Most people know that lice are a pain, but basically no real health threat. People ask me what they should have done to prevent it. And, every now and then a young mom worries that they’ve neglected something. They think the presence of lice is saying something about their parenting skills and overall devotion to their kids.

Yesterday, a young mom asked me, “Does this mean we’re dirty?”

Clearly, there’s some anxiety among our clients. So I want to answer this question once and for all…

Lice prefer clean hair over dirty hair. Clean hair is easier for them to colonize.

It’s true. Whether it’s the grasping and crawling lice do, or the gluing of nits (eggs) to the hair shaft… for some reason, lice have been shown to prefer clean hosts. The oils of unwashed hair tend to make colonization harder. So, no, you have not neglected your kids in any way!!!!

Human head lice have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. It seems that they are a fact of life. Maybe science could eradicate them, but since they are merely a very uncomfortable pest (the don’t carry any diseases in the way that mosquitoes carry malaria, for example), they haven’t merited the huge governmental effort it would take to eradicate them.

It seems they’re here to stay for the time being, and they’re on the lookout for clean kids.

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