Natural and Herbal Remedies: Prevent Head Lice

It's back-to-school time. Head lice can really be a problem sometimes, especially if your children attend school and they keep coming home with the little varmints in their hair. While it is quite a process to get rid of them once someone in your home is infected, I would like to center around a possible green way to prevent getting head lice in the first place.

Of course, it is important to not share combs and brushes, hats, or anything that touches the head or hair. It is important to keep the hair clean but children can easily get head lice even if their hair is clean. All they have to do is have their head touch another child's head that is infected with head lice.

I was so frustrated with how thoroughly we had to clean and treat everything when our child had the problem. We were living in a warm climate at the time and it was a common occurrence with the children to the point where the health nurse suggested either greasing the child's hair down daily or cutting the hair very short. Our daughter had long lovely hair at the time and I did not consider that cutting it was a good option.

Finally, I called my friend who is a Master Herbalist. What she suggested worked very well even though the kids that infected my daughter were still infected and my daughter played with them off and on. Here is what the Master Herbalist told me:

1. Purchase some black walnut leaf tea. This particular product looks like it may be a good choice, although I have not purchased anything from this company, myself: http://www.zooscape.com/cgi-bin/maitred/GreenCanyon/questp511432/r04
2. Make a hot tea by bringing water to a full boil.
3. Pour 1 cup of hot water into a glass container or glass cup. I prefer to use distilled water.
4. Use one tea bag per hot cup of water.
5. Let the tea bag soak in the hot water for a minimum of 30 minutes. I just leave the tea in the water until the water is totally cooled. DO NOT ADD ANYTHING ELSE TO THIS LIKE MILK OR SUGAR.
   
6. Using a funnel, pour the cooled tea into a clean spray bottle.
7. Spray the cooled black walnut leaf tea on shampooed and cleaned hair. Make sure you cover the hair well with the tea.
   
8. DO NOT RINSE OFF HAIR.
9. This tea acts as a repellent for head lice.
10. SPECIAL NOTE: This tea can darken lighter shades of hair. It has somewhat of a dark tint to it. I found that it really added a lot of shine to darker shades of hair.
    

After the initial treatments of clothing, heads, etc. to get rid of the lice, I used black walnut tea as listed above to stop the problem from coming back. Every morning before going out, we would wash, brush, and comb our hair and then spray the black walnut tea on our hair. The added benefit to this was that it left our hair very shiny and beautiful. All in all we never had to go through another head lice problem again.