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To avoid getting the flu, you should avoid touching your face
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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With the onset of winter cold, the number of people with colds and flu increases and therefore there is a risk of catching the virus.
However, those who are determined to avoid illness at all costs should take into account that simply washing your hands is not enough. Offices are especially dangerous, as they are poorly ventilated and all the germs and viruses settle on tables, keyboards and other objects.
A team of researchers at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has found that we infect ourselves with bacteria and viruses by touching our mouths and noses after touching contaminated surfaces. Yet many people believe that if we avoid contact with sick people, hand washing is enough to keep us from getting infected. But in between hand washings, when a person thinks that by soaping their hands well, they have eradicated all the evil, germs are transferred.
This transmission of microbes from oneself to another even has a special name - autovaccination or the transmission of viruses from one part of the body to another. This method of infection is considered the main one both in the transmission of microbes from a sick person to a healthy person, and from an infected surface. That is, the more often we touch our face, the greater the risk of getting sick we expose ourselves to.
The results of the specialists’ work were published in the scientific journal “Clinical Infectious Diseases”.
The researchers observed 249 people. They monitored their behavior and the frequency of their face touching.
As it turned out, on average, people touch their faces with their hands 3.6 times per hour, and their touching of surrounding objects occurs with a frequency of 3.3 times per hour.
Thus, if you do not wash your hands every 15 minutes, people are likely to get reinfected. Therefore, you should not rely on frequent hand washing, it is better to listen to the advice of professionals and touch your face as little as possible during epidemic outbreaks. By the way, doctors recommend panicking less during such periods and worrying about catching an infection, because nervousness and anxiety negatively affect the body's defenses, significantly weakening them.