Want to Avoid Getting the Cold or Flu? Stop Touching Your Face!

And wash your damn hands too!

If you just scratched the inside of your nose, picked some food from your teeth, or rubbed the sleep out of your eyes, congratulations, your face is now teeming with bacteria.

Technically, it already was. And some of that bacteria is the normal kind that regularly makes a home on your skin without complaint. There are billions of these teensie organisms in our body, after all.

But by touching your face you're at risk of transferring the specific bacteria from your hands; hands that spend their days… touching other things that may be carrying harmful bacteria. It’s basically an invitation to get sick, addressed from your fingers to your face. Or, as they call it in the medical community, an infection.

Sound alarmist? Maybe even a little obsessive compulsive? Good. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a virus going round, and the less you touch your face, the better your chances are of staying healthy. In fact, we know you likely came to this article because you’re mortally terrified of coronavirus, and experts in the field of infectious diseases say one thing you can do right now to try and prevent infection is to stop putting your hands on your face. So, who’s being alarmist now?

We spoke to Professor Tom Riley of PathWest Laboratory Medicine at the University of Western Australia, to confirm our suspicions that touching your face with unclean hands is a bad idea.

He took it one step further: "You shouldn’t be telling people don’t touch your face—you should, really—but you should be telling people, 'Wash your hands!' Washing your hands is the most important infection control measure you can do."

However, he conceded that a lot of people just can’t help touching their face, saying, "That’s part of the problem, you don’t even know you’re doing it."

"You’re putting [bacteria] closer to places, or indeed in places, where you can either ingest it, i.e. you swallow the bloody thing, or you stick it in your nose, because people stick their fingers up their nose even though they don’t bloody ever admit to it, and that means you can actually inhale it."

Consider this example: A sick person sneezes into their hands. Then they touch a doorknob. Then you touch that doorknob. Then you eat lunch and maybe even lick the crumbs off your fingers. That’s called 'indirect' contact. 'Direct' contact is when, say, a sick person sneezes right into your mouth. Short of scraping your tongue, there’s not much you can do there. However, regularly washing your hands and not touching your face can help keep indirect germs out of your mouth, which is especially necessary given some infectious bacteria can hang around on your skin for hours.

(Professor Riley says alcohol-based sanitisers are handy, but depending on the bug, sometimes the mechanical action of cleaning and scrubbing your hands with soap can be more effective.)

"The skin is, for many organisms, an inherently hostile place," Professor Riley stresses.

Still, when there’s a nasty virus on the loose, he says it’s a smart idea to wash your hands—"the number one infection control measure available in the world"—among other preventative actions: "Don’t go around touching s***, for example."

And, of course, keeping fingers clear of your mouth and nose.

"Sticking your fingers in your ear is never a good idea either," he adds.

"And we won’t talk about any other orifices."

Read More:

What to Do If You Think You Might Have Coronavirus

Why Social Distancing Is Essential to Stopping the Spread of Coronavirus

What Does Self-Isolation Actually Mean? (Like, Can I Still Go to the Shops?)

Why Schools Are Staying Open (For Now)

Don’t Snooze On Podcasts: 8 Recommendations While You Self-Isolate

Podcast: Everything You Need to Know About Coronavirus (and a Few Things You Didn't)

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