For many who have encountered these insects, the question arises where lice live except for the head. There are three varieties of louse, it is on this that its habitat depends. Lice can be:
All three varieties are very similar to each other, their body shape, color, size and location distinguishes them.
The head louse prefers to live in the hair on the head, the linen louse lives in the underwear and clothes of its owner, the pubic louse lives in the hair growing on the pubis, eyelashes and eyebrows, occasionally in the armpits.
Insects feed only on human blood, as do scabies mites and bed bugs. Therefore, the question of how many lice live without food can be answered, which is no more than 2 days.
Insects, depending on their variety, cause three types of pediculosis:
You can get lice after contact with a sick person., which is typical most often, insects actively breed in places where there is a large crowd of people, that is, in prisons, children's camps and kindergartens, military hospitals.
Pediculosis most often affects children, since it is they who spend a lot of time together, playing and exchanging personal items, for example, hats, combs, hairpins, toys. Lice do not know how to fly, they move by crawling, but this does not prevent them from traveling from one head to another.
This is because the public has been saying for many years that these diseases are characteristic only of the marginalized, but this is not so.
Many people seek to find out the answer to the question of how many lice live on clothes. If this question is about linen lice, then it can be answered in such a way that the insect is able to live on the linen and clothes of its owner for up to 46 days, getting out on his skin in order to drink blood.
Also, many people are interested in the question of how long lice live after treatment, and some, confusing them with bed bugs, think about whether they can live in pillows and bedding.
The structure of the body of these insects is such that they can live and function only on a person, wool and hair of other mammals, their blood is not suitable for lice.
The head louse dies without human blood in two days, its nits can go through a full life cycle and hatch, but they will die almost immediately without food.
The pubic louse dies without food in 4-5 hours, and its nits immediately after hatching. Linen louse can live without a human body in its bedding and pillows, provided that it has access to a food source up to 5 times a day.
Having found uninvited guests at themselves or their loved ones, most people seek to immediately carry out the treatment with the help of pharmacy products. These products can kill insects in just one application., the action of many of them is so strong that, for example, it kills all adults in 20-30 minutes, but it is somewhat more difficult to deal with nits, since their shell serves as a powerful defense.
Special aerosols that kill insects instantly and washing linen and clothes at high temperatures are well saved from linen lice.
How can you treat hair and clothes from lice
Numerous shampoos, sprays, ointments, creams and aerosols will help get rid of uninvited guests today. Many of them are excellent at destroying adult insects, but are not able to kill nits, so after using them, you need to use a special comb in order to comb out the nits.
Shampoo your hair the easiest way, for example Nok, Veda. Sprays Nyuda, Para-Plus, Lavinal are also used. Upholstered furniture and bedding should be treated with A-PAR aerosol.
Scientists have also found that insects survive at temperatures from minus 5 to plus 42 degrees, and then die at lower and higher temperatures. These temperatures are quite acceptable for people, and lice can easily be thrown off their heads and clothes at them.
Many people are afraid to use pharmaceutical preparations for lice treatment, believing that they contain a lot of chemicals and prefer to use folk remedies such as hellebore water, vinegar, cranberry juice, tar soap, decoctions of tansy and wormwood. After treatment with these means, lice do not disappear completely, so their single use will not be enough.
The main methods of prevention are personal hygiene, refusal to use other people's personal belongings, namely combs, hairpins, hats.
You should be careful when choosing a hotel or inn, as some unscrupulous hoteliers handle poorly or do not change bed linen and towels after previous guests. The same applies to the choice of hairdressers and beauty salons, it is very important that the tools from a previous client are carefully processed.
In conclusion, it is worth saying that contact with people with obvious signs of illness should be avoided.
In contrast, the entire life cycle of lice must occur exclusively in direct contact with the victim of a certain type of warm-blooded animal.
A person is attacked by 2 types:
- human louse;
- pubic louse (ploshchitsa).
The first is divided into 2 forms: head and clothes. The head louse lives in the scalp of a person, the body louse prefers to cling to the hair of the body or live in the folds and seams of clothing.
But if, for example, the head louse is transferred to the body, then the insect will change towards the clothes one. Although some scientists refute this.
Subsequently, the skin becomes grayish-brown.
In advanced cases, the hair, under the influence of a thick exudate, sticks together into tangles, regional lymph nodes increase and become painful. Conjunctivitis, blepharitis, allergic dermatitis and even sepsis are possible.
The flathead lives on the hair of the pubis, scrotum, upper thighs. With advanced pediculosis, pubic lice can spread to the armpits, back hair, chest, beard, eyebrows and even eyelashes. However, they are not carriers of typhoid pathogens.
The structure of the lice
Lice are small (0.3 - 6 mm) wingless insects whose body is flattened, it is covered with hairs, bristles and spikes. The head is small, the eyes are either absent or reduced, the 3-5-segmented antennae are short, the thoracic parts are fused.
The pubic louse is wider and flattened than the head louse.
The structure of the limbs provides a reliable fixation on the host's hair: they are short, each is equipped with a strong unpaired claw that wraps around the hair. At the same time, the legs and the general structure of the body are adapted to hold lice of a certain type on the hair (wool) of a particular mammal: humans, pigs, dogs, cats, etc.
The piercing-sucking oral organs consist of a short proboscis, inside of which there is a corolla of teeth, and three piercing setae.
Lice spend their entire lives in the base of the hair (underwear) of a person. At the same time, pubic lice feed after 3-4 hours, head and body lice - after 6. They multiply without interruption. Females stick eggs, which are also called nits, to their hair, and clothes ones also stick to underwear and clothes. Nits hatch into larvae, from which adults emerge.
The full development cycle of the louse takes 20 days
The development of lice lasts at least 20 days. But the life of adult creatures is short - from 27 to 46 days.
But without blood, lice can not last long at all:
- The human louse dies on the second day. Only when the temperature drops to 10 - 12 degrees, the duration of fasting increases to 10 days.
- Ploshchitsa can stretch from the strength of 8-9 hours, in the water - up to 2 days.
Lice spread
Head and body types spread by direct contact between people, while they crawl from one person to another.
Clothes can additionally be transferred by contact with the linen and clothing of an infected person.
With severe lice, human lice spread over outerwear, bedding, floors and furniture, from where they can easily get on the body of a future victim. For more information on where lice come from and what to do about it, see this useful video:
Ploshchitsy are more often transmitted during sexual intercourse, but can be transmitted through bedding, towels, it is possible to pick up an infection in the bath.
The spread of these bloodsuckers is facilitated by:
- The low cultural level of the population, in which sanitary and hygienic standards are violated (people rarely wash, change their underwear and bed linen, wash outerwear irregularly, clean their homes).
- Various social and natural disasters.
Diagnosis and treatment
Pediculosis is diagnosed by medical workers: nurses in kindergartens and schools, dermatologists in adults.
In this case, a visual inspection of the scratches on the scalp, body, and, if necessary, the groin occurs.
Additionally, a magnifying glass with 4x magnification or a Wood's lamp is used. Upon detection of white nits attached to the roots of the hair, which burst with a characteristic click, and sometimes adults filled with blood, the specialist makes a diagnosis of pediculosis.
- To get rid of pests, there are special shampoos, combing. Combs are treated with ointments and antiseptics. Modern shampoos destroy not only adult insects, but also larvae and lice nits.
- For disinfestation, it is imperative to wash linen and clothes, and then iron, paying special attention to seams and folds.
- Floors should be washed with disinfectant solutions.
- During social and natural disasters, special disinfection and shower installations are deployed, in which a large number of people can be washed, and sanitization of clothes and linen is carried out in disinfection chambers under the influence of high temperature. In the absence of installations, clothing is treated with insecticides.
Lice infestation from animals should not be feared. However, if livestock, cats and dogs are affected by these bloodsuckers, then you should definitely contact a veterinarian and rid them of evil spirits. After all, for example, pig bloodsuckers can spread anthrax, fever and swine fever. For more information on how to be treated, see this video:
To avoid pediculosis, you should follow the rules of personal hygiene, avoid promiscuity, regularly wash, iron clothes and linen, and clean your home.
How long do lice live without a person and whether they are able to survive without hair, our ancestors knew. After all, the method of shaving on the bald head is still practiced, which guarantees the death of nits. Therefore, if you need a quick 100% effect and the size of the hair is not critical, you can resort.
The louse is an obligate and extremely highly specialized insect. How long does a human louse (Pdeiculushumanus) live without hair on its head and its pubic sister (Pthiruspubis), entomologists give an unequivocal answer. They absolutely can not adapt to another habitat other than the human body.
Lice live without a human outside of their head if the total life cycle is no more than two months. The whole process from egg to adult (full-fledged adult) is no more than two weeks under favorable conditions. If the temperature regime does not correspond to the norm, the development process can be delayed up to a month.
Stages of development
Lice cannot live without hair and without a host. It is worth considering that human lice have subspecies, there are three types of pediculosis:
- head;
- pubic;
- wardrobe.
Lice live for several days without food if they have lost their usual habitat - the hair and human body:
Knowing how many days lice live without a person, we can assume that you can fight them in various ways:
- difference between high and low temperatures;
- chemical treatment with insecticides or folk recipes;
- mechanical way;
- with the help of fasting;
- with pungent odors.
What methods are considered the most effective:
If you apply folk remedies, then the effect on nits will be approximately the same as above. There is the simplest, but most painstaking way:
combing method
You will need:
- comb with fine teeth.
Your actions:
- Lay out your hair in thin strands and comb each strand carefully.
- Pay attention to the presence of nits that need to be removed.
With tar soap.
The method of application is extremely simple: foam the soap, apply the foam to the skin and hair, hold for 10 minutes and rinse. One of the most effective remedies.
With vinegar.
Dilute ordinary 9% or apple cider vinegar with water in a ratio of 1: 2. Treat the skin and hair with the composition. Vinegar has a destructive effect on the shells of lice, which die from this.
With ether.
The use of essential oils is considered very effective. In ordinary vegetable oil, add a little of any essential oil, for example: tea tree, lavender, cypress, eucalyptus, menthol, rosemary or geranium.
Treat the entire head with an abundant amount, wrap with polyethylene, hold for 2 hours, comb out the dead insects well. Wash your hair in the usual way.
With tansy and wormwood
Take tansy and wormwood in equal proportions at the rate of 1 tbsp. to a glass of boiling water. Boil for 5 minutes, strain and cool. Treat your head with this composition.
The lifespan of a louse without a human depends on how long it can survive without food.
The life span of an adult louse is thirty days. It is during this time that the female lays about ninety eggs. After the incubation period (7–10 days), the nits hatch. In the next ten days, it turns into an adult. Then the cycle repeats again.
With regards to nits (lice eggs), in this case the situation is different. Nits, enclosed in a dense shell, can remain alive without a person for 3-4 days and hatch only when favorable conditions for survival appear.
Can lice live in things
All available remedies have been tried in the fight against lice, and the problem of pediculosis reappears. What's the matter?
Blood-sucking insects are able to live and reproduce not only on human hair - this is a fact.
Lice live in textiles, namely:
- clothes;
- bed linen;
- upholstery of sofas, armchairs;
- pillows (and not always feather ones).
Pediculosis pathogens feed only on human blood. Consequently, their habitat is closely intertwined with human skin.
Linen lice can go without food for a longer time. Therefore, they are most often found:
- on clothes, in particular on underwear;
- on upholstered furniture (upholstered sofas and beds are especially susceptible to damage);
- on bed linen (pillows, blankets, mattress).
The body louse lives only on clothes. As soon as a person puts on an infected outfit, small blood-sucking insects immediately begin to bite him.
Is it possible to get lice without contact with a person
The problem of pediculosis is quite common, because many people are concerned about the question, is it possible to get lice without contact with a person?
Find out more where lice come from, how you can get them, on our website.
Why do lice appear on the head.
Lice. Causes and treatment.
Since the louse lives at the expense of blood, for a long time without a "master", i.e. man, they cannot exist. Therefore, whenever possible, they always move to the body to feed on blood.
The risk of infection is not excluded even when swimming in a pond. They can live in any public places and even in transport.
Important! Lice do not live outside the human body. They are waiting for the moment to settle on his body.
Also, many believe that if the hair is dyed, insects do not start on them. During staining, adults may die due to the presence of hydrogen peroxide in the dyes. But this composition does not work on nits.
How quickly do they die without a "master"?
The life of insects depends entirely on the ability to feed on blood. It is on the human body that they complete their cycle. Without a blood supply, they cannot even lay eggs. An adult should eat at least 6 times a day. Therefore, lice cannot live without a person.
If suddenly an insect for some reason was outside the human body, left without food, it can live a maximum of 3 days. If during this period they cannot feed on blood, their death occurs.
Is pediculosis transmitted through things and other objects?
Flesh lice can live for a long time on clothing or in its folds. If the louse is pubic or head, they definitely need food. Therefore, they try to get on the human body at every opportunity. For some time, lice can live without a "master".
They are very easy to get infected. To get infected in a few minutes, it is enough after a sick person to use his personal belongings:
- towel
- underwear;
- comb.
Often, infection occurs when visiting baths, saunas or beaches.
Therefore, even when visiting pools or reservoirs, infection is possible.
In order not to become infected with pediculosis, it is necessary to monitor body hygiene, use only your hygiene items and avoid contact with patients. When infected, treatment should be started immediately.
