Maintaining Personal Hygiene Is Easy, Just Follow These 5 Steps
Activities of washing hands, bathing, brushing teeth and others are things you do often. You also definitely know that this is done to maintain personal hygiene. Unfortunately, not everyone knows about how to maintain personal hygiene properly, including the reasons why they have to maintain personal hygiene in addition to being a routine.
Why do we need to maintain personal hygiene?
Personal hygiene or personal hygiene is an action to maintain one’s hygiene and health in order to obtain optimal physical and psychological well-being.
Maintaining body hygiene needs to be done for three reasons, namely:
1. Social reasons
Maintaining personal hygiene can help you avoid a negative body image.
After all, who other people like to talk about, especially when it comes to body odor, underarm odor, bad breath, yellow teeth, or anything related to your body?
2. Health reasons
Poor personal hygiene can increase your risk of developing diseases, such as diarrhea or other infections.
The following are various diseases that can attack if personal hygiene is not maintained properly:
- Fever
- Skin infection
- Food poisoning
- Typhus
- Worms
- Hepatitis
- Urinary tract infection
- Cavity
By maintaining personal hygiene, you can prevent exposure to the diseases above.
3. Psychological reasons
Good personal hygiene can increase your self-confidence, especially in social situations.
Guidelines for maintaining personal hygiene
If so far you have been doing the following activities to maintain personal hygiene, then you are a clean person.
If you haven’t done the five important things below, you can start now.
1. Wash hands with soap
Most infections can occur when you touch your food or your mouth with dirty hands.
Therefore, washing your hands with soap is one way to maintain personal hygiene that you can do to avoid infection and disease.
It is recommended that you wash your hands with soap and running water, especially when:
- After using the toilet.
- Before and after eating.
- Before cooking or preparing food.
- After handling the animal.
- Being around someone who has a cough or cold.
select hand wash contains aloe vera which has an additional function to soften the skin.
For those of you who have sensitive skin, choose hand wash which contain allergen-free fragrance. That way, you can keep your hands clean and soft at the same time.
However, if you don’t have access to running water, you can use the soap and water provided.
If you don’t have access to water or soap, you can use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer such as hand sanitizer containing at least 60 percent alcohol to clean hands.
2. Brush your teeth morning and night
Teeth and mouth are also important aspects that you should not miss when talking about personal hygiene.
To prevent bad breath, plaque on teeth, and other tooth infections, you need to regularly brush your teeth at least twice a day, in the morning and at night.
In the morning, you will usually experience bad breath because saliva is not made while you are sleeping. And at night, the production of saliva is reduced and the bacteria that destroy teeth are more active at night.
To maintain optimal oral and dental health, you need to gently brush your teeth at least twice a day, replace your toothbrush every three months or when your toothbrush starts to wear out, and make sure you use toothpaste that contains fluoride.
3. Keep nails clean
Nails that are left long and dirty can be a cause of infection.
Therefore, you need to maintain personal hygiene by paying attention to your nails. Here are the ways:
- Does not bite or tear nails.
- Trim nails when they start to lengthen. Use a clean nail clipper to trim your nails.
- If you like to maintain long nails, it is recommended that you clean your nails with water, soap, and a nail brush to scrub under the nails when you wash your hands.
4. Keep your feet clean
If you wear socks and shoes all day long or use the same socks and shoes for days, bacteria will build up on the skin of your feet, which can lead to bad foot odor.
To maintain the condition of your feet as part of personal hygiene, here are what you need to do:
- Wash your feet regularly and dry them with a towel.
- Avoid wearing the same socks and shoes every day or wearing socks and shoes all day long.
- Do not wear shoes when your feet are wet, as this makes the feet moist and makes it easier for bacteria to thrive.
5. Keep clothes clean
Hygiene on yourself is also closely related to what you wear.
You need to wash dirty clothes with detergent until they are clean before you use them again.
It is also recommended that you hang clothes that you have washed in the sun to dry because the sun can kill some germs that can cause infection.
6. Shower every day
Dense activity sometimes makes some people lazy to take a shower. In fact, maintaining personal hygiene by regularly bathing in a tropical country like Indonesia is very important.
Bathing with soap helps you to remove dead skin cells, bacteria, and oil buildup on the skin.
Make sure you rinse your body parts thoroughly, especially under the armpits and genital area, as these areas sweat more easily and are prone to mold. Ideally, you should shower 2 times a day.
7. Keep the reproductive organs clean
In maintaining personal hygiene, of course you should not miss all parts of the body, including the genitals. Unfortunately, not many realize the importance of maintaining cleanliness of the genital organs.
In fact, by maintaining cleanliness, you can avoid various diseases and infections of the genitals, ranging from urinary tract infections, bacterial vaginosis, to sexually transmitted diseases.
Especially for the intimate area, avoid using soap to clean it. The reason is, soap has the risk of causing irritation because the skin in your genital area is very sensitive.
If you want to use soap, choose products with mild ingredients and don’t contain perfume.
8. Maintain cleanliness of hair
Hair is also not spared from body parts that you have to keep clean. Thus, the hair will avoid unwanted conditions, such as hair loss, dryness, dandruff, or even becoming a nest of lice.
It is better if you do not need to wash your hair every day. Shampooing once every 2 days or 2-5 times a week is sufficient.
When shampooing, make sure the shampoo is used on all parts of the scalp. After rinsing, towel dry your hair, but avoid rubbing your hair too harshly.
Make sure you rinse your hair thoroughly to avoid buildup of product residue on your scalp.
9. Maintain nasal hygiene
Another way to maintain personal hygiene is to pay attention to your nose.
This is because the nose is one part of the body that is at the forefront of preventing bacteria and viruses, making it prone to allergies, irritation, and even infection.
You can clean your nose in the following ways:
- Boil the water for 1 minute or until cooked, then allow it to cool.
- Rinse your nose with boiled water.
- Blow your nose a few times to get rid of the dirt and mucus in it.
10. Keep your ears clean
One more body part that you should not miss is the ear. By maintaining ear cleanliness, this will prevent you from various ear infections.
It is a good idea to use ear drops containing hydrogen peroxide. This content can help thin the wax that has accumulated in the ears.
Avoid using cotton bud because doing so runs the risk of pushing the wax deeper, and injuring your eardrums.
11. Choose clean foods
Food hygiene is also important to protect yourself from various diseases, such as food poisoning or worms.
You can follow some tips from the following Hygiene Food Safety website to ensure that the food you consume is really kept clean:
- Always wash your hands before cooking and eating
- Wash your cooking and eating utensils, such as knives, mixer, spoons, forks, and so on
- Store meat and dairy products in the refrigerator to prevent bacterial development
- Separate raw ingredients from cooked foods.
- Wash vegetables and fruit before consumption or cooking
- Do not use a butcher knife to cut other food ingredients to prevent the transfer of bacteria
- Cook your ingredients at a suitable temperature
- Keep the kitchen area away from insects, cockroaches, or mice to keep it clean
12. Make sure the house is always clean
A clean house is also an important part of maintaining personal hygiene.
With a clean house, dust and germs will not easily accumulate, so you and the people at home can avoid the risk of getting sick.
To keep your home clean, you need to pay extra attention to the surfaces that you touch directly, such as door handles, tables, chairs, switches, remotes, or children’s toys.
In addition, the cleanliness of the bedroom must also be prioritized, such as changing pillow sheets, bolsters, and mattresses.
Kitchen cleanliness should not escape your attention because this is also related to the cleanliness of the food that you prepare at home. After cleaning, don’t forget to spray disinfectant at home.
