He’s a fountain of wisdom.
Dr. Scott Walter, a board-certified dermatologist in the Denver area, claims that a bidet should be a fixture in your bathroom for hygiene reasons.
“To put it simply, would you ever consider cleaning your dirty hands with a dry paper towel?” Walter mused on Friday to his 1.2 million TikTok followers. “Exactly — that’s what we’re doing when we’re using toilet paper. It’s a dirty area, and we’re using a dry paper to clean.”
Bidets clean the genital and anal areas — basin buffs boast that the stream is more hygienic than just wiping, gentler on sensitive skin, helpful in the prevention and treatment of hemorrhoids and better for the environment because it cuts down on toilet paper use.
Though bidets date back to 17th century France, they didn’t find their footing in the US until the toilet paper shortage in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
CNN reported that the bidet market grew two to three times in 2020.
“You couldn’t get a bidet if you wanted to,” James Lin, founder of the online marketplace BidetKing.com, recalled to the Washington Post in March. “We all sold out … There was a huge scramble to get more.”
Walter got his first bidet a few years ago, and “it’s hard to imagine now life without it.”
He said the crap contraption cleans the skin better, leaves fewer bacteria behind and causes less irritation than toilet paper.
“This is great for people already prone to issues down there, such as rashes, fissures or even hemorrhoids,” Walter explained. “[Bidets] have actually been shown to decrease the incidence of [urinary tract infections] in women due to less bacterial transfer.”
If you decide to take the plunge, Healthline reminds you to follow the manufacturer’s instructions for maintaining the bidet.
If you don’t keep it clean, it could get contaminated with bacteria and disrupt a woman’s healthy balance of vaginal microflora.
Sydney Cano, for one, considers herself a stream queen. She installed a bidet attachment during the pandemic and convinced her mom to do the same.
“No exaggeration, my life was literally changed,” the Virginia resident told the Washington Post. “I can’t live without mine now. Realistically, I will never go through the rest of my life without using mine. I have a travel one, so I’m never without it.”
