RELATED: Never Skip a Shower After Going Here, CDC Warns. You may only be steps from the toilet, but it’s no secret—and yet another matter of heated hygiene debate—that some people feel free to urinate while rinsing themselves off. And while there may be those who argue it’s a cleanliness issue, one doctor warns that you shouldn’t pee in the shower because of the potential effects it could have on your body. In a video that has since gone viral on TikTok, Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas, MD, a certified pelvic floor physical therapist with a doctorate in physical therapy, cautions that you may be accidentally conditioning yourself to urinate on command to the sound of the nozzle spraying. “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 shower is running, you’re creating an association in the brain between the sound of running water and having to pee,” she said.
At first blush, it may seem like a stretch to connect bladder control issues with peeing in the shower. But in a later interview with Buzzfeed, Jeffrey-Thomas clarified her comments and described the psychological response known as a Pavlovian effect. “Your bladder relies on signals it gets both from the stretch of the bladder walls as it fills, as well as signals from the brain which let it know when to contract to urinate,” she said. “We want to avoid training our bladder to associate certain signals with the urge to pee. In this case, peeing in the shower associates the sound of running water with urination or with submersion in water. This can often transition into being triggered by other sounds of running water (like when you’re running the faucet to wash your hands or the dishes) or when you’re in bodies of water.” The conditioned response may not be a problem for everyone, but she said others might feel the effects in one potentially embarrassing way. “For some, this may just be an annoyance, but for people with any kind of pelvic floor dysfunction, this could contribute to urge incontinence (or leaking urine when you have the urge to use the restroom),” she told Buzzfeed. RELATED: Stop Washing This Every Time You Shower, Doctors Say. But it’s not just the psychological conditioning that could be creating an issue. Depending on your body type, allowing yourself to urinate while standing in the running water could be going against your body’s methods for holding it when you need to.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb “From a pelvic floor perspective, the position for peeing in the shower is not conducive to pelvic floor relaxation,” Jeffrey-Thomas told Buzzfeed. “AMAB (assigned male at birth) bodies have the prostate to support the bladder, which makes standing to urinate okay, but AFAB (assigned female at birth) bodies—as well as people who have had affirmation surgeries—do not have the same level of support for the bladder. To maintain continence (i.e., not peeing your pants at inappropriate times), the pelvic floor generally wants to remain contracted in a standing or hovering position, so to urinate in those positions, one has to bypass these normal continence mechanisms, which can be problematic down the line.” However, there is one way to overcome this issue if you ever find yourself desperate to pee while bathing. “Deep squatting all the way to the ground in the shower avoids this and allows the pelvic floor to relax.” But, she added, “then you’re still doing the water/peeing association.” For more helpful health tips delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. Ultimately, Jeffrey-Thomas admits that her recommendation might come off as a bit extreme. But she argues that paying attention to this one minor bathing detail now could significantly affect how your body works down the line. “Shower peeing may seem like a silly thing to focus on, but there are many small habits that contribute to our overall bladder function and pelvic floor function,” she told Buzzfeed. “This is all about preventing problems later in life. Ask anyone who pees their pants: If they knew how to prevent the embarrassment and frustration associated with it, they would go back and do it in a heartbeat.” RELATED: Never Do This When You Shower at Night, Doctors Warn.
