Man Was Doomscrolling On His Phone While On the Toilet. Then He Becomes Paralyzed: ‘Can’t Make This Stuff Up’
You might want to rethink your toilet habits.
We’ve all experienced going into the bathroom, sitting down on the toilet to do our business, and then doomscrolling on our phones without us noticing anything else. More often than not, we end up on the toilet for far longer than we need to be. But one doctor explained how doing so can lead to lasting damage.
Dr. Sahar Yousef, a neuroscientist and professor at UC Berkeley, shared in a video on TikTok (@drsaharyousef) how a man allegedly became paralyzed after sitting on the toilet for a long period of time and subsequently fainting when he stood up. According to the doctor, the man was scrolling through his phone for 30 minutes.
Dr. Yousef claimed the incident was not a “freak accident,” but was due to biology and physics instead. The doctor claimed that sitting on the toilet puts pressure on the body’s blood vessels due to the seat forcing the hips and knees into an unnatural angle—cutting off blood flow to the legs.
It got dubbed the “bathroom scroll syndrome”
When the body is seated in an unnatural angle for a long period of time—around 10 minutes or so—it will allegedly give a “warning sign” in the form of a tingling sensation, Dr. Yousef said. “Now if you ignore that warning sign, because you’re, I don’t know, scrolling and completely distracted, bad s*** happens. Literally,” she said.
According to Dr. Yousef, a 24-year-old stood up after 30 minutes of scrolling through his phone when his blood pressure had an abrupt drop. She claimed that the blood in his lower body couldn’t redistribute quickly enough, resulting in the man fainting and becoming paralyzed.
Per BroBible, the man—from Chongqing, China—was allegedly healthy, with no previous or known medical condition. His family reportedly found him unresponsive in the bathroom before rushing him to a nearby hospital back in 2014.
The bathroom he was found in reportedly lacked ventilation and space. Doctors reportedly informed the family that the man had suffered oxygen deprivation that led to cerebral edema, which worsened into brain herniation.
Doomscroll responsibly
“This is actually something called ‘orthostatic hypotension,’” Dr. Yousef said. “Doctors have been informally calling this ‘bathroom scroll syndrome.’” But it seems that this isn’t the only potential issue that can arise due to prolonged doomscrolling.
Dr. Yousef also cited a study released by the Public Library of Sciences, that claimed there was a 46% increase in haemorrhoid risk when scrolling on the phone while sitting on the toilet. “They say bathroom scrollers are five times more likely to camp out past the five-minute mark, which increases your risk significantly,” Dr. Yousef said.
Dr. Yousef’s informative video seemingly made viewers rethink their toilet habits. “This video would be safer if it was shorter. I’m currently on the toilet,” one comment said. But more wondered how sitting on the toilet differed from sitting on a chair. “What’s the difference between sitting on a toilet and sitting on a chair I mean in terms of posture,” a user asked. “How does this not happen sitting at a desk all day??”
Some were a bit more skeptical about the doctor’s claims that doomscrolling can lead to paralysis. “I don’t know what men you’ve been around but the weird relationship isn’t with the phones – it’s men’s relationship with the toilet. They’ve done this forever. Long before phones they camped in there with their newspapers, mail, magazines, etc,” a comment read. Nevertheless, Dr. Yousef urged viewers to leave their phones outside of the bathroom and learn how to lessen their screen time: “Don’t let Instagram give you hemorrhoids.”
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