Rosario Monachino
A doctor has issued a warning that you should never sit on the toilet for longer than 10 minutes.
We’ve all been there when a quick trip to the toilet ends up being half an hour – or more – of scrolling through your phone.
Whether you’re on TikTok, catching up on the latest news, or flicking through Instagram, we have all been guilty of spending an unhealthy amount of time on the toilet – even when we might not actually need to go.
But unfortunately, one medical expert has issued a pretty serious warning to anyone who spends more time on the loo than they need to.
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Dr Roshini Raj, a gastroenterologist at NYU Langone, has suggested that you do not want to spend any more than 10 minutes sitting on the toilet.
As per The Washington Post, she explained that sitting for prolonged periods of time could actually lead to haemorrhoids – which could be due to the design of the toilet.
Haemorrhoids (also known as piles) are lumps inside and around your bottom that can lead to painless bleeding – if inside the rectum – or be extremely painful if they are outside the rectum, as per Mayo Clinic.
Raj says: “There’s a hole in the middle and so the actual anorectal area is hanging a little bit lower than the part that’s supported- your thighs.
“Just by that position, gravity is causing everything to hang a bit, and that is causing pressure on the veins.
“So even if you’re not straining, if you’re just sitting there thinking of something else, doing something else, there is some pressure being applied to those veins.”
The gastroenterologist also suggests that sitting on the toilet for a prolonged period of time can actually have a subtle impact on how your body functions when visiting the bog.
Peristalsis is the term used for the process that moves stool through the intestine to the rectum, but, sitting on the toilet for long periods of time and not doing anything can hinder it.
Raj continues: “If you’re sitting for too long and not going to the bathroom, that kind of process actually stops.
“Your body can start to not recognise those signals as well, so it can lead to constipation if you’re sitting for prolonged periods of time on the toilet without actually having a bowel movement.”
This comes after a survey by NordVPN revealed that 65% of 9,800 participants confessed to taking their phone with them when they needed the toilet.
In every country which took part, 26-41-year-olds were the most popular age bracket who took their phone to the loo – with 18-25-year-olds coming in second place.
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The survey also found that Spaniards are most likely to use their phones on the toilet with 80% of those surveyed doing so – while Germany was at the bottom of the list with 54%.
It was also revealed that scrolling through social media was the most popular activity to do – especially in the UK and Spain.
Meanwhile, other countries favoured reading the news, catching up with family and friends and watching videos.
Elsewhere, it was revealed that people in the USA tend to be the clumsiest, with 20.4% of respondents admitting to having dropped their phone into the toilet – followed by the Netherlands with 16.9% of those surveyed confessing to doing the same.
Lithuanians, on the other hand, were the least likely to let their phone slip with only 10.2% of respondents admitting to having such an incident.
Germans are also unlikely to drop their phone with just 11.9% saying they had.
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