Your simple daily personal hygiene

It is often said that if you want to have a long life you must first cultivate the habit of living healthy. For you to minimize the risk of infection and enhance your overall health, you must learn to properly maintain a good personal hygiene. Personal hygiene habits like washing your hands and brushing your teeth will help keep bacteria, viruses, and illnesses at arm’s length. However, there are mental and physical benefits to it. “Practicing good body hygiene helps you feel good about yourself, which is important for your mental health,” notes Donald Novey, an integrative medicine physician with the Advocate Medical Group in Park Ridge. According to him, people who have poor hygiene — dishevelled hair and clothes, body odour, bad breath, missing teeth, and the like — often are seen as unhealthy and may face discrimination.  

Here are simple personal hygiene habits that will help you live a long and fulfilled life!

Have a regular Bathe: Washing your body and your hair helps a great deal. You need to often wash off dust and sweat that must have been lying on your skin throughout the day. Give your skin a chance to breathe and not being stocked up by dust and dirt. Your body is constantly shedding skin, and that skin needs to come off. Otherwise, it will cake up and can cause illnesses or skin disease.”

Often cut your nails: Keeping your finger and toenails well-trimmed and in good shape will prevent problems such as hang nails and infected nail beds. Because we use our hands all the time, germs and bacteria can stock up inside our nail causing infections. Nails that are neatly cut hardly contact any form of bacteria.

Brush and remove remnants of food: Ideally, you should brush your teeth after every meal. At the very least, brush your teeth twice a day and floss daily. Brushing minimizes the accumulation of bacteria in your mouth, which can cause tooth decay and gum disease. Flossing, too, helps maintain strong, healthy gums. “The bacteria that build up and cause gum disease can go straight to the heart and cause very serious valve problems,” Donald Novey further said. Unhealthy gums also can cause your teeth to loosen, which makes it difficult to chew and to eat properly, he adds. To maintain a healthy smile, visit your dentist at six-month intervals for check-ups and cleanings.

Wash your hands regularly: Most people take this for granted. Hands are mostly exposed to bacteria, and this is because we use our hands all the time and in everything we do. Washing your hands before eating, after going to the bathroom, after coughing or sneezing, and after handling dirt, goes a long way toward preventing the spread of bacteria and viruses. Always have a hygiene product, like an alcohol-based sanitizing gel, handy for when soap and water isn’t available.

Have enough sleep: Sleep is very essential to our health. It plays a vital role in our overall wellbeing. It helps us recuperate from a lot of stressful moments. When you get plenty of rest like 8 to 10 hours a night, you will be refreshed and are ready to take on the day every morning. Lack of sleep can leave you feeling run down and can compromise your body's natural defences, your immune system. Have in mind that when you don’t have a good sleep, your body becomes weak and vulnerable to any kind of infection.

Personal Hygiene: Good habits help keep you healthy generally. For most people, good hygiene is so much a part of their daily routines that they think little about it. They bathe, they brush their teeth, visit the dentist and doctor for regular check-ups, and wash their hands when preparing or eating food and handling unsanitary items.

You can help those you care about to be healthy and safe. You can help them learn, and be sure that they are practicing good personal hygiene just like you. In order to be healthy, live a wonderful life and be happy, we must cultivate the habit of maintaining a proper personal hygiene. Have in mind that poor hygiene leads to poor health and exposure to sickness and diseases. 

 Rifkatu Yusuf