A Few Facts About Lice and Nits: What you Should Know

Lice infestation is quite annoying to say the least. Many people, who find that they have lice, do not know how to handle the situation. The following few facts about lice and nits might be helpful.

What you Should Know

The most common age to get lice is between 3 years to 12 years old. It somehow happens that children in this age group “attract” lice more than any other age group. This is why school going children are the most affected by this problem. Once the kids become 12 years old, the lice problem disappears for the most part, although there is surely still a risk of being infested at any age.

African people (with their very curly hair) do not get lice as often as straight haired people, and this could be due to the fact that the lice are not able to move on the extremely curly hair as much as they can on straight hair.

Females are more prone to lice than men. This is thought to be because women have longer hair and the lice can jump on it faster than they can on the hair of men. Head lice cannot jump or fly (they do not have wings).

Contrary to popular belief, human lice do not burrow under the skin of human beings. In fact, they do not burrow at all. They live on the hair and scalp, lay their nits on the hair, and after completing about 30 days, they die on the hair.

Having lice is not a symptom of a disease. The lice are parasites (something like ticks, bed bugs or mosquitoes) which live on human body and feed on human blood. Only very advanced infestation would give way to infections, but that too would be more for lack of hygiene than the lice themselves.

The lice nits are extremely stubborn and cannot be removed easily. The louse sticks the nits with a glue like substance on the hair and unless you use a special nit comb, it is not possible to get rid of them. The nits can be exceptionally dirty looking on the hair.

Lice get transmitted from person to person by contact. They literally jump from one head to another and then they lay nits which then multiply in the host territory. Unless they are removed early, the nits can create an almost unbreakable source of life, and since they do not die when the hair is treated with anti-lice solutions like adult lice do, it’s necessary to use a fine toothed comb to get rid of them.