5 Tips to Stay Well This Cold and Flu Season


5 Tips to Stay Well This Cold and Flu Season

Nothing spoils the fun of fall faster than being hit with a cold or flu. To help keep you and your family safe, consider the following tips from GOJO Industries.

1. Get vaccinated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the single best way to prevent seasonal flu is to get vaccinated each year. As the flu vaccine takes approximately two weeks to work, the CDC recommends that everyone six months of age or older get a flu vaccine by the end of October—before the flu begins spreading in your community. It's especially important for those at high-risk for developing flu-related complications be vaccinated. That includes those age 65 and older, pregnant women, young children and those with chronic conditions like asthma, diabetes and heart disease.

The flu vaccine reduces your risk of getting sick with the flu, and can reduce the severity of your illness if you do develop the flu. During the 2017 - 2018 U.S. flu season, the flu vaccine prevented an estimated 7.1 million illnesses, 3.7 million hospitalizations, and 8,000 deaths associated with the flu.

2. Keep your hands clean. Health experts know that more than 80 percent of illnesses can be transmitted by hands. Just one hand soiled with pathogens can contaminate over half of the employees in an office before lunchtime.

According to the CDC, keeping your hands clean through improved hand hygiene is one of the most important preventative measures you can take to reduce your risk of getting sick or spreading germs to others. CDC recommendations include handwashing with soap and water for 20 seconds (hum "Happy Birthday" twice) or using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 60 percent alcohol (when soap and water are not available) at key moments throughout the day.

3. Know when to clean your hands. Knowing when to clean your hands is a key component in practicing good hand hygiene. Critical times include before eating or preparing food; after touching something that could be contaminated, such as a garbage can or restaurant menu; after caring for someone who is sick; after changing diapers; after blowing your nose, sneezing or coughing; and, of course, after using the bathroom.

4. Clean high-touch surfaces. Since so many illnesses are transmitted by touch, it's important to clean objects and surfaces that people may frequently encounter, such as cellphones, door handles, handrails, elevator buttons, refrigerator handles, shopping cart handles, countertops, etc. After touching these surfaces, people often touch their face, other objects or other people, spreading these germs further. Disinfecting surfaces and objects helps eliminate the number of germs that are passed around and picked up by others, breaking the cycle of infection.

5. If you're sick, stay home. Be a hero to others this cold and flu season and stay home when you’re feeling under the weather. It's an important way we can help stop spreading the flu to our co-workers or fellow students.

A survey conducted by Wakefield Research revealed that 69 percent of working Americans don't take sick days because they don't want to miss a day of work, even if they're actually sick. If you're sick and think you can head into work and just keep your distance from others in the office, think again. People with the flu can spread it to others up to about six feet away. People with the flu are most contagious in the first three to four days after their illness begins. The CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities.

Source: GOJO Industries

#cold #flu #bayer #mucinex #sick #nyquil #realtor #yeahTHATgreenvilleagent #home #healthy #cdc #coldandflu #healthcare #hospital #prisma 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Save for a Home with a Dollar-for-Dollar Match Program

Image
Save for a Home with a Dollar-for-Dollar Match Program A federal program helps low-income families buy a home with a unique method meant to encourage saving: It matches dollar-for-dollar what they save to buy their first home. The Individual Development Account, or IDA, doesn’t offer a lot of money to help with a down payment — up to $2,000 in federal matching funds with more contributions possible from local IDA programs — but it’s a start. Participants can start by saving as little as $25 — matched to as much as eight to one, depending on the program, though most offer one-to-one matches. Income levels must be 200 percent below their state’s poverty level. With an 8:1 match, IDA participants can raise much more than the $4,000 total with federal matching, and could have $10,000 or so for a down payment on a house. Most IDAs are funded by the federal government and are run by nonprofit groups and financial institutions, and grantee programs are required to raise an equ...
Read more
Image
  Ending Small Talk: Tips for More Meaningful Conversations Having more meaningful relationships with friends both new and old is a great goal, and it can start with your conversations. Below are five tips for those of us frustrated with small talk. Skip the weather.  As tempting as it may be to springboard off the weather, this can lead you down the empty-conversation rabbit hole and into a twenty-minute dialogue about rain. Asking about almost anything else should yield more interesting results. Think of base questions.  So, what should you talk about, if not the weather? Come up with a short list of base questions you can turn to in a flash. If you’re talking to a stranger or new acquaintance, try “have you done any traveling lately?” or “are you reading any good books?” These more personal questions show genuine interest and will actually reveal something about your conversation partner. Make eye contact.  Regardless of what you’re discussing, work to maintain or...
Read more

How to Help Home-Bound Teenagers Cope Stay-at-home restrictions are challenging for everyone, especially teenagers. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, teens – who would normally just be starting to enjoy life as independent beings in the world – are suddenly back under the purview of mom and dad. To make matters worse, many teens have had something extremely important to them suddenly ripped away: a lead in the school play, a varsity spot on the team, prom, graduation, a part-time job, etc. On top of that, their all-important social life is now off limits as well. What’s a parent to do? While nothing will come close to replacing the life your teenager had been living, here are a few strategies to help your teen cope: Make sure they’re informed. Teens are masters of disguising their true feelings, so don’t misread their cool demeanor as apathy. They might be getting the bulk of their information through social media, which is not always accurate and may be causing undue alarm. Be sure to calmly keep them apprised of the developments surrounding the coronavirus, explaining why the restrictions are important. Don’t withhold information out of fear of worrying them. Listen to a trusted news source together so that the information is coming directly from the experts, not their “overreacting” parents. Give them a social outlet. It’s critical that your teenager is still able to connect with friends during this time. Encourage social distancing activities they can do with a friend, such as hiking, running or biking. Let them take the car to a nearby scenic spot and hang out side-by-side with a friend in another car. Give them privacy to use the family computer to host a Zoom “meeting” or Google hangout with multiple friends. At all costs, make sure your wifi is up to snuff so that your teens can easily text, use social media and Facetime to stay connected. Help them earn money. Your teenager may be depressed about losing a job, but you can easily come up with some jobs around the house for your teen to take on to earn some money. Have them help you with some small tasks related to your job while you’re working from home, or a project that will get them outside, such as spring yard clean-up. While the financial incentive is a big plus, the real benefit is getting their minds focused on something other than the situation at hand. Keep student athletes in shape. While staying active is essential for all teens in this situation, it’s particularly important for your student athlete who is used to a rigorous work-out schedule, and could respond negatively to suddenly being sedentary. Check in with coaches to see if they’ve put a work-out schedule in place or are perhaps hosting online group workouts. Remind your athlete that keeping their fitness level up is essential so that they can return to sports without missing a beat. Embrace family time. While the hectic pace of life before the pandemic might have made you and your teenager ships that pass in the night, you’ve now got lots of time together, so make the most of it. Eat meals together, binge watch a series together, play cards, get the old photo albums out, etc. The idea is to make sure your teenager doesn’t stay holed up all day in his or her room. So make some interactive time mandatory.

Image
How to Help Home-Bound Teenagers Cope Stay-at-home restrictions are challenging for everyone, especially teenagers. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, teens – who would normally just be starting to enjoy life as independent beings in the world – are suddenly back under the purview of mom and dad. To make matters worse, many teens have had something extremely important to them suddenly ripped away: a lead in the school play, a varsity spot on the team, prom, graduation, a part-time job, etc. On top of that, their all-important social life is now off limits as well. What’s a parent to do? While nothing will come close to replacing the life your teenager had been living, here are a few strategies to help your teen cope: Make sure they’re informed.  Teens are masters of disguising their true feelings, so don’t misread their cool demeanor as apathy. They might be getting the bulk of their information through social media, which is not always accurate and may be causing...
Read more