by Garry Keown

Created on: August 10, 2009   Last Updated: August 11, 2009

it was my unfortunate pleasure to have come into contact with the common head louse a few weeks back. My kids got them, at a party, and it is an unpleasant experience for all. You feel dirty and creepy, when actually the opposite is true. Lice cannot tell the difference between clean hair and dirty hair, and actually find it easier to grip on to clean hair.

what you need to know -

1. they are basically harmless. What you feel in the itch is not them crawling about on you, but rather an allergic reaction to the louse saliva as it chomps down on your scalp.
2. They cannot jump or fly. They are very slow, and travel between heads via head to head contact. This contact needs to be for 30 seconds or more to transfer the louse.
3. chemical treatments have lost their effectiveness, as the lice are building up a resistance to them.
4. the only real way to know that you have lice is if you find a live louse there. having nits (eggs) does not necessarily mean you have lice.
5. you can first try to remove the lice using a special comb, but on its own this is not too effective, as i found out.
6. It is not necessary to clean any hats or bedclothes when they are about. They clamp fast to the hair and do not willingly leave it. They cannot survive off the human head for long, and only move off to get on a new head.

Life cycle of the louse -

This is broken down into three distinct stages. These are the egg, or nit, the nymph and the adult louse.

The egg.

The female louse lays six to eight of these a day, each one on a single hair. They are smaller than a pin head, and oval in shape. If they are a light grey colour they have hatched, and if they are a dark colour they are still inside. It can be hard to spot the eggs, as the louse lays them close to the scalp where it is more humid. They can look like dandruff, or other flecks in the hair.

The nymph.

these hatch after 7-10 days, and start to feed on your blood right away. They do this via a tube coming from there head, and it is the saliva from this that makes you itch. These are different from adults as they cannot mate or lay eggs. They must moult out of there skin as they grow, three times before they are adult lice.

the louse.

The adult louse will start to mate and lay eggs within a day. They live around 30 days, and as such can lay up to 100 eggs in the head during there lifespan. Thus they need to be treated quickly. generally the louse is a greyish brown colour, and has a head, a thorax with three sets of legs,

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