Jennifer McEntire: According to the CDC washing your hands is very effective in preventing all kinds of illness. This is particularly important during cold and flu season. If you have pets that you've been touching, playing with, just wash your hands, it's a really simple step to take, but there are some techniques involved and today we're going to show you that.
What you want is warm running water, wet your hands, use soap and it doesn't really matter what kind of soap you use, but it's really important that you lather up, that you make lot of bubbles and there are places that you get -- that you may not normally think of this includes the risk under the fingernails and is recommended that you use a brush if you have longer nails to get all those cracks and crevasses, all the spots in your hands, make sure that they are good and clean.
You want to wash your hands for about 20 seconds and there are some of the ways that you can count for 20 seconds, you can count, you can sing happy birthday twice, do the a, b, cs, but get back 20 seconds in, make sure all the soap is off and then you're ready to dry your hands. It's recommended that you use a paper towel, because it's fresh, it's clean, you can alternatively use a dish towel as long as it is clean.
Some people don't like to waste paper towels, they want to use a dish towel, but if they used the same dish towel over and over again, you will just transfer that dirt onto these nice clean hands.