Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Head Lice

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Lice aren’t just a longtime annoyance of school aged kids, they’ve actually been around longer than people. Dr. Sydnee and Justin talk about the history of trying to get rid of these creatures as well as some common misconceptions. Be warned: your head will be itchy during this episode.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, a marital tour of Miscotted Medicine. for the mouth. Wow. Hello everybody and welcome to Saw Bones, a marital tour of Miss guided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McRoy. And I'm Sydney McRoy.

Sydney, I'm so happy to be here with you again. Always a delight, always a treat. Well thank you, Nanny. This is collectively our third podcast of the day. Friday's a big podcasting day for us. We did a lot of casting. And normally I don't do test day, but Travis is going on the the Joe Cookers. So I'm way to double up. Yeah. A lot of podcasting. I do. That's what I tell people at Harmony House because I'm there

Monday through Thursday, pretty much regularly as long as the kids are in school or not sick or whatever, which we've been dealing with. But I they're like, but you don't come on Fridays, right? Is that when you go to real work? And I'm like, I don't know. It's the day I podcast. That's real honey. Is that my real work? Honey, if podcasting isn't real work,

this whole thing that I got going on that I call my life is about to crumble in within itself. So let's say podcasting is work. And let's talk about life, baby. Let's talk about the Larv. Let's talk about allice. I'm done. You want to call Weird Al and tell him about your parody. I think. Let's talk about Lice. I think my close personal friend, Weird, as he, and Tisla, call him, would be totally bold over by that.

I just want to warn you at the beginning of the sub-sode that you're probably going to get itchy. If you're like me, whenever you start talking about Lice for a while, you start scratching your head. At least, I mean, don't you think so? Like eventually you start. Yeah. Yeah, I know.

Okay, so there it is. You've been warned, you're probably gonna get itchy. It seems like Lice to me, Sydney, are a recent thing. Probably in the last 20, 30 years, people have been like really getting into Lice. You must have seen the first, like, line or my nose. So I was trying to set you up beautifully before I locked into your gorgeous face

and just listen, let you carry me away without peeking at your notes again. You may think that, Justin, but in fact, the... You know what I'm telling you, they're older than 30 years. Okay. Lyser older. Maybe 50, maybe 50 years.

Tops. Tell me if I'm getting close. 100? Lice are older than humanity. So like 200? Well, I mean, I guess that depends on your belief system there, but yes, it's where I would say a science of. So I'll see here's old.

Lice are very old. Now the the lice that we know today, the the lice that love humans, that we humans don't love back. Oh, it's an unrequited love story. They have they basically just sort of evolved alongside us. So there've been the specific kinds of lice that inhabit our bodies have probably been around since the first creatures we would call humans existed. So lice are super old. Not you know what's really old to the Appalachian Mountains? Let's, on a side note there, if you're really interested in something cool.

It is one of your wild or non-seppolder shallots. Sorry, read about how old the Appalachian Mountains are. Blow your mind. I kind of have always thought that most mountains are old. No, not all mountains are, the Appalachian Mountains are like older than the oceans. They're like older than dinosaurs. They're so old. No, not all mountains are... The Appalachian Mountains are older than the oceans. They're older than dinosaurs. So, all... 6,000 years away. They're so old.

Anyway, so let's talk about... By the way, I should clarify, I am going to focus in this episode on headlice. There are lots of... That's my first touch of the episode. There are lots of lice that we could talk about. And certainly we've talked about diseases that can be spread by different types of louse. But this time we're just talking about head lice. Can you help me louse versus lice?

Plural versus singular. Louse, it's not lices, lice and louse. Right. One louse. One louse. Lice, lice. Got it. Right. One Louse. Louse is one Louse. Lots of Lice. Got it. Yeah. Okay. So there are different kinds of Lice, of course, and it's probably, it's mainly because there are different

Lice for different animals. Almost every species of bird and mammal has its own Louse friend. That's nice. Yeah, I know. It all except for monotremes, pangolins and bats. What's a monotream? That's a great question, Justin. What is a monotream? Would you like to know? Yeah, I'm low to know. They are, they look like, it looks like...

Here's what I know about monotream and that one they might be giant songs. They're a cousin called monotream, down a col with the area. Monotrame are proto-therian mammals of the order of monotramauta. Fascinating. So it's like, it's like a classification of mammals. Let me get to some examples.

A platypus is a monotrame. Short-beaked a kidna. Is that enough? Do you need to know more monotream? No, that's a good number. Yeah, platypus. Think about what those look like. Platypai?

Platypai, platypai. Anyway. This is not an animal show. This is not an animal show. I take care of you. Listen to just the zoo of us. If you want an animal show elsewhere on the Maximum Fun Network, we are not an animal show. I take care of you. Listen to just the zoo of us. If you want an animal show elsewhere on the Maximum Fun Network, we are not an animal show.

No. Lice are obligate parasites. I mean, they've got to live on something else to survive. Okay, they're ectoparasites as opposed to endoparasites. Ectop meeting outside. They live on the outside of us as opposed to various worms and such that might live inside of us. And we're loaded with... We're loaded down with that.

And you know, it's not always bad. That's sometimes, often maybe, but not always bad. Yeah. Anyway, they either suck our blood or they just sort of eat like dead skin and debris and stuff that's on us. So like the ones that are living in your scalp, for instance, are sucking blood. Or if I mean or if they are. I do this one on your own.

What about you said just in type things from the other room every human is? Now, body lice can transmit disease. Typhus is the big worry there. And I believe we've done an episode on that and we've talked about the lice. Those live on clothing. A typhoid, a typhoid barrier episode? Well, that's different. Ty A thick red typhoid, berry episodes?

That's a bit of a problem. Well, that's different. Typhoid and typhus are different. Oh my God. Yes. But those live on clothes and that's, they can transmit disease. So they're a bigger concern. Headlights don't transmit disease.

So in the realm of dangerous things, headlights aren't particularly dangerous. Right. Because they're not going to give you typhus. That's a big advantage of a headlight of a headlight. That's what we're interested with things like the mosquito, which is a misdangerous hand water. Yes, exactly. The mosquito is much more dangerous.

The body allows us much more dangerous. The headlouse is not dangerous. We just don't like having them, I think. And that's why I want to focus on it. Because even though it doesn't make us sick, it is something that we as a species have decided to devote a lot of time and energy to Ritty ourselves at various points. It's it and I want to preface with this. Headlice is extremely common and it can infest anyone. So I think that there's still a lot of social stigma around headlice that in some way it indicates you are not clean or hygienic. And that is not the case at all.

Headlice just live on heads and when they can get to new heads, which they don't jump, but they can crawl. When they get to new heads, which they don't jump, but they can crawl. When they get to new heads, they just infest a new head. And they don't care about the social strata of this head. They're very democratic. You are just a scalp to them. Just a warm blood-filled scalp. So the name for the headlouse is ridiculous humanus capitis. Predictculosis means you're infested, you have

paediculosus. So as opposed to paediculous humanus, which is just the body louse. Okay. Capitis refers to the head in case you're curious. It is similar to the lice that chimpanzees and bonobos get, that makes sense, you know.

And like I said, it feasts on our blood, it tends to live its entire life on one host unless you take pains to rid yourself of it. Most of them aren't gonna crawl around from person to person, obviously that does happen. But most of the time, they just sort of chill. If you're not messing with them, I mean, I don't want to say they're not messing with you, but they don't want to leave. So they obviously lay eggs daily, several eggs daily.

And what can be tricky, especially if we've ever tried to remove headlice from someone, is that they actually attach the eggs to the hair shaft, and it's usually pretty close to the scalp. Now, it's interesting, you'll find that in some warmer climates, the eggs can actually be attached further down the hair shaft because it's still warm enough that they're fine. In other parts of the world like here,

you would expect it to be pretty close to the scalp because it's got to stay warm. But they cement it to the hair shaft with this sort of like keratin protein complex and it's really on there. Caratens stuff like, is your hair? Like hairs? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, we used to think it was like a kite thing which is more of an insect type product, but no, it's a keratin-like thing. And that's why they're so hard to get out, because they're, and if you look at microscopic photos of what is happening with the egg, it's completely like wrapped around the hair shaft at the base, and then the egg is stuck there. So you've got to comb those out individually and it takes a really long time. So they hatch in six to nine days. So the egg is laid, stuck to the hair shaft, six to nine days later it hatches, and then

they molt like four times before they become a grown-up life over the course of like four weeks or so. And as they grow, they are more visible and move around on your head, which is part of the itching, the movement, and then the other thing that makes you feel itchy is the sucking of your blood. And itchy experience. That is an itchy experience. Generally not painful, usually itchy. Obviously, if the infestation was severe enough, it could become painful, I think. I think that is reasonable to say,

but that is generally not what we see, right? Like even in pretty severe infestations, most people just feel itchy. We first probably noticed headlights. I mean, early humans almost certainly did. We found evidence like they found the remains of a body in Brazil from 10,000 years ago that had nids eggs. That can't be right. Check your notes. It can't be 10,000.

It can't be that. Try again. Eggs or nits, as can't be right. Check your notes. It can't be 10,000. It can't be that. Try again. Eggs or nits, as they are also called, were on the hair shafts. So we know that we've been aware of them for that long. Now, how would ancient people have addressed them? Probably mechanical removal would have been most popular, you know, picking them out. This is, have you heard the phrase nitpicking?

Oh, gotcha. This is where the phrase nitpicking comes from. This is how deeply entwined. It's interesting if you think about the history of life and humanity. They're so deeply entwined with our species that we have words like that. And this is part of like the, when you talk about the stigma and the social connotations, what if you call a human a louse?

A blanket blood sucker, like there. Yeah, or like generally it's a negative thing, right? Like it's a bad person, a lazy person, somebody who doesn't care or doesn't do much apathetic, whatever. Like it's a bad connotation. So we have sort of used the words that we use to describe lies to negatively describe things

in humanity. It's very interesting, but that's because we've got the words wrong. We've grown up together. Yeah, exactly. So probably through just removing, physically removing, or combing would have been the early methods. And you can find paintings too if people like with their kid between their legs, physically removing or combing would have been the early methods.

And you can find paintings too if people like with their kid between their legs, like picking rice out of their hair and stuff, not making that time. I mean, that was so little to do back then. It was probably nice to have a change of pace, like at least then you got an activity. Like you have a hobby, you know, for a little bit. And I mean, I'm sure it's not the least satisfying thing in the world, I'm sure. Just, you know, removing a bunch of nits from hair. Yeah.

And it would take a while because again, they're cemented to the hair shaft. It is said that among Cleopatra's belongings and her tomb were golden combs, fine, golden fine tooth combs, go removing lice. That's weird, because gold is very flexible. I feel like a gold comb would not be the best. Maybe it's gold plated.

Maybe gold plated. Maybe gold plated. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know that part. The idea is just that combing out lice goes back to the beginning. And I mean, really, if you didn't want to comb or pick out all of the knits and lice, the other thing you could do is remove the hair.

So you could just shave your head or your body. Whatever was infested. And infested is our word here because it's not infected. These have different relationships with organisms. Okay. And ectoparasite, a parasite that lives outside your body that's an, you know, it's an insect is going to infest you. It's not going to infect you. Does that, does that make sense? Okay. Yeah.

The first recorded treatment that we have of headlice, we've talked before about the Ebers Papyrus. Yes, I remember that. Yes, I thought it was a few times. Yeah, a very ancient document, 1550 BCE. And what they say you're supposed to do is take a date meal and water and like basically warm it all up in your mouth and then spit it on your skin and then all the lice and fleas if you got those too will leave. Oh yeah sure I sure, I guess, yeah.

No, I doubt that that would work. Or be pleasant. No, we also have ancient documents from China that indicate things like mercury or arsenic could be put on the head. To, that's kind of a little bit, if you'll exceed your version of overkill. I like to read.

Yes, to rid yourself of Lice. And you know, when you start thinking about like caustic substances like that, I mean, certainly there are a degree to which some substances are gonna kill insects, right? Like you could spray really intense pesticides on somebody's head, but you also have to balance that with the damage you would do to the person's head.

And then there's the eggs, which are interesting and that they're not as easy to destroy. So, and we'll move into this as we get get into modern treatment methods, just because we found a way to effectively kill, lice without damaging your human head, we don't necessarily have great ways and never really did of killing the eggs. That's a little harder to do. The Egyptians just eventually recommended, just shave yourself. Just shave your body, just shave everything.

New look. Yeah, just start over. Hit reboot. I like that idea. Like, with lights like, never mind, just reboot everything. This is going to be a total pain. You're not going to have time for this. But through the years, we have come up with a variety of ways.

It's funny because the mechanical removal of lice and the nets or combing or shaving are like tried and true methods, right? That would work. Any of these things, if done correctly, will work. So I think that what's weird about lice's that we found methods early on that 100% would cure you, so to speak. But we weren't satisfied. We don't want to lose our beautiful hair or who can blame us.

So we had to come up with a bunch of ways that didn't work, which I'm going to tell you about. But first we've got to go to the billing department. Let's go. Let's go. I hope they've got the bread bowl. Have you seen the bread bowl at this place? Good evening.

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Whose side are you on? That would be telling, but okay, I'm on my own side. It's one of my favorite ever TV shows. We want a podcast on it. A prisoner podcast. You won't get it. By hook or by crook, we will. Who are you? I'm Elliot Kaelin. Who is number one? Jesse Thorn, but you are John Hodgman. I am not a prisoner podcaster. I am a free man. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha It'll be better down. All right, so I'm not gonna shave my head for a little bit. I'm gonna give you a chance to get rid of it with some of these other methods before I go hog wild. What, so I'm gonna talk about Plenty the Elder, of course.

Of course, Plenty had to. You know, he's gotta get in there. And I think it's interesting, because not only did Plenty have a recommendation in natural history, which is where we get most of our medical advice from plenty the elder. He also calls them nits. So I like that that term is that old. It's wild that we just we called these eggs nits and we always just stuck. Yeah. Well, we might not even have been known. They were I was thinking like, wow, they're just calm eggs? We might not even know when they were eggs, right?

Like, possibly, it's not like we had a microscope to get in there and look at them hatching. No, I don't think we would've had any way of knowing that they were eggs. Yeah, no, I mean, you would see, I guess, you would have to know they were related, I would think, to the infestation because you would see the live lights

and you would see these and you would connect the two ideas. So certainly, I think somebody may have guessed that. But yeah, no, I don't think so. And by the way, I should say, I didn't really describe the condition like what you see and experience with Lice. I know you need to. If you haven't. So there are the adult Lice that looked like little teeny bugs on your head.

And they can be somewhat translucent in appearance, which can make them kind of hard to see until they move. Then you see that. Or they can look darker. I would imagine this has to do with like the blood meal that they've taken or not. Also, are they able to lay eggs or not? That will change their appearance on your head. There are tiny little bugs.

They move around. They are visible with the naked eye. You can see them. They're just incredibly small. You can see them crawling around. They're going to mainly stay on the scalp, so it's not something you would just see probably looking at someone. You would have to like use a comb or something and go through the hair and look close to the scalp to find these things.

They also, you're going to see the eggs, which like I said, are going to be attached to the hair shaft. And initially, when there's something inside them, they can look like tan-ish in color. And again, they're not gonna be easy to come off, so you can't just brush them out. You're gonna have to take a very fine tooth comb, which they make nowadays, lice combs, and comb over that piece of hair, maybe even several times,

to make sure you've actually physically removed the egg from the shaft. And the tough thing about NITS, and we'll get into how this has kind of impacted school attendance, the tough thing about NITS is that after they've hatched, the egg remains attached to the hair shaft. So you may have someone who has no active

lice infestation left, like the lice have been killed, the live nits have been removed, have hatched, have died, have whatever, but you still might see these little, their white appearing once they've hatched, white appearing. It's like a piece of dandruff that is firmly attached to a hair shaft basically, might still be in there and you would think, oh, there's still ice and actually it's just the remnants because it's gonna take months for those

to just dissolve on their own. The only way to get them out sooner would be to mechanically remove them, but that's not an infestation at that point. Does that make sense? Yeah. So plenty recommended that NITS specifically could be destroyed by dogs fat.

So you just take it and like apply it topically. Not a thrill for the dog, I'm assuming. Or you could eat serpents that were cooked like eels, which by all accounts, like there was a way at this time in history that you knew to cook an eel and then you just cook a snake that way, you know, like you cook the eel. So it's like eel, eel fried serpent. I would, I assume you have to like skin it and then eat

the stuff inside. You know what? We've had such a lovely robust episode in terms of visual imagery. Let's just keep on trolling what you say. Or you take the skin from the snake and drink it. You put your prepared in a beverage and drink it. That is none of these things. Also, you could bathe in Viper venom. I do that any every day already, just to intimidate my enemies. You know, you wouldn't actually have to do it

if you just said you did. That's my secret. I'll never tell. I bathe in Viperventum. Where do you get so much Viperventum? I lay out patients. I feel like that's a line from like one of the villains in a fast and furious movie

says something like that. Yeah. I bathe in Viperventum. Viperventum. And then they like rev the engine of their car. They just took your foot off the tiger's neck. And then Vin Diesel's like, it's about family. This is a hundred. I feel like I'm watching the film right now. I don't even need to go go see fast ten. By the way, you could have

if you had, as I said, picking them off was a common was always all throughout history has been a common way to get rid of them. Montezuma just employed people to do it. Oh, that's nice. A's a job creator. Yeah. There was an English herbalist, Nicholas Cole Pepper, who recommended that you dunk your kids head in tobacco juice. I'm, yeah, I know how we get tobacco juice and I don't think that would be great as a kid that would not be a wonderful. No, no, that would be a bad idea.

It wouldn't work. And I think that it feels more be a wonderful. No, no, that would be a bad idea. It wouldn't work. And I think that it feels more like a punishment. Like I'm mad at you for getting lies. I don't, I would not recommend any of that. Parents, especially I think, were targeted with like bad, bad lies advice because they probably felt like a little helpless. My job is to get all these lies out of my kids kid's head and it's really hard and I don't know how to do it.

So that's just right for a bunch of pseudoscience and medical misinformation. So, they would try everything from tomato juice to mixing together vinegar and cheese way. There was one recipe that was ginger, melted butter, and sneeze powder. Sneeze? I didn't even know it was a real thing. I thought sneeze. I can buy it at the pranks.

That's what I thought. I'm assuming like mainly black pepper? I guess, right? Sneeze powder. One single whoopie cushioned or properly applied can. When wigs would be popular, especially among, you know, if we think about like among royalty, the idea of like wearing beautiful fancy, huh? Can you get license wigs?

Yeah, yeah, you can get license in your wigs. Now, I will say though that they're, if you're not wearing the wig for a period of time, you know, they're not going to survive. They need that heat and the blood supply. But you could certainly get any, you know, it's the same thing you worry about with like a lice infestation in your head is that is it going to get on blankets, on pillows, for kids, on stuffed animals. And it can't survive very long in any of those places. Like most of the time, adult lice are going to die a couple days after being away from some sort of

host. But the nits can survive for a couple weeks. And so that's the real worry is that like if you have stuffed animals or something that have become infested and now there are nits on them. Like, yeah, no, the adult ice might die off, but in a week or so, those eggs are gonna hatch, and then you've got more. I know. But the nice thing with the wigs, one, in order to fit some of the wigs that would be worn like powdered wigs,

you would shave your head, and so you take off the ice when you take off the wig. It's convenient. And then I think as you could just boil your wig. That sounds like it should be like a drag slang of some sort. Like I had to boil my wig or really boiled her wig, it just feels like. But that would be so much easier and more satisfying. If you could do that with your hair, if you just boil it. Don't do that. Don't do that.

You'll burn yourself. But like, and that would be effective too, that heat is pretty effective at killing lice. And it's more obviously more difficult to employ when they're, you know, again, on your head. But like blow drying kills a good percentage of lice, not all of them, but a good percentage of them. Yeah. So anyway, so with your wigs, you just throw them in some boiling water, and they're good. Also, of course, you could use combs and things like that if you wanted to,

but I don't know why you'd bother. And as far back as a hundred CE, Chinese medicine people discovered peritrem powder, which was extracted from chrysanthemums. And this powder that came from the flower, the chrysanthemum, was useful for killing insects, a variety of insects. So the thought was, hey, maybe this would be useful for headlice. So it took a while, it was eventually refined into perethron and it actually wasn't available just for like targeted at headlice until the 1940s. But we've known about it in ancient Chinese medicine,

the tradition of using chrysanthemum extracts, perethroms to treat a variety of insect infestations as an old practice. So it was well known long, long, long before the Western world started marketing it for this specific purpose. This sounds like the Western world. Yes, exactly. And then we probably took credit for it. Yeah, of course.

Now again though, it was less effective at killing the nits, more effective at killing the lice themselves, so that, you know, problem would persist. A synthetic version was eventually introduced in the 70s, so you didn't actually have to get the extract from the original plant. You could synthesize it in a lab, which is common, right? Like we've done that with a load of medications. Like a blind eye. It's like that, right? Yeah, things that we initially went out and collected things.

Fox Glove, Digitallus. The way you just passively were like, oh yeah, that's one Justin, and you were like, whoa, you know what I mean? Like, I understand that you know that stuff, but the fact that I knew that it should have gotten a bigger reaction. You know what kind so you want. Okay, let's try it again. Okay. Oh, like a quinine. Oh my, oh my god Justin. There's too much. That's like your right. How did you? That sounds like you're worried about.. You know, you're right. How did you? That sounds like you're worried about me. Are you okay?

Yeah, okay, that is exactly. Were you, hold on. Did somebody tell you, did somebody tell you that? Yeah. It's, hold on. No, it's not my notes. It's not my notes. I have phenomenal.

Phenomenon disease. Oh God, no. Phenomenon ditus. Don't say that. I think it was a brain tumor, honey. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, There's no way that that actual real movie that was applauded. Are you gaslighting me right now? That is the plot of that movie.

I'm being sarcastic. I thought I was sitting here thinking that is the plot of that movie, isn't it? The plot of that movie. It's a huge bummer. Anyway, so we were able to synthesize it. And this is great because a lot of what you probably know as over-the-counter Lice Treatments. And there are a variety of brands, and there are also endless numbers of like generic products depending on what pharmacy or grocery store or wherever you're buying

it from. You can go online and find, again, endless different types of lice-killing products. And a lot of them have basically the same perethroid type compounds in them. That's what they're using. Most of them are based on that. The only concern we have nowadays is that we have found strains of lice that are actually resistant to these compounds. That doesn't mean that if you have had lice, yours are, but it's possible. And so it makes a little trickier when it comes to killing them.

They become a lot easier, as you may imagine, to comb out of the hair if they're dead. So you can still comb them out alive. They come out wiggling, but you can get them out that way. It's just the whole process becomes a lot less stressful if you've killed the Lies first. You can get them off easier and then,

I don't know, you're less worried about if you've killed the eggs, they're not gonna come back, but you probably have to treat again. But it's a lot easier if you can kill them first. So because I think it is such a cumbersome treatment, because even if you use these over-the-counter Lies treatments, and I should say for more severe infestations, there are prescription medications that we

can use for lice. I have yet to have personal experience with having to do that in every case that I've been involved with in my professional life. Over-the-counter products combined with really rigorous combing is the treatment. And again, if you've got, you can look up a picture if you've never seen a knit comb or a lice comb. It's not like your regular comb, the teeth are too wide on the vast majority of combs

or brushes we would use for our hair. You need something that has tines that are really close together. And then the ones that, most of the ones you're gonna buy aren't plastic, they're more like metal because they're stiffer. And they're gonna really trap the little guys, almost like tons of teeny little tweezers.

They're gonna trap all these little guys and pull them out of the hair. It's an incredibly cumbersome process. And so a lot of people have come up with alternatives that they will tout as folk remedies or online remedies. Of course. Because this is hard, it just is hard. And you think, surely there's gotta be up with alternatives that they will tout as folk remedies or online remedies. Of course. Because this is hard, it just is hard.

And you think, surely there's got to be a better way. People will tell you to put melted butter on your hair, mayonnaise. I was about to say mayonnaise. I don't know why I was about to say that. Vinegar, olive oil, gasoline is recommended a surprising number of times. That's gasoline. Please do not ever put any flammable substances on your head or body. Certainly, not gasoline.

Some have said that the fume specifically are what's helpful. That's really dangerous. Because those are the fumes are bad, actually. But there have been, as a result, multiple cases of people accidentally catching themselves or the person who they're trying to help treat their head on fire because of treatments with gasoline. So please, please do not, this is serious. Don't make a joke here because it's tragic that people have tried this and then just all it takes is a little spark. But you

have to admit, it does get the life. Justin. I'm just saying. Yes, I'm sure the life died. But my point is, please do not put gasoline or any other flammable so I can't put, please don't put any flammable sources on yourself or your child or anyone else you may be helping treat for life. What a hairspray tough guy. What a hairspray. Okay, well, I don't know. Don't get, let's not.

Just don't put gasoline on your head. It feels like hairspray would get them, doesn't it? It doesn't though. It feels like it should. It feels like it should. It's like, oh no, I'm frozen put gasoline on your head. It feels like hairspray would get them, doesn't it? It doesn't though. I have a feel like it should. It feels like it should. It's like, it's all known on frozen in stasis. Especially like 80s hairspray. Like I feel like our moms used to use, yeah.

Like the heavy duty stuff. You feel like it would just like, they freeze there till they die. They don't. There is also like, as an alternative medicine, tea tree oil is very commonly recommended. It has been recommended to me in my professional life. By many people, there is no evidence that this is effective.

There aren't, as is typical, with a lot of these sorts of herbal alternative remedies. There aren't a ton of high quality studies, but it's never been proven to work, whether as a preventive or a treatment for headlice. And it can, as with a lot of, I mean, just because something is from the earth doesn't mean it can't have side effects or you can't have a reaction to it. Anyone with seasonal allergies knows that. So you can have an allergic reaction or some sort of irritation as a result of tea tree oil and then you can do that to your scalp if you put a bunch of tea tree oil all over your scalp to try to kill lice. So that is not a recommendation. And same for a lot of they smell really nice. I have I have

encountered them myself the sprays that prevent lice they smell great. I enjoy them too. No evidence of those actually work at this point. But if you want to use them, that's fine, but there's no evidence that those sorts of things are going to work. So obviously the current concern is resistant lice and you've got to kill the eggs. For all these reasons, keeping children out of school while they have lice has been common practice for many years. It really shouldn't be. And that recommendation is not brand new.

For quite a while, the CDC has been recommending against what are called no-knit policies at school. So basically, if you find a single knit on a child's head, you send them home until they're all gone. There is little risk of your child sitting next to another child in school and getting lice that way. Certainly, if you're sharing hats or scarves or brushes or hair clips or whatever, obviously, there are ways if you're sleeping next to each other, if you're hairs entangled,

there are ways, of course, you can get lice from each other. But these no-knit policies are really damaging because they end up keeping kids out of school longer than necessary. It's not really a risk to anyone else. And even if somebody else gets lice, yes, it's inconvenient, yes, it's a bomber, yes, it's itchy, but it's not life-threatening and keeping a child out of school for weeks on end

to try to make sure every knit is gone is really damaging to them in many way, not always, but can be very damaging. So we do not have known it policies anymore. It's stigmatizing. It's unnecessary. If you are interested in treating headlifts, it is something that most people just do at home.

Most people do not seek medical advice to treat headlifts because it is so common and because the over-the-counter treatments are the first recommended treatment anyway. Certainly certainly you can reach out to your provider if you have questions or if it's not working or if you're worried that the infestation is really severe. You know, if you have so many nits and live lice that you can just see it sitting across the room, you probably want to talk to somebody about that. But for most of us, it's something you're going to find a few in there and go, oh crap. And you're going to spend a lot of time treating and coming and treating and coming and double checking. But you don't need to keep your kid out of school for it. And I would really recommend if you need more information, the CDC website,

CDC.gov, you just type in LICEN the search bar. They have plenty of information, whether you're a healthcare professional or a layperson, whether you're a parent, or somebody who has lice yourself, read that information, read the, they have specific information for schools about the American Academy of Pediatrics, does not recommend keeping your kid out of school for having some nits in their hair and how to treat. You don't even need to send a kid home. You find a nit in their hair, they can treat it

at the end of the day. There's no need to send him home early. So, I think it's still so stigmatized. Yeah. I had Lice as a kid. There it is, folks. I had Lice. I'm not ashamed to admit.

I still remember my mother combing and combing and combing my hair. Not a fun experience. I had very long hairs again. I never had Lice with. I think it's because the other children avoided me Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you've enjoyed yourself We are going to be doing a virtual show with my brother my brother me. It's on March 17th. Yes, that one

The same one that is St. Patrick's Day as well If you go over to bit.ly, first slash Mbmbm virtual, you can get all the details on that tickets are 10 bucks. They're available right now. You can watch that for two weeks afterwards. You can get video on demand also. You can buy it for two weeks after. But you know, get ahead but get there.

It's going to be really fun. The live virtual shows are always a hoot and a half. And when you're getting two for one, I mean, you're basically losing money to not go to the sea. Absolutely. And stop scratching your head right now, please. Yes. And that's going to do it for us.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, the taxpayers. We just, there's all medicines in the internauture, we're burdened. Thanks to you for listening. It's gonna do it for us this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't draw a hole in your head. Alright!