The children are going back to school. How do you avoid the lice infestation that often arises at the beginning of the school year?
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Cristina: 'At the beginning of every school year, it is often a problem:head lice. Children reunite after the holidays and head lice are often found. Because children often play close together and their heads come into contact with each other, it is easy for lice to walk from head to head.
Do you suspect that your child has lice? Lice especially like a warm and moist place, such as behind the ears, under bangs, on the crown or on the neck. They are good places for a lice check, because these are the places where you can often find them first.
The lice check The best way to see if someone has lice is to comb with a lice comb. Hang head over white towel or over white paper. In this way, existing lice (grey-blue or red-brown in color) fall on the white background and you can immediately see them. In addition to lice, there can also be eggs (nits) in the hair. They look like small, grey-white dots and are firmly attached to the hair, close to the hair root.
Shampoo and lotion
Lice or nits found? You can buy various products in the drugstore that help against lice. The most commonly used products are shampoo and lotion with dimethicone, malathion or permethrin. The shampoo kills lice within minutes, after which you can comb them out of the hair. The shampoo has no after-effects. So to prevent your child from getting infected again, you should wash the hair again after a week with the shampoo. The lotion has a longer exposure time, so it can still work after a few weeks. In the drugstore you can ask exactly how to use the product. The louse is sometimes insensitive to the substances malathion or permethrin. If the remedy does not work, try another product.
Lice comb
After using shampoo and lotion, the hair should be rinsed well with water and combed with a lice comb. It's important to comb your hair every day for two weeks to make sure all the lice and nits are gone. Because the nits are firmly attached to the hair and the lice comb has very fine teeth, it is nice to put conditioner or lotion in the hair. Then combing is easier. You can loosen stuck nits by dabbing with vinegar.
Pregnancy, breastfeeding and babies
Drugs based on malathion and permethrin are not recommended during pregnancy and lactation. You can then follow the combing method. You should only use drugs with dimethicone in consultation with your doctor. A head lice remedy may only be used on babies under 6 months in consultation with the general practitioner.
Hygiene
I often notice that people are ashamed when they come to buy a product against lice. But that is not necessary at all! Having lice has nothing to do with poor hygiene, because lice love clean hair.'
Who is Cristina?
Cristina Knollema-Lertora is a licensed druggist and works in a drugstore with the Certified Specialist in Self-Care quality mark, which is the quality mark for good advice on over-the-counter medicines. On www.erkendspecialistinzelfzorg.nl you can find out which drugstores in your area have this quality mark and what you as a customer can expect from these drugstores.
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