While lice don’t discriminate when it comes to the age of their victims, young kids are most known for contracting (and spreading) a lice infestation. In fact, according to the American Academy of Dermatology, an estimated 6 to 12 million kids between the ages of 3 and 12 years old get head lice every single year. And a lice outbreak in a day care or a preschool or kindergarten class is enough to send parents into a panic. This does, however, mean you would have to slather your child’s head in petroleum jelly (and leave it on for an extended period of time—up to eight hours) and, even then, some of the lice and their eggs would still almost definitely survive to make your kid scratch another day. If it’s all you have on hand, consider it, but some of the more natural options on this list will likely be more effective. If you do decide to try “suffocating” the lice, remember that you’ll still need to brush them out (in fact, some people even recommend coating the comb with oil instead of applying it directly to the hair). After you’ve combed through the hair thoroughly and removed all of the lice and eggs you can find, be sure to wash your kid’s hair with regular shampoo, and be prepared to wash it a few times to get the oil out. The study isn’t the only one that found success in using coconut-oil-based products to treat lice. Another showed that a spray made of coconut oil and aniseed oil was effective in treating lice, and yet another found coconut oil was actually more effective than some chemical treatments. (Bonus: It also makes hair soft and shiny.) You can also just use plain coconut oil as a treatment at home. First, rinse your kid’s hair with hot water. Then, apply coconut oil (use plenty—this isn’t the time to skimp) to the hair, making sure to massage it throughout. When you’re finished, put a plastic shower cap on and leave it on for at least eight hours before removing the cap and combing through the hair, removing any lice and eggs you find. In another, researchers tested three different products to treat head lice in children, including one that contained tea tree oil (as well as lavender oil). At the end of the treatment period, almost every child who was treated with the tea tree oil and lavender oil product was completely lice-free. By comparison, just a quarter of the kids treated with pyrethrins and piperonyl butoxide (the most common ingredients in over-the-counter treatments like Nix) were free of lice at the end of the study. If you want to treat your child’s head lice with tea tree oil, you should always combine the tea tree oil with a carrier oil such as coconut oil or olive oil first; otherwise it can be too potent and damage the skin. After blending, apply it in the same way as you would coconut oil, described above. Or as a recap: Rinse the child’s hair with hot water, massage the tea-tree-oil-carrier oil mixture into the scalp and hair, put a shower cap on for eight hours, and then comb through for lice and eggs before washing the tea tree oil out of the hair. You can also buy tea tree oil lice shampoos online or add tea tree oil to your current shampoo as a preventive step if you don’t want to go with a pure essential oil treatment. While tea tree oil was found to be the most effective in the study (another win for it as a natural treatment for lice), peppermint was also shown to be very effective at repelling lice. What’s more, the slippery nature of these oils helped limit the transfer of the lice between kids—so the rest of the PTA will thank you. Just remember, if you want to experiment with using essential oils for lice treatment, always combine them with a carrier oil before they come into contact with any part of your skin, including the scalp. While many essential oils show promise as potential treatments for lice (and in countless other areas of your life), the research into their effectiveness isn’t conclusive by any means, and these products aren’t regulated by the FDA. You should talk to your doctor before using essential oils of any kind to treat lice at home, especially if you’re using the treatment on a young child. Overall, no home remedy has been shown to be totally effective in treating a lice infestation. Whatever treatment method you use, manual removal (meaning doing the hard time combing through your child’s hair, strand-by-strand, and removing any lice and eggs you see) will always aid in the effectiveness. Female lice lay seven to 10 eggs a day10, which they attach to the hair with a sticky, glue-like substance that’s not water-soluble, which explains why lice and their eggs are so difficult to get rid of. The female louse sticks those eggs very close to the scalp (about 1 mm away), and the heat and moisture from the host’s head actually incubates the eggs and helps them hatch. (Talk about adding insult to itchy, itchy injury.) The eggs hatch11 after about seven to 10 days and, since their moms laid them so close to the scalp, the baby lice are able to immediately sink their teeth in and start feeding. Adult lice live for about 30 days, which means every adult female louse, if left untreated, could lay as many as 300 eggs in her lifetime. The math really helps put their prolific nature into perspective. Many people believe that lice are caused by poor hygiene, but that’s not necessarily the case. Kids and adults who have lice don’t get them because they don’t take enough baths or showers or because their homes are dirty. Anyone can catch lice, no matter how clean their homes or their hair. In fact, not washing hair every day may be a slightly better deterrent than keeping it squeaky clean. “Keeping hair a little ‘dirty’ can help,” says Bindiya Gandhi, M.D., an American Board Family Medicine–certified physician and mbg health expert. “A good way to do this is to oil your hair regularly—for example, Indian parents always use coconut oil because it’s antibacterial and helps keep lice away.” This may also help prevent the lice from clinging to hair follicles.
