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How long do you have to wash your hands to kill germs?

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By Dr. Abhishek Agarwal in Internal Medicine

Apr 19, 2022

Handwashing is the best way to avoid catching the flu and Germs. Wash your hands thoroughly and frequently with soap and warm water  with alcohol based hand sanitizer specially before leaving a restroom, eating and touching your face. Wash your hands for about 20 seconds. Regular soap simply causes bacteria to loosen their grip on your hands to be rinsed away. It helps explain why using water alone still seems to work just fine  as long as you rub your hands together vigorously. Washing your hands well is a necessary building block for excellent hygiene. Hand washing and hand Sanitizers are definitely not interchangeable. The nature of the washing is the most  important as the duration. Particular attention should be paid to between the fingers and the fingernails. Soap and other detergents kills few  gram negative bacteria including common issues  of diarrhea.

Following are steps  towards more efficient hand-washing:-

Turn on the Water- Clean, running water is more important than temperature. Turn on the water and get your hands wet. You can turn the water off and  leave it running depending on your preference.

Lather Up- Soap is the important part for hand washing . It helps lift the germs and microbes off your skin while you wash your hands and makes the whole process more effective.

Scrub for at Least 20 Seconds- Several people  don’t scrub their hands nearly long enough. Twenty seconds doesn’t sound like a long time but it is much longer than you would imagine.

Rinse The Soap and Germs – Rinsing is ultimately how you get the germs off of your hands, so it’s really the most important step. Again, it’s important to use clean running water. Dipping your hands in a stagnant pool of water (or even standing water in the sink) is not the same as rinsing the soap off with clean running water

Abhishek Agarwal
Content Medically Written & Approved by
Dr. Abhishek Agarwal
Senior Consultant - INTERNAL MEDICINE
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