BHealthy Blog

How and When to Wash Your Hands

Washing your hands is one of the easiest and best ways of preventing ailments, such as Staph infections, the flu and the common cold, that occur when we touch our face or mouth with our hands. In this post we’ll share some of our best tips for how and when to wash your hands:

How to Properly Wash Your Hands

While we all have washed our hands since we were kids, we commonly skip two important parts of washing our hands. The first step that people miss is the time it takes to wash your hands. Instead of the five to ten seconds that many people take to wash their hands, we should aim to scrub our hands, palms, fingernails, and wrists for at least twenty seconds. Another technique to handwashing is to use your towel to turn off the faucet. Using your bare hands to turn off the faucet exposes yourself to other germs and undoes the work you just completed.

When to Wash Your Hands

We all know to wash our hands after we go to the bathroom. But there are many times that hand washing is necessary. 

  • One of the most important times is before you handle or consume any sort of food. Without washing your hands, germs will get onto the food and expose yourself and others to infections. 
  • Another time that we need to wash our hands is when we handle or play with our pets and other animals. Though we love our furry friends, they can also carry infections and germs that can be detrimental to our health if we do not properly clean our hands after handling them. 

This year, Baptist Health encourages you to help prevent infections by not only washing your hands but also helping your friends and family remember to do so as well. This small change can make a big difference when it comes to staying healthy this season.