Do You Really Need Hand Sanitizer?

Bacteria have always been our enemy. Before antibiotics were invented, our fight against bacteria often ended in death when we became aware of them. For this reason, many of us think that hand sanitizers are very powerful bactericidal agents and that we can use them freely without fear of the health problems they may cause. Is this really true? In the last decade, microbes have started to play a positive role in our lives again. In addition to the bad microbes infecting us, we noticed that the good bacteria in our bodies also digest food and even remove the infection from where it first occurred. Unfortunately, antibacterials make no difference between good and bad bacteria. This leaves users at the crossroads: Should we use hand sanitizers to prevent disease or take ownership of our infected hands for our health?

There is no definitive answer based on what we now know about the microbiome. Therefore, the situation in question becomes an issue that needs to be questioned.

“There is a view that hand disinfectants can often affect our body’s microbiome in several ways, and some of those aspects can have bad consequences,” says Jonathan Eisen, a microbiologist at the University of California. While we are likely to kill dangerous microbes, we are also replacing bacteria in the skin that benefit humanity. While we can’t see any of them, millions of bacteria live in our hands, skin, and gut. Scientists have recently begun to realize that each person has a personal balance of bacteria alongside other bacteria, and that these bacteria keep the body in check. When we use hand disinfectants, we try to kill almost all of the good and bad microbes living in our hands.
In addition to potentially killing beneficial bacteria, Eisen says hand sanitizers also cause antibiotic resistance. “Although they usually don’t contain standard antibiotics, once microbes become resistant to some disinfectants, this makes them more easily resistant to antibiotics that matter.” says. You may want to make sure you don’t eat any harmful bacteria with your burrito (a Mexican dish), but if you do this repeatedly and the whole community does, the bacteria can come back and prey on us later. Antibiotic resistance is already a serious threat and is getting worse.

So should we disinfect or not?

“I advise people to use hand sanitizers with caution and only when they really need it.” Eisen said.

Consider what your hands touched just before. If you just spend your time in the hospital, for example in a doctor’s office or on the subway, if someone coughs and sneezes next to you, using disinfectants is not a bad idea. But it is not necessary to disinfect yourself on a normal day when you do not touch other people much. It’s not particularly necessary if you have the opportunity to use soaps regularly. A 2009 study with regular soap found that soap, when properly rubbed, is good at potentially killing bacteria and viruses that cause infection.

A lot of work still needs to be done to better understand the skin microbiome, especially for those who live in our hands. When we know more about the species of bacteria that normally live with us, we will know less about what each specific function is. If we can understand how certain microbes keep us healthy, we can know how often and in which situations it will be more appropriate to use hand sanitizer. For now, follow Eisen’s advice and use disinfectants sparingly as much as you can. Imagine this is your last chance to defend the world against dirt.