As it turns out, the best advice to stay healthy during cold and flu season is really pretty simple. It doesn't involve mega-dosing Vitamin C or popping mysterious anti-influenza supplements. And while avoiding people who are coughing and sneezing is a good idea, the infectious disease pros say that’s also not enough.
Instead, what it mostly comes down to is your hands.
Start by taking note of what you touch. Some common viruses spread quickly via surfaces touched by multiple people, as shown in a now classic study of viral contamination by infectious disease specialist Charles Gerba and his team at the Univeristy of Arizona.
The researchers contaminated two surfaces, a doorknob and a tabletop, with viral samples in an office building, hotel rooms and a healthcare facility. The virus they used was harmless to people but mimicked the contagiousness of the human norovirus (the dreaded “stomach flu” that causes diarrhea and vomiting).
Throughout the day, the researchers took samples from surfaces in the buildings, including light switches, bed rails, tabletops, coffee-pot handles, doorknobs, phones and computer keyboards. Within four hours, 40 to 60% of the surfaces in the buildings were contaminated with the virus. In the office, "the first area contaminated was the coffee break room," Gerba reported.
Norovirus is heartier outside the body than influenza, which sticks around on surfaces for up to 48 hours but loses much of its potency the longer its exposed. But since we can't control exposure to viral particles in the air (aside from maybe wearing a mask every day), managing what we touch is the best strategy available to us.
With that in mind, here are three simple things office dwellers can do to stay healthier this cold and flu season.
Wipe down surfaces.
Infections in offices could be significantly reduced by wiping down common surfaces with a decent disinfectant. That includes door handles, refrigerator doors, coffee pots, microwave handles, common area phones and anything else you can think of that gets touched by more than one person throughout the day. As Gerba’s study showed, this practice is especially important in the break room. Vigilance with disinfectants reduces the spread of viruses by 80 to 99%, according to his research.
Use a paper towel to open the bathroom door.
Since bathroom door handles are touched all day long, infectious disease experts recommend using a paper towel to open them when you're exiting and then throw it away. Your office building can help out by placing a wastebasket near the door to encourage the “open and toss,” resulting in fewer people transferring germs and less infectious misery. If your office building isn’t accommodating, they’ll get the message when a pile of paper towels keeps appearing near the door.
Wash your hands (the right way).
Arguably the single best way to avoid getting sick is by washing your hands. But as you've probably heard, most of us aren’t washing our hands the right way. Rather than just spritzing with a little warm water, use the disease-neutralizing five-step process:
- Wet your hands and apply soap (just regular soap is fine)
- Lather up, including the back of your hands and between your fingers
- Scrub for at least 20-30 seconds
- Rinse thoroughly
- Dry using a clean towel
And if you see someone not washing their hands, make sure to throw them a glare.
A final item worth mentioning is to stay home if you’re feeling sick, but since we can't control what other people do, that’s not a perfect solution (and the idea, of course, is to avoid getting sick in the first place). Washing your hands and staying vigilant about what you touch is about as effective a strategy as we're going to get, and it's really not that hard to do.
You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and at his website,daviddisalvo.org.
