First of all, remember that you don’t catch a cold or flu; it catches you! And if you think otherwise, you’re just fluing yourself! Let’s look at the high risk places where viruses lurk, then we’ll see what you can do to avoid or prevent getting sick this season altogether.

1. your kitchen sink
2. airplane bathrooms
3. a load of wet laundry
4. public drinking fountains
5. shopping cart handles
6. ATM buttons
7. your handbag
8. playgrounds
9. mats and machines at health clubs
10. your bathtub
11. your office phone, desk, computer keyboard and mouse
12. the hotel-room remote control, pens, clock radio, faucets and light switches

We probably should throw in restaurants, buses and schools too.

Insufficient hand washing remains a major problem among the general public and medical staff even in wealthy countries! Colds, flu, and food-borne illness spread by unclean hands are responsible for billions of dollars each year in health care costs and productivity losses in the U.S. and Canada.

Recent surveys show that nearly 25% of North American adults did not wash their hands after using public restrooms in 2007, with men being the chief offenders, although women were guilty too.

Just as important as washing up after using the washroom is washing after coughing or sneezing. Even medical staff fail to wash up and disinfect before contact with patients, causing hospital-acquired infections that affect 1.4 million people worldwide at any time.

So yes, it’s true; the best advice ever given came straight from Mom: wash your hands! But don’t just trickle a little water over them and think that’s enough…… it isn’t! Here’s how to do it properly: Try this: while you’re soaping up, sing or hum to yourself the ABC song. By the time you’re done singing, you’ve blasted those nasty germs off your hands!

If you can’t wash your hands, use a good hand sanitizer, preferably one that is foaming, non-alcohol based instead of gel. (The alcohol varieties dry out your skin and are only effective until the alcohol evaporates, leaving your hands subject to germ infestation through small cuts caused by the drying action.) The foaming type stays effective up to 3 hours.

It’s surprising how long germs can live on hard surfaces: up to 3 days! Who knew? Because of that, we need to be aware of what we’re touching and then be extra careful not to touch our eyes, noses or mouths, as those are prime entry points to our body for illness-causing germs.

There are, of course, many factors that impact our susceptibility to viral infections --- stress, diet, sleeping patterns, fatigue, traveling --- but by taking a few precautions, you can be one of the few who are too quick and too smart for those nasty viruses to catch you!