If You Don¡¯t Wash Your Water Bottle, Harmful Bacteria Is Entering Your Body With Each Sip

We know that we must stay hydrated and keep sipping water as our body really needs it. However, some of us are really lazy to clean it everyday as we think its self-cleansing. However, it's actually a cesspool of bacteria as contaminated as a petri dish.

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According to Dr. Philip Tierno, a clinical professor of pathology and microbiology at NYU Langone Medical Centre, it is very important that you clean the inside of your bottle, and just rinsing isn't going to cut it.

He said in a statement to Mashable, "Bacteria tend to form a biofilm on the inside of the reusable container over time. So you need mechanical action to get rid of that biofilm that coats the inside of the bottle." According to him, the inside of the bottle is similar to the soap accumulation that we see in the bathtub. Now that's disgusting.

This accumulation holds numerous kinds of bacteria that come straight from your mouth in the form of a backwash. It also includes bacteria that gets in through the surrounding when the cap is open, even for some time. This bacteria accumulation can cause infections. It doesn't matter if its plastic or metal, bacteria still gets accumulated.

Tierno further added, "Some people may [for example] carry strains of staph that other people don't have. They may pick those up shaking hands with somebody, touching things like countertops, doorknobs, elevator buttons, telephones, computer keyboards. You're constantly exchanging flora on your hands, and then you're touching your water bottle. You're unscrewing it, capping it, scraping lipstick from the mouthpiece - basically, you're ensuring that whatever was on your hands is getting into that water."

Moreover, in a study by Treadmill Reviews, researchers swabbed 12 different water bottles and discovered that it contained more than 300,000 colony-forming units of bacteria per square centimetre. They even compared different kinds of bottles and discovered that ones with slide-up top had over 900,000 CFUs where your lips touch the water outlet. The one with a straw top had just 25.4 CFUs

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Just to put it into perspective, a pet bowl has 47,383 CFUs on average. So your bottle is more disgusting than your pet's food bowl.

To get the bacteria out, some sort of mechanical action is required. Your best bet is warm water, some soap and a brush to clean the bottle on the inside.

So before you take a sip from that bottle, make sure it's thoroughly cleaned.