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Health & Fitness

Detecting Lice: What is the Most Effective Way ?

There is always controversy surrounding school nurse lice screenings vs. wet head checks at a professional Lice Removal Boutique. School nurses do an amazing job at caring for our children. Many nurses also provide a cautious head check for lice. The reality is, they do not have the time or the extensive training to thoroughly investigate our children’s heads.

Usually when lice have been detected within a classroom, they are sent down to the nurse’s office and are sent home for a removal. The school’s protocol differs after that. Some schools have a “No Nit Policy” which means the child cannot return to school unless all nits and louse have been completely removed. Most nurses have the classroom where the child was found to have lice in all be checked as well. Some schools send letters and emails home alerting families when there’s an outbreak and to take precautionary measures. Majority of the time they do not have the whole school screened because of the amount of students. 

We are here to make you aware of the necessity to have routine head checks done for your children. There are various ways of checking for lice. School nurses usually use an orange wooden stick and check the “hot spots” of where lice usually hide (nape of the neck, behind the ears, crown area). The problem with this is that lice can be found anywhere on your head and any live louse can crawl very quickly away from the orange stick! So, it is possible to easily miss something during this type of check.

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To do a head check, the most important part is to have a lice comb! Specifically, a “Meticulice Knock-Out Terminator Comb,” which can be purchased at Meticulice.

An easier alternative is to come to a lice removal boutique that specializes in this. We will be able to detect if your child has lice or is clear effectively, faster and within less time.

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According to an extensive study in Germany, it was found that a wet head check identified active infestations 91 percent of the time, while visual inspection of a child's hair only spotted 29 percent of the active infections. For more information, look at the “Reuters Heath News” article here: http://reuters_th.adam.com/content.aspx?productId=16&pid=16&gid=29504.

Here at Meticulice we offer a Lifetime Prevention Plan. For only $50 a month for the whole household! Within this membership you must come in each month for $15 head checks (usually $30). If at any time we find lice, we remove for free! This is of course only if you come each and every month. You also will receive 20% off all of our Meticulice products! Many of our patients love this plan; it puts your mind at ease as a parent knowing that you’re taking precautionary measures for your children.

One term we always use with our patients is “once a week, take a peek!” If you continuously check your child, and you find evidence of lice, it will be a much lighter, easier case to treat than not knowing they have it for weeks, or even months!

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