The concept of smart toilets has become increasingly popular in recent years. The term ‘smart’ is being applied to a range of products; several brands offer sleek and modern smart toilets that include automatic lids, bidets, and water saving features.
What interests us in a smart toilet is the ability to analyze a person’s stool and provide valuable insights into their health.
A smart toilet can track the rhythm of a person’s bowel movements. This information provides a personalized daily gut health score that is easy to interpret. The gut health score can empower individuals to make informed lifestyle choices and better understand which foods may trigger unpleasant flare-ups.
People who enjoy technology to stay healthy and energetic and use wearable devices to track aspects of their health such as sleep will appreciate a device that tracks their bowel movements. The characteristics of bowel movements reflect gut health and, through the gut-brain axis, overall health.
A smart toilet can give peace of mind to parents worried about their children or to adults who care for others.
A truly smart toilet can also analyze stool for markers of disease. For several diseases, markers for early detection are in a person’s stool. However, when people feel well, they find all sorts of reasons to avoid doing a stool test, which has traditionally involved the ‘ick’ factor.
If you are a person living with Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis, a truly smart toilet can automatically monitor stool markers that predict when a flare-up is imminent. In this way, we think of a smart toilet as providing a valuable ‘check engine light' to help monitor your health.
