Last month, Mark Sisson had a post on "Nature's Platform", a product designed to simulate pre-toilet days. It's the same idea as a "squat toilet", which is used in many developing countries. As it turns out, modern toilets have only been used extensively in the last couple of centuries, and so humans are not really designed for this type of bathroom setup.
This got me thinking, is it possible that toilets are contributing to the high rate of back pain in developed countries? I don't mean the actual use of toilets, but what they replace: the deep squat movement. You would expect functional differences in a person who engages in a deep squat every day (without a toilet) versus a person who can use a toilet and maybe rarely squats at all. There should be large differences in hip mobility, and I wouldn't be surprised if this connected to back pain.
All this is speculation - I don't have any evidence to support it. It would be interesting to compare health measures in different countries/areas with regular toilets versus squat toilets.
Last month, Mark Sisson had a post on "Nature's Platform", a product designed to simulate pre-toilet days. It's the same idea as a "squat toilet", which is used in many developing countries. As it turns out, modern toilets have only been used extensively in the last couple of centuries, and so humans are not really designed for this type of bathroom setup.
This got me thinking, is it possible that toilets are contributing to the high rate of back pain in developed countries? I don't mean the actual use of toilets, but what they replace: the deep squat movement. You would expect functional differences in a person who engages in a deep squat every day (without a toilet) versus a person who can use a toilet and maybe rarely squats at all. There should be large differences in hip mobility, and I wouldn't be surprised if this connected to back pain.
All this is speculation - I don't have any evidence to support it. It would be interesting to compare health measures in different countries/areas with regular toilets versus squat toilets.