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Turns out most people are wiping their butts completely incorrectly, but this doctor is here to teach us the right way

Turns out most people are wiping their butts completely incorrectly, but this doctor is here to teach us the right way

You’ve probably heard that few things in life are certain except death and taxes, but we’d like to add something else to the list: cleaning the bathroom.

Shot of man crouching over suitcase, getting ready to poop. As seen in

Thomas Winz via Getty Images

So, since we have to do this, what is the best technique?

The preferred method for wiping ‘is not wiping,’ nationally known anal surgeon Dr. Evan Goldstein told us – Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, co-hosts of from HuffPost Am I doing it wrong? podcast – when we recently chatted with him.

“When you look at someone’s (anus), left and right are these wrinkles – it’s like an accordion. It opens. It’s closed,” said Goldstein, who is also CEO and founder of Custom surgical.

“Front and back – towards the vagina, towards the penis and testicles area, or towards the tailbone, the skin there is not wrinkled. It’s very thin. When we wipe, where do we wipe? Usually front to back – thin skin! We all wipe a lot, so what happens over time? People tear their skin. It gets irritated. It gets angry at us.

Instead of wiping, Goldstein suggested cleaning the area without toilet paper. “I’m a big (fan) of the bidet,” he told us, because it allows you to wash the anus thoroughly without damaging it. He also recommended taking a quick shower or rinse if you don’t have a bidet. “You always want to make sure you dry off,” he added, because moisture in that area can cause irritation.

This is also one of the reasons why it is decidedly anti-wet wipes.

Wet sanitary napkins from the pack

Valery Lushchikov / Getty Images

“They are so terrible, not only for the environment, but also for your hole,” he said. “There are so many companies launching wipes and I think they should all be banned. I see 90 people a week (in my surgery), and I would say that a third of all the people who come here are from wet wipe-induced problems.

Indeed, their use can modify the microbiome of this area of ​​the body.

“Think about it: we have good bacteria, we have bad bacteria, but they are in homeostasis. They are in balance. Wet wipes screw that up in a really bad way,” Goldstein said. “I see ridiculous dermatitis (in my patients)… bacterial infections. …Now that you’ve messed up that microbiome, it causes so many problems.

If you’re going to wipe with toilet paper, he recommends more “spotting” than wiping and doing it in a “standing squat” because there’s less blood flowing to that part of the body when you’re standing. And that means less potentially problematic pressure on the delicate area.

A scene from

Universal images

“The longer you sit on the bowl, the more blood (there), the more wiping, the more irritation. The body feels it,” Goldstein said. Instead, we want to return to vertical as soon as possible to relieve this pressure. “So you poop, you wipe once or twice (while sitting), you end up standing. For what? Blood starts to come out (when you get up). The mechanism begins to return to the normal daily (position),” Goldstein said.

“There are people for whom it is more difficult (to wipe) when they are standing,” he noted. “They don’t feel like they have the whole hole. …But we don’t need to go all out. If you’re going down this path, we need to go back to diet, fiber, pre and probiotics, and think about better strategies. I always say, “It’s not about butt health; It’s gut health. If you have gut health, you will automatically have butt health.

Goldstein also shared with us why squatting is the best position for pooping, what a perfect poop should look like, and much more. Check out the full episode wherever you get your podcastssubscribe to Am I doing it wrong? so you don’t miss any episodes.

To learn more about Goldstein, visit his website or his Instagram page, and consult Future Method Daily Fiber for Butt and Gut.This article was originally published on HuffPost.