Is Your Yoga Mat Giving Your The Herp??
Possibly!!!
This study comes from The BBCÂ and they have accents over there, so they are SUPER smart…
It is usually up to members to use paper towels and disinfectant spray to clean off equipment another person has used – otherwise bacteria can lurk for several hours and viruses for several days.
“If you swab a yoga mat you probably are going to pick up viruses and certainly funguses,” says Dr Seth Rankin, a GP and chief executive of the London Doctors Clinic.
“Minor things like athlete’s foot can be picked up in any moist environment, it’s why we wear flip flops in the gym showers,” he says.
‘Herpes’ mats
A US surgeon – Dr David Anthony Greuner – recently issued a more serious warning by claiming that herpes, a virus more commonly associated as coming from sexual contact, could potentially be picked up from dirty mats.
He says in a blog post: “Making skin contact with a dirty yoga mat covered in germs and bacteria can lead to skin infections, acne, toenail fungus and even transfer of the herpes virus and staph and strep infections in susceptible individuals.”
Meanwhile, a study in Sexual Health, a medical journal, also found a low risk of getting human papilloma virus (HPV), an infection which can lead to genital warts, by using unclean bike seats at the gym.
But GP Dr Rankin insists the risk of catching a more serious infection from a mat or seat is “vanishingly rare” and tells people not to worry.
“If you were doing yoga on a naturist farm you’d certainly want to be very careful,” he says, since herpes is usually spread through mucous membranes or broken skin.
“But where people are wearing Lycra or normal gym clothes the chances are incredibly slim,” he adds.