Getting rid of lice is no small feat. Those who work with small children in daycares or schools know all too well how fast head lice spread. Infestations can spread between friends and classmates very easily and even spread to their families when they come back home from school.

Many parents don’t like the prescription insecticides often prescribed by doctors because of their levels of toxicity, and over the counter medications don’t always work effectively.

But lice have been around for a very long time, and people have been dealing with infestations since their discovery. There are a ton of natural lice treatments out there that have not been well-researched, but are seemingly effective and safe, too.

Here are a list of home remedies used as treatment for lice.

1. Nitpicking: The most common and obvious way to treat lice is to find and remove them. Before you start any treatments, you need to comb your hair with a fine-toothed comb and pick out every last egg, or nit, to prevent them from hatching and spreading.
2. Olive oil: Not only does olive oil make your hair extremely soft, it’s also believe to be an excellent lice suppressant. Olive oil smothers the lice and plugs their breathing holes. Because lice can survive without breathing for hours, you’ll have to use olive oil as a night treatment and put a shower cap over your hair to prevent the lice from leaving your head. In the morning, the lice should be suffocated and more easy to shake out of the hair.
3. Blowdrying: Lice aren’t huge fans of heat, and direct heat from a hair dryer following a thorough washing can kill them pretty fast. Nits are much more easily killed by heat agents, as they have not developed a hard exoskeleton to protect themselves. If you’re planning to use this remedy though, don’t use it in combination with a chemical treatment. Many of these medications have flammable properties that can be activated with heat. And while fire will most certainly kill the lice, nobody wants a scorched scalp.
4. Hair gel or petrolium jelly: Like olive oil, these two items are believed to suffocate the lice and keep them stuck in their tracks until they’re rinsed out. While petroleum jelly is believed to be more effective, hardening hair styling gel is far easier to wash out.
5. Mayonnaise: Mayo has been used as a treatment for lice, as well as a macaroni salad binder, for generations. Those who use the mayo method recommend letting the mayo set in the hair overnight, and also recommend a second treatment to make sure that no nits were hatched in the meantime.
6. White vinegar: Vinegar is also a common treatment for lice, but isn’t well-researched at all. Vinegar is believed to dissolve the substance that a mother louse uses to attach her babies to the hair.

Have any other natural lice remedies? Feel free to add them in the comments section!