A lab study found people who bring phones to the bathroom are five times more likely to sit longer than five minutes and have a 46% higher risk of hemorrhoids. Prolonged sitting on an uncovered toilet seat reduces pelvic-floor support, letting rectal veins become engorged. The fix: a five-minute rule, a two-TikTok limit, or leave the phone outside.
People should not spend more than 5 minutes at a time in the bathroom.
Last year I did this study in my lab where we looked at people coming in for their screening colonoscopies. And so we're taking a look directly with our eyes, with our scope, to see what's going on in their bodies. And we asked them right before they went in all about themselves. How long do you spend in the bathroom? Do you take your smartphone in the bathroom with you? How much fiber do you eat? How much do you exercise? What we found is is that people who take their smartphones into the toilet with them, they are more than 5 times as likely to spend more than 5 minutes at a time in the bathroom, and they are at a 46% increased risk of having hemorrhoids.
We saw them with our eyes. You're kidding me.
And you know what we think is happening is that, I mean, we get distracted with our smartphones when we're trying to go to sleep, when we're waiting in the line, some— like, why would we not be getting distracted beyond belief in the bathroom when we bring our smartphones in? And what that's doing is making us sit for longer than we intended on this seat that has an open bowl. So there is no pelvic floor support, and our hemorrhoids are actually just engorged veins. That's all they are. And so as we're sitting there in that vulnerable, unprotected way, those veins are just passively filling. And if we do that and we put that pressure on our pelvic floor for longer and longer periods of time, over days, over years, this becomes our pattern. We think that's how we get hemorrhoids. Holy cow. But, you know, I tell people, not just if you already have hemorrhoids, don't bring your cell phone in. I tell everybody, don't bring your smartphone in. All of these social media apps, they're designed to hijack our brains and distract us. They're going to do that when we go to the bathroom. So if you can't stop yourself from bringing your cell phone in, at least set a 2 TikTok limit. I mean, who here isn't guilty? You go in for what's supposed to be a 2-minute job. You come out 45 minutes later having learned everything about the latest celebrity divorce. You didn't need to do that with your pants down. I sometimes use the bathroom as an escape from my kids and my dog. I could just sit on the toilet seat with the lid down with my pants up and doom scroll to my heart's content for a couple minutes and then go out. You don't actually have— like, keep your me time to yourself, but you can do it with your pants on with the seat lid down.
Well, it never even occurred to me that the longer you sit on the toilet, the more pressure you are putting unnecessarily on your pelvic floor, on your rectum. And that can lead to all kinds of issues that you don't even realize. And that's why you have the 5-minute rule. If you can't do it in 5 minutes, get up and go.
Yeah, I think if the magic hasn't happened within 5 minutes, go for a little walk and try again later.
