Doctors reveal why gross shower habit is actually good for us and the planet
Topics: Health, Science, Weird, Environment, Psychology
Ella Scott
Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Images
Topics: Health, Science, Weird, Environment, Psychology
Specialists have made bold claims about how a controversial shower habit may help the environment while having a positive impact on your health.
According to rapper Cardi B’s social media followers, there are two kinds of people in the world: people who pee in the shower and those who lie about it.
A survey conducted on behalf of Abcotechbrand.com by Showers To You discovered that a whopping 61 percent of those polled sometimes allow a golden flow while they’re lathering up, while the remaining 39 percent apparently wouldn’t dream of taking part in the habit.
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But did you know that passing water while you’re washing could help to calm your body down?
Speaking to the Daily Star on behalf of Showers To You, General Practitioner Dr Hana Patel revealed that the sound of running water can often help people wee.
“Men with issues passing urine found that listening to sounds of running water helped them,” she said.
“This is because water is calming for the body and activates the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).”
The PNS is a network of nerves that helps your body to relax after periods of stress and helps to run life-sustaining processes like digestion and tightening airway muscles when you’re relaxed, states the Cleveland Clinic.
Swinburne University of Technology agrees that the sound of running water can increase activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, writing: “This would relax the bladder muscles and prepare the bladder for emptying.”
The experts also claimed that running water sounds may also have a conditioned psychological effect.
This is due to the ‘countless times in our lives where this sound has coincided with the actual act of peeing, it may trigger an instinctive reaction in us to urinate’.
This is similar to Ivan Pavlov’s discovery of classical conditioning through dogs learning to salivate when a bell is rung.
However, Dr Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas has argued that while peeing in the shower seems harmless it could be negatively affecting your bladder health.
In a TikTok video, she claimed that a woman’s pelvic anatomy isn’t built to urinate while standing up and is not ‘conducive to pelvic floor relaxations’.
While peeing in the shower has a myriad of positive health benefits, it turns out the practice can actually help the environment.
Princeton University states that a single flush on a standard toilet uses seven gallons of water per flush, while Michigan Daily writes that by substituting a toilet flush for a minimally longer shower you could save up to 6.125 gallons of water.
Eliminating just one toilet flush a day could significantly reduce the average American's 156 gallons of water they use on a daily basis.
That means less water being used, thus simultaneously saving you a couple of dollars in the process!
So, will you be spending a penny in the shower anytime soon?
Or are you set to remain staunch and side with the 39 percent of people who categorically will not pee in the shower?