One of the best ways to maintain good overall health and wellness is to maintain proper personal hygiene. Personal hygiene helps you to stay clean, giving you a boost in confidence and positively impacting personal relationships, as well as reduce the risk for disease and negative medical conditions that stem from bad hygiene. Keep reading for ten ways you’re able to practice proper personal hygiene.
10 Personal Hygiene Practices
1. Wash Your Hands Frequently: Washing your hands is one of the most effective ways to reduce the spread of disease. You should especially wash your hands before and after you eat, after going to the bathroom and when you come into contact with someone who is sick. In order to achieve effective results, make sure you wash your hands properly.
- Wet your hands with clean water and apply soap.
- Lather your hands by rubbing them thoroughly with soap.
- Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds.
- Rinse your hands well.
- Dry your hands with a towel or air dry.
2. Bathe: Cleaning your body washes away dead skin cells and dirt and helps fight the spread of disease. For older adults, it’s recommended to shower or take a bath at least twice a week to achieve the positive effects.
3. Brush Your Teeth Twice a Day: Make sure you are brushing your teeth twice a day, once in the morning and once at night, to maintain good oral hygiene along with regular dental checkups.
4. Floss Your Teeth Daily: In addition to brushing your teeth, floss your teeth once a day for optimal oral hygiene.
5. Take Care of Your Nails: Cleaning and trimming your nails reduces your risk of hangnails and infected nail beds.
6. Wear Clean Clothes: After you wear clothes, wash them with a detergent and dry them immediately upon rinsing. Dirty clothes can harbor bacteria that could lead to body odor or even skin irritations.
7. Cover Your Mouth When Your Cough or Sneeze: This is extremely important to avoid spreading germs to people around you.
8. Get Restful Sleep: Restful sleep is essential to wellbeing, no matter your age. It is recommended for all adults to sleep between seven to nine hours a night.
9. Create a Routine: Whatever your process may be to maintain good personal hygiene, make either a mental checklist or write it down. This way, you’ll remember and keep up with the steps you need to take to stay clean and healthy.
10. Visit the Doctor: Maintaining regular healthcare appointments can help you catch infections and illnesses early, making it easier to treat them. Visit your healthcare provider when you have a concern and schedule routine check-ups.
Learn More About Wellness at The Moorings at Lewes
The Moorings at Lewes offers a continuum of care that covers all aspects of wellbeing. LivWell is our holistic wellness program touching on all seven dimensions of wellness. Through community activities and amenities, you’re able to learn healthy lifestyle tips and ways to improve your wellness that helps you to achieve your own personal goals.
Learn more about how we offer healthy lifestyle opportunities within our community by contacting our team today. We’re happy to answer any questions you have!
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These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
Good personal hygiene is one of the best ways to protect yourself from getting gastro or infectious diseases such as COVID-19, colds and flu. Washing your hands with soap removes germs that can make you ill. Maintaining good personal hygiene will also help prevent you from spreading diseases to other people.
Personal hygiene includes:
- cleaning your body every day
- washing your hands with soap after going to the toilet
- brushing your teeth twice a day
- covering your mouth and nose with a tissue [or your sleeve] when sneezing or coughing
- washing your hands after handling pets and other animals
To slow the spread of COVID-19, you should:
- wash your hands often with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitisers
- avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth
- clean and disinfect surfaces you use often such as benchtops, desks and doorknobs
- clean and disinfect objects you use often such as mobile phones, keys, wallets and work passes
- increase the amount of fresh air by opening windows or changing air conditioning
Why is personal hygiene important?
Good hygiene is vital because it helps prevent you and your children from getting or spreading germs and infectious diseases. The germs that cause many diseases can be passed on through touching other people, getting faeces [poo] on your hands, handling contaminated food, or coming into contact with dirty surfaces or objects.
Conditions that you can develop if you have poor personal hygiene include:
Washing your body
Try to bathe or shower each day. Wash well, especially under your armpits and around your genitals and anus. Keeping clean will prevent skin irritations and remove bacteria that cause body odour.
Wash yourself with soap, shower gel or a hypoallergenic body wash. Soap removes more germs, but you may need to wash sensitive body parts with plain water or salt water.
If there is no tap water or it is scarce, clean yourself with a clean wet cloth or sponge.
Washing your hands
To avoid getting sick, wash your hands properly for at least 20 seconds.
- Wet your hands with water.
- Apply enough soap to cover all surfaces of your hands.
- Rub your palms together.
- Clean between the fingers and the back of your hands.
- Clean dirty nails with a scrubbing brush, if one is available.
- Rinse both sides of your hands, preferably under clean running water.
- Dry off your hands with a clean towel.
- Use the towel to turn off the tap.
You can also use hand sanitiser. Make sure you use enough of the product to cover all surfaces of your hands. Make sure you rub the palms, backs of the hands and in between your fingers.
When to wash your hands
It is especially important to wash your hands after going to the toilet because faeces, which you might come into contact with, contains billions of germs. Also, wash your hands:
- before and after eating or preparing food
- after changing babies’ nappies
- before and after touching a sick person or cleaning up vomit or body fluids
- after blowing your nose
- before and after treating cuts or wounds
- after touching rubbish, dirty surfaces or objects
- after handling pets or farm animals
Find out more here about hand washing.
Washing your genitals
Men who are uncircumcised can clean their penis by gently pulling back the foreskin and washing underneath it with warm water or soap. See more here about penis care.
Women can gently wash the delicate skin around the vulva with a soap-free wash, salt water or plain water. Avoid perfumed soap and bath products since these may irritate the sensitive skin of the vulva. Do not douche, because it upsets the healthy bacteria in the vagina.
During menstruation [your periods], wash your vulva as usual. Tampons can be changed every 3 to 4 hours. To avoid toxic shock syndrome, do not leave a tampon in for a long time, and never insert more than one tampon at a time. Change sanitary pads several times a day. Wash your hands before and after changing tampons or pads.
Preventing body odour
After washing, apply deodorant to your armpits. Put on clean, dry clothing. Wash sweaty or dirty garments well and, if possible, hang them outdoors to dry. If you have a problem with excessive sweating, make an appointment to see your doctor.
Handling food safely
Wash your hands before and after preparing food. This will stop you contaminating food and will also protect you from getting ill or passing on bacteria from foodstuffs, such as raw meat. Find out more here about food safety.
Preventing bad breath
Bad breath can be caused by poor oral hygiene. Brush and floss your teeth twice a day since this reduces gum disease and the chances of future tooth decay. Use these dental care tips and make an appointment with a dentist for a check-up if you have further symptoms.