Back-to-school time marks the beginning of the weeks when your children will start to bring home new friends, most of whom you will like, but it’s also the time when they may bring home some very unwelcome guests – head lice and bowel worms.
Head lice live on the scalp and feed by sucking blood. They can’t fly or jump so they spread by crawling from one host to another during head-to-head contact. Admittedly, with today’s better housing standards, these parasites are not as plentiful as before but they’ve been around forever, and they haven’t gone away. As only a third of people with infestations have itchy scalps, careful weekly inspections are recommended. You may not actually see the lice but their eggs (nits) usually turn up on a trawl with a fine-tooth comb. There are several good remedies available. I know of one house where ‘the shampoo’ is used once a month anyway, just in case. You can’t pick up lice from your pets – they have their specific lice and we have ours.
Bowel worms are probably even less common today than head lice. They come in two forms – tape-worms, which are acquired by eating underdone beef or pork, and roundworms which are passed literally from hand to mouth.
Worm-eggs are passed from the host’s body with the stools and, with poor sanitary practices, especially not washing the hands after using the toilet, eggs can adhere to the fingers and pass on to food much later. The hands should always be thoroughly washed before eating because, at some point, you could have picked up worm eggs from someone else, just by normal contact, shaking hands, exchanging money, people passing you the salt, etc. Again, routine worming with any of several available products is recommended.
Some worms of dogs and cats can cause serious problems in man so it is most important to keep pets wormed on a very regular basis. And, remember, animals use their tongues to clean themselves all over, so be just a bit careful about the closeness of your contact with them. From a health point of view, being licked (kissed) by your dog is probably not the wisest move.
Head lice live on the scalp and feed by sucking blood. They can’t fly or jump so they spread by crawling from one host to another during head-to-head contact. Admittedly, with today’s better housing standards, these parasites are not as plentiful as before but they’ve been around forever, and they haven’t gone away. As only a third of people with infestations have itchy scalps, careful weekly inspections are recommended. You may not actually see the lice but their eggs (nits) usually turn up on a trawl with a fine-tooth comb. There are several good remedies available. I know of one house where ‘the shampoo’ is used once a month anyway, just in case. You can’t pick up lice from your pets – they have their specific lice and we have ours.Bowel worms are probably even less common today than head lice. They come in two forms – tape-worms, which are acquired by eating underdone beef or pork, and roundworms which are passed literally from hand to mouth. Worm-eggs are passed from the host’s body with the stools and, with poor sanitary practices, especially not washing the hands after using the toilet, eggs can adhere to the fingers and pass on to food much later. The hands should always be thoroughly washed before eating because, at some point, you could have picked up worm eggs from someone else, just by normal contact, shaking hands, exchanging money, people passing you the salt, etc. Again, routine worming with any of several available products is recommended. Some worms of dogs and cats can cause serious problems in man so it is most important to keep pets wormed on a very regular basis. And, remember, animals use their tongues to clean themselves all over, so be just a bit careful about the closeness of your contact with them. From a health point of view, being licked (kissed) by your dog is probably not the wisest move.
