Want to Stay Healthy? Wash Your Hands. (And Use Soap.)

Last updated on: March 13, 2020 at 1:08 pm by Rebecca Hamilton

Want to Stay Healthy? Wash Your Hands. (And Use Soap.) 2020-03-13T13:08:24-06:00 Rebecca Hamilton

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The best way to avoid germs is to wash your hands.

The best thing to use when you wash your hands is plain ole’ soap. It turns out that hand sanitizers just don’t have the germ-killing mojo of grandma’s bar of soap and a generous rinse with clean water.

So, if you want to stay well, lather up, rinse thoroughly, and use clean towels.

You also might consider using soap to wash faucets, doorknobs, the cover on your computer keys (get one of those if you don’t already have it) your steering wheel and anything else you and other people handle.

Soap. It does a body good.

From The New York Times:

Why Soap Works

At the molecular level, soap breaks things apart. At the level of society, it helps hold everything together.

Washing with soap and water is one of the key public health practices that can significantly slow the rate of a pandemic and limit the number of infections.Credit…Alex Welsh for The New York Times

By Ferris Jabr

March 13, 2020Updated 9:17 a.m. ET

It probably began with an accident thousands of years ago. According to one legend, rain washed the fat and ash from frequent animal sacrifices into a nearby river, where they formed a lather with a remarkable ability to clean skin and clothes. Perhaps the inspiration had a vegetal origin in the frothy solutions produced by boiling or mashing certain plants. However it happened, the ancient discovery of soap altered human history. Although our ancestors could not have foreseen it, soap would ultimately become one of our most effective defenses against invisible pathogens.

People typically think of soap as gentle and soothing, but from the perspective of microorganisms, it is often extremely destructive. A drop of ordinary soap diluted in water is sufficient to rupture and kill many types of bacteria and viruses, including the new coronavirus that is currently circling the globe. The secret to soap’s impressive might is its hybrid structure.

Soap is made of pin-shaped molecules, each of which has a hydrophilic head — it readily bonds with water — and a hydrophobic tail, which shuns water and prefers to link up with oils and fats. These molecules, when suspended in water, alternately float about as solitary units, interact with other molecules in the solution and assemble themselves into little bubbles called micelles, with heads pointing outward and tails tucked inside.

Some bacteria and viruses have lipid membranes that resemble double-layered micelles with two bands of hydrophobic tails sandwiched between two rings of hydrophilic heads. These membranes are studded with important proteins that allow viruses to infect cells and perform vital tasks that keep bacteria alive. Pathogens wrapped in lipid membranes include coronaviruses, H.I.V., the viruses that cause hepatitis B and C, herpes, Ebola, Zika, dengue, and numerous bacteria that attack the intestines and respiratory tract.

When you wash your hands with soap and water, you surround any microorganisms on your skin with soap molecules. The hydrophobic tails of the free-floating soap molecules attempt to evade water; in the process, they wedge themselves into the lipid envelopes of certain microbes and viruses, prying them apart.

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