Now, I’m not talking about you if you have an autoimmune disorder, cancer, or OCD. You can’t help that sort of thing, and I get it. I’m talking to the average medically sound dopers out there who go are squicked out by everything. What’s up with that? What convinced you that your health practices are necessary or beneficial? Going by my lifetime, I was sick a lot as a young child, and now I’m fairly invunerable. I get a flu shot every couple of years and that’s about it. I don’t freak out about hand washing, anti-bac soaps, bleach use and all that jazz. I’ve pretty much done every gross thing that I’ve heard on here you should never EVER do, at least once and never had any ill effects. Is it really necessary?
I find it strange how people who are careful about infectious diseases are so quick to be labelled “germaphobes” and “hygiene Nazis” on this board. I don’t like getting sick, and I take precautions to prevent it; that doesn’t seem pathological to me.
Well, there is germaphobe and then there is germaphobe. Judicious handwashing, not eating stuff that has fallen to the floor, and using disinfectant on your phone and doorknobs once a week is, IMHO (checks forum, ok yep) within the range of normal.
But I knew a woman who would clean her laundry basket out with bleach spray so that she wouldn’t have to put her clean clothing back into the same basket that her dirty clothing came out of. And I’m taking normal family laundry, not like working on a pig farm or something. That is taking it all a little to far.
(I kinda always wondered why she didn’t take the next logical step and have 2 different baskets.)
Please don’t lump us OCD’ers in with the germaphobes. Not all of us have that particular brand of OCD.
I am more of the ‘John’s tie is not straight. I must straighten it now.’ type.* And the ‘things must be done in exactly this order’ type (or obviously SOMETHING BAD will happen).
I wash my hands like everyone else and am quite tidy (see comment about John’s tie) but I am in no way a germaphobe.
*In fact, resisting such urges often causes me to make mistakes at work since I am either trying to flee from John so I don’t see it or worse, reaching out and fixing it. Most people here don’t mind so much.
I most definitely don’t fall into this category, but someone I dated for seven years did. If food fell on her clean kitchen floor, she’d throw it right out. I’m talking about food that was still in its package, and still in the shopping bag. And not only would she wash dishes after using them, she’d wash them before as well.
I’m pretty much the extreme opposite of a germaphobe. Yet I rarely get sick, and have had food related illness just twice. I’m the one who eats the macaroni salad accidentally left on the counter overnight.
It’s the old american fallacy that if some is good, more is better.
Some germ avoidance is very, very, very helpful in preventing infectious diseases. Proper handling of meats and dairy, don’t drill the well downhill from the outhouse, proper hygiene after sneezing/coughing/urination/defecation is all quite vital in avoiding truly debilitating and potentially lethal diseases.
But taking it to the extreme of avoiding all possible germs by using antibiotic-laden soaps, bleach wipes, etc. runs counterproductive, as the helpful or neutral germs tend to get wiped out, and people no longer get low dose exposures to common bacteria in the environment in order to slowly build up commensalate relationships with them.
Over the last year, my wife has accused me of becoming much more of a germophobe than I was when she met me. Perhaps this is because in my area there was recently a particularly nasty stomach bug going around, and I *really really really *hate anything that makes me vomit. That said, my rule of thumb is that I always wash my hands before I eat, after using the bathroom, and any time I think I have handled something that a sick person recently handled (as in, I saw an obviously sick person using it in the past 30 minutes). My wife had a very bad hacking cough, and I drove her crazy wiping the phone with a Clorox wipe after she used it so I didn’t catch it (and I never did), but holy crap, she would cough all over the thing.
And yes, I am aware that my rule of ‘seeing someone use it’ is pointless since 10 people with all manner of virulent deadly diseases could have touched every door handle in a public place 10 seconds before I got there out of my site. But if I see it, it does bother me and I will generally avoid it if possible, or wash my hands afterward so I don’t have to worry about then scratching my nose, eyes, etc.
Perhaps I am overly paranoid, but I do not own a single bottle or Purell, so I somehow justify my behavior with the obviously biased data that I seem to never be sick.
I clean my phone after I got a HORRIBLE ear and sinus infection from the receptionist (when we had one, I had to cover her lunch). I wouldn’t want to go through that again. Mostly it’s not often I do it, but once in a blue moon or if I know someone sick was using it.
some people would refuse to use a glass in a bar setting if it has been hanging upside down and too much dirty air could have floated around it. Saw that just the other day in the discussion of whether glasses should be stored upright or upside down.
About the extent of my germaphobe tendencies is that I wash my hands after using the bathroom (duh!), I’m positively pathological about handling and cooking chicken, I try to use a paper towel to open the door of a public restroom after I’ve washed my hands, and I won’t eat food that’s dropped on the floor. Oh, and I try to avoid sick people, especially small children. That’s pretty much it.
I’m glad to see Qadgop’s post–I’ve often said that parents are doing their children more harm than good by wrapping them in a bubble and having everything around them sterile, disinfected and antibacterial. I think (maybe I’m wrong, and I don’t have kids so there you go), that a certain amount of crawling around on the carpet, eating dirt, and gnawing on toys is a good thing for kids–it helps them develop a resistance to things. I often wonder what happens to these little hothouse flowers who are never exposed to germs once they get to school and have to deal with other, non-antibacterial kids. Do they get sick more often than the kids who were allowed to eat dirt?
In any case, my hygiene/germaphobe-or-lack-thereof habits must not be too bad, because I almost never get sick and I can’t remember the last time I was seriously ill. Usually a mild cold or allergy is about it.
I went to a friend’s party last weekend that was the typical, ‘Stand around the barbie and the bonfire in the backyard with a sausage and a drink in yer’ hand’ Aussie summertime-do. It was a good mix of folks from babies right up to 88 year olds, and a jolly good time was had by all.
The friend’s parents though sat alone inside the house, refusing to join in the revellry. On enquiring about this to the friend’s husband, he confessed that the oldies were not being anti-social as such, just that they are extreme germaphobes and that the backyard was ‘dirty’…by extension, the other party-goers were also dirty, so hanging out where the action was happening was not an option for them.
You can’t help what you’re squicked out by. What you CAN help is what you do to avoid what squicks you out, or what you ask others to do so you can avoid the boogeyman.
Washing your hands after handling raw chicken is reasonable. There are real bacteria in raw chickens that can make your life pretty unpleasant. I think totally avoiding chicken because of this would be going too far, though, unless someone in your house really were likely to die as a result of getting salmonella or campylobacter.
I don’t get the people who take elaborate precautions to avoid catching a cold. It’s a cold, people. You’ll be a bit under the weather for a few days. (This doesn’t apply to someone who’s more likely to get serious complications from a cold, such as an immunocompromised person) A cold isn’t going to kill a person with a normal immune system.
ETA: And doing germophobic stuff when you can’t even name the specific disease you’re trying to avoid is ridiculous. I’m looking at you, people who carry around a bottle of Purell everywhere you go.
At times, I think it goes back to the old idea that increased sensitivity to things is a class marker. It’s trashy not to be bothered by dirt, so if you are really, really bothered by dirt, you must be really, really not trashy.
For example, I am not at all freaked out by hair. Hair just doesn’t register as particularly dirty to me. If I were alone and found a hair in my food, I’d probably just pick it out and go on eating. But if I was with work people and they saw it, I’d (mildly) freak out and wouldn’t eat it, because I don’t want them to know that I am the sort of person that would eat food touched by a stranger’s hair.
