How Long Fingernails and Kitchen Sinks Can Kill You!!

Are you feeling sick more often than you like, and you can’t figure out why?? Does it seem as if you have an ongoing case of the flu or a cold that you just cannot shake?? Are you feeling great one day and like death the next?? Have you been to the doctor over and over, but you still do not feel well?

Even though we live in one of the cleanest countries on earth, there can still be germs lurking in your environment, and they can make you SICK, they can maybe even kill you!!

Don’t look at your toilet bowl in horror, you won’t find super germs there, unless you are a really bad housekeeper, and even if you don't know the business end of a mop or broom, most toilets do not harbor that much bacteria because we have some very effective cleaners that take care of that, even without the toilet brush. It is also a really good idea to put a bleach tab in the toilet tank once every 3 months.

The places where germs are probably lurking are in your kitchen and bathroom sinks! To be more precise, your kitchen and bathroom sink drains. Before you stop reading this…hold on!! If you do not believe it, just take a piece of thread and dangle it from the drain, leave it there for a week, and then pull it back up and take a look. You will be disgusted, I can guarantee that! Now, if you are washing your dishes by hand, just imagine how close the dishes you eat off are to this source of germs! There is a very easy remedy to this problem, ALWAYS use a dishpan, both to wash and rinse your dishes. You should also pour a small amount of bleach down the drain once a week….but be careful if you have a septic tank, too much bleach could make it stop working. You can do the same with your bathroom sinks, bleach them once a week, and avoid using them, except for brushing teeth, and hand washing. Keep small children away from the open drains. It is almost as bad as playing in a cesspool, and if you don't believe that do the string test if you haven't done it before!!

Next I would like to talk about another source of germs that millions of women have closer at hand than they would ever think! I found out about this when my best friend and her children got sick with a flu symptoms that lingered for months.

My best friend, Nancy (not her real name), got sick with the flu, and no one thought too much of it, because it was the flu season, and lots of people had the flu. Nancy worked at a nursing home, so she got a flu shot every year, but no one thought too much about that either, because the flu can have many variations. Nancy’s young daughters also got the flu, and just when they felt well enough to go back to school or work….they got sick again! This went on for many months and was a mystery. Nancy was a super diligent house keeper, and her house was spotless. We assumed that she was picking up the germs from the nursing home, however the other women who worked there were not getting sick, and even more importantly the nursing home patients were not getting sick.

Nancy wore plastic gloves all the time when she worked at the nursing home, and changed them after each patient, so how could she be bringing germs home??

After much thought, we started wondering if anything changed that would be causing all these problems. Nancy had excellent personal habits, she always washed her hands after going to the bathroom or when handling food. She used antibacterial hand soap and dish soap. Her daughters were young, but they were also very good with their personal habits…. Just as we were ready to give up, something dawned on me. Nancy had been wearing long acrylic nails for the last few months!! Because her own nails failed to grow she was very happy with this alternative, but I started to wonder if the artificial nails could be the source of the sickness that plagued Nancy and her daughters for months.

Nancy had the standard acrylic nails, not too long, not too short, but her boyfriend would often joke and ask her how she wiped her butt with such long fingernails?? The thought had entered my mind, but because Nancy was such a neat freak, and a serious hand washer, I never thought that long fingernails could be the problem…BUT THEY WERE!!

A friend of ours who worked at a lab tested under Nancy’s nails, (after a good hand washing), and we were all horrified to find what was under there!! The lab found both staff and ecoli germs, and even super germs that can easily kill people!! It was a good thing that Nancy wore plastic gloves at work, because she could have killed some of her patients who had a weakened immune system!! Nancy and her daughters were in excellent health, their immune systems were fighting most of these germs off, but if this had gone on longer, it could have turned deadly.

To say the least, we were all stunned and the tests were done again at a different lab with the same results!!

Nancy had the nails removed, and was tested again, that test came back negative. Nancy and her daughters recovered within a week, with no relapses.

After Nancy's experience with her fingernails, it has become standard practice for all employees to have short nails, and no acrylic nails at all. They were also required to use a nail brush during hand washes.

With Nancy being such a clean person, I would have never believed that she would have super germs under her nails. She even did dishes several times a day by hand…and still those germs were still lurking under her nails.

I used to think that long beautiful nails were so sexy and sophisticated, now I doubt that I will ever have long nails again, unless I get the stick on fingernails for a special occasion.

I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but I noticed that Oprah stopped wearing long fingernails years ago. Hmmm, makes you wonder if she just got sick of them, or if they really did make her sick!