Diagnosis
Reliable Self-Diagnosis
Here you will find information with which you can carry out a reliable self-diagnosis and easily identify lice and nits.
We constantly see wrong self-diagnoses!
Itching or no itching?
Found something or nothing?
It doesn't say anything!
Did you know that you only have a 5% chance of detecting an infestation if you check visually? Unless it is a heavy infestation.
It is highly important to make a reliable diagnosis, especially in the following cases:
- Multiple family members
Check the whole family at home first before switching to treatment.
If other family members unknowingly have head lice, the treated person will get re-infested again. - Finding of nits, but no lice
Have you found dark or light specks for weeks or months, but no lice?
There is a high probability that you may confuse the specks with nits.
Even if they actually are nits, they cannot be live nits, if no lice are found for ten days or more.
In order to determine with certainty whether you or your family members have lice or nits, an active-, eliminated- or no infection, we recommend checking with the 'Lice Clinic Combing Method'.
Comb out > Look > Identify!
Find: with our unique comb kit you can easily comb out + 95% of lice and nits in one comb session.
Identify: With this video, and the photos below, you can easily identify and diagnose:
Nits versus dandruff and dirt
Not every speck is a nit.
Nits are brown, not black. White nits are empty.
White spots can also be dandruff, and dandruff can also stick to hair, also known as pseudo nits.
Not every nit is an active infection
An empty or dead nit can stick to your hair for up to a year!
So you can still find nits after the infection is eliminated!
Delusional Parasitosis
Especially people with Delusional Parasitosis, who therefore comb and treat for a long time, find many (black) spots. There are pieces of crust, broken hair, dried blood, all from damaged skin and hair, due to the many treatments.
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Viable Nits
Viable nits always meet all three of the following criteria:
1) Brown, teardrop-shaped
2) Glued firmly to the hair
3) A few mm., max. 1 cm. removed from the scalp
Precisely because they are perfectly camouflaged in the hair en well hidden near the scalp, viable nits are rarely found with the naked eye.
Only with the professional Licemeister nit comb can you be sure to discover these viable nits by combing them out effectively.
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Lice
Head lice can reach a maximum size of about a sesame seed.
The young lice (nymphs) can be as small as a nit.
They can be transparant, red, or any shade of brown.
They have 6 legs, attached to their upper body and 2 feelers on their head.
They can't walk effectively on regular surfaces, like other beetles, bugs or spiders can.
Nor can they fly because they don't have wings.
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10+ days no louse? Infestation eliminated!
When you haven't found a louse in over 10 days, it is absolutely impossible that the infestation is still active.
(At least, as long as you haven't missed the louse! You need the 'Comb Cream' to make sure you catch all potential lice).
Nits always hatch between 7-10 days. If there is an active infection, lice will always be found within this time.
No lice means that the nits are either dead or empty.
Like we mentioned before: a dead or empty nit can stick to the hair for up to a year!
If you still have doubts about what you have found, and weither you have an active infestation or not, please feel free to send a clear, zoomed in picture, per specimen to us, so we can analyse it for you:
[email protected]
More information about lice, nits, their Life Cycle, contamination and itch can be found on our webpage "Head lice, the facts".