Waugh Zone

31st January 2010

 

DON’T TEAR YOUR HAIR OUT

Daisy Waugh

There was a stage at the beginning of swine flu when catching it had a snob value attached. It hit the expensive schools first, you may remember, because pupils were travelling back from exotic holidays in pox-ridden hot spots – and for a week or two it was quite smart to claim you had a case of it at home.

No longer, of course. Utter the words “swine flu” on this side of the pandemic – which was meant, by now, to have wiped out most of the human race – and people’s eyes glaze over with boredom and embarrassment. One day, I suppose, we’ll learn to stop attending to every Armageddon-style prophecy emanating from every government office. In the meantime, out of kindness,

I shan’t dwell on the matter of swine flu and the British propensity for mass hysteria at first whisper of snuffles, germs or “official warnings”. I shall move on.

To head lice, that other playground scourge, which never had quite the same glamour attached.

I get letters from my children’s schools occasionally asking parents to put some extra elbow grease into the unwinnable battle against them. And on those occasions I am often moved to act. But mostly, I have to admit, I’ve more or less given up. Like adultery and murder, so they say, lice infestations feel shocking – not to say shameful – on first experience, but after that it’s easy. I’ve come to the conclusion that the occasional visitation is an inescapable fact of childhood. And of motherhood, too, actually. I’ve also decided, rather conveniently, that like a lot of other things I can’t be bothered to be thorough about – organic diet, children’s homework and so on – it’s a bit bourgeois to get too het up about the ruddy things.

So I said to a friend of mine, who last month discovered a single nit on her eldest child’s head and within a day or two had laid down £500 professionally delousing her entire family. She had a team of people dressed like astronauts, wearing magnifying goggles and carrying vacuum cleaners with special lice-sucking attachments, come in a lorry to her sitting room.

I think she could sense my shock. “But don’t you realise,” she cried, “they were copulating on my daughter’s head! That’s what they do! They roam around sucking blood and looking for a mate, and then the female has a sperm sack, and she stores up all the extra sperm and she carries it around with her, so she can go on using it for ever.”

What a waste of money, I said sourly, scratching away.

But these things niggle, don’t they? It’s much cheaper if you visit the salon, in any case: £40 per head for the first visit, from which, ahem, my two youngest children and I have recently returned.

It’s in expensive Primrose Hill in north London, in a small groovy-looking room covered in scarlet wallpaper. Dee Wright, a posh working mother who’s won lots of Excellent Businesswoman awards, understands the difficulties rich mummies and daddies suffer, trying to have a nice time, as well as getting their and their children’s nits eradicated. So she makes the experience very pleasant. She provides Nintendo games and miniature DVD players for the children and Grazia magazine for the rich mummies. There was only one other present when we were there. She looked a bit like Cruella de Vil. She had a Chanel handbag and a long coat with a fur collar, and a BlackBerry, from which she did not look up.

Dee told me, while my hair was being hoovered by one of her astronauts, that it had been an exceptionally busy day. I wondered why, since term had started. She reminded me there were plenty of places where term had “only just” begun. “Plus there’s snow on the ground. Mum’s got jet lag. There’s no way she’s taking the kids to school.”

The company’s called The Hairforce – Lice Assassins, by the way, if you’re feeling rich and want a temporary break from all the scratching. But be warned – with or without the “home visit”, the salon costs add up. Or they’re meant to, if you do the thing properly. Each head is supposed to be hoovered three times, according to Dee Wright, just to be sure “the cycle is broken”.

We had the second round last night. I was planning to cancel, obviously, since the scratching had stopped. But I didn’t, did I? It’s the problem with expensive tastes; once acquired, they’re hard to shift. We were in good company, though. Thandie Newton was in the chair next to me, looking like a movie star even with the Hoover on her head.

 To view the article go to: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/article7004885.ece

IN NEED OF NITTY NORA

By: Nick Morrison

Headlice are rapidly climbing their way back into schools, prompting calls for the return of nit nurses, aka Nitty Noras. With a national campaign, a petition on the Number 10 website and massive online support, will the quest succeed?

It was a ritual part of the school calendar, as much a fixture as the nativity play and sports day. Shuffling along, you queued up in the corridor until you were admitted to the inner sanctum, where you bowed your head and waited for judgment to be passed.

But the days when the school nurse would rifle through your hair on the hunt for headlice are long gone. The nit nurse – known as Nitty Nora to generations of children – was gradually phased out in the 1980s and 90s, regarded both as an inefficient way of screening and as degrading to those found harbouring the beasts.

Now, though, there are signs that headlice are on the advance again, increasingly resistant to the chemicals deployed against them. Although there are few reliable figures on the level of infestations, one study in Welsh primary schools showed the number of cases has doubled this decade.

A survey in Essex in 2003 found approximately one in 50 children had headlice, and almost four in 10 had caught them at some time in the previous 12 months. Even reality show contestants are not immune. It was reported last year that quiff-loving X Factor twins John and Edward had introduced headlice into the house they shared with their fellow contestants.

“Infestations are going up right across the developed world,” says Joanna Ibarra, of Community Hygiene Concern, a charity that promotes ways of tackling head lice. “Conventional insecticides are often simply not effective because the lice have become resistant.”

The apparent profusion of headlice has prompted calls for the return of Nitty Nora. A survey on the website netmums.com found almost 90 per cent support for the nit nurse to make a comeback, while a petition on the Number 10 website, running until May 18 this year, urges the Prime Minister to restore nit nurses in schools. Four previous petitions on the subject have collected between 189 and 383 signatories.

Lucy Weis’s introduction to headlice came when her eldest daughter caught them aged six. Attempts to vanquish the critters using special shampoos proved fruitless. “You buy all the lotions and use them but three or four lotions later you start thinking you can’t get rid of them,” she says.

Her frustration drove Mrs Weis, a mother-of-four from Colwyn Bay in north Wales, to launch the Nitty Nora campaign for the return of the nit nurse. She argues that even if parents manage to vanquish the bugs in their own child’s hair, there is a good chance they will be reinfested by classmates. It is only school-wide action, she says, that can banish them for good.

“Parents are happy to do it but because there is no co-ordination, they do their child’s hair and they go back into school and catch them again,” she says. “That is why we liked the nit nurse: she would come in and do everybody in the school.”

But she doesn’t envisage a return to the days of whole-school inspections. Rather than examining every child’s head in turn, the nit nurse should organise whole-school action against headlice, she says, as well as helping parents who struggle to deal with the problem.

In extreme cases, parents can be overwhelmed. Or sometimes don’t even try. A Norfolk mother was jailed for five months last year for neglect after her daughter’s hair was found to be crawling with lice. A social worker had thought the nine-year-old’s hair was dyed. Closer inspection revealed the “colour” was really thousands of headlice.

Headlice rarely pose a medical danger. The lice feed by sucking blood from their victim’s scalp. Their saliva can cause itching, but the biggest health risk is if repeated scratching makes the wounds bigger and opens them up to infection. Often of greater concern is the stigma carried by headlice. While the humiliation of being singled out by the nit nurse is, for now, consigned to the past, the shame of being portrayed as the source of an outbreak remains. And what is true for parents and their children is equally true for schools: no one wants to own up to having a problem.

One headteacher, speaking on condition the name of her school was withheld, says reports of headlice among pupils can be very alarming for parents. Her school, a primary in the north of England, gained unwelcome publicity last year when a parent contacted the local paper to claim her child had been given headlice by classmates.

The school’s PTA produced a guide for parents on how to get rid of the lice, but the damage had already been done. “Parents often find it degrading and when their child keeps getting it and they see no end to it, that is when it becomes frustrating,” the head says.

Her 30 years in education stretch back to the days when nit nurses were a common sight in schools, but she doesn’t believe they were effective in weeding out headlice. Rather than spending time checking every child’s head, school nurses these days are better employed focusing on issues such as child protection and obesity, she says. Instead, parents should take responsibility for regularly checking their child’s hair for lice, and taking remedial action if they are found.

Ros Godson, who represents school nurses for the union Unite, says blanket screening of school-aged children – including checking for headlice – was phased out because it was seen as inefficient. “Children used to have medicals as well, but this type of approach isn’t a good use of the school nurse’s time,” she says.

But the problem with putting the onus on the parent is that it only takes one to fail to perform their duty properly for a whole class to be reinfested. Mrs Weis, whose involvement in the Nitty Nora campaign has prompted neighbours to bring their children to her for delousing, says the flaw in this approach can make all a parent’s hard work in ridding their children of lice redundant.

And it’s not just the children. One poster on the TES Connect website, a primary school teacher, says she caught headlice three times last term. “Is there anything I can do to fend them off or must I resign myself to being infested until I retire?” she asks. Other posters recommend tying your hair back and keeping it away from the children as the most effective way of avoiding catching them.

The market for treatments to get rid of lice is worth about £30 million a year in the UK. But chemical lotions are only recommended when live lice have been spotted, as they are often ineffective against eggs. Combing using special nit combs is the other recognised method of lice removal.

Community Hygiene Concern developed its own Bug Buster kit, including wide and narrow-toothed combs, to combat lice. The charity also promotes National Bug Busting Days in schools, to encourage a synchronised effort to check for lice. The next Bug Busting Day is January 31.

This co-ordinated approach is proven to be the most effective way of eliminating headlice, says Ms Ibarra. It was pioneered on Teesside in the 1970s by the father of the current chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, when it halved the level of infestation.

One problem with the nit nurse approach is that when dry, lice will quickly move away from any disturbance in the hair. Wet lice, by contrast, tend to stay completely still. Checking the hair when it is wet therefore makes the lice easier to spot.

“The school nurse would miss all but the worst cases,” says Ms Ibarra. “They rely on being able to see lice on the head, but the lice rush away as the fingers move through the hair.”

Instead of nit nurses, schools should encourage parents to check their child’s hair when wet, and organise synchronised hair-checking to have the best chance of making sure re-infestations don’t occur, she says.

The majority of cases involve only about 10 lice and no itching, so many parents may be unaware their children even have lice. Regular checks where parents check their children will uncover even these “hidden” infestations.

“You might succeed in getting rid of the lice but if you are sending your child back into an environment where they are likely to catch lice again you could be none the wiser,” she says.

Some schools have turned to more drastic measures. Hairforce is a north London company that specialises in eradicating lice, through its team of “lice assassins”. Founder Dee Wright says they have been employed by a number of schools to deal with lice outbreaks.

Their approach is to carefully go through the hair with special combs. When called in by a school, five lice assassins go in to check every child’s hair thoroughly, before informing the school of whether it has a light, medium or heavy infestation.

“Checking every child can be really useful in letting a school know what is going on, but it would be very hard for one nurse to be able to do that in a school of 250 children,” Ms Wright says. “We might be there for a day and a half and school nurses don’t really have the time to do that.”

Recent cases treated by Hairforce include a boy who had about 450 adult lice on his head, and a girl who had been infested for six years. The Hairforce method, which costs £120 per child per treatment, involves three separate appointments over a period of several weeks, and guarantees to remove all lice.

But there can never be a guarantee they won’t come back through contact with another infested head. Only a concerted campaign of vigilance can hope to keep the lice at bay, and in the continued absence of the nit nurse, it looks like it’s up to schools to ensure parents get on board. Perhaps it’s time to take the stigma out of the louse and show the critter we mean business.

Nitty Nora campaign: www.nitworks.co.uk; Hairforce: www.thehairforce.co.uk

Bug Busting kits cost £5.95 plus postage and packing from www.nits.net or the Community Hygiene Concern helpline 01908 561928

Headlice facts

• Headlice is the name of the hatched creatures; nits refers to the eggs.
• Eggs take seven to 10 days to hatch; lice take six to 14 days to become fully grown, when they are capable of reproducing.
• A louse life span is about three weeks.
• A female louse lays about five eggs a day, more than 100 during the course of its life.
• Lice use a glue to attach their eggs to hair strands near the scalp.

Headlice myths

Myth: Headlice prefer clean hair

• Lice like any sort of hair, clean or dirty, although regularly washing and combing hair makes them easier to detect.

Myth: Lice can jump from one head to another

• Lice cannot fly, jump or hop. They spread through head-to-head contact.

Myth: Headlice can be caught from animals

• Headlice affect only humans and cannot be caught from, or passed on to, animals.

Myth: Headlice will not live on a shaved head

• Headlice can live on hairs as short as half a centimetre, although shorter hair may make them easier to spot.

Myth: Clothes and bedding need to be fumigated after a headlice infestation

• Headlice need to maintain contact with a host body to survive, and any that leave the host voluntarily are likely to be approaching death and unable to start a new colony.

 To connect to the TES website go to: www.tes.co.uk

Illustrations Guillaume Cornet, commissioned by The Hairforce - Lice Assassins

January 2010

WHEN NITS HAPPEN…

Combs at the ready, hoover in hand, meet the lice assassins who are determined to free the nation’s hair from the nastiness of nits……

The environs of Regent’s Park in London are famed for having a wealth of wildlife and creatures great and small. From apes and aphids and wombats to weasels, the confines of London Zoo is all about animal conservation and welfare as creatures are lovingly cared for and nurtured. Yet, just a stone’s throw away, in a pretty tree-lined street, there lurks a legion of rather less welcome critters. Barely visible to the naked eye, these pesky nuisances are the bane of many a child’s – and parent’s – life. And behind the doors of a stunning family home, a team of expertly trained technicians, dubbed The Hairforce, are busily setting about their daily task – combs at the ready, spray guns in their pockets and hoovers in hand. The logo on their pristine white lab coats says it all: “Nasty with Nits, Lethal with Lice.”

Far from clinical, the room in which the so-called lice assassins conduct business oozes boudoir chic. There is fuchsia pink paisley paper on the walls, a lovely mirrored armoire and a huge black chandelier that gives an air that’s more pampering hair salon than head-lice removal service. Young clients are treated to mauve leather massage chairs, plus a choice a portable DVD player, Nintendo DS, magazines and children’s books to entertain while the serious business of nit-picking is taking place.

The Hairforce is the brainchild of Dee Wright, a former strategic planner for an advertising agency and a mother of two, who decided to set up her unusual business from home. “This used to be my dining room,” she says. “I used to have dinner parties here, and now we have nit parties!”

I wish I could say that I was only visiting in the capacity of investigative journalist, but alas, the truth was that we had an infestation. Times three. Looking back, the signs had been there, but, being novices who were thankfully thus far uninitiated in the heady world of nits, I was mistakenly putting all the head scratching down to a change in shampoo brands. It was only when my seven-year-old daughter, Lauren, scratched her head and came across a fully-grown creature that we realised that she, her four-year-old brother, Jack, and myself were all suffering from an unwelcome visitation.

Nits are a fact of life – in fact, practically a rite of passage – for most children. It’s what every parent dreads. An outbreak of head lice in the classroom heralds diligent wet-combing and nit-picking (the head lice are the fully-grown creatures, the nits are the hatched egg cases). More than a mere inconvenience, the effects of a severe infestation can also be debilitating. “We see children with runny noses, they’re tired, they’re run down with flu-like symptoms, their concentrating is not what it should be – all from having lice,” says Dee. “If your child is itching a lot, she will invariably be itching in her sleep, so she is never going to get that deep proper sleep that we need; in turn, that will affect their concentration and learning. Head lice are blood-sucking parasites and they’re the reason the word ‘lousy’ is part of the English language.”

It’s estimated that head lice now infest nearly half of the nation’s four- to eleven- year olds every year. What’s more, the sneaky little things have evolved to build immunity against chemical warfare, meaning parents find it increasingly difficult to get rid of them. According to NHS guidelines, wet combing with a fine-tooth comb is the most effective method of removal – not vinegar or mayonnaise, which are a couple of the old wives’ tales.

The downside is that wet combing is pain-staking and tedious, especially for children who are loathe to have their hair combed at the best of times. It was this that prompted Dee to come up with the idea of creating an environment that was fun rather than boring, welcoming rather than intimidating and, above all, highly effective.

The treatment goes something like this. Firstly, the hair is methodically sectioned off and tied in little bunches with purple hairbands. Jack looked decidedly cute, a bit like Pebbles from ‘The Flinstones’ and funnily enough, seemed quite happy admiring his rather unconventional look in the mirror. I, on the other hand, looked more like some crazed schoolgirl extra from Britney’s Baby One More Time video. After this, each section is hoovered using a specially customised combed nozzle, starting at the scalp and working the length of the hair. The cooling air and gently massaging technique was actually quite pleasant, though it is quite funny to see the technicians stopping every so often to open up the specially designed attachment in the hose that catches anything suspect. Then it’s on with the magnifying goggles to inspect their trappings: is that a head louse, a nit… or just dandruff? After the entire head has been hoovered, it’s time to literally set about nit-picking. Each section of the hair is spritzed with Aveda conditioner, before being combed through with a fine-tooth comb and any suspect speck meticulously removed from the hair using tweezers.

Every finding is jotted down in a notebook and a nit count totted up at the end of the session. Our first session ended thus: Lauren 14 lice (6 adults and 8 babies) and 265 nits (eggs); Jack, 7 lice (1 adult, 4 mediums, 2 babies) and 28 nits; Me, 2 lice (medium) and 17 nits. “The process is about getting the lice out and removing the nits as they come through,” says Dee. “Some of these will hatch – babies and then mediums – but the timings mean that they are unable to get to adulthood and reproduce.” It usually takes three visits, within the space of ten days, to get rid of them, with each session costing £40.

Although head lice are a minor ailment, they are never a pleasant discovery. “My daughter, Dani, used to get head lice so often, and we could never seem to get rid of them completely,” says Amanda Coplans. “She hated the chemical treatment, because it smelt so horrible. She used to run away when she saw me with a bottle!” it was after Amanda’s playground discussion with a friend, who was an aromatherapist, that they came up with a lotion that contained a blend of aromatherapy oils. It worked – and it smelt nice, too. “My daughter half-jokingly said ‘you should sell this at school,’ and we thought what a great idea. It became our Nitty Gritty Head Lice Aromatherapy Solution.”

Amanda was now also on a mission to find the perfect fine-tooth comb for wet combing, a quest which led her to two clever fathers in Argentina, who were former ship engineers. Their design became the Nitty Gritty NitFree Comb, which has now sold over a million units; it’s available free on prescription, too. So what’s so unique about its design? “The micro-spiral groove on each tooth runs smoothly along the hair strands and gently removes any lice without damaging the hair,” says Amanda. “It works really quickly and easily removes not just head lice, but also un-hatched eggs and nits.” Legions of parents swear by the Nitty Gritty for its efficacy (including Jonathan Ross, whose own effusive testimonial can be found on the website) and it’s the perfect piece of kit to keep infestations at bay. Meanwhile, back at The Hairforce, we were visiting for the third time in nine days and eagerly awaiting the verdict: Lauren, 0 lice, 9 mostly empty nits; Jack 0 lice, 14 nits; Me: 0 lice, 6 nits. Lauren and I were officially pronounced clean, but because Jack had more than ten nits, he was booked in for a complimentary check a few days later where he had no lice and one nit. Of course, there’s no guarantee that we won’t suffer from head lice again, but we departed from The Hairforce with a common farewell: “Thanks for everything,” I said, “And I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I hope we never see you again.” “Pleasure,” replied Dee. “Good to see three more nit- and lice- free people in the world.”

In an attempt to make this a reality, we have also vowed to include a once-a-week wet-combing session into our bath routines. But you know, it’s not all bad news. “Nits are a nuisance,” says Amanda, “but all children can get them, and most do. I always like to remind parents of one simple fact: to catch head lice, you need friends. Isn’t that more important for your child?”

THE FACTS OF LICE

What are head lice? Lice are wingless,  greyish – white insects with flattened, elongated bodies and oval heads. They are 1.5mm to 3mm long.

Where can head lice be found? Head lice spend their life clinging tightly onto our hair as soon as they hatch. They tend to stay close to our scalps, so they can feed on our blood; they cannot survive for long once removed from the head.

How do you get head lice? Head lice move from one host to another during head-to-head contact. When your hair is touching someone else’s, even for a few moments, they can migrate. This is why they are prevalent amongst primary school children.

What are the signs? Often, there is no sign of infestation until nits- empty egg cases – start to become visible as they grow out in the hair. Not everyone itches. Use a fine-tooth comb to do a careful visual check for nits, eggs and head lice once or twice a week. Do this when you wash and condition the hair. If hair is dry, lice can move rapidly away from the area being examined.

How can you detect lice and nits? It’s easiest with conditioner on the hair, as this immobilises lice. Section the hair and comb from the scalp downwards. After each stroke, check the comb for live lice. Fully grown head lice are the size of a small ant, but newly hatched eggs can be as small as a pinhead. If you inspect dry hair, do so in good light. Look for eggs glued to the roots close to the scalp. If you find eggs or nits attached to the hair, then check all family members and use a comb to treat everyone who has lice, nits or eggs in their hair.

What is the difference between nits and eggs?

‘Live’ head louse eggs are glued to an individual hair strand as soon as they are laid. Nits are empty egg cases, which remain glued on the hair as it grows after the nymph lice have hatched. Nits are often the first visible sign of a head-lice infestation.

Where are the eggs found?

Female head lice attach each egg to the root of an individual hair strand close to the scalp, so that when they hatch, they are close to their food source. Eggs found more than 1cm from the scalp will be nits, which remain glued on and grow out as our hair grows.

What do the eggs look like? They are about the size of a pinhead, white to cream in colour and they look like a tiny teardrop fastened to the hair shaft.

Do lice prefer clean or dirty hair? They’re not fussy, but it is easier to move in clean hair. Lice are tough, resourceful creatures. You can’t wash them out, and there is no scientific evidence to indicate that either washing or not washing the hair will prevent an infestation.

Do they prefer boys or girls? Girls tend to spend more time than boys in head-to-head contact. They usually have longer hair too, which can make it easier for head lice to move from head to head. It’s rare for fathers to get head lice, so some experts believe they don’t like testosterone.

To view Junior Magazine go to: www.juniormagazine.co.uk Read the rest of this entry »

23rd November 2009

7.30 pm

The Head lice Terminators!

Fantastic coverage by BBC 1’s Inside Out team.  They also interviewed our ally, Dr Ian Burgess, who showed how ineffective the head lice treatments are.

This is the text of the show:

Since the 1980s, the number of children with head lice in London has risen by as much as 1000%.

With many bugs becoming resilient to the chemicals traditionally used to treat them, combating head lice is turning into a headache for many parents.

But one London mum has turned the fight against nits into a business opportunity.

Armed with her trusty vacuum, entrepreneur Dee Wright’s nit-busting business has been running successfully for two years now.

Inspired by a press cutting from a New York magazine several years ago, Dee set up her own nit-busting company from her home in London.

BBC Inside Out presenter Mike Dilger investigates the head lice terminators.

Just imagine if there were a treatment that didn’t involve any chemicals on the scalp or parents having to pull a comb through their children’s hair. Well, there is. The Hairforce – Lice Assassins. It’s the brainchild of business entrepreneur, Dee Wright. ‘I came up with the idea about three and a half years ago, I saw a two line article in New York Time Out about a company in the States that is a nit and head lice removal service, so I had a good look at that and I just thought, I can do that so much better.’ Two years later, in Dee’s front room, the company’s thriving. ‘Lucy, what are you doing to Amira’s hair? So I’ve divided it into bunches which allows us to go through more methodically and make sure we’ve cleared every part of the head. And next I’m going to take this special attachment we have on the hoover with a nit-comb in the end and then I’ll go through which will take out any lice that might be there. Then we apply an organic and enzyme-free leave-in conditioner, nit comb very thoroughly and then a Lice Assassin will nit pick following the nit combing so she’ll use her medical magnifying visors and we have lighting like dentist lighting so that they can see absolutely what is going on in the hair. It’s the only treatment that guarantees to rid your hair of lice completely. But, at £120 a go, it’s not cheap. This is the tenth time Marcus has been infested. ‘In Rugby season in scrums, it’s very easy for them to crawl across to other people’s heads. So, how have head lice become so resilient? I met up with scientist Ian Burgess who’s an expert when it comes to these pests. ‘So, what have you got here?’ ‘I’ve got some lice here, come and take a look. These are first stage nits, those two, and then we’ve got adults – these are females. ‘And how long from the egg hatching to a fully fledged adult?’ ‘From the egg hatch to an adult that’s able to lay eggs, we’re looking at ten days.’ ‘So, Ian, time for a bit of science, we’ve got some head lice here and four different treatments. So, if we make a tiny drop on each louse… ‘We tested four of the top-selling treatments to see just how effective they are at killing head lice.’  ‘They have survived everything we’ve thrown against them.’ ‘In some ways to be admired.’ ‘Oh very much so. You have to take your hat off to them as they say.’

Log on to Inside Out London and check out their programmes:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/

Standing in for Vanessa was Gabby Roslin.  Having experienced nits and head lice in the home with her own children, Gabby was particularly interested in understanding how The Hairforce – Lice Assassins operate and any intelligence on the beasts….

GR: We’re talking nits, how to get rid of them, tell me your nit stories

GR: Now, the other thing we’re talking about this morning is lice and nits. And good morning to Dee Wright. You’re founder of Hairforce

DW: Morning

GR: Now, tell me about Hairforce! The Hairforce – Lice Assassins is a service. We clear nits and head lice infestations for you. So we do all the work, we do it all by hand we don’t use any chemicals or treatments and we remove all the lice and all the nits. And if we’re working on you, we need to see you three times four days apart to break the cycle of development that you’re inevitably struggling with

GR: Can we eradicate lice, completely?

DW: Well I think, you know, well I’ve got a business based on nits and head lice being out there but we can certainly, certainly reduce the issue.

GR: Now, we’ve had it in our house as one of my daughters has…

DW: Congratulations

GR: Yes, one of them brought it home and I did everything, I did the conditioner, and I saw the eggs, but we also saw the creepy crawlies and I have to say, that wasn’t nice and my eight year old really didn’t like actually seeing the things crawling around, and then we realised, we all had it. But for people who haven’t had it, how can we identify a nit?

DW: Well, a lot of people sort of rely on seeing if somebody itches but 53% of people are totally asymptomatic, they do not itch.

GR: Really?

DW: So you can’t just rely on that. What we always recommend to all the parents that we see is that they do a weekly check so that at the end of the school week take some time with your child, gossip about the week, use it in a positive way but then check the hair and you have to be quite systematic at checking it, go around very carefully and look to see if there are any black specks for a start on the scalp and that’s a good way of thinking about it, if you see any tiny little things…

GR: But they were white, I remember them being a grey/white actually in the hair

DW: Are you talking about the lice or the nits – the eggs?

GR: The eggs

DW: Yeah, when eggs are empty, when the nits have hatched they’ll go a sort of white

GR: Whoo! I’ve started itching, isn’t it funny? Ooh

DW: Then you can tell they are empty, look for black specks and then also you’re looking for anything that’s attached to the hair and it’ll be fresh laid eggs are very very close to the scalp they’re at the base of the hair. Hair grows about a centimetre a week so if you’re looking for also nits that are further down the hair then, this shows that the infestation has been there quite awhile. A lot of those would have hatched by the time they’re further down the hair anyway. But you’re looking to see if there’s anything attached to the hair you can blow at it to see if it doesn’t move when you blow, then it could well be a nit and then you need to pull it with your fingernail and see if it comes off.

GR: And if there are eggs, there are lice. Is that right?

DW: Not necessarily, you can have a lot of eggs or some eggs sitting in there and you won’t be able to find the perpetrator, the live louse who’s laid them. It could have crawled off, it could have been that, when you nit combed you killed it but you didn’t really see it because you know, if you put lots of conditioner in, sometimes it obscures your view. Or, it could have died and just fallen off at some stage. They last for about 30 days.

GR: Dee, when you go to dinner parties or parties, does the same thing happen that’s happening right here? I can see six people sitting around, and everybody scratching their heads!

DW: Laughs

DW: I have presented to bald bankers and they all itch. So yeah, I mean there’s that whole psychosomatic side about lice where everybody itches when they think about it and talk about it and you have to get beyond that.

GR: Now, if you don’t get rid of them in your head, can they cause, you know, a lot of damage? They bite, don’t they?

DW: Well, there’s this whole thing, which you’ll see in the news and you’ll hear probably discussed on your show today about lice because everybody’s got them, they are pretty much a ubiquitous part of childhood and you know they’re just little parasites and don’t worry about it and some people will not do anything about it because they have that attitude. The thing about lice is that they are bloodsuckers, they are sucking away at your blood and they are moving from host to host and they carry bacteria, they carry germs with them, so you know. Impetigo was eradicated in this country, its back and it’s been back for the last fifteen years…

GR: Really, because of lice?

DW: Because lice carry impetigo, they carry all sorts of things so you’ve got to think quite carefully about it. Am I quite happy to have these blood-suckers on my child moving between well all over place who can come from who knows where. What we see, really interesting when we clear children we see children who have had them for many years who’ve got very heavy infestations, we see a strong change in their behaviour and the parents witness it and the school, will comment on it so if the child has got a nice big infestation of it and its been there for awhile they’ve more often than not got a snivelling nose, they are not sleeping that well, they’re itching in their sleep and all of these things mean that their concentration is affected. There’s a term in the English language called ‘feeling lousy,’ which comes from having lice, long term, infestations of lice and they give you flu-like symptoms so all of these things affect a child’s wellbeing

GR: Oh my word

DW: A child’s wellbeing and then we also listen to children talking to us about how I’ll sit at the back of the class on purpose so nobody can look at my hair

GR: Ohhh

DW: Or I’d never volunteer for the school play, as I don’t want a light on my hair

GR: Oh no

DW: Or you know they get bullied in the playground, they’ll get marginalised as people often know who has got them and they wont invite them on a play-date, they won’t ever get invited to sleep-over’s. So all of these things actually affect the development of your child and that’s worth thinking about, I think.

GR: Now, Dee can I just ask you, so some of the fallacies, is it true, you just mentioned sleep-over’s, that lice don’t live on pillows or bed-sheets and you don’t need to wash them

DW: Well, they need to feed on blood, they need to feed on human blood and it needs to be from the scalp

GR: Right

DW: They like to feed every four hours so if an adult louse crawls off a head and they are genetically programmed to travel, to move to another, to find another host otherwise they are constantly intermingling with their own siblings, if they crawl off 24 – 48 hours it will be dead, it will dehydrate and die because it needs to feed, so

GR: So we should actually change the pillowcases then

DW: Well, what we do, I mean, there’s a whole debate about whether that’s necessary or not. What we say to our clients is that they are paying for our service so let’s be cautious and careful and you never know what the probabilities are, so change the sheets after they see us, after you’ve done a good old clear out, you should give them some fresh sheets, yes

GR: OK

DW: You could get out of bed and something could be sitting there

GR: Well, do you know, I have to say it does sound like we’re talking about creatures from Dr. Who the way we’re talking about living and infestation.

DW: They’re great, fantastic

GR: And, the other thing is, is it true that they don’t go to clean hair?

DW: Oh, no

GR: That’s it yeah, it’s too clean

DW: It’s about blood. They like healthy people, they like healthy blood

GR: But if your hair is too clean, sorry I’m getting it all confused here, that lice like people with dirty hair?

DW: No, they like clean and dirty hair

GR: Oh

DW: Clean hair is easy to hang onto, it’s easier for them, so yeah, we have very well manicured children and a lot of them have got lice

GR: That’s what I meant, yes, but I got it all completely around the wrong way!

DW: But, if someone’s got dirty hair and you know they like high blood sugar levels, which is why they like female blood in particular, they like children as they nice have high blood sugar levels when they’re young they dislike testosterone so you’ll find that daddy’s don’t really get them

GR: Yes, well David didn’t really get them, he was lucky but the three of us did, I have two girls…

DW: You see them on men but they tend to be very low numbers, they want to get off, go back to females, as they are more tasty

GR: Oh yeah Dee, it’s great, so it’s Hairforce – Lice Assassins

DW: The Hairforce – Lice Assassins

GR: And also your story is going to be on Inside Out, this week BBC 1 at 7.30pm on Monday. But Dee it was an absolute delight to talk to you. I think – in the nicest possible way!

DW: Pleasure

GR: It was a delight but we are all scratching now

DW: Next time if you have a problem, bring your kids to us

GR: I hope we don’t have it again, but thank you very much indeed. I could have talked to Dee all morning that was incredible, so much to learn!

DW: Thank you

Check out the Vanessa Feltz show: http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2005/04/22/radio_vanessa_feltz_feature.shtml

Weekend Family section

Why I spent £400 on getting rid of my children’s head lice

Her kids’ hair was infested with nits but Carla Power found an effective solution – at a price

By Carla Power

I’m writing this to help defray the cost of delousing my daughters. Had anyone told me that I would turn into the kind of woman who spends £414 having nits picked from my children’s heads, I would have told them I had a better chance of winning a Nobel for physics. But last month, I became such a woman, handing over my debit card, again and again, to The Hairforce, a deluxe nit-picking boutique in north London.

Am I stupid, you may ask, or just ridiculously rich? I can rule out the latter. I’m a freelance journalist who is married to a civil servant, so we’re hardly the sort of household with spare hundreds to spend on hair care. When it comes to haircuts, we’re strictly Sunday-nights-with-the-kitchen- scissors folks. Occasionally, I’ll treat myself to a £12 cut at my local salon, but that is pretty much the extent of our household hair budget.

Until last month, that is. My five-year-old, Nicola, had had nits for months. Her older sister, Julia, seven, had been infested with them for the better part of a year, her thick hair so crowded with lice that I could see the hum of nit highways crisscrossing her head from 20 paces, or so I convinced myself. One afternoon, just as I had finished reassuring her teacher that we were nitting religiously, a particularly bold louse scampered across her forehead.

I hadn’t been lying: we were pretty assiduous. I hadn’t the nerve to blast my darlings’ heads with chemicals, so we’d sit, me with my blue plastic nit comb and a bottle of spray conditioner, the two girls in their nightgowns, lulled by a DVD. Lit by the bedside lamp, we looked like some ghastly Victorian tableau. They were patient, but even so, after entire seasons of such nights passed, both girls were in revolt. There were tears, pleadings, scenes. And despite gallons of tea tree oil and lashings of over-the-counter potions, the insects kept going forth and multiplying.

Earlier in the year, I had read about The Hairforce, which gets rid of nits for £40 a session. At first, I had dismissed it: calling in the professionals was for the rich or timid, not us. We could handle this ourselves. By late August, I had changed my mind. School was starting in a week, and Julia’s head remained a megalopolis for nits. I gritted my teeth and ferried the girls to the elegant Primrose Hill terrace in north London, where Dee Wright runs her business in her former living room.

Julia was met by her so-called Lice Assassin, Aileen, a young woman wearing medical magnifying goggles and a white lab coat embossed with the slogan “Comb to Kill” in lavender. Would the girls like a DVD or a game? With Julia transfixed by a film and Nicola happily jabbing at a games console, Aileen went to work. She parted Julia’s hair into sections, then combed, then wielded a giant vacuum cleaner fitted with a nit comb. Within minutes, she had the bottom of a tiny paper cup littered with lice corpses. Soon, she was calling for backup. Hairforce counts the lice and eggs (or nits, as eggs are known), in a chart for each child. “You need an intelligent clearing system,” explains Wright, a crisply articulate former ad executive who launched Hairforce in 2007. “A quantitative approach helps you understand an infestation, so we can educate you. That way, we take out the fear factor and make it a clear, understandable process.”

Britain’s £30m nit and lice market, argues Wright, is far from transparent. “Eighty per cent of what you buy is ineffective,” says Wright. “It’s pretty much a rip-off industry.” She thinks her own business, by contrast, is performing a crucial social service, as lice can affect everything from children’s schoolwork to their self-esteem. “We’ve had children sitting in the back of the class, because they were so embarrassed by their lice,” she says. “Or being too shy to audition for the school play because of them.”

Globally, nits are a growing industry, with boutiques and mini-businesses popping up to counter increasingly virulent strains. Classified as the second most communicable childhood disease after the common cold, lice can do more than simply itch. Bacteria on their faeces can cause runny noses, and they can interfere with sleep and focus. “They’re a brilliant opponent, really interesting,” says Wright, who cites their nimbleness – “they’re like monkeys” – and speed: 23.5cm a minute. “They can become immune to products, but not to hand-clearing.”

Julia had, according to her assassins’ log, “thousands” of lice and “zillions – uncountable” numbers of nits. “So is this the worst case you’ve ever seen?” I ask, perversely chuffed at our spectacular score. “It’s a heavy infestation … ” agrees Wright. Even with two women labouring over Julia’s head for nigh on two hours, combing by hand, peering through their magnifying goggles, she was so infested she had to go back the next day. In the end, she had multiple sessions with a couple of people working on her scalp, while her sister, who also had “thousands” of nits, plus 250 fully grown lice, needed several sessions of her own.

As happily nit-free as we are – at least until the next infestation hits school – I still feel a bit of a fool for parting with so much money. One mother told me about a £15 electric zapper that works, another about barber shops that do head-clears for £20. Would they work? Who knows? But I do know that I haven’t seen a louse for a month – and that’s worth a lot.

Link to The Guardian article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/24/nits-head-lice-infest

Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies filmed us clearing a wonderful girl from Ipswich.  Her Mum had been struggling to rid her of her infestation for a very long time.  Cleared of a substantial build up of nits, we all witnessed a very happy transformation.  This will be aired in the Spring of 2010.

Link: http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/

Finding a solution to an irritating problem

By Sarah Ebner

A single scratch of the head is enough to make normally sane parents panic. Their fear … headlice.

Only a few weeks into the new school year, and far too many children (and some unfortunate parents) will already be suffering from the dreaded lice attack. Gone are the days of the nit nurse, and also gone are the days when lice affected only a small number of children. New research suggests that between 10 and 20 percent of Britain’s 4 million primary school children will have headlice at any one time — up from around one per cent in the 1980s.

“There are so many kids now with relatively high levels,” says Dr Ian Burgess, Director of the Medical Entomology Centre in Cambridge, and a headlice expert. “They’re passing the lice around easily.”

There are many reasons why headlice have become so common, but there are three main ones — changes in school practice, resistance to insecticides, and a lack of urgency in dealing with them.

Although a surprising number of parents (one in four according to the latest research) still think that their school does nit checks, most do not, which means that the issue slips out of many parents’ minds. There is now a feeling that periodic inspections would, “be valueless, unless carried out weekly if not daily,” says a spokeswoman from Barnet Council.

“The schools are saying it’s really bad,” says Amanda Coplans, who co-founded Nitty Gritty, an aromatherapy based solution to headlice, 10 years ago. “More children are sitting next to each other at tables rather than desks, there’s more head to head contact, more huddling in groups, and central heating. Lice thrive in that atmosphere.”

Dr Burgess agrees. He explains that this “huddling”, whether to work or sit around a computer, is also partly to blame for the rise in cases of boys, and in secondary schools.

Headlice cannot jump or fly from one head to another. Instead, they crawl on or between hairs and feed on human blood. Lice lay their eggs (which take around a week to hatch) near the scalp, and generally stay close to the skin. Some people do not feel itchy until several weeks down the line.

Once a child is infested, parents have a few options. Headlice are now largely resistant to pesticide-based treatments, although many parents still use them. Instead Dr Burgess recommends newer options such as Hedrin or Full Marks Solution (not mousse). All treatments need to be done in conjunction with (the very boring) combing.

It’s all rather time-consuming, but there is a new solution. The Hairforce, based in Primrose Hill, north-west London, now boasts its own headlice “spa”.

Dee Wright founded the company after hearing many parents complain that they did not know what to do about lice. Customers have their hair vacuumed and combed by headlice “assassins” who go through it pretty much strand by strand (using no chemicals). Children are otherwise engaged watching DVDs or playing on Nintendos.

“We get 18-month-olds to grandmothers,” says Wright. “And at the moment we’re extremely busy because of children going back to school. We also had lots of Jewish families coming to us after all the summer camps. Children with lice pass it around each other. Then they go back to school…”

A visit to the Hairforce is not cheap (it is £40 a session, with three needed) but many grateful parents do not seem to mind. Wright herself argues that it is a failsafe way of removing lice, as opposed to bottled treatments.

Dr Burgess agrees that the Hairforce may have the right idea, but is put off by the cost. He is also convinced that only way to get rid of lice completely would be for the entire community to be treated at the same time.

“If you treat everyone at once, it’s so much more successful, because you can really knock the lice out,” he says. “What we need is a radical re-think, and, of course, continuous vigilance.”

See the article: http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/20518/finding-solution-irritating-problem

BBC 1

We were filmed a few months back for this well known programme.  Our feature is due to air on the 26th October 2009 at the primetime slot of 7.30 pm.  Do watch!

Check out the Inside Out website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/