FAQ

1. One of our friendly, compassionate and knowledgeable technicians or staff members will greet you.
2. If you haven’t previously visited us, you will be asked to fill out our confidential client information form. Your driver’s license will be copied. Click here to download the forms and expedite the process by filling out at home.
3. Once the forms are completed, a technician will bring you and your family to our treatment room. Children can watch a DVD (choose one of ours or bring your own). Siblings can play in our play area. Snacks and beverages are available for purchase.
4. If there is a lice outbreak at your school, expect to wait if you haven’t made an appointment.
5. Click here to make an appointment.
6. Technicians will apply safe products and thoroughly comb the hair to remove all lice and nits.
7. The process for each person being treated should take about two hours, although for boys it could take less time. The process could be longer than two hours depending on the cooperation, length and thickness of hair, how tangled the hair is, and amount of infestation.
8. A technician will check to see if any other family member has lice. Only if lice or nits are found is treatment recommended. You do not have to pay extra to have all members of the same household checked. Even a person with very short hair should be checked. Time permitting, if lice or nits are found on other family members, we will treat immediately.
9. You will need to make appointments for two 15 minute follow-up visits within a two week period. Only by keeping these appointments can we ensure that no further contact with lice exists.
10. You may want to educate yourself while in our facility. Take advantage of this time to learn more about Head lice. We have plenty of reading material, including a sample copy of LICE ADVICE and we are always willing to answer questions you may have. Education is the best way to help prevent future reoccurrences!

1. Leave product on for at least two hours before washing out with a mint based shampoo and conditioner.
2. Be a friend and tell a friend. Notify your child’s school and any close friends who may have been in contact with your child. Remember, it is not just where the child got lice but who the child gave it to as well. Failing to notify contacts could put your child at risk for re-infestation.
3. Make head checks a part of your weekly routine. Early detection is the only way to stop Head lice from escalating or spreading!
4. Reduce your child’s chances for re-infestation. Keep girls’ hair pulled back, any time they are around others. Shampoo regularly using a mint-based shampoo or lice prevention shampoo to minimize the risks.
5. Use a mint-based leave-in spritz on the hair before leaving home. Comb with lice comb once or twice a week for 2-5 minutes each time and watch for signs of Head lice.
6. Use a mint-based shampoo and conditioner twice a week.
7. Play It Safe! Know who you are coming in contact with and NEVER knowingly expose yourself to Head lice.
8. Remember to come for your two follow-up visits.

Although the feeding bite of the louse is painless, its saliva can cause an allergic reaction in many people. There can be red marks and itching at the site of the bite. Reaction severity depends on host sensitivity and number of prior exposures. Initial infestation may produce no signs or symptoms for 4 to 6 weeks. Subsequent infestations may cause itching within 24 to 48 hours. Thus, first-time infestations are often asymptomatic, and severe itching usually indicates an infestation that has been present for several weeks. Fifty % of the population are asymptomatic and never itch. This may account for the high rate of re-infestation among individuals who appear to be lice-free.

At a minimum you should have a:

• Terminator comb
• Mint shampoo
• Mint conditioner
• Mint spritz

Click here to purchase these and other products.

Despite what you may have heard or done in the past, cleaning your home or classroom need not be very difficult. Studies have shown that there is less than 2% chance of anyone getting lice from items such as stuffed animals, bedding, carpet, linens, helmets, hats, coats, dress-up clothes, and draperies. This is because lice cannot live more than approximately 24 hours off the head.

Head lice are tiny six-legged blood-sucking parasites. Each leg is equipped with a claw, enabling the lice to grasp onto the shaft of the child’s hair. They can vary in color from grayish white to reddish brown. Head lice, like chameleons, have the ability to adapt to their environment.

The female louse lays her eggs by gluing them to your hair shafts. She will produce approximately 200 eggs in her lifetime. Eggs, or nits as they’re commonly called, generally hatch in 7 to 10 days. Once hatched, they have a life expectancy of approximately 30 days.

Lice are wingless and cannot jump or fly. They can, however, move with amazing speeds.

They depend on human blood for survival. A louse separated from its human host will rarely survive more than 24 hours.

No one knows for sure. The first mention of lice existence is in the Bible.

In almost all cases, lice are transmitted from one human host to another, brought about mainly as a result of head-to-head contact.

There are many factors that draw head lice to one individual over another. Blood type and Rh factor are among them.

While it’s more commonly spread among children, parents and other adults are not immune. When hair has contact with another’s hair (and it will), if that person has lice and you are a favorable environment, you take the risk of exposing yourself to an uninvited houseguest.

Head lice actually prefer a clean head of hair. Lice, however, are not prejudicial. A louse’s only concern is for its own survival. To accomplish this, the louse needs to feed and is always looking for the most convenient means of doing so.

While we hear this question a lot, we strongly discourage it. It is nice in theory but wrong in actuality. Shampooing daily does nothing to prevent head lice.

Since nits are glued to the hair, all the brushing and washing on earth won’t change that fact. The eggs are coated with a fixative substance, which literally cements them to the hair shaft. They are blood-sucking parasites with crab-like claws. They can attach themselves to your hair and will hang on for dear life.

The most obvious way is the usual itchy scalp so commonly, but not always, found in head lice cases. The only way to confirm your suspicions, however, is by a thorough examination of your child’s hair. Making head lice exams a part of your regular routine will allow you to identify the problem at its onset and thus prevent head lice from taking over your family, your home and your life. To be on the safe side, let us check your child. Once your child is in our system, you only pay $15 for each head check. The first time you come you pay $25 and receive a Terminator^TM comb for home use.

If you find head lice on your child’s head, take care of the problem right away. Each day wasted is an increased opportunity for reproduction, not to mention the additional chances of spreading to others. There are many options for lice removal. Of course, in our opinion, professional lice removal by Lice Solutions is the best. However, how you treat the problem is entirely up to you.

• How long have you been providing this service?
• Where did you receive your training?
• What method of nit removal do you use?
• Is your treatment process safe?
• What is your success rate?
• Do you provide follow-up?
• What guarantees, if any, do you offer?
• What about other family members? Do you check them as well, and if so, is there a charge?

The National Pediculosis Association was formed in 1982. Since then the Association has made great strides in increasing awareness through research and education. The group fought to limit the use of potentially harmful products containing dangerous chemicals such as Lindane and was also instrumental in establishing the current “No Nit” policy still utilized in many schools today. The NPA was also instrumental in recognizing the importance of combing and through their research they helped to revolutionize the way we treat head lice, with the use of better and more effective combs.

Cetaphil may kill some lice, but it doesn’t kill the nits. It requires multiple treatments and is no more effective than other available OTC products.

The intense heat of a flat iron can kill lice and possibly damage some of the nits in the ironing process. It doesn’t, however, kill all of them. Furthermore, because most bugs are found closest to the scalp, and a flat iron cannot have direct contact with the scalp, far more lice and nits remain unaffected by this process.

The AirAlle is a device that kills lice and nits through dehydration. It is widely popular and claims to kill 92% of lice and nits. However, you still need to comb to eliminate all evidence. While we applaud this means of bringing safer alternatives to the market, we believe that our methodical approach, when used beginning to end, is the most efficient means of ensuring a successful outcome.

The general rule is that head lice don’t carry disease. The fact that head lice have a low morbidity rate and are fairly host-specific reduces the odds of spreading disease. Some researchers in the field, however, believe that they carry disease, and studies are being done in that area to prove it.

Pediculosis is another word for head lice.

A pediculicide is a pesticide that kills lice.

If a person who has lice dies, it is usually due to other factors, such as infections that come from scratching the scalp with dirty nails or from unsafe treatment methods.

These are all types of lice.

• Bedbugs: Bedbugs hide among sheets, blankets, and in furniture and really do bite during the night when they seek a warm body for a meal. They usually leave brown or black markings on the bed linens and bite in rows, often leaving three or more linear bite marks.
• Head Lice: Head lice live only on the head; including, eye brows, beard, or eye lashes. They do not travel to other parts of the body.
• Body Lice: The body louse looks similar to the head louse, but is slightly larger. It lives in clothing (commonly in the seamed areas) and then transfers to the human host to feed. While the life cycle of the head louse and the body louse are similar in character and duration, an important difference is the ability of the body louse to survive for up to 30 days away from its human host. Body-lice infestation is a prominent public-health problem in communities with large populations dealing with poverty, overcrowding, and poor personal hygiene. Reused mattresses and bed linens as well as communal beds are risk factors.
• Pubic Lice: The pubic louse (“crab louse”) is somewhat rounded with three pairs of legs on either side of the body and it looks like a crab. The female life span is three weeks, and she produces fewer eggs per day (three) than her counterparts. The eggs attach to the base of the pubic hair shaft for approximately six to eight days before hatching. In adults pubic lice is transmitted by direct sexual contact; children generally contact the infection via nonsexual transmission from their parents, although sexual transmission is possible in cases of sexual abuse. A pubic louse can travel up the body. Pubic lice can live in the eyelashes, especially in children who lack pubic hair.

To emphasize how severe a neglected problem can get, we like to share a story. Several years ago, one of our local middle-school nurses called about a seventh-grader who was battling a head lice problem. The school was well aware of it, but since the child had already missed so much school, she was allowed to continue in class.

What the school wasn’t aware of was the real severity of the situation! Our technician, ill-prepared for how severe the problem was, quickly had to call for reinforcements. The child’s head was so infested that it took two technicians four hours each to comb through her hair and even then they didn’t get it all.