How Do You Get Rid of Lice? 3 Moms Share Their Experiences
Key takeaways:
Head lice are very common and getting them has nothing to do with bad hygiene.
You can get rid of head lice with special shampoos and combing with a special fine-toothed comb.
Some people prefer to go to special lice clinics that help people get rid of lice.
It’s a moment every parent dreads — a note or phone call saying that head lice are on the loose. Lice may be extremely common, especially among small children, but they’re sometimes feared by families.
The first reason is the ick factor. Google “head lice” and you’ll get this less-than-charming information from the CDC: “The head louse, or Pediculus humanus capitis, is a parasitic insect that can be found on the head, eyebrows, and eyelashes of people. Head lice feed on human blood several times a day.”
The CDC adds that “head lice are not known to spread disease” and have nothing to do with bad hygiene (they’re spread by head-to-head touching). That’s reassuring, but it doesn’t make the thought of having bugs on your head sucking your blood any less disgusting.
Second, lice have a reputation as hard to get rid of, requiring many applications of special shampoos and a lot of careful combing. There are even lice that are resistant to some chemicals in shampoos designed to kill them.
Plus, the adult lice do the biting, but their eggs — which look like small white or yellow dots and are known as nits — take 6 to 9 days to hatch. Miss some and the lice can return. No wonder many adults have childhood memories of their parents pulling painfully on their hair day after day.
Does getting lice still mean weeks or months of battling bugs? Or are there now simpler ways to get rid of head lice? GoodRx spoke to three families, and our medical expert offered some advice.
Denial doesn’t get rid of head lice
Like many moms, Vanessa McGrady’s struggle with lice began with an itchy scalp. A Burbank, California-based writer, Vanessa took her 11-year-old daughter to the beach one day in the summer of 2021. On the way home, her daughter started complaining that her head itched. Vanessa didn’t want to consider the possibility her daughter might have lice.
“Her best friend had lice a few weeks prior, but I thought that was way in the past,” Vanessa says. “In fact, I was in so much denial that I looked at the white nits and decided that her scalp had been sunburned and she was flaking.”
Vanessa stopped at a beauty store and got a vitamin C serum to treat what she thought was a sunburn.
The serum didn’t work, and her daughter’s itching continued. Vanessa and her husband checked each other and found a handful of nits on their heads. It was time to admit that there were lice in the house.
“I didn’t have the knowledge or bandwidth to figure it out on my own. And because my daughter was so uncomfortable, I wanted to help her as soon as possible,” Vanessa explains.
She found a local service that specializes in removing lice. The service came to their home and treated the whole family within a few hours. The service also advised the McGrady family to wash their bedding and clothing in hot water. Vanessa contacted people the family had been in close contact with to warn them to check for lice.
“Fortunately, we didn’t spread it,” she says. “Most people are pretty cool about lice. It’s just something that happens.”
In fact, lice are so common that Vanessa is determined to be more prepared in case it ever happens to her family again.
Her daughter mostly wears her long hair up when she’s in crowded situations now. And Vanessa has stocked up on lice shampoo and bought the fine-toothed comb used to remove nits just in case the problem crops up again. She also advises other parents that “when your kid complains of an itchy head, move into action immediately.”
Paying for the quickest possible solution
Lindsay Wilcox, a 35-year-old communications manager in Salt Lake City, was in church when she spotted her daughter’s lice.
“My daughter, Norah, was 4 years old and was sitting in a children's class at church. All of a sudden, I noticed a little bug crawling around on her scalp,” she recalls.
Her husband Googled lice and showed her a picture.
“My stomach dropped,” Lindsay says. “It was definitely lice.”
Lindsay didn't wait to jump into action. She immediately pulled her daughter from the class and headed to a pharmacy. She bought a special shampoo for removing the lice and a nit comb.
After washing and combing out her daughter’s hair, as well as washing Norah and her twin brother’s sheets and bagging up their stuffed animals, Lindsay and her husband checked each other for lice. The family thought they were in the clear.
But a few days later, Lindsay was in the shower and noticed lice in her hair. Her scalp had felt itchy but that was not unusual for her. “Because I have dry, curly hair, I have had an itchy scalp for years and didn't really notice it being itchier than normal until I found the louse,” she remembers.
Grossed out and worried about passing lice to others, Lindsay called her husband at work to see if he could come home and help her comb out her thick hair. He was busy, so he suggested a lice clinic.
Lindsay decided to pay $150 for a nearby clinic’s fastest treatment, which uses heat to kill the lice and eggs before removing them with a comb.
“Once they finished that, they applied olive oil to my head and had me wear a disposable shower cap over it,” Lindsay says. “I left it in for about an hour and then rinsed it out and styled my hair as normal.”
The experience wasn’t pleasant, but it was relatively short.
“The peace of mind I got from knowing they had killed all the lice and the eggs and feeling instant relief was invaluable,” Lindsay says of her clinic experience. She adds that “the at-home treatment seemed to work well for my daughter. We checked her hair daily and didn't see any more lice.”
It’s past time to get over the stigma
For Shayna Klopett, an education policy consultant in Katonah, New York, camp was the culprit.
Shayna’s 8-year-old daughter had spent a 45-minute bus ride reading to a younger camper. A week later, that camper’s mother called to report that her daughter had developed a raging case of head lice.
When Shayna checked her daughter’s thick, curly hair, “there were bugs crawling everywhere. It was disgusting,” she says.
Because of the sheer number of nits and lice, Shayna wasn’t sure she could remove them all on her own. School was also about to start, and Shayna’s daughter would need a note confirming she had been treated for her lice to attend.
For these reasons, Shayna decided to take her daughter to a lice clinic, which confirmed that Shayna’s daughter had a full-blown infestation.
The clinic removed the lice and sent the family home with a regimen of daily shampooing and 45-minute combing sessions. Even after 2 weeks, the lice stubbornly remained. So, the family returned to the clinic for another treatment.
It wasn’t the family’s first experience with lice, but it was their worst.
Previously, on a trip to Israel, the whole family had gotten lice. When Shayna’s daughter picked them up again at summer camp, Shayna felt the stigma in America was far worse. In Israel, the family “went to the pharmacy and there was a floor-to-ceiling rack of different medications,” Shayna reports. “In the United States, there was like one bottle.”
Shayna says that here, many people still believe that if you get lice, you’re not clean.
“People need to get over themselves and be like, kids get lice just like kids get colds,” she says.
What does the doctor say?
Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH
Medical Editor
I once saw a decal that said, “Lice Happens” and immediately bought one for my office.
Many people are creeped out by lice. But the truth is, they’re a normal (and almost inevitable) part of childhood, like scraped knees and colds.
Children like to hug, play close and trade clothing. Lice take advantage of those behaviors to spread around schools and homes. Lice may be opportunists, but they’re not a sign of poor hygiene, nor are they dangerous.
Lice can be difficult to get rid of, particularly if you have long, thick, or curly hair. Some people opt for head lice removal centers, like the stories above. The benefits to these centers include working with someone who’s experienced in removing lice and applying lice treatment. For some people, it’s worth paying money for a service you could do yourself but find easier to outsource.
But there’s no evidence that these clinics are any better at getting rid of lice than regular people who do it at home. With patience, you can get rid of lice just as effectively as a clinic and save money.
If over-the-counter lice treatments don’t work, you can try prescription treatments. Some people opt to go straight to prescription lice treatments because of growing concerns about resistance.
Two tips if you go the treatment at home route:
Wash hair with shampoo only before applying medication. Don’t use conditioner or other hair products. Conditioner will make the medication slip off the scalp.
Don’t forget the second treatment 9 days later. That second treatment kills any nits that escaped the first round.
If you prefer to avoid chemical treatments, wet combing can be just as effective. This is the “old fashioned” way of getting rid of lice. You simply comb out live lice and nits every day until they’re all gone. It’s time consuming, but effective and safe.
Why trust our experts?
