Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Women, wash your hands!

My grandpa use to freak out about how little we washed our hands. My parents were always too busy shuffling a kid or two to swim practice or helping someone with their science project to make sure everyone's hands were scrubbed clean before dinner.

And don't lie, you don't
always wash your hands after going to the bathroom or before eating. Yep, there's a lot of invisible bugs festering around all of us, but maybe more on women?

I was pretty surprised to read this
MSNBC health article citing a study that claimed women have more bacteria on their hands then men.


The researchers aren't sure why women harbored a greater variety of bacteria than men, but Fierer suggested it may have to so with the acidity of the skin. Knight said men generally have more acidic skin than women.

Other possibilities are differences in sweat and oil gland production between men and women, the frequency of moisturizer or cosmetics applications, skin thickness or hormone production, he said.

Yuck. Note to self, scrub those palms more often. Also found this quote later on in the article pretty interesting:
The average hand harbored 150 species of bacteria.

Not only did individuals have few types of bacteria in common, the left and right hands of the same individual shared only about 17 percent of the same bacteria types, the researchers found.

By the way, does anyone else think about how many germs you come in contact with while at the mall? How many bodies slipped on that sweater, ran their snotty hands over that Guitar Hero box or held onto the oh-so-not-clean railings? I make it a point to try out as many Bath and Body Works products as possible; better yet if they have an anti-bacterial try me soap by the in store sink!

What do you think? Does this prompt you to wash more, or have you always been a regular washer? How 'bout hand sanitizers, do you swear by a certain brand? Fill me in on comments!