Back In The Day...

Do you remember having head lice as a kid? I don't. I think I knew one kid who had head lice, and we just said he had "cooties" (kids can be cruel) and then the school sent him home. Most people I talk to never remember head lice being the epidemic that it is now. Why has the problem grown over the years?

My theory is this has happened because we've put our faith in pediculicides (pesticidal lice treatments). Back in the day, head lice was dealt with severely. Kids were sent home from school. Heads were shaved. Giving people the "leper treatment" probably increased our therapy bills (not good), but perhaps head lice was taken care of in fairly effective ways (with the exception of the turpentine and toxins that were poured on the children in residential schools, but that's another horrible blog post altogether.)

With the arrival of treatments that promised fast results as easy as shampooing your hair with no need to pick out the eggs, all that changed. But so did the lice. The more we shampooed, the more the bugs adapted. The less we picked, the more they spread. So many still believe these treatments are effective and the problem keeps growing.

So what do we do now? As I always say, we gotta pick it old school. Forget the treatments. Pick and comb (with a REAL lice comb, not those little green combs from the treatment packs).