Your child comes home one day itching his head, and sure enough, he has head lice. This article will cover how to get rid of the "visitors" for good. Over the last decade or so, head and pubic lice have been adapting and gaining a resistance to most common lice killing chemicals. However, there are alternative remedies to take care of them.

Mayonnaise is often used as an alternative treatment for head lice. Other options along this line include olive oil, conditioner, and vegetable oil. The child's hair and scalp need to be thoroughly coated with the chosen oil or cream and then covered with a shower cap and left on all night. By morning the oily substance will have smothered the lice which can now be eliminated using a lice comb.

Tea tree oil is another alternative treatment. This special oil comes from an Australian tree famed for its anti-fungal and anti-vermicidal properties. There are many commercial preparations of tea tree oil available. We recommend a conditioner with a high percentage of tea tree oil. As with mayonnaise, leave it sitting overnight and comb out the head lice.

Other alternative choices involve treating the child's diet with brewer's yeast and garlic. These two substances are perfectly safe, good tasting, and help make the child's skin and scalp an unpleasant environment for head lice. However, repeated combing of nits is necessary since brewer's yeast and garlic may only have a modest effect, and in fact, studies are ambivalent about whether they work at all.

Finally, we should mention the manual treatment. This treatment is highly labor intensive but has great results and is non-toxic. It involves repeatedly and thoroughly combing the child's hair for lice and nits. This process must be repeated daily for up to two weeks. It is not for the faint of heart, but for stubborn cases, it will do the trick. We should note that this treatment is far more viable when the child's hair is short.

With time and patience, you can rid your home and child's head of head lice with traditional, herbal, oil-based or manual treatments. As an extra precaution, don't forget to sterilize all the bedding, hats, pillowcases and other items in your home that could be hiding the eggs of head lice.