Are you’ a #hygiene freak?

 Good Personal Hygiene

“Practicing good body hygiene helps you feel good about yourself, which is important for your mental health & Physical health.”

Hygiene is a series of practices performed to preserve health.

People who have poor hygiene — disheveled hair and clothes, body odour, bad breath, missing teeth, and the like — often are seen as unhealthy and may face discrimination. On a social level, people may avoid a person with poor personal hygiene, which may result in isolation and loneliness.

In people with poor personal hygiene, the body provides an ideal environment for germs to grow, leaving it vulnerable to infection.

Developing and maintaining a personal hygiene routine is key to having a healthy body and mind.

Personal hygiene

Personal hygiene are practices performed by an individual to care for one's bodily health and wellbeing through cleanliness. Many people equate hygiene with 'cleanliness' but hygiene is a broad term including personal habits choices as how frequently to bathe, wash hands, trim fingernails and change clothing. Also includes keeping the environment clean and pathogen free. 

Components of personal hygiene

Personal hygiene has many components, following these components one may be able to advance his/her hygiene the following are some;

• Face hygiene

• Fingernail & Toenail hygiene

• Ear hygiene

• Hair hygiene

• Foot hygiene

• Environmental cleanliness

The following common symptoms will tell you if there is an issue with your personal hygiene.

Cold Fever	Food Poisoning	Skin infections	Cough
Typhoid	Hookworm Infection	Gastroenteritis	Depression
Scabies	Hepatitis A	Urinary Infections	Lice
Tooth decay	Pediculosis	Salmonellosis	Halitosis

Wash Your Hands Multiple Times a Day

This should be an obvious one, but it’s the first one on our list for good reason. How many surfaces have you touched today? And how many other people have touched those surfaces?

Our hands are our primary tools, and we touch hundreds of things every day without a second thought. They carry all kinds of germs, and we can easily transfer those germs to other surfaces.

Let’s accept it: our hands are gross! And the best way to improve our personal hygiene is to wash our hands thoroughly and regularly.

When you need to wash your hands:

• after handling garbage
• before and after dining
• before and after handling food
• after touching animals
• after spending time in public spaces
• after blowing your nose
• after changing diapers

And those are just some of the times when you should wash your hands. Generally, if your hands come into contact with something that may have germs on it, wash your hands afterward.

Washing your hands is more than splashing around some water for a couple of seconds. Whether you’ve handled food, used the toilet, or entered someone’s home, you should always wash your hands with soap and water.

The soap is important because it captures the grease and germs on your hands. When you rinse the soap off with water, it takes the germs away with those sudsy bubbles!

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.

Avoid Touching Your Face

Remember when we talked about all the germs on your hands? Chances are you’ve touched your face at least once since starting this article, and you didn’t wash your hands before you did it.

 

It’s an unconscious move. If our nose itches, we scratch it without a second thought. We rest our heads on our hands while we think or listen. We play with our hair, whether it’s on our face or on our head.

And it’s gross. Because when you touch your face after touching numerous surfaces, there’s a good chance that bacteria will get on your face and stay there.

And “touching your face” includes more than just your cheeks or forehead. As soon as your fingers enter your nostrils or your mouth, that’s a whole new level of contamination (and again, gross).

Ear hygiene

Ear wax accumulates in the ear canal that leads from the outer ear to the ear drum. As the secretion comes out of the ear it collects dust particles from the air. Daily washing with soap and water is enough to keep the outer ear clean. Do not reach farther than you can with your little finger into your ear. Putting in hairpins, safety pins or blunt-edged things for cleaning purposes might harm the ear. If you feel wax has accumulated and is plugging your ears and interfering with hearing, consult your doctor.

Hair hygiene (hair care)

The hair follicles from which the hair grows produce oil from the sebaceous glands that keeps the hair smooth. The scalp (the skin covering the head) also has numerous sweat glands and is a surface for the accumulation of dead skin cells. The oil, sweat and dead cells all add together and can make the hair greasy and look dirty unless you wash it regularly.

Poor hair hygiene could cause dandruff and skin infections such as Tinea capitis. Dandruff is dead skin on the scalp that comes off in tiny flakes when sebaceous glands produce too much oil and accumulates on the scalp.

Armpit and bottom hygiene

These are body parts that easily get sweaty and where ventilation is very poor. After puberty, our sweat gains a specific and unpleasant odour which may be offensive to others. The armpits and the bottom should be washed daily.

Anal cleansing is the hygienic practice of cleaning the anus after defecation. The anus and buttocks may be cleansed with clean toilet paper or similar paper products. Water may be used. Hands must be washed with soap afterwards. The use of rags, leaves, stones, corn cobs, or sticks must be discouraged as these materials can damage the skin.

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:

• COVID-19 and other infectious diseases
• Diarrhoea, especially gastroenteritis
• respiratory infections, including colds and flu
• staph infections
• worm-related conditions, such as threadworms
• scabies
• trachoma, an eye infection which can lead to blindness
• tinea or athlete’s foot
• tooth decay

Value and Benefits of Good Health: 

Life is a big fight and health is the best weapon to succeed in the battle of life. A healthy man can enjoy life in every way. An unhealthy man lives a miserable life. He may have intelligence, merit, and wealth, but he cannot use them and reap the benefits.