Do I Have Head Lice?

Sometimes it is hard to know if you have head lice.  Self-diagnosis is tricky unless you happen to see them crawling around on your scalp. The best thing to do to find out if you have head lice is to find someone help look for them. You can certainly do it yourself in a mirror but it is best to have an assistant who can come and look down into your hair. We like to look right down the scalp and the crown of the head. We use a stainless steel lice comb or you can use a wooden stick or tail end of a comb or something like that so you can go right down along and pick off a little strand of hair, a little line and look right down near the scalp and see if you see any lice moving around. They are very small, they are difficult to see. Sometimes they are the same exact same color as your hair. Sometimes you will see lice, sometimes you will see their eggs.  The eggs are extremely tiny and very difficult to see.  They are tan or sometimes clear in color and Usually they are within a centimeter, maybe two centimeters of the scalp so a quarter to half of an inch.  Look right along the scalp, sometimes even on the scalp where it is warm. Places they like to hide are behind the ear, right at the base of the neck up in this general area, or sometimes on the crown of the scalp is a favorite location for lice and their eggs. If you do not have help, do not see them, or are not sure, definitely get checked by a lice professional if you think you might have lice or you have been exposed to someone who you know or who you suspect has it. The other thing that is common is that it is difficult to tell if what you are looking at is a louse egg or maybe some dandruff or some product from some hair gel or something like that.  Take your fingers and grab the spec that you think might be a louse or a lice egg and just pull it all the way off the strand of the hair.  If it comes off easily it is probably not a lice egg but if it is pretty difficult to move and you have to break it free off the hair it’s probably a lice egg but you are still not sure then you should probably get head screened by a professional.