They Are Creepy And Crawly!  They Are Head Lice!

It has nothing to do whether you take good care of your hair or not.  Clean hair does not keep head lice away. 

Head lice, body lice, and pubic lice are the three types of lice that can attack the body.  They have varying characteristics and some physicians are not even sure that head and body lice are even of the same species. 

Body lice, while more rare than head lice, is found on those living in crowded and unsanitary conditions and often infesting the those wearing the same clothes for days and days on end.  Pubic lice, equally as creepy as the other two, are transferred from pubic area to pubic area by intimate contact.  Well now, that is rather disgusting. 

Particularly a problem for school children, head lice is the most common type of lice found in the United States.  These lice are spread by physical contact and of the six to ten million in the United States with head lice, almost 75% of those suffering with the itchy head were children under the age of 12.  Girls seem to have a higher incidence of head lice infestation than boys and Caucasians have head lice more often than other races.  This seems to be related to the shape of the hair shaft. 

Head lice are wingless, reddish-brown critters.  With no wings, they cannot jump from one person to another.  Female head lice lay anywhere from 50-150 eggs, called nits.  These nits are the size of the head of a pin and their entire life’s purpose is to glue themself as close as they can to the scalp, hanging on to the hair shaft for all they are worth.  These little nits hatch in about ten days and become nymphs.  So, the fun continues. 

The nymphs shed their skin three times and then the magic happens.  Poof, the nit becomes a nymph and the nymph becomes and adult.  Heat and humidity affect the incubation period and the survival rate of the head lice.  They adore temperatures between 75 and 98.6 degrees and simply cannot live away from a host for more than 48 hours.

If the head lice infestation is slight, then you will see the nits on the back of the scalp and above the ears.  If it is a raging infestation then you will find the entire scalp covered in nits and even in the eyelashes!  For goodness sakes, in the eyelashes! 
The itching from head lice can nearly drive you nuts.  It disrupts your sleep since you can wake yourself up at night scratching.  And scratching the itch can even lead to a secondary infection making you even more sick.  Extreme infestation can lead to other symptoms such as horrid fatigue, chills, leg cramps and even a rash. 

Head lice can range from mild to extreme and it can certainly seem to drive you mad with the itch.  So it you are suffering from head lice, then seek treatment to keep the infestation from worsening.