Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser (8 oz for short hair, 12 oz for shoulder-length or longer hair)

Transcription

1 The Nuvo Method for Head Lice Using Cetaphil Cleanser, by Dale Pearlman M.D. Each treatment application has three main steps. Apply the wet lotion throughout the scalp. Comb out as much excess lotion as possible. Use a blow dryer to dry your child's hair. This dries the lotion on the scalp, and coats any lice in a shrinkwrap-like layer. The dry lotion must remain on the hair and scalp for at least 8 hours. Usually parents leave it in place until the child s usual bath or shower the next day. The course of treatment consists of 3 applications done at one week intervals. What you will need for one application. A large bath towel Cetaphil Gentle Skin Cleanser (8 oz for short hair, 12 oz for shoulder-length or longer hair) A new 8 oz condiment dispenser A regular pocket comb If your child has long hair, you should also get a wide-toothed detangler comb If you want to remove nits, a Licemeister comb (For why you might want to remove nits, click here. Links to: If you need to remove nits to comply with your school s no nit policy, then use the Licemeister comb to carefully go through the entire scalp. It will remove many nits. If your child's school does not have such a policy, then skip this step. It adds 70% more work and is unnecessary to cure children of head lice. ) Available at CVS.com but at no stores in 612 or 651 area codes. How to apply the lotion-- detailed instructions. Cover your child s shoulders with a big dry bath towel to catch the lotion which will drip from the scalp. To boost your cure rate you must cover all the lice with lotion. We advise you to apply so much lotion that it literally overflows the totally soaked scalp and drips off onto the towel. Pour 8 oz of Cetaphil into the condiment dispenser. Step 1. Begin with dry hair. Start at the left of the scalp. Make sure the nozzle is always touching the skin. Apply the lotion zigzag back and forth from front to back and then back to front. Apply to the entire scalp as you move forward until you reach the front of the scalp. Use 1/4 of the bottle. While the lotion is shown in the diagrams below as yellow, actual Cetaphil Cleanser is a translucent pearly liquid which is not visible once dried on scalp.

2 Step 2. Now start at the back of the scalp. Again make sure the nozzle is always touching the skin. Change the direction of your zigzagging application now to criss cross the first pattern. Move zigzag front to back then back to front as you move from the right side to the left side of the scalp. Use again 1/4 of a bottle always touching the scalp with the bottle nozzle. Step 3. Use your fingers to thoroughly massage the lotion throughout the scalp and hair. Step 4. Redo steps 1, 2, and 3. Use up another 1/2 bottle of lotion. You now have used a whole bottle of the lotion. Step 5. Does your child have long hair that reaches to the upper back? Then apply another 1/2 bottle of lotion to that large amount of hair from roots to tips and massage in thoroughly with your fingers. Step 6. Wait 2 minutes for lotion to act. Step 7. Comb out the lotion. You should seek to comb out as much excess Cetaphil lotion as possible. You are done when you can't get out any more lotion. The more you get out, the quicker will be the blow drying step which comes next. You may choose to first use a detangler comb if the hair is long or thick. Otherwise you can just start with the plain comb. Step 8. If you need to remove nits to comply with your school s no nit policy, then use the Licemeister comb to carefully go through the entire scalp. It will remove many nits. If your child's school does not have such a policy, then skip this step. It adds 70% more work and is unnecessary to cure children of head lice. Step 9. Blow dry the hair thoroughly, so that the scalp skin, hair roots, and full length of the hair are totally dry. You may use a detangler comb and/or your fingers to make the drying process easier. Anticipate that this will takes 3 times longer than drying hair that is just wet with water. Step 10. You may style the hair now with a sterilized comb and/or brush. Please do not apply any styling gel, mousse, hair spray, or other cosmetic products to the hair while the dried Cetaphil lotion is on the hair. Step 11. Leave the dried lotion on the child s head for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight. Step 12. To remove the lotion at the end of the treatment phase, you just shampoo with your usual shampoo, cream rinses, etc.

3 Recommended household clean-up The three clean up steps should be done once a week at the time of the weekly treatment. *Sterilize all the family's combs and brushes. You can choose one of two methods. You may soak the combs and brushes in isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol for 10 minutes or you may put them in the dishwasher on the full hot cleaning cycle. *Treat all bedding at the time of each lotion application. Take all sheets, pillow cases, blankets, comforters, and bedspreads from the beds in your house and run them in the dryer for 10 minutes on high temperature. Then put the bedding back on beds. You do not have to wash it. *Patients should change to new fresh clothes after each treatment. Put dirty clothes in the laundry hamper for later laundering. A Final Caution To achieve cure, it is important to follow the directions carefully. We have seen the treatment fail when parents do not follow instructions. Avoid these four common mistakes: a) Parents skimp on amount of Cetaphil Cleanser used. You must use precisely the amount recommended in the detailed instructions or you will fail to coat all the lice with lotion. An uncoated louse will survive the treatment and may go on to reproduce. This is especially important for children with shoulder length or longer hair. You must remember to add an extra half bottle because of the long hair. b) Parents apply the lotion incorrectly to the scalp. Sometimes parents just squirt it on top of the hair and try to massage it in. This is NOT the way we explain in the instructions. You must achieve a uniform coverage of the entire scalp to be effective. It is critical to be touching the scalp with the nozzle the entire time you apply the lotion. The criss cross pattern of application assures even, complete coverage. c) Parents do not completely dry the lotion on the scalp. You must dry the scalp so that it is totally dry. The lotion works by drying onto the louse and plugging up its breathing holes. If you leave the scalp and hair partly wet then the lotion can be accidentally rubbed off when your child changes his shirt, lies down on his pillow, rubs his hair, or lies on the carpet or couch. By thoroughly drying the lotion in the scalp, the lotion adheres to the lice and kills them. d) The timing between the applications is wrong. You must use the treatment in three applications done at one-week intervals. The dried lotion kills lice and disrupts their life cycle. If you wait too long for the next application, then baby lice can grow into adults and lay eggs and continue the cycle. We regret that we cannot answer individual questions. However, if you feel at your question has not been answered on our web site, please send an to Mail@Nuvoforheadlice.com. From time to time, we will be posting the answers to additional FAQs. Notice: The Nuvo method for treating and diagnosing head lice has not been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Cetaphil is a trademark of Galderma Laboratories, L.P. United States, which has not reviewed or endorsed the material on this web site.

4 From the FAQ [ What's wrong with just looking at my child's scalp to see if lice or nits are present? The presence of nits (louse eggs) does not prove active infestation. These may be inactive, dead nits from a prior infestation. Or the white specks may not even be nits at all. The only way to prove active infestation is to find actual crawling lice. Why do you leave it on the hair for eight hours? Answer: Lice can hold their breath for a very long time. A louse needs to be submerged or coated with lotion for at least eight hours to die. That is why other wet suffocation treatments like olive oil or mayonnaise are unreliable. The wet treatment can be wiped off too soon if the child lies down on a pillow, changes a shirt, or just rubs the hair. The child cannot wipe off the dried-on lotion. With the Nuvo method, patients usually leave the dried lotion in their hair until the next day and shampoo it out at bath time with the child's usual shampoo. The dried lotion is invisible in the hair, so the children are not embarrassed to have it in their hair during the day. Does the Nuvo method kill nits (louse eggs)? Answer: No, the Nuvo method kills only crawling lice. If the Nuvo method does not kill the nits, how can it work? Answer: The Nuvo method cures head lice infestations by disrupting the life cycle of the lice. The lice are all killed before they can lay any more eggs. The Nuvo method is used in three applications. The first application kills the crawling lice. The second application, one week later, kills the lice that have hatched in the interim. Because it takes a louse about 10 days to become sexually mature, the newly hatched lice cannot lay more eggs. A third application kills any remaining lice that might have hatched after the second application. You're saying that newly hatched lice may still be on my child's head during the treatment. Does that mean my child will be contagious? Answer: Although baby lice or instars will hatch on your child's head, these instars do not migrate on their own to a new host. Only older "teenage" or adult head lice migrate. The serial applications of Cetaphil will kill them before they are mature enough to migrate. It is still a good precaution not to let your child share combs that may transfer instars. What about household cleanup? Answer: The families in the research study did only minimal household cleanup. They laundered their clothes, and put their bedding in the drier for 10 minutes. In addition they sanitized their combs and hair brushes by running them through the dishwasher. Patients in the study had a 96% cure rate using this cleanup regimen. I don t see how your recommendations for minimal household cleanup could be reasonable. Why don t we need to clean up carpets and couches and chairs? Couldn t nits fall off our child onto these surfaces, and hatch there? Then couldn t the louse climb onto someone else? What about children s stuffed, plush toys. Couldn t a louse lay eggs there that would hatch and infect other people? Answer: A louse egg contains the embryo of a living creature. It requires specific temperature and humidity requirements in order to develop. These conditions are found on the human scalp but not on the floor, a chair, or a couch. So the nit will not hatch when off the human head. Thus we are not concerned with nits that fall on these surfaces. A good way to think about lice eggs is to compare them to chicken eggs. The egg must either be under the hen or in a special incubator in order to hatch. It will not hatch on the floor.

5 There is no support for the standard recommendation to vacuum floors as part of curing head lice. There is no report in the research literature of lice being found on the carpets of the home or school. An Australian researcher, Rick Speare, evaluated the floors of 118 schools where 20% of the students had head lice. There were no lice found on the carpets. The concern that a louse would lay eggs on a plush toy is not valid. Female lice lay eggs on human hairs as close as possible to the scalp as possible for good reasons. First such a location assures the conditions described above to allow the eggs to develop. Second, such proximity to the scalp means the newly hatched baby lice will easily find a place for its first meal nearby. A plush toy s hairs do not offer either of the above required conditions. While one often hears about the need to remove all the stuffed, plush toys from a child s environment, actually there are no published reports showing lice eggs on plush toys. The Lice Identification Test (LIT) is a handy and reliable way of identifying lice in the scalp. It can be especially useful to answer three common questions: 1) Does my child actually have head lice? 2) For a child who had a lice treatment recently: Does my child still have head lice? 3) For a child being treated now: Is my child now cured... is it safe to stop weekly treatment? You perform an LIT by taking all the lotion you comb out during the Nuvo method treatment and putting this lotion on a pale or white hand towel. Once the lotion is absorbed by the towel, you look for lice on top of the towel. A bright light and magnification can make this job easier. You must be careful to be sure that your identification is correct. You must find actual baby, teenage, or adult lice. Finding nits (louse eggs) does not count. These photos may help you identify real lice and nits. Be careful! Frequently you will find small objects on the towel which are not lice. Kids' hair often contains miscellaneous objects such as grass, small pieces of leaves, bits of paper, flakes of scalp scale, and little chunks of dirt. You must distinguish between these "fakes" and real lice. In his office Dr. Pearlman has learned that if two LITs, done one week apart, show no lice, then there is no active lice infestation. Louse egg (nit) attached to a hair shaft. louse). Second stage instar (teenager head louse). First stage instar (baby head Adult head louse (aged days).