Homeopathic lice treatment

[ShowMe]

Recently a friend of mine contacted me because her daughter had head lice. She was concerned about putting chemicals are her child’s head since her kid has some medical problems.

At the drugstore she found a product called lice freee (three e's on free). It's a homeopathic lice treatment; when she saw the word "homeopathic" she called me. I guess my occasional rants about such medicines are having some effect...

In any case she asked me about it so I said I would look into it. I went to the drugstore and checked it out. The main ingredient is Natrum muriaticum; as near as I can tell this is a fancy name for table salt.

I decided to look into this further so I bought a bottle and brought it home. It contains a shower cap, lice comb and bottle of product. The product turns into a water soluble gel when you apply it to the hair; you're then supposed to put the enclosed shower cap on and leave it on for at least an hour.

Hitting Google once again I couldn't find anything scientific on this product in particular, but I did find some studies that showed lice would die if put in Olive Oil for a few hours. It seems they can be suffocated. Either that or they're all allergic to olive oil.

It seems to me that this particular product could work, in theory. If it's a gel and it prevents the lice from breathing for a few hours then I don't see the difference between it and olive oil. But I'm certainly not an expert in such things so I came here; when I go back I want to be able to say something more than "It won't hurt if you try it".

Anyone in the medical field ever use this product or similar products? Or that has experience with lice and can tell me if I'm off base on my assumptions?

 

[ponderingturtle]

The main ingredient is Natrum muriaticum; as near as I can tell this is a fancy name for table salt.

Well from this quote

Natrum Muriaticum: Natrum Mur, Sodium Chloride (remember this is the mineral,
not the processed with chemicals table salt and is not only safe for those who
need to avoid salt, but is beneficial for those with sodium imbalances.

link

The only thing that I got confused by is that I thought muriatic acid was sulfuric acid not hydro cloric acid, so it could have been sodium sulfide or something like that. But I was wrong.

 

[Dogdoctor]

I have no personal experience with human lice but lice are insects and they can be suffocated. The question is how well does it work. I have no answer but I am aware that treatment failures are common in lice. Not being a human doctor I couldn't really say but typically in veterinary medicine treatment failures result often from using low efficacy products and or not understanding the life cycle of the insect. The safety of a product that hasn't been tested is questionable. In animals treatment of lice has been greatly simplified by new efficacious and safe flea products. Lice in animals is easier to treat for than fleas so almost anything that works well for fleas will wipe out lice. So my guess is that if you scrupulously and diligently suffocate the lice and keep the environment clean and keep treating at intervals that don't allow the lice to reproduce you should be able to rid the child of lice but other treatments will be easier. Sorry but no practical experience in humans.

 

[Patsy]

I too would assume that this product's purpose is to suffocate lice. It raises a couple of thoughts in my mind. One, if you are going to use this method, how expensive is the packaged product? It might be less costly to use any of a number of thick, oily substances like olive oil or generic mayonnaise. Two, if you are going to use this method you would need to be extremely scrupulous about picking nits, and make the commitment to do so long enough to be assured they are gone.

 

[ShowMe]

I too would assume that this product's purpose is to suffocate lice. It raises a couple of thoughts in my mind. One, if you are going to use this method, how expensive is the packaged product? It might be less costly to use any of a number of thick, oily substances like olive oil or generic mayonnaise. Two, if you are going to use this method you would need to be extremely scrupulous about picking nits, and make the commitment to do so long enough to be assured they are gone.

Those were my thoughts, almost exactly. The question was "will it work?" and it sounds like it will. The "homeopathic" (which I usually refer to as "homeopathetic") part seems irrelevant in this context. As homeopathic eye wash will relive minor eye irritation...but then, so does water.

So the next question should be "is it worth the cost?"

The unit I purchased cost $8. It's a thick goo that gels after you apply it but washes out easily. The only advantage I can think of to this product over, say, olive oil is the fact that this product will gel & stick to the hair. Olive oil would be more difficult to manage, I think. Also, since it gels you require less of the prduct than you would for olive oil.

Olive oil is fairly expensive, at least around here so the cost difference isn't significant. Mayonnaise is something I hadn't thought about; I'll pass it along.

The big question was weather or not lice could be suffocated. It seems like the general consensous is that they can.

Wow...a homeopathic remedy that may actually work. How weird is that?

 

[ponderingturtle]

There is the real traditional medicine for this, and it works too. It is called nit picking.

 

[ChristineR]

It isn't just the suffocation angle, the key is actually the nit comb. The oil flattens and softens the hair and makes it easier to see the lice and nits, and makes it easier to run the comb through the hair.

This gel may actually be superior to olive oil. It sounds like it is a lot easier to wash out of the hair, for example.

Lots of natural remedies are being labeled homeopathic nowadays when they are not homeopathic at all, or when they contain some sort of real remedy along with the homeopathic stuff. Since salt in no way that I know of can cause lice, salt cannot be a "real homeopathic" cure for lice. Maybe the salt has some sort of use in the whole gunk 'n goo part.

 

[kmortis]

Well, I, for one, am glad that you explained the function of this "cure". I was getting worried that out there, somewhere, there's a 30C solution of lice.

I don't care if it's just a "memory". It still gives me the heeby-jeebies.

 

[noblecaboose]

There is the real traditional medicine for this, and it works too. It is called nit picking.

I got lice when I was ten, and as far as I was made to understand, the idea is that oil (olive or any other kind) suffocates the little bastards, and it makes the nits (white eggs) easier to pull off with the lice comb. No matter what method you use, it is an unpleasant process that takes time and patience. I have heard (from hippies) that tea tree oil helps too, but as far as I can tell, it's just for fragrance. Oil, a lice comb and patience seems to be the best (pesticide free) method.

 

[Dogdoctor]

I think people often mistake removing nits as a treatment when in reality it is more useful as an asessment of progress. If you are still finding nits you still need to treat. Shaving off all the hair is a safe and likely rapidly effective treatment. Using homeopathic crap will be neither rapid or very effective and the safety is questionable. Use of tea tree oil has potential for more harm. Too bad some of the dog products aren't licensed for humans.

 

[Patsy]

Personally, I would only fall back on smothering lice if there was some sound medical reason I really, really could not use more effective treatments. If I were so unfortunate as to be infested with lice, I'd want to throw the biggest nuclear bomb of lice treatment at it that was available <shudders> and get those bugs outta my hair!

 

[rustytunes]

It may suffocate the lice, but I don't think it will deal with the eggs. The life cycle of lice:

Egg is laid on hair shaft. Egg is called a 'nit'.
Louse emerges after 6-7 days.
First moult 2 days after hatching.
Second moult 5 days after hatching.
Third moult 10 days after hatching.
Emerging from their third moult as adult lice, the female and slightly similar male begin to reproduce.
Female lays first egg 1 or 2 days after mating.
Female can lay approximately 3 to 8 eggs per day for the next 16 days.
Having lived 32 to 35 days the louse dies.

So the treatment would have to be repeated weekly until all eggs are gone. This involves a lot of combing through with a fine tooth comb - and normal hair conditioner works well as a treatment, as it stuns the lice and they can't grip the hair or crawl around.

 

[Zep]

I think I can rather safely say that the product you are looking at is not homeopathic in the slightest. It is simply labelled as such as a sales gimmick. A real homeopathic remedy (!) would contain only water or alcohol, or be in pillule form, and would be taken internally.

Whether your prospective product works, and how it might work, is a completely unrelated point.

 

[Goshawk]

There are a surprising number of people out there who think that "homeopathic" means "all-natural", as opposed to "synthetic".

 

[Asolepius]

Natrum Muriaticum: Natrum Mur, Sodium Chloride (remember this is the mineral, not the processed with chemicals table salt and is not only safe for those who need to avoid salt, but is beneficial for those with sodium imbalances.

One has to wonder about the intelligence of the people who write this stuff. Sodium chloride is salt, so how can giving it a fancy name change it into something that's safe to eat if you have to avoid it? Oh I forgot, there isn't any of it in the preparation link

 

[Wolfman]

It may suffocate the lice, but I don't think it will deal with the eggs. The life cycle of lice:

Egg is laid on hair shaft. Egg is called a 'nit'.
Louse emerges after 6-7 days.
First moult 2 days after hatching.
Second moult 5 days after hatching.
Third moult 10 days after hatching.
Emerging from their third moult as adult lice, the female and slightly similar male begin to reproduce.
Female lays first egg 1 or 2 days after mating.
Female can lay approximately 3 to 8 eggs per day for the next 16 days.
Having lived 32 to 35 days the louse dies.

So the treatment would have to be repeated weekly until all eggs are gone. This involves a lot of combing through with a fine tooth comb - and normal hair conditioner works well as a treatment, as it stuns the lice and they can't grip the hair or crawl around.

I can offer some input here. I have a friend who's a Chinese doctor; his focus for the past 20 years or so has been on studying traditional Chinese remedies, and trying to determine which actually work (and how/why they work), and which don't.

I sent him an email about this, he responded that there are similar traditional Chinese treatments. He also noted that the inclusion of the salt is very important, as this treatment works in two ways. First, as mentioned above, it suffocates the lice. Second, through osmosis, the salt in the gel causes the lice eggs to dehydrate, resulting in killing them. He said that one or two treatments with this type of product, if used properly (ie. coating all the hair completely, and staying on for at least one hour), should be sufficient to get rid of all lice (assuming the child is not re-infected from another source).

 

[Cuddles]

On a slightl yrelated note there's an advert currently on in the UK that confuses me. It's for a head lice treatment that apparently doesn't contain any pesticides but still kills all the head lice. Assuming this is actually a real treatment and not homeopathic my problem is this; surely anything that kills pests is in fact a pesticide? Either the treatment doesn't work in which case they are engaged in false advertising, or it does work in which case it is, by definition, a pesticide and they are still falsely advertising. Personally I think it would be great to have head louse treatment that isn't as bad as the regular stuff, but there doesn't seem to be any excuse for misleading adverts when the only difference is likely to be that it smells less. Does anyone know about advertising law, or the product in question? I can't remember the name, but I think it's called Head-something (not Head-on).

 

[JJM]

Here is an interesting item from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6556272
"If you immerse a louse in water, then it shuts down its breathing system," he says. "So drowning or asphyxiation is not really a viable option." Once a louse closes its breathing holes, it can sit pretty for hours and hours.”

I once saw a homeopathic treatment for lice, it was 10% salt. I don’t know if that is enough to make a gel, or if there is an undisclosed ingredient.

Many years ago, I studied the ability of low-toxicity compounds to kill lice. We found a lot of compounds that killed them; but not 100% (which is required). We never got to the point of testing the products on the nits (which is a bit more complicated).

The only way to be sure a patient has no viable nits is to remove every nit. Speculation about the efficacy of salt in the gel is simply that- speculation.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Well salt will not make a gel by itself, you would need something to give it viscosity.

There are also things that coat the louse in some thing that shrinks crushing the louse.

There is always the shave all the hair option as well.

 

[Niobe]

There are a surprising number of people out there who think that "homeopathic" means "all-natural", as opposed to "synthetic".

Thank goodness it doesn't have any of those pesky "chemicals"!