any mumsnetters from the US, please read.

[mckenzie]

Thanks for reading this.

Today on Radio 4 they had an article about head lice.
They mentioned a product that is available in the US but not yet available in the UK that clears up head lice with 100% success rate. IT's based, I think, on coconut oil. Apparently when it is marketed in the US is comes with a 'if you are not 100% satisfied please return it for a full refund' policy and none of the tproduct has ever been returned.

Does anyone know what product it could be and/or have any experience of how successful it is?

[august24]

I think I have heard of this on another message board, it is this type of thing that you apply to hair and then blow dry, it forms a coating and the lice suffacate, then you wash out the coating. Off now to find the link

[august24]

TIMES NEWS TRACKER
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Medicine and Health

VITAL SIGNS

Treatments: A New Approach to Fighting Lice
By JOHN O'NEIL

Published: September 7, 2004

The start of school can also mean the start of head lice season, and the unpleasant choice of picking lice out or poisoning them. Now there is a new approach: a lotion that suffocates the bugs.

According to a study released yesterday in the journal Pediatrics, the lotion rid 95 percent of a group of 133 children of their head lice. The study was conducted by the inventor of the lotion, Dr. Dale L. Pearlman of Family Medical Center in Menlo Park, Calif.


Dr. Pearlman wrote that the study involved children who were referred to him by local pediatricians after standard treatments either failed to work or were refused by parents worried about possible side effects.

The lotion is nontoxic and dries on the hair, Dr. Pearlman said. It is applied to the hair, then heated with a blow dryer.

As it dries, it forms what he described as a shrink-wrapped film that covers the louse, shutting off its air supply. The dried lotion is removed by shampooing eight hours after application.

An expert not connected to the study, Dr. Howard Taras of the University of California at San Diego, called it interesting research, though preliminary.

Dr. Taras, a former chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on school health, said he thought the suffocation approach would eventually yield better treatments than current ones. Already, he said, informal reports show positive results from using mayonnaise, Vaseline and olive oil to coat hairs and cut off air to lice.