The Common Poop Habit That Increases Your Risk Of Hemorrhoids

It might be a taboo topic, but your poop can tell you a lot about your health. When your poop floats instead of sinks, for instance, it could be the result of anything from having a very fatty or fibrous meal to a serious health condition. On the flip side of that, certain health conditions may be an indicator of what you're doing when you're having a bowel movement. Developing hemorrhoids, for example, could be a sign that you use your smartphone while sitting on the toilet.

Hemorrhoids are veins inside and outside of the anus and rectum that can become enlarged and swollen, sometimes to the point of bleeding when you have a bowel movement. According to a study published in PLOS One, people who take their smartphones to the toilet with them are more likely to develop a problem with their hemorrhoids. The study included 125 participants, and colonoscopies for 43% of them revealed enlarged hemorrhoids. After adjusting for common variables, the researchers used a statistical model to estimate that using the phone on the toilet increases the risk by 46%.

That's slightly alarming considering the study also found that 66% of the survey respondents admitted to spending their toilet time on their phones. Of those, 55.4% said they do it most of the time, while 93% do it at least once a week. That's a little more than the nearly 90% of people who reported using their phone in the bathroom in a 2015 survey (per CBS News).

While poop euphoria or "poo-phoria" is a weird thing that happens when we poop, having hemorrhoid problems has the opposite effect, especially thrombosed hemorrhoids that cause severe and sudden inflammation and pain. Based on the PLOS One study, the correlation between bathroom phone usage and enlarged hemorrhoids comes down to spending more time sitting on the toilet. The researchers found that 37.3% of the participants who have this pooping habit spend more than five minutes on the toilet every time they have a bowel movement. By comparison, only 7.1% of people who didn't entertain this habit spent that much time in the bathroom.

Harvard Medical School's Dr. Trisha Pasricha explained to ABC News, "That time that you're spending on sitting on this open bowl without any pelvic floor support is not good for you. It is causing those hemorrhoids, those hemorrhoidal cushions, to bulge." Additionally, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki told ABC Science that, with prolonged sitting, inner hemorrhoids "can actually come out in the outside world and stay there. And sometimes, you can push them back in easily, and sometimes you need surgery to get them back in."

Hemorrhoid problems aren't the only risk of taking your phone to the bathroom. According to a study published in Germs, phones can pick up more than 20 different species of bacteria, including Micrococcus luteus, Acinetobacter lwoffii, Staphylococcus epidermidis, and S. hominis. On top of that, a different study published in PLOS One found that excessive smartphone screentime can make your memory worse. All of these findings make a good case for keeping your phone out of the bathroom to improve overall well-being.