Washing your hands more than twenty times a day makes you 2.8 times more likely to contract dermatitis.

Sounds crazy right? Well, maybe we don’t wash our hands twenty times a day. Btu shouldn’t it be even safer?

Sanitation is really, really effective at cleaning and avoiding disease.

But have you ever noticed that most sanitizers (and thus also most sanitation equipment) only kill 99% of germs?

It’s true. And the remaining 1% have an interesting immunity to whatever antibiotic was used. And now, their environment is completely free and non-competitive to resources like air and light such that they can rapidly grow and pass their genes.

In fact, many of the most sanitized places, like restaurants and hospitals, are often the most prone places to catch medicine-resistant diseases.

The point here isn’t to ditch sanitation. Or use this as an excuse not to wash our hands. The lives saved from progress in this field are countless.

But there is a point where exercising fatigues you more than helps you. Where sleeping becomes a bad habit instead of a good one. When even broccoli and water could negatively affect your health and cells.

We have a strange power of unnatural selection over ourselves and our world. It’s a power that’s helped us a lot. But we should be weary of any blowback from over-usage of any of those powers. Because there can be too much of good thing.

To answer the question though, you should wash your hands. Just not too much.