Let's talk toilets.
Prison officials find this topic high on their agenda list because, on account of toilets and toilets alone, prisons are one of the highest water users in any state.
If they wish, prisoners can flush 100 times a day, using water at an alarming rate.
Some prisons have placed timers to limit flushes to twice every 15 minutes, still an amazing amount of water going down the drain.
Those of us not incarcerated (did you know nearly 7 million Americans fall under one of the three Ps — prisoners, on probation or on parole?) will flush 140,000 times in our lifetime, while a prisoner can rack up that number in just a three-year stint. It's because they do nearly everything besides use them as toilets.
Prisoners drain the toilet water and talk to any cell linked by the same pipe. They build fires in emptied tanks, stuff laundry down them and flush until their cells are flooded, which allows extra time outside.
They wash their clothes in them, use them as tiny pools for relief from heat, flush to warn of inspections or guard shift changes and even have flushing codes for chess moves.
They make "prison hooch," a wine brewed by soaking bags of fruit juice in the toilet.
In the United Kingdom, toilets had to be turned away from Mecca for the Muslim prisoners.
Interesting thing is, prisoners are kind of on the right track. Toilets would make a lot more sense for any function besides us sitting on them. Western toilets place
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us in a position that is most disadvantageous for well, going to the bathroom. To properly eliminate, we should be squatting, which offers perfect inter-abdominal pressure to empty bowels and bladders. It's almost impossible for a squatter to have hemorrhoids or hiatal hernia (causing reflux), diverticulitis and even in some literature, appendicitis (don't get me started on appendicitis).
For the body to properly, efficiently and even completely eliminate, knees should be higher than hips. Toilet sitters can place a small stool under their feet to achieve the proper position and watch in amazement as incontinence and constipation are nearly eliminated.
Having knees higher than hips does something else besides create proper abdominal pressure — it takes the pressure off the back of the legs. It turns out we have a pressure point on the back of the legs that shuts things down for a few seconds. Kids use it all the time. They cross their legs when they "have to go," placing pressure on their thighs, giving them time to make it to the restroom. But if you're sitting on a toilet, the only pressure is on the back of the legs, mandating that the sphincters remain closed. Essentially having our knees at the same level as the hips and applying pressure on the thighs is telling our body to do anything but go to the bathroom.
And then, what animal do you know besides ducks that defecates in their fresh water supply? Geez, even a hardened criminal knows that's the last thing we should be doing with a toilet.
Joy Colangelo of Pacific Grove is an occupational therapist and the author of "Embodied Wisdom: What Our Anatomy Can Teach Us About The Art Of Living." Her column runs in Opinion on the first and third Sundays of each month. She can be reached at
[email protected].
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