Whether you want to admit it or not, chances are you’re guilty of peeing in the shower once or twice (or many more times than that). Generally speaking, it seems a pretty harmless habit, but is it really? According to one doctor, maybe not. In fact, she’s warning people to save your wee for the toilet instead for one very important reason.
- Dr. Teresa Irwin is behind the plea. She specializes in pelvic health and incontinence and runs a TikTok channel where she dispenses health advice we can all use. Recently, she told her 84,700 followers that peeing in the shower could very well train your bladder in the wrong way.
- Your bladder will want to pee every time you hear water. As Dr. Irwin explains: “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. 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.” That wouldn’t be very convenient!
- Dr. Irwin isn’t the first health professional to give this advice. Dr. Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas issued the same warning to her own TikTok followers last summer, saying that peeing in the shower could have “huge consequences” later in life. “If you pee in the shower or turn on the faucet or turn on the shower and then sit on the toilet to pee while the water is running, you’re creating an association in your brain between the sound of running water and having to pee,” she explained. “Combo that with pelvic floor dysfunction, either now or down the line and that’s gonna potentially lead to some leak issues when you hear running water outside of the shower.”
- For women, it’s even worse. As Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas went on to say, those who were born with female anatomy will struggle even more if they make peeing in the shower a habit. “Unfortunately, those of us that were assigned female at birth and have that anatomy, we’re not designed to pee standing up… your pelvic floor isn’t going to be relaxing properly meaning that we’re not going to be emptying our bladder super well,” she said.
- What’s the answer? Dr. Jeffrey-Thomas advises everyone to try and go pee before you even turn on the shower or run the bath and if you do feel the need to empty your bladder, ignore it while you’re in the shower.
@dr.teresa.irwin I said what I said! Unless you’re struggling with total bladder emptying you need to hear this #bladdertips #pft #obgyn
