Miracle Whip kills head lice

[snopes]

Comment: Once when my children caught head lice at school, the school
nurse told us to use Miracle Whip to get rid of them. We bought the
industrial size, slathered the kids head with it, put a shower cap on and
let it sit for a few hours, them shampooed it out. You have to use Miracle
Whip, not mayonnaise, because of the vinegar contents. The nurse said the
oil in the Miracle Whip smothered the lice and the vinegar in it would
kill the eggs. I know it worked for us, but have never seen anything about
anywhere. I can't remember how long she said to leave it on though.

[JoeBentley]

Wouldn't any heavy, oily material kill head lice if left on the head long enough?

Basically it just sounds like a rather roundabout and disgusting way to suffocate the little bastards.

Not sure about vinegar killing the eggs though.

[kia]

Pretty much, JoeBentley. The go-to fix for suffocating lice is thickly coating hair in conditioner. Would definitely smell better than Miracle Whip in hair I assume (never having actually smelled Miracle Whip) but would do the same job.

[Avril]

I've heard mayo several times as the cure. (And it's pretty good for your hair, too.) But you have to repeat this treatment two or three times over the course of a month because it doesn't kill the eggs.

Mayo has vinegar in it, too, so I'm not sure what the miraculous properties of Miracle Whip would be. Maybe it's just more acidic overall.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by kia

Never having actually smelled Miracle Whip

It's basically just a sweetened mayo with some salad dressing spices in it. There's a similar product called Salad Creme in some countries.

[Bettie Page Turner]

The vinegar wouldn't kill the nits, but it might help loosen them for removal by combing.

[Mimi]

Dang. I was under the impression that vinegar would make the eggs basically unhatchable. I mean to say, it would prevent the lice from hatching. My sister has this issue as she has three daughters and they keep passing it around, much to the annoyance of her ex-husband. I have three sisters and one brother and me and my sisters had this issue as children. If there is a miracle cure, I wish I knew it. My sister has tried the over the counter lice shampoo as well as cleaning all bedding, carpeting, couches, etc. The issue is the girls keep getting reinfected by a friend, but how can you figure out which friend without subjecting each playmate to an embarrassing lice check?

[Latiam]

I bought the Nit Free Terminator comb. It removes both lice and nits. You wet the hair, slather it with a thick conditioner so they can't move, and systematically go over the whole head, pinning away clean sections. Make sure you get right to the scalp. After each pass you wipe the comb off on paper towels. You will see the lice and I recommend using something hard like the edge of the comb to crush them, because they will crawl. I checked them in the bag I put the paper towels in and they lived more than 24 hours. Do the entire head at once. When you're done it's a good idea to do one last comb through. If you get anything you weren't thorough enough the first time.
After you go over the hair a certain number of times and get no lice or nits you're good to go.
Brush the hair first so it's not tangled!

[NobodyAtAll]

Here they have VERY expensive services where you drop off the kids and they delouse them, and call you when they're done. Weird or worth it?

[Latiam]

If you can afford it, worth it. Check out LiceBusters in your area and their rates; I got the comb from them when I was at a low SES school and they came in to check and treat everyone. They thought there would be 40 or 50 infected kids - there were 172. As the kindergarten teacher with long hair, I kept getting reinfected. Near the end of the year I just gave up until school ended, then got the buggers out of my hair.
Anyway, they deloused me using the comb and it was much easier and quicker than you'd expect. Doesn't hurt, either. The first volunteer messed it up and they found more on my head when they checked three days later, but the second one got them all. I was lice-free for quite a while...then the cycle started again.

[Chloe]

I second the comb. Head lice lurve me. For a couple of years, it seemed like I got infested every time I even looked at a child. I think it was Morgaine who recommnded the mayo treatment, but I never needed it, thanks to THE COMB.

[Brad from Georgia]

In my opinion, Miracle Whip will kill dang near anything.

Brad "I'm a Duke's guy myself" from Georgia

[Moku]

When I was a kid my parents were immensely strict about hair. It was either short or tied back tightly (you know that 'I can't blink' effect). Looking back at school photographs the majority of girls were the same.
I don't know if it was because of this or we were just somehow lucky that there were no nits around, but we never had them, never heard of anyone else having them either.

[Alarm]

Head lice? What are those?

*Sun glistens over hair shaved with a #1 clipper*

[Thera]

Crabs. Got everything shaved?

And I have to agree with Brad. Miracle Whip is the devil.

[Sue]

Originally Posted by Moku

When I was a kid my parents were immensely strict about hair. It was either short or tied back tightly (you know that 'I can't blink' effect). Looking back at school photographs the majority of girls were the same.
I don't know if it was because of this or we were just somehow lucky that there were no nits around, but we never had them, never heard of anyone else having them either.

Same here. The only time I heard about lice growing up was if I read about them in a book. Fast forward to the 90s and my own kids and while we were lucky and never had to deal with lice ourselves it seemed like just about everyone we knew did.

[Latiam]

I got my first case of lice in my teen years as a babysitter.

[Avril]

I had my only case at the age of 14, and got it from a babysitting situation. I had hair to my waist then, and it is very thick, so...

I ended up with a very short haircut, the shortest my hair has ever been. My mother gave me the cut. It was not exactly trendy or well done. But a very popular girl I knew got her hair cut like mine shortly after that, and then I was "cool" for my sloppy layers.

[Spam & Cookies-mmm]

For those who like the comb, how thick is your hair? I found combs to be pretty useless on my kids dense hair, and used my fingernails instead. It was time consuming and horrible, but I saw the comb leaving too many eggs on the hair shafts.

The one thing i found that prevented repeat infestations was hand sanitizer. After initial treatment, including the nitpicking, I washed and conditioned their hair, then coated it with the alcohol gel, and dried with the hair dryer, every day for two weeks. This killed any new hatchlings from missed eggs. It did not hurt their hair.

[Chloe]

My hair is very fine; it may not work for thick hair.

There was a "nit nurse" at school who inspected you by poking at your head with orange sticks, but I would have been totally humiliated to have lice. In contrast, in the last ten years, I've been infested four or five times: all the kids seem to have them almost all the time. Luckily they don't seem to survive the comb plus hair color applications.