Want to Stay Healthy? Cough in Your Elbow

April 21, 2005 — -- The kids in Jon Nessan's fourth-grade classroom know what you're supposed to do when you feel a tickle in your throat: Cough in your elbow.

"They've been doing it since kindergarten; it's an automatic reflex for them," says Nessan, a teacher at Meridian Park public elementary school in the Shoreline section of Seattle.

Over the past decade or so, schools and day-care centers around the country have gradually adopted the technique as a way to ward off colds, flu, whooping cough and other easily transmitted bugs. It's been replacing the traditional cover-your-mouth-with-your-hands-or-a-tissue approach that has long been considered the polite and most sanitary technique.

The reasons are fairly obvious -- when you use your hands to block a cough or sneeze, the germs stay here. And your hands can then spread the germs to doorknobs, desks, chairs and anything else you touch.

So one solution is to cough and sneeze in your elbow or on your sleeve, instead.

"As long as you don't wipe your face with your elbow you basically decrease your chances of transmission," says Dr. Craig Rubens, an expert on pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Washington.

The technique is now recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which both pass out health information to schools and public health officials around the country. The CDC distributes posters showing ways to prevent the spread of germs -- including an illustration of a child with his elbow tucked beneath his nose.