Doctor warns people to stop peeing in the shower right now

A doctor warned people to stop urinating in the shower right now.

Urogynaecologist Dr Teresa Irwin took to her TikTok to share her expertise on the matter, stating that although it will empty the bladder correctly while standing up, peeing in the shower also trains your brain to relieve yourself every time you hear the water running.

"You don't want to do it all the time because what happens is every time you hear the sound of water, your bladder is going to want to pee - because it's used to hearing the sound of the water in the shower," she said in the video.

"So whenever you're washing your hands, washing the dishes, your bladder is going to be salivating, so to speak, because it wants to go and pee."

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Fellow Dr Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas, a Boston-based pelvic floor therapist, shared Dr Irwin's sentiments and spoke on the threatening side effects that can occur when peeing while standing up under a flow of water.

"If you pee while the water is running, then you're creating an association in your brain between the sound of running water and having to pee," she told her viewers on TikTok in 2021.

If you don't have a strong pelvic floor, Dr Jeffrey-Thomas said that it could cause "leak issues" if someone hears water outside of the shower.

She also said that people born with female anatomy were also not created "to pee standing up."

Even if you manage to do the one leg up in the "Captain Morgan" pose, as Dr Jeffrey-Thomas stated, the "pelvic floor isn't going to relax properly, which means we're really not going to be emptying our bladder super well'.

She recommended that people try to urinate before they turn the shower on and if there is the "urge to pee while you're in there, try to ignore it."

Dr Jeffrey-Thomas also referenced scientist Ivan Pavlov's "bell" experiment with dogs that led to the discovery of conditioning.

The dogs would begin to associate the sound of a bell being rung with food even if there isn't any food present.

Elsewhere, the doctor has a series on TikTok called "How To Train Your Bladder", in which she suggests that people use the restroom only 'three to four hours during the day but a minimum of two," and people shouldn't "be getting up at night" to do so.

Professor Ajay Rane, Townsville Hospital's Director of Urogynaecology and Head of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at James Cook University, told Mamamia that they'd conducted a lot of research into the "most appropriate posture" for women to sit on the toilet.

"The appropriate posture is to sit on the toilet with your feet flat on the ground," Prof. Rane said at the US 2004 Urogynaecology Society Meeting on "The Perfect Pee" back in 2004.

He also said that feet flat on the ground "promote relaxation of your thigh muscles and your pelvic muscles."

Prof.Rane further added that elbows should be on the knees as people "lean forward as if you are reading a newspaper on the floor" which helps to empty "both your bowel and bladder."

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