Can you count how many times you touch your mouth, noses, and eyes with bare hands in a day? Countless, right! Thereby disinfecting your hands with alcohol-based hand sanitizer is important.

They will help you to keep viruses, bacteria, and other disease-causing agents off your hands. On top of that, it will reduce the chances for you to get infected by deadly diseases like the ongoing pandemic of Covid-19.

What is hand sanitizer and how it works?

It is an alcoholic solution that kills disease-causing pathogens present on your hands.

The main ingredient of a hand sanitizer is alcohol – ethanol, isopropyl alcohol, propanol, etc. These break down proteins, disrupt cellular metabolism, and split the pathogenic cells into pieces.

Advantages of using alcohol-based hand sanitizer

Of course, washing hands with soap and water is best to kill germs, but when you do not have such facility sanitizer helps you in many ways,

• Easy to apply, dries up fast, and kills germs almost instantly.
• It takes less time and effort as compared to hand-washing.
• Less irritating to the skin against other disinfecting methods.
• Convenient to carry, fits easily in your pocket and purse.

Sanitizers work well when applied properly

You can consider using sanitizers once every hour for the best results.

However, excess use of sanitizers is not always good for you. Greasy hands reduce its effectiveness, and too much use can cause skin irritation, dry your hands due to its alcoholic properties.

Using a moisturizing solution will help you to lower skin complexities caused by using hand sanitizers.

• Pour a coin-shaped drop of hand sanitizer on your palms.
• Rub your hands gently for at least 10 seconds.
• Let tour hands dry completely before proceeding to any activity.

When to use sanitizer to disinfect hands?

A working hand gets dirty from time, ad accessing a sink to wash hands is not always practical. Here are some of the best situations to apply sanitizers to keep your hands germ-free.

• Use it before, during, and after when you are in public.
• After using washrooms.
• Soon after blowing your nose, coughing, and sneezing.
• After petting animals.
• Before and after using health-care instruments.
• After interacting with someone who is sick or supposedly so.

Even after washing your hands, you can apply it for all-round protection.

All sanitizers are not equally effective

WHO recommends using sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol concentration for effective disinfection. Sanitizers with alcohol content ranging from 60 to 95 percent are highly effective as compared to those with lower alcohol concentration and non-alcoholic sanitizers.

You must check the concentration of alcohol content before purchasing one.

The bottom line…

To sum up, if you want to keep your hands disinfected, there is no alternate for washing hands with soap and water.

However, access to such a facility is not always practical, and few drops of alcohol-based hand sanitizer are good enough to keep your hands germ-free.

They are handy, easy to use, and less costly. You can avail sanitizers online through different shopping sites according to your need.