Healthful Sanitization: The importance of sanitation and cleanliness
WHAT IS SANITIZATION?
Healthful sanitization, unlike cleaning, refers to removing all unwanted elements or particles at the microscopic level. It suggests the killing of undesirable microorganisms that we need to eliminate from the occupied surface.
Cleaning implies removing undesired particles that include soil particles, oil, or any sticky as well as non-sticky substances. Consider it as the first step of sanitizing.
Cleanliness removes germs or microbes from your hands or any other surface using soap, detergent, etc. Similarly, healthful sanitization of hands is very crucial to kill germs and to avoid further transmission.
When we use unhygienic hands to eat food or place hands everywhere around us, we unknowingly provide germs favorable conditions to multiply themselves.
These careless habits can make us unhealthy and costs us and our loved ones’ health. Therefore, handwash is necessary. It is equally important to have a hygienic environment to avoid getting ill.
Moreover, you should maintain the healthful sanitization of everything you use every day. Include everything from counters, kitchen, furniture, equipment, washrooms to every corner of your house. Because bacteria or viruses, like COVID-19 viruses, spread through contamination.
WHY IS HEALTHFUL SANITIZATION IMPORTANT?
Yes, sanitation is essential to prevent diseases like COVID-19. Preventing germs from transportation is a crucial objective to keep our hands clean.
Several diseases and infections spread through a careless wash of hands, without soap and running water.
The diseases that spread due to contact with contamination include diarrhea, COVID-19, etc. They spread from person to person.
When a person comes in contact with contaminated surfaces, which contain germs or microorganisms, they are likely to be sick or get infected.
People can easily get infected if they ignore the sanitization of hands or the body part. Washing your home and accessories will gradually decrease the presence of germs and microorganisms.
Similarly, after using the washroom, it is essential to wash hands with soap and flowing water to avoid further contamination.
Such steps can prevent you from being sick or infected from unrestrained diseases.
Importance of hand washes in the kitchen
While preparing food for yourself or your loved ones, it is significant to wash your hands frequently and prevent the spreading of germs.
It is equally important to wash vegetables, fruits, and other food items before preparing a meal. Before, during, and after having a snack, germs could naturally spread and enter the body through unwashed hands.
Therefore, it is mandatory to wash your hands properly before and after meals. Cleaning your kitchen is quite essential because carelessness in its sanitation can cost your health.
While eating food through unclean groceries, viruses can efficiently enter the body and ruin our health. Since a contamination disease diffuses faster than any other disease, prevention is considered the best cure.
You can avoid a deadly disease entering your family by sanitation. After wiping counters or kitchen surfaces, wash your hands to kill the germs in your hands.
Importantly, you must always sanitize your hands after performing activities, including touching pets, pet food, their feces, after coughing and sneezing, etc.
Also, wash your hands before and after using gloves, which have a high risk of contamination through germs or infections. Thus, make sanitation a healthy habit to avoid health risks.
HOW HEALTHFUL SANITIZATION PREVENT DISEASES?
Since we unconsciously touch our eyes, nose, and mouth with hands, which spreads germs in our body and consequently makes us sick.
Germs could be diffused from hands to the food and drinks, either while preparing or consuming the meal.
People unknowingly provide viruses the conditions that make them survive or, even, multiply their quantity.
Some food items, drinks, or favorable temperatures provide germs or microorganisms to survive for long. Microorganisms like viruses, bacteria can be easily transferred from person to objects and objects to person.
Therefore, proper sanitization of hands is quite relevant to prevent diseases like COVID-19, diarrhea, respiratory problem, skin disorder, and eye infection.
While having any meal, it is necessary to ensure that they are free from germs. Similar to animal wastes. However, it is quite hard to make them germ-free.
Besides, vegetarian food is plant-based and carries much nourishment needed for the body.
Further, vegetarian food studied healthier as they contain lots of nutrients and are full of antibodies that assist the immune system.
All these things are enough to fight diseases. However, washing your meal contents thoroughly, before and after preparing a meal, can save us from germs and infectious diseases.
Therefore, after every contact with infected surfaces, objects, or coughs and sneezes, wash hands to prevent infection.
Preventive measures:
A person should promote the habit of hand wash in his family and community for a healthy lifestyle. Around every affected individual includes elders (above 50-years) and children (below 10-years).
A rule of hand wash with soap can help us fight COVID-19 and also prevents illness. It hardly matters which soap you use. You must wash your hands with soap and water every few hours.
Parents and caretakers can teach children this healthy habit of hand wash. Teach them all these hands wash techniques like the five steps – wet, lather, scrub, rinse, and dry, creating a song, etc.
Habits are quickly adopted by children when taught from a young age. It also helps them follow hand wash activities lifelong.
Thus, this sort of teaching can prove to be a precautionary measure and ensures restricting several diseases.
HOW SHOULD WE WASH OUR HANDS?
Keeping hands and ourselves clean is the most important and preventive step to avoid diseases spreading worldwide.
Follow five steps to wash your hands
- Wet your hands and turn off the tap to save water.
- Lather it, take soap in your hands and lather your hands.
- Scrub hands properly; friction removes dirt and germs from hands.
- Rinse your hands in clean, running water.
- Dry your hands with a clean towel.
Wet your hands with clean and running water, then turn off the tap and apply soap. Now, you must be thinking, what is wrong with stagnant water? It is not advisable because when we wash hands in steady water, our hands become contaminated again once we touch the water in the basin after washing hands.
Therefore, to clean, we should use running water. However, cleaning objects may include steady water and can save water too.
So, we can wash our cars and other objects with a small quantity of water. Moreover, we should wash our hands after cleaning our gadgets/devices as they may contain contaminated stuff.
Thus, potable and non-potable water is necessary for different purposes. Use soap to wash hands rather than just water, prevents germs and harmful elements present on the unhygienic surfaces and hands.
Several studies indicate no additional health benefits provided by soap having antibacterial elements and regular soaps.
Although it depends on how much you came in contact with the germs every day. You may observe, surgeons, doctors, sweepers require frequent hand wash as they deal with many contaminated surfaces and unhygienic objects every time.
Conversely, we may reduce the number of hand washes if there is no contact with any object. It would count as unnecessary hand washes.
Hand wash is a must
The most effective way is to use soap containing triclosan, which is effective than antibacterial soaps, and running water to lather your hands.
Don’t forget to scrub your hands from the front, back, and between the figures, including nails. Lathering combined with scrubbing helps lift grease, dirt, and microbes and removes them along with clean water.
A proper scrubbing of hands needs 20 seconds to kill viruses. We can sing the “Happy Birthday” song twice to measure the time for hand wash.
In case of soap unavailability, you can use hand sanitizer. However, it is safe to simple sanitizer to remove the dirt and microbes from the hands.
However, studies show that soap and water are more effective than sanitizers, which are inefficient when hands are visibly dirty.
What sanitizers we should use?
Although alcohol-based sanitizer, in sufficient quantity, can effectively remove germs at a microscopic level and could be as efficient as soap.
Moreover, the use of alcohol-based sanitizer is also considered inefficient on several chemicals and germs. Thus, they are not useful in killing germs and are used to reduce the growth of germs.
Additionally, one should not use alcohol sanitizer, which can cause alcohol poisoning. Also, ethanol-based sanitizers cleanse your hands, which also causes alcohol poisoning when taken in an excess quantity as a mouthful.
However, keep sanitizers out of reach of small children. The reason, they should not swallow hand sanitizers and suffer adverse impacts.
Liquid soap can be useful for handwash. Besides are considered even better than bar soaps in terms of killing germs.
Thus, liquid soaps are found efficient as they are untouched and are beneficial, especially at workplaces.
I hope you all are moving towards a healthy lifestyle. Prevent yourself and your loved ones from diseases through a habit of hand wash.
Moreover, include intake of lukewarm water so that the virus would go down in your stomach and will die. It prevents the virus affect your lungs or any other body part.