4 Well-Known Hygiene Myths We Need To Clean Out

By M. C. October 12, 2021

Photo by Maridav from Shutterstock

Hygiene Myth 3: Always wash your hands with hot water – One thing is sure: boiling water is effective in killing harmful bacteria, as the World Health Organization approves. Even so, there’s no scientific evidence that sustains the fact that you have to wash your hands with scalding hot water in order to clean them. Warm water is just as effective as a hot one. But even more important than temperature is the fact that you have to soap your hands before you get them wet. And wash them for at least 20 seconds.
Hygiene The 5-second rule means food is safe to eat – This ancient rule dates all the way back to the 1200s, when Genghis Khan implemented the “khan rule” at his parties, saying that “food on the floor has to stay as much as Khan allowed”. In time, it turned into the “five-second rule”, which you surely know already. But in reality, dropping the food on the floor even for a second and then eating it might be harmful to our bodies, as Thomas Murray says, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and an associate professor of pediatrics at Yale Medicine. “Bacteria can attach to food as soon as it hits the ground.”