Dr. Trisha Pasricha

There was a study that showed that your hands, when you wipe after having a bowel movement, have more microbes on them than people who use a bidet.

Actually, I don't remember what ply it was, but the point... But toilet paper is not as clean as we think it is.

And I mean, think about it this way, and I know every parent can relate to this.

Suppose you somehow get a little bit of poop on your hand, a little bit of poop on your arm.

Would you in that moment consider it acceptable to just like smear it off with a little paper towel and go about your day?

No, you would absolutely put, I hope, you would absolutely put some running water on that thing and make sure it was clean.

But for some reason, again, with the most delicate tissue in our body, we think wiping's okay.

Yeah.

Is there a wiping technique?

I think women are sometimes taught that it should be front to back.

And that's the idea is that we don't want to mix the bacteria from our rear end up front to decrease the risk of UTIs, urinary tract infections.

There have been some studies that show that that's the case.

The best way to wipe up front is a gentle dab.

And I think that if you have the ability to do that in the back, that's the best way too.

A gentle dab keeps you from...

creating these microscopic tears, smearing it in.

I really think that like sometimes when we're like just scraping our bums, a lot of people have sensitivity in that area.

So people who have fissures, who have hemorrhoids, women who are postpartum, I tell all of my postpartum patients this, just a gentle dab is all you need.

Yeah, there's two big ones for me.

One is leaky gut.