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There’s something lurking, something waiting in that hotel room you were thrilled to get for just $99 a night.
Germs.
Oh sure, we all know better than to cuddle up with the seldom-washed bedspread. But that’s not the only thing to fear. “Travel + Leisure Family” magazine says light switches and door knobs are teeming with germs.
What ever can we do? The magazine advises travelers to bring disinfecting wipes to use on phones, TV remotes, switches, handles and sinks.
I guess that makes me a real daredevil, considering I used to have a job traveling where I’d often call hotels home for as long as seven weeks at a time. Never did I think of packing disinfectant wipes. I touched whatever surface I needed to, giving little thought to the weary traveler who preceded me.
And when I go on vacation this summer, I’ll do the same.
Call me Evel Knievel.
There’s no doubt that hotel rooms have more DNA than a paternity-themed episode of Montel Williams, but what can we expect? We leave our mark wherever we go, as any good episode of “CSI” will teach us.
Take a good look at your home. Has it been sanitized for your protection? Most likely, we keep the surfaces pretty clean with a more thorough scrubbing every so often.
Certainly a hotel bathroom gets cleaned more often than our own. I guess we take comfort in knowing that it’s mostly our own filth in our own homes.
We spend billions of dollars on cleaning products, all in an effort to kid ourselves into thinking that we’re killing all the creepy-crawly things the human eye can and cannot see.
We can’t.
We don’t.
Good hygiene has helped us live longer lives — and has made us smell better — but maybe we need to mellow out. The hygiene hypothesis is a fairly new school of thought that argues we may be becoming too clean for our own good.
“The hygiene hypothesis suggests that the more hygienic one becomes, the more susceptible one is to various autoimmune diseases,” Dr. Subra Kugathasan from the Medical College of Wisconsin told the Web site Healthlink. “The autoimmune diseases, the diseases that result from all the activation of your immune system, are increasing. The hygiene hypothesis — and we don’t yet have a proof of it —acknowledges that the maturation of the immune system needs some kind of hardening, some kind of resistance. Put another way, you cannot really build up good muscles without doing exercise.”
What better “exercise” than going to a hotel room that has housed hundreds if not thousands of people?
We essentially live together, sharing public bathrooms, work spaces and restaurant tables. It would be nice to think that every space is completely sanitary but far from realistic.
Wash your hands of worrying too much about germs.
Contact Käri Knutson at kknutson@winonadailynews.com or (507) 453-3523.
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Wow wrote on Jun 16, 2007 8:07 AM: