So you’re dealing with scabies.

One of the most frustrating things about scabies, other than the mites themselves, is trying to get hold of the right treatments.

Often doctors are ill informed about scabies and are reluctant to give out the necessary prescriptions.

Not only that, getting a doctor’s appointment so you can get a prescription can be costly in many places.

What could be more frustrating than having mites relentlessly burrowing through your skin and having a doctor refuse to prescribe the treatment you need?

ARRGH!

Luckily for you, there are ways to get prescription scabies treatments, such as permethrin cream, over the counter at a reasonable price, without the need for a doctor.

What Permethrin Cream Do You Need For Scabies?

If you’re unaware – permethrin is the active ingredient in things like bug spray and pesticide, and is the standard prescription treatment for scabies.

The way permethrin cream is used to treat scabies is you rub it all over your body and leave it on overnight. This soaks into your skin and eliminates all the scabies mites, and finally you wash it all off in the morning. Basically, you’re covering yourself in insecticide for an eight hour period.

Most pharmacies will sell you a branded Permethrin cream – the more common ones are Lyderm, Nix or Elimite. These are the creams you’ll need a prescription for in most countries, including the USA.

These creams are all more or less the same – it’s a moisturizing type lotion mixed with 5% permethrin. Normally they come in 30g or 60g tubes, and are intended to be used for a single treatment for one person.

How To Buy Permethrin Cream OTC

The bad news is – getting permethrin cream over the counter in the United States is not easy. In fact, you probably won’t be able to. It’s also extremely expensive.

Instead, I’d suggest buying it from overseas.

You can find many sites in places like India and China that sell permethrin over the counter, but I’d recommend staying away from those.

Instead, get it from a country like New Zealand or Australia, where the standard of medicine is very high and you can be sure you’re not getting a fake product.

Here’s a good online chemist in Australia that sells Lyclear – a reputable brand of 5% permethrin – without a prescription.

While it might take a while for it to arrive, the plus side is it will probably be cheaper than seeing a doctor and getting a prescription.

The downside is, with scabies you really can’t afford to wait a week to start treatment. Scabies gets worse every day, and the longer you wait, the harder it is to eliminate. You need to start treatment immediately.

Therefore, an often better approach is to just make your own permethrin cream. It’s safe and affordable, and you can get started right away.

How To Make Your Own 5% Permethrin Cream

The thing about permethrin is, it’s not a rare product. It’s used in all kinds of farming, livestock, industrial, pest control, and many other types of situations outside of scabies.

Therefore, finding permethrin is easy.

In fact, you can buy a whole bottle of it online from a pest store like this and have it delivered to your house by tomorrow.

And as for replicating the prescription permethrin creams – if you look at the ingredients, they’re nothing more than a simple body lotion mixed with 5% permethrin.

When you put two and two together, it becomes clear that permethrin cream is nothing special. You can mix it up in your own bathroom in just a few minutes.

So how do you do this?

First, you’ll need to buy some permethrin. I recommend getting Martin’s 10% Permethrin, which is a quality and very highly reviewed product.

The second thing you’ll need is a body lotion. Any standard body lotion will do – I like this one.

Finally, you need to mix them. Mixing it together in any regular kitchen bowl will be fine.

Remember, you need a 5% permethrin mixture. Therefore, fill half the bowl with 10% permethrin. Then add an equal amount of body lotion.

If you’re not following the maths here – adding equal parts of 10% permethrin and body lotion means you’re cutting the strength in half. Therefore this will leave you with a 5% permethrin mixture.

You can even see in the Amazon reviews for Martin’s Permethrin that the most common reason people are buying it is to mix permethrin cream for scabies (with good results!). You can read the reviews here.

The bonus of mixing your own permethrin is you’ll never run out of it. One bottle of 10% permethrin is going to last you a long time.

This is perfect because one of the biggest complaints about the prescription tubes of 5% permethrin is they’re not big enough. Treating scabies requires you to cover the whole body in permethrin cream, and often a 30g or 60g tube is simply not enough.

By mixing your own permethrin, you’ll be sure that you have enough to lather over your body and then some. That’s exactly what you need to treat scabies effectively (more on that in a minute).

The other bonus is, when treating scabies you normally need to treat more than one person. Therefore by mixing your own permethrin cream, you should definitely have enough for the whole household, even if there’s four or five of you. That’s really important because if you don’t treat the whole household, it’s very possible (and common) that someone else will have caught scabies and, left untreated, will start spreading it through the house again. This happens a lot so make sure you to treat everyone in the household diligently!

Where to buy permethrin

My first choice would be to buy it from a proper pest control store like Do My Own. That way you can be sure of the source and quality, and the shipping is fast as well.

Amazon will be my second choice. It’s often out of stock, and sometimes sold from unknown sellers, but it’s still pretty reliable.

Please note: This is not medical advice. I am not a doctor or your medical advisor. Mixing your own permethrin cream is not as safe as buying it ready-made from a pharmacy. You follow this advice at your own risk. I advise you to consult your own medical professionals if you have any concerns.

How To Use Permethrin Cream Properly

I’ve written about this on the blog before, but I’ll leave you again with a few pointers:

-Permethrin needs to be left on for at least 8 hours, and no more than 12 hours. If you leave it on for less than 8 hours it won’t work, and if you leave it on for more than 12 it can damage your skin.

-The best approach is to put it on after your shower at night, go to sleep, and wash it off in the morning.

-When applying the permethrin, make sure you get it absolutely everywhere! This means between the fingers, under the fingernails, between the toes, between your butt cheeks, behind the ears, under your armpits. I’m talking absolutely everywhere. Scabies can live anywhere on your skin – if you miss a spot, you could miss a mite, and that means you won’t be cured.

-Once you’ve put the cream on, go straight to sleep. Don’t sit around on the computer or go eating a late supper – all you’re doing is letting the cream come off your skin. One of the main reasons permethrin doesn’t work for people is they don’t let it sit and do its job. Maybe you go to the toilet, wash your hands, and go back to sleep. You might not realize it, but you’re washing off all the treatment! In fact, one of the most common places for scabies to hide is under your fingernails, especially because scabies sufferers scratch so much. If you wash your hands an hour after putting your permethrin treatment on, obviously the mites under your nails are going to survive. Then two weeks later, you still have scabies and can’t understand why. My best tip is, as soon as you put the cream on, get into bed and go to sleep! Let the cream work, and wash it off in the morning.

These are the main tips, but before you use your permethrin cream I would highly recommend reading my guide on how to use permethrin properly. You can click here to go there now.

Other ways to treat scabies effectively

While permethrin cream is the standard prescription treatment for scabies, there are many other proven treatments you can use to help aid your recovery.

In fact, there are various natural treatments that have been shown in studies to have even better cure rates than permethrin.

Some of these are clove oil, sulfur, and tea tree oil.

Therefore, my recommendation to killing scabies quickly and effectively is not to pick and choose treatments, but to use them all in tandem. This gives you the best chance at eliminating scabies from your body without any stubborn mites slipping through the cracks.

Permethrin is great, but permethrin paired with tea tree oil, sulfur, neem, clove oil and ivermectin is much, much better.

This is exactly what I did when dealing with scabies myself, and the results were excellent. Within two weeks I’m sure all mites had been killed, and within a month my skin was completely back to normal.

If you’d like to see the exact treatments I used and how I used them, it’s all detailed in this blog post here. If you’re suffering from scabies, I’d highly recommend checking it out.

Other than that, wishing you the speediest recovery possible.

Jon