With a Squatty Potty toilet stool your bowel will empty more effectively, more easily and more fully! No straining, pushing or laxatives - just as nature intended At first, many people saw the footstool as little more than a joke Christmas present. But, like fresh bed linen and French bulldogs, the Squatty Potty exerts a powerful emotional force on its owners. “I have one and I have to tell you, it will ruin your life,” a Reddit user called chamburgers recently posted. “I can’t poop anywhere but at home with my Squatty Potty. When I have to poop at work I’m left unsatisfied. It’s like climbing into a wet sleeping bag.” Bobby Edwards, who invented the footstool with his mom, calls people like this “evangelists”. “They talk about it at dinner parties, they talk about whenever they can – about how the Squatty Potty has changed their life,” he told me. He sounded almost mystified. People’s reluctance to embrace the Squatty Potty wasn’t helped by the fact that the Edwardses promoted it at the local trade show with a skeleton on a toilet. (Although the Squatty Potty itself is designed to be as discreet as possible – the standard, white plastic version almost blends away into the colourless expanse of many modern bathrooms – the marketing could never afford to be minimalist.) But friends and family to whom the Edwardses had gifted Squatty Potties where pleasantly surprised by the stools, so Bobby and Judy carried on. St George might not have been ready for the Squatty Potty, but it was about to make a bigger splash than they could ever have imagined.

The recorded history of human defecation can be read as a series of attempts at differentiation: how do we separate our excrement from our bodies, our sewage from our homes and cities? How do we keep the sounds and smells of our bodily functions from infesting other people’s senses? How do we enforce social hierarchies by dividing the bodies of the powerful from the bodies of the oppressed? The philosopher Slavoj Žižek has claimed to discern in the toilet designs of Germany, France and England basic ideological differences between Europe’s three principal cultures. Germany’s “lay and display” toilets, which allow excrement to rest on an exposed shelf for inspection before being suctioned away, reveal a blend of conservatism and contemplativeness. French toilets, designed to remove faecal matter as swiftly as possible, express that people’s revolutionary hastiness. Anglo toilets reflect a pragmatic medium: according to Žižek, “the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected”. On its descent through our bodies, faecal matter traverses a landscape marked by the poetry of the gastroenterologist: the flaps of tissue that project into the rectum, known as the “valves of Houston”; the bouquet of blood vessels contained in the “anal crypt”. As the rectum fills with the products of digestion, it signals, through nerves running into the sacral region of the spinal cord, that defecation may be necessary. The internal and external anal sphincters then begin a culturally mediated pas de deux, the former pressing for release and the latter restricting discharge until the opportune moment. More complete bowel movements eliminate bloating and help your body absorb essential nutrients from your food so that you feel healthier and full of energy. Those who suffer from severe, regular constipation will find relief and help to prevent further build-ups. Haemorrhoids will be reduced and prevented, and those with bowel disease will find using the toilet far less painful. Pregnant women will experience relief too as the squatting position avoids pressure on the uterus and helps to prepare the abdominal and pelvic floor muscles for a natural delivery. Sometimes the comforts and luxuries of modern life go against the human body’s natural design and can have significant effects on our health. The way we use the loo is the perfect example; many of us couldn’t imagine what damage we could be doing to ourselves by sitting down for a number two. The truth is, humans are anatomically designed to squat, just like other animals, and since the prevalence of the modern toilet, we’ve been causing ourselves serious health problems.

Top 5 Toilet Stools

Add chopped fruit and nuts to your cereal and replace half the meat in Bolognese or chilli with beans or pulses. In many foreign countries ‘squatting’ toilets are commonplace, while problems such as haemorrhoids and diverticulitis aren’t. Not only are the muscles and blood vessels in danger when sitting, but the pelvic floor is put under a lot of stress too, which can cause bladder weakness and incontinence. The Squatty Potty has been expertly designed to put our bodies in the correct squatting position when we’re on the loo, so we are not at risk of developing any pelvic floor or bowel problems. But sales were sluggish. The family is from St George, Utah, a high-desert town where 70% of the 80,000 residents are Mormons like Judy – not the sort of folks who gossip about their bodily emissions on a regular basis. “She’s a believer, she’s super faithful, she goes to temple every Sunday,” Bobby said of his mother. “That was an interesting dynamic when we were creating this. We embarrassed her a lot.” (This wasn’t so much of a problem for him, Bobby added; he left the church at 17, when he came out as gay.) One local woman told Judy she should be ashamed of what she was producing. We speak to Dr Sammie Gill, a Registered Dietitian and Research Associate at King’s College London specialising in gut health, about the optimum way to evacuate your bowels:

Like any technological solution, however, the water closet set in motion new problems. The use of water to dispose of faeces has been “a central element of our perilous fantasy that the planet was created for human convenience,” one Canadian scholar has written. Alongside improved hygiene and stronger taboos also came an explosion in various so-called “modern” diseases, such as haemorrhoids and constipation, which were attributed to seated toilets. One 20th-century physiotherapist described constipation as “the greatest physical vice of the white race”.So there you have it, our guide to the top ten best toilet stools available online in the UK. We hope you have found this guide enlightening and useful in helping you choose the right one to keep you feeling your absolute best! Hearst UK is the trading name of the National Magazine Company Ltd, 30 Panton Street, Leicester Square, London, SW1Y 4AJ. Registered in England. All Rights Reserved. Most toilet stools are made from plastic, which is sturdy and cheaper to manufacture and buy than some other materials. Medical grade plastic is versatile and durable with high impact resistance and resistance to chemicals. It doesn't retain dangerous bacteria and it can withstand harsh cleaning agents, making it an ideal material for toilet stools. There are lots of things to like about this Folding Toilet Stool from Pukkr, but we particularly like its ability to fold-away after use. Made from lightweight plastic in a compact design, this stool is super portable and easy to store.

Clinically proven to reduce straining of the loo, preventing problems, such as; constipation, haemorrhoids & diverticulitis Made from safe, BPA-free plastic, the HOCA Original Toilet Stool by Hey Nature is an example of excellent German design, and is the only toilet stool licensed as a medical product in Germany. Enabling the perfect squatting position, the HOCA allows you to use the bathroom in a healthy and efficient way. Salina Lee, assistant professor of gastroenterology at Rush University, phone interview, January 29, 2021 So it does seem plausible that the Squatty Potty might return us to a sort of pooping Eden. But the limited research that exists on footstools is equivocal. In three studies that were either uncontrolled or had very small sample sizes, there was evidence that squatting to defecate has positive effects on the ease and extent of elimination. When it came to simulating a squat by using a footstool, though, the results were inconclusive. The semi-squat position did not appear to open the anorectal angle, or reduce the amount of straining needed to go, though the studies were not rigorous enough to establish anything approaching a scientific fact.

That doesn’t mean you need to hit the squat toilets that still exist along the French motorway or – to the horror of the Daily Mail – in Rochdale’s Exchange shopping mall. Dr Adil Bharucha, who is leading the Mayo clinic’s randomised controlled trial of the Squatty Potty, hopes that his study will establish more conclusively whether the Squatty Potty works, and why.

When sitting down the anorectal angle is kinked and the puborectalis muscle chokes the rectum, keeping faeces inside. It is only when we squat, lifting our knees higher than our hips, that the anorectal angle is straightened and the puborectalis muscle releases the rectum, allowing complete defecation.Once you’ve tried Squatty Potty you’ll wonder how you ever managed to go to the loo before. Get one for each bathroom and the whole family will feel the benefits of a more natural number two! The popularity of the Squatty Potty, and the existence of its many rivals and imitators, is one of the clearest signs of an anxiety that’s been growing in the west for the past decade: that we have been “pooping all wrong”. In recent years, some version of that phrase has headlined articles from outlets as diverse as Men’s Health, Jezebel, the Cleveland Clinic medical centre and even Bon Appétit. By giving up the natural squatting posture bequeathed to us by evolution and taking up our berths on the porcelain throne, the proposition goes, we have summoned a plague of bowel trouble. Untold millions suffer from haemorrhoids – in the US alone, some estimates run to 125 million – and millions more have related conditions such as colonic inflammation. But the Squatty Potty also represents a more worldly sort of devotion. Our anal sphincters “are concerned with some of the most basic questions of human existence,” Giulia Enders, the scientist, writes: how we navigate the boundaries between our internal and external worlds. One might add the spiritual world, too. The simple hedonism of a full bowel movement reminds us that the body is the ultimate seat of the soul. Like Bryan Cranston, we all want the ecstasy of elimination, the self-love we feel after a really good shit. Squatting may be natural, but the question remains: is the Squatty Potty also good? Post Darwin, we no longer tend to believe a couple of hundred or thousand years of human ingenuity can improve upon the immemorial march of evolution. Those who think the water closet has been vindicated by history ignore how contingent, and in some ways irrational, modern sewage systems with seated toilets really are. This is underscored by the fact that billions of people regularly use modern, hygienic squat toilets to poop. In many parts of the world, people sit in a deep squat to rest, pray, cook, share a meal and use the toilet. However, in the UK, we find ourselves constantly sitting in an upright position, with many of us not only considering squatting to be undignified, but uncomfortable too. But did you know that many experts believe that squatting may be beneficial for our health?