Avoiding Halloween head lice

When you grow up from child to adult, the things that were generally considered “scary” about Halloween suddenly don’t seem so bad anymore – but they’re often replaced with newer, very different fears. A group of trick-or-treaters dressed as zombie cheerleaders? No problem. An infestation of head lice all that spreads around the whole family, on the other hand? Terrifying.

Obviously, you can get head lice all year round, but reports from Lice Clinics of America Tulsa document that the Halloween season is peak season for lice infestations. There’s then the issue of dressing up for Halloween, which often means kids are sharing costumes and wigs – an ideal situation for the spreading of the lice.

So, where exactly do head lice come from? How do you get rid of them? And more importantly, how do you make sure they never come back? It’s all answered in the post below.

A long time ago…

It sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale, but there’s nothing magical about the formation of head lice. Their origin is largely unknown, but they date back a very long time in history, so they’ve clearly been pests for our ancestors as well as our predecessors. It is thought that head lice might have first popped up in North America, before migrating across all four corners of the world. Thanks for that, lice.

What exactly are head lice?

We call head lice parasites because they have to live off another living thing (in this case, human heads), in order to survive. Head lice are insects that are effectively harmless, apart from making you want to itch your head until you have no hair left. That’s caused by them nibbling into your scalp to draw blood, which they live off. (They’re like tiny vampires. Very Halloween-appropriate.)

“Lice” actually used to refer to all lice, head and body-based. But then humans started wearing clothes – a practical necessity, really – and body lice evolved, developing claws to make it easier for them to grab onto smoother materials.

How do head lice spread so fast?

Almost all of us will have experienced the horror of receiving a letter home from school detailing a head lice infestation, with orders to check our children’s hair immediately. Frustratingly for the average parent of a long-haired child, head lice can spread incredibly quickly, and are more common in children, who generally get a bit more up close and personal with one another than us adults do.

Head lice can be transmitted from person to person in a number of ways, and touching heads is only one of these. You can also spread lice through sharing combs and brushes, as well as towels, hats – and Halloween wigs and clothing that gets pulled over the head. Head lice can’t live for more than two days without food (that’s human blood, unfortunately), so they will usually only travel in the quickest means possible from one head to the next.

Are head lice a sign of bad hygiene?

No! This is a huge misconception about head lice. Anyone can catch head lice – and most shampoos and conditioners won’t kill them, so even if you’re washing your hair every night, you’re very unlikely to kill them off.

So how do I kill head lice?

If you don’t have head lice, but want to avoid you or your children catching them this Halloween, there are a few things you can do to prevent them from spreading (or being spread to you). Never share your personal items like brushes and towels, not even with your family members. Keep those Halloween costumes separate, too – as fun as your kids and their friends might find it to try on each other’s wigs, this is a really easy way for lice to spread.

If you’ve got head lice in the family, and want to kill them off, you can buy shampoos and other hair products that should do the job. Most of them will instruct you on what to do with the product, but it’s generally a simple apply, wait for five to ten minutes, wash off situation. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to comb the infested hair to remove any dead lice that might still remain. You can also buy special combs that kill the lice as you brush through the hair, which is a quick and easy option, especially for those with kids who won’t stay still for long.