People often wonder if it’s more common to have head lice in winter. Are they seasonal? And does the cold or hot weather affect their ability to flourish? In fact, neither of those things is true. Lice flourish all year round, and the only pattern that is discernible is the one school term imposes on children’s being together and mixing.
Lice in winter
Lice like a warm cosy environment living in hair and in winter this is preserved by us wearing hats and living with the heating on – so head lice in the winter months are well looked after! Lice do not die in winter because of the way we live.
How do different seasons affect head lice survival?
Head lice survival is unaffected by the different seasons. Lice survive in winter, summer, autumn and spring. Hair provides warmth, moisture, access to blood for them to feed on, and a fantastic place to lay their eggs and let their young mature into adults.
As humans, we protect our hair in the cold and give it freedom in the heat. Clean, dirty, long or short, your hair is a great place for head lice to thrive. They feed off your blood, drawing the nutrients from it, and if infestations are heavy and prolonged that feeding will make you anaemic. Anaemia is not to be ignored as it can have serious long-term consequences to the body.
Lice in summer
Lice seem to flourish in the summer mainly because if your child goes on holiday with head lice, that prolonged time where no one wants to sit down with a nit comb, allows the infestation to take hold and proliferate.
By the time you get back from your holiday and get them straight into school, there will be a full-on infestation to deal with. This in turn means the infestation is shared with their school friends and why so many other children catch head lice when they go back to school in September.
Stopping a lice infestation
Whatever the season, if you have a head lice infestation on your hands that needs to be cleared and you need help doing it then call The Hairforce, the UK’s professional nit and head lice clearing service since 2006. You can access their clinics through www.hairforceclinics.com or call 020 7485 7351.