Ep 198 Lice Myths Busted: What Every Parent Needs to Know, with Amy Chinian

 In this episode of Your Child is Normal, Jessica Hochman, MD, talks with Amy Chinian, founder of My Hair Helpers, about the truth behind lice—what they are, how they really spread, and why they have nothing to do with hygiene. Together, they bust common myths (spoiler: you can stop bagging stuffed animals for two weeks), explain the most effective ways to check for lice, and share safe, non-toxic treatment options. Whether you’ve been through a lice outbreak or just want to be prepared, this conversation will help you. 

Your Child is Normal is the trusted podcast for parents, pediatricians, and child health experts who want smart, nuanced conversations about raising healthy, resilient kids. Hosted by Dr. Jessica Hochman — a board-certified practicing pediatrician — the show combines evidence-based medicine, expert interviews, and real-world parenting advice to help listeners navigate everything from sleep struggles to mental health, nutrition, screen time, and more.

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Transcript

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Hello, listeners. This is Dr Jessica Hochman. I'm excited to share that I am now booking sponsorships for your child as normal for this fall. If you have a product, service or a message that you think our listeners would benefit from, whether it's for parents, kids, healthcare or family life in general, this could be a great opportunity. You can find details on how to sponsor by checking the show notes. Just click the link that says how to sponsor an episode, and I'll let you know for a good match and get back to you. Hi everyone, and welcome back to your child is normal. I'm your host and pediatrician, Dr Jessica Hochman, so today we're discussing a topic that makes many people start scratching their heads the moment they hear the name head lice. But did you know that much of what we think we know about lice is actually myth and misinformation? So to help us separate fact from fiction, I'm joined by Amy chinnian. She's a lice expert, and she's worked with many, many families to demystify this very normal and very treatable childhood issue. So in today's episode, we'll talk about what lice are and what they aren't, how they really are spread, which treatments actually work, and how parents can feel calmer and more confident if lice happened to show up in your family. Now, I hope I don't make anyone start scratching by me saying this, but let's start talking about head lice. Amy Chaney, and welcome to your child as normal. Thank you so much for being here. I am so excited to be here. I love talking to pediatricians, so I am looking forward to this conversation. Specifically. I want to help everybody understand about lice, what lice is. I can't wait to bust some myths with you about lice, and then I would love for everybody to know about you and what you do. So first, can you tell us about what you do at lice helpers and how you got into this work in the first place? Okay, the name of my company is my hair helpers. And I started 17 years ago. I had a lice crisis in 2000 with my fifth daughter, I was pregnant and my hair was itching, and I had not grown up with lice. I didn't really know much about it. I didn't know how normal it was, and honestly, I didn't know that there a bug could actually live in your hair. So when my hair was itching, I had a friend at my house, and she looked at my hair, and she said, Well, you've got head lice. I said, What? How could that be like? How does this bug live in my hair? How did it get there? I had a million questions. And so that kind of started my journey. I hired the only company I could find. There was only one lady that had started a company. She de loused all four kids and myself. And I didn't really remember much of that experience, but I just remember, Oh, thank God, it's out. So at my hair helpers, we use non toxic products. We put them on the hair, we section it, we go through with the fine tooth comb. You know, it takes maybe an hour, maybe two hours, so you leave our salon knowing it's gone, which is beautiful. So as a pediatrician, I'm very familiar with lice. I know that it's a very normal, common occurrence with children, with families, but I do find that there's a lot of shame around lice. I think a lot of parents, they all dread getting an email from school that there's a case in the classroom. Or I meet a lot of parents that don't want to talk about it. They want to keep it a secret. They don't want their friends and family members to know, because they worry about how they're going to be perceived if someone else finds out that their kid has lice in their hair. Why do you think this came to be? Why, in your opinion, is there so much shame around lice? Well, there, there are a lot of myths surrounding lice. So when I first started my company and I was doing research on lice, I was shocked at just the differing things I was reading, that they didn't match up with the CDC. They didn't match up with what people were saying. I mean, the myths are just crazy. I'm so excited to talk to you for this reason, because I agree there are many, many myths out there about lice. So is it okay if we go through them? Oh yeah, I'd love to absolutely okay. So the first question I have for you, is lice related to hygiene at all? Is it true that getting a diagnosis of lice comes from not being clean enough, not showering enough, for example? So I will tell you this, that hygiene has zero to do with lice. It's about being at the wrong place, at the wrong time. It's head to head contact, only which most people don't know. It's not living in your environment. You're not living in a dirty house that has lice crawling around. It's simply head to head contact, they love clean hair, they love dirty hair. They love curly hair. They love straight hair. They love babies. They love. Grandmas. They're equal opportunity bugs. They will go to anybody. So this is great to know. So it has nothing to do with hygiene. Will you say that again, nothing to do with hygiene. But I will tell you is that sometimes people have a lot of children. They're living in small quarters. All it takes is, you know, one case of lice to spread quickly to the rest of the family. So that's interesting, that you say that they like head to head contact. So a lot of times we give advice for kids not to share hats, not to share helmets, not to share bedding. Does that mean that that's a myth as well. I would say that 99% of lice is passed head to head. The other 1% we don't know, and I would not tell you that a hat is a good way of transporting lice, because they're not very coordinated. They can't just hang on in a hat and then the next person puts the hat on. They like long, dangling hair, and that's how they travel. And the way I know this is because I go to lice conferences once a year, and I'm with the world experts in lice, and I always ask them, Why is this so misunderstood? Why does everybody think it's in hats? It's in furniture? They need the blood to survive. If they end up on a couch or somewhere, a hairbrush, they're going to die quickly. And I asked the experts, what's the 1% you know, if 99% is passed head to head, what's that 1% they didn't know. They said, I don't know, but we know that it's head to head contact. That's fascinating. There's a saying that goes around the pediatrician community. We'll say that which kids wear we do not share. So that sounds like it may not be entirely true, that sharing things, or sharing hats in particular, might not be the greatest source of spreading lice. That's so interesting to me. Maybe a hairbrush, you know, but they did studies in the hair, on the lice and hair brushes and their legs were broken, the lice under the microscope, their legs were all broken. Now here's something interesting. This is going to prove my point. During covid, when all the kids were six feet apart, I did not have one new case of lice. The only cases I had were cases that were left over from kids in school. Had been, you know, breeding in their hair for a few months. But like I said, all of us nitpickers got together, and we're like, see, we told you, during covid, nobody got lice. They were all six feet apart. Okay, so that's interesting. That makes sense, that head to head contact would be the primary source of spread. I still have a hard time, you know, it's still ingrained in me not to share hair brushes and not to share hats, but I think that's really interesting, that that's the primary way that it's spread. And it makes sense, as you said, that the lice like to feed on the scalp. Well, what I like to tell my customers, when I see them face to face, I'll say, I want you to know lice is not living in your home, and it's not living in your bedding. It's not living in your couch. If it falls off onto one of those areas, it's dead or dying. And I tell them, it's nice to have a clean home. It just doesn't impact lice. You can go nuts on your house. Clean it. That feels good, but there's not going to be an outbreak of lice because you didn't clean your home. It has to do with checking every family member, making sure every family member is clear. That's how you get lice back. And you get lice back from your friendship group. Your kids brought home lice because they had a friend with lice. That's how you get it, not because you didn't clean your home, or you didn't scour everything, and I found that so interesting, such misinformation. It reminds me of illnesses, colds. For example, you get colds from other humans. You don't get colds from sitting on your couch, from from touching other things. Generally, yeah, yeah. The most, the most common way to get them is from somebody else that's sick, from your kid hanging out with somebody else who has a cold, right? You know, this is the most misunderstood bug which I which is why I love talking about it. For example, the eggs, the nets that the lice lay, they can't even hatch off your hair. So the whole fact of bagging stuff up for two weeks, I just imagine some poor little child with their stuffy, and they can't have their stuffy for two weeks because the parents think that that they're in the stuffed animals. I mean, it's just this information got circulated years ago, and so I'm just here to bust it. When I was a kid, I remember our family had an outbreak of lice. Myself and my two sisters and my mom did put all of our stuffed animals in a bag, all of our sheets in a bag. And I remember that very clearly, because I missed having my toys to play with. So so interesting to know that that didn't make a difference. Doesn't make any difference. But I tell people, if it makes a difference in your mental state, by all means, clean your home. Mm. Yeah. So just in conclusion, if parents want to vacuum, if they want to clean, if they want to wash all the bedding, it may be overkill, but it's not going to contribute to worsening of the spread of lice, but it's having a clean home never hurt anyone. It's not going to solve your life's problem, but it's going to serve it's going to solve your anxiety because you did it fair enough, and that's and that's worth something right now. How about how lice move? How they transport themselves? Do they jump or fly from head to head? Okay, so the anatomy of a life bug is that they have three legs on each side of their body. They they don't have wings. They can't fly, thank God. And they can't jump. They have no back legs, so they crawl very quickly. All it takes is your child, you know, hugging another child, looking at a maybe a book or computer screen together, sitting on a couch together, boom, crawls over. What I'm learning here is that long hair plays more of a factor in the spread of lice than I realized. I mean, they're equal opportunity, for sure, but long hair is a swinging bridge for the lice to crawl across. It makes it a little easier. Now, can you bust this myth? For me, are pets a source of lice? So for example, if my head touches a dog, can my dog be a source that spreads lice within my home, absolutely not. Dogs have a different body temperature and a different bug that loves them, fleas. And we don't carry fleas around and they don't carry lice around. We can't interchange the two bugs. This is great to know, so dogs and pets do not need to be treated. And it sounds like lice are only spread via human to human contact. That's right, that's right. I do get questions, like one lady threw her mattress out, and I'm thinking she's got them confused with bed bugs. Somebody's, you know, vacuuming, they're thinking about fleas. So this, this bug. Your best to check every family member. Okay? 20% of men get lice. 80% of moms get lice. Okay, so my next question is, what I would like parents to know is, how can they check their children for lice? So let's say they get that email from school there's been a lice outbreak. Where can they look on the scalp to confirm a lice diagnosis. That's a very good question. So the first place you want to look is the nape of the neck and behind the ears. For some reason it's nice and cozy and warm there, and that is the first place that the lice lay their eggs. They look like little brown or clear egg sacs. And the way to tell if it's dandruff or lice is that if it's dandruff, it flakes off and falls a lice, egg is not going to come off unless you pull it down with your nails. It's glued on there so that it can hatch. And the best way to know is to take your fingernails and slide it over. Is it feel bumpy? Is it glued at an angle? And you can check your child for lice. The best way to also check is to use a good lice comb, because sometimes a bug just passed and is hiding in there. They haven't laid eggs yet. And say, you find out, Oh, my kid's been exposed to lice. The only way to know is to wet the hair. I use like a mint shampoo and detangle the hair and just go through comb your kids scalp, swiping on a white paper towel, they look like little strawberry seeds. And another fact that people don't realize is that lice like to return to the same heads. It's a scent they leave behind, and they're more prone to go back to your child once you've had lives. And so what I tell parents, if you have a child prone to lies, they keep getting it over and over. You know you could have missed something, and it's coming back. So the best thing to do is, once a week, take a peek. Okay, that's my motto. Once a week, take a peek. If you see something interesting, and you don't know, you can send me a picture. And I always welcome that I get a lot of pictures of lice. Sometimes, when I'm out at a nice dinner with my husband, I'll get a picture of lice, and I'll say, excuse me one second. I have a very weird life, but you sound very passionate about it. And I'm also assuming it's possible that they're so easy to miss one or two and they could probably reinfect the scalp that way, correct? If you are doing a treatment yourself, if you've decided to get products and do a treatment, it is very hard to get everything, and I don't recommend chemicals. I don't use toxins. They keep making the recipe stronger. So red and Nyx, they just keep making the chemicals stronger and stronger, and the lice are more and more resistant. So what I do differently is I have oil. It suffocates them, especially. Special oil, special enzymes, and then we go through strand by strand, combing everything out. Now I have to admit to you, in my home, one of my kids did have lice a few years ago, and I did use the over the counter treatment. You know, we did retreat a couple weeks later just to make sure it was properly treated. And it did work in my situation. But I do have to say, even though I know the data has shown that permethrin, 1% is safe, I did smell the chemicals, and I would prefer not to use chemicals. So it's, it is nice to know about non chemical options, so I I definitely appreciate what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. In the in here's a little fact. The tiny bugs, the tiniest one that's newly hatched is called a nymph. They don't have developed nervous systems. So what if you're using a word to counter treatment, it's not going to kill them. It's not going to get them because it doesn't have anything in it to affect them. Interesting. It's too early in their life cycle. Now, a lot of people ask me about home remedies. Maybe they grew up using mayonnaise. I've heard coconut oil. I've heard about vinegar. I even heard about Vaseline, you know, covering the hair in Vaseline as a way to suffocate the lice. Do these actually work? Well, what I tell my customers is, if you use mayonnaise, you'll never look at a sandwich the same. It's kind of gross and messy. The idea is, you do want an oil and you do want a good comb. So I tell my customers, if I can't get to you tonight, just put some coconut oil on your hair. That'll at least hold you over until I could see you, because no matter what you're using, you still have to comb everything out. And I know you touched on this earlier, but what can people expect a typical visit at lice helpers to be like you said. It takes about an hour or two and you gently comb through all of the individual hair strands. Is there anything else that you want parents to know? So when you come to my salon, you are going to first of all have a great experience. Okay, they're all kid friendly. We are going to put you in a salon chair, and we are going to spray product on your hair. It's going to smell like mint, and first we check, we comb through the whole scalp to see if there's anything in there. And the minute we find something, we add more products. We use oils and enzymes. And then the technician is going to section the hair and go through the whole head. And then you're going to come back in five to seven days, we're going to see if there's been any more exposure to lice. Okay, we want to make sure that once you put your child back in the same environment, that they didn't get it again. It sounds good to me, yeah, and you're so experienced with lice, you've been dealing with head lice for so many years. What do you wish that more pediatricians and school nurses knew about lice management? So I would like them to know first of all, how to diagnose it. You've got to look at pictures see what it looks like. You've got to use a rule of thumb, when you're looking above the ears, nape of the neck, does it fall off easily? Does it crumble when you touch it? If it's lumpy, when you run your fingernails over it, it's lice. And then I would like them to know that the over the counter products are not effective anymore, that people need to find products that really work, enzymes and oils is what I use. But there's got to be these. Focus has to be checking every family member, and not cleaning and bagging and all that stuff that makes you exhausted. You have to just check the family and then you have to just treat them twice, okay, the first time, and then about a week later, that that basically is what I want doctors and nurses to know, and they need to study lice and see what it looks like so that they can really diagnose it. I think that's a really good point. I do agree, when my when I send my kids to camp, there are people that will double check all of the scalps of the campers before they enter camp, and I can see they're not looking at the nape of the neck and behind the ears. They're looking at the top of the head. So I think that is really helpful advice. Yeah. I mean, I could spot an egg a mile away once you know it. You know it. I think the most common question I hear is that parents aren't sure what is dandruff and what is head lice. So Right? I appreciate you bringing up the point that lice really are hard to take off. Yeah, your fingernails have to pinch it and pull it down. Yes. And can you also talk about where on the scalp it's typically found? Yes, so lice like to hang out above the ears. It's nice and warm there. The first place that I check is above the. Ears, and that's usually where we find the most amount of eggs, and the nape of the neck and the crown of the head, and about how far away from the scalp will you find the nets? So the nets are glued a quarter inch from the scalp. So what happens is, the female louse comes over to your hair, and they have to have a male. They have to be impregnated. And then what happens is they are ready to start laying eggs. So they lay about three eggs each time. They lay eggs in about three times a day, and then those eggs hatch in about seven days. And then the little nymph molts three times and becomes an adult egg laying. Louse, I'm thinking I want to come join you next time you go to your yearly lice conference. It's so much fun. I've never had a pediatrician come. Sounds interesting? Yeah, I don't know what that says about me, but it sounds very interesting to me. And what would your message be to a parent that just got that dreaded message from their school classroom that there's lice going around? What would you what would your message be to that family? Well, there's one of two things you can do. You can either give us a call, or find a lice company wherever you live and go down there and get your child checked. Or you can order my products. You can order a good lice comb, and you're going to get that message. You're going to get that call if you have a child, there's no way around it. So you can prepare yourself when you do and have things on hand, a good lice comb and some shampoo conditioner with mint. And learn how to comb, learn how to check. And out of curiosity, I've been hearing about sprays to keep lice from reinfecting The hair. Is there any data to support that? That's helpful? That's a new one for me that I've been hearing about recently. Okay, so lice hate the smell of mint, and remember, I told you that they'd like to return to the same hair. They leave a scent behind. So what you're trying to do is camouflage your scent, and there's not 100% effectiveness in anything, but with the hair back, braided bunt for the girls, the hair is not dangling down, and then spray them with the mint repellent. I like that. Braided back and bunt, yes. Okay, okay. And finally, can you just remind us, you know, after all, this podcast is called, your child is normal? Can you reaffirm to families getting lice doesn't mean that something is wrong with your child? Correct? I am writing a book called everybody gets lice because I have to tell you that I've had people every age, from newborn babies to 99 year old ladies, and then I've been to some of the scariest parts of La helping to remove lice. And I've been to the biggest reality star homes for lice. So I will tell you, if you go your whole lifetime, you've never had it that is so rare, maybe if your head is shaved, maybe if you're bald, but you just have to be prepared, because it's going to happen, and all you have to do is check your children's hair. And another point I want to bring up that I think people may not be fully aware about is that lice don't actually cause disease, right? So when I think about how mosquitoes, for example, may carry malaria or West Nile virus or other illnesses, lice really are just a nuisance, correct? Absolutely true. Lice are completely harmless. They do not carry any infectious diseases. They're not like ticks with Lyme disease or mosquitoes. They're just a pain in the booty. Just a pain in the booty. I think that's a really helpful point to remind everybody. So thank you. Yes, you're very welcome. Well, this has been so helpful before we close, can you tell everybody? Where can they find you? I know not everybody that listens lives in Southern California, but where are your locations? Absolutely so I have six locations, 1000 Oaks Downey, Pasadena, Riverside, Redondo Beach, and opening Costa Mesa. I have mobile service all the way from Santa Barbara all the way down to San Diego. You can buy my products online. I'm on Amazon, and you can also buy them on my website@www.my hair helpers.com, we do have somebody on the phones from 7am till 10 at night. 310-874-4550, 8744550, and if you have any questions, you can text me and you will get me and I can answer any questions. Or if you find something, you can send me a picture, offering to give a number that someone can text for you. Text them back. That's very generous of you. It is. But I love what I do, and I love helping people. I found my niche. Well, thank you. As the kids say these days, let's normalize such and such. So we're normalizing lice, and that's great. Thank you so much. I love meeting people that are passionate about whatever it is they do, and I love meeting someone that's so passionate about treating head lice. So thank you so much. Hi everyone and welcome. Welcome back to your child is normal. I'm your host and pediatrician, Dr Jessica Hochman, so today we're discussing a topic that makes many people start scratching their heads the moment they hear the name head lice. But did you know that much of what we think we know about lice is actually myth and misinformation? So to help us separate fact from fiction, I'm joined by Amy chinnian. She's a lice expert, and she's worked with many, many families to demystify this very normal and very treatable childhood issue. So in today's episode, we'll talk about what lice are and what they aren't, how they really are spread, which treatments actually work, and how parents can feel calmer and more confident if lice happened to show up in your family. Now I hope I don't make anyone start scratching by me saying this, but let's start talking about head lice. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of your child is normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review, wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr. Jessica.