People who take their mobile phones to the toilet should limit their scrolling to two TikTok videos, doctors have advised, after a study found that toilet scrollers are more prone to haemorrhoids than those who go without phones. The research, published in PLOS One, linked longer toilet stints to a greater risk of developing piles.
Dr Trisha Pasricha, a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said: “Leave your smartphone outside because when you go in you have just one job, and you should focus on that job. If the magic hasn’t happened within five minutes, you should get up and go.”
The study examined 125 people aged 45 and over during colonoscopies for bowel cancer screening. Two-thirds admitted to taking a phone to the toilet, mostly to scroll through news and social media. After accounting for risk factors such as age and diet, toilet scrollers were 46% more likely to have piles than those who left their phone behind. More than a third of scrollers spent over five minutes on the lavatory, compared with only 7% of those without phones.
Pasricha noted that modern apps like TikTok are far more distracting than newspapers or magazines. “The whole business model of these apps is to make you lose track of time,” she said. Prolonged sitting increases pressure on anal tissues, weakening connective tissue and causing veins to engorge.
Haemorrhoids affect up to a quarter of adults, with over 20,000 surgical procedures performed annually in the UK. For those who cannot give up their phones, Pasricha recommends a strict limit: “Set a two TikTok limit. What you shouldn’t be doing is getting so trapped in this cycle of scrolling that you lose track of why you came here in the first place.”
