W hen my daughter, at age 4, came home with a head full of lice from kindergarten, I was horrified! We had been so lucky since we had managed to escape any infestations before then, even when all the other children in her class had been through countless rounds of recurrent infestations. I will tell you how we treated them, since she did not get anymore lice until recently at 9 years old. That was incredible to me since lice frequently makes the rounds in her classroom. The treatment was a two pronged approach.
The Homeopathic Approach
Homeopathy can be fantastic for both acute cases of lice and chronic recurrent never-ending cases of nits. How on earth can taking a homeopathic remedy internally help lice? We are so conditioned by Newtonian physics whereby there is an external bug or microbe causing an issue. Then we are trained to think immediately how we can target that same bug or microbe to kill or destroy it. However the flaw in this thinking is that once the ‘baddie’ is destroyed then we will be fine. With lice we can see that it is totally flawed, because often, the lice just return either straight away or on reinfection when the next round of lice appears in the classroom or family.
Homeopathy has a different approach, we are looking at why the child would have ‘susceptibility’ or weakness to having a lice infestation in the first place. Our philosophy reinforces the understanding that if a child is constitutionally healthy and well then they will be more naturally resistant to a lice infestation. This was certainly the case with my daughter who resisted for 5 years any further reinfestation. When she finally did pick them up again, I treated her exactly the same way as the first time and hey presto, no more issue! This was in-spite of others in the class with ‘resistant’ lice.
A homeopath would generally want to take the child’s case and give a good remedy that matches the overall condition of the child’s health so that we strengthen any weaknesses in their emotional and physical body systems. That, in my opinion, is always the best and deepest route of care. However, there is a fabulous remedy that I often give over the counter (after asking a few questions to make sure) for lice infestations. Now, what is so interesting about this remedy is the mental/emotional picture behind it. If we translate that to layman’s terms…the possible susceptibility as to why a child needing this remedy may have lice.
Staphysagria – sensitivity and suppressed emotions
Staphysagria is one of the main remedies that I give for recurrent lice infestations and I have used it both times acutely for my daughter when she had her two infestations. Have you ever had lice yourself? It can feel dirty and shameful and with all the little bites and itching you can feel a bit helpless and like a victim. Funny enough, the remedy Staphysagria has all those feelings in the mental/emotional symptom picture. Staphysagria’s nervous system is extremely sensitive, meaning that any little input they will respond to. Staphysagria is often a remedy for victimhood, where your boundaries have been crossed or you have been dominated in some way. One of the first questions I ask to someone seeking a remedy for their little one’s lice infestation is “Have they been bullied at school?”. The other possibility is that they have been the ‘victim’ of a stressed out parent who might have been more reactive than normal, perhaps over a period of time. These children may have had to suppress their natural emotional reaction to being in an environment like that and may also have experienced feelings of shame or guilt. Interesting how it seems to match the feeling that one can have when subject to a lice infestation.
Of course there are other remedies but when you find the right homeopathic remedy that supports and heals the child’s susceptibility to lice infestations then you should find that they seem to resist many of the rounds of lice that their classmates will get.
What about Physical Supports?
Alongside the homeopathy, of course, you still need to be practical and thorough at getting rid of the current crop of lice on your child’s head. There are many websites that go through all the steps that you need to do but here is the oil recipe and instructions that I use when my daughter has lice.
I use olive oil at a pinch but cold pressed almond oil is good too. To this base I add a few drops each of 2 or 3 essential oils such as lavender, tea tree, rosemary, geranium, lemon and ylang yang. If you can, please do use the tea tree as one of the oils as it is excellent at repelling the lice. The essential oils go straight into the bloodstream and can be very powerful, so make sure you only use a drop or two and patch test first if needed. So, mix up your oils and base oil and then smother the hair with it. Really smother it. Then I wrap the head in glad wrap (not tightly) and this both helps to keep the oil from dribbling too much but also helps to trap the heat and smother the lice. The base oil will suffocate the lice but you need to leave it on for about 4 hours minimum. My best results have been when we have allocated a whole 8 hours to having this concoction on the hair, but that may not be possible with a young one. If you take it off before about 4 hours, the lice will only have been ‘sleeping’ not fully suffocated and the whole process won’t be as effective. Believe me, you are not going to want to do this twice!
Okay, so you have waited the allocated amount of time, now you have to get a lice comb and begin to comb them out. The lice will be suffocated and be very easy to comb out while the eggs will be loosened with the oil and also be easy to comb out. If you take the time to comb carefully, you will be able to get the hair just about completely free of the eggs and lice. Wash the hair immediately after that.
For the next two weeks, put a dab of tea tree oil behind both ears on the way to school and comb with a lice comb every night after school. Tea tree is both repellent and seems to make the lice slow and very sleepy, so even if they come into contact with more lice, the little beasties will be easy to comb out. The cycle of two weeks is imperative so that any eggs that may have been missed and subsequently hatched will be caught and removed immediately. This will break the cycle.
I always wash the pillow slip and sheets daily during this time and any soft toys that the child has had in their bed at night will go in the wash and sun or else enclosed for 3 weeks in a black plastic rubbish bag to kill the cycle of lice.
So…there is my lice advice. So far for me it has been foolproof even though time consuming. Of course this way, you are both strengthening your child as well as avoiding the nasty chemicals in some of the lice shampoos. Anything that is applied to the skin gets absorbed in as little as 26 seconds directly into the blood stream so it’s important that the treatment is as natural as possible for the optimum health of your child.
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