“Pig-Pen, you're the only person I know who can raise a cloud of dust in a snowstorm!”  ~Charlie Brown
 

General GDMBR Health and Personal Hygiene Strategy:

1. Keep as clean as possible, wash clothes often.
2. Carry the minimum of hygiene supplies.
3. Stay well fed, hydrated, and supplement with multi-vitamins.
4. Keep containers and cooking gear as clean as possible.
5. Utilize ‘preventative maintenance’ over ‘reactive maintenance.’

I never got sick, not even a case of the sniffles, so as far as I’m concerned my strategy worked.

Keep as clean as possible, wash clothes often.  

This seems like it should be simple, but I learned from several periods of a month plus without a shower in the army how significant keeping clean can be.  A key item available for cheap at any grocery store or pharmacy…HAND SANITIZER.  If I stopped to do things normally done in a restroom, I washed up.  Before I ate, I washed up.  Before I went to bed and first thing in the morning, I washed up.   If I went into a restroom anywhere with a sink, I washed up as best as possible.  Restaurant and gas station bathrooms are perfect for an impromptu field shower.  If showers were available, I showered.  If I stayed in a hotel I showered when I first got there, before I went to bed, and again first thing in the morning.   If I could do laundry, without exception I did it.   Small towns are good about having easy to access laundrymats.

Carry the minimum of hygiene supplies

Okay, I admit it, I was doing the full beard thing from Canada through Mid-Montana.  It didn’t work for me.  People treated me like a vagrant for some reason…it seemed to change when I shaved.  That being said, I never carried a razor or shaving cream.  Disposable razors and shaving cream are cheap and available everywhere, so I shaved when I had hot water and a sink, which was about once or twice a week.  I would never shave if my face wasn’t clean and the water wasn’t hot.  My beard grows faster than the average dude (and grows even faster when my metabolism increases) and I didn’t have any problems with over growth. 

Basically, I didn’t carry anything that wasn’t needed on a day to day basis.  If it could wait a few days, I’d save it for hotel night or rest day.

Stay well fed, hydrated, and supplement with multi-vitamins. 

The first two parts I have covered in other sections.  I supplemented with a package of USANA multi-vitamins that I planned to test out, possibly starting a distributorship when I returned.  I had enough for 60 days and returned home with about a 20 day supply left.  I struggled with using these vitamins, as the ‘bleed off’ factor turned my urine yellow.  Not the most pleasant subject, but I have been trained to gauge hydration (or dehydration) by urine color and the vitamins threw off my visual method.  I can’t say the vitamins didn’t work, as I never got sick.  But, I can’t say for certain that they worked either. 

Keep containers and cooking gear as clean as possible. 

Also simple and self explanatory, but watch those water bottles, they crud up.

Utilize ‘preventative maintenance’ over ‘reactive maintenance.’ 

 I’m not going to get too deep into this but dealing with problems before or immediately after they occur (cuts, sores, etc) is a good strategy.  Physical problems are not like fine wine…they generally don’t get better with age.

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