is standing to be actually bad for you have you been doing it wrong all this time I'm Dr Rena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and in this video we're going to talk about if you should sit or stand to urinate so recently a data analytics firm surveyed over 7 000 men from 13 different countries and they asked them where in the world do men sit down to we in the U.S just 10 of men said they always sat down to pee while 31 said they never sit down and 17 said they rarely do and this
was pretty similar in both younger and older men but in Germany which was the highest rate of sitting 40 of men sat every time they urinated and older men were even more likely to sit when they pee so I remember in one of my videos I said as a recommendation sit down stand up walk around sit back down to pee again and people came out at me they were like we don't sit who sits to pee well there you have it there are people who sit to pee so let's get into it is it actually
better for you to sit or stand when you're urinating so in order to answer this question you want to know what exactly happens when you sit so we know that generally speaking your pelvic floor is more relaxed when you're sitting down and when you're standing you often recruit some of that pelvic floor musculature just for postural reasons so when you need to urinate that pelvic floor actually needs to relax in order to allow urine to pass through the urethra oftentimes I will see people who have what's called a high tone pelvic floor and they actually
have difficulty urinating and there's no other reason for it except for the fact their muscles are really tense and talk about this a lot because I see it a lot I think it's particularly under diagnosed in men where people have stress and anxiety and they carry it in their body for some people they carry in their jaw when they get TMJ and they wake up with headaches and jaw pain but in some people they carry it in their pelvis and they get pain when they sit pain when they have erections pain when they ejaculate difficulty
urinating or sometimes urinating more frequently or more urgently but I digress the question here was is sitting better so based on that fact sitting would be probably better in general just based on that fact alone but the other thing very specific for men is that after the age of 50 about half of men develop what's called BPH or benign prosthetic hyperplasia and that just means that your prostate enlarges and many people have this problem in fact up to by the time they're 80 about 80 percent of men have this problem and it makes it more
difficult to urinate because as the prostate enlarges it Narrows the P tube where your urine comes out of and so it's like almost thinking about sucking a straw right if you're drinking out of a bubble tea cup that has a really big straws the flow is really fast but when you say you took a coffee straw and tried to drink out of that it would be nearly impossible so similarly when your prostate enlarges it becomes more and more difficult to get urine to flow past the prostate and you might notice this with symptoms such as
having to strain when you urinate having to wait for your stream to start or your stream kind of starts and stops some people will dribble after they pee or it will take just a long time to empty their bladder and also you may notice a weak stream and if you think about it when you're dribbling urine or having a weak stream it can be kind of difficult to stand and aim the urine in the actual toilet so sitting can be more convenient for Hygiene purposes okay but these are all series and if you know me
and you've been watching me you know by now I love to tell you what the data says so there's one study that looked at men who had BPH and those who did not have it and they found that in particular men with BPH had higher flow rates meaning that their urine flow was faster and they had a higher voided volume meaning that they peed more when they did actually urinate and they left less urine behind in their bladder or what we call a lower post void residual when they sat compared to when they were standing
this was not the same for men who didn't have BPH So based on this and the things we know about sitting if you're struggling with urinary symptoms or you're older than 50 and are concerned about BPH it may be a good idea but you may be wondering if you're not having symptoms why do some men actually sit so another study surveyed nearly 200 U.S men and of those 18 preferred to sit of those men who did sit they were more likely to have urinary symptoms and be bothered by those symptoms it's one thing to have
the symptoms and not really let them bother you other people had physical limitations that made them sit like they had recent surgery back pain arthritis and then had a lower desire to stand compared to men who actually stood of the men who liked to stand a lot of them reported that it was really important for them to actually pee in a standing position other popular reasons for sitting were to try to avoid a mess associated with standing if they preferred to sit at night time and sitting feeling just generally more comfortable than standing or trying
to get a better urinary flow and reading or using the phone I do not recommend reading or using the phone on the toilet because you'll spend too much time on the toilet and potentially put you at risk for other issues like hemorrhoids or things like that so what's my takeaway if you don't have any symptoms and you prefer to urinate standing it's probably not a problem but at the same time if you like to sit or if you sit because you have issues like urinary symptoms again totally nothing wrong with it in fact you might
be helping yourself if you guys enjoyed this video please make sure to subscribe and share this Channel with your friends and if you like this video make sure to check out my video on urinary dribbling because I think it's super useful and helpful for so many people as always remember to take care of yourself because you are worth it
