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ciphergoth comments on Boring Advice Repository - Less Wrong
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Wash your hands before every meal.
For what reason? Which concrete benefit do I get from following that advice?
In a study of children in schools, setting up a 'handwashing event' 4x per day cut sick days in half. Another controlled study on hand sanitizer showed a 20% decrease in sick days.
Here's a replication on sanitizer showing 20% reduction in illness rate for college students.
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/Sept03/090203/75n-0183h-c000075-att-14-vol154.pdf
Here's one in Pakistan where incidence of Pneumonia and Diarrhea in children were cut in half.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16023513
Here's one in China where intensive handwashing programs for child schools cut sickness by ~40%. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17556631
The short of it is 20% to 50% fewer contagious sicknesses, depending on your current habits (assuming what holds true for children or college students holds true for you).
This seems like a pretty big assumption for many adults. Children and college students are likely in much closer quarters with many other people than a lot of office workers.
(I'm a college student, though, and will try to take this advice!)
Except when they come in direct contact with the food, isn't washing hands after going to the bathroom and before cooking enough?
Notice how often you touch your lips and the area under your nose. For most people, it's pretty often.
This is true. However, touching your face makes you look uncertain. So it is probably a good idea (as a simple social hack) to stop touching your face.
Then here's some more boring advice:
Learn to use eating utensils and napkin properly.
Avoid touching your face.
It's probably better to just wash them anyway so you don't have to plan out whether you'll be touching bread and fruits or not.