Other Articles from Pauline Odhiambo
TMI Alert: Loo Literature is NOT for germophobes
Turns out your loo seat is cleaner than your phone. Research shows that cellphones carry 10 times more bacteria than most toilet seats. If you are like me and carry you phone to the loo, this one is for you.
Nowadays it’s not unusual to have in your bathroom stacks of (fashion) magazines or an assortment of other reading material.
We all know how boring it can get waiting on your bowels to do what is natural. For many for us, it’s pretty normal to have your smart phone with you while on the toilet especially during ‘Number Two’.
In the years that lavatory literature wasn’t as popular, I took to reading the backs of aerosol cans among other labels on bathroom freshening products to help ‘relax’ my bowels for the task at hand.
It can either take you just a few seconds or longer than 30 minutes. This is often dependent on several factors including diet and levels in hydration.
After barely twenty minutes of having plugged their phones to a charger, many people can barely resist taking quick peeks at their gadgets.
It’s easy to poke fun at the alleged ‘addiction’ to social media. However in so doing, more of us are invariably confronted with our own dependency issues.
While settling down for the night, some of us suffer agonising neck cramps while scrolling through Facebook. Why? Because our phones are already plugged onto the charger on one side of the bed. Thus rolling over to the other side of the bed isn’t an option.
In the times we gather to socialise in person, we’ll intermittently catch ourselves zombie-staring out phones; endlessly clicking through ‘live’ feeds instead of actually living in the moment.
Though many of us are certainly aware of the dangers attached to phone addiction, we aren’t necessarily making any concerted efforts to curb it.
Every time you flush a toilet, up to six feet of water speckled with faeces and urine is sprayed in every direction imaginable.
Depending on the location of the loo, the most contaminated areas are the door and toilet handles, the tap, and the floor. You might want to consider not touching the door handle with your bare hand as you walk out. It’s equally contaminated.
As discussed above, many of us bring our phone with us EVERYWHERE and so the rate in spreading germs is probably that much higher.
I personally find it uber relaxing using my phone while in the loo. Therefore I will not give up this habit any time soon. You might however want to read up a bit more on the dangers of texting while pooping. It makes for a great read even outside the confines of your bathroom.
