People who take a mobile phone to the loo should keep to a two TikTok limit, according to doctors who found that toilet scrollers are more prone to haemorrhoids than phoneless lavatory-goers. Those who sit on the throne with a phone spend far more time on the toilet than others, with longer stints linked to a greater risk of developing piles.
Though preliminary, the findings prompted the team to advise people against taking a phone to the lavatory, or at least to impose a scroll limit. “Leave your smartphone outside because when you go in you have just one job, and you should focus on that job,” said Dr Trisha Pasricha, a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “If the magic hasn’t happened within five minutes, you should get up and go.”
Pasricha and her colleagues examined 125 people for haemorrhoids during colonoscopies for a bowel cancer screening programme. The same volunteers completed questionnaires on diet, exercise and bowel habits, including how long they spent on the toilet and whether they took their device to the toilet. Two-thirds admitted to taking a phone, where most scrolled through news and social media.
After accounting for common risk factors, toilet scrollers were 46% more likely to have piles than those who left their phone behind. More than a third (37%) of toilet scrollers spent more than five minutes on the lavatory compared with only 7% of those without phones. Pasricha believes that smartphone apps prolong time on the toilet, increasing pressure on anal tissues.
Haemorrhoids affect up to a quarter of all adults, and while most resolve on their own, more than 20,000 surgical procedures are performed on piles each year in the UK alone. For those who cannot contemplate being phoneless on the toilet, Pasricha suggests minimising the scroll. “Set a two TikTok limit,” she said.
