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You don't wash your hands after using the bathroom to remove urine. Urine is sterile. It won't hurt you to get it all over your hands or anything else. This is why we ladies are taught to wipe front to back (or better, pat, or even better, use a bidet) and not the other direction. Getting a little urine in your vagina or anus is harmless. Icky, but harmless. Getting some fecal matter in your vagina or urinary tract is setting yourself up for a nasty infection.
The skin in your nether regions, for both the ladies and the fellas, is not like the skin on the rest of your body. It is swimming in some truly nasty bugs called coliform bacteria. But, you say, you wash thoroughly every morning. Doesn't matter. You clean off the surface, but those that are down in the pores are still there, waiting to hop on for a ride when you touch just about anything down there.
When you wash, this is the order it should be done in:
1. Use a paper towel to turn on the water and adjust it.
2. Wet hands.
3. Add soap. Lather thoroughly.
4. Scrub thoroughly for at least 15-20 seconds. Get fronts and backs, palms, and between the fingers.
5. Dry hands thoroughly using a paper towel. It's more sanitary than even a hands free electric dryer. Make sure your hands are completely dry. Bacteria and viruses like wet hands a lot better than dry.
6. Turn off the water with the paper towel. If you're in a modern bathroom, it's probably automatic.
7. Open the door with a paper towel. What I usually do is open the door with the paper towel, prop it open with my foot, and drop the towel in the trash.
For a double whammy, get your alchohol based gel hand sanitizer out of your purse, and sanitize with it (guys may have difficulty with this one).
The hand sanitizer is both better and worse than hand washing. It kills a ton of the bacteria, but washing with soapy water will remove more than the sanitizer kills. Using both is like using a sand blaster.
At home, I dispense with the use of use the towel on the door knob, because I know that it gets cleansed daily, and because the bathroom door is pretty much never closed.
Anti-bacterial soap is a scam. It does kill some of the bacteria, but the purposes of washing isn't to kill them, it's to remove them. The bacteria will be clinging to the oils in your hands, and washing with soapy water will remove the surface oils, taking the bacteria with them.
Ya gotta do it after using the restroom, before preparing food, and before eating.
Gilda
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