Winter: you either find it a joy or a misery. For those of us who detest the summer time, winter is the time of year when we feel our truest, cosiest selves. However, winter is, of course, the time of year when we are most vulnerable to illness, and illness can spread through a household like wildfire!
With this in mind, here are five important tips for keeping you and your family healthy in winter:
- Stay updated with your vaccines
Vaccines – like the Afluria Quad flu vaccine – are essential to safeguarding against the dreaded influenza. It is one of the first lines of defense when it comes to fighting flu, and it is important to update each year as influenza changes and thus cause a change in vaccine requirements!
- Keep your surfaces clean
Home surfaces that experience a lot of touching should be regularly cleaned and disinfected, as these are the surfaces that can promote the spread of nasty bacteria during the year’s colder months. The risk of bacterial spread is greater in winter as we spend more time indoors and more time cooking up hearty winter feasts in the kitchen (hence the need to regularly clean the kitchen bench!).
- Keep your hands clean
Our whole lives this has been a no-brainer, but there is no harm in reiterating for reminder’s sake: you must keep your hands nice and clean in the winter months! As bacteria and germs are more likely to spread during the winter months, and because people are more likely to be sick, it is important that you keep your hands nice and clean to scrub away any potential threat.
So, be sure to wash your hands in warm, soapy water for up to 20 seconds, maing sure you scrub the fingers and nails, and feel free to keep one of those little bottles of sanitiser on-hand if you are worried about catching something at the workplace!
- Teach your kids about proper hygiene
Obviously, one of the biggest risks to a family’s health during the winter months is one of the kids coming home with influenza. Look, we all know that this nasty illness can’t be avoided forever, especially when kids are surrounded by other kids all day at school, but we can help our kids to better understand basic hygiene principals that could potentially ward off a nasty case of influenza.
By simply reminding them the basics of hand washing before eating, staying away from clearly-sick kids, covering their nose and mouths when they cough and sneeze and avoiding touching the eyes, mouth and nose in high-risk situations, you will be going a long way to reducing the risk of the whole family copping this unwanted illness in the winter months!
- Stay home & rest if you are sick
Obviously, staying home with the family if you are already sick may increase the risk of germs spreading around the home, but continuing on with your daily activities like working when sick will only prolong the illness. As such, the best thing to do if you are already sick is to stay at home and get as much rest as possible, so as to not prolong the illness which, consequently, prolongs the risk of other family members getting sick!
We know that influenza can be unavoidable, but by following these simple health tips you should be able to go a long way to keeping warding off the influenza risk in the cooler months of the year!
