Q: I am a kindergarten teacher and, on occasion, pick up lice from my students. The best home remedy I’ve ever used to kill lice and easily remove nits is coconut oil. I completely saturate my hair with the oil and cover my head with a shower cap. Leaving it on overnight, I wash it out with regular shampoo the next morning. This leaves my hair silky and smooth without lice. Depending on the size of the infestation, I will do this again a second night. It really works! A: Thanks for sharing your remedy. We assume you are also using a nit comb to remove the eggs after treating the lice. Coconut oil presumably suffocates the lice, but it does not seem to affect the nits. At one time, doctors prescribed a shampoo containing permethrin insecticide (Nix). It then became available over the counter. Eventually, however, lice developed resistance (Journal of Insect Science, March 2, 2026). Most current methods for eliminating lice rely on physical methods such as coconut oil.…