With 8 of us, I guess it was just a matter of time. We have dodged bullet after bullet on this one for years but our luck finally ran out this week.
If any of you have faced even the possibility of lice, you’ll want to read this post! I will be sharing our little nasty journey and giving you some great info on treatment options as well as preventative ones. I don’t like to offer up advice, recipes or recommendations when I haven’t had direct experience with something and this is no different. I have simply avoided this topic when it comes to Essential Oils as I know there is serious skepticism out there with whether or not they actually work on lice and I woulnd’t ever want to steer you astray! But faced with our own little epidemic, the cost of “lice kits” and the sheer number I’d have to purchase to effectively treat my whole family, I had to start taking a very real look at treating with EO’s first.
So, are you ready? Here we go! Buckle up! If you’ve ever dealt with or worried about lice before, you’ll be glad you stuck around for the ride!
DAY 1
So the story begins after we returned from a very fun vacation up north. We were so excited to be home and settling back into some semblance of a schedule. My youngest daughter had been complaining about an itchy head for some time. I had checked her several times but I think I just was not confident enough to know for sure what I was checking for. She is prone to dry skin and I assumed that this was what we were dealing with. For those of you who don’t know, lice can look deceptively like dandruff. The way you can tell the difference is the dandruff will brush easily out of the hair but nits will not budge. This would have been important information to have known several weeks earlier!
Without that little pearl of wisdom in my arsenal, I moved ahead with my assumption of dry scalp. Now that we were home, I purchased some essential oil-infused shampoo and deep conditioner and went to work on her scalp before and after her shower. Apparently, the EO’s in the shampoo and conditioner succeeded in flushing the little buggers out because when I started combing through her hair, there was a LOT of movement! That was the moment I realized without a doubt what we were actually dealing with. Trying by best to keep my cool and not throw up (so as not to panic my 9 year old), I began picking out what I could see moving and began to research what we were up against and where we needed to go from here. I became increasingly panicked as I realized this daughter had been sharing brushes with me and my oldest daughter for the last week (why take three brushes on a trip when you can get away with packing one?)! Plus she had shared a bed with my oldest daughter the whole time as well! Two very long car rides in tight quarters, shared suitcases and lots of group sleeping arrangements for an entire week began to piece together in my mind. The crushing ramifications of our packing conveniences and sleeping arrangements struck me all at once and I slowly started realizing what we might actually be facing…a whole family with lice?!?! Please say it isn’t so!
It was 10:45pm at that point. I had done a quick check through everyone and it looked like my boys might have somehow escaped this one. My older daughter and i though were not so lucky. While we weren’t as bad as my youngest daughter, there were some obvious signs that we would need treatment as well. I always thought lice were something you find in really nasty, dirty hair. I learned that they actually LOVE clean hair and very much prefer it over dirty, greasy hair! Clean hair makes it so much easier for them to latch onto the hair follicle. So I guess we’ll be relaxing the hair washing rituals around here…
I ran in a panic to the nearest Walgreens before they closed and purchased several of their homeopathic lice kits. I have always been more than a little concerned about the heavy chemicals and pesticides in more traditional lice kits. My oldest has demonstrated severe topical allergies to many chemicals and even essential oils. So I opted for a more homeopathic kit option for her. As the counter lady rang up my bill, my jaw dropped a little at the cost of these kits. $30 for a single treatment?! And from everything I read, even WITH the chemicals and pesticide kits, I’d still be looking at several treatments per head to completely eradicate them. Holy crap! That’s some serious cash!
So I left with my kits and a much lighter wallet but determined to use only one of them for my oldest daughter (who is extremely skin-sensitive to oils and pretty much everything chemical) and try the Essential Oils route with me and my younger daughter. I figured I’ve got the kits just in case but if I don’t need them, I’ll be super happy to return them to the store for a refund.
I arrived home at 11:15 and realized quickly that once started, I was looking at 6-9 hours to process all of our hair. So I sent everyone to bed and committed to initiating the process first thing in the morning. But the night would not go idly by…I began some copious researching. Did you know that Rosemary has actually been successful in completely killing lice on contact?! And Melaleuca, Clove and Eucalpytus have been successfully tested to repel the little buggers! I decided I could try treating with Essential Oils first for a fraction of the cost. If needed, I always had the kits. I talked to some very educated friends with direct experience using EO’s to treat lice and decided on my recipe of choice. Here’s the breakdown:
5 drops Rosemary…$0.30
5 drops Eucalyptus…$0.30
8 drops Melaleuca…$0.64
8 drops Peppermint…$0.64
5 drops Terrashield…$0.20
Enough Coconut Oil to fill a 2 ounce glass spray bottle …$0.10
One 2 oz spray bottle was good for about one treatment. So for about $2.18 vs. $30 per scalp treatment, it was definitely worth the attempt! Even if it required retreatment, essential oils would by far be the more inexpensive route to pursue.
My oldest daughter would be the “control” since I felt she needed to go the kit option to avoid any oil sensitivity issues.
DAY 2:
First things first. We took the lice kit “gel” and saturated my oldest daughters hair. The smell of the gel just about made me gag. It was a very thick, goopy gel that very quickly saturated her hair…I didn’t need to use the entire bottle, only about 3/4 of it. Then I made up the essential oil treatment in a glass spray bottle and saturated both mine and my younger daughters hair. Her hair is just past her ears and pretty thin. We each needed a full 2oz spray bottle to completely saturate our hair (mine is really thick and a little longer than shoulder length so I actually used my 2 oz dose and then about 1/4 of an additional spray bottle). My house smelled wonderful though after our application! So that was a nice side benefit of the oils. Then we wrapped our hair in plastic wrap and began the hour waiting game.
Talk about a mother/daughter fashion statement…don’t we look dashing?
The time was not wasted though. The next step was to gather all the stuffed animals, pillows, etc and throw them in plastic bags to “cook” in the garage for a few days. Then I took everything that was capable of being washed and that may have come into contact with any of us and began the ridiculously large laundry pile…everything was getting the hot water treatment followed by at least 30 minutes in the dryer on high heat. Lice can actually hold their breath for over 8 hours in water. But heat is another story. Lice cannot survive without a host for more than a day. They hatch every 3-5 days so that’s why it’s so important to bag everything up and leave it in a hot attic or garage for a few days. This is also why you need to recheck hair every 3 days for a couple of weeks to make sure everything was eradicated. I was told retreatment in a week was advised.
When I started with the Nit comb on my youngest first, I was horrified to realize the extent of her infestation. But happily, the nits and lice were coming out with relative ease as I drew the nit comb through her oiled hair. As directed, i would wipe the nit comb on some Kleenex each time I pulled it through her hair, wiping off the removed nits and lice, then disposing of the Kleenex into a ziploc bag. The lice looked like little black “pepper flakes”. If you look very closely at the hair follicle, you can see the lice either on the scalp or perched about 1/2″ to 1/4″ away from the scalp directly on the hair shaft. The eggs were in about the same location and could be seen as tiny, white specs on the hair follicle. They are relatively hard and will actually “pop” if you squeeze them. The lice were almost impossible to spot on my daughters dark hair but very easily seen when we wiped the nit comb on the Kleenex.
My oldest daughter did not have nearly as much infestation to comb out. The gel was super messy and ridiculously smelly but I think it may have made the nits slide out a little easier than the EO application. My oldest son had the unfortunate duty of taking care of my comb-out as my husband was working all day. He found a few, but again, not nearly as many as my youngest daughter. He commented several times how easyily they were coming out though. All in all, we probably spent about 6-8 hours total working through our hair with a nit comb…just so you know what to expect on your time management. It was an easy 3 hours on my daughter with the biggest infestation.
We all then went and washed our hair out with the lice shampoo that came in my daughters kit. I took the spray I had used on me and my younger daughters hair and sprayed down all the rest of the family just to be safe. It makes your hair smell wonderful and super soft so no one really objected to the preventative treatment!
And can I just say, lice are so gross!!
DAY3 :
I revisited each of my kids hair with both the essential oil spray and my trusty nit comb. My oldest daughter just used the shampoo that came in her kit. It recommends shampooing with it every day for the next week to 10 days. I found a few more nits in my youngest daughters hair but no more live lice. My son found one hatched louse on me and a few more nits. Didn’t see anything more on my oldest daughter. Re-sprayed us all with the EO blend once again. The laundry efforts are ongoing…
Also had to boil our combs and brushes as well as hair ties we wanted to keep. Most of it I just threw away though. I was too grossed out and most of our brushes and combs were well beyond their prime anyway.
And yes, lice are STILL SO GROSS!!!
DAY 4:
My daughter is still using the shampoo that came in her kit. Continuing to treat everyone else’s hair with the essential oil spray. I don’t feel the need to completely saturate at this point. I’m just spraying it on the roots and working it through the hair. It’s a great hair and scalp conditioner!So at least there’s that little side benefit! I’m checking hair daily but so far, haven’t seen any more signs of lice. Fingers crossed we got ’em! I’m too grossed out to do much with my hair so I just spray it down, comb it out and pull it up for the day.
DAY 8:
Rechecked and continued to spray my EO recipe on each of our hair. I also added in DoTERRA’s Root to Tip Serum ($35 wholesale) as an additional preventative protocol for all of us. This serum has almost the same oils as my spray recipe but it’s a little less concentrated and much more light weight for daily wear. You only need a few drops. Wet your hair and then dab a few drops in different locations on the scalp and work it into the roots and out through the tips of the hair. Dry and style as per usual. Additional tip regarding lice…they don’t like heat! So feel free to blow dry, straighten, iron, etc. as desired!
Guess what we did today?? took back the other kits I bought because it looks like we don’t need em! Glad to have that money back!
DAY 9:
Didn’t want to completely wet and blow dry my hair today so I just dabbed a few drops of the Root to Tip Serum on my scalp (even on my dry hair) and just work it around the roots. Still feeling a little creepy crawly but my “lice checkers” assure me there’s nothing they can see in my hair anymore. I double check my girls and boys just to be thorough…still nothing to report. YAY!
DAY 10:
Still no lice! Started bringing in the toys from the garage. I think we’ve thoroughly fumigated them in the hot plastic bags…one little side benefit of the ridiculous arizona summers is there is plenty of heat to go around!. Finally caught up the wash…that was probably the most time consuming part of this whole adventure!
CONCLUSION:
Both the “Licefree” Kit and the Essential Oils seemed to do the trick at our house. Hoping we don’t have to worry about any reinfection. I will keep you posted though! My fellow lice survivors caution me against early celebration as it is not totally uncommon for a second infestation to crop up. But I am hoping we are done with the little buggers!
If you are looking to purchase your own essential oils, I encourage you to visit my site at http://www.mydoterra.com/theessentialhome and get started today! I can’t even tell you how empowering it is as a mom to be able to have some inexpensive options available to you to treat your own family. I am so excited to share these tools with you and I hope you will not hesitate to comment or message me with any questions on our little journey or how I can help you and your family have the same successes we have experienced with essential oils!
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