The Sunday News
Gabriel Masvora, News Editor
SINCE the outbreak of Covid-19, experts have come up with a number of measures meant to minimise the spread of the virus which is affecting thousands of people across the globe.
One of the measures is that people should stop touching their faces. Well, I guess before even continuing reading this article, instinctively your hand was already on its way to either touch the mouth, nose, beard or any other part of the face.
“When someone says do not touch your face, what do you do, you actually touch your face,” said a psychologist with a local university. “It is natural, it is inborn.”
For many people touching the face is instinctive, it’s one of those things that come naturally, we do not even think about it.
It is like one of those things that are wired up in our brain. Touching an itchy nose, tired eyes, wiping the mouth with the back of the hand are all things we do without a second thought.
There have been numerous studies to determine how many times people touch their faces in an hour. In 2008, a study done by the United States of America Library of Medicine Institute of Health discovered that people touch their faces at least 16 times an hour.
Another research by the same institute in 2015 discovered that in fact, people touch their faces more than 23 times an hour.
Considering that most people are awake for between 12 and 15 hours a day, it translates that most people touch their faces 276 times a day.
Most of the affected parts are the mouth, nose, or eyes, which health experts say are the easiest pathways for viruses and bacteria to enter our bodies.
The habit of touching the face has come to scrutiny since the world is trying to deal with the spread of the coronavirus prompting even psychologists to try and trace why people are so often fond of touching the face. To buttress how difficult it can be not to touch the face, a video has surfaced on social media where a health expert in the United States of America touched her face during a news conference that had been called to advise people on what not to do to minimise the spread of coronavirus.
According to the video, the official licked her finger to flip to the next page before she also rolled back her hair, part which was covering the face. Rolling back the hair is a common practice among women, in fact, it’s almost fashionable that some stylists deliberately leave some hair strands hanging towards the face so that the women can be constantly rolling them back.
Health experts and psychologists across the world have been trying to study the behaviour of touching the face and trace how it all started. Mr Martin Grunwald, a psychologist at the University of Leipzig, Germany told BBC that self-touching is a “fundamental behaviour of our species”.
He said: “Self-touches are self-regulatory movements which are not usually designed to communicate and are frequently accomplished with little or no awareness. They play a key role in all cognitive and emotional processes. They occur in all people.”
So, no one is safe when it comes to touching the face. A professor at Marquette University, Dugalass Woods argues that although face touching has become instinctive, it’s also a habit that people develop over time.
“Maybe you need to rub your eyes, you adjust your hair. And our hands habitually go to our mouth when we eat, and so on. Basic bodily maintenance like brushing a crumb or scratching an itch involves a lot of face-touching, and from there, it often becomes a habit,” he told Vox.
Some experts argue that touching the face is some kind of soothing mechanism that people apply. They say skin-to-skin contact results in the release of oxytocin, a hormone that calm people when they are stressed. As such touching the face can be some cure to deal with stress.
Imagine how difficult it is now how people dealing with the stress of Covid-19 are told not to implement the cure to deal with that stress.
“It’s a double blow. It is like telling a hungry man not to cross the road because there is a risk of being run over by a car when that person knows that food is across the road,” remarked Mrs Chipo Moyo, a resident of Bulawayo when asked how difficult it was to deal with face touching.
So how can people deal with the problem of face touching? Mr Michael Hallsworth, a behavioural scientist at Columbia University, told BBC that one of the most difficult things facing mankind is separating talk from action.
“Telling people to do something that happens unconsciously is a classic problem,” he said. “It’s much easier to have people washing their hands more often than to have them touching their face fewer times. You won’t have success if you just say ‘Do not do an unconscious thing’ to someone.”
One person said human beings tend to do the opposite of what they are told.
“It’s work,” a colleague in the local media industry remarked. “It’s not about those unconscious things such as touching your face only. Human beings by nature do exactly the opposite of what they are told not to do. We attend workshops on HIV and soon after the session, the facilitators will be at the forefront of hiring sex workers and you wonder if most people practice what they say.”
Some experts also say the propensity to touch faces has even derailed other efforts to avoid contamination and spread of diseases. According to the World Health Organisation people must wash their hands with soap after using toilets. However, studies have shown that once people wash their faces, they open the doors of the same toilets and risk re-contaminating their hands. In most cases these people go on to touch their faces while some actually prefer to rinse their hands by rubbing them on their faces.
Now, imagine thinking you have practised all the necessary hygiene only to re-infect yourself moments after by touching the face. Are there any practical ways to ensure people do not touch their faces or at least reduce the frequency? Scientists think that people must always distract themselves when they feel the urge to touch their faces.
“The most obvious way to curb your face-touching would be to find something to distract you. For example, you might want to keep a ‘fidget spinner’ small toy or stress ball by your desk to play with when you’re stressed or just need something to do with your hands,” healthtimes.com noted.
“For women who are fond of touching their long stray hair just secure it with a pin.”
However, not everything scientific works.
“My brother, just move around with crashed chillies on your fingers. If you unconsciously touch your face especially your eyes or nose, I tell you next time you won’t be telling me about this nonsense that people touch their faces unknowingly, next time they will remember,” said Mr Chris Dube, a Bulawayo resident.
NB: The writer touched his face more than 10 times while writing this article.
