Lowana's Study on Lice

[Guest guest]

WOW! And I thought *I* was an email packrat! 1997!!! Butch, you sure got ME

beat!

Cindy

www.pittstownsoapworks.com

 

 

 

-------------- Original message from Butch Owen : -------------- Hi CM,

 

Her study is below. :-) Butch

 

> Re: Lice...Buuuuu! (long)

> lowana (Lowana Veal)

> Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:55:53 +0800

>

 

 

[Guest guest]

Hi CM,

 

> On the old idma list was a gal named Lowana. She did a lot of research

> on lice and EO's. I think it was a species of peppermint that she ID'd

> as being helpful.

> C-M

 

Her study is below. :-) Butch

 

> Re: Lice...Buuuuu! (long)

> lowana (Lowana Veal)

> Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:55:53 +0800

>

> At the risk of boring those who have already seen it, I am

> resending the posting (amended slightly) I did on lice at the end

> of April. I worked with lice for 6 years so know quite a bit

> about it. I have also got, I think, general information I wrote

> on lice after being appalled at how the media/authorities were

> treating a lice outbreak here. Contact me privately

> if you're interested in that - it's not EO stuff. Oh, olive oil

> works pretty well too as a killer, and kills the eggs too. Coat

> your scalp and hair with it, leave on overnight and rinse off.

> Yes, it is important to check other people's heads with whom the

> person might have come into contact and to treat them if

> necessary, but lice don't live long off the head - not more than

> 48 hours, and they don't live in sofas etc. as cat flea larvae

> are prone to do. If they are found off the head, they are

> probably dying. We used to say at the Medical Entomology

> Centre in Cambridge that it was a fallacy that lice live in

> combs, chairs, movie seats, etc. There is a lot of misinformation

> about lice; there are not many research organisations which work

> with them.

> Finally, before I post the original posting, there is a chance

> that this information will appear in a US newsletter called

> Nutrition Insights, a subsidiary of the US magazine Lets Live.

> The editor contacted me recently and wanted to verify the

> information as someone had written a short article about it. It

> is scheduled to appear in August.

>

> I want to share the results of some experiments I did with

> essential oilsas a means of killing headlice (adults AND eggs -

> the latter are muchharder to kill). I wrote up the results last

> year for Complementary Therapies in Nursing and Midwifery vol.

> 2(4) and in a slightly differentformat, more geared to

> aromatherapists, in the Aromatherapist vol. 3(3).The latter paper

> reviews existing lice recipes found in variousaromatherapy books.

>

> One of the reviewers of the CTNM paper suggested that I push for

> aclinical trial, so I added that too. I know clinical trials are

> expensiveto carry out, but I think some sort of proper study

> needs to be carried outon children - if anyone is interested,

> please let me know.

>

> I should mention that the research was carried out at the

> Medical Entomology Centre in Cambridge, where we carried out a lot

> of experimentalwork on lice products for companies, so the

> procedure used for lice andeggs was based on our standard

> technique. The EO work was a side-line ofmine. Having said that,

> an essential oil researcher suggested and suppliedthe original

> blended oils, with a note of what concentration to use and

> tofollow up the treatment with a rinse.

>

> I wasn't interested in anything that didn't kill the eggs as well

> as theadults. One of the proprietary chemical products on the

> market consistentlykills only 67% of the eggs, but I don't think

> that's good enough so wasn'tinterested in anything less than 80%

> kill.

>

> I started off by dissolving the oils in shampoo, but that didn't

> work (lice shampoos never do). So then I used 40% alcohol

> (ethanol) as a solvent, andlater water. 40% alcohol is the

> concentration used in louse lotions, so I hoped it wouldn't be too

> irritant. According to Gattefosse, if you dissolve EOs in alcohol,

> the alcohol loses its toxicity... The lice were dipped in the

> solution, at a concentration of 2 drops EO to 10 mls solvent,

> blotted dry, and left overnight in an incubator. Then they were

> shampooed with a normal shampoo, and then a rinse mixture of 2

> drops essential oil to 100mls of vinegar/ water (50:50) was

> poured over them.

>

> Anyway...the blended oils that worked best were a 50:50 mixture

> of tea tree and cinnamon leaf (not cinnamon bark), which killed

> all the lice and 96% ofthe eggs; and peppermint and nutmeg at a

> 30:70 ratio, which killed 82% ofeggs and all the adults. The

> solvent in these cases was alcohol. A rosemary/red thyme mixture

> was also tried, but didn't work well. Also,without the rinse the

> oils were hopeless against the eggs.

>

> I then tried various oils by themselves. I tried pine (Pinus

> sylvestris) asthat is supoposed to be an insect repellant and I

> thought it might work.However, both it and rosemary had lower egg

> mortalities than the controls,and only killed 78-79% of the

> adults. I abandoned any more work on them.

>

> I also tried red thyme (thymol chemotype), tea tree, cinnamon

> leaf, origanum (oregano) and aniseed by themselves. I tried

> aniseed as in herbalmedicine it is supposed to be effective

> against lice (but it isn't - I tried that first). I often had

> higher than average mortalities with the controls, probably

> because some molecules " escaped " and contaminated them.

> Nevertheless, I persevered. The percentage mortalities

> always take into account the control mortalities.

>

> Not all the oils were tested at the same time. Origanum had 100%

> mortality with both eggs and adults when dissolved in alcohol, and

> so did aniseed and cinnamon leaf, thought the control mortality

> for the egg results in the last two oils was abnormally high. Red

> thyme had 84% mortality with adults and 92% with eggs, though it

> was in the same batch as aniseed and cinnamonso the egg results

> may not be accurate. Tea tree had 93% adult mortality and 83% egg

> mortality. A rinse was used in all cases. The rinse by itselfis

> ineffective.

>

> I also tested some of the oils in water rather than alcohol, and

> found that aniseed still killed 100% of the adults and eggs, and

> origanum killed 99.3%of eggs and 100% of adults. Red thyme killed

> all the adults but only 51% ofeggs; tea tree killed 94% of adults

> and 59% of eggs, and cinnamon leaf killed 86% of adults but only

> 26% of eggs.

>

> I had to shake the mixtures each time because they weren't

> particularlysoluble. It may be possible to use jojoba oil as a

> solvent, which will dealwith the solubility problem. Jojoba oil

> is said to dissolve sebum (Price,1993), which means that the oils

> may penetrate the insect cuticle faster.Alcohol is also known to

> penetrate the cuticle more quickly.

>

> The effective components of the oils are likely to be phenols,

> phenolicethers, ketones and 1,8-cineole (these components were

> also identifies as effective anti-parasitic components by Penoel

> and Franchomme inL'Aromatherapie Exactement, but I didn't know

> that at the time). Somealdehydes and sesquiterpenes may also be

> effective. These are the commonconstituents of these oils (and

> no, they don't all have all of them). A French research team had

> found previously that myrtle oil was effective against lice, and

> attributed the effective ingredients to cineole and, to alesser

> extent, alpha-pinene and linalool (Gauthier et. al., 1989).

>

> Other oils which also contain significant amounts of these

> constituents may also be effective. Thus winter and summer

> savoury, clove bud, fennel,hyssop, sage, caraway, verbena,

> Spanish marjoram and all the oils from the eucalyptus family

> (myrtle, niaouli, cajuput and Eucalyptus globulus) may also be

> effective.

>

> NOW...the problem is/could be toxicity, especially as the oils

> are likely to be used on primary age children, who get lice most

> often, and also pregnant women will probably sometimes be carrying

> out the treatments. Tisserand and Balacs (1995) classify all these

> oils as safe if not ingested orally, though they say that aniseed

> should not be used on children under 2. Many others, though, say

> that virtually all the essential oils mentioned bar tea tree

> should not be used by pregnant women. Should aniseed and origanum

> be used at all? Also, there is the question of dosage. 50 mls

> ofsolution is generally regarded as a suitable amount to use in

> licetreatment, but if the dose rates are extrapolated, that means

> that 12 dropsof essential oil are applied. Is this too much?

>

> With some of the oils such as tea tree, red thyme and possibly

> cinnamon leaf, the procedure should probably be repeated after a

> week. Does that effect anything?

>

> REFERENCES

> Gauthier, R. et. al. (1989) Activite d'extraits de Myrtus

> communis contre Pediculis humanus capitis. Plantes medicinales et

> Phytotherapie vol.23(2),95-108.

> Price, S. (1993) Shirley Price's Aromatherapy Workbook. Thorsons,

> London.

> Tisserand, R, & Balacs, T. (1995) Essential Oil Safety.

> ChurchillLivingstone, Edinburgh.

>

> That is a summary. In one or the other papers I mention existing

> essential oil recipes by various authors, possible mechanisms of

> action, more on toxicity, etc. I am concerned that the information

> may be used before it's been properly evaluated as it has now been

> relatively widely disseminated (especially in Cambridge, where I

> was living at the time). So...

>

> Love and peace,

> Lowana

> lowana