Tag Archive for: germs

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Paper Towels or Air Dry?

This week is dedicated to keeping you healthy during cold and flu season!

Question of the day: You’re in the bathroom at the airport washing your hands this holiday season and you have a very important choice. Paper towel or hand blower?

The old opinion was hand blower because you don’t have to touch anything and it warms your hands. Apparently things have changed. According to The Wall Street Journal, using a paper towel is much more hygienic than hand blowers. Hand blowers can blow and spread germs up to 3-6 feet from  the actual wall mount. Another issue with blowers is that most people never wait for their hands to fully dry and end up wiping them on dirty jeans or coats. The truth is there is still no substitute for good ole soap, water and paper towels. Make sure you wash your hands long enough, paying attention to under the nails, where germs can hide. Always completely dry your hands and then take a paper towel to turn off the sink (if it’s not sensor activated) so you don’t have to touch the dirty faucet again. Take an extra one to open the door on your way out or you may just contaminate your hands all over again.

All this talk about germs makes me want to carry around a few pairs of latex gloves and just keep changing them, but that would look crazy…. Another tip for air travel is a surgical mask, which helps to keep germs away from your mouth and nose. Travel safe, w
ash your hands and take your vitamins!

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A Few Ways to Try and Stay Healthy….

Since it is cold and flu season, I thought I would continue on with a few tricks to keep yourself healthy. Although, I am writing this holed up in the guest room at my parent’s house. My Dad has been coughing and sneezing and I am fighting something yucky off….

The truth is you can be as careful as possible and follow all the rules on how ‘not to get sick’, but if you’re due for it-you’re going to get it. That being said there are still a few tips that may help you. Wash your hands after everything! Don’t touch your face, nose or mouth, this is the quickest way to get germs. Stay hydrated and limit your sugar intake. If it is cold outside cover your nose and mouth. If you start to feel like you’re getting sick, pop some vitamin D and C. I’ve been loading up and I think i’m winning the war.

Yesterday my Dad told me that the most common way germs are passed around a restaurant are through the water pitcher.  Apparently most pitchers are cleaned in the PM after the restaurant has closed-that means the same pitcher is used throughout the entire day and night. When waiters go around and fill your glass up they are also unknowingly giving you everyone else’s germs. Every time a pitcher touches a glass it can pick up other people’s saliva which carries germs and ends up on your glass….yuck. Your best bet in a restaurant is bottled water or skip it all together.  Another scary restaurant fact is that when you take something home in a doggy bag, you should always ask to box it yourself at the table.  Once you send your food away, it can come into contact with numerous hands (germs), not to mention anything airborne.

Stay healthy friends!

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Is Your Hand Sanitizer Making You Sick?

Are you finding  that you are getting sick more than usual? A sniffle, a cough and overall malaise?  Your hand sanitizer may be to blame.

We all keep our trusty, germ fighting friend ‘the hand sanitizer’ in our purses, gym bags and cars, but to what cost? Instead of keeping us healthy, could it be making us sicker?

Of course if you’re in a career that requires you to physically touch a lot of people (like when we host a GOLDAFADEN MD facial event) than it makes sense to sanitizer after each encounter, but for those who use it incessantly for fear of germs, it can be doing more harm than good.  Our immune system is designed to catch germs and then build antibodies in order to fight them off in the future. This is how our body protects itself from getting sick every time  a germ invades our system. Not only that but studies have shown that overuse of anti-bacterial products used in the household can cause bacteria to become resistant! We don’t want to create a super bug! MRSA is bad enough!

So next time you reach for a household anti-bacterial cleaning product or your trusty bottle of hand sanitizer, try soap and water instead. You might just keep yourself from getting sick!

 
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