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Want to know how to avoid the office flu this winter? Ask an ER doctor. “I’ve got to find a piece of wood before I say what I’m going to say: I have not been sick in, like, four years, not even a cold,” says Mark Gendreau, M.D., the medical director and vice chair of emergency medicine at Lahey Medical Center in Peabody, Massachusetts, who comes into contact with his share of pathogens every day. While his strategy for staying healthy may be multipronged—he takes North American ginseng to boost his immune system and vigilantly sanitizes shared keyboards and airplane tray tables—he is a firm believer in the power of straightforward soap and water.
“Hand hygiene is incredibly important,” Gendreau stresses, explaining that the most common way to get sick involves simply touching a public surface, such as an ATM or escalator handrail, that’s contaminated with a virus or bacteria. What happens next? “The average human touches their face about 200 times a day, so what you’re basically doing is self-inoculating”—that is, inviting those invader cells in through the mucous membranes of your eyes, nose, or mouth. Frequent hand-washing goes a long way, but most people go through the motions without getting a thorough clean. According to Gendreau, you need to lather up for a full 20 seconds, followed by a 10-second rinse—in other words, as long as it takes to “sing ‘Happy Birthday to Me’ in your mind,” he says.
In today’s hyper-speed world, 30 seconds might feel overly generous, but it doesn’t when a particularly decadent and chicly packaged soap transforms the whole process into a sensorial experience. (Diners who are pleased to find Aesop hand wash by the sinks at King in New York’s Soho know what I’m talking about.) In the service of fewer sick days ahead, here are 11 liquid soaps that will inspire devoted lathering and earn pride of place on the bathroom vanity.
