What can you catch from public toilets?

“A cold shiver runs up your spine and a small knot tugs in the depth of your belly!
Your eyes scan the dirty messy toilet seat! Your imagination runs rife, knowing what is lurking there. The acrid odour fills your nostrils. You know this unsavory smell means germs and bacteria….. Lots of them!.”  This is a direct quote from http://www.sanicone.com/index.html, a company that sell disposable cones for women to urinate through, so they don’t have to sit on public toilets.

Let me start at the beginning, my friend and me were out shopping. She was whinging that her sock had fallen down before we went into the toilet, when she came out she was still whinging. I asked her why she hadn’t sorted it while on the toilet, to which she replied “eww you sit on public toilets?”  She then went on to tell me you can get all sorts from toilet seats, including crabs. I don’t believe her.

I’ll tell you why. When I sit on a toilet, the only points of contact are my arse cheeks, which don’t feature much in the preparation of food or anything (honest). The point being no orifice ever touches the seat, therefore no fluid based disease can get there. Also taking into account wiping and hand washing it all sounds a bit far fetched. But, I need proof.

The delightful http://www.sanicone.com/index.html states that from toilet seat you can catch:

·        Sars

·        Enteroviruses (responsible for gastroenteritis)

·        Herpes

·        Parasites

·        Veneric Diseases

·        Skin infections

·        Colds and flus

·        Intestinal illnesses

·        Salmonella bacteria

·        E. Coli

·        Hepatiti

 

Which is all a bit bloody scary, so I turned to the NHS. Who, I (perhaps naively) believe to know the truth about such things. On crabs they say “You can get pubic lice by having close body contact with an infested person. They crawl from one hair to another; they cannot jump, fly or swim”. http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=2306&sectionId=5 This is backed up by a woman who claims to be a specialist in microbiology, and infectious disease consultant on Yahoo answers http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080624150831AAmCaiD. Another contributor on the yahoo answers page about toilet seats and general toilet disease came up with “it depends if you lick it”.

The only one that I could possibly believe in was genital warts, because warts are passed by skin contact but this website http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/stds/std_warts.html tells me you can’t.

I know this is probably a biased perspective but on looking on the Internet, a lot of people seem to be telling me you can but not backing it up, so I’m sticking with logic and the NHS.

 I would just like to add the following disclaimer, I don’t sit on all public toilets, if there’s wee on the seat, i’ll hover with the best of them. To give your opinion on the matter go to http://www.quizilla.com/polls/7923577/do-you-sit-or-hover-on-public-toilets-taking-into-account-obvious-sanitary-requirements and take the poll.

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

The age old question of which came first: the chicken or the egg? Well I think I’ve cracked it (If you’ll excuse the pun). Using my A level understanding of evolution, I can reveal that it is…. The chicken.

 

The theory goes that at some point in the evolutionary chain there was a bird and it produced an offspring that was the first bird to be defined as a chicken.

  Which still raises the issue that that chicken had to have come from an egg. However, an egg if defined by the creature that lays it. For example, a robin egg is a small blue egg and a blue tit egg is small whitish egg. So the egg the first chicken sprung from was a pre-chicken egg. The egg can also be regarded as a by-product of birth, like a placenta. The placenta is generally referred to as the mother’s not the baby’s. The next egg produced by the new ‘chicken’, would be the first bona fide chicken egg.

 

In conclusion, the chicken came first, so there.  For a more scientific version you might like http://www.howstuffworks.com/question85.htm or if you were backing the egg try http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/may/26/uknews and if after all that your brain hurts you can’t beat (sorry) http://gamescene.com/Chicken_And_Eggs_game.html for a 5 minute chicken related distraction.

8 sneezes = orgasm?

Whilst at work the other my mate Paul commented on how much he enjoyed having a slash. This lead to a conversation about how it is also rather enjoyable to sneeze. Which to be honest it is, that expulsion of crap from your nasal passages and the noise is just a bonus. Whilst researching this I discovered this website http://sneezeforum.com/, so at least one other person enjoys sneezing too.

 

Then the question of does eight sneezes in a row equal an orgasm. I generally only manage about three in a row, so I went to the lengths of using pepper. Which to be honest just made my nose burn for a while and didn’t produce a large number of sneezes. So I just looked on the Internet and apparently it’s not true. The website http://www.snopes.com/scienceoffers a very good explanation. Basically, a sex therapist named Dr. Ruth Westheimer is generally misquoted as saying “An orgasm is just like a sneeze.” However, what the good doctor actually said was: “An orgasm is just a reflex, like a sneeze,” So it’s a cause/ effect thing, stimulate the right part and the reaction occurs involuntarily.

So if you want an orgasm, stick to the old favourites and not the condement shelf.

Stuff I Wanna Know

Hello, I’m a curious kind of girl and want to find out all about the things which people generally don’t talk about. Perhaps because they really don’t care or just due to a sense of embarrassment.

Recently, I got into a disscusion with my freind about sitting or hovering on public toilets. My freind claims that you can catch crabs and diseases from toilets, which i think is rubbish. We did a quick survey of our freinds, which intrigued me.  To vote on the matter go to http://www.quizilla.com/polls/7923577/do-you-sit-or-hover-on-public-toilets-taking-into-account-obvious-sanitary-requirements

Another one recently brought up, is whether or not a man can lactate if they rub their nipples long enough. Again, I’m dubious but my male friend says its true.

In short I propose to find out the things that don’t really matter and report back. If you have any burning questions please feel free to put them forward.