Head Lice And Long Beards

December 26, 2015 2:58 PM

I just learned that some kids I was visiting over the holiday have head lice. I have a beard that goes down basically nipple length. I'm going to get The Shampoo Of Shame for my head, but do I need to use it on my face hair also?
posted by hippybear to Health & Fitness (14 answers total)

CDC says that they are generally found on the scalp, near the ears and neckline. You can occasionally get head lice in eyebrows and eyelashes and they move by crawling. (you can also get public lice in your beard but that is a different question.) Seems like it is a very short crawl to your beard, especially the side burns and chin. I would be less worried about the long parts of your beard - they like blood and warmth. On the other hand, lice are spread by head to head and hair to hair contact. If you were just in the same room with this kid but not snuggling, wrestling or otherwise in close contact, you might wait to see if anything develops before you get treatment.
posted by metahawk at 3:33 PM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I think I'd rather shampoo now and early before I do anything like, um.. sleep with my head in contact with my bedding... or lie down on the couch...

A shampoo and washing the tiny bag's worth of stuff I took with me is much easier as a preventative feels much easier than laundering my entire house once something has developed.

I guess I'll shampoo the beard, too.

*itches everywhere even if it's just psychosomatic*
posted by hippybear at 4:08 PM on December 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

You could go right now and blow dry every hair on your body. I have used that method myself with great success. First I wash my hair with pyrethrum dog shampoo. I am not a chemist but I just have a feeling it is not as bad for me as lice shampoo and it does kill lice just fine. I leave it in for about five minutes. Then I wait. If I feel the slightest itch I blow dry my hair on the hottest setting for as long as I can stand it. This works to kill the lice. But I don't think it kills eggs. So if the shampoo and the blow drying didn't kill the eggs you will have to deal with them when they hatch - I can't remember when that is because this happened to me years ago. I did have them hatch and the blow drying worked alone - I didn't have to shampoo because I killed them before they laid eggs of their own.

After you kill everything, in the days after, you should not itch at all. If you do, immediately blow dry.

The very worst thing you can do as far as the big picture is - is try on hats in stores, especially thrift stores. That is the worst thing ever.

I got lice 3 times from working at a homeless shelter for teenagers but the only time I got lice out in the wild is once when I tried on a hat in a thrift store.

Sorry, question was should you shampoo your beard, yes I think you should unless you go with my blow dry method then I think it would not hurt to blow dry your beard just to be on the safe side.
posted by cda at 4:33 PM on December 26, 2015

A little girl I used to babysit caught lice over the weekend once, and despite her parents attempts to treat, I found this out when she was sitting on my lap and I looked down at her head. BLEARGH. I went home and coated my head with olive oil and left it in a shampoo cap (disposable once I used it for this) for a long time - the olive oil is supposed to suffocate the lice. And then washed several times. Each time (and for about a week after) whenever I used shampoo, I mixed in like a teaspoon of tea tree oil with however much I was about to wash my hair with. I didn't have or get lice, and I think the olive oil helped with the itching, because just like you, every time I felt an itch I thought OH MY GOD IT'S LICE :D
posted by lemniskate at 4:43 PM on December 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Lice are pretty particular about which type of body hair they live on. Head hair is different in its shape (cross sectional shape) than beard or pubic or other body hair, which is why head lice don't end up where crabs live and vice versa. For that matter, I understand that lice are way less common on people with characteristic super-curly African heritage hair than on people with Caucasian hair structure.

Beard hair is pretty different than head hair, so I'm betting you're safe.

But since we're talking about lice treatment, our family has fought the fight a few times (never when we lived in a heavily African-American neighborhood in Seattle--but lice seem to be a perpetual problem in our lily-white suburb of Boston.) The product we like to use is called Licefreee (notice the three "e"s at the end), which is an anise-scented gel with a very high salt/sodium chloride concentration. It is NOT pyrethin based and acts by desiccating the hatched bugs. It is not scary or particularly unpleasant to use. If you wanted to be safe you could treat your head hair and beard hair with this stuff.

Good luck. Lice are yucky. I feel for you, friend.
posted by Sublimity at 4:44 PM on December 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've lived through (guh) 3 lice infestations. Effing grade school.

There are a scant few ways to effectively treat lice and olive oil isn't one of them.

The article I linked to reflects data on lice treatments.

In my experience, you do Nix a first time which wipes out the adult and nymph lice and then spend the next two weeks nit picking. OTC treatments do nothing for the nuclear bunkers that are nits. You have to take them out by hand.

Pick your favorite tools and a friend with good eyesight. Mine technique was to just go through and my kids' heads and plucking each hair with a nit on it and then burning it in a candle. The kits come with plastic combs - those are useless because you have to boil them when you're done with a session to kill any nits that are still there. The plastic warps and melts.

Then after two weeks you should be seeing hardly any nits at all. If so great - one more treatment of Nix which will kill off any few nymphs that hatched in the intervening time, but are not yet mature. Also in the meantime, you should be changing your bedding and washing that shit in the hot cycle and dying on high, but like TFA says, your time is better spent removing nits than it is doing bedding since lice don't live long off a host.

If you're still finding lots of nits after say 10 days, you need the strong stuff because you got infested with a variety that is resistant to Nix because someone didn't follow the damn directions and didn't pick out the nits. Doctor time!
posted by plinth at 6:11 PM on December 26, 2015

We had a lice treatment professional come to the house.

Step one was to saturate the hair with a whole bottle of conditioner. Work it in, squeeze and massage every bit of your hair/beard. Drowning/suffocating the living bugs. (The other liquid products mentioned would serve the same purpose, as long as they are slippery enough) Leave the goop in the hair for the next step...

comb the hair in a systematic and purposeful way with a steel lice comb. Section the hair off into 1" square sections and comb repeatedly from top to bottom from every direction. Lice eggs have a tenacious grip on the hair shaft, and the comb needs to scrape, scrape, scrape to get them off. Wipe the comb on a papertowel and examine ghoulishly for tiny black specks.

Meanwhile, wash sheets, towels, coverlet, pillowcases, hoodies, beanie caps, scarves-- in HOT water and dry in very HOT dryer.
posted by ohshenandoah at 6:13 PM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: To be clear: I haven't found lice on me. I was in a house that, after I left after spending about 48 hours there, was found to have lice on the children. I didn't snuggle or wrestle with any of the children, I didn't wrap myself with any of the afghans sitting on the couch that the kids were also using. I did sleep in a bed in the house for 2 nights.

I've used Rid-X today on my hair and beard, and I'm washing every piece of fabric I had in that house in hot water and soon to be dried as hot as my dryer will let me.

I'm looking to nip this in the bud before it becomes a personal infestation. Maybe I've had nit-laying lice on me already, but I'm pretty sure I have not. I'll use the comb that came with the shampoo for the next few days -- I'm not expecting to find nits, but maybe I will.
posted by hippybear at 6:54 PM on December 26, 2015

I found the shampoo ineffective. Dousing the hair with conditioner and combing is effective. Too late now, but I would recommend this approach over leaving a bunch of pesticide residue right by your mouth.
posted by crazycanuck at 7:48 PM on December 26, 2015

PS - please go back to the drug store and buy a metal comb, it is more effective than the plastic job in the kit.
posted by crazycanuck at 7:49 PM on December 26, 2015

Response by poster: None of the stores that would carry that were open today. I will try to find one open tomorrow or on Monday.
posted by hippybear at 7:51 PM on December 26, 2015

Having traveled extensively in lice-riddled areas (aka hippie hostels in Central America), I am here to tell you that:

a) Seriously, lice are not as easy to catch from clothing, bedding, or pillows as you think. So don't freak yourself out too badly and run screaming through the house with a can of Raid. It might amuse your neighbors, but I think lice partially feed on human fear so don't make things worse. Head-to-head contact is the culprit here. Until you know for sure that you are lice-free, save long hugs for another time.

b) Lots of lice are becoming immune to the shampoos :( But where chemicals fail, a nit comb will win. Just get a really *good* nit comb, squirt some vinegar and conditioner on your hair, and comb through it verrrrrry thoroughly, starting with sections from the back and working forward, like ohshenandoah says. If you take about an hour to do this, washing the comb out after every stroke, you'll get 90% of what's there. Wait 4 days until the remaining little buggers get big enough to nab with the comb and go at it again. You can do this again after another 4 days, but trust me, your paranoia will serve you well and you will do a good, complete job the first two times and you will be lice free.

If you even have nits. Which hopefully you do not.

Yes, your head and possibly your bearded area will have phantom itches for the next several months. When in doubt, whip out that fancy nit comb and reassure yourself that your hair is fine.
posted by ananci at 12:24 AM on December 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Seconding Licefreee (or as we call it in my house, "Licefreeeeeeeeee!"). It's much less toxic than Nix, and it works mechanically (by drying out the lice) instead of by poisoning. There's a gel and a spray.

Honestly though, if you weren't hugging the kids, and you were sleeping on clean sheets in a guest room, you might not even have lice. It takes direct contact (with another person, a hairbrush, or bedding) to pass them on. Try checking right above your ears--that's where egg-laying usually starts. If you don't see nits above your ears by now, you're probably OK.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 10:02 AM on December 27, 2015

My children brought home lice from a cousin. While it was very simple to shave two little boys, my own hair was fairly long at that point. I prefer to go with the wash everything washable on hot, or at least hot tumble dry, technique for fabrics. Those items then go in a sealed garbage bag for a couple weeks.

Common knowledge in our area, as supplied by daycare, says that the shampoos are ineffective. The included lice combs are pretty crap as well. Steel flea combs for pets are a much better investment and much less physically damaging to hair. I was working that flea comb and conditioner as needed through my head several times a day until I was sure there would be no reoccurrences.
posted by Talia Devane at 3:10 PM on December 29, 2015