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What’s Effective, Visual Head Lice Checks or Combing?

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Recently, we’ve had customers ask why we don’t do visual head lice checks in addition to our comb-out checking. The reason? Visual checks can miss a lot of things. The nits and lice are the same color if your hair is dyed and  It can be hard to spot the few eggs/nits that are laid so close to the scalp.  This is especially true if you have a light infestation.

In fact, a 2001 study showed that, “The average time until detection of the first louse was 57.0 seconds with the comb as compared to 116.4 seconds by direct visual examination. Diagnosis of louse infestation using a louse comb is four times more efficient than direct visual examination and twice as fast.”

While visual head lice checks are still better than no check at all, a lice infestation would have to be fairly advanced in order for it to be easily seen with the naked eye. Many summer camps, school programs, or day cares will use pencils or chopsticks to  inspect the scalp. This is still good! Any check is better than no check at all.

However, we go right to combing to see what the comb finds. This is a better use of both our time and your time. It helps us find lice and nits twice as fast! Then we can get you lice free and back to your day.

We sell our Terminator brand professional combs, so you can use what we use on your children at home! We have a tutorial video on how to do thorough comb outs, and we have an instruction sheet posted as well. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call (865) 245-5353!

Head Lice Prevention Month

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September is Head Lice Prevention month, a good time to call attention to the facts of head lice as children go back to school—typically a peak period for the head-loving bugs. Once children start playing, hugging, and taking selfies with friends, and, if someone in the group has head lice, the bugs will spread. 

Parents often panic when they get the call from school that their child, or a child in class has head lice. The first thing we tell them is they didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did their child other than maybe hug or touch hair with someone who has head lice. The true facts about head lice can help diffuse parents fear and stress.

To help parents be informed and prepared, you can review the basics of head lice infestations, prevention, and treatment.

  1. Head lice have nothing to do with economic status or the cleanliness of the home. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Association of School Nurses are very clear on this.
  1. Head Lice don’t represent a health threat. They don’t carry or cause any diseases or illness other than itching. Again, health professionals are very clear on this. Lice are simply a nuisance.
  1. 98% of the time head lice only spread through head-to-head, contact. They cannot jump or fly. They can only live on a human scalp, and they cannot live anywhere else since they dehydrate and quickly become too weak to move. As a matter of fact, head lice do not want to leave the scalp at all; since they feed on human blood up to 6 times per day. That may be disgusting, but it’s true. Lice don’t want to be on your sofa, on stuffed animals or the carpet. The good news is, you don’t need to treat your home with lice-killing products. They are ineffective, pesticide-based and can be toxic. Simply wash any bedding, towels and clothing the child with head lice has had contact with in the last 48 hours, lint roll upholstered surfaces, and freeze brushes and hair accessories for 8 hours.
  1. Help prevent head lice by educating your child to avoid hair-to-hair and head-to-head contact. You can also prevent lice by keeping her hair pulled back in a braid, tight bun or short ponytail.
  1. Traditional pesticide-based lice products are no longer working! The most recent study, published in the Journal of Medical Entomology in 2016, found that 98 percent of head lice in 48 states are now immune to the pesticides used in traditional lice products. The most popular drugstore products are still pesticide-based.
  1. Head lice products do NOT kill all the lice eggs (sometimes called nits), and so, the 10-day process requires repeated applications and tedious nitpicking to get all the eggs out. Common reasons for at-home treatment failure is using the popular pesticide-based products or parents missing just a few tiny nits, which hatch, and the lice return.
  1. Traditional lice products often use pesticides, and most parents don’t realize that. Even if those products still worked, would parents really want to douse their child’s head in pesticides when there are safer, faster, more effective alternatives available? Not only are pesticides no longer effective, repeated use has been shown to cause behavioral issues.
  2. At Knoxville Lice Clinic, our professionals quickly and easily get rid of head lice.  The Headwinds Heat Treatment gets rid of lice in a single treatment. That’s right, one treatment, one hour and you are lice free! Parents love this ‘one and done’ option and are so relieved to have lice out of their life so quickly.  Our Saline Comb Outs take only 2 visits — generally an hour at the first visit and 30 minutes at the follow up.

“Prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Benjamin Franklin

Knowing the facts can go a long way toward reducing stress and anxiety about head lice.

Knoxville Lice Clinic is the exclusive provider of lice treatment using the Headwinds heat treatment device. It’s fast, non-toxic, and pesticide free. Our professional, certified head lice technicians are friendly and knowledgeable and will relieve all the stress and anxiety head lice may cause you and your family. Knoxville Lice Clinic also offers pesticide-free and effective do-it-yourself lice treatment solutions, along with lice prevention products.

Have a lice-free school year!

Why You Should Bring Your Whole Family to the Lice Clinic

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We know that family bonding day at the head lice clinic isn’t high on anyone’s list of family adventures to go on. It can be complicated to get both parents off work, or all the kids at home at the same time on a weekend. Packing up the baby’s stuff, bringing snacks for toddlers, wondering how long until your third grader goes from “irritating but handling it” to “full on melt down,” it’s all hard. So why do those crazy lice people keep insisting the entire family make the trek to the clinic?

 

Believe it or not, we’re trying to help. Lice get transferred very easily, and odds are more people than you think have head lice. In fact, in our informal everyday work, we figured that about 80% of moms, 20% of dads, and 50% of siblings have the dreaded little bugs. The risk is higher for whoever has been combing out the kids, the primary caregiver, or if mom or dad like to bed share or snuggle up and read books or have movie nights with the kids. Because less than half of people with lice will itch, you can completely overlook someone with lice and catch it back from someone living in your own house. We are so serious about getting your whole family lice free, if you bring everyone in, we’ll guarantee the service.

 

Family is important. You want to hug your kids, we want to keep you lice free while you do it. 

Differently Abled and Lice Treatment

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Lice is a huge problem for every family, but differently abled families have different concerns. Since we opened, we’ve had several new experiences and our staff has made each person comfortable while we got rid of their lice.

For our non-verbal clients, we explain the procedure and book the appointment via text. They are able to communicate with our clinician using texting on their phone without a problem.

Our sensory clients, or those who are non-verbal and too young to text, generally play on a tablet during treatment. We provide Amazon Kindles that are child locked to age appropriate games. Parents, guardians, or siblings are encouraged to stay close by and talk or hold hands with them while we work together to make sure treatment is as fast and comfortable as possible. We take as many breaks as the client needs. If a heat treatment is too much, we transition right into a comb out and teach the parents or guardians how to do it at home, for maximum success.

For infants or toddlers, we generally let a parent or guardian hold them on their lap during a head check or comb out. They feel safe on someone’s lap, and we are able to do our job quickly and completely without anyone having a melt down.

Our parking lot has a handicapped space, and none of our furniture is bolted down. We can adjust our clinic to your needs, ensuring you get the best possible environment.

 

Our main goal is to get and keep our community here in Tennessee lice free, and we are willing to do whatever it takes to fit the needs of that community. If you have a disability, or any general concerns about you or your loved ones, please call us and let us know.

Lice Treatment Myths 101

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We get a lot of people on Facebook asking about lice treatments, and there is a lot of misinformation on the internet! Here are some myths I’ve seen lately:

  • Listerene – doesn’t help. You’ll smell minty fresh, but it dries out your scalp and won’t kill many hatched lice.
  • Mayonnaise – while this a great hair moisturizing treatment, it won’t kill anything.
  • Olive/coconut oil – you’ll have shiny hair, but it doesn’t kill anything.
  • Saran Wrap over any of the above – keeping Saran Wrap over mayo or oil overnight is uncomfortable and can ruin your sheets, but won’t kill anything on your head.
  • Rid/Nix/prescriptions – include harmful pesticides and only kill unevolved lice (not “super lice”).
  • Kerosene – this one is the most dangerous. Not only will this not kill lice, but it can easily set on fire and cause permanent damage or death to you and your loved ones.

The only real way to get rid of lice without our nit killer is to comb out every single nit. This can take hours of work every day for weeks. Between work, kids in school, extra curricular activities, and the inability to properly comb out your own head, this means a simple lice problem can last for months and interfere with every aspect of your life.

Our Headwinds device will leave you free to live your lice-free life. Feel free to check out other sections of our site to learn more! We are also on Facebook, Instagram, and answer emails and phone calls within 24 hours. We are committed to getting and keeping our community lice free.

Over 100 Heat Treatments given in just two months!

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We’ve been open for two months now, and business is booming! Over one hundred heat treatments treatments have been performed, and several hundred head checks as well. Head lice are out in full force in Knoxville! A few highlights are:

  • The family who showed me pictures of their pet fox.
  • The family on vacation who brought in everyone in the cabin. We had three generations of people in our office and helped nine people that Saturday.
  • Two different families evacuating from Irma who can go home lice free.
  •  The eight year old who said she wanted lice again because she loves the treatment so much.
  • Several families who had been struggling with lice for years and walked out free from lice.

It is truly an honor to be able to help so many people and their families. When people walk in, they’re in crisis. We can fix that. The relief on peoples’ faces when they realize the problem is over is worth so much to all of us who work here.

We look forward to meeting and treating your family! Come on in, let us make your day better.