Raise your hands for hand washing
For all of you who obsessively spray alcohol and water at the gym or clean your hands with sanitizers, Canadian researchers have found what medical professionals already knew — old-fashioned soap and water works better than anything to clean your hands.
Hospital-acquired infections — called nosocomial infections — are a huge problem worldwide. One of the most difficult bugs to combat is Clostridium difficile. Michael Libman, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal studied the most effective ways to eliminate C. difficile from the hands of health care workers.
Researchers tested five hand-washing protocols that emulated hospital conditions as closely as possible, according to a McGill press release. After the hands of 10 volunteers were contaminated with the bacterium, they washed with regular soap and warm or cold water, antiseptic soap and warm water, an alcohol-based solution and a disinfectant towel.
