If you are looking for an effective scabies treatment for your rash, over-the-counter cortisone creams are discouraged. Topical prescription medications, the most common scabies treatment, are used to treat scabies rash infestations, including lotions that contain lindane or crotamiton, which are applied from the neck down. Lindane, another scabies treatment, is a pesticide that is associated with neurological damage, poisoning, cancer, and environmental contamination. As a Scabies Treatment it’s use in adults is controversial and it is no longer used in children. NEVER use Lindane as a scabies treatment.
For an effective scabies treatment, coating the body, or the rash, with a mixture of petroleum jelly and 5% sulfur for 3 consecutive nights has also proven beneficial. Itching caused by the absorption of mites and their feces into the body can last for weeks, leading people to believe they are still infected long after an effective scabies treatment.
The lesions, or rash, caused by scabies should be kept clean to prevent infection. Physicians may advise wearing cotton gloves during and after a scabies treatment to prevent breaking the skin by scratching, which can cause secondary infection.
The parasites cannot survive away from the body for more than a few days, so contaminated clothing and bedding can be sanitized by thorough washing in hot water and storing for 1 or 2 weeks.
Scabies Treatment in the Home
All persons in the household who have had contact with the infected person in the past month must be treated. This would normally include everyone in the home, even if they have no symptoms. (The symptoms may take 4-6 weeks to grow after an being introduced to the house.)
It is important that the bed linen and clothes of everyone in the household be cleaned thoroughly as scabies may linger for a period of days after a scabies treatment.
To prevent the re-occurrence of scabies and to prevent the mites from spreading to others, take these scabies treatment steps:
- Clean all of your clothes and household linens. Using hot water with detergent to wash all clothing, towels and bedding you used at least two days before a scabies treatment should do the trick. Dry everything cleaned with high heat. Take the items you can’t wash at home to the dry cleaners.
- Starve the mites. If you can’t get to a dry cleaners, try placing items you can’t wash in a sealed plastic bag and leaving it sealed for a couple of weeks after a scabies treatment. Mites will die if they don’t eat for a week
Scabies Treatment with Over The Counter Medicines
For scabies treatment, there are few medicines that can cure a scabies rash infection. Over-the-counter lice medicines are not strong enough to kill mites, or scabies, so are of no use for scabies treatment. If you believe you have scabies, do not use products without a prescription from your doctor or another valid scabies treatment alternative.