Keep Lice Out of Your Summer Plans!

Ahhh – summer vacation is finally here – no school, no studies, no carpools! What a relief; so why has my summer been hijacked by an outbreak of head lice? Yikes! Surprisingly, summer is actually the busiest time of year for lice outbreaks because children are closer in contact than they are while they are in school. Between the slumber parties, summer camps, and backyard adventures, lice have an even higher rate of infestation than during the school year! So what is the best way to avoid contracting lice? Let’s go to our experts at Fresh Heads for some simple tips at preventing lice.

First, arm yourself with knowledge! Our professionals at Fresh Heads recommend that you remind your children not to share combs, brushes, and hats at summer camp. They also suggest that your kids sleep in the “star pattern” during slumber parties or sleepovers. Instead of children sleeping side-by-side or in a circle with their heads in the middle, arrange them in the “star pattern” with their feet in the middle! Assure them that this allows them to have more room, and no one has to sleep on the “end”!

Second, remember that the school year isn’t the only time to get “back-to-basics.” Our Fresh Head experts advise you to frequently wash commonly used items, such as bike helmets, sports helmets, car seat headrests, headphones, and the like. And what about those public places where we so often rest our heads during the summer months, such as airplanes and movie theaters? Our Fresh Heads professionals tell us not to worry so much about that issue; since head lice cannot live and breed unless they are on your head, it is highly unlikely that you would contract head lice from those external environments…whew! Ironman 3 – here we come!

Third, learn to recognize the symptoms of head lice, and learn how to properly check your children’s scalp for any signs of lice. In addition to the obvious “itchy head” – you might also see small red bumps or sores on the back of the neck or near the ears. Be sure to keep our TERMINATOR COMB (only $15 from Fresh Heads) on hand for routine head checks. In the event, you discover the “unthinkable” – DON’T PANIC! Call Fresh Heads – we will save you the time of scouring the Internet only to find a variety of scary home remedies (lamp oil and dog shampoo – seriously?), alarming pesticides, or unnecessary recommendations about your belongings! Our FDA approved, chemical-free treatment rapidly turns your scary-time back into your SUMMERTIME!

So don’t let your summertime slumber party turn into a scary-time louse party! Now that you are in-the-know about lice prevention, you can enjoy your summer without worrying about head lice. Throw a fun-filled sleepover party, travel by plane, and go to the movies! Of course, if any head lice should derail your plans, just call us; we are only an AirAllé™ (formerly known as the LouseBuster™) away!

First Of A Kind Salon Treats Head Lice

Kids miss days from school because of head lice. This is a unique process guaranteed to get your kids back in school the next day. Mandy Ottesen is a “unique exterminator”. Her target: head lice. She opened Fresh Heads, a head lice treatment center for families who have had enough.

“People who call us have been trying to get rid of it for a month or more, and they just can’t. The pesticides don’t work anymore, the bugs are resistant, and parents are frustrated.”

Fresh Heads offers Northern Florida’s and Southern Georgia’s only head lice treatment center using the AirAllé™ (formerly known as the LouseBuster™)
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Head Lice Outbreak Hits Northeast Florida

Spreading across our area in record numbers is a problem so small you can barely see it.

Head lice.

Experts say Northeast Florida is having one of its biggest outbreaks to date with some of the hardest hit areas being the Beaches and San Marco.

“From Ponte Vedra to Atlantic Beach and everywhere in between, every single school,” said Mandy Ottesen.

Ottesen owns Fresh Heads, the first lice treatment salon in our area. This week at Fresh Heads they treated more patients than they typically see in an entire month.

Ottesen believes the lice are becoming resistant to many at-home treatments.

“We have families come in every single day and tell us they just treated them last night with whatever pesticide. But when we start looking, there are bugs that are alive and well,” said Ottesen.

To kill them at her salon, Ottesen uses the LouseBuster, an FDA-approved machine that blows out heated, dry air.

“It takes about 30 minutes and it’s incredibly effective,” she said.

But to get to the real root of the problem, this bug buster says it’s going to take parents being proactive.

“If you don’t know to look, it’s going to get pretty bad to the point where you’re going to have a hard time getting rid of it,” said Ottesen.
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Time Magazine Hails The LouseBuster™ As Affordable Lice Treatment

Nancy Gordon winces at the term nitpicker. She prefers lice-removal technician, which is what she calls her employees who pick out nits (the pinhead-size white eggs that lice lay twice a day, four to five at a time) and the critters that hatch from them at Gordon’s LKY Salon — Lice Knowing You, natch — near Seattle.

Business has been booming at such boutique operations ever since the head louse, or Pediculus humanus capitis, developed resistance to the traditionally prescribed shampoos Rid and Nix. But two new treatments — one a mechanical desiccator, the other a potion whose secret ingredient is a lowly bacterium discovered in an abandoned Caribbean rum still — mean that high-priced hand picking has some serious competition.

Various methods of lice removal were all theoretical to me until one morning this winter when my 5-year-old daughter announced, “My head itches.” Her kindergarten teacher recommended LKY, and by that afternoon, I was there with my three kids: we’d all been infested. And LKY did not disappoint. We were spritzed and sprayed and combed this way and that with the fine-tooth Terminator comb. We were also soothed — with mimosas (offered to frazzled moms) and cupcakes, candy and unlimited Wii (for the kids). I left utterly relieved but nearly $500 poorer, despite a multihead discount. LKY’s going rate is $95 an hour, and the average head requires 1½ to two hours.

So you can see why the arrival of the LouseBuster, a contraption that dries up lice in 30 minutes by blowing warm air at the hair’s roots, where they tend to hang out, has been met with such celebration. Fans say it feels like a scalp massage. More significant, it gets rid of 99.2% of shampoo-resistant nits, according to a study published in the Journal of Medical Entomology. The machines are leased to companies that collect flat fees, starting at $125, so all that hot air can end up being cheaper — as well as quicker.

Meanwhile, bacteria-based Natroba is as hotly anticipated as summer vacation. Approved in January by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for kids 4 and older, the solution has worked nearly twice as well as Nix in clinical trials. Its active ingredient, spinosad, is so safe that it’s approved for use on organic crops. And its $36 price tag seriously undercuts both salons and the LouseBuster, though its kill rate is less than perfect, at 86.7%. Available by prescription, it’s expected to debut in the next few months, but manufacturer ParaPro gets calls every day begging for the magic potion. “They ask, Can I fly there and get it?” says Bill Culpepper, ParaPro’s president.

Natroba boasts that because the drug kills the lice — and lots of their eggs — there’s no need to comb. But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find parents who would be content to let their progeny waltz around with a coif of dead bugs. Nancy Gordon is banking on it, having opened two new LKY storefronts in the past few months, with another planned for Portland, Ore., in April. “Maybe the kids couldn’t care less,” she says, “but the moms? No way.”

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“Yahoo Health” Features The LouseBuster™ As Effective Treatment Against “Super Lice”

It’s enough to make your skin crawl: If head lice weren’t scary enough, 60 percent of the itchy pests are now resistant to one or more common treatments, according to a new study published in New England Journal of Medicine.

More alarming still, the researchers report that in some states-—including Texas, California, and Florida—100 percent of the lice tested carried resistance genes to pyrethroids, the most widely recommended pesticides. These chemicals are found in such over-the-counter products as Nix, RID, and generic equivalents, as well as in prescription formulations.

Some researchers also warn that the blood-sucking parasites are starting to become resistant to even the strongest insecticides, such as malathion. Head lice are now the leading childhood contagion, attacking up to 12 million American kids each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Preschool or elementary school students are most likely to suffer infestations. Outbreaks are now so common that some schools asked parents to debug their kids during spring break so they would return to class lice-free, WoodTV.com reports.

It’s easy to see why schools are worried. Last year, an Idaho elementary school shut down for a week after 60 students and nine staffers contracted the itchy critters.

Researchers around the world have warned for years that head lice are developing immunity to the insecticides in OTC and prescription shampoos. Nor can they be “suffocated” by such home remedies as slathering the head with mayonnaise, olive oil, vinegar, or petroleum jelly, a study published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing reports.

These increasingly hardy critters, known as “super lice,” are physically tougher than their six-legged counterparts of the past. Some experts report that today’s lice have thicker exoskeletons and have changed their hatching and egg-laying cycles to foil conventional treatment schedules.

“If an organism is exposed to something that could kill it, it develops defenses,” says Deb Lonzer, MD, chair of the department of community pediatrics at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital. “Lice that survive chemical treatments pass on their genes and that leads to resistant lice.”

The wingless insects are about the size of sesame seeds and feed by sucking blood from the scalp. They’re most likely to be resistant to pyrethrin (the chemical found in Nix) or permethrin (the chemical in RID), says Lee Moorer, MD, a Denver, Colorado emergency medicine specialist and father of two. These drugs are neurotoxins for lice that have been the mainstay of treatment.

“These drugs are no longer working, so parents are forced to turn to more toxic prescription drugs to treat kids or try natural methods like coating the head with Vaseline that may not be effective,” adds Dr. Moorer.

Dr. Lonzer has seen many cases of resistant lice. “Parents will tell me, ‘I tried this, and I tried that, and nothing worked.” Typically the creepy crawlers tend to become resistant to the insecticides most widely used in that community. “Lice in Cleveland can be resistant to chemicals that are effective in Cincinnati.”

However, parents shouldn’t panic, adds Dr. Lonzer. “People completely freak out about lice due to gross-out factor and attack very hard with chemicals, but unlike ticks or mosquitoes, lice don’t transmit any diseases—they just make the scalp itchy.”
One Mom’s War Against Super Lice

Getting rid of super lice can be an epic battle. In a recent Slate article, KJ Dell’Antonia chronicles a yearlong ordeal, as she tried treatment after treatment to rid her four kids—and herself—of highly resistant infestations:

“October was Nix. November: Licefreeee. (Or so we thought.) December: RID and the electric “Robi” comb, which claims to “detect and destroy” lice on contact,” she wrote.

“January brought still more lice, skipping among our four children’s heads and mine like six-legged swingers, and a return to RID. In February, we tried a representative of the Lice Doctors. After March’s pulling-out-all-the-stops prescription-only malathion treatment, we were sure we had finally won, and so let our guard down in April, only to find in May that the lice had returned in full force.”

In the end, the infestation was defeated with a combination of combing and a highly toxic prescription treatment called Lindane. The FDA warns that Lindane (found in such products as Kwell) can have potential health risks—including three reported deaths and neurological side effects. It should only be used after other therapies have failed and with caution by anyone weighing less than 100 pounds.

Decades earlier, when Dell’Antonia’s mom, a teacher, contracted the pests, a single treatment with Nix solved the problem.

Fortunately, it’s still possible to get rid of super lice, because none are resistant to all treatments, Drs. Moorer and Lonzer emphasize. Along with treating the scalp, machine wash and dry bedding and clothing the infected person has used, soak combs and brushes in hot water for 5 to 10 minutes and vacuum the floor and furniture in areas where the infected person has recently sat or slept.

Head lice can’t survive more than 48 hours after falling off their host, so it’s not necessary to spend a huge amount of time cleaning and vacuuming, the CDC reports.

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ first choice treatment is products that contain permethrin, such as Nix, with the application to be repeated after seven to 10 days. The AAP reports that it typically kills about 70 percent of nits (lice eggs) and leaves a residue on the hair that will help kill lice that hatch. It’s also helpful to comb out nits.

However, because this treatment, while very safe, is becoming less effective, says Dr. Lonzer. Other options include:

    • Shaving the child’s head. “This is both safe and 100 percent effective, so that’s what I’d do if my sons got lice,” says Dr. Moorer. “However, I can understand that parents of girls wouldn’t find this an appealing solution.”
    • Treatment with the Lousebuster device. These treatments, offered at hair salons that treat lice and nits, have been effective for several of Dr. Lonzer’s patients. However, she cautions that trying a hair dryer at home will not work and risks blowing lice around the room. The device works by applying controlled heat to dry hair. According to a study published in Pediatrics, one 30-minute treatment killed nearly 100 percent of lice eggs and 80 percent of hatched lice.
    • A 2012 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin (Sklice) was 95 percent effective at treating resistant head lice. In February, Sklice lotion was FDA-approved as a lice treatment for kids ages 6 months and older. In two clinical trials involving 781 patients, fewer than one percent experienced such side effects as eye irritation, dry skin, or dandruff.

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