5 Bad Toilet Habits to Eliminate
1. Hovering over the toilet seat
Do you have a fear of public restrooms or concerns about cleanliness of toilet seats in public? Many women opt to “hover” above the toilet seat to urinate rather than actually sitting on the toilet seat in public stalls. However, hovering above the toilet seat doesn’t allow the pelvic floor muscles to fully relax and let go to open and freely allow urine to pass through. Maintaining the hover position can create unwanted tightness of the pelvic floor and potentially lead to incomplete urination.
2. Holding urine for > 4 hours during the daytime
Do you work in a setting where it is hard to sneak away for bathroom breaks? Are you consistently holding your bladder for long durations over 4 hours during the daytime? This can be a detriment to your bladder, because you are allowing the bladder (which is a muscle) to become overstretched and consistently ignoring the signals from the muscle to your brain about the need to urinate. By consistently doing this, it can weaken the bladder muscle and create urinary leakage issues. It can also cause you to lose the sensation that you need to urinate, making it harder to sense when your bladder is truly full and needing to be emptied.
3. Ignoring urges to have a bowel movement
Our bladder is designed to be a storage facility. It is meant to slowly collect urine and stretch to it’s capacity (adult capacity is approximately 2 cups) before needing to be emptied. Pelvic floor physical therapists often teach people to spread out their bathroom trips and allow the bladder to fill to it’s capacity before we empty it. However, the rectum is NOT meant to be a storage facility. The rectum is actually a transit pathway which provides information to our brain to let us know when we need to have a bowel movement. Consistently delaying the urge to have a bowel movement can result in backwards propulsion of fecal matter and contribute to constipation, as well as make it more difficult to effectively eliminate our bowels when we do sit down to have the bowel movement on the toilet. When we receive the first signal from our rectum about the need to have a bowel movement, we should be creating a plan to eliminate the fecal matter within the next 10-20 minutes. So, while it is OK to delay the first urge we feel from the bladder, it is not OK to consistently ignore and delay the use of the toilet when we feel the urge to have a bowel movement.
4. Straining on the toilet
Using the toilet should be a fairly passive event - meaning that there shouldn’t be a lot of pushing, groaning, or grunting going on! Sitting down to urinate, we should be able to fully relax the pelvic floor muscles which allows urine to exit the body without the need to push at all. Even when we talk about bowel movements, while there may be a slight “push” it should not be making our faces turn red. If you find yourself consistently straining hard to have a bowel movement or urinate, it is time to talk with a pelvic floor physical therapist!
5. Peeing “just in case” - or urinating when you don’t feel an urge to go
Maybe you’re afraid that if you don’t empty your bladder before you join that exercise class, you might leak some urine, so you use the toilet before the exercise class “just in case” [BTW, if you’re leaking urine, see a pelvic floor physical therapist!!]
Maybe you’re leaving your house to run a few errands and you’re not sure if you’ll be able to make it the whole time you’re out of the house without a restroom, so you use the toilet before you leave the house “just in case”
Well, I don’t REALLY have to go right now, but I’ll use the toilet “just in case”
STOP IT! Emptying your bladder when you don’t really have an urge to urinate can be problematic. When we are consistently letting the bladder fill only partially before we empty it, we begin to train our brain that the bladder NEEDS to be emptied when it’s only 1/4 to 1/2 full. This can lead to unnecessary urges and frequent (and unnecessary) bathroom trips, as well as potentially leakage with urges as well.
If any of these bad toilet habits sound like you, or if you are having any pelvic floor symptoms, don’t hesitate to reach out to a pelvic floor physical therapist at Shift Physical Therapy to help you gain confidence and take control of your body.
Written by: Renee Hancock, Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist
