When you’re doing a task which you haven’t reflected on in a long time, like brushing your teeth or washing your hands, take a few minutes to search online or ask about the optimal way to do the task. These small improvements add up over time. You’ll find you might be making common mistakes!
Oral hygiene:
Listen to dentists! Use a fluoride tooth paste. Oral health is partly genetic. Some will have to work much harder than others. Oral health is tied to the overall health of the animal. A build up of plaque can lead to other serious issues when inevitably swallowed, plaque builds up in the arteries of the heart and in the brain leading to various serious diseases. These types of small habits build up over a lifetime.
I currently brush my teeth for about 2 minutes in the morning and at night. I have a tongue scraper in the morning to fight odor causing bacteria. I follow it with mouth wash. At night before brushing my teeth I use my water pick which shoots water on my gums and between my teeth to clear build up.
Bathing:
Bathing is really about washing skin and hair, the expertise of dermatologists. There are some general rules about showering:
- Don’t shower too often (no set limit, just several times per week)
- Keep it short (ideally 10-15 minutes)
- Stay cool (hot water strips away essential oils, stay lukewarm)
- Don’t wash your hair too much or too little
- Focus on the dirtiest or most oily areas (armpits, groin, and any flap of skin)
- Start at the top of your head and wash your way down
- Shave last
- Pat yourself dry
- Moisturize post-shower
I take a quick shower most days of the week and a full body shower weekly. I use a bar of soap, and I’m trying out bar soap shampoo to reduce plastic and other waste products.
Hand washing:
Correct handwashing technique recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control for prevention of transmission of disease includes the following steps:
- Wet hands with warm or cold running water. Running water is recommended because standing basins may be contaminated, while the temperature of the water does not seem to make a difference.
- Lather hands by rubbing them with a generous amount of soap, including the backs of hands, between fingers, and under nails. Soap lifts germs from the skin, and studies show that people tend to wash their hands more thoroughly when soap is used rather than water alone.
- Scrub for at least 20 seconds. Scrubbing creates friction, which helps remove germs from skin, and scrubbing for longer periods removes more germs.
- Rinse well under running water. Rinsing in a basin can recontaminate hands.
- Dry with a clean towel or allow to air dry. Wet and moist hands are more easily recontaminated.
The most commonly missed areas are the thumb, the wrist, the areas between the fingers, and under fingernails. Artificial nails and chipped nail polish may harbor microorganisms. Moisturizing lotion is often recommended to keep the hands from drying out; dry skin can lead to skin damage which can increase the risk for the transmission of infection.
In general, hands should be washed little more than 10 times per day. There are good bacteria on your hands which defend against worse bacteria. Cleaning too much lowers your natural defenses.
Poop:
All I will say about wiping is once I got a good bidet, I can never go back to just using toilet paper.
Feces and urine are good indicators of bodily health. You should review your excrement and adjust accordingly. For poop, you should follow the Bristol stool chart. Your poop should be like a cracked sausage or a long, smooth snake. You should be able to finishing pooping within a minute or so of sitting down.
Your urine should be a transparent, light yellow. If your urine is dark, drink some more water. If your urine is cloudy or murky, you may have an infection. The young, old, and obese often have inhibited thirst mechanism; they should pay closer attention to urine to determine hydration levels.