It’s Not Your Fault!!

Over the Counter Products Don’t Work!

Sadly, we say this a lot. It’s not your fault. We say it to upset Moms and defeated Dads. In reality, when you buy the over-the-counter lice treatments in good faith with the expectation that you’ve followed the directions and think you’ve taken care of your lice only to find you still have lice a day, week or a month later.

We’d estimate about 70% of the people we’ve treated for lice in the Center for Lice Control’s salon try treating on their own first before they feel they need a lice service. As you can imagine, parents are so upset, frustrated, and defeated when they use the over-the-counter pesticide, comb for hours, day after day, and do a tremendous amount of house cleaning and they find they haven’t won the lice battle. Parents tell us they failed or they must have missed something. They are so defeated. This makes me so sad that a concerned and engaged parent feels like they have failed their family because they’ve followed every direction on the products (most people do even more) and they still have a lice problem. We’re here to tell you: IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!!!

Why is it not your fault?

Unfortunately, most OTC and even prescription lice products do not work as well as they need to and certainly not as well as the product companies claim. It’s not something you missed in your house or what you did wrong, it’s product failure! Most over the counter lice products, especially the products containing Permethrin, used to work and did for many years but lice has evolved growing resistant to the pesticides and are no longer as effective as they used to be. Most likely you or your family member has lice because someone in good faith treated with the OTC lice products and still have lice to share.

In September 2019, Consumer Reports did a report on How to Get Rid of Head Lice with the consistent message that the pesticide treatments that contain permethrin are much less effective at killing the bugs and nits. Consumer Reports tested and recommended lice products containing Dimethicone (like CLC’s Lice Treatment Products) over any others. Even combing with a good nit comb would add value to the process, but too often the nit combs provided in OTC lice kits are not tight enough making it difficult to properly comb out the nits effectively. So the outcome is that even if you follow the directions and do tons of combing and house cleaning, etc. the consumer will only be about 40% effective because they did not have the best nit comb or an effective product to be successful. It’s time to get these products off the self and stop causing lice outbreaks so people will buy effective lice products for lice control.