Why is Good Hygiene Important?
Hygiene is an important component to reducing disease, according to the World Bank. Good hand, face and body hygiene is important. It helps keep the germs at bay for everyone involved. If we don’t like getting sick, we must keep ourselves clean. But, what areas of hygiene are there?
What Areas of Hygiene are There?
There is a plethora of hygiene that we have to maintain. Hand hygiene, for one, is one of the different areas of hygiene that we are taught earliest. Face and body hygiene are also important areas of hygiene. Face and body hygiene also goes beyond the simple act of showering. Covering coughs and sneezes are also a form of hygiene
Hand Hygiene
Death by diarrheal bacteria is not a nice thing to imagine. It is extremely preventable though. All you have to do is wash your hands. Contaminated hands cause a large percentage of foodborne disease outbreaks and respiratory diseases. It is best to not touch your eyes, nose, mouth, and prep food with dirty hands. Don’t know when to wash your hands? Here are some tips. Effectively washing your hands is very simple.
- With warm or cold running water, wet your hands. Then turn off the tap (don’t waste water) and apply soap.
- Now that you have soap in a palm, bring both hands together and rub every single square inch together. Make sure to get between your fingers, the backs of your hands and under your nails.
- You should keep scrubbing with soap until you’ve counted twenty seconds. Do not count to just twenty. Count twenty legitimate seconds as they would happen on a stopwatch.
- After those twenty seconds are up, rinse your hands really well under running water until all the soap is off.
- With a clean towel, rub your hands dry. If you don’t have anything clean to dry your hands with, let them air dry.
Remember, keep them your hands clean.
Facial Hygiene
According to the CDC, the average person touches their face a total of 23 times per hour. Your face is where most diseases can enter easily through your eyes, mouth, nose and ears. Keeping your face facial area clean can prevent germs from entering your body. Also, remember discussing washing our hands in the above section, well, washing your hands can also prevent germs from reaching your face. Facial hygiene includes washing your face, cleaning your teeth, mouth, eyes, contact lenses and ears.
Some diseases that can be prevented by washing ones face include:
- Cold
- Flu
- Pinkeye
- Trachoma (the number one leading cause of preventable blindness in the world)
Effectively Showering
Effectively showering your body includes washing every crevice of your body, especially parts of your body covered in hair, which brings us to hair hygiene.
Hair Washing
Hair hygiene means finding a shampoo that’s good for your hair type, applying an appropriate amount, and then scrubbing away at the extra sebum(oil you produce naturally, but too much is not good) and nasty things you collected throughout your day. Did you know that washing your hair can help prevent scalp related ringworm and head-lice? Neither of those sound pleasant to have right? Well, you can wash your hair.
Feet Washing
Please keep those grippers clean. They are nasty at the end of a sock and shoe wearing day. They need to be washed individually and thoroughly. The whole foot needs to be lathered, especially between the toes. Trim your toe nails, too, bacteria can gather underneath. Don’t wear your socks for more than one day and if you do happen to go to a salon, pick on that is clean and licensed. You don’t want athlete’s foot, now do you? Nor would you want fungal nail infections or hookworm. Keep your grippers clean.
Keep Your Hands and Body Clean
That being said, keep yourself clean. Wash your hands, take thorough showers, keep your nails trimmed, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, etc. This will help prevent you from getting and spreading germs. Do you part to respect yourself and others.