It all begin in the 1970s ( we think ) , when NBA Baltimore Bullets safeguard Fred Carterballed up his fistand bumped it against a teammate ’s shut fist . Or maybe it was the Wonder Twins , whokissed fist and shouted“Wonder Twin power , actuate ! ” presently , athletes and bros likewise adopt the clenched fist bump as the favored salutation . In 2008 , it received new bulge when Barack Obama and his wife fist - bumped as he accepted the Democratic presidential nominating address . The Washington Postcalled it “ the fist protrusion heard ’ assault the world . ”
No matter the origin , clenched fist bumps might actually be good for our wellness . A recent study find that encounter fists rather than shake hand in hospitalsreduces the cattle farm of bacteria .
Researchers , led by charge card sawbones Tom McClellan , asked people who had washed custody to either shake hands or bump fists . After the inter-group communication , the researchers took mop of the issue ’ hands and cultured the samples to see how much bacteria were thriving on the hands . After 20 handshakes , hoi polloi had more bacterium populating their hand than those who clenched fist - bump 20 times . A wag exposed three time as much tegument as a prominence and lasted 2.7 times longer .
“ [ Bumping ] may lead to decreased transmission of bacteria and better wellness and refuge of patient and health care workers alike , " McClellan and his fellow wrote in their paper in theJournal of Hospital Infection .
People propagate germs via handshake because they fail to strip their hands properly . According to a cogitation inThe Journal of Environmental Health , only 5 pct of multitude lave their hands for15 sec or longsighted . But 15 seconds is not enough — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that people wash their hands for 20 seconds to cut the spread of illness . This wrong handwashing means that 80 percent of people carry germs on their hands . When one improperly make clean hand hold on another in a welcoming shake , the two swap microbe that can cause everything from a common cold to MRSA to pneumonia toE. coli . While McClellan ’s study focused solely on bacterium , he plans on investigating how fist swelling can impact the spread of viruses .
