Maintain Hygiene: Why!

The word ‘hygiene’ is back in talks. The credit goes to the pandemic of coronavirus. It is the case of the highest despair that a pandemic was needed to teach us something that shall be very basic requirements of each person. Before this pandemic, we were living in a time were refusing to share the same spoon or share food on a plate was considered traditionalist and was seen under a bad light. We had failed to assess the importance of leaving shoes outside our homes in shoe racks as not letting in a person with shoes was considered conservative.

The World Health Organisation has defined hygiene as ‘conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases.’ Hygiene is much more than simple cleanliness.
It is a broad term. Speaking about personal hygiene specifically, it refers to maintain the cleanliness of one’s body. Besides personal hygiene, it also includes medical hygiene, home, and everyday hygiene, culinary or food hygiene, personal service hygiene, and sleep-hygiene.

Let us look at the benefits of maintaining hygiene:

·        Being hygienic makes you less likely to suffer from diseases!

    The disease-causing microbes include viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens. You touch your office table or any doorknob or something kept at a public place or anything left uncleaned for a while in your home and thousands of pathogens land on your hand. When you take the same hands to your eyes, nose, and mouth; you are granting those pathogens to enter inside your body. And if your immune system fails to counter those pathogens, you lay on the bed diseased.

Coughing and sneezing with hands-on your mouth instead of covering your face with tissue makes your hands the transmitters of pathogens to other people if you do not wash them immediately after coughing and sneezing.
Ignoring your oral hygiene, not brushing and flossing at least twice a day makes you likely to suffer from bad oral odor and oral infections.
In case you have a wound on your skin, ignoring hygiene can result in many pathogens entering inside the wound and complicating the existing situation which in turn increases the time taken for recovery and the pain you suffer from.
Good hygiene is therefore essential to limit transmission of diseases and preserve and gain back one’s health.

·        Your hygiene impacts your self-confidence and self-image!

Imagine your face and hands with dust all over and yourself with a dirty shirt. Imagine yourself not taking a bath and stepping out with sweat and offensive body odor. How will you feel of yourself?
Even imagining this scenario makes you hat your appearance. The dust and dirt might not be visible to others but it doesn’t make you feel any better. An individual with low self-confidence is likely to have a disregard for personal cleanliness which endures the issue of personal hygiene. Better hygiene leads to a better self-image and increased self-confidence.
You know the kind of confidence you carry on your sleeves when you had a proper bath in the morning and step into the office with clean and ironed clothes.
People with good personal hygiene are happier and successful in their personal and professional lives.

·        You are accepted well professionally and socially with good hygiene!

Bad breath and bad body odor make you unbearable for the person sitting beside you. Poor hygiene can make you rejected in an interview. A well-dressed person with pleasant body smell would definitely be preferred over you. Bad hygiene increases your own risk of infections and diseases and has negative consequences on your social and professional relationships including personal and business relationships.
Bad hygiene in school makes a child easy target for being bullied at school and this increases the responsibility of parents to teach hygiene and take care of their children’s hygiene.
Employers urge employees to follow hygiene in the office and even inside the washrooms at the workplace to limit the spread of any disease and maintain cleanliness everywhere.
People working in the medical industry are at the highest risk of infections and if they do not follow the issued guidelines of personal and medical hygiene; they are sure to get infected and diseased. A clean, healthy and hygienic doctor would always be visited by many patients.

·        You can save a lot of pain by keeping in good hygiene!

Painful diseases and infections find a good platform to flourish on unhygienic bodies. E.g. not brushing your teeth can lead to painful infections, cavities and pus-filled areas in the mouth which also cause bad breath. Suffering from chronic pain reduces the overall quality of life and paves way for comorbid disorders such as obesity.
Good hygiene can save you from the pain of many medical conditions. Changing wet clothes and socks immediately after exercises prevents you from fungal infections. Not paying attention to dandruff on time can create painful and bleeding areas on your scalp.
You can get prescribed homeopathic treatment to enhance immunity and reduce problems like dandruff and improve healing of existing wounds, infections and diseases.

Here is something Lee beautifully said which sums up this article,

                                                                       “I think of you
                                                                        the same way
                                                                        modern society thinks of hygiene.
                                                                        You are severely undervalued by most
                                                                        and eternally needed.”