Having good hygiene is really important for many reasons. We should teach the importance of hygiene from an early age to instil such a good habit from kids and to keep themselves and others healthy. There are many types of hygiene that we should maintain in our daily life. They include teeth hygiene, nail hygiene, hand hygiene, sickness hygiene, toilet hygiene, shower hygiene and travel hygiene.
Keeping a hygienic living condition helps to prevent the spread of infections and contracting illness to oneself. Most diseases are spread through faecal-oral such as coronavirus, diarrhoea viruses, tuberculosis. Those diseases have been the top causes of morbidity worldwide. It is very crucial to be clean in order to sustain good health. Conditions such as head lice and athlete’s foot should be treated immediately to prevent complications. For example, you can easily transfer germs and bacteria to your mouth or eyes if you don’t have proper hand hygiene after using the toilet or before handling food, which can lead to diarrhoea. While neglecting your teeth hygiene will lead to plaque build-up and also a risk factor to heart disease.
Poor personal hygiene habits can lead to bad body odour and greasy skin, and cause a problem with your body image. This will perpetuate your low self-esteem, low confidence and even worse depression. You will feel more comfortable if you are well-groomed and clean. Feeling dirty and unfresh will kick in negative emotions such as irritability, anxiety and discomfort. Your mood and interactions with others also will be affected if you have poor hygiene. While good hygiene can boost your confidence when you seem more attractive to others. The peace of mind will always come from within yourself and the way you feel about yourself. Even though comparing yourself in your social media is not good for your mental health as well, however, you should follow basic personal hygiene principles. Hygiene is important for our self-presentation and how we and others perceive ourselves which can affect many aspects of our lives.
Other than body images, hygiene is also for social and professional acceptance. It could be unpleasant if people have to spend their time with you who have bad breath and body odour. Some business relationships will get negative consequences. Hiring company also look for employees who practice good hygiene in order to prevent contamination in the industries like food and medical industries. A study also proved that the top reasons why kids being bullied at school are due to poor hygiene. Thus, a hygienic lifestyle should be instilled at an early age to prepare them the best personality which prevents them from being bullied.
Apart from common hygiene, we should maintain good sleep hygiene. Healthy sleep is one of the crucial things in our life as well in order to balance physical and mental health. We can also improve our productivity and overall quality of life when we have good sleep and rest. The sign of poor sleep hygiene is when you have frequent sleep disturbances, daytime sleepiness and when you are taking too long to fall asleep. You should look back at your sleep habits.
To sum up, you need to practice good hygiene by having a good and healthy routine. You need to wash your body including your hair often to brush off bacteria and dead skin. You need to brush your teeth at least twice per day and meet your dentist twice a year. You need to wash your hands after coughing, sneezing, holding dirty things, or coming out from the restroom. Also, you need to trim your fingernails and toenails regularly. You may ask doctors for online consultation about good hygiene. For example, what type of shampoo to treat dandruff? What is the best sleep hygiene practice to avoid sleep paralysis? What type of soaps can I use if I have dry skin? What is the cough etiquette?