Improving hygiene: Are you staying unclean?

Basic personal hygiene is the number one thing that can save you from infectious diseases, by far. Not antibiotics, not vaccines, just staying clean.

Bacteria and viruses that cause diseases aren’t created inside you, they are transmitted to you through an outside source. You can kill these microorganisms from ever harming you simply by washing hands regularly enough. And let’s face it, personal hygiene is very important when it comes to socialization.

People like you more if you’re clean and tidy, and there’s a natural repulsion if you’re not brushing your teeth or taking a shower often enough.

Many psychological disorders have also been found to stem from bad hygiene, including depression, anxiety, paranoia, and anger. Now that we’ve established the importance of hygiene, we need to look at some ways to improve it.

If you’re worried that you’re not staying clean enough, here are some tips to help you get better:

1) Are you following basic hygiene?

Think for a second, are you following basic hygiene. It is no shame as long as you change your actions, ask yourself, how regularly do you take a shower or a bath. It’s recommended to take one every day or at least every two days. How often do you wash hands?

You should theoretically wash your hands every time you enter someplace new, but that’s not practical and not basic either. You should always wash your hands after you use the toilet because waste is one of the top contaminators of the planet. Are you brushing your teeth twice a day?

Bacteria in your mouth have direct canals to your lungs and stomach, which is where most infections occur, so always brush your teeth before and after you sleep. Finally, are you wearing clean clothing?

Don’t wear the same clothes for more than two days in a row, especially during summertime. The sweat can cause you to smell and cause skin irritation, so it’s important to wear clean clothes even if you aren’t going out.

2) Plan a schedule:

The global pandemic has made people adopt a more strict regulation of hygiene, where people extend their personal cleanliness to leave an even smaller window for the virus to attack in.

People set fixed times in their days to take a bath or a shower, sometimes twice and wash hands, face, and neck multiple times. This makes it a part of their routine, and what is better than that?

People have also started brushing more often too in an attempt to have clean mouths all the time.

3) Keep your personal stuff personal:

Everybody knows well enough to not lend toothbrushes to other people but most people have no problem with sharing soaps.

People reason that soaps are self-cleaning, but toothpastes cleans toothbrushes too.

The fact is, you should keep all your hygiene tool kit to yourself because there is always a chance that there will be bacterial or viral transmission even if you use the cleaning tools themselves.

Don’t share your soap or toothbrushes, not even your hairbrushes or towels, or your handkerchief. These tools are a very good host for an unsuspecting victim, so beware.

4) Use trusted tools:

Since sanitary tools are in direct contact with your body, you should use trusted companies that only make harmless cosmetics. A bad soap can cause you skin disease for life, a bad conditioner can ruin your scalp.

Always be aware of how your body reacts to different cleaning creams and go see a doctor if your skin starts feeling itchy after using too much body wash.

5) Finally, don’t overdo it:

Nothing can possibly go wrong even if you clean yourself too much, all problems you will have are how beautiful you smell or how scared viruses are of you, right? Wrong.

Overcleaning yourself is real, and it doesn’t have to do much with cleaning than what you are using to clean. None of the cleansing cosmetics have zero side effects, if you brush your teeth too much your teeth will start to erode if you use shampoo too much your hair will start to fall off. Know the limits of your body, and again, understand how it reacts to substances.

We take hygiene for granted because most of us in the modern world do practice it regularly, but when it was discovered how important personal hygiene is, it was revolutionary.

Before, even surgical operations were made with dirty hands, and most people died not because of the surgery itself, but because of the infections, the dirty hands caused. It has now become a need in this era as we face a global pandemic that has already claimed the lives of thousands of people.

And in our daily lives, personal hygiene can give you social and psychological benefits. People like you more and you feel good about yourself more often.

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