There has been a flurry of reports this week warning of the dangers of sitting too long in the somewhat unnatural position demanded by a toilet seat.

These include a higher risk of haemorrhoids and weakened pelvic muscles – which become more of a potential problem from middle age onwards.

A common issue when sitting on the toiler for too long is pins and needles in your legs or feet.

This is caused by the posture we assume when sitting on the toilet – hunched forward with knees higher than our bottom.

This posture compresses and hinders blood flow to the nerves in the pelvis. These nerves go all the way to our toes.

The poor blood flow causes the tingling.

There’s a version of this called ‘toilet seat neuropathy’ – a tingling in the sciatic nerve that has caused some people to seek help at the hospital emergency department.

Some doctors say that 10 minutes is the maximum you should spend on the throne. Others say you should sit no more than five minutes.

The average time for a bowel movement – whether you’re a human or an elephant – is 12 seconds. (This is an ancient evolutionary development to limit the time we’re exposed to dangerous predators.)

So, if you can’t empty your bowels fairly quickly, without straining, you need to get up and walk around, have a drink of water and try again later.

If prolonged straining is a habit, talk to your doctor about why you’re constipated and how to fix it.

The dangers of straining

Dr Chris Moy is a GP based in Adelaide. He told The New Daily that sitting on the toilet “puts us at an anatomically disadvantaged position”.

He describes how the fibrous muscles that hold the pelvis together, are “slinged downward to make a kind of funnel”.

Poking through these fibres are organs such as the bladder, the rectum, anus and the vagina.

He said the muscles usually stay quite tight, especially when we’re young, to stop these organs from fully pushing through.

“Sitting on top of that are all your abdominal organs, your innards,” he said.

All this pressure is further increased when we sit on the toilet.

“You’re trying to relax everything. Your bottom is below your knees, it’s the worst position, and you don’t want to stay in it too long,” Moy said.

“With your bottom relaxed, it allows everything to poke through a bit more.”

It’s not such a worry when you’re young and your muscles are keeping everything tight.

“But as you get older, you put on a bit of weight, women are injured when giving birth,” he said.

More pressure, more weakness.

It’s this combo that can lead to haemorrhoids – which are varicose veins inside the anus – or further weakening of the pelvic floor that has occurred in childbirth.

Worse, sitting on the toilet for too long can also increase the risk of prolapses, including a rectal prolapse.

This is when the rectum drops down and bulges out of the anus.

“You can also get a prolapse of the bladder pushing through the urethra, or the bottom of the uterus poking out of the vagina,” he said.