Welcome back to Outdoor Fitness Dunky. Today we're going to talk about how to use the bathroom in the outdoors. When researching my gear for the Appalachian Trail and pretty much how to live on the trail for six months, I came across a piece of gear that a lot of female thru hikers mentioned. P-rags is my P-rag. A P-rag. I'm P-rags. A P-rag. Oh, the P-rag. If you haven't heard what this is, a P-cloth is a piece of cloth that is designed for wiping after urinating in the woods to reduce toilet paper usage. So for example, people will sometimes use something like a cloth or bandana, something along those lines and just kind of tie it on their pack. And then there's actually a manufactured piece of gear called a cooler cloth that is a little bit more high-tech. When researching the P-cloth, I had a couple questions. I noticed that a lot of people had recommendations that they really liked and enjoyed it. But one of my main thing was was a sanitary. Is it safe to use? Or does it pose a risk for me to get an infection or a disease on the trail? When starting my research, I came across an article in USA Today talking about reusable toilet paper. Toilet paper. Like the stuff you use in your bathroom at home. The article was a little concerned with the fact of bacteria growing in the hamper or bin that you would put it in after using it. Now these cloths were not just used for urine, but also some of them were used for urine and fincal matter. And in order to clean out all the bacteria that fincal matter has, you have to use sanitizer and bleach and hot water. Otherwise, you can not only infect your entire family and house with bacteria like E. Coli, but you can also affect your washing machine, which would get your laundry really groty. They did mention that urine could also be infected with bacteria when you use it to wipe just the urine clocks. But it made me a little confused because it isn't urine sterile and then all these other different questions started popping up. So I decided to give a call to my friend Mary who is an OB-GYN resident and kind of get her thoughts on what she would say about a p-rag. I can see some theoretical risks, which are that like anything that you put near your urethra, which is like what you pee out of, can put you at risk of a urinary tract infection. So if you have any bacteria or something that you are like using to wipe, you could infect yourself, like you could give yourself a urinary tract infection. When men have very short urethras, they're like very vulnerable to urinary tract infections. That being said, I think that if properly used like a bandana or something like that, that you then like lay in the sun and make sure that bacteria can't grow on. And urine itself is aseptic. It doesn't have bacteria in it. So you just used it to wipe urine, always going like front to back, only not using it for any stool. Obviously only urine if you did that. And then if you had it suned and stay moist, and bacteria didn't grow on it, I feel like it would actually be okay. Talking with other medical professionals and my own doctor about a p-cauth, the biggest concern was wiping. Since wiping can cause infection whether you are in the back country or you're at home. Even if you haven't just had a bowel movement, like your perineal area has a lot of bacteria that just live there all the time. So if you wipe from back to front, no matter how clean your rag is, you will be dragging bacteria up onto your urethra and like putting yourself at risk of infection. And then also like infecting your rag that you're using. Most people don't have bacteria in their bladder at any given time. Some people may have bacteria that just happen to live in their bladder and it's not causing them problems. We don't go looking for that as doctors and we don't treat it unless they're pregnant. Then we want to treat it because it could turn into a kidney infection. But a normal person doesn't. The issue comes around when the urine on your rag doesn't have a chance to dry out. So bacteria like dark moist areas. And if you don't have a chance to put it out in the sun for it to dry, then it gives bacteria a chance to grow on it. This makes sense why the article about reusable toilet paper had such a concern when especially when throwing it in the hamper, which is a dark wet area. If you've done research about p-cloths before this video, you've probably heard that the sun's UV rays can kill any bacteria on your rag. Visible light can infect kill bacteria. In fact, there is a specific UV wave length that is emitted from the sun that can kill up to 99.9% of bacteria and viruses. Manufacturers use this specific wave length in UV lamps for hospital and sewage to use to disinfect. The problem with the sun emitting it and you using it to disinfect your p-cloth is that most of it is absorbed into the earth's atmosphere. Some UV rays still do make it to the earth's surface and developing countries will use a technique called solar disinfection to provide clean water sources because of this. However, this technique takes at least six hours to disinfect a six-liter bottle of clear water on a very, very sunny day. So, yes, it can disinfect your p-cloth essentially, but I wouldn't necessarily rely on that completely or at all. I would probably just wash it at the end of the day or in between uses. Coovalcloth is a newer innovation when it comes to your traditional p-cloth. On the side that you wipe has an antimicrobial fabric to kind of keep or find off bacteria while the other side is a waterproof backing. My original thought was like, you know, if you have a scrap of fabric, you have no idea like what side you're using. There's no way to like really keep it clean when you're setting your pack down on the ground. So I was sort of thinking about those things. The antimicrobialness of the fabric is meant to sort of kill or deem a nerd anything that gets onto the fabric from different ways. So like from setting your pack down or from your hands, you know, something like that. So it's meant to keep the fabric from like growing any sort of bacteria. And then the idea is that the fabric is going to be cleaner so that when you put it onto your skin, you aren't as worried about like the transfer of bacteria from the fabric itself to your body. Silidor is an antimicrobial treatment used on a variety of different outdoor products just like coovalcloth. The treatment itself prevents bacteria getting onto the fabric or on you while also protecting humans and the environment. I did a lot of research about this and I actually talked to the scientists who developed the product as well because my big concern with the silver was that I had read articles about like silver nanoparticles getting into like wastewater treatment systems and like harming them. And the Silidor product is it is a silver eye on. And so if any silver which isn't a lot like washes off of the product, it becomes a nerd and it's not going to like kill bacteria in a wastewater treatment program. Treatment itself is OcoTech approved, is EPA approved, BPR supported, a whole lot of different things support this treatment. Plus when you use it, it doesn't break down as easily. There are tests on the effectiveness of the anti-microbialness of the fabric itself. Like all of that has been tested like after 50 washes with standard detergent, which of course is like extremely harsh. You know it retains 99.9% defectiveness. Something along those lines is I believe what the tests say. So if you're washing it by hand with bronours soap, it's just going to like extend the life of it dramatically. Be it that we are talking about cool cloth, I do want to put in there that I am not sponsored by cool cloth whatsoever. So say you're not fully convinced of the pee cloth and you're kind of graced out about it. So what are your other options? Well you have toilet paper and the shake it off method. Toilet paper is something that we all know and love, you use it in your bathroom in your home every day. The difference between using it in your home compared to in the outdoors is that you have to pack it out. So a lot of people will choose to use the pee cloth in order to not pack out a big pile of used toilet paper. Now the shake it off method is probably the most riskiest out of the bunch. Here's why you probably shouldn't be using this method. The like real punchline of all of this is that I carry like warm dark spaces and moist. And so if you have not like thoroughly dried, even if your urine is doesn't have bacteria in it, if you are not thoroughly dry and you pull your underwear back on and you're hiking and you're sweaty and you're like have not great access to laundry facilities or whatever. So your underwear aren't that clean? Like the bacteria from your perineum from like closer to the posterior part of your genitals can come up and live in your underwear and then infect you give you a UTI that way. And so like as much broader advice, it is also I know challenging to like use Dr. Bronner's or whatever to like clean your underwear like when you're hiking, but like to make sure that you use breathable underwear that will actually dry and wick sweat and moisture and urine in whatever away. A yeast infection is very common and I don't know that necessarily a pee rag would cause it, but like poor hygiene around going to the bathroom and having like moisture in your underwear, especially like talking about the shaken off method that puts you at definitely risk of getting something like a yeast infection. I hope this video helped you guys with researching which method you should use when it comes to bathroom hygiene. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up, maybe consider subscribing and I'll see you guys next time.