Not necessarily.
And even if it did, why would you go to the extreme of shaving your head if you didn’t otherwise want to? There are actual treatments available (keep reading) to help you with lice, dandruff or other hair-related problems.
A woman in the UK shaved her son’s head to get rid of the lice but it didn’t solve the problem. Mind you, we may not know the whole story as getting rid of lice involves more than just getting rid of your hair, as we’ll see below.
If you’re planning on shaving your head, that’s great. But shaving it won’t necessarily get rid of the lice 100%. And even if it does, you have other things to take care of such as washing any clothing you wore while you had head lice. More on that below too.
When I was a kid, I remember the yearly lice test at school. A nurse would come in and check the head of each student with a long, thin wooden stick, moving our hair around looking for lice eggs.
These days, we’re asked to check out own kids’ hair for lice and in the past year, I’ve received 2 letters from my kids’ school that one of their classmates had lice. The letter asked us to keep track of our kids’ hair and to keep them home from school if they got lice.
Will lice go away if i shave my head? Well, the letter stated the correct form of treatment and shaving your head wasn’t on the list.
Why Lice Will Not Go Away If You Shave Your Head
Lice appears on your hair but it actually lives and feeds on blood from your scalp. Lice simply use your hair to lay its eggs because your hair is a nice safe place for the eggs to rest. So when you shave your head, you remove the nest so to speak where lice like to lay their eggs.
But some lice may still live on your skin feeding on your blood waiting for the hair to grow back again to lay more eggs.
Plus, you might have gotten lice from another person who still has it and may give it to you again. Did they shave their hair off too?
Also, unwashed clothes you wore while you had head lice may still have live critters that haven’t died yet.
Could shaving your head get rid of lice? It could. But there’s another way to ensure you kill it 100%.
How To Get Rid Of Lice
Treatment of head lice typically involves:
- Using a nit comb to comb out lice from your hair.
- Using a pediculicide shampoo or another medical treatment to kill the lice.
- Washing and disinfecting any clothing you wore while you had lice to ensure any lice transferred to the clothing are removed.
- Making sure other people you are physically close to (ie. your household) don’t also have lice that they can give you again.
So giving yourself a buzzcut won’t help on its own although used in conjunction with a medical treatment as above will help to remove lice from your hair while the treatment kills remaining lice from your scalp.
Check out this detailed page from the CDC for very specific instructions and background info.
See your doctor if in doubt.
Interesting Facts About Lice
- Live are parasites and must live off a host to survive and reproduce.
- Lice don’t fly or jump from someone’s head to another. We used to tell each other this as kids but it turns out that’s wrong. They actually crawl from an infected human head to another human head.
- We also used to tell each other lice only live on dirty hair. Turns out they like hair full stop, whether it’s dirty or not. So getting lice isn’t a reflection of your cleanliness.
- Lice also live amongst short hair too.
- Body lice can survive on unwashed clothing. Wash clothes and don’t share them to avoid spreading body lice.
- Public lice (crabs) is spread through sexual contact.
- Getting lice is not seasonal. It can happen at any time of the year.
- Lice only live, feed and reproduce from a human head. They don’t live in your house or on your pets, clothes, etc.
- You also can’t rid of lice by coloring your hair or using hair spray or other haircare item to kill it.
- Forget about using tea tree oil, lavender oil, etc because that doesn’t work to get rid of lice either. Although some people believe they may help with the itchiness.
Conclusion
- Does shaving your head get rid of lice? It may, but shaving your head isn’t the solution to get rid of lice completely. A medical treatment as described above is a better option.
- Lice feeds off blood so it uses your scalp to survive and lays its eggs in your hair.
- Lice is a parasite and can only live on a human head although body lice and pubic lice also exist.
- Getting lice isn’t due to uncleanliness as lice will live on clean or dirty hair.
- The CDC has a very detailed page linked above that discusses what they recommend for treating lice.
If you’d have lice, how did you get rid of it?