A bathroom is a place of pleasure, a relaxing environment, but also fun; not only a place for bodily functions that can often be a starting point to address different topics, such as Science, Technology, Art, Design, and History. Without excluding hacks, viral phenomena, and more or less funny news.

So welcome to this blog to explore the bathroom from different points of view trying to break down the taboos about the place most people are ashamed of, but everybody attends.

So have a seat!

Latest posts

Why do some poops float and others sink?

24 November 2022A study sheds light on the question It’s a mystery that comes from afar. I’m talking about why sometimes poop floats and other times sinks. Theories told that a higher percentage of fat may contribute to making poop float. According to this article, one 1972 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, however, revealed that all poops sank when the gas inside was “compressed by positive pressure” when it examined the stools of 33 healthy individuals (9 with floating stools, 24 with sinking stools, and 6 patients with fatty stools). “After degassing, previously floating and sinking stools had similar specific gravities, indicating that the floating or sinking propensity of such stools depends upon differences in gas rather than fat content”, the fatty poops were less thick than the others, but this was attributable to an increase in water content rather than fat content, the authors noted. “Thus, stools float because of an increased content of gas or water (or both); the floating stool should not be considered a sign of steatorrhea “. All of this is fascinating, but it doesn’t really explain why the gas and water contents differ. But lately, a team investigating germ-free mice found something peculiar in the mouse poo. Compared to mice, who make floating poop at a rate of about 50%, healthy humans only consistently produce about 10% of them. The team discovered, after publishing their findings in Scientific Reports, that the stools of germ-free mice tended to sink. “Our serendipitous finding of ‘sinker’ and ‘floater’ feces in TFS in germ-free and gut-colonized mice, respectively, led to the question of whether gut colonizers were fundamentally linked to the genesis of fecal floatation phenomenon”, the team writes in their study. The scientists conducted additional research by introducing healthy mouse gut flora into the stomachs of germ-free mice confirming that their poop started to float as well. “By introducing microorganisms into the gut of germ-free mice, we have conclusively demonstrated that gut colonization of microbiota is a pre-requisite for feces to float”. While they emphasize that additional research is necessary to determine which gut bacteria are responsible for the floatation and that analysis of human poop is also required, they were able to identify a few species of bacteria that are connected to floating poop by introducing them individually to germ-free mice. “In fact, we identified Bacteroides ovatus as the most enriched species in our analysis which has been positively correlated with flatulence and anal gas evacuation in human patients. Further, we also identified Bacteroides fragilis which is known to produce hydrogen gas in the gut”. [...]

A poop exhibition in Québec City

21 November 2022Poop and its many facets In the last few years, we are witnessing more and more exhibitions about poop. We started talking about the Japanese poop museum in Tokyo but soon we moved to other displays such as the Italian s**t museum or the poop exhibit in Rotterdam by Gelatin; not to mention the other toilet museums, such as in India and the toilet art festival in Leicester. However, according to this article, there’s another poop exhibition to mention that takes place in Québec City (Canada). The idea came up by Coline Niess, the Musée de la Civilisation’s exhibition project manager, in 2017. Although her team was a little confused and concerned about the theme, she convinced them by explaining that poop is a way to explore humans and their culture. “I explained to them that it could be the best way to explore the diversity of humans because the relationship between humans and their body, and their sh*t, varies across time and cultures. I said to the museum, it’s the best topic about society and a story about humanity”. Everyone goes to the bathroom, but how they do it, where it goes, and how they process it to reveal a lot about how they view the world. We can learn from waste about public health, psychology, anthropology, history, and more. (In a way is what this blog is trying to do). After Niess convinced her museum that this was a subject worth delving into, the curators collaborated with scientists to examine every aspect of poo and how it impacts our lives. The outcome is the “Ô Merde!” (Oh Sh*t!) show. The massive, multi-room exhibit tackles the poop subject with a great deal of humor, intelligence, and curiosity, with art, games, history, artifacts, and models of turds. Art historian Vincent Giguere claimed that the museum hired a group of experts to make sure they did it right. Among the experts who took part were Corinne Maurice, a researcher at McGill University who focuses on microbiota and viruses, and Catherine Bourgault, a sanitation advisor at the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technologies. “We really wanted the visitors and the people that come through the exhibition, to say, ‘OK, this is the part where we laugh, but the other part, it’s very serious'”, Giguere said. Although poop is still a taboo, is something that concerns everybody. Therefore, it’s interesting how we can talk about various topics starting from one subject. Biology is one of them. Then, in one chamber, you can find a row of toilets with various poop models that allow you to learn what they have to say about your diet and general health. And for history lovers, there are, for example, also ancient chamber pots. While those who are interested in psychology and gender studies can learn more about why some people are reluctant to pee in public and why women experience shame about defecation more often than men. But also the exhibition’s design alone is worth the trip. For example, a room has been decorated to resemble a public restroom with stalls. There are small displays when you walk into each stall. While other displays look at areas where individuals have to poop outside and how this impacts their quality of life. There’s also a hilarious history of the poop emoji, and a replica of old French latrines. You can also find the sustainable toilet supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which doesn’t require conventional plumbing and could aid in the global effort to find environmentally friendly ways to dispose of waste. It’s a fun experience and the more you go in, you discover interesting things, information about diseases, social problems, etc. Nonetheless, Neiss claimed that learning that stools are deposited directly into the St. Lawrence River not far from lovely, clean Quebec City shocks local visitors. She claimed that the museum was monitoring to determine whether what visitors learned could change their way of life. “Did they add a bidet? Do they use washable paper? Are they composting?… The DNA of our museum… is a museum for a better world, and so it fits. It’s the best fit. We want to incite people to act. It’s a call to action”. [...]

A walk through the poop

17 November 2022Giant turd sculptures in an exhibit in Rotterdam In this peculiar exhibit in Rotterdam, you are invited to get naked when you enter by putting on a naked costume featuring different shapes and sizes of male and female genitalia. The reason for that is to get visitors out of their clothes without undressing them. In addition, all people look the same. Then you can walk through the turds. As reported here, there were four giant turds inside the 16,000 square feet of museum space. One mammoth piece of feces was reminiscent of a long, winding steel sculpture by Richard Serra, known for his large-scale sculptures. One was a brown spiral. Another resembled an enormous chocolate chip. Yet another featured intertwined layers with a gap in between that you could have crawled through if you had been brave enough. The 16,000-square-foot museum room included four enormous turds. One enormous human poo resembles a lengthy, twisting Richard Serra sculpture. One looked like a brown spiral, while another, looked like a very large chocolate chip. Another had layers that were connected and had a gap between them that you could have crawled through. All four sculptures of poo were placed on elegant Persian rugs, seeming like welcome-home presents from a huge dog. The piece by Gelatin, a Vienna-based art collective known for breaking taboos, provoking nervous laughter, and familiarizing with bodies and their excretions, was on display at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam with the name “Gelatin: Vorm — Fellows — Attitude“. Before the opening, the sculptures were constructed in situ for two weeks in the Boijmans’ huge contemporary galleries by the collective’s four artists, Wolfgang Gantner, Ali Janka, Florian Reither, and Tobias Urban. Huge plaster casts were initially built by a group of volunteers, who then manually coated them in thick brown clay. Any museum exhibit that shows feces to its viewers as art must be prepared for at least a small amount of scandal. The Boijmans’ director, Sjarel Ex, claimed he had no issue with that. Mr. Ex declared that he had no reservations about commissioning the project. He claimed there were numerous ways to interpret the show. “You can approach it from the field of sculpture, you can approach it as an installation that was tailor-made for these big rooms”, he said, “and you can see it as a provocation and then explore what side of you is provoked. That’s also very interesting. You can also see it as an intimate experience you keep only for yourself”. The work of Gelatin is frequently crude, grotesque, and ludicrous; it is frequently repulsive on purpose yet with humor. The performers placed themselves in a circle, naked, with lit candles emerging from their anuses, creating a “human birthday cake”. They broke into the World Trade Center illegally in 2000 and put in a tiny balcony on the 91st floor (a stunt that lasted a mere 19 minutes or so). Their 2005 works featured a 180-foot pink toy bunny that they left to rot on the side of a mountain in the Italian Alps and a sculpture created from frozen urine. According to Francesco Stocchi, the exhibition’s curator, their brand of performance-based, interactive art has roots in the Situationist and Fluxus movements of the 1960s, particularly in the Austrian avant-garde movement known as Viennese Actionism, whose artists frequently used their own naked bodies as a canvas and blood, milk, or entrails as their materials. Gelatin has had numerous international exhibitions since 1993, most notably at the Fondazione Prada in Milan. Other venues for his work include the Venice Biennale, the Greene Naftali gallery in New York, a cave in Puerto Rico, and the Greene Naftali gallery. “They tend to use two powerful tools: humor and simplification”, said Mr. Stocchi, who is Boijman’s curator of modern and contemporary art. “Simple doesn’t mean to make it easy but to have clarity of intentions. The intention is to confront ourselves with our own fears, or our own preconceived notions or taboos, which we can also call prejudices. When we have prejudices, what can we do? We can discuss it. So the exhibition is an arena for discussion”. For the modern Bodon Wing of the museum, which was constructed in the 1970s to house colossal art, minimalist installations, and land art pieces, Mr. Stocchi invited Gelatin to produce their piece of art. The Boijmans van Beuningen is best known for its extensive collection of early Dutch and Flemish paintings, which includes works by Renaissance painters such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch who explored grotesque hybrid beings, people and animals engaging in all manner of coarse behavior, and drolleries. Additionally, the museum houses a collection of surrealist works. “If you look into the work of Gelatin, you see that they very often refer to those artists”, Mr. Ex said. “The strange performances that they do and even the costumes, you put on one of their costumes and look like you come from one of those paintings. It’s not a re-enactment of Bosch or Bruegel, but it’s a kind of mentality that belongs to this museum”. Mr. Ex claimed that he had foreseen that the performance may generate a sensation and that some guests would have negative reactions. However, in the weeks since the display began, Dutch art critics have generally been favorable toward the pieces, notwithstanding some unfavorable remarks on the museum’s Facebook page. “We are a free space, so we can do things that are silly and also maybe a sign of bad taste”, Mr. Ex said. “This is a museum, here is a place where artists work and we have to defend the freedom of showing things, so there’s a bigger side to it”. But, he added, “so far, my experience is that people just enjoyed it and had fun with it”. [...]

India’s first carbon-negative public toilet

13 November 2022A schoolgirl builds this toilet available at Amritsar airport The trend of using sustainable toilets is giving many technological options for those who need a toilet in a poor country or aim for a more eco-friendly solution. As reported here, Ruhani Verma, a schoolgirl native of Amritsar, claims to have constructed India’s first carbon-negative public restroom using four lakh bags of single-use plastic. The restroom is made entirely of recycled or recyclable materials. At the Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport in Amritsar, Toilet 01, also known as Swachh-Alyaa, was opened by MP Gurjeet Aujla and airport director V K Seth. Carbon negative is when the quantity of CO2 emissions you remove from the environment is greater than the amount of CO2 emissions you emit into the atmosphere. The class of Jayshree Periwal International School in Jaipur said, “The central idea of this project is sustainability. I aimed to build India’s first structure using environment-friendly bricks. Around 30% of the brick used in making the toilet is made from single-use plastic and the rest 70% is made of waste and silica dust”. “Waste generation, especially the single-use plastic seen littered across our countryside, is a concerning issue not only in India but globally too. This problem has only increased drastically each year. This toilet will be able to tackle this problem”, Verma said. She claimed that no natural resources, such as soil, silica, or water, were used in the production of the Silica Plastic Blocks (SPB). They are entirely made of garbage. The building’s materials can all be recycled, and no cement mortar was used in the construction. In addition, Verma noted that an SPB brick is three times stronger than a typical red clay brick and the complete toilet building was built using modules. “If these (four lakh) plastic bags are lined up, they cover a distance of 150 km. The idea of interlocking bricks, like Lego blocks, was used to bind them together, as this structure uses zero water or cement to build a carbon-negative building”, said Verma, who plans to study sustainable architecture and come up with more such models to support the environment. “Amritsar airport did not have toilets in the parking area and I thought it would be the best location for this sustainable toilet project. My school director Ayush Periwal and co-founder of SPB technology Shridhar Rao assisted me to make it possible. Airport director V K Seth-ji also encouraged me to come up with this toilet”, she said. [...]

The Portal, a futuristic toilet in the woods

10 November 2022A sustainable and modern porta potty If you need to use a toilet while in the woods it may not be much comfortable. However, the company Jupe tried to modernize this need by designing a new kind of toilet that looks very sci-fi but that blends well with the natural environment. It’s called The Portal and the team who worked on the project includes ex-Tesla and SpaceX designers. As explained here, this toilet can be brought to different places by its users and when they enter this modern cabin with an all-white interior, they can feel like being in another dimension. To power The Portal there are some solar panels included with a battery and an inverter able to generate 200 watts that provide ample lighting and an always-on fan for odors. Such panels can be freely positioned in order to soak more sunlight. The interior has been planned to have a volume that is at least three times larger than that of a typical portable toilet. In addition to the roomy design, The Portal has a natural skylight on the roof. The experience becomes an intense optical illusion thanks to the Sky Portal cutout in the ceiling, which transforms the sky into a canvas. Additionally, the hole lets in a ton of light from the outside and gives users a glimpse of the sky as they do their business. The right place for meditation. The mirrored glass that Jupe purposefully chose on The Portal is what gives the impression that it is hidden from the observers. A full-length mirror window provides panoramic but private views of mother nature. And if somebody wants to block off the view of nature while using the public restroom, they can roll down the thin window blind. The instant-on LED track lighting that runs along the ceiling appears to help the Portal detect users as soon as they enter. In order to promote those cozy aesthetics, it appears that the team also added some house plants inside The Portal in addition to the brilliant lighting that creates a warm sensation inside. Along with its composting partner, Jupe is incorporating circular waste transformation technology that may transform human waste into soil fertilizer. [...]

How to better clean your toilet

7 November 2022Because sometimes it looks clean it’s not Even when your toilet looks sparkling it doesn’t mean it’s perfectly clean. As explained by Washington Post, at the Hudson College of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma, aerosol scientist Changjie Cai is in charge of a lab that investigates what there might be in the toilet bowl and what each flush might release into the atmosphere. One lesson from his research is that occasionally we overlook cleaning the rim’s bottom of the toilet. It could be a serious problem, he warns. Because of the ideal environment, salmonella can survive there for a long time, months even. It’s important to choose the correct toilet brush. Choose one with stiff, angled bristles so you can better access the trap’s interior and the underside of the rim (the hole in the bottom of the bowl). Getting under the rim can also be accomplished using an old toothbrush. After each use, it’s better to wash your toilet brush by placing it in its holder and filling it with hot, soapy water, rinsing it, and then repeating the process with cold water and a little bleach. It’s time to replace your brush if you use that procedure but your brush still doesn’t look clean. Rubber dish gloves (reserved for bathroom usage exclusively) are a wonderful option because they reach almost to your elbow. Additionally, some experts advise donning a mask, especially if your ventilation is poor and you’re using items like bleach that need adequate airflow to be safe. Simply applying a “disinfectant” on your toilet is all that the American Cleaning Institute recommends, but there are so many options available that choosing one might be challenging. One very important piece of advice: if a product’s label claims that it “kills 99.9% of viruses and bacteria”, it indicates the Environmental Protection Agency has confirmed it will work as promised. The EPA’s “Safer Choice” label, which a product only acquires when the agency has decided that its contents meet certain requirements for human and environmental health while being effective, should be observed if harsh chemicals are a concern. For a less complicated method, regular home bleach is still likely the most effective germ killer available. According to the EPA, use ⅓ cup liquid chlorine bleach per gallon of water. (If you use bleach, take special care to ventilate the restroom properly.) Although many people use white vinegar to clean, it has a limited capacity to disinfect, according to NSF International, a company that tests products and creates public health guidelines for them. However, if you’re dealing with difficult stains, it’s worthwhile to include the pantry basic in your toilet cleaning toolkit. To safely and effectively remove dirt, try cleaning them using a paste made of three parts baking soda to one part white vinegar. However, tablets for your tank containing bleach that promise constant cleaning aren’t a good solution because they may harm the rubber gaskets and seals on a toilet. Additionally, they are harmful to pets who drink toilet water. Turn on the bathroom fan, open a window, or if possible, do both before you begin cleaning. Proper ventilation is crucial because of the fumes from your cleaning products and anything you leave in the air when scrubbing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a toilet’s surfaces must be clear of any debris that could prevent your disinfectant from working correctly. Therefore, it’s vital to give exterior portions like the seat an initial wipe down and the bowl a preliminary brushing if you can see filth like hair, mold, and you can imagine what else. It is not necessary to be a plumber to lower the water level. In certain toilets, you can simply flush by cutting off the water flow to the tank. If that doesn’t work, empty the bowl by plunging or by pouring in around one-and-a-half gallons of water; both actions will simulate a flush and stop the bowl from refilling. Cleaning the bowl with less water is slightly better because you’re less likely to splash yourself. Reducing the water allows cleaning products to perform better since they are not as diluted and spend more time in direct touch with the toilet. It also reduces reflections, improving your perspective of what’s happening in the bowl. Now you can really get down to business. Add your bowl cleaner and grab your angled brush. Be meticulous about scrubbing the underside of the rim, as well as the trap. Cai says both are often-neglected, hard-to-see areas that tend to become hot zones for biofilms, essentially, slimy colonies of microorganisms that attach to surfaces. It’s a common error to immediately flush the cleaning agent from the bowl, which reduces its efficiency. If you want to disinfect, you must give the disinfectant enough time to come into touch with the surface. If you’re unsure, wait at least one minute and then proceed as suggested on the label. Cleaning and sanitizing the toilet’s exterior is the last procedure. Spray and clean the top and underneath of the seat, the bowl base, the top and underside of the lid, the tank, the handle, and the hinges that attach the lid to the bowl with your EPA-verified disinfectant. You can flush it once you’re through if you use a large wad of toilet paper for the task. If you use paper towels, throw them in the garbage right away to prevent cross-contamination. And keep in mind that every flush, not to mention every careless user that uses the restroom, sends all kinds of germs outside the confines of your toilet, so be sure to frequently clean the remainder of your bathroom as well. [...]

That’s why alcohol makes you pee

3 November 2022A hormone is responsible You know, drinking too much makes you pee but when you drink alcohol, why do you have an ever-growing urge to urinate while getting tipsy? Of course, there’s a physiological reason for which a hormone is responsible. It has many names: vasopressin (VP), antidiuretic hormone (ADH), or arginine vasopressin (AVP). To simplify, you can just call it ADH. As explained in this article, ADH is a neuropeptide hormone. The term “antidiuretic hormone” refers to a hormone that reduces the diuretic effect, which causes you to urinate less frequently. In your body, hormones are a form of a chemical messenger, and peptides are chains of amino acids. The longer chain of amino acids that makes up ADH is first created in the brain, specifically in the hypothalamus. The arginine vasopressin gene (AVP) is located on chromosome 20 and provides instructions for the body to produce this longer chain. Active ADH, which is kept in the pituitary gland, is created by trimming the big chain. The pituitary gland releases ADH, which causes the kidneys to reabsorb more water when you need to preserve it and/or urinate less, such as to avoid dehydration or stop bedwetting. Consequently, there will be less urine. Alcohol, however, throws a wrench in the works by preventing the release of ADH. According to numerous studies, alcohol (also known as ethanol) lowers the activity of calcium channels in pituitary gland neurons, which in turn lowers the release of ADH. This indicates that ADH isn’t present to stem the flow of pint-induced urination. ADH Consider the amount of liquid entering your body and ADH won’t be much of a help if the liquid in question is alcohol. And your drink contains caffeine is even worse because it’s a diuretic that doesn’t mix well with low levels of antidiuretic hormone. Both caffeine and alcohol irritate the bladder. Therefore, the detrusor muscle, which contracts in the bladder wall to release pee, may be impacted. Caffeine and alcohol use in excess are known causes of the overactive detrusor muscles that cause a sudden urge to urinate. However, why after a few drinks rather than right away after the first drink, do you start to feel the need to urinate immediately? Although it normally takes approximately 10 minutes for alcohol to start to take effect, blood alcohol levels can start to rise up to 40 minutes after your last drink. The stomach is where about 20% of alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream. The rest is absorbed through the small intestine, which has a larger surface area and does so more quickly. The pyloric sphincter closes to allow for the digestion of food in the stomach, which prevents alcohol from flowing swiftly into the small intestine and slows its absorption into the bloodstream. As a result, it may take a little longer for the alcohol to reach this area. [...]

We fart more on planes

31 October 2022A study seems to confirm that During a flight to New Zealand, Jacob Rosenberg, a Danish scientist, noticed something interesting: there was a change in the air of his water bottle but he also felt a bit bloated after the journey. Then he started theorizing about what may happen to the human body, specifically why it seems we fart more on planes. On that voyage to New Zealand, Rosenberg noticed alterations to his water bottle. It had expanded during the low pressure, crumpled back up as the plane landed, and then been “squeezed”. “When we landed, my belly had grown. That led me to speculate what had happened. When I got back to work I discussed with two of my students, and we simply came up with the idea for the paper”. According to this article, in 2013, Rosenberg collaborated with a few other researchers to publish a study titled “Flatulence on airplanes: Just let it go” in the New Zealand Medical Journal. The South China Morning Post and the BBC were both interested in learning more, and other international media outlets followed suit. The interest was “quite extreme”, according to Rosenberg, who is currently employed by the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Clinical Medicine. “I was interviewed by numerous radio and TV stations and many individual web pages cited and discussed the work. Thus, a few months after publication my name and flatulence were mentioned in more than 2 million web pages according to Google”, said Rosenberg. “I have never seen anything like this with other publications. So we must have hit something of common interest and relevance”. We fart because our intestines need to release some gas, but different things may affect how the gas accumulates. We breathe in the air while performing everyday tasks like chewing food or drinking throughout the day. Exogenous air is the term for the air that has been swallowed. Exogenous air contains oxygen and nitrogen that enters the bloodstream from the small intestine, but any excess must be ejected. Additionally, the colon contains a large number of bacteria that are working to break down food and produce endogenous air. The majority of this will be hydrogen, depending on what you have been consuming, but it may also contain methane and hydrogen sulfide, which gives it a bad smell. However, of the approximately 1.5 liters of gas we produce each day, barely 1% of it smells. Of course, certain foods you eat tend to affect how much flatus you have for the day. These foods include those high in fiber, undigested carbohydrates found in sugars like fructose and sorbitol, starchy foods like potatoes, high-sulfur foods like garlic and onions, and cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli. The typical person completes 10 farts every day, however, some studies place the number closer to 25. Men and women fart at roughly the same rates, except for the fact that one gender may brag about accomplishing more tasks than the other. There is one exception, though, since women typically outperform males in terms of smell with a study that supports that. Talking about planes, it comes down to physics. The air inside of you is being affected by the pressurized cabins on aircraft; as the cabin pressure lowers, the air in the intestine expands by up to 30% more than usual, and that air needs to be expelled. “Since there is only limited space in the large bowel, it is a natural consequence to fart”, Rosenberg told the South China Morning Post. Modern airplanes have extremely silent cabins, which increases the risk of farting. You may hesitate to fart because a significant percentage of the air is constantly recycled, but doing so has health hazards. In addition to bloating, holding them in may cause dyspepsia, upper abdominal pain, or even heartburn. If odors are a concern, the majority of commercial aircraft today are equipped with HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filters, which can collect approximately 99.97% of airborne particles larger than 0.3 microns. The charcoal within aids in odor removal. The HEPA filtration process removes about 40% of the air in a cabin, with the remainder being pumped in from outside the aircraft. The air is totally replaced roughly every five minutes. If it’s not enough, allow the coverings to do the work since your seat will absorb a lot of your gas. If you have frequent gas, you might want to consider buying underwear or a tool that reduces flatulence and collects gasses before they exit your underpants. [...]

Poop can be burned underwater

27 October 2022The Super Toilet promoted by Gate Foundation Many people around the world don’t have access to a modern toilet and have a sewage system unable to treat human waste. However, even where there’s a working sewage system, the problem is that it requires a lot of water due to inefficient toilets. To fix these problems, Shannon Yee, an associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, is trying to change the way we think about waste. Not for nothing, there’s a word play on his name with people saying “you need to go take a Yee” in place of the word ‘pee’. As explained here, Yee is in charge of a group of engineers developing a water-less super toilet that can be used everywhere without the need for a sewer infrastructure thanks to funding from the Gates Foundation’s “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge”. Dr. Shannon Yee. Photo by Georgia Institute of Technology “Stated very simply, we’re taking infrastructure and we’re turning it into an appliance”, Yee says. “So, no water coming into the toilet and no output sewage… You just plug it in wherever you need a bathroom and it treats your waste”. Yee has experience with thermal energy technologies rather than toilets however, this new kind of toilet also uses heat and is powered by electricity. It has a front-end unit that resembles a standard toilet and a rear processing unit where waste is treated. The poop is heated to high pressure while remaining separate from the liquids. “We enter into this phase of matter known as a supercritical fluid where the feces spontaneously combusts underwater. It’s a pretty unique way of doing this: we can actually burn feces underwater”, Yee says. The stools are converted into little, odorless ‘poop cakes’, which can be composted or thrown in the garbage, while the purified pee is employed to flush the toilet. The “super toilets” are currently being tested by Yee and his colleagues in South Africa, India, China, and the United States. If the idea is successful, he expects it will enable towns to avoid spending millions of dollars on sewage and garbage processing facilities. Yee’s work is just one of many international initiatives attempting to address the complex issue of human waste. [...]

Why do I have to pee after taking a poop?

24 October 2022A nurse gives a good explanation After taking a poop, many experience the need to pee. This can be an unusual question but maybe many wonder why this happens and it’s more common than you think. According to Natalya Yvette, a nurse at UCLA Medical Center, who answered this question on Quora, there’s a reasonable explanation. The human body has both voluntary and involuntary muscles including those for helping us to pee and poop. These muscles have dual functions, holding urine and stool in as well as expelling them outside. But the muscles that hold in stools are much stronger and larger than those that hold in urine. The primary muscles that hold stools in are called internal and external sphincters. Anal sphincters The internal sphincter is a completely involuntary organ, and when poop passes through this muscle, it slowly relaxes. Then, poop contracts the external sphincter which is a voluntary muscle. That’s when we feel more pressure in our rectum, and the need to poop increases. So, if we can sit down on a toilet and relax our external sphincter poop can passes through. However, if we decide against going at that particular time, we deliberately constrict our external anal sphincter, which keeps the poop in the rectum. Bladder The control of urine is similar. Although the muscles are weaker and smaller, the actions are the same. There is both an involuntary internal urethral sphincter and a voluntary external urethral sphincter. When the pressure inside the bladder is high enough, the internal urethral sphincter opens. We can hold back the urine by contracting the external urethral sphincter or urinate by releasing this muscle. Urethra So why do we need to urinate? The reason is that the pelvic floor muscle relaxes when we poop, in addition to allowing stool to pass, it decreases the tension in our urinary sphincters, thereby allowing urine to flow. It is easier to have control over your anal sphincters than your bowel, so experiencing this means you are perfectly normal. The anatomy of the male and female pelvis is very different, which also affects how urine and stools are controlled in men and women. [...]