Ringworm Article

Ringworm Prevention

As the ringworm infection is serious and should not be taken lightly, it is best to put into place any precautionary steps that you can in order to protect yourself, your children, and any other person that are in your care on a daily basis. There are four basic precautions that you can take to prevent this ringworm infection from invading your space.

Number One: Wash yourself and Your Clothes! Bathing on a daily basis is a good way to prevent the spread of ringworms, and in many cases, can take away ringworms before they even start to grow or spread. Since bathing and taking showers takes off that very outer layer of your skin, the ringworm infection will have no place to grow. Young children also are more susceptible to the infectious ringworm, so making sure that they shower once a day, at the minimum, will prevent the spread of ringworm infection. This is also very handy in case you have teenagers that are involved in sports on a daily basis. Since young children have a better chance to get ringworm and their siblings are involved in sports, be sure to have those who are involved in sports shower at home even if they have showered in the locker rooms!

Number Two: As mentioned above, wash your clothes! This was touched upon briefly in the last paragraph, but is being repeated for those people are involved in sports. Ringworm is especially prevalent in those sports that involve skin to skin contact, like wrestling. If one person has the infection and either realizes it or doesn't, they can spread it to other wrestlers through skin contact. Once the person is infected, it can spread through your clothes, sports uniforms and equipment, so in addition to showering right after a wrestling match is finished, be sure to wash whatever equipment you used in the match so that if you do wear them again you will not get infected!

Number Three: Don't share clothes, towels, and other things. If one person has the disease and shares clothes or towels with an uninfected person, the disease can spread in this way also. Although this rule usually should be heeded by sports athletes, and especially by those involved in wrestling matches, it is a good idea for others to use this precautionary measure as well.

Number Four: Be wary of stray animals. This may seem an obvious rule, but in some cases, ringworm is not obvious on infected animals either. Ringworm can be transferred from animals to humans, and a good rule of thumb to use when dealing with stray animals would be to not touch them or pet them if they have curious bald spots. Bald spots in animals may signal the ringworm infection and should be paid attention to when trying to prevent the ringworm infection.

All of these tips are not hard and fast rules, but they are all excellent guidelines in order to prevent the spread of ringworm. No matter what you do, what sport you participate in, or what your daily activities contain, be cautious of not only ringworms, but also other infectious diseases as well. The prevention tips that you use on a daily basis can be a guide to prevent serious problems down the road.