You agree with me when I say that the effects of poor personal hygiene hurt your health and well-being?
You may not know exactly how this happens but something inside tells you that you should better be aware of the poor personal hygiene consequences.
Very often these side effects negatively impact other aspects of your life like your job, your relationships or social life.
As an adult, you must understand the importance of personal hygiene and the cause and effect theory related to it.
Because if you learn that, you can easily avoid all the disadvantages that poor personal hygiene may provide you with.
Let’s begin.
What is bad personal hygiene?
Bad personal hygiene is a sign of neglecting the body’s cleanliness needs. As a result, it may hurt your health, worsen your physical appearance and drop the level of your self-esteem.
For example.
Imagine that your access to water was restricted for the following two weeks. In this time, you have to live without showering, hand washing or fresh clothes, which means eating with dirty hands or going to work with smelly body and clothes.
Your coworkers wouldn't be very excited when your body odor would make their eyes watering.
How would you feel about that?
Not good. Right?
Think about that.
But the most important thing to remember is that the lack of hygiene has noticeable disadvantages for your health.
Examples of poor personal hygiene practices and their negative effects on health
Health
Most people perceive someone with poor personal hygiene as someone with poor health.
Body odor
Body odor is a familiar personal hygiene issue for most of us. So, I suppose you know how it embarrasses the people around you making them trying to avoid your company whenever possible.
Secondly, it may develop allergies or unsupportable itching, making your life a nightmare.
Examples of behaviors that leads to body odor are:
- Infrequent showering.
- Wearing smelly socks again and again.
- Not airing out your shoes from time to time.
- Not washing your feet.
- Wearing smelly, stained or dirty clothes daily.
- Not changing your underwear regularly.
Bad breath and other mouth diseases
Bad breath is another poor personal hygiene issue that hurts your oral health. Ignoring to clean your mouth regularly leads to such mouth diseases like teeth decay, dental caries, bleeding gums, tooth erosion and bad breath.
Examples of behaviors that leads to oral hygiene diseases are:
- Not brushing your teeth regularly.
- Not flossing.
- Not cleaning the white coating from the surface of the tongue.
- Eating odorous foods and drinking acidic drinks too often.
- Heavy smoking
Influenza
Poor personal hygiene means that you don't know how to prevent spreading the influenza virus in the air, which may infect other people around.
Examples of behaviors which may spread the influenza virus:
- Not wearing a face mask.
- Not covering your mouth with a cloth or elbow when sneezing or coughing.
- Not avoiding social gatherings.
Body lice
Body lice are small insects that thrive and produce eggs in clothing and bedding. These insects feed themselves with the residues they find on the skin. Their favorite parts of the body are the armpit, groin and waist as these areas of the body have high humidity.
Behaviors that may lead to body lice development:
- Not showering regularly.
- Not changing the bedding at least once a week.
- Not washing your clothes and wearing them on your body.
Herpes
This type of infection is a form of fungi that appears on mouth lips.
Examples of behaviors which may lead to getting a herpes infection.
- drinking from the same cup used by someone with herpes used it before.
- using forks, knifes or tablespoons after they've been used by someone with herpes.
Disadvantages of poor personal hygiene on well-being
1. It affects your social life
As I mentioned above, poor personal hygiene is also a sign of poor health. A person with poor personal hygiene is perceived by others as a source which may spread infections and diseases.
In consequence, people try to avoid getting in contact with such a person. For example, with someone who sneezes and coughs a lot.
Another side effect of poor personal hygiene on your social life is that many people find it disgusting and disturbing. Nobody likes being interrupted by a smelly person when he is doing his thing.
If you expect that people will tell you when it's time to take a shower, they won't. Once they'll notice a disturbing odor from you, they'll politely leave your company without explaining why.
And that makes sense.
It's your job to control your body odors. That's why we name it "personal hygiene".
2. It hurts your personal presentation
Personal presentation is the skill of communicating about yourself through your physical appearance.
What message do you think your physical presentation communicates when you lack personal hygiene?
For example.
Let's say that you work as a customer relationship representative and your job is to meet clients face to face daily. Imagine the customers satisfaction rate when they feel the unpleasant smell of your body and examine your unprofessional attire.
You might have much better results meeting customer's with a professional look and a nice and friendly smile. They would actually enjoy doing business with you.
3. It harms your authority in the workplace
There are many negative effects of poor personal hygiene in the workplace as well.
One of these disadvantages is that employees with bad personal hygiene have a hard time getting a promotion at work or higher salary.
A study shows that 23% of employers are less likely to promote an employee with poor personal hygiene or physical appearance.
This study conveys the fact that poor personal hygiene may be one of the major reasons why an employee doesn't get promoted.
The employer thinks that:
- jokes about your bad hygiene will spread throughout the office damaging your reputation in the eyes of your coworkers.
- your inappropriate personal presentation in the workplace affects your self-esteem and confidence.
- an employer who cares about his teams health and safety will pass on an employee who is potentially infect other members of the team.
4. It hurts your romantic relationships
Poor personal hygiene hurts your chances to find person with whom you'd share mutually satisfying moments.
By having bad breath or unpleasant body odor you make it difficult for anyone to like you. These personal hygiene issues are a big turn off for your partners.
Even if someone likes you be aware that it's uncomfortable to stay around a smelly person.
Conclusion
The consequences of poor personal hygiene may be infinite depending on the circumstances you are in now. The one thing to remember is that the effects of poor personal hygiene are not welcomed by most people. So, these negative effects would affect your relationships at work, in life and health.