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Benefits of Washing Your Hands
Symbolic washing of the hands forms a part of ritual hand washing of many religions like Hinduism, Bahai Faith and Judaism. The most common way of washing your hands is with soap and water. By washing hands, a person is secure from various diseases including:
- Respiratory infections like common cold and influenza
- Hepatitis A
- Pneumonia
- Acute gastroenteritis
- Stomach infections like salmonella
- Preventive measure against death of infants during home birth deliveries
- In addition, child mortality rates, which are related to diarrheal and respiratory diseases in many developing countries, can be checked with the simple introduction of hand washing.
In fact, hand washing protects us from droplets and airborne diseases like chicken pox, influenza, measles and tuberculosis, diseases transmitted via fecal-oral routes like gastroenteritis and diseases which might due to direct physical contact such as impetigo.
- How to Wash Your Hands
You have to make sure that you are washing your hands properly to actually remove the germs.
- Before you start washing your hands, remove rings and watches if possible.
- Wet your hands.
- Work up lather up to your wrists using a mild soap for at least 20 seconds.
- Rub your hands ensuring that all the areas have been covered – wrists, the back of your hands, between your fingers and also your fingernails.
- Use warm running water to rinse your hands thoroughly.
- Either use a towel to dry your hands or air dry them.
- When to Wash Your Hands
Though hand washing is a recommended sanitary measure, remember that over-washing your hands will reduce the protective oils that are present in your skin. Ensure that you wash your hands before certain tasks or when they are dirty. And since, the skin is the primary defense against the germs and not the soaps, washing your hands with water also suffices.
- Your hands should be washed when you are preparing food, especially poultry and raw meat.
- Wash your hands thoroughly before eating.
- They should also be washed after using the toilet or after you have changed diapers.
- Clean them after touching any animals, their toys or their leashes.
- When you are about to treat a wound or take/give medicine your hands should be cleaned.
- Make sure you wash your hands after blowing your nose or even after coughing or sneezing into your hands.
- Clean your hands after you have handled any garbage or waste materials.
Ingraining the habit of washing hands before eating and after using the toilet into your children will protect them from various diseases more than any vaccine or medical intervention. So make hand washing a part of you and your families’ habits. Click here for more hand washing information for germ removal.