Wanna stay healthy? Wash your hands!

When I entrusted my very sick body to the wonderful team at my local hospital (as I wrote about here), I didn’t think twice if they were clean or not. I was near death and frankly, it just wasn’t on the top of my mind. But as I’ve slowly recovered, I read an interesting article in the April 5th, 2005 Wall Street Journal entitled, “Hospitals Get Aggressive about Hand Washing”. I was surprised, to say the least, about what doesn’t happen to keep the bacteria out of the hospital. I had no idea that hospital infections themselves are a critical problem effecting patient care. Well isn’t that a bit disturbing! And it seems the simple act of handwashing can cut those infections in hospitals dramatically - but it works outside of hospitals just as well too.

Some of the statistics are interesting regarding hand washing and how amazingly effective this simple step is to keeping ourselves and others health.

• According to a study done of 305 Detroit school children, youngsters who washed their hands four times a day had 24% fewer sick days due to respiratory illness and 51% fewer due to upset stomach (Reuters New Media, 12/10/96 )

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) did a review of surveillance data for U.S. foodborne disease outbreaks from 1988-1992 and found that poor personal hygiene was a contributing factor in 1/3 of the cases. If people had washed their hands, they’d be 1/3 less likely to get sick!

• Day care children have a 30% higher likelihood of diarrhea than those cared for at home and day care professionals have higher rates of diarrhea as well. Hand washing of both the child’s hands and the day care professionals hands can cut infection rates by 50%. (U.S. FDA statistic).

• What’s the best defense against the potential Bird Flu? Washing your hands! According to Sian Griffith’s, Director of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health at the Chinese University, “It’s very glamorous to talk about (antiviral drug) Tamiflu and vaccines, but actually, wash your hands, cover your mouth when you sneeze, then wash your hands…It is really basic, it’s a bug that spreads like any other bug,” (there’s much more in this interview on MSNBC, “Hand washing best defense against bird flu” so click to read here).

What amazes me about these statistic is how fragile we are as humans. Our bodies are beautiful machines, intricately designed, self-healing and incredibly adaptable. They are also amazingly fragile. My infection took only 5 hours to come near killing me. We are fearfully and wonderfully made - but a bit fragile at times!

So how do you wash your hands? Well it’ simple, choose a soap of your liking (soft soap is good either anti-bacterial or not, bar soap appears to keep germs on it at times) put on the warm water, and scrub all parts of your hands for 15 second to 30 seconds. Then dry with a clean towel (disposable is best, otherwise a clean towel. The old used ones actually are bacteria havens). The act of scrubbing your hands with soap and water and rinsing them physically loosens and removes the bacteria from your hands (see the Mayo Clinic’s excellent write up by clicking here).