Washing your hands: You're doing it wrong

Step one: Apply hand sanitizer to palm. Step two: Rub your palms together. Step three: Rub the sanitizer across the rest of your hands until dry. Badda bing, badda boom, hands are clean. Right?

Wrong, according to a study published in the Journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Apparently the traditional 35-second three-step method for washing your hands that we all know is not actually the best way to reduce the median bacteria count on your hands, despite being promoted by the CDC.

The real best method for eliminating bacteria, used by the World Health Organization, takes 42.5 seconds to complete comparatively. It is also so complicated that nearly one-third of health-care professionals who were shown the technique couldn't actually do it properly.

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Oh — and there are 11 steps. Here is the abbreviated six-step version, which was tested by the researchers:

Did you catch all of that? If not, you're not alone. Watch below for a demonstration — and happy scrubbing. Jeva Lange