Coronavirus: Why we touch our faces and how to stop it

Several medical officials across the world have warned people to avoid touching their face as a key way to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Often when issuing the warning, they've gone on to - you guessed it - put their hands on their face. But why do we touch our faces in the first place? And is it that easy to just stop doing it all of a sudden?

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[Music] doesn't touch your face and teachers and I haven't touched my face in weeks because we can't help it it's part of it it's part of our DNA we're hardwired to do it we know this because humans as young as fetuses in utero touch their faces so every time you tell yourself stop touching your face don't touch your face if I touch my face I'm gonna get really ill it's telling yourself to do something that it's entirely unnatural to you when we touch our faces what we're really doing is calming ourselves down when we touch certain areas of our faces what we're really doing is we're activating certain pressure points which then activate something called the parasympathetic nervous system which is the thing that makes us calm ourselves down internally we see the same response in dogs and cats children often model the same behavior as their parents so if our parents when they're shocked they touch their faces or when they're surprised they touch their faces or if they're upset they touch their faces we're much more likely to do exactly the same thing there are any is at a time when it's more important than ever to not touch your face unconsciously your mind is constantly moving to a place where it can better protect you by doing the things that it knows will soothe you and so your unconscious mind will prompt your hands to go straight to your face whilst it's almost impossible to totally stop touching your face a key way that you can go about making it easier for me to take out the habits which need you to do it so that might mean wearing glasses instead of contact lenses it might mean wearing less makeup so you don't have to top it up throughout the day it might also mean creating habits around how you use your hands so rather than perhaps when you're always moving around and having your hands like this and making it so easy for them to land on your face making an effort to cross your hands and put them on your lap then when the urge comes to pick your hands up and touch your face you will be more aware of what you're doing and you'll be quickly to catch yourself I cleaned my hands before I touched my face [Music]