Get my hands away from my face so I don't get sick so often!

September 1, 2005 2:20 PM

Nose scratching, Face scratching, Nose Picking, Teeth picking, Eye rubbing: Get my hands away from my face. I'd like to not get sick quite as often, and I've noticed I have a few unsavory habits that probably have gotten me sick a number of times. How do I keep my hands away from my face permanently?
posted by sirion to health & fitness (8 comments total)

Previously: How can I stop touching my face?
posted by smackfu at 2:29 PM on September 1, 2005

Two suggestions:
1 - My doctor told me that in med school they were told to always imagine that they had on one of those welder's masks, the type that are one big plexiglass screen in front of your face. With that image in your head, you wouldn't even try to touch your face.
2 - I don't remember where I learned this one, but whenever I am around someone with a cold or flu, I use the "wet paint" method. I imagine that anything I touch is covered in wet paint, and so once I touch it, it is on my hands. This keeps me very aware of everything I touch, including my face, as anything I touch will get smeared with the paint on my hands. Imagining the 'germs' as wet paint really increases your awareness of where you are spreading it with your hands.
posted by juggler at 4:05 PM on September 1, 2005

smackfu: Oops..missed that thread! Thanks!

I guess an additional question to deal with: How does one deal with said habits perpetuating themselves by causing one's face to be incessantly itchy?
posted by sirion at 8:41 PM on September 1, 2005

I went through the SARS crisis in Hong Kong and became very aware of the transmission route from hand to eye nose & mouth. Although I did my best simply to reduce face touching, I found it easier using something like juggler's 2nd suggestion above.

After all, it isn't the face touching that is the problem (and I recall reading at the time that we touch our face an average of 30 times an hour, or something really high like that). It's the picking up viruses or bacteria on the fingers or hand that is the problem.

I became, and remain today, very conscious of what I am touching, and I wash my hands more frequently than before. I also keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some tissues, and will dampen a tissue with alcohol then wipe all my fingers. When going through doors or lifting toilet seats or touching anything in a public area, I try to touch a part that fewer people would use. If the door handle runs vertically the length of the door, I grasp it high up or low down. I try not to touch banisters or the railings of escalators. I push open doors with my shoulder where possible, or my forearm, or push through backwards. I occasionally wipe down my keyboard with rubbing alcohol. And the phone.

Most viruses don't live more than a few hours on a dry surface, so I figure the steps I take above do indeed materially reduce my risk of eventually communicating a virus to my innards. It's much less compulsive and anal than I make it seem above. It's simply a matter of habit for me now, like brushing teeth. And I haven't had a cold in a couple of years.
posted by mono blanco at 9:00 PM on September 1, 2005

I try and keep my hands busy in other ways to keep them off my face -- sit on them, fold them, push them in pockets, carry things etc.

Interestingly, I read somewhere that picking your nose may perversely boost your immune system, but my google-fu has let me down and I can't find it now. I think the constant irritation causes an increase in white blood cells or something. Not that I'm recommending you pick your nose a lot!
posted by londonmark at 3:28 AM on September 2, 2005

londonmark, you're on to something, but you have to eat it too.
posted by PhatLobley at 7:01 AM on September 2, 2005

You may make the problem worse by keeping your hands away from your face. If you stop doing it only while around someone who is sick, that sounds like a good plan. If you stop doing it always, you might just end up exposing your immune system to much lesser slice of the bug life, and a few years down the track, become much easier to sicken as a result.

I've only seen a handful pop-sci articles on this and related themes, so the above is hardly an authoritive perspective, but I get the distinct impression that lowering exposure isn't always the good thing it's assumed to be, and there are plenty of documented cases where exposure to a virus that causes little to no noticeable effects enables the immune system to toast a virus that does make people sick.
I also note that people I know who take the most steps to avoid viruses are invariably the people who sicken the easiest. The assumption is that they go to the effort because their immune system is weak, but I sometimes wonder if it's not the other way around. But like I said, I don't know, I'm just posting this as some food for throught.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:28 PM on September 2, 2005

I'm really bad about always having my hands on my face too, but for me it's usually rubbing my eyes or propping up my chin while I'm on the computer.

I don't have a solution for propping up the chin yet, but I might have figured out somthing to keep my hands away from my eyes. I had LASIK, and if you rub your eyes much in the next few weeks, the little flap they make in the cornea may not heal right. Knowing myself, I was paranoid.

I bought some comfortable swimming goggles, put them on loosely enough that they didn't seal, and wore them at home, even to sleep in, for the first week. Now I'm in the second week, and I think it actually worked! I haven't even found myself rubbing my eyes in my sleep.
posted by Jaie at 6:58 AM on September 3, 2005