Seriously, to help prevent germs, the best tips I have seen here are to try to avoid touching your face area as much as usual, and to properly wash hands and do it more often than just bathroom breaks.
I honestly have been trying to do both of those things, and the most surprising thing I have encountered is I cannot believe how many times I keep touching my face area. It is shocking when you start paying attention to it. Whether its scratching your nose, or rubbing your eyes, its like an automatic response to go to your face area. I have been trying hard to at least slow that down and I have had mixed success with it. But just being aware of it has helped reduce it because now I am concious about it when I catch myself going to my face area.
Its really bizarre and I had no idea until this thread that it was a "thing" we all do.
This is a great small article about how we innoculate ourselves with infections by touching our face area.
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RESULTS:
On average, each of the 26 observed students touched their face 23 times per hour. Of all face touches, 44% (1,024/2,346) involved contact with a mucous membrane, whereas 56% (1,322/2,346) of contacts involved nonmucosal areas. Of mucous membrane touches observed, 36% (372) involved the mouth, 31% (318) involved the nose, 27% (273) involved the eyes, and 6% (61) were a combination of these regions.
CONCLUSION:
Increasing medical students' awareness of their habituated face-touching behavior and improving their understanding of self-inoculation as a route of transmission may help to improve hand hygiene compliance. Hand hygiene programs aiming to improve compliance with before and after patient contact should include a message that mouth and nose touching is a common practice. Hand hygiene is therefore an essential and inexpensive preventive method to break the colonization and transmission cycle associated with self-inoculation.
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Face touching: a frequent habit that has implications for hand hygiene. - PubMed - NCBI
