Can you stay healthy sitting on your dead ass? You bet your biffy.
Introducing The Heart Seat! The Heart Seat is a connected toilet seat (they all are, ideally) that gathers vital signs and other data and sprays it through the ether directly to your doctor’s office. It’s a data dump, as it were. The company claims the device can learn lots of things during a “90-second sit”—sure, let’s call it a Sit!—on the toilet. For instance, if it just took 90 seconds, you’re a girl, although you might already have suspected that. But they’re also looking for such things as heart rate, EKG, cardiac output, and blood pressure. Elvis could have flatlined his doctor in real time with one of these.
The Heart Seat aims to be an improvement on the current diagnostic model that relies on the patient to take home a mess of monitoring devices and report to the doctor; because sometimes the patient will do that, and sometimes the patient will swear up and down they’re going to do it just as soon as Family Feud is over, and then they go to the kitchen for a bag of chips. But everybody ends up on the pot. “The toilet seat can help move the needle on the adherence front,” is the unfortunate way a company spokesman put it, although no one really wants to think of toilets and moving needles at the same time. Or adherence. Still, this thing has a software application and is connected to the cloud, which sounds downright comfy.
You’re going to be on that seat anyway, the thinking goes, at least in your better households. Just think how handy this would have been in my North Dakota Grandma’s day! The biffy was way out there in the in the windbreak (you only thought you knew why they called it a windbreak). With a Heart Seat and uninvented wifi, Ol’ Doc Pritchart could have determined the exact moment someone’s ass froze off.
The Heart Seat is for cardiac patients, and it can distinguish among household members by means of biometrics, such as weight, although I suspect there are a number of other ways to tell who’s on the pot, given a timer and a methane detector. It’s a good way to keep on top of your health issues while you’re on top of your other issues. It can sort out your blood oxygen levels even with all the other gases in the vicinity. And the high-end model can dispatch a drone with a hemorrhoid cream.
The company is proud to say their device is able to successfully identify noise from signal, which is good, because sometimes there’s a lot of noise. Is that your heart going off like a jackhammer, for instance, or is something else going on that sounds like it? Your toilet seat knows. Your toilet seat knows your cardiac output, and can tell it from your other output. I don’t know exactly what cardiac output is, but I think it shouldn’t be in your stool.
The Heart Seat is in beta. In order to qualify for trials, everyone in your house has to weigh under 350 pounds and have good wifi and an elongated seat.
Toilet seat.
I see no reason to confine the festivities to cardiac patients. I mean, you’re right there, with all the equipment God gave you, and lack only a robotic probe with good aim for a prostate exam. A roving camera could Roomba its way across your personal real estate and fire off a report to the dermatologist, especially if you help by hauling up the flappy bits. You’re even in a terrific position for a pedicure. Be sure to leave a good tip.
Hat tip to Sharon Hull for this breaking medical news.
My doctor’s feedback would no doubt be, “You spend WAY too much time playing Sudoku.”
Sudoko can make your legs fall asleep, all right.
Today I just started wondering if reading on the throne is aggravating my sciatica!
That Sudoku comment was me.
And now everyone knows what you do when you doo!
Gosh what will they think of next! What about the folks who prefer to spend 20 minutes on that seat 2 times daily and do their blog reading? I just wonder if a good chuckle (at poor Elvis expense or the drone with that bum creme) would screw with the diagnostics… the last place I want to be ‘on guard’ is when I’m doing my business! In all seriousness though, a surprising number of cardiac arrests occur yearly on the throne…. this could be a real life-saver.
I’d hate to think of what my last thoughts would be.
I’m guessing “oh shit”.
I’ll leave a link to how this ‘seat’ calculated cardiac output. For those without google, Cardiac output (CO) is the volume in liters pumped by the heart in one minute.
This toilet seat has a pulse oximeter much like the one you get put on your finger when you visit the doc. It than reads your heart rate, and your ecg pattern through skin contact, and using a calculation estimates your CO.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21095971/
If it works as well as other medical calculations (estiated caloric needs, etc) it’ll be a plus or minus 15%.
I’d guess the cost of the device, and the need by cardiologists (virtually nil), it won’t get much traction.
And traction is one of the things you want in a good toilet seat.
You can see where this is going, right?
A friend’s little girl, during potty training, released a staccato fart. Surprised both mother and daughter. My friend’s daughter looked at her and said, “My back is laughing.’
And now I’m laughing SO hard I’ll have to dry my eye now. Many thanks, Lesley!
I can remember only one time I farted when I was a kid. It Wasn’t Done. I musta Done it but if something is never, ever referred to it might as well not have existed.
Sounds like just another smart device to creep me out; and when I’m most vulnerable.
But if they make one that includes a drone to bring me a roll of toilet paper…I might consider it.
I hope it doesn’t have a speech function. No one needs that much critique.
Sounds like just another smart device to creep me out; and when I’m most vulnerable.
But if they make one that includes a drone to bring me a roll of toilet paper…I might consider it.
I really don’t need another device that’s smarter than I am. My washing machine knows better than me how to do the laundry. My car tells me what needs to be done for it. I REALLY don’t want my toilet telling ANYONE about me or my habits! Especially about how little exercise i do now, and how much I drink. As Doctor Gregory House would say on the TV show House: patients lie. Yes… yes we do. As in, “Oh, I only drink 2 glasses of wine. ” But we don’t say how BIG the glasses are! “Oh, I exercise EVERY day!” Yeah, but for only ten minutes. Fuck these Heart Seats and their little drones, too!
I’m pretty straightforward about how much I drink, but I’m not all that proud of it.
Yeah, it will shorten my life, but it’s not the fun part at the beginning when I was a child… it’s not the middle part when I was horny all the time and socializing. No, it’s the end part, when everything hurts, Most of your friends are dead, and you look like a zombie. So, that’s acceptable to me. Longevity is for suckers.
Still laughing – good one, Murr!
Thanks for the memo!
Love this! If you live in Rochester, NY you can volunteer to be a study participant, or as they, “sit for science.”
And I think for publicity they should run a nationwide “rename the Heart Seat” contest. Pooping for Progress. The Smart Throne. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Big Brother. Year of the (Blood) Ox.
Yeah, that worked so well in England (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-36064659).
The winning name would probably end up being “Shitty McShitseat”.
I think I just invented a new tongue-twister.
I’m not even going to your link but I’ll bet it’s Boaty McBoatface! I love that.