On the misery scale where one is a mosquito bite and ten would be a yeast infection, head lice rates about a four. Getting bit by dog or cat fleas is far more annoying and far more painful. Pet fleas are also harder to eliminate than head lice or body lice. Although there is a very high creepiness factor in head lice, you get used to the idea very quickly, because you don’t have any other choice.
Symptoms of head lice
The first symptoms of head lice are not the itchiness, as is commonly thought. It’s finding black specks on your fingertips and under your fingers whenever you either run them through your hair or do manage to give the odd scratch as you would normally do throughout the course of the day. Those black specks are head lice droppings. You might also find these smudged on your pillow if you never scratch your head.
The second head lice symptom will be in the hair that you normally shed. The strands will not just consist of hair. Somewhere along the strand, usually about halfway down, is a teardrop-shaped hard round thing. That thing is a of head lice egg. Don’t just let the strand of hair drop onto the floor. Throw it in the trash or burn it.
And then your head starts to really itch. You can’t help but scratch, even though you know the head lice will be waving at you from underneath your fingernails as a result. Things are really bad when you see the adult louses crawling down the strands of your hair to fly off and make their fortunes.
Getting Rid Of Them
Head lice symptoms are one of the easier itchy conditions you can successfully treat. First, you should wash your hair, making sure every strand is saturated. This will drown most of the adults. To get the rest, you need to thoroughly coat your hair with at least half a bottle of any hair conditioner you can get a hold of. This suffocates the rest of the adult louses. Leave it on for about ten minutes, then comb your hair with a nit comb, then rinse.
Put all of your bedding and sleepwear into the dryer (washing isn’t necessary) and run them through for ten minutes. That’s all it will take to kill the eggs laying about. You also need to go buy and use a nit comb and over the counter head lice medications to combat the symptoms of head lice, these will do a good job killing your tiny hitch hikers.
Filed under Health by on Nov 6th, 2008. 
Drug use among teenagers has reached tragic levels. No matter how on top of it you are, your teens are going to be exposed to drugs at school, the very place you think should be a safe environment. Mrs. Reagan’s ‘Just say no to drugs’ campaign fell flat on its face. The fact is that teenagers perceive adults as old stupid people that have never seen the outside of a paper bag. Adults, try as they may, face an uphill war in safe guarding their children from the ravaging effects of drugs.
The battle is made tougher by the fact that most of us have prescription medications in our cupboards. When confronting the issue of teenagers and drugs, you have to present a sound argument that distinguishes between necessary prescriptions and illegal drugs. This isn’t easy. Some well known prescription medicines are being sold at school as a way to catch a buzz. Teens don’t know that these medications are issued in duplicate or triplicate, as a method to control the use of certain narcotics. Not having experienced a real need for these drugs themselves, they may well conclude that their parents are experiencing and liking some high that they are for some reason being denied.
One more problem with teaching children about the issue of teen drug abuse is that this society does not make any distinction between drugs. Some medicinal drugs have a place, but when it comes to teens and drugs, we say that every drug is bad. This is incorrect. Some kids need medications for a legitimate condition. Not used correctly, that medication can get a child high who doesn’t need it. Sometimes, that drug can have fatal consequences when taken as a ‘recreational’ drug.
Children are not capable of making those distinctions. For example, a person with extreme pain due to arthritis or cancer, could be prescribed codeine or another opiate to ease the pain. Children don’t comprehend that this patient doesn’t get high. That pain killer only dulls the pain. However, in the world of teens and drugs, this potentially dangerous drug becomes an opportunity tocatch a buzz. They don’t know the difference.
One big lie that encourages teenage drug use is the fable of marijuana. This street drug is posited as the first step to drug addiction, thrown in the same bag as heroin and crack cocaine. The same houy that grade school kid tries weed, the kid sees that although it gets them high and they like it, they can hide this new habit from their parents and it doesn’t make them crazy. They conclude that the rest of the warnings about kids and drugs are deceptions. That’s the reason why they step into the jaws of the really dangerous drugs.
As a nation, we need to educate our children. Teach them the effects of drugs. Cocaine, crack, heroin and drugs like ‘ecstasy’ can devastate their lives or kill them. Be honest. We can defend our teens.Addiction is a serious problem in our society today but with the “proper” education we can teach our future generations the realities of addictions and drug abuse.
Filed under Health by on Nov 6th, 2008.