Personal hygiene is very important to you. So you shower daily, perhaps even twice a day. Great! But do you pay as much attention to your towel? How often do you wash your towel and more importantly, is it enough?
Most of us wash our towels once a week (after all, towels wipe clean bodies so they probably aren’t that dirty, right?) Wrong! Towels are among the leading carriers of harmful bacteria and fungi.
An experiment was recently conducted among randomly selected individuals. Each of these individuals revealed that they wash their towels once a week- and we’re confident about it too.
Each of their towels were swabbed for bacteria and sent to a lab for testing. The results were as disgusting as they were bewildering. In just a week, the towels were rife with bacteria and fungi.
Each towel harbored between four and eight different types of bacteria and a fungi. The types of bacteria identified after testing included E. coli and staph aureus. The bacteria are capable of causing all kinds of infections and illnesses. Staph aureus is among the most dangerous common bacteria and can cause serious illnesses like pneumonia and bone disease.
We’re not done yet. The bacteria population grew from several hundred thousand recorded on day one of use to 650 million by day seven. That is twice the population of the USA.
If your towel is as germy as the ones tested in the study, you seriously need to reconsider your personal hygiene. Here are a few tips you can follow to ensure you are using a hygienic and safe towel after each bath.
- Experts recommend that you should wash your towel every three days, at least.
- Use hot water to wash your towels
- Throw your towel into the dryer between washes. The heat in the dryer helps kill bacteria or at least slow down their reproduction rate.
- If you live in a sunny area you can hang it out to dry after each use to achieve the same effect as with the dryer.
- Do not share your towel with other people to avoid transfer of gems and bacteria that can cause infections.
Therefore, as much as you shower daily, you are only as clean as your towel. What you can’t see is way more dangerous than what you can see. Wash your towel every three days for peace of mind; avoid nasty infections whose origin you can’t track and save money on anti-bacterial creams.
