Frat stars and nervous sweaters rejoice—medical research now proves that fist bumping is significantly more sanitary than shaking hands.
Scientists at Aberystwyth University in Wales recently published a study in which they laboriously tested advanced scientific techniques to determine which common contact greetings transferred the most bacteria between people.
Via: kausesuccessmanagement.com
Their ground-breaking method involved taking a pair of sterile rubber gloves and dipping one into an E. coli bacterial soup before hand shaking, fist bumping, high-fiving and, presumably, jazz-hands-ing with varying intensity.
Though it seems like a lazy sixth-grade science fair project, the study actually yielded some insightful data: A handshake transfers 10 times more bacteria than fist bumping, while high-fiving is somewhere in the middle. This, of course, should not come as a surprise to anyone. Your unnecessarily germaphobic friend has been cringing and quietly sobbing at shaking hands with new people for years. If you honestly thought rubbing your own grubby meat gloves together with a stranger’s was a clean choice, you are probably the same person that refuses to wash their hands after using the bathroom and then proceeds to eat a full rack of finger-lickin’ BBQ ribs. Delicious, nutritious, unhealthy and suspicious.
Via: trulia.com
Alas, now that there is finally some concrete medical fact you can pretentiously refer to, your life may change in radical and unforeseen ways.
First, you can finally say “no” to that manhandling, gob-slobbering, self-obsessed, public-health-hazard of a brosiness major and his overbearingly sadomasochistic handshake every time he solicits you to rush his professional organization. We all know that his certified XtraFirm© grip is just a desperate grasp at the last vestiges of his masculinity and possibly an implicit invitation to join him in a frothy dungeon-porn-inspired weekend of bliss. Good luck communicating that nuance through a simple knuckle-touch.
Secondly, doctors will (hopefully) stop offering you their cold, lifeless hand as they stare into your eyes knowingly just before a colonoscopy. The handshake is supposed to infuse patients with confidence and trust, but to be honest, it usually just brings up thoughts of medical students disemboweling frogs in anatomy and physiology classes. The only person finger-hugging me in a hospital better be that hot doctor everyone is obsessed with on Tumblr.
Via: WordPress
Lastly, you may or may not start to regard the chubby-sporting, frat-tank-shredding, muscle head bromigos of the world as accidental health innovators. Sure, a frat house is probably going to be the next site for an Ebola epidemic, but at least those beer-drenched fists will be marginally cleaner than expected when bump raging to EDM in the chapter room.
The medical research is clear: fist your friends, fist your parents and fist a teacher if you have to. When you walk into that first post-grad interview, fist your future boss. Keep the slimy open palm for yourself, and keep healthy.
Featured photo courtesy of: WordPress
