I once had a lice, and putting my hair in a jecuzzi killed all the lice and nits in my hair. I'm curious, would soaking my hair in the dead sea, also kill the nits?

Old "natural" remedies for lice, nits and similar parasites called for (table) salt and shortening or salt and vegetable/olive oil mixtures. This process both suffocated and "burned" the critters. They drown in the oil/grease.

The problem with soaking your head in the Dead Sea is that you would have to soak it for 24 hours, or have to go out and soak your head several times over a week. (This is beginning to sound like a joke - Go soak your head in the Dead Sea?!?!?!) IF the Dead Sea contained table salt only.

The old remedies I recall required long soaks and repeated applications. Other remedies that come to mind is mayonnaise, butter and other similar thick fluids which had to remain in the hair for a long period of time to "drown" the nits and lice.

Lice and nits can live up to 24 hours under water, thus a shower or a regular bath does not kill them. Many of the natural remedies required you to apply a thick compound and leave it in your hair and on your scalp for a day thus my thinking is that the remedies worked because you were drowning the critters.

What killed the lice and nits in the Jacuzzi may have been something in the chemicals used to keep it clean. Unlike a swimming pool a Jacuzzi is more concentrated with chemicals and salts. If the Jacuzzi was filled with "soft water" it may have had more salt in it. Plus there are acids and bleaches and algaecides and other things in the water which is put there to kill germs, algae and clarify the water and make the filter more able to absorb the contaminates such as body oils and loose skin that humans shed all the time. Small particles that could easily slip through the best filter due to their small size combine with chemicals that not only keep them from sticking to the sides of the Jacuzzi, but also help them to clump together to get stuck in the filter (which is usually just a sand filter not a water purifying filter which is designed to catch very small particles).

Another thing we have to consider is that the Dead Sea (any sea in fact) contains much more than just salt water. Yes the water tastes like salt water, but there are many other trace elements and compounds which make the seas a soup of chemicals.

This website gives a decent breakdown of the chemicals in the Dead Sea. Though Table salt and the Dead Sea share the commonality of Sodium Chloride, table salt usually has iodine and very small traces of other elements. The Dead Sea (and the Salton Sea California and the Salt Lake of Utah) contain other minerals and compounds in greater portions: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Dead-Sea clarifies that.

Water Softener Salt is not table salt either. Potassium Chloride is in Water Softeners, Sodium Chloride in your table salt. Going back to the Jacuzzi it is highly possible that it contained large amounts of potassium chloride which killed the lice and nits. Though they are both called salt they are not the same thing.

The Dead Sea also contains a fairly high amount of potassium chloride, 37% in fact. This may be higher than what was contained in the Jacuzzi – I don’t know.

This is all to say that there is a “good reason” to say that it is highly possible that soaking your head in the Dead Sea could lead to killing nits and lice.

I know that there are several “Dead Sea” products out there that claim to contain salts from the Dead Sea which kills lice. I assume that the salts are from evaporated Dead Sea water where the water is removed through evaporation. Whether or not these things also contain other chemicals which do the job of killing I do not know.

Edited to correct page distortion

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