How To Keep Your Health And Hygiene In Check As A Squatter

NOTE: Please do not construe any of the following to be meant as medical advice. I am not a doctor. These are merely observations I have made concerning others own personal experience as homeless. If you feel that you might need medical attention then GO TO THE HOSPITAL... it is your life after all.

When we live our lives out here in the civilized world, we tend to take a lot of things for granted, for example-- nightly showers and baths, "unlimited" water, health and dental care, etc, but when you're on the streets it is a whole different story. You simply must take care of yourself.

Dental/Oral Hygiene - To that end, it would be a most excellent idea to make sure that you always have a toothbrush with you. Dental problems have a way of making life an extremely miserable affair, not to mention the fact that abscesses left untreated can become life threatening. Good oral hygiene will also do much to prevent cheek, gum and tongue sores, which barring infection, can make one an unhappy squatter also. A couple of times many squatters try one of those old tricks you read about every once in a while, where you chew the end of a small diameter stick until the end is frayed and use that as an improvised toothbrush. If you're stuck in the middle, with no store for miles around, it is somewhat workable and better than nothing, but you are much better off with a real toothbrush (even an old worn out one). It saves you the trouble of picking slivers out of your gumlines or cutting/scratching your gums, causing problems where before there were none. Salt water or baking soda make decent toothpaste substitutes to brush with, but if you don't have any just make sure to rinse really well after brushing. 

Vitamins/Nutrition - We get our vitamins and minerals from what we eat and drink and it's important to make sure that you're getting what you need. Having a deficiency in one or more vitamins is a sure fire way to suffer any number of wonderful maladies, scurvy (lack of vitamin C), beriberi (vitamin B1, I believe) and rickets (vitamin D and calcium deficiencies- especially harmful to children) among them.

Being homeless, meals were always an iffy proposition at best (three squares a day were out), almost all squatters suffers this. Sure, you should now know now that many wild foods can provide for a lot of your nutritional needs, but at most times, money is a major issue. Because of that, as a squatter, you can resort to scrounging money to buy multi-vitamins.

Wash Your Clothes - One word... LICE. Aside from being disease carriers themselves, if I remember correctly, a single louse will drink about 1cc of blood a day. An average man has about 50,000 cc's (I think) of blood in his body. Lice multiply quickly and a person that allows himself to become covered with lice probably isn't long for this world. Keep your body clean, inspect yourself regularly, and wash those clothes every once in a while. Suspect any clothes you scrounge to be lice infested and wash them well before you wear them for the first time.

Wash Yourself - At the very least, a sponge bath (your whole body) every other day is okay, but wash your hands BEFORE YOU EAT EVERYDAY. Dirty hands and bad water are two excellent ways to get dysentery (monster diarrhea). You will dehydrate VERY QUICKY if you get this and while many modern medications can go a long way to fix this, being a penniless homeless person complicates things. Make sure that the water you drink is as clean as you can get and ALWAYS clean your hands before you eat. If you think you have this malady the emergency room at the hospital is the way to go.