Got Lice?: Breaking the Stigma Associated with Lice

Remember wintertime when you were in elementary school? The school nurse took students out of the room, one-by-one, and led them somewhere private. She ran combs through your hair, and if you were lucky like I was, she'd braid your hair when she was finished. A few hours later, the teacher announced that there was a lice infestation in the school. Bookbags and coats were stored throughout the day in separate garbage bags, and fingers started pointing at the kid everyone thought was dirty, poor or just didn't fit, and nobody would sit with him at lunch because they'd get lice, too.

As adults, we don't encounter the same situation. Nobody checks your hair and your boss doesn't hand out garbage bags. Still, the murmurs resurface when we hear that word, "Lice."

Lice can be as small as a half a millimeter long, so even if you bathe every day and brush your hair three times a day, you won't notice that you have lice until it they have reproduced significantly. Itchiness is the most obvious sign that you have lice (unless you see them with your own eyes), so it's best to go to a doctor and get checked out if the itch persists. If you do see an insect in your head or pubic hair, it's most likely a louse. Lice are very small, but you will be able to identify head louse by its long body and six legs. Pubic lice have thicker legs and rounder bodies.

If you suspect that you have lice, comb your hair thoroughly looking for nits or lice. They can be very hard to see, but nits will attach themselves to the hair shaft very near to the scalp.

Lice are hatched from nits, extremely small eggs that are firmly attached to the hair shaft. Nits look almost like oval, yellow or white, seeds and take a week to hatch into nymphs. Nymphs look just like adult lice but are smaller. Seven days later, nymphs grow into full-grown lice. Nymphs and lice must feed off blood to survive, which makes their color darker than white or yellow and more difficult to see.