Soap or Hand Sanitizer, Which is Better for you?

9 days ago (Edited)

Soap or sanitizer, if I were to ask you to pick one to prevent yourself from germs, you might pick hand sanitizer and yo might pick soap. Either ways, you are right and you have your reasons to pick a choice but what does science say?

Objects with electric charge or polarity will only dissolve in any solvent or liquid with polarity such as salt and water and not oil and water. Object without polarity can stick to oily stuffs but when it comes to soap, it allows water access oily things. Soap has a molecular structure where the head is charged and hydrophylic while the rest of the chain is hydrophobic. With this, soap will make substances that will normally not dissolve in watet dissolve.

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Humans have been using things that have soap properties for over 5000 years even when they didn’t understand the chemistry at length. Soap clean oily dishes, hair, and other things and while it does that it also kills germs by destroying the cells. This is because all cells have a membrane with two layers with molecules in the area having one oily end and one water loving end. The hydrophobic ends are in the middle, leaving the hydrophilic end at the surface. But these molecules aren't held by any covalent bond they just stick to one another but when soap get into this equation, it messes a lot of thing as it breaks the oily membranes inside, put holes in the protein which destroys the germs generally.

When we wash our hands, we are not only removing the germs from our hands as we break the bonds between the germs and our skin, we also destroy the germs. It is advisable to frequently wash your hand so you do not pick up germs from places where germs have been laying seige for a long time and touch an exposed area infecting the area or the body in full.

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Alcohol based sanitizers are another great anti germ solution. If the alcohol is in the right proportion of 60 to 65%, then they are doing a good job just like soap does as the break the germ molecules. They are comvineint and good if a person is not in a place with access to soap and water but it isn't better than soap and water.

People who do not apply hand sanitizers properly and scrub it properly tend to experience this placebo effect where they think the sanitizer is working but it isn't because of the smell. They do not bother to scrub properly rather they just believe a medicinal reaction is already taking place. In the case where water isn't available, hand sanitizer is good but be sure to use correctly, and check the percentage of the alcohol based sanitizer you are using by looking at the back of the sanitizer.

A lot of people just go to the bathroom and rinse their hands with the believe that the germs on their hands have falling off, this isn't so because germs stick to our oily skin. So the germs remain on the skin even after rinsing the hands. If you could check under the microscope, i am certain you shout for help because you will realize that the germs didn't leave your hands at all.

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Hey! You that rush to wash your hands with soap and water aren't any better than the person who just rinsed their hands with water alone. This is because germs in the hard to reach places between the fingers weren't removed so you are good as not washing at all, remember that germs multiply very fast, so they can fill your hands back sooner than you think.

So if you want to have clean hands, you should concentrate on washing the palm, the back, the fingers, the wrist, the nail region the middle of the fingers. By doing so, you will be able to wash the germs away from almost every region of your hand.

Do you see Sodium Lauryl Supphate behind your soap, in the ingredient area, then you are fine. It doesn't matter how much soap you are using, majority of the soaps have the same ingredients and the only differences most times are perfume, color, and marketing. Just wash your hands properly and you are safe to go. Also, contrary to what you might have been told that germs stick to soap, that's not true because they cannot adhere to the surface of soaps.