By Lice Clinics of America 

Wonder how long it will take for you to get rid of lice. The answer really depends on how you treat the infestation, and how effective the treatment is at killing or removing both the lice and the lice eggs.

First of all, if you do nothing, the lice won’t go away. Adult female lice will lay around 88 eggs in their lifetime (see the lice life cycle), so unless you get rid of the infestation, lice will continue to live in your hair for months and years.

If you use a lice treatment that isn’t very effective at killing the lice eggs, you should anticipate it taking at least a week or more to eradicate the lice on your head. Because eggs take 7-9 days to hatch, you’ll probably need to do a follow-up treatment about a week after your initial treatment. Because it may be possible that there are new eggs from female lice that weren’t killed in the first treatment, you may need to do a third treatment in another week.

If you’re looking for a one-time treatment, you may want to consider going to a professional lice-removal business. These businesses will either spend 2-3 hours combing the lice and eggs out of your hair (a lice comb can be very effective in the hands of an expert) or treat you with the AirAllé™ lice device, which kills lice and 99.2 percent of the lice eggs in a single, 30-minute treatment, followed by a short post-treatment comb-out.