"If you’ve had these symptoms of constipation or sitting on the toilet for a long time for more than three weeks, Monzur said it might be time to bring your concerns to your doctor."
I've never sat for more than three weeks on the toilet, so I'm good.
On the topic of toilets, is there an explanation for the continued lack of dual flush toilets in the US? It's been common in Europe for as long as I can remember and now Latin America seems to have lapped us.
Separately, but still related, I've been thrilled by the rapid adoption of bidets and rarely see a friend's bathroom that doesn't have one. What are the chances we start to get bidets in hotels and restaurants? What the hold up?
I live in a big city. But I've seen them at friend's houses in lots of places in the US. You can order one on Amazon for like $40 and install it in about 30 minutes.
This doesn't change the fact that bidets in the US are only in a vanishingly small percentage of homes. As an example, while not at all scientific, open up Zillow or Redfin and look at any random property and see if there's a bidet.
1. they are increasingly seen in the US, i see them all the time
2. if where you live does not have a "water cycle shortage", it's really not necessary. North America is huge and nowhere near as densely populated as Europe or Japan.
when I visited Hong Kong a loooong time ago, we were told that the water system for the toilets used salt/ocean water. Hong Kong is a small island, that was driven by their need. if you don't need it, you don't need it.
rapid adoption of bidets might increase public health/comfort by some measures, but it actually also increases water use. I feel you are influenced as much by familiarity/fashion as by a coherent water usage strategy
Bidets can actually reduce water usage overall, depending on how much less toilet paper is used. Then of course there's the benefit of needing fewer materials to produce toilet paper.
It reduces by not needing you take a whole shower to have a less gross asscrack. Although most of the solutions proposed below make me wish I never see a bidet again, at least I should remember to avoid them when traveling to said country.
But you have to take a whole shower to get all the toilet (bidet) water off...
Having just been to India, and the Middle East, they have sprayers next to every toilet. When you go into one of these public stalls, there is often water everywhere. All over the seat, all over the floor. It takes a minute of cleanup just to get to the point where you can sit.
I don't know how people aren't walking out of these with wet clothes. I imagine you take your pants off and hang them and put your sandals in the corner... but I don't think that's for me.
i always assumed you wiped first, then cleaned up with with the bidet. you're telling me you're spraying and rubbing with your fingers... i don't want to talk about it any more
hate to break it to you, but if you are spraying poop off, you are aerosolizing poop. full stop (except for the poop, which you have not stopped, you have sprayed). No shit? no, shit.
(and it would no longer be aerosol, it would be pooposol)
I have 4 dual flushes that get fully flushed each use. The low flow option doesn’t even move enough water to clear the bowl of a single bladder full of urine. That is to say, it doesn’t flush. So we don’t like them. I also heard women tend to really dislike them, something about the flush mechanism is gross. Pushing a button I suppose.
I don’t know if they refuse flushing but they don’t want them in their house is what I’ve found out. I put them in our house without consulting my wife and apparently everyone we’ve discussed it with is of the opinion of “eww gross, why would you do that”. It’s usually a funny story to tell if we get asked about our house and building process, almost without fail a man will see it as no big deal “efficiency good” and women don’t like it “buttons gross”
I imagine they may use a piece of paper to avoid pushing the buttons directly.
Wait wait, you mean they despise flushing in general? Is every US house fitted with flush triggers? Or how else can you flush, if no button? You mean maybe those women are simply fine with the smell? You only managed to confuse me more :)
This must be part of the problem. People complain about them here (in the US) all the time. I'm wondering if we're not producing crappy dual flush toilets in this country compared to overseas where they've presumably be manufacturing them for a generation or so.
This was the same problem low-flow had in the 90s or early 2000s (so common it even made a full episode of King of the Hill), they didn't redesign the bowls very well to handle it.
I've seen some dual flush toilets in the US, though rare. My dad has one, and I don't think he went out of his way.
My assumption is that the lack of awareness would be part of the reason for public toilets to not use them. It's often not clear which button to use, so people just push one at random. We have a hard enough time getting people to flush at all, so adding decisions into the mix doesn't great.
In men's bathrooms, the assumption is probably that a urinal will be used for #1, so it's a safe bet that the stalls are mostly used for #2 (at least by design of the overall bathroom). With this in mind, having a dual flush seems like an unnecessary extra cost.
> My assumption is that the lack of awareness would be part of the reason for public toilets to not use them. It's often not clear which button to use
Instead of having two buttons, there are designs that do the smaller flush by lifting the handle instead of pushing it down. That way people who don't know about it always get a full flush and the people that do can use the smaller one.
Leaving aside health issues to those involved, people who use smartphones whilst there pose health risks to others especially when preparing food.
These people are likely to wash their hands afterwards then think nothing of answering their smartphones when preparing food. I'm surprised that health officials don't make a much bigger deal of the fact.
You just kicked at least one elephant in the room, smack in the nads. I sincerely think this is an underestimated issue. It reminds me of the Jewish family afflicted with neurocysticercosis - a disease normally precluded from those not partaking in infected porcine products, but rather normal if the folks handling the food do while neglecting hygiene. I presume grooming, particularly what remains under the fingernails, is the culprit. Tapeworms are quite adhesive.
I'm not following. You're saying people who spread fecal matter on their phones don't wash it off their phones? That seems hard to believe, if for no other reason that the smell would be repulsive.
Bacteria in the invisible droplets from flushing the toilet alone is plenty enough to contaminate your smartphone, big-time.
If say you've the highly contagious and all-to-common Noro virus, and even if you've washed your hands thoroughly and then touch your contaminated smartphone you'll go on to contaminate almost every surface you touch, food and everything else.
Why don't people still understand this given that it's had such huge airing in recent years (as it's such a significant problem on cruise ships)?
That people still don't is the reason why medical and health authorities should be much more proactive in this area.
I know that comment is provocation and I should ignore it, but I'll take the opportunity to say that if people exercised a little more hygiene and washed their hands more frequently—especially when leaving the bathroom whether they've feces on them or not—then we'd have considerably fewer cases of gastroenteritis and other communicable diseases in the community. You don't have to believe me, there are thousands of authoritative references on the net and elsewhere that attest to that.
I say that not as an obsessive hand-washer or an anti-germ-freak like Howard Hughes but because it's just commonsense. It also comes from being taught as a child both by my parents and at school to wash my hands before eating food and to be hygienic around food preparation such as washing fruit before eating it. That early training has meant that if say I were to sit at the dinner table without washing my hands I'd have a feeling of being dirty and have the urge to wash them.
I'm not alone, many others have similar a experience for the same reason. That said, I suspect the percentage ought to be much higher than it actually is (simple observation tells me that).
Again, I'm careful but not obsessive about hygiene and I like most others have occasional minor lapses such as eating an apple or picking strawberries from a punnet without first washing them. Nevertheless, I'm aware of the fact and feel somewhat guilty for not having done so.
Similarly, I'm always aware of the many almost futile practices people adopt in the name of hygiene. For example, the commonplace and token-like habit of shop assistants with disposable gloves on preparing say bread rolls and then handling money especially so notes (which are particularly dirty and germ-laden) and not changing to a new pair before the next customer (the same can be said about them handling their smartphones at the same time).
Long gone are coins with high silver content that were in part self-cleansing (Ag has strong antimicrobial properties).
BTW, if one takes the effort to wipe one's phone with a tissue with a few drops of ethanol (or rubbing alcohol—isopropanol for those in the US) on it then it serves a dual purpose, greasy fingerprints are removed and one's screen is clean—and the alcohol kills most of the microbes.
IMO westerners are becoming much dirtier and more careless in this regard, and in general with the careless spreading of disease. The exceptions just point out the rule that people constantly go places sick. Last Fall my family fell ill almost every time we went to church.
Right, I agree with you. I'm old enough to have noted the shift towards being more careless/less hygienic. I wonder why. You mention Westerners, well I'd probably agree with that too (but that's a trivial sample of two—a proper survey is needed). By contrast, when in Japan I noticed many, many instances of food preparation to be particularly hygienic.
It's interesting to note I purchased a Vietnamese-style bread roll for lunch today (presumably the owners were originally from Vietnam), and noticed the woman serving me had only one protective glove on—on her right hand. What was particularly noticeable was that she prepared the roll with her gloved hand and put it in a new paper bag without her other glove-less hand touching anything (tongs acted as her second set of fingers). At the cash-register I handed her a $50 note and rather clumsily with her left hand she deposited my note and returned notes and coins as change without using her gloved hand at all. Clearly, she was very conscious of hygiene. Why her and rarely others? Incidentally it was a small family-owned shop so the woman wasn't just acting out the hygiene requirements of say large chains like McDonald's.
Moreover, as COVID has diminished I've noticed very few now wear masks but the vast percentage that still do are Asians (BTW, I'm in Australia which is a mixture of every nationality).
"fecal matter" here is not nuggets of poop smeared on surfaces. It's germs. You generally don't see, smell, or taste them but they can definitely make you sick.
I'm pretty sure its a joke. It's based on the thinking that "the government" is trying to remove all our pleasure of life, such as smoking, eating meat and drinking. The joke is to compare the pleasure of sitting on the toilet with these vices.
I wonder why that attitude changed…oh yeah, I remember now…it’s when our public health authorities started making decisions based on political tribalism instead of trying to actually protect people in the one moment in modern times when they they should have shined for us.
You don’t get to fail that bigly and retain your reputation.
given the stunning regularity of pro-bidet discussions on reddit and HN, I'm wouldn't be surprised if Big Bidet is a thing and is pushing aggressively via online marketing
2.7 liters to 3.7 liters of water per day?? That's got to include the water we get from food, right? Is anyone here seriously drinking 128 ounces of water per day? I'd always heard 64 ounces as a guideline, but that's like half. How could the guidelines vary by that much?
From the linked article:
"This recommendation includes all fluids and water-rich foods such as fruits, vegetables and soups"
Most people get 20-30% of their water intake from food. But they never seem to explain this in articles. It's a great example of how health/science journalism has been failing us for generations.
I start my day by pounding a liter of water. Usually do a second within a couple of hours of starting work.
The initial bolos of water is effective at waking me up for the day. That it is not furthering my chemical dependence on caffeine is a double bonus to maintaining hydration.
About 25 (maybe 30) years ago I had a family member who required hemorrhoid surgery because they used to read novels on the toilet. It was a long and painful road for them. Do not recommend.
When I was a kid, my dad had some Kurt Vonnegut book (I think Breakfast of Champions) in the bathroom. I sat on the toilet for a couple of hours while I read the entire book. And that is how I got introduced to Kurt Vonnegut.
If one were to sit on a toilet and read a book in its entirety, that would certainly be the book to read. Vonnegut includes a crude drawing of an asshole in it.
Pull your pants down to your knees; your knees are in front of you when squatting and your pelvis rotates, so the feces will land behind your heels. Maybe wearing very baggy pants there might be a problem, so don't do it if you're a teenager and the year is 1994?
Ah, these are sommon in parts of the middle east I've lived. I've always done a few minutes of slavic squatting a day just to make sure I'll never crap my pants if I find myself constrained to using one of these.
Yes, do it. It's doable if you're not a very large person. Just position yourself accurately so the output goes in the exit, not in front of it or behind it.
Or if you're in Asia, just get an Asian style squat toilet.
In a Western toilet with water in it, the splash is always there, whether you're sitting or squatting.
The only time there isn't any splash is in a proper Asian squat toilet, as it doesn't hold water. The output can be drained away as often as needed, again with no splash.
Western toilets seriously weaken the pelvic and hip muscles. Squat on them, either directly, or using a stand, or using an Asian style squat toilet instead. There is no other alternative. Weak pelvic and hip muscles can be painful.
In addition, there is also the issue of worsening constipation and making it needlessly harder to produce output.
Yes, this trend of tall toilets is at odds with human anatomy.
The full-on squat toilet may be excessive (and has its own problems), but at least the Western toilet should be low enough that the hips and knees are at acute angles. I keep seeing the opposite.
I am sorry but that is not making sense for me. I have used squat toilets without ever having any such issue.
In contrast, with Western toilets, I always have the issue of the dick touching the toilet surface, seriously risking chronic urinary tract infections, spreading all the way from the urethra to the kidneys. This is not just theoretical; it actually happens, chronically so, and only with the Western toilet.
Where did you get that? It's not true at all. In fact, cleaning a squat toilet doesn't even require a flush, only a drain.
On the contrary, when using the Western toilet, the dick touches the toilet surface, and this chronically spreads urinary infections up the urinary tract, starting at the urethra, all the way to the kidneys. This is not just theoretical; it actually happens, and only with the Western toilet.
What would kegels do for hemorrhoids? Maybe would help with rectal prolapse somewhat but still sitting on the toilet for a long time regularly is probably bad for you. You could squat instead.
I've never sat for more than three weeks on the toilet, so I'm good.