After each treatment, checking the hair and combing with a nit comb to remove nits and lice every 2–3 days may decrease the chance of self–reinfestation. Continue to check for 2–3 weeks to be sure all lice and nits are gone.
But unfortunately, the nits will not simply fall out your hair. The lice themselves take 7 to 11 days to hatch, so after that what is attached to the hair is the empty eggshell or the dead nit. These will stay attached to the hair and as the hair grows you will find them further and further down the hair shaft.
If you spot nits, but do not see any lice, it is possible that they are hiding and scurrying from the light as you search the hair and scalp; they can move quite quickly! Focus your search to their preferred hideouts, behind the ears and at the nape of the neck.
New eggs are attached to the hair shaft very close to the scalp. Eggs that still contain a louse embryo are brownish in color, while the empty egg shells are white to grey.
If nits are yellow, tan, or brown, it means the lice haven't hatched yet. If the nits are white or clear, the lice have hatched and just the egg remains. Lice eggs hatch within 1 to 2 weeks after they're laid.
After Treating with Lice Medicine
Use the nit comb to remove dead lice and nits. If some are still present but moving slowly, do not shampoo again. If lice are still active and no dead lice are found, call your health care provider. These lice may be resistant to the medicine.
Since eggs do not need a host to survive, they will continue to live until a nymph hatches from it. A louse will ultimately die without a human host. However, it can still live for 1-2 days on a pillow or sheet.
It may be easier to see lice and their eggs when the hair is wet. So, if lice are not visible under a light, try washing the hair and then looking again. If no lice are visible, but the scalp is itchy, people should consult a doctor.
Also look for lice feces, that look like tiny black specks on your child's scalp. If you see black specks, care- fully examine the rest of the head for live lice. Eggs: Female lice typically attach eggs 1/2-inch from the scalp. There can be from a few to several hundred nits in a child's hair.
Lice won't go away without treatment. You can treat lice and their eggs with prescription or over-the-counter medicines. After treatment, your skin may still itch for a week or more. This is because of your body's reaction to the lice.
With effective treatment, head lice will completely go away after two to three weeks. The duration is dependent on how many lice made a home in your hair. Make sure you follow the instructions on your medicated shampoo, lotion or cream to get rid of lice quickly.
Most treated nits (lice eggs) are dead after the first treatment with Nix. The others will be killed with the 2nd treatment. Removing the dead nits is not essential or urgent. However, it prevents others from thinking your child still has untreated lice.
Just like with mattresses, lice can only live on any bedding—whether it's sheets, pillows, or comforters—for 1-2 days. Without a human scalp as a source for food (blood) for longer than 1-2 days, lice cannot survive.
Then use a fine toothed “lice comb” to systematically work through the hair and remove adult lice. Regularly wiping the comb on tissues or paper towel will reveal the dispatched lice. This approach works but must be repeated twice, about a week apart, to break the life cycle of the head lice.
Before treating one family member, check others in the household for bugs. Then treat everyone who's infected at the same time, to avoid passing lice back and forth. Let close friends and schoolmates know to check their own heads (and what to do if they find bugs).
Head lice sometimes go away on their own because there are not enough insects to maintain the infestation, or they may persist for an indefinite period without treatment.
Subsequent treatments are timed based on the life cycle to get any new nymphs before they become mature, lay eggs, and keep the cycle going. If you do not comb out all the remaining nits, that's ok. If any viable nits remain, the 2 follow up treatments done 5-6 days apart will eliminate the baby bugs before maturing.
Some treatments need to be done twice – 7 days apart. This makes sure that any newly-hatched lice are killed. Detection combing should usually be done 2 or 3 days after finishing treatment, and again another 7 days after that, to check for any live head lice.
Infested children usually carry fewer than 20 mature head lice (more commonly less than 10), each of which, if untreated, live for three to four weeks (5–7). Head lice stay close to the scalp for food, warmth, shelter and moisture (6,7).
Fresh eggs are a golden-brown colour and are plump and shiny before they hatch. Hatched or empty eggs are white and flat. As the hair grows the eggs are further down the hair shaft. It is important to look out for both brown nits and their white eggs.
If a person cannot find any nymphs or adult lice in the scalp and the nits are more than a quarter of an inch from the scalp, these may be dead and from an old infestation.