Lifehacks from a Microbiologist - How Not to Get Sick

The so-called cold can "arrive" in two cases — from the outside and from within;

Germ from the outside:

The source of illness from the outside is any sick individual who is sneezing, coughing, or breathing, as well as surfaces he contaminates. Moreover, the role of these surfaces is often key, because we usually get sick not when someone sneezes on us, but when the person who sneezed into his palm touched a rail, we then grabbed the rail, and then rubbed our nose. Such chains can be very intricate, but most often they include links such as hands, rails, door handles, our mobile phones, wallets, elevator and intercom buttons, keyboards, ... glasses, beards, and a girl’s bun. And of course, potentially dangerous is any closed space with “coughers” and “sneezers” — public transport, open-plan offices, with pharmacies and hospitals being zones of especially high risk;

Germ from within – our own microorganisms, which normally live-feast on our mucous membranes of the throat and nose, but under certain circumstances (cooling down/stress/lack of sleep, etc.) can rapidly multiply and disrupt the truce;

It should be emphasized immediately that the germ from the outside is more dangerous than the germ from within, because the microorganisms that have already taken the wrong path have had time to select, gaining a bouquet of virulence factors and often antibiotic resistance. It’s like in laboratory studies, when a strain of some germ, which has begun to lose its pathogenic properties from boring life in a test tube, is passed through a group of guinea pigs and it, hearing fresh meat, again, like an athlete, is in shape;

And now the main thing — what techniques and habits will help us avoid becoming victims of either of these infections:

• whenever possible, avoid the same “sneezing” and “coughing” people — simply go around, reschedule the meeting, move to another table, ask colleagues to work/sleep at home — sometimes a few minutes of awkwardness save the whole week from snot;
• plan your city movements not during rush hour;
• the safest time to go to a pharmacy or supermarket is the morning; those who stood in a long line of temperature-ailing folks for “cold flu” at some валютикс at seven in the evening will understand;
• make it a rule to try not to touch your face and hair more than necessary while outside the home; by the way, for those with facial skin problems, this will also come in handy;
• as a ritual of returning home, include washing hands, face, and also the nose. For it is in the nasal cavity that all day’s breath has accumulated. Its daily hygiene is meant to rid us of the zoo of microbes that may still intervene in our precious organism and ruin weekend plans; pay attention to the beard, bun, and glasses if you wear them;
• as part of the homecoming ritual, add cleaning your mobile phone. One more reminder that this item is used everywhere — in transit, in the kitchen, in bed, in the toilet. There are many publications on this topic, including — mobile phones of medical personnel as a reservoir of nosocomial infection, and also a source of germs that cause acne on the face, etc. Now on Amazon there are ready-made solutions, like a home sterilizer for a mobile phone. I am not a proponent of chasing sterility and using disinfectants, but in this one case I tilt toward two small sprays of isopropyl alcohol
• and if you have a Saturday wedding, an Oscar ceremony, or participate in the Olympic games, and an influenza epidemic hits, but you must urgently get from point A to point B, it’s not bad to use old good laboratory masks (just buy sealed ones, or make sure the good apothecary doesn’t hand you the same five-ruble note that he just got from a sneezing customer) or a bus instead of the metro;

We sorted out the external infection, but what to do with our own resident bacteria so they don’t become “throat blockers”?

• primitively but effectively — full sleep and avoiding unnecessary stress. So, if in the weekend there are the same weddings-oscars-games, better postpone the late night party and quarrel with neighbors to the next week;
• primitively but logically — avoid hypothermia. Yes, only the most hardy who manage to keep a hat and gloves until the end of the spring frosts will be happy owners of a nose free of snot and used tickets to Sukhishvili;
• and if things start to "hit," then what can save you until tomorrow morning is a full night’s sleep in wool socks and a wool scarf, frequent gargling with warm water and baking soda (this solution simply causes the production of mucus, which literally washes away the biofilm of the frantic little bad guys from the mucosa);
• NB: for a few days you should exclude from your diet products high in sugar, as this is an easily available substrate for bacteria on your throat and by this you only feed them. This includes candies, cakes, tea with sugar, as well as jams. It sounds strange, but old good raspberry jam for the throat is not exactly medicine; you should also limit the consumption of products prone to forming plaque — pasta and flour products, dairy products.

Health to all!

ps: and finally - "if you’re sick, stay at home" - take care of your neighbor, don’t sneeze on him and don’t spoil his weekend plans :)