Healthy for a Happy Life

Ever wonder why so many of us get sick during the holidays? In their new book, Did You Just Eat That?, scientists Paul Dawson and Brian Shelton share the results of their germy experiments and give some simple steps to help you stay healthy through the New Year:

1. Don’t Double Dip. Tempted to imitate George Constanza and double dip at the party? As suggested in The Washington Post, you might as well put your entire mouth in the dip. In one of their studies, Dawson and Shelton found that between 100 and 1,000 bacteria are transmitted from your mouth to the dip when you double-dip a cracker. Thinner dips, such as salsa, attract the most bacteria as a greater volume of dip drops from the cracker back into the bowl.
2. Don’t Share. While it may increase affection, sharing food also increases infection. In an experiment with soup, scientists found that 70,000 more bacteria per milliliter are transported into a bowl after a spoon is placed in the mouth. While measuring germ sharing with rice, they discovered that the transfer of bacteria from the mouth back into the shared bowl of rice was 800,000 bacteria per gram of rice while eating with a spoon and more than 2 million bacteria per gram were transferred while eating with the hands.
3. Drink it neat without a twist. The scientists found that it is very likely for viruses to spread from ice and lemons when they are added to your drink. They put E. coli bacteria on hands that then touched ice cubes or lemons and found that more than 6,000 E. coli bacteria were transferred to 100 percent of the wet lemons and ice cubes.
4. Hands off the menu. When you sit down in a restaurant, nearly every surface around you is contaminated – especially the menus, which are touched continually by restaurant staffers and customers. In their study, Dawson and Shelton found more than 2,000 bacteria on six-inch- square samplings of 108 randomly sampled restaurant menus. In another study, they put E. coli bacteria on menus and found that up to a third of the bacteria transferred to customer hands after they handled the menus for one minute.
5. Beware of the holiday blockbuster. A report by the ABC show “20/20” found that the seats and armrests in New York and Los Angeles movie theaters contained fecal bacteria. Obviously, when you touch a seat or armrest and then thrust your hand into your bucket of popcorn, these same germs transfer into your snack. Dawson and Shelton found that 85 percent of the handfuls of popcorn touched with hands inoculated with E. coli contained these bacteria, while 79 percent of the popcorn samples remaining in the serving bowl contained E. coli transferred from the person taking a handful of popcorn from the same bowl.
6. Don’t let them eat cake. If any of your holiday celebrations coincide with someone’s birthday, you may want to decline the cake. Dawson and Shelton’s studies found that blowing out birthday candles transfer oral bacteria to the cake surface. In their experiments, nearly 3,000 more bacteria, and as many as 37,000, were recovered from the surface of a cake after the candles were blown out.
7. It’s more than just hot air. In addition to hot air, hand air dryers blow bacteria around public rest rooms. (Which explains why you do not see them in most medical facilities.) In this study, Dawson and Shelton found more than 18,000 bacteria on restroom hand air dryers in grocery stores and more than 2,000 in gas stations and college campuses. In addition, the activation push buttons and air intake vents in male bathroom dryers had more bacteria than hand dryers found in female bathrooms. A study from the United Kingdom found that hand air dryers increased bacteria populations on hands fivefold after washing, while paper towels decreased bacterial populations on hands by 42 percent. According to scientists, paper towels are your safest option.

Dawson and Shelton suggest that one of the best ways to stay healthy is to practice good personal hygiene habits and encourage them in those around you. These include effective hand-washing (10-second warm water rinse, ­10- to 15-seconds lathering and scrubbing of the hands with soap, warm water rinse long enough to remove all the lather, and then drying with disposable paper towels); covering your mouth when coughing and sneezing; keeping your hands out of your eyes, nose and mouth; staying home when you are sick and limiting your contact with those who are sick.

None of us want to spend the holidays in quarantine, but I hope you will consider these tips and enjoy a healthier and happier holiday season.