How long do lice live and can they survive outside of a person's head? How long do human lice live outside the head Head lice live where.

Pediculosis is a common problem in schools, public places, kindergartens and so on. Children can share hats, combs and other hair accessories that can transmit lice through head-to-head contact. Infection can also occur through sleeping on the same bed, through toys and clothing.

Who are lice?

The first sign that lice have entered your home is the news that another student in your child's class or group has contracted the lice, and your child also has symptoms of itching or itching on the scalp and feeling like something is moving in the hair.

On closer examination of the scalp, you can find small white spots that seem to cling to the hair, these are lice eggs or nits. You may also notice gray moving larvae or adults that are about the size of a sesame seed and are also greyish. Your doctor will help you recognize them and prescribe treatment. Today we will focus on how to get rid of this scourge from bedding, towels, clothes and toys.

Basic recommendations for getting rid of lice: do lice live in bedding and other household items?

Each specialist will tell you that the first step is to comb your child's hair with a special comb with fine teeth. This will help remove adult lice from the hair at the same time, as well as get rid of the nits attached to the hairs. By far the most contagious form of lice transmission is from head to head. However, to prevent infection, you need to wash your child's personal belongings, vacuum the floor and furniture, especially in areas of the home where the child usually spends a lot of time.

Lice in bed linen and not only: what to do?

Step #1

Collect all items that have been in contact with the infected

Any item that the child has used or worn in the two days before you found head lice should be cleaned. Adult lice can only live for two days if they do not feed on the host's blood.

The first step is to collect the bedding for washing, as the lice remain on the bedding. In addition to bed linen, you should not forget to send to the laundry:

Towels
Clothing, including outerwear;
Hair accessories - headbands, headbands, etc.;
Hats;
Pillows and pillowcases;
Soft toys and any products made of artificial fur;
Briefcases and bags.

Step #2

Sort out infected items

Sort the collected things into the following types:

Items that can be machine washed or hand washed;
Items that can only be dry-cleaned;
Things that cannot be cleaned and washed - neither wet nor dry.

Step #3

Clean up infected things and objects

For items that can be washed, such as bedding and towels, use the highest possible hot temperature that your washing machine can handle. When drying, it is also best to use heating elements to make sure that all insects are dead.

For really delicate fabrics, use the following method - soak them in warm water with plenty of laundry detergent for several hours, and then wash as usual. After that, the lice are unlikely to survive on bedding.

Items that can only be dry washed should be placed in plastic trash bags and kept there until you can take them to the dry cleaners. Do not forget to warn the cleaner about the risk of infection.

For those items that cannot be washed in any way, there are two ways that you can go in order to get rid of the problem in the house.

First way - week quarantine. Place the items in a plastic bag or bag and tie it tightly, leaving it for a week. After that, vacuum each element to remove dead lice.
If you can't afford to send an item to a week-long quarantine - perhaps it's your child's favorite toy that he can't sleep without, use freezing. Adult lice cannot tolerate extremely low temperatures. Infected items can be sent to the freezer, previously wrapped in a bag, for 4 hours.

How long do lice live in bedding?

The lifespan of adult lice in a feeding environment is approximately 30 days. At this time, females can lay about 90 eggs. After an incubation period of 7 to 10 days, the nits hatch, and after another 10 days they turn into adults, and the cycle repeats again. Outside the head of the host, an adult louse can live only 2 to 4 days at a temperature of about 23 degrees Celsius and 1 to 2 days at a temperature of 30 degrees. Nits without a host can live up to 10 days, but they will not survive in temperatures below 20 degrees.

It doesn't matter which method you use, be patient. Lice can be very stubborn, so it's possible that you'll need to take precautions for several weeks to make sure you get rid of every single lice.

Pediculosis develops very quickly and, unfortunately, goes unnoticed by many. One female lays up to 4 eggs of future offspring per day. But what if there are 5-7 individuals per head? In a day, the head will be covered with many new eggs, and in a week a whole tribe of little uninvited guests will live in the hair. Trying to get rid of this disease, many are worried because of the possibility of re-infection. “How long do lice live outside a person’s head?” - this is one of the most popular questions of concern to people undergoing treatment for this disease. Let's try to understand this issue, paying attention to some of the nuances that affect the life expectancy and development of insects. So, how long do lice live.

Life span of lice

In order to understand how long lice can live, let's first recall the life cycle of lice since the formation of nits.

Fact. In science, it is believed that lice do not have a larval stage of development. Therefore, the first stage is the formation of a nit egg, in the shell of which there is a louse embryo.

Terminology. Imago is the stage of an adult insect of the arthropod species, which have a complex stage-by-stage development. At the adult stage, insects are capable of reproduction and dispersal, but are no longer capable of development and growth.

Realizing the speed of development and reproduction of lice, it becomes clear how important it is to start treatment on time and stop their development.
Lice develop and multiply rapidly in the following favorable factors:

the source of food, which is a person, is always nearby. An adult feeds every 3-4 hours. When it enters the outside world, outside the human body, the head louse lives no more than 3 days. The pubic louse is less hardy - death from starvation occurs within 10 hours;
the most favorable temperature for the life of a louse is the temperature of the human body, fluctuations should not exceed 10 degrees Celsius;
lice cannot live without air, so its absence leads to their death within a few days. This is used in the destruction of body lice - things are folded into a tight plastic bag and securely tied. The knot is left for a couple of weeks, after which the dead lice bodies are simply shaken off.

When comfortable environmental conditions change, lice slow down in development, multiply more slowly, or stop doing so altogether.

Lice lifespan outside the human body

Body lice live mostly outside the surface of the human body, crawling onto it only to get food. Therefore, they do not depend so much on the external temperature and other environmental conditions. The main condition for their normal existence is that the food source must be within the reach of insects.
As for head lice, they are more dependent on humans. They feed more often than clothes ones, besides, they are adapted to lay eggs only on their hair. Without a person, the head imago at a comfortable temperature and the presence of air lives for 2-3 days. If the temperature drops below 20 degrees Celsius, the imago falls into “hibernation” in anticipation of more comfortable conditions. This condition can last 1-2 weeks, depending on the temperature.
The pubic imago is the most sensitive to external factors. Therefore, having lost a source of power, it can last only 10 hours, if other conditions remain favorable. While waiting, the louse slows down in development and reproduction. With a decrease in temperature, it can live outside the human body for about a day.

The answer to the question of how long lice live outside a person’s head is a completely accurate statement: "As long as they can live without food". But, since this is an acute problem for lice, it can be argued that this period is no more than two days.

If the ambient temperature is at the level of ten degrees Celsius, then they manage to withstand as much as 10 days. In this case, a kind of protective reaction is activated, and the individual falls into a dormant state, in which all necessary processes slow down. But the lice that live on the pubis die already at the ninth hour.

The mechanism of reproduction is also unique, which is impossible outside the human body. The female lays eggs, each of which is in a specific bag with a sticky base. The individual produces the planting, moving along the hair, on which each nit is immediately fixed individually. The appearance of the nymph is accompanied by its fall on the skin of the head, where it will begin the process of nutrition.

Can, in principle, and how long can lice live outside the head?

True, it must be said separately that nits are practically not found outside the hair. This fact is quite understandable. All thanks to the special property of attachment to the hair, produced by an adhesive substance. This holds the nits both during combing and during shampooing.

How long does a body louse live?

There are also so-called body lice. Their habitat is clothing. But to receive the next nutrition, they move to the human body, and after the procedure they return back. Clothes parasites lay their nits in the areas of the seams in such a way that the latter can subsequently cling to the hair. The structure of their paws is slightly different from those of ordinary parasitic insects. It can be explained by the need to stay on the fabrics.

The insect organism is designed in such a way that nutrition for it is the key to normal existence and further reproduction. The question that interests many parents, how long adults can live outside of a person, can be answered easily and simply - as long as they can live without food.

How long do lice live?

Usually an adult can live without food for no more than two days. Although there is an opinion that insects can live up to 10 days if the ambient temperature drops to 10-15 degrees. At low temperatures, adults hibernate, waiting for the next reinforcement time.

In addition to human hair, bloodsuckers live well in underwear, pillows and clothes, periodically biting their owner in different parts of the body. For example, a child can be bitten not only in the hair, but also on any closed area of \u200b\u200bthe skin, since its skin is very delicate and ideal for insect punctures.

How long do lice live outside a person's head?

How many adults live in clothes and bed, periodically feeding on blood, no one knows. Such a way of existence translates their body into a slow cycle of life, thereby slowing down their ability to reproduce normally. What can not be said about the nits, which live long enough without food due to the strong outer shell.

Usually, adults feed about 4-5 times a day, so it is easy to guess that a violation of the usual regimen leads not only to a decrease in the rate of reproduction, but also to death. Despite the fact that hair suckers live for about one month, this time is enough to multiply strongly.

Where do lice live besides the human head?

Head lice live at home in any things of an infected person. It can be bedding, pillows, clothes, combs and even home carpets. Therefore, at the first opportunity, they easily fall back into the hair or completely to another person. For this reason, infection often occurs in children's sports or dance sections, where children share common rugs and costumes. At the same time, girls with long hair are more susceptible to infection than boys with very short haircuts.

Do lice live in dyed hair and short hair?

Despite the widespread belief that lice live with any length of hair, it is still more likely to get into long strands than into short ones. There have been cases when all family members were infected, except for those who had very short haircuts. This suggests that lice are not comfortable living in too short hair.

Do head lice live on clothes?

For many who have encountered these insects, the question arises where lice live except for the head. There are three varieties of louse, it is on this that its habitat depends. Lice can be:

All three varieties are very similar to each other, their body shape, color, size and location distinguishes them.

The head louse prefers to live in the hair on the head, the linen louse lives in the underwear and clothes of its owner, the pubic louse lives in the hair growing on the pubis, eyelashes and eyebrows, occasionally in the armpits.

Insects feed only on human blood, as do scabies mites and bed bugs. Therefore, the question of how many lice live without food can be answered, which is no more than 2 days.

Insects, depending on their variety, cause three types of pediculosis:

You can get lice after contact with a sick person., which is typical most often, insects actively breed in places where there is a large crowd of people, that is, in prisons, children's camps and kindergartens, military hospitals.

Pediculosis most often affects children, since it is they who spend a lot of time together, playing and exchanging personal items, for example, hats, combs, hairpins, toys. Lice do not know how to fly, they move by crawling, but this does not prevent them from traveling from one head to another.

This is because the public has been saying for many years that these diseases are characteristic only of the marginalized, but this is not so.

Many people seek to find out the answer to the question of how many lice live on clothes. If this question is about linen lice, then it can be answered in such a way that the insect is able to live on the linen and clothes of its owner for up to 46 days, getting out on his skin in order to drink blood.

Also, many people are interested in the question of how long lice live after treatment, and some, confusing them with bed bugs, think about whether they can live in pillows and bedding.

The structure of the body of these insects is such that they can live and function only on a person, wool and hair of other mammals, their blood is not suitable for lice.

The head louse dies without human blood in two days, its nits can go through a full life cycle and hatch, but they will die almost immediately without food.

The pubic louse dies without food in 4-5 hours, and its nits immediately after hatching. Linen louse can live without a human body in its bedding and pillows, provided that it has access to a food source up to 5 times a day.

Having found uninvited guests at themselves or their loved ones, most people seek to immediately carry out the treatment with the help of pharmacy products. These products can kill insects in just one application., the action of many of them is so strong that, for example, it kills all adults in 20-30 minutes, but it is somewhat more difficult to deal with nits, since their shell serves as a powerful defense.

Special aerosols that kill insects instantly and washing linen and clothes at high temperatures are well saved from linen lice.

How can you treat hair and clothes from lice

Numerous shampoos, sprays, ointments, creams and aerosols will help get rid of uninvited guests today. Many of them are excellent at destroying adult insects, but are not able to kill nits, so after using them, you need to use a special comb in order to comb out the nits.

Shampoo your hair the easiest way, for example Nok, Veda. Sprays Nyuda, Para-Plus, Lavinal are also used. Upholstered furniture and bedding should be treated with A-PAR aerosol.

Scientists have also found that insects survive at temperatures from minus 5 to plus 42 degrees, and then die at lower and higher temperatures. These temperatures are quite acceptable for people, and lice can easily be thrown off their heads and clothes at them.

Many people are afraid to use pharmaceutical preparations for lice treatment, believing that they contain a lot of chemicals and prefer to use folk remedies such as hellebore water, vinegar, cranberry juice, tar soap, decoctions of tansy and wormwood. After treatment with these means, lice do not disappear completely, so their single use will not be enough.

The main methods of prevention are personal hygiene, refusal to use other people's personal belongings, namely combs, hairpins, hats.

You should be careful when choosing a hotel or inn, as some unscrupulous hoteliers handle poorly or do not change bed linen and towels after previous guests. The same applies to the choice of hairdressers and beauty salons, it is very important that the tools from a previous client are carefully processed.

In conclusion, it is worth saying that contact with people with obvious signs of illness should be avoided.