Lice vs dandruff: Differences, pictures, and symptoms
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This makes sense when you consider that behind the ears and neck are the “hot spots” where lice prefer to lay their eggs. Don’t be terribly horrified if you find a few head lice that are red. Head lice are like vampires, feeding on human blood multiple times a day! In fact, if lice fall off the head and cannot feed on human blood, they usually die within 24 hours. This picture shows a child with a head lice infestation.
How to recognize and treat lice
They have six legs and are a tannish to grayish-white color. The front two legs have larger claws that help them crawl around. Upon closer inspection, the eggs are oval-shaped and whitish to light yellow in color. If your hair is light-colored, the eggs can be difficult to see. Dead lice eggs remain glued to the hair shaft until you remove them.
What about the bugs that look like lice?
Generally speaking, “live,” or unhatched nits are golden/brown/ or black. Hatched eggs, usually appear translucent and can look white in the hair. It is impossible for someone to determine whether they are finding live or dead nits when looking through the hair.
Closing Thoughts About Lice Pictures…
Employing a lice comb is the best way to treat live head lice and nits. You will see these remnants of an infestation, including empty egg casings, trapped in the nit comb and you are using the lice comb to remove lice. Once lice glue a lice egg to the hair strand, it will not come off unless removed from the hair. Lice eggs stick to the hair, so eventually, over time, they will move from near the scalp to further down the hair strand as the hair grows over the years. Notice the dark brown unhatched/viable lice eggs are close to her scalp, and the white, already hatched lice eggs go all the way down her hair.
Regularly washing the hair reduces dandruff in some people, but lack of hygiene does not cause dandruff. Some people find that their dandruff does not get better with an anti-dandruff shampoo. If symptoms do not improve, the flakes may be due to a yeast infection on the scalp, an autoimmune condition, eczema, or a severe case of dandruff. Washing items that make it easy for lice to hop back onto a person can reduce the spread of these bugs. Over-the-counter (OTC) lice remedies work well, but some lice are resistant to these medicines.
White and Brown Nits in Hair: What Lice Egg Color Means
If you aren’t looking closely, you are likely to miss them. More specifically, most people are confused what color are lice eggs and how can you know if they are dead or not. Whether you’re checking your child for lice or are trying to determine if what you’re seeing is dead or live nits, you’ll find the answers here.
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Yes, finding brown nits but no active lice could mean either an active or recent lice infestation. After treatment, the AAP recommends manually removing dead nits from the hair. You can do this by wetting the hair with water and using a fine-tooth nit comb to carefully comb through each section from the scalp to the ends. The American Academy of Dermatology Association recommends repeating this combing daily for 2 weeks after treatment. Hatched casings and dead nits can stay on the hair shaft for months, even after curing the lice infestation, unless you remove them manually.
How Do Head Lice Move?
Because pubic lice are sexually transmitted, they are most common in adults. Finding pubic lice anywhere on a child's body—even if it's just their eyelashes—could be a sign of sexual exposure or abuse. Having lice does not indicate a lack of cleanliness or poor hygiene.
Lice vs. dandruff
Prevent head lice by instituting a “no sharing” rule for personal belongings such as combs, hairbrushes, towels, hats, and bedding. Lice are typically grayish-tan in color and the size of a sesame seed or smaller, depending on where they are in their life cycle. Lice eggs look similar to dandruff and attach to the hair shaft. As their nickname suggests, adult crabs look like tiny crabs with roundish bodies and six legs. The color of pubic lice can also range from grayish-white to beige.
Constant scratching can injure the scalp, however, and may lead to a scalp infection. The American Academy of Dermatology recommend shampooing with an anti-dandruff shampoo twice a week unless a person is African-American. Dandruff often responds well to OTC anti-dandruff shampoos. People can purchase these shampoos in drugstores or online. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), nits more than 1 cm from the scalp are usually dead.
Some people with dandruff notice temporary hair loss, but hair loss is more typical of other conditions. Dandruff, also known as seborrheic dermatitis, is a skin condition that causes the top layer of skin to shed too quickly. People with dandruff may also notice flakes of skin on their clothes. While lice are a temporary infestation, dandruff is a chronic skin condition. The AAP generally recommends treatment when nits are within 1 cm of the scalp. With pubic lice, you should warn all sexual partners from the previous month that they're at risk for infection.
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