Washing your hands properly is the best and quickest way to defend yourselves from the germs that might attack your body and cause infection.

Proper hand washing ritual that is done frequently can prevent you from illnesses like flu, cold and other communicable diseases.

When Should You Wash Your Hands

You should wash your hands often, especially if you have flu or the seasonal cold is spreading in your area.

When you touch objects, surfaces and other people, bacteria can get collected on your hand. These, in turn, can get transferred to your mouth, eyes or nose when you touch them with these unwashed hands.

This is why it is important to keep washing your hands frequently and properly.

Wash your hands after:

• Using the toilet
• Changing a baby’s diaper
• Cleaning up after a child or a pet
• Dusting/cleaning your home
• Taking care of someone sick
• Eating food
• When you come home from outside, especially if you have been to the hospital
• Blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing
• Treating a wound
• Handling garbage or disposing of something contaminated
• Shaking hands with others
• Handling raw meat or poultry

You should wash your hands before:

• Preparing food
• Eating
• Treating wounds
• Administering medicine or injections
• Going into a sick person’s room
• Inserting or removing contact lenses

How to Wash Your Hands

Knowing how to properly wash your hands is important to kill the bacteria lurking on them. If you don’t wash them with the required care, it useless to do so.

Here is the correct way to wash your hands:

Embedded from Fab How

Wet your hands with warm or cold water. Turn on the faucet and hold your hands under it. The water need not be hot.

Apply enough soap to cover your hands completely. You can use liquid, bar or powdered soap.

Rub hands palm to palm. Work the soap into a lather and scrub both sides of your hands, in between your fingers, around and under your fingernails, and around your wrists.

Wash your hands for 20 seconds. You can keep a track of time by knowing a simple trick; it is about the same time as it takes to sing Happy Birthday 2 times.

Now rinse your hands by holding them under the running water, warm or cold.

Remember to dry your hands completely with a towel. Get a clean, dry towel. If you are drying your hands with an air drying unit, make sure to move your hands around and rub them together.

Use the towel or your elbow to turn off the tap.

While there are many soap brands that market themselves as anti-bacterial, this triclosan containing soaps were found to be no more effective at killing bacteria than the normal soaps.

If Soap and Water are Not Available

Sometimes, it may happen that you are outside and water and soap are not available. In such situations, you can use an alcohol-based sanitizer.

The alcohol-based sanitizers do not require water which is why they are an acceptable alternative. Before you use, make sure the sanitizer you are using contains at least 60% alcohol otherwise it will not have any effect on the germs.

Here is how to use sanitizers:

Squeeze the sanitizer gel on your hand. The amount should be enough to cover your palms.

Rub your hands together and spread the sanitizer around as you would if you were washing with soap.

Cover your palms, the area between the fingers and around your wrists.

Do not rinse it off with water. Just let it evaporate on its own.

But keep in mind that sanitizer cannot eliminate all the germs on your hand. While it is a good substitute as cleaning agent if soap and water are not available, it should not be used as a replacement.

Why Washing Hands is Important

Regular hand washing routine gets rid of dirt, germs and other bacteria on your hand. This stops diseases and illnesses like flu, diarrhea and food poisoning from attacking you or spreading to other people.

Hands are easily contaminated with fecal bacteria when you use the toilet and these can easily spread to other things you touch, including food.

Washing your hands with soap and water is sufficient to remove dirt, viruses or bacteria and it can reduce the risk of diarrhea by nearly 50%.

It is especially important to instill in children the habit of proper hand washing. They are the most vulnerable in case of communicable diseases as they pick up infections quite quickly due to their immune system not being strong enough.

This hygiene habit can reduce their risk of contracting an infection and provide them with a healthier lifestyle.

Supportive Resources:

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/homehygiene/Pages/how-to-wash-your-hands-properly.aspx
http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/proper-hand-washing
https://www.fabhow.com/wash-hands-properly.html
https://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/when-how-handwashing.html