To Wipe or not to Wipe?

I’ve been thinking for a while about hand sanitizers at the gym. I don’t believe in them. I’ve been getting the stink eye from the one remaining person in the gym. However, I possess an almost religious belief that antibacterial products are unnecessary and could possibly be harmful. Now while I am willing to possess such a belief in a supernatural being, faith isn’t really required when it comes to soap because science can tell us about soap.

So I went off in search of the “truth” about antibacterials. The first thing I found was a piece from the New York Times entitled “Be Sure Exercise is All You Get at the Gym.” The story discussed a position statement from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association that stated (among other things) that athletes should bathe with liquid antibacterial soap immediately after using gym facilities. Somehow, I distrusted this information and dug deeper. A 2007 literature review from the Journal of Clinical Infection Disease found that there was a “lack of an additional health benefit associated with the use of (antibacterial) soaps over regular soap.” Other studies have looked at people washing with regular vs. antibacterial soaps over long courses of time. The result: people who used antibacterial soaps had the same level of bacteria living on their hands as people who used “normal” soap.

However, my big concern- that I would be promoting antibiotic resistant bacteria by using antibacterial wipes- appears to be unfounded. Or at least there is limited evidence in the literature to support this notion. I guess we will have to add it to the long list of problems that merit further investigation.

Does Common Courtesy Demand?

Last night I made my way to the gym. Just as I had predicted, the gym scene has shrunk predictably. Hot guys I and II were there, running on the treadmill. Just like they were back in November. There are also two African-American ladies who are old timers and they were riding the stationary bikes. I hopped onto the elliptical, and was happily peddling away when a new guy walked in. Now this new guy was older, sort of balding, boring looking. He was wearing pleated pants and they didn’t really work for him. He went in to the locker room to change and came out and got onto the elliptical by me.

Isn’t there a rule somewhere? “Don’t wear too much cologne if you are going to the gym?” This guy reeked. The smell sort of made me nauseas. But I made it to the end of my 30 minutes on the elliptical and the smell wasn’t too bad once I went over to the mat to do my physical therapy exercises.

I’ve been doing pretty well on my fitness regimen. Last week I went to Dr Kim in Annandale and he straightened out my neck with his amazing acupuncture techniques. After that I was able to move all my extremities and get back on track with the cardio workouts. I have been slacking on my PT exercises and I can feel that I really have to work now when I lift my legs. Of course it’s even harder to do them when you have to deal with people wearing stinky cologne.