What Are Super Lice and Are You Safe?

Posted January 15, 2009

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Are super lice lurking on a scalp near you? (Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

Posted January 15, 2009 by Emily Miles Terry

There's a nasty little four-letter word associated with parenting that no one tells you about before you have kids. Oh, they'll go on about sleepless nights, teenage attitudes, and back-breaking college bills, but no one discusses the really scary stuff. I'm talking about those little buggers that really keep us up at night: lice.

The other day I received an email from a mom friend that took my breath away. I had to pick up the phone and call her immediately.
"This has got to be one of those bogus e-alerts," I practically yelled.

"It isn't," she replied.

I nearly fell to my knees. "What are we going to do now?"

She was silent.

What brought me close to a panic attack was a report about the discovery of lice that are resistant to anti-lice shampoo. Their name: super lice. These newly-detected evil-doers defy over-the-counter remedies like pesticidal shampoos, making a case of lice persist sometimes for months rather than weeks.

If you're like me, you probably got itchy just reading that.

Getting lice has always been rough. I've seen mothers--strong women who would throw their bodies on train tracks for their kids if they had to--reduced to shrunken red-eyed heaps, dragging their kids to the school nurse for a "lice check" after pulling an all-nighter washing sheets, bagging toys and nit picking. I've been there too. Twice.

What always seemed to make matters worse to me is that we have to also deal with the judgments from our older generation. Grandmothers and grandfathers who gasp "No!" when they hear that their darling grandchildren have you-know-what, and then make the situation even worse with their, "Back in our day, no one got lice except..."

Well, back in the day, while grandmom happily poured pesticidal shampoo with the fire power of napalm, those little buggers started evolving. Nowadays, if you try the pesticidal shampoos on super lice you'll only "slow them down." At least that's what our school nurse told me. Before the age of super lice, once parents got over the shock of seeing live bugs on the precious heads of our offspring, we generally managed to muddle through with tips from school nurses, other moms and helpful step-by-step survival guides. Yet it's terrible to think that getting rid of lice can get any harder than it already is.

But all is not lost, as lice expert Dr. Daniel Rauch of New York University, has advised. "The best thing to do is smother the super lice ... using smothering products such as mayonnaise and olive oil. While the benefit is that they do work, they have to stay on the head for two or three hours." So although the prospect of some kind of bionic bug is harrowing, at least there's still the good old-fashioned way of warding them off.

So, run to your kitchen rather than the nearest drug store next time you see a critter crawling through your child's hair. Especially if it's wearing a cape.

Emily Miles Terry lives with her husband, three children, and hand-me-down dog in the Boston area.

Your Turn: What's your secret weapon against lice?

Read more about how to battle these bugs:

Lions, and Tigers, and Lice! Oh, My!

Home Treatments and How to Get Rid of Lice

Head Lice and Babies: Infants and Toddlers Get Lice Too

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