Alcohol-based hand sanitizer is a quick and convenient way to reduce germs while on the go, but it isn’t always the best option. Knowing when to skip it in favor of proper handwashing can make a big difference in your overall health. Here are five times you should avoid reaching for the hand sanitizer.

Helpful tip: When hand sanitizer is appropriate, choose a formula with an alcohol concentration between 60% and 95%. Any lower and it may not be effective.

After Handling Chemicals

Pesticides and cleaning products can leave harmful residue on our hands, and using hand sanitizer may not neutralize that residue. According to the CDC, one study found that people who had used hand sanitizer to clean up after applying pesticides had increased levels of pesticides in their bodies. Hand sanitizer also won’t remove heavy metals like lead.

You should also never mix hand sanitizer, which has a high alcohol content, with cleaning products. Combining bleach and alcohol, for example, creates chloroform, which is harmful to humans and could potentially irritate the eyes, skin, and respiratory system. It’s likely that any reaction to bleach and sanitizer on your hands would be small, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. The best way to protect yourself if you’re exposed to any of these chemicals is to use soap and water to remove them.

On Dry, Cracked, or Sensitive Skin

If your skin is dry and cracked, or you have skin issues such as eczema, avoid alcohol-based sanitizers and opt for soap and water instead. Alcohol can worsen cracked skin, leaving you susceptible to more germs, inflammation, and even infection. Instead, the Cleveland Clinic recommends proper handwashing followed by a gentle moisturizer — a thick cream or ointment such as Vaseline — to protect sensitive hands and maintain a natural barrier against infection.

When Your Hands Are Visibly Dirty

If you’ve been gardening, spending time outdoors, or doing hands-on projects, the best way to clean your hands is with soap and water. According to the CDC, hand sanitizer isn’t effective on visibly soiled or greasy hands. While it does kill some germs on the surface of your skin, it doesn’t remove dirt, grease, or residue — or all of the germs that could be lingering within the leftover debris. Washing your hands with soap and warm water breaks down grime and physically washes away contaminants, something sanitizer can’t do.

After Using the Bathroom

Hand sanitizer can kill some types of bacteria and viruses, but it’s not as effective against germs such as Clostridium difficile, cryptosporidium, and norovirus — all of which lurk on surfaces in public restrooms (and elsewhere). Soap and warm water are far more effective at physically removing these germs from your hands rather than just trying to neutralize them. Also, many people don’t use enough sanitizer or rub it in long enough for it to work properly. If soap isn’t available in the restroom, the CDC recommends applying enough hand sanitizer to cover all surfaces of your hands (even the back) and rubbing it in until dry.

While Preparing Food

If you’re preparing foods that commonly harbor pathogens that cause foodborne illness — such as raw meat, eggs, or seafood — skip the sanitizer and wash your hands instead. Sanitizer alone cannot penetrate food debris left on your hands to completely remove dangerous foodborne bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli. To avoid dangerous cross-contamination, wash your hands in warm, soapy water for at least 20 seconds after touching raw foods. This removes stubborn grease and pathogens simultaneously, ensuring a safe cooking environment.

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The internet is filled with ads for blue-light-blocking glasses whose manufacturers claim all kinds of health benefits. Many promise to “defend your eyes” from “potentially pesky” blue light without specifying why your peepers might need defending. Some say wearing the glasses “[boosts] evening melatonin production” and helps regulate your circadian rhythms for better sleep. Others claim to absorb blue light from digital devices to relieve eye strain and fatigue or even help prevent eye diseases.

Should you believe the hype? Or are blue-light blockers just smoke and mirrors? Here’s what the science says.

Blue-Light Basics

Blue light is a short, high-energy wavelength of light that comprises about one-third of all visible light in our atmosphere. The sun is our main source, but it also shines from light-emitting diodes (LEDs), the mechanisms that backlight smartphones, laptops, tablets, and TVs. While exposure to blue light does boost your energy and wakefulness by regulating your internal circadian rhythm, too much blue light can disrupt sleep by suppressing your brain’s production of melatonin. Extremely high doses of blue light in the environment can even damage the eye’s retina and contribute to cataracts and macular degeneration.

Our eyes are not great at blocking blue light on their own. But with many teens and adults spending hours every day looking at screens, and likely experiencing some degree of eye fatigue from that activity, blue-light-blocking glasses have emerged as a potential solution. These glasses often have a special coating or amber lenses meant to prevent some of the blue wavelength of light from penetrating your eyes. 

Shedding Light on Eye Health

A few randomized, controlled trials have found that wearing blue-light-blocking glasses before bedtime had some positive effects on sleep quality, but these trials were small and used self-reported data. A 2023 meta-analysis of 17 randomized clinical trials revealed little evidence that the glasses relieved eye fatigue from screen use and no consensus on whether the glasses improved sleep.

As for eye comfort, screen-related eye strain and blurred vision usually come from forgetting to blink while looking at your phone or computer — not from the blue light emanating from the device, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. A better solution for scrolling fatigue is to keep your screens an arm’s length from your eyes and take “20-20-20” breaks: Shift your gaze to an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes. Rewetting drops can also keep your corneas comfortable.

The Bottom Line

While long-term exposure to ambient blue light may cause eye problems, there is no evidence that the amount of light put out by digital devices, including blue light, causes any eye disease. In fact, the amount of blue light in Earth’s atmosphere, which you’re exposed to every day, is much higher than the amount emitted from your smartphone, computer, or TV. 

UVA and UVB radiation, which also emanate from the sun, pose a bigger risk to eye health than blue light does. Long-term exposure to UVA/UVB can cause cataracts, macular degeneration, and eye cancer. Because of that well-established risk, the most effective glasses for eye protection are probably not blue blockers with iffy health claims, but a pair of sunglasses with a 100% UV protection rating.

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Daytime naps aren’t just for babies and cats. A brief snooze in the early afternoon has the power to boost your energy, improve your alertness, relax your mind, and brighten your outlook on life. Read on to discover more of the surprising perks of napping — and how to set yourself up to maximize the benefits.

What Is a Nap, Exactly?

“Napping is sleep, but in a shorter time and during the day rather than at night,” says Joseph Dzierzewski, Ph.D., senior vice president of research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation. You won’t cycle through all four stages of sleep in a 20- to 30-minute nap. Instead, you’ll experience only the first and second stages — in other words, light sleep — and wake up refreshed rather than groggy.

“The brain processes all sorts of information, pruning and cleaning out toxins from the mind” during sleep, Dzierzewski says. Good sleep is a biological necessity for health and well-being, and you can gain a lot of the benefits with a quick nap.

Benefits for Your Brain

If you learn something new and then nap on it, you’ll remember the information better. According to a 2018 study, when young adults spent a morning and afternoon studying, with either a break, a nap, or cramming in the middle, the nappers had the best recall of the information after one week. 

Napping can also improve your alertness and performance. These abilities are important for paying attention at work or while playing sports, but they become life-or-death matters when you’re behind the wheel. A 2023 study suggested that the risk of a car crash doubles when the driver has had less than five hours of sleep in the previous 24 hours. Napping can restore your sense of vigilance and improve reaction time, reducing your chance of an accident.

Older adults can gain additional cognitive benefits from naps as their sleep efficiency (the quality of sleep versus how much time is spent sleeping) declines with age. A 2016 study of older people found that those who took a post-lunch nap of between 30 and 90 minutes displayed better word recall and figure drawing — indicators of healthy cognition — than participants who took longer naps or didn’t nap at all.

Mood and Energy Boost

Feeling cranky, irritable, or burned out? There’s a nap for that. Short naps can reset your mind and help you deal with stressful or annoying situations more productively. A post-lunch snooze may allow you to retain new skills, gain new perspectives, and boost creativity. Jade Wu, a sleep medicine specialist, told NPR that naps “[make] us less biased towards negative stimuli and more flexible in our thinking.”

Napping also reduces daytime sleepiness so you can tackle tasks after lunch and avoid the afternoon slump. The trick is to take a brief nap of no more than 30 minutes to avoid sleep inertia, that disoriented, confused feeling you may get when waking from a deep sleep.

Help for Your Heart?

Some studies have shown that naps can offer a boost for your heart health, while others have found links between napping and risk factors for heart disease.

According to a 2019 study, naps may help lower blood pressure, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. A midday siesta seems to decrease blood pressure levels at the same magnitude as other behavioral changes, like reducing salt and alcohol intake, and nearly as much as low-dose hypertension medications. 

However, a study published in 2022 found frequent daytime napping was associated with a higher risk of high blood pressure and stroke. Napping in itself is not dangerous, but frequent or extended naps can be symptoms of poor sleep at night. Chronic poor sleep can cause high blood pressure, diabetes, and other heart disease risk factors. 

If you find yourself nodding off at different times of the day, or feeling so tired that you can’t avoid a lengthy nap, it’s a sign to ask yourself why you’re feeling so sluggish. It may indicate an underlying health issue that should be evaluated, Dzierzewski says.

How To Take the Perfect Nap

The key thing to remember is that napping shouldn’t impact your regular nighttime sleep. The ideal nap should last 20 to 30 minutes and take place in the early afternoon, such as when you find yourself yawning after lunch. Find a place where you can recline and close the curtains to foster a dark, cool, and quiet environment. And don’t forget to set your alarm. “A small, intentional nap is a booster, not a replacement for your main sleep period at night,” Dzierzewski says.

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