Hand washing is not just a habit, it is a way to protect yourself from many infectious diseases.

Nowadays, it is difficult to find a person who does not know that it is necessary to follow the rules of hygiene: brush your teeth, maintain order where you live and, of course, wash your hands. All this has become familiar to us, and we often don’t even think about what will happen if we don’t do this. But the habit of washing our hands is very important; it saves us from many dangerous diseases.

Why wash your hands?

Mandatory hand washing before eating and after using the toilet is not just a fad. This is a necessity designed to protect our body from many pathogens that accumulate on our hands.

Hands are our main tool, which we constantly use in everyday life. We take on a wide variety of subjects: door handles, handrails, money, computer mouse. But all these things are not sterile at all; thousands of pathogenic microorganisms have found refuge on them. By touching these contaminated things, we transfer some of the germs to our hands.

What diseases can be “caught” through unwashed hands?

Many infectious diseases can be contracted through unwashed hands. Among them:

• hepatitis A
• influenza and other acute respiratory viral infections
• diseases caused by worms

The causative agents of these and many other diseases fall into our hands. Then we touch our faces with our hands, take food with unwashed hands, or bring unwashed hands to our mouth, and thereby open the door for infection to enter the body.

Of course, with a strong, operationally functioning immune system, such penetrations of enemy spies must be neutralized. But if the immune system is weakened, then we risk “getting” one of the diseases dirty hands.

Intestinal infections

Very often they enter the body through dirty hands. Their frequency especially increases in summer, when air temperature promotes the activation of pathogenic microorganisms. Signs of intestinal infections - nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.

Intestinal infections can vary in aggressiveness and can lead to dangerous consequences: dehydration, a sharp increase in temperature, and can even pose a threat to life.

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Acute respiratory infections

During the cold season, frequent hand washing is one of the main means to prevent pathogens from entering the body. This method is effective for both bacteria and viruses. Regular hand washing reduces the likelihood of contracting ARVI several times.

ARVI and the well-known representative of this class of diseases, influenza, are especially dangerous due to their complications, including pneumonia, otitis media, and meningitis.

Hepatitis A virus can also be contracted through contaminated hands. The mode of transmission of this disease is fecal-oral. Those. Unwashed hands after using the toilet or contaminated food allow infection to enter the body. Then the virus enters the liver with the blood and destroys its cells - hepatocytes.

This is a serious disease that disrupts liver function and requires long-term treatment. Hepatitis can be severe and lead to irreversible damage to the liver.

Worms

I stroked an animal in which worms live, and then forgot to wash my hands - this is a very common way for worms to enter the human body. The most common worms that enter us this way are pinworms and roundworms. They can cause us a lot of trouble in the form of nausea, weakness, and headaches. The larvae can enter the lungs, muscles, eyes and settle there. May develop intestinal obstruction, allergies will appear, as well as other dangerous manifestations of the appearance of “tenants” in the body.

A simple procedure saves us from all these dangerous diseases - washing our hands. You can avoid diseases of dirty hands by using a universal product - soap. This disinfectant removes up to 99% of viruses and bacteria settled there.

When to wash your hands?

• Wash your hands after using the toilet.
• Be sure to wash your hands before eating
• Wash your hands when you get home
• Wash your hands when you come to work

Hand washing technology

You should not wash your hands poorly, just for show, because such washing may not bring the desired effect and too many germs will remain on your hands. According to the technology, you need to thoroughly lather your hands with soap several times, and then rinse it off under running water. warm water. This is the only way we can remove pathogens from our hands.

Did you know, how to wash your hands correctly?

• You need to wash your hands with soap for at least 30 seconds
• Do not forget to lather the faucet handle with soap, because the maximum amount of bacteria accumulates on it
• Rub the soap under your nails too
• Remember, the more foam, the cleaner your hands will be.
• Jewelry must be removed before washing hands

Psychological effects

It not only has a “disinfecting effect”, but also helps from a psychological point of view. Scientists have found that hand washing helps get rid of unpleasant memories and can relieve stress after making a big decision. This discovery can be used to relieve fatigue and relax a little. True, it’s probably not worth getting carried away with such “psychological” hand washing, otherwise there is a risk of turning into a paranoid person who will need to wash his hands every hour “to calm down.”

Wash your hands as often as necessary, this will help avoid a number of troubles and stay healthy!

In order for pathogenic bacteria to enter the body and provoke the development of a disease, it is enough to simply touch your mouth with dirty hands or eat something with the same dirty hands.

Such an everyday little thing as washing your hands will help you avoid many different infectious and viral diseases. So what diseases can you catch without washing your hands?

ARVI and influenza

Viruses and bacteria that cause these diseases can be acquired not only from a sneezing person; they float in the air and settle on surfaces: door handles, keyboards, furniture. It follows that you can introduce the influenza virus into your body simply by touching your face with dirty hands.

Viral conjunctivitis

This is an inflammatory process of the mucous membrane of the eye and conjunctiva. Most often, this eye disease is associated with an upper respiratory tract infection and can appear with a common cold. And as was said earlier, we can also “catch” ARVI through dirty hands. Prevention measures are very simple: do not touch your eyes with your hands (rub, scratch), wash your hands thoroughly, and always use only your own towel.

Dysentery

Acute bacterial intestinal infection. Hand contact plays a large role in the transmission of this infectious disease. With dirty hands, a patient can infect various objects: dishes, door handles, towels, light switches, telephone handsets. By contacting these objects, you risk introducing infection into your body through dirty hands.

Rotavirus infection

It is an acute viral disease associated with damage to the gastrointestinal tract. This disease is transmitted mainly through food products and dirty hands.

Giardiasis

Hepatitis A

This is a viral liver disease. Of the entire group of hepatitis, hepatitis A is the least dangerous, since it does not have the ability to become chronic. Surely, everyone is familiar with such a disease as jaundice - this is hepatitis A. The most common way of transmitting this disease is fecal-oral, that is, through water, dirty hands, and household items.

Helminthiasis

Salmonellosis

Acute intestinal infection, usually transmitted through dirty hands, meat products and raw eggs. Salmonellosis is one of the most common bacterial foodborne diseases.

Typhoid fever

Acute intestinal infection. Even in the last century, it posed a huge danger, wiping out entire villages from the face of the earth; today it is practically defeated. The risk of contracting typhoid fever still exists today. The highest probability of transmission of infection is through contact and household contact: dirty hands, dishes and surrounding objects.

Almost every profession involves risk in one way or another. Occupational diseases – by-effect human activity. Oddly enough, computers and the Internet are firmly in the lead in the number of occupational diseases.

It would seem, what dangers can await a person in the office or even at home? The risk of contracting one of the diseases of dirty hands is one of the most likely risks.

Giardiasis– a classic disease of dirty hands. The causative agent of giardiasis, lamblia, is extremely active in natural environment habitat - the small intestine. Feeding on digestive products, Giardia reproduces at an extraordinary speed. Giardia is transferred from one carrier to another in the form of a cyst - an oblong microscopic sac. In this state, Giardia is very resistant to external influences– withstands temperature changes from -70 to +50°C and most common disinfectants.

Giardia is very hardy even in its mature state. They stick to the walls of the internal organs and feed on any organic food that they come across, right down to the mucous membrane and intestinal walls. Disability is the minimum penalty for failing to see a doctor in a timely manner.

Salmonellosis– a disease caused by salmonella, a bacterium that lives in fresh meat, eggs and dairy products. Stale water and food, insufficiently processed foods are the habitat for salmonella. The bacterium is easily transmitted by hands, including through the keyboard and computer mouse. Salmonellosis is not just dangerous, but deadly. Even modern medicines are not always able to cure this disease.

Dysentery- a well-known, but still dangerous, insidious disease. The causative agent is staphylococcus, which enters the body with water and food. Staphylococci live in places with high humidity, so dysentery is not usually transmitted through contact with smooth, dry surfaces. But if the smallest drops of saliva of an infected person or animal fall on the surface, even computer mouse or keyboards can become sources of infection. In this case, the infected person is guaranteed several weeks of suffering, and in the worst case, death from dehydration: the body of a patient with dysentery is almost unable to retain and absorb water.

Symptoms of diseases of dirty hands

• abdominal pain;
• frequent nausea, vomiting;
• inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract;
• fatigue, irritability, restless sleep;
• allergic conditions;
• urinary tract infections (cystitis);
• increased level of eosinophils in the blood (blood cells related to leukocytes that are involved in protecting the body from the penetration of foreign bodies);
• a sharp decrease in body weight.

Causes of diseases of dirty hands

A computer keyboard and mouse are objects that a programmer, designer, or copywriter does not just come into contact with. These are objects with which contact continues long time from day to day. Once we touch the keyboard, coming from the street, we transfer microparticles back to our fingers, closing the circle and making hand hygiene pointless.

Methods of treating diseases of dirty hands

Prevention of diseases of dirty hands

Everything here is more or less simple: you need to wash your hands more often after visiting the toilet, immediately upon returning from the street and after communicating with pets, after shaking hands (there is no guarantee that the interlocutor is as clean as you).

It is also worth cleaning the keyboard with special compounds that can be purchased at any store: it is advisable to thoroughly clean the keys and computer mouse at least once a week, and wipe them with damp wipes every day.

It is worth giving up the habit of biting your nails and putting a pen in your mouth.

You should not allow your cat to lie on the table, even if your pet is clean and well-groomed. The fur of any animal, even the cleanest one, contains enough pathogens from dirty hands.

It is worth giving up eating at the computer. Chips, sandwiches and various sweets are taken with hands, which simultaneously operate the keyboard and mouse.

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Diseases of dirty hands arise as a result of neglect of personal hygiene rules. The habitats of pathogenic microorganisms are very diverse: banknotes, public transport handrails, door handles, computer mouse, telephone handset, etc. It is contact with the above items that helps pathogens of various infectious diseases get into human hands. The further it goes, the worse it gets: a person touches his face and lips with unwashed hands or takes food that he immediately eats. As a result, infection opens access to the body.

Among the most common diseases of dirty hands, experts identify the following: acute infections, such as dysentery, hepatitis A, escherichiosis, helminthic infestations, influenza and acute respiratory viral infections, salmonellosis, typhoid fever and cholera. People with weakened immune systems are primarily at risk of becoming infected. In addition, young children and the elderly are at risk, since even a small number of pathogens can cause disruption in the functioning of their organs and entire systems.

Dysentery is the most widespread. It is accompanied by acute pain in the abdomen and rectum, as well as frequent bowel movements, vomiting and high body temperature. Most often, dysentery breaks out in the summer, when people actively eat vegetables and fruits. As a result of neglecting the proper treatment of products from dirt and pathogens, instead of increasing immunity, you can get an acute infection.

Another serious disease that occurs due to dirty hands is hepatitis A. The disease disrupts the functioning of the liver and requires quite a long treatment. Hepatitis can occur in extremely severe forms and lead to irreversible damage to the human liver. The patient develops a fever, and heat can last up to ten days. Fever is accompanied by muscle and liver pain, weakness, loss of appetite, and sometimes nausea and vomiting.

Among the common infections transmitted through dirty hands is salmonellosis. It is accompanied by pronounced signs of poisoning - nausea and frequent vomiting. It is worth noting that body temperature may remain within normal limits.

Typhoid fever is one of the most dangerous infectious diseases. At first it manifests itself in weakness and malaise, but after a couple of days the body temperature can reach 40 degrees. In addition, the disease is accompanied by headache, insomnia, rashes on the stomach and chest, diarrhea or constipation, and loss of appetite. In the most severe cases, swelling of the tongue can occur, leading to loss of consciousness.

Currently, a rare infectious disease of dirty hands is considered to be the plague of the 20th century - cholera. The disease is accompanied by severe diarrhea and poses a danger to the body in the form of dehydration. In order not to be at risk of this terrible disease, you must observe basic personal hygiene standards!

So, most in a simple way To protect your health from all of the above and similar diseases is to regularly wash your hands with soap. It is also worth noting that the treatment of diseases of dirty hands requires individual approach and depends on the stage of its occurrence. The danger of such diseases lies in the difficulty of predicting them, since some people carry pathogens within themselves for years, spreading them to others.

11 months ago

Since childhood, we have heard from adults the requirement to observe the rules of personal hygiene. Of course, kids often perceive this as an annoying obstacle to their own activities. For example, I ran in from the street to quickly have lunch and continue playing, and there was my mother with the inexorable: “Wash your hands!” Yes, be more diligent, with soap!

And daily washing with brushing teeth, taking a shower or bath could poison any pleasure from the coming day. Not to mention regularly cleaning your room or cleaning your clothes and shoes.
Only with age do we understand why we need to instill self-care skills from childhood. After all, in addition to the sloppy appearance, there is another important factor: failure to comply with the rules of personal hygiene often causes the development of a number of diseases, including serious ones, with consequences and serious complications.

What are the consequences of not following personal hygiene rules?

Hand washing is a special tradition. They are washed before eating, after visiting the toilet or performing physical work. They are washed after using public transport and walking the streets. Why?
Hands are among the most open areas our body. And taking into account the fact that the main part of the activity is carried out with the participation of the upper limbs, one can imagine how many harmful microorganisms accumulate on their surface.
Microorganisms can act as causative agents of diseases such as typhoid fever, salmonellosis, helminthiasis, various intestinal infections, hepatitis A, conjunctivitis, etc. If the rules of personal hygiene are violated, microorganisms that cause diseases can penetrate from the surface of the hands into the oral and nasal cavity, onto the mucous membrane of the eyeballs, into the bloodstream and contribute to the development of serious illnesses.
In addition to thoroughly washing the skin on your hands, you need to remember about your nails. Pathogenic bacteria are constantly hiding under the nail plates in large quantities.

Even if an external examination indicates cleanliness under the nails, this is a misleading impression. Without careful treatment of the surface of the skin under long nails and the inner surface of the nail, a certain number of pathogenic microorganisms will still remain. For this reason, young children who are unable to maintain good hygiene regularly have their nails cut short.

Prevention of diseases of dirty hands

To prevent diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria found in environment, it is recommended, first of all, to observe the rules of personal hygiene, in particular, regularly wash your hands or, whenever possible, treat their surfaces with damp antibacterial wipes or by special means with a similar effect. In this case, it is necessary to use soap or other detergent to improve the result.

We must not forget about the surfaces of products that you washed your hands before using. Fresh fruits, vegetables that have not been heat treatment Before use, wash under clean running water(preferably using a special brush).
Drinking water is not enough High Quality cleaning can also provoke many intestinal infections, viral diseases and other diseases of dirty hands. You should not drink water from open sources or in places where water quality has not been tested. Even local residents they assure that “the water is straight from the spring,” and in general, “we drink everything here, and nothing happened.”
Often parents are faced with the fact that their children are infected with one or several diseases of dirty hands. Most often this happens while relaxing near a body of water (pond, river, sea, lake).

Adults are perplexed, they say, personal hygiene was observed, and unwashed fruits and vegetables were not consumed, and they drank only bottled water. It turns out that infection occurs due to swimming in polluted waters.

Pathogenic microorganisms enter the surface of the skin, mucous membranes of the nose, mouth, eyes, and genitals. In order to prevent diseases of dirty hands, you should be careful about resting places. Especially if you are planning a vacation with children!