A TikTok doctor just explained why it's bad for women to pee in the shower
A doctor has gone viral on TikTok after sharing a video explaining why it's not a good idea to pee in the shower – and it's nothing to do with it being unhygienic. Taking to the social media app to deliver some hard truths, Dr Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas, a doctor of physical therapy, explained why relieving yourself under a running stream of water isn’t actually such a good move.
In a video which has since been liked over 28,000 times, Alicia says that the reasons she'd advise against urinating in the shower are twofold: the first being because every time you do it, or run the tap whilst going to the toilet, you brain starts to make connections with the sound of running water.
Essentially, if you pee in the shower too often, the trickling noise becomes a habit which could catch you out later down the line (nobody wants a sudden urge to pee whilst doing the washing up, for example).
The other reason why peeing in the shower isn't advisable, she says, is all to do with the stance you adopt whilst doing so.
"There's two things I want to focus on," Alicia says at the beginning of her video. "There's the overall bladder fitness perspective and the pelvic floor perspective. You guys know the whole Pavlov’s Dogs experiment right?"
Said experiment was based around the observation that dogs begin to salivate when they heard footsteps approaching, as it made them anticipate that food was also on its way over, despite not actually having seen any grub. Pavlov also confirmed this theory by testing out other sounds, such as a bell, and saw that the pooches again began to associate them with food, and involuntarily began to produce excess saliva.
"He rings the bell every time he puts food out for the dogs, so eventually the dog starts to associate the bell with food and he starts to slobber, even if there's no food there," Alicia also recounts in her video. "If you pee in the shower, or turn on the faucet or shower and then sit on the toilet, you're creating an association in your brain between the sound of running water and having to pee."
She adds that this could, in combination with pelvic floor dysfunction, lead to some "leak issues when you hear running water outside of the shower".
Then, as for that second earlier mentioned reason why peeing in the shower should be a no-no, Alicia says those who have female anatomy were also not designed to pee standing up. She details how urinating while standing doesn't allow the pelvic floor to properly relax, which could mean not, err, everything comes out.
So there you have it: every day really is a school day! (And no more sneaky shower wees).
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