The threat of contagious spread of disease has sent everyone into a hand sanitising frenzy. However many people don’t realise that your hands have greater than 150 bacterial species, and resident fungi and viruses that have evolved to live on your skin and protect you over millions of years.

The balance of this and its interaction with our skin and immune system is poorly understood at this stage as it has had very little research but as we have learned from the gut microbiome, a war an everything has serious consequences for your health.

A study of health care workers who washed their hands frequently found that those with less microbial diversity were more likely to harbour pathogenic (disease causing) microorganisms on their hands (1).

So what do you do in a situation like COVID-19?

1. Wash your hands for at least 20 seconds with natural soap.

2. Add a drop of Doterra On-Guard to your hands and rub it in.

3. Expose your hands to sunlight.

4. Swim in the ocean or go surfing (if you can).

Read the full article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/arti…/pii/S0923181115300268… References: (1) M. Rosenthal, A. Aiello, E. Larson, C.Chenoweth, B. Foxman Healthcare workers’ hand microbiome may mediate carriage of hospital pathogens Pathogens, 3 (2014), pp.1-13