I’m a pro nitpicker, one client had thousands of head lice – there’s a common mistake parents should NEVER do
A PROFESSIONAL nit buster has revealed how to get rid of head lice and the steps to take to ensure they never come back.
With a background in advertising, Dee Wright noticed there was a gap that needed filling in the head lice department.
“My last career was all about solving problems and I could see there was one here, in this market, so I looked for a solution towards it,” she told The Sun’s Fabulous magazine during an exclusive chat.
And after a great deal of research, tests and trials, she founded The Hairforce. While there are other services in different parts of Europe now, Dee says hers was the “first in this part of the world”.
“When I set it up, there was one service in America and one service in Canada,” she explained.
Dee read about the one in New York and found that they use products that could be bought at a chemist.
It made her think: “I could do this… I could do this better”.
And now, with seven clinics across the UK, she does appear to do it better – all without the use of any products.
With her team of what she calls ‘head lice assassins’, who go through rigorous training, they give parents everywhere peace of mind.
Even Hollywood celebrity Taika Waititi, 47, who married singer Rita Ora, 32, last year, has visited one of the clinics after “not doing the best job” of removing head lice from her daughter’s long brunette mane.
Dee has had her fair share of horror stories too as once a hospital in Tunbridge Wells called her team to help a child who had a severe case of it.
“We’ve seen a lot of heads over the last 16 years, many thousands of people. We’ve seen a whole range of infestations from the pretty average levels to very extreme ones,” she shared.
“I’ve had a call from a hospital down in Tunbridge Wells one time to say that they had a child with toxic shock syndrome because of head lice. They asked if we could come and help it.”
According to the NHS, toxic shock syndrome is a “rare but life-threatening condition caused by bacteria getting into the body and releasing harmful toxins”.
I’ve had a call from a hospital down in Tunbridge Wells one time to say that they had a child with toxic shock syndrome because of head lice
Dee Wright
“You’ve probably heard about it around tampons,” she explained.
But if you have a really bad infestation, it can be really bad for you. According to Dee, you could even become anaemic.
“With that hospital case, we instructed them to shave the child’s hair. We’re not going to come down and do that, we haven’t got time for that. Shave the hair off. That was a particularly extreme one.”
Dee has also had situations where the children who have come in to be treated by them have been excluded from school.
Some have “really extreme” cases of infestation where there are “eggs all the way down the hair shaft, thousands upon thousands of lice.”
Both the parents and child would be struggling a great deal by that stage, so “we get rid of those frustrations, we clear them up and get them back to school to get on with their lives”.
Dee finds the work very rewarding as the child that first walked in the doors leaves looking completely different.
“People need to be a little bit more understanding to a parent that falls into a tricky situation with head lice,” she warned.
Going to Dee and her team of assassins should be a last-case scenario only be done if you can’t get the situation under control at home though.
And with this in mind, the expert has a series of helpful tips to ensure you nip the head lice in the bud quickly and effectively.
“They need to tie the child’s hair back into a ponytail,” she said, explaining that this is the first step in the preventative-measures to take.
“Keep it well tethered away from everybody and check it on a regular basis. Check that with a nit comb and conditioner, don’t do this dry.”
NIT FACT
One of the key aspects of head lice is that when they lay their eggs, it’s an invisible sack of liquid. When people do a clear out, they go, ‘I can’t see anything else in the hair, they’re completely gone,’ and think it’s sorted. What they don’t realise is if those eggs are left untouched, in seven to 11 days, those eggs will come through. Parents, therefore, need to check throughout those 11 days to ensure they’re truly gone.
When asked if having a clean home will make people exempt from catching head lice, Dee replied: “Lice aren’t about cleanliness.
“Everybody gets them from all walks of life, it’s not just certain types of people they love. They’re all about the blood. They like healthy blood. So they particularly like healthy children. Anybody is vulnerable.”
When preventative measures don’t work though, Dee said the first step every parent should take is “get in there and nit comb, section by section”.
The pro explained that the one mistake people tend to make is they rely on the products to sort the problem out and don’t take the time to really nit comb the lice and the eggs out of the hair.
She said: “They’re missing the eggs and not getting them out. Then it keeps feeling like they’re child is re-catching it. But actually when someone describes a pattern of every three weeks to a month, it’s usually the same old infestation, picking itself back up again.
“That’s what a lot of people suffer from.”
Dee recommended a good quality nit comb with long teeth that are close together so they can pick up those eggs.
“When you’re combing, we highly recommend that you put a lubricant in the hair. We highly recommend that you use a leave-in conditioner, because more often than not, they’re clear so you can at least see what you’re doing.
“If you use the ordinary shampoo and conditioner in the bathroom, they’re often gloopy and you can’t see what you’re doing.”
Dee said you should do one section, cover it, spray on conditioner and do the next section, ensuring you’re covering all ground thoroughly.
Acknowledging that people find this quite difficult because perhaps their child is bored, she suggested putting on an audio book, DVD, or simply music while you chat to your child.
Everybody gets them from all walks of life, it’s not just certain types of people they love
Dee Wright
If you work in an organised way, not only will you not have to repeat the whole process again but it won’t be a painful experience.
“Parents come to us when they’ve tried a few rounds of the products and they haven’t got anywhere,” Dee continued.
“What we do first is we hoover the hair section by section with a specialist lice hoover – get all the crawling life out.
“After that, we dehydrate the eggs using University developed control heated air technology. And then finally, we forensically nit comb nitpick.”