It Turns Out That Using Your Phone on the Toilet Could Leave You With a Pretty Painful Problem

"If you bring your phone with you to the bathroom, you're very normal. You're also at risk of developing hemorrhoids-swollen veins in the anus and lower rectum that can cause pain and bleeding-according to a study that came out last week. Of the 125 adult participants in the study, two-thirds reported smartphone use during bathroom visits. Subsequent colonoscopies revealed that those bathroomgoers had a 46 percent higher risk of hemorrhoids than those who didn't use their phones. It's not the phone itself causing problems, of course, but the fact that it often prolongs a visit to the toilet."

"The purported health risks of extended loo time have long circulated through doctors' offices and news articles. "Don't Sit on the Toilet for More Than 10 Minutes, Doctors Warn," read a CNN headline in 2024. "Why You Shouldn't Sit on the Toilet Longer Than 15 Minutes," a Men's Health article explained in 2016. Gastroenterologists have been advising a five-minute limit to their patients for as long as study co-author Trisha Pasricha can remember. "It's what I heard when I was in training from the GI docs who were teaching me, and I kept saying it to my patients," says Pasricha, a gastroenterologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. "It's kind of what most people say.""

"The scientific literature on the issue, however, is scant- just a few studies, the largest of which relied on hemorrhoid self-reporting rather than evaluations, which makes the results less reliable. ("There's all kinds of other things that we just don't think about that can be a little lumpy and bumpy on our butts that are actually not hemorrhoids," Pasricha explains.) That's what led Pasricha's team to conduct this new study-and why the results were something of a relief."

A 125-adult study found that two-thirds of participants used smartphones during bathroom visits. Colonoscopy evaluations showed a 46 percent higher risk of hemorrhoids among those who used phones on the toilet compared with non-users. Prolonged toilet sitting rather than the phone itself appears to drive the increased risk. Medical guidance often recommends limiting toilet sitting time, with gastroenterologists advising about five minutes and media reports citing 10–15 minute warnings. Existing scientific literature on the topic is limited and frequently relies on self-reported hemorrhoid diagnoses, making objective evaluations more reliable.

Read at Slate Magazine