Safeguard Yourself by Washing Those Germs Away

If the many things you learned from your mother, there is one piece that doctors adhere to as the most effective way in keeping yourself at the peak of health: Always wash your hands.

According to experts, making sure that hands are clean and germ-free, is one of the basic and most effective methods of preventing flu, a cold, or some other infectious disease.

“Disease transmission is hand-to-hand combat, at least for infectious diseases,” said Dr.  Thomas Weida, a family and community medicine professor at Penn State University’s Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. He said that we can lessen the spread of infection by doing a regular hand washing.

Hand-washing has been listed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the leading recommended ways of keeping the flu at bay.

Marcia Patrick, director of infection prevention and control for MultiCare, a health system in Tacoma, Washington, said that washing your hands can also protect you from infections caused by bacteria like salmonella or E. coli. That is crucial since, according to the CDC, approximately 76 million people in the United States are infected with a food-borne disease every year, and about 5,000 die as a result of their illness.

Patrick, who also acts as a spokesperson for the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, said that all the various things we touch on a regular daily basis such as telephones, handles of grocery carts, elevator buttons-keyboards, can harbor germs.

Those germs are passed on to your hands, and from your hands enter your body through openings such as the nose, mouth, or eyes.

Patrick said that many infections of the upper respiratory tract are caused by hands that have come in contact with upper respiratory discharges of someone else.

Fundamental hand-washing that involves soap and water is quite an uncomplicated matter, but the order in which things are accomplished is essential. Begin by wetting your hands with warm water. Then apply soap into your hands.

According to Patrick, that practice helps in distributing the soap evenly over the surface of the hands. “If you put the soap in your hands and then wet them, you lose a lot of the soap to the running water,” she said.

After that, briskly rub your hands together for at least 15 to 30 seconds, vigorously scrubbing all areas of the hands and fingers, said Weida. That friction is vital as it extricates all the microorganisms like viruses and bacteria, from the surface of the skin.

“To do a thorough job, when you’re standing in front of a sink, it can seem interminable,” said Patrick. But according to her, you’ll find it helpful to go through the routine by singing through either ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ at an acceptable pace.

Then, rinse your hands quickly under running water to get rid of the suds – and along with them, the microbes. Be sure to rinse your hands thoroughly to remove all traces of soap as soaps can cause skin dryness, said Patrick.

To complete the task, pat your hands dry with a couple of paper towels. Weida said that it is considered ideal to then use the wet towels in turning the faucet off.

Patrick added that you might as well deem it essential to use the paper towels in opening the door as you go out of the restroom.

“How many times have you been in a stall and there’s a toilet flush and the next sound you hear is the person leaving, with no stop at the bathroom sink?” asked Patrick.

Weida and Patrick take a different view on whether the soap you use should be antibacterial or not.

Whereas regular soaps work efficiently as well, Weida has a preference for antibacterial soaps. “I don’t have any studies showing one way or the other,” he said, “but I tend to lean toward antibacterial.”

However Patrick is worried that antibacterial soaps can be rough on the skin, especially if people need to wash their hands as often as they ought to. She said that if you perform a thorough hand-washing, a regular soap is just perfect.

Both of them agree though that if your hands are obviously clean, and you only want to ensure that you are not carrying and moving germs around, then a disinfectant hand gel that contains alcohol will work just as effectively as soap and water.

Patrick said that the alcohol-based hand gel works very well. “It will kill upwards of 99 percent of the bacteria on your skin, and does it quickly and cleanly,” she said.

Simply pour a small amount on your hands and rub it all over until it evaporates, said Weida. The applied friction helps the alcohol kill the germs present on your hands.

Weida said that generally, you ought to wash your hands thoroughly before eating or after going to the bathroom.

It is also recommended by the CDC to wash your hands after every diaper changing task, before and after tending to a sick person, after touching an animal or handling animal waste, after handling garbage, before and after applying treatment to a cut or wound, and after clearing your nose, sneezing or coughing.

“For me, here in the office, our policy is to use an alcohol-based hand-washing gel both before and after we examine a patient,” said Weida. According to him, before so he does not transfer something to the patient, and after so the patient does not hand over something to him.

Weida said that people ask him, ‘Gosh, what special shot do you get to keep yourself healthy, seeing all these sick people?’ And he says that what protects him is hand-washing.