Crippling, Crawling Paranoia: Things You Didn’t Know About A Lice Infestation

Lice and lice treatment are like an existential crisis; everyone runs into them at one point in their lives. These nasty parasites have been around for as long as humans have. Hence, there is much more to them and lice infestations than one would assume. Here are some lice facts that will astonish you.

1. The itching sensation you feel when a louse bits you is because of an allergic reaction, and not the bite itself. You wouldn’t even feel such a tiny nibble on your scalp, but the saliva left from the louse will have a reaction that leaves an irritating sensation.
2. Lice are surprisingly fast. A single adult louse travels at a speed of 3.75 inches per minute. While this figure may seem small, it translates to 450 feet per day—that’s about the length of a football field. Pretty amazing for a bug the size of a sesame seed.
3. Lice are often stereotyped as having the ability to jump, fly and hop. However, head lice specifically are unable to perform any of those actions. They can only spread when two heads come directly into contact with one another. Then they simply crawl over to the new host.
4. Head lice and pubic lice are two separate creatures. If you have an infestation on your head, it is impossible for those insects to spread to your nether regions and vice versa.
5. Contrary to the prevalent old wives’ tale, head lice actually prefer clean hair over dirty. While lice typically don’t discriminate between who they’re infecting, they do have preferences. Normally, they’ll attach themselves to anyone’s head to quench their thirst for blood, but they prefer clean hair since it is difficult for a female to attach her eggs to dirty or oily hair. Lice are also repelled by strong odors.
6. Head lice are less common in certain demographics. African Americans are less likely to catch the parasite because of the nature of the hair which lice found in North America are not adept to. Men are also less likely to get an infestation because of their shorter hair.
7. A single adult female louse lays roughly 3-4 eggs per day, which translates to staggering 90-120 eggs per one month alone. What’s more surprising is that a female louse only needs to mate once with a male louse to produce all the eggs of her lifetime.
8. An estimated 6-12 million Americans are infected by lice every year.

If you or somebody you know is one of these millions of Americans, then contact a head lice treatment provider to get rid of lice and free yourself from the menace.