Transcript for: Understanding and Managing Common Pests
Hi, I'm Susan Taylor,
with Scripps Health in San Diego, California. Please subscribe to our
Scripps Health YouTube channel. Today, we're gonna talk about flees, ticks, lice, and bed bugs. What we affectionately
call, creepy crawlies. If you've got kids or pets,
you are at higher risk. Joining us is Family Medicine
Doctor, Christen Benke. She's at Scripps Clinic
in San Diego, California. Thanks so much for being with us. - My pleasure. - So you've actually
had personal experience with some of these creepy crawlies. Your daughter actually
had lice in kindergarten? - Sure did. It's every parent's rite of passage.
(Susan laughs) She, as with all kindergartners, likes to hug her friends, and they touch heads when they're playing under the play structure
and on the playground. And we had a little bout of
it run through our family. - So what are lies, how do you
get them, and the symptoms, and how do you treat them? - Sure. So lice, super common, tiny, tiny, little insect
that likes to live on a host, whether it's an animal or a human. They like to feed on our scalp, and that's what causes the itching. And they basically cannot jump, so you don't have to worry about them getting onto you from
some place you don't know. But they do like to crawl
from one head to the next. The way you know you have 'em is basically if you have some itching
where they are living. And after a couple of days or weeks, if that itching isn't going away, you can have 'em looked at by a doctor or a close friend, your hairdresser. But basically, they look
like a little sesame seed. And unlike dandruff,
they won't really rub off if you rub the hair. They'll be kinda stuck on. So that's how you know what they are. The way you treat them
is with a cream rinse. Either an over-the-counter
brand or a prescription brand. The cost varies based
on the newest, greatest, you know, brands that are out. And what you have to do
is put the cream rinse on, walk around for 10 minutes, and then you want to rinse it off. Wash all of the bedding, the
clothing, hats and headbands, and hairbrushes, and such in hot water. And then with clean wet hair-- - Sweatshirts, too, with hoods? - Sweatshirts, too. Anything with a hood, anything
that touches the hair. The lice can live for up
to two days without a host, but after that, they'll die. This is every parent's dream. It's a very, very fine toothed comb. And on wet hair, you'll
sit in the bright light, probably in your kitchen or bathroom, and you'll need to go
through very carefully each little strand of hair. This is what gets the little
eggs off that are so sticky. And you'll collect the nits
and the little eggs in here, and then you'll kinda wipe
them off with a tissue. And then after that, nine days later, you'll do the cream rinse one more time. And that's what will kill
all of the little eggs that have had a chance to hatch now. - What's the difference between
head lice and body lice? - So body lice are much less common. Really typically in areas
where there's poor hygiene, communal living, classically a homeless, or people who are in communal beds. They live on fabric, usually at the seams of the waistband of your
pants or of a shirt. They will cause local
irritation to the skin, not necessarily itching so much. The treatment is a lot easier. You just wash all that
clothing in really hot water, and then the areas under the armpits and along the waistband will
clear up all on their own. - So you talk about these
special rinses for your head. What about home remedies,
such as mayonnaise or olive oil, or butter? Where do you apply
those, and do those work? - People would apply them to the scalp with the attempt to suffocate
the little lice insect and asphyxiate it to death. Unfortunately, as natural
and holistic as they sound, they just haven't been
proven to be effective. So what about fleas? How do you get them? - Fleas typically live on
animals, pets, dogs, cats, animals that come in and
outdoors, living in nature. They also live on a host animal. But they can jump. And they can jump up to two feet. So if you're going to have any flea bites, you'll see them usually
within two feet of the carpet or of a cushion that an animal, maybe your dog likes to sleep on. And that'll be the extent of it there. - And what are the symptoms,
and how do they spread, and what's the treatment? - Local irritation of the
skin, little red bites, a little itching and scratching. The treatment would be basically getting that animal treated. They have shampoos and treatments, collars that you can put on your animal. So you would treat your animal and then you'll be cured after that. - And what about ticks? - Ticks, now, they live
out in nature also. Typically on wild animals
like deer and rabbits. And they will be in the
shrubs and the tall grasses, kind of near hiking trails
or even out in your backyard. They will transfer by maybe a small jump, but mostly just from
brushing against the foliage. And they will cause a bite. They will typically grab on and bite and hang on for a few hours, feeding on your blood. And then they'll fall off all
on their own within a day. So if you didn't notice that you had the tick on
you in the initial part, it will fall off all by
itself leaving no trace. Very rarely, it can cause some diseases. You'll see a rash, either on your wrists or on your body where the tick had been. And so you'll know that
you have maybe contracted something from a tick that way. - And how do you treat the ticks? - The tick, if you see a tick on you, you want to really carefully
grab it with some tweezers, or come on into the office and we'll do it under a bright light. But you want to make sure
you grab it at the neck where it's attached onto you. If you were to just grab
the body or flick it off, you could leave the head attached. - And what would the
head grow another body? - No, no, no, but it would...
(Susan laughs) You would then have to wait for it to drop off all on its own
and it would be expelled. - Okay. - Yep.
And what about bed bugs? - Bed bugs. - So we all think about hotels and places where we've gone traveling. Bedbugs typically live in the seams similar to on the edge of your mattress and they will cause bites usually, whatever body part was in
contact with that mattress. So if you're being
really, really attentive, you could strip the bedding off the bed and inspect the mattress. Typically, any place
that's of good quality will have a good-quality housekeeping team that will make sure the
bed bugs are taken care of. If you do notice that you
have bugs in the upholstery of your chairs or of your mattress, you pretty much have to
buy an exterminator service to come and take care of it that way. There's no way to treat it yourself. - Are bedbugs common in people's homes? - Less, so, no. Normally in homeless
shelter-type situations or in places where
there's a lot of turnover of a lot of people coming through and it's hard to get
things clean regularly. - Okay. Hold this thought, we're gonna come back and talk about this in
a couple of minutes. If you don't catch these
creepy crawlies early, what can happen? Because they actually can do some real damage to your household. So we'll come back and talk
about that in a few minutes. Are there any other creepy crawlies that you would like to mention? - Ah, boy, we could go on and on, spiders and all this such.
(Susan laughs) But these are the ones that
most commonly affect families right here in our neighborhood. - And all of these bugs, are they more prevalent
in southern climates, you know, like California or Florida where we really don't have a winter? - Definitely, yeah, they do typically spread more during
temperate times of the year. If you live in an area where there's cold and snow, they're less common. Here, there's no season
where we don't have them. But still we see them more commonly when people are outdoors, spring and summer. - And then you talked about over-the-counter treatments
and prescription drugs. How long should you consider doing these over-the-counter treatments before you consider a prescription drug to treat these creepy crawlies? - It's pretty much how
much patience you have. How many times do you
wanna run through the scalp with the little comb that I showed you? That's quite tedious. So I know families that will
do it two or three times over the course with the
nine days in between. But if the itching comes back each time, that's probably the time to get a prescription strength cream rinse. And for the cost and the hassle, it does give you some peace of mind. When we had this run through our family, we went straight to a prescription. And it was really nice because the one that we
used was called Sklice. And it kills the nit as well as the lice. So you don't have to
go back nine days later and do another treatment. You don't have to be so diligent
about making sure you got every last egg off of every last hair. - And we wanna make an appeal to parents because they are sometimes
reluctant to come forward and talk about this
because they feel ashamed about having these parasites in the home, in the bed, on the kids. - Sure. - And you're saying that
they shouldn't feel ashamed? - Not at all. Everyone's been there, I promise you. And what we really just want to do is get rid of the itching. So there's no person of
any socioeconomic status or living situation that isn't
at risk for these little guys and we just treat them when they happen. - And as much as we love our pets, they obviously can bring insects and ticks and fleas into the homes. So how do you keep them clean and check them for these
external parasites? - Yeah, well certainly if you have a cat or a dog that comes in
and out all the time, you're going to be
seeing your vet regularly doing some sort of couple
times a year flea treatment. You'll notice if your own pet themselves is itching and scratching and you'll get them treated by the vet. From ticks, this is actually
a really good point. When you go out hiking and
having fun, come back in if you shower, within about two hours, rinse your clothes off in really hot water that'll help to kill any tick that might have hitched
a ride on your clothes. - Do these creepy crawlies
cause any serious illnesses or is it just a lot of scratching? - Typically when it's lice or
flea bites or bed bugs, no. There's no serious illness in there. It's just the itching of the skin and the irritation of the skin. With ticks, there are two
diseases that can come. One's called Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and the other one is Lyme disease, which everyone's heard of. They're both very easy to detect. They both cause similar type symptoms. Malaise, fever, body aches, a rash. The classic Lyme disease rash is called the erythema migrans. And it's a target-like rash. It's red in the center
with a little clearing and then another red
ring around the outside. The Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever typically will have a rash
on the wrist or the ankles, and then that'll progress to
a rash on the palms and soles. Docs and any practitioner could
pick 'em up pretty easily. And they're both easily treated with a course of antibiotics. Typically, doxycycline. - What should you tell your children about these creepy crawlies? Because obviously, you wanna protect them, but you don't want to scare them. - Sure. And believe me when my daughter found out that she had them, she was mortified. And so no. We just say, you know, from then on... And I'd even been told by another friend of mine with kids older, we just pull her hair back when she goes to school every day. We pull it back into a
ponytail, and that does wonders. You're not gonna keep 'em
from hugging and playing with their friends and touching heads. So I just told her, "Yeah,
you had a little bug, "we killed it off, nothing
to worry about there." And we just pull her hair
back into a little braid or a ponytail every day for school. - So you talked about kinda
cleaning out the seams of your furniture
Mmhmm. and your bed. Are there other steps
you can take to protect yourself and your home and your backyards from getting these
Sure. - creepy crawlies? - Yeah, ideally, you would
keep a lot of the shrubbery and foliage kind of pulled
back and neatly maintained. Just to minimize you know, when you're out playing frisbee and kicking
ball in the backyard, you're not gonna be running into a bunch of tall grasses and shrubs like that. The dogs are going to
get under the bushes, that's fine. Basically, just normal hygiene. You can inspect yourself if
you really are afraid of ticks or you live in a wooded area. You can inspect the seams of your clothes, wash your outdoor-clothes
fairly frequently. - So we referenced this
a couple of minutes ago. Let's come back talk about this. If you don't catch these
creepy crawlies early, what can happen? Because they actually can do some major damage to your household. - Right, it's just, you'd have to set off maybe some flea bombs in
your house or some bedbugs at the cost of hiring a service to come in and clean out your house
from all of these little bugs that like to live deep in the cushions of your bedding and of your pillows. There's no way anyone's gonna go buy new pillows every month. You are going to have things like that and certainly a little
dust mites that live in the stuffing of your
mattresses and such. Just cleaning off everything
in hot water and keeping track. Yeah, if you do feel like you've got a bug bite or an itchy scalp, come on in, show it to us, and we'll help put your mind at ease. - Talk a little bit more about dust mites 'cause we didn't address those early on. - Right, yeah. So pretty much every
pillow, every mattress, every cushion is gonna
have some dust mites in them after a period of time. These are all animals that live in nature, and we live and coexist with nature. So we basically would do a... If someone's having an
allergy to dust mites, stuffy nose, runny nose,
waking up in the morning with a sore throat, I would might maybe advise
them to try going out and buying a hypoallergenic cover that goes over your pillow
or over your mattress. They're a little bit stiff and crinkly, but they create a little extra barrier between you and those little buggies. So that might help to improve
sore throat, stuffy nose, upon wakening in the morning only. - And how often should you
wash your sheets and pillows to get rid of the dust mites? - Sheets and pillowcases? Probably every one to two weeks. - Any final thoughts, Doctor? - We live and exists with nature. We enjoy living in San Diego, and we're gonna be exposed
to all these little guys. And just by, you know,
being aware you'll be safe. - Thanks so much for being with us. - Oh, it was my pleasure. - [Susan] We appreciate it. - Thank you. - If you'd like more
information on Creepy Crawlies, please click on the link or
go to scripps.org/videos. Want more critical
information about your health? Please, subscribe to our
Scripps Health YouTube channel and follow us on social
media @scrippshealth. I'm Susan Taylor. Thanks so much for joining us. It's our mission at Scripps to help you heal, enhance,
even save your life.