10:50 a.m.
, March 23, 2020
Public health officials strongly encourage people to wash their hands to protect themselves from the new coronavirus. However, this virus can survive on metal and plastic for several days, so just adjusting your glasses with unwashed hands can be enough to get infected. This is why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have asked everyone to avoid touching their faces. We are specialists in psychological sciences and public health.
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Brian Labus, communicable disease expert, knows what to do to prevent infections. Stephen Benning, clinical psychologist, helps his patients change their habits and manage their stress in a healthy way. Kimberly Barchard, a research methods specialist, wanted to know what studies on facial touch say. We used our clinical expertise and scientific literature to determine which are the best practices to reduce contact with the face and thus reduce the risk of catching Covid-19.
People often put their hands on their faces. You wipe your eyes, scratch your nose, bite your nails and play with your mustache. We tend to touch our faces more when we are anxious, embarrassed or stressed, but we also do this when we do not feel anything particular. Studies show that students, office workers, medical staff and train passengers touch their faces on average 9 to 23 times an hour.
Why is it so hard to keep from doing it? The touch of the face satisfies us by soothing momentary discomforts such as itching or muscle tension. These discomforts usually go away within a minute, but you get immediate relief by touching your face, making it a habit that’s hard to break.
Change your habits
The reversal of habits technique is a behavior modification method that helps people to stop automatic behaviors, such as nervous tics, stuttering, and nail biting. It teaches people to notice the feeling of discomfort that causes their habits, to use other behavior until the discomfort subsides, and to change their environment to decrease the feeling.
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Many people have already changed certain habits. So, you cough in your elbow rather than in your hands, and greet people by waving or bowing rather than shaking hands. But unlike coughs and handshakes, touching the face is something you don’t realize. The first step to reduce contact with the face is therefore to become aware of it.
Each time you touch your face, you can observe how you do it, the desire or the feeling that preceded the gesture and the situation in which you find yourself, in other words: what you do, where you are and the emotion you feel. If we tend not to notice it, we can ask someone to let us know.
Self-monitoring is most effective when creating a physical document. We can make a logbook in which we describe each contact with his face. Here is what the journal entries might look like:
- Scratched nose with finger, itching, sitting at my desk
- Fiddled with my glasses, ants in my hands, feeling of frustration
- Put chin in hand, sore neck, while reading
- Bitten a nail, nail hung in pants, in front of the TV
Self-monitoring is most effective when you share your results publicly, for example showing them to friends or posting them on social media.
New gestures
Once you have become aware of the behavior you want to change, you replace it with a gesture incompatible with the muscular movements necessary to touch your face. When you feel the desire to touch your face, you can clench your fists, sit on your hands, rest your palms on your thighs, or stretch your arms along your body. The replacement gesture must be discreet and the position must be able to be held for at least one minute. We keep it as long as the desire persists.
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Some sources recommend the manipulation of objects, which allows to occupy his hands otherwise. You can rub your fingertips, fiddle with a pen or squeeze a stress ball. The activity should not require contact with any part of the head. For stubborn habits, handling objects is not as effective as alternative gestures, perhaps because people tend to play with objects when they are bored, but to touch their faces and hair if they are anxious.
Find out more about ways to break the itch-scratch cycle.
Manage triggers
It is possible to reduce the urge to touch your face and the need to resort to alternative gestures by changing your environment. Use your logbook to identify situations or emotions associated with contact with your face.
For example :
- For glasses that slide on your nose, you can take ear hooks or hair bands to fix them in place.
- To avoid biting your nails, you can keep your nails short by filing them or wear gloves or bandages at your fingertips.
- If allergies cause itchy eyes, skin, or runny nose, you can limit your exposure to allergens or take antihistamines.
- If you tend to have food stuck between your teeth, you can brush your teeth after each meal.
- If you often have hair in your eyes or mouth, you can use an elastic band, a scarf or a hair product to retain it.
Here you will find more information on the habit reversal technique.
Sometimes it’s not possible to stop
Most people are unable to completely eliminate unwanted habits, but they can reduce their frequency. According to the principle of risk reduction, the less we touch our faces, the more we decrease the possibilities of viruses entering our bodies.
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Sometimes you need to touch your face, whether it’s to floss, put on contact lenses, wipe food on your lips, make up or shave your chin. It is then necessary to wash your hands well before. To adjust your glasses without first washing your hands, you can take a tissue that will be thrown away immediately after use. You should avoid eating with your fingers and putting food in your mouth with unwashed hands. We wash our hands, or use utensils or packaging to handle food.
You can also reduce the spread of infectious diseases by practicing social distancing, washing your hands thoroughly with soap and water or hand sanitizer, and disinfecting surfaces that you come in contact with regularly. However, when touching potentially contaminated surfaces, the above suggestions help avoid touching your face before washing your hands.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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