\n<\/p>\n
Y<\/span>ou can buy a smart ring to track your sleep activity or a smartwatch to monitor your heartbeat, so perhaps it makes sense that health tech\u2019s next frontier has come for your toilet. Behold: Dekoda, Kohler\u2019s new toilet cam. No, not that type of toilet cam: this one only shoots pictures down <\/em>at what is inside the bowl, sending the snaps to an app that analyzes stool samples and rates your gut health. The Dekoda can be yours for $599, plus an annual subscription fee.<\/p>\n Kohler\u2019s new product joins Throne, a $319 offering from an Austin-based startup. \u201cThrone captures stool and hydration patterns, hands-free and automatically,\u201d the camera\u2019s description reads. \u201cNotice shifts sooner, fine-tune daily choices, and feel more confident, every day.\u201d<\/p>\n You might wonder: Who is this for? Slovenian philosopher Slavoj \u017di\u017eek <\/strong>once noted that traditional German toilets have \u201cpoo shelves\u201d, where \u201cshit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness,\u201d while French toilettes have a hole in a back, to make feces \u201cdisappear as quickly as possible\u201d. Somewhere in the middle are American toilets, \u201ca basin full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected\u201d.<\/p>\n Clearly \u017di\u017eek has not spent enough time on TikTok; in an optimization-obsessed world, stool-gazing has become nearly as popular as sleep-tracking or counting steps. People share their \u201cpoop logs\u201d on the app, recording every time they number two each month. \u201cI have pooped 329 days this year,\u201d one woman said in a 2024 TikTok. \u201cA poop weighs about \u00bc[lb] to 1lb. So if you take it at \u00bc, that\u2019s about 131 pounds that I pooped this year.\u201d<\/p>\n People think waste is something you flush away, but it really contains a lot of insights about usKash Kapadia, Kohler Health CEO<\/p>\n The Bristol stool scale, a clinical assessment tool developed by doctors to classify samples into seven different categories \u2013 with types three (\u201clike a sausage but with cracks on it\u201d) and four (\u201clike a sausage or snake, smooth and soft\u201d) being the gold standard \u2013 frequently makes appearances on gut health influencers\u2019 social media pages.<\/p>\n The chart helps doctors diagnose irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which was once a diagnosis one might keep to oneself. Not any more: in 2022, the magazine Allure proclaimed \u201cWe Are Entering an Age of IBS Empowerment,\u201d with more doctors studying the syndrome, and women rallying around the theory that \u201chot girls have stomach issues\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople think waste is something you flush away, but it really contains a lot of insights about us,\u201d says Kash Kapadia, the CEO of Kohler Health. \u201cIt literally comes from us, and now we can study it in a way that doesn\u2019t require you to handle it.\u201d<\/p>\n The device starts working as soon as a user decides to \u201cstart the session\u201d, with the tap of their fingerprint. \u201cRight at the time when your urine hits the water level of the toilet, the camera will start flashing its LED light,\u201d Kapadia says. The pictures then get uploaded to Kohler\u2019s cloud and are analyzed through \u201cproprietary algorithms\u201d which take about three to five minutes to process before the results are visible on the user\u2019s app.<\/p>\n <\/span>Dekoda from Kohler Health.<\/span> Photograph: Kohler Health<\/p>\n Though Kohler says the camera boasts \u201cprivacy-first features\u201d such as fingerprint authentication and end-to-end encryption, it\u2019s understandable that many would not trust a toilet-tracking cam.<\/p>\n Joana Gaia, a clinical professor of management science at the University at Buffalo who studies health data systems, says that the idea of a poop camera is \u201cless invasive\u201d than a Fitbit or Apple Watch, which collects more data. \u201cKohler is not a medical organization, so they are not covered by Hipaa [the US law on medical privacy],\u201d she adds. \u201cThis is something that comes up a lot with apps that are healthcare-related.\u201d<\/p>\n (When 23andMe, the at-home genetic testing company filed for bankruptcy, many feared it would sell data from more than 14 million customers to a third party. In the end the data went to a non-profit founded by the company\u2019s former CEO Anne Wojcicki, who intends to use it for medical research.)<\/p>\n I could see how these devices could make people obsessed with chasing the \u2018ideal gut\u2019Amanda Sauceda<\/p>\n \u201cThe concern for me comes from what data [the Dekoda] collects,\u201d Gaia adds. \u201cWho owns all this data, and what could they potentially do with it?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe recognize that this is a very personal space, and we\u2019ve taken that very seriously in how we designed for privacy and security,\u201d Kapadia says. Though the Dekoda shares anonymized poop data with unspecified business \u201cpartners\u201d, it will not share the data with a physician or family members. As of now, the Dekoda does not share its data with Apple Health or Google, but Kapadia says that could change \u201cif people want that\u201d.<\/p>\n Amanda Sauceda, a registered dietitian based in Long Beach, California, is not exactly surprised that poop cameras exist. \u201cI think especially with the rise in colon cancer among young people, there are more conversations about actually looking at what is inside the toilet bowl,\u201d she says, referencing the sharp increase of the disease in people under 50, which many experts attribute to ultra-processed foods. \u201cIt\u2019s another way [for companies] to capitalize on that.\u201d<\/p>\n She worries that too much attention placed on a poop\u2019s appearance could be detrimental. \u201cThere\u2019s this idea in gut health that you\u2019re striving for this big, beautiful, smooth, snake-like poop all the time, when that\u2019s really just not realistic,\u201d she says. \u201cI could see how these devices could make people obsessed with chasing the \u2018ideal gut\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Ashley Oswald, a Minneapolis-based registered dietitian, adds that the bacteria in stool changes within two days of a new diet, which could lessen the importance of timely poop data. \u201cIs it even that useful to know about the bacteria in your stool when it could all change within two days?\u201d she asked. \u201cWe\u2019re losing sight of the basics when we chase trends. It\u2019s interesting and fun to track your poop, but how many people are doing things that significantly influence the gut, such as eating enough fiber or being active?\u201d<\/p>\n Sauceda tracks her own movements using the Bristol chart. \u201cI always say that looking at your poop is like a report card: it\u2019s a good way for us to know what is going on inside our gut,\u201d she says. \u201cYou don\u2019t always feel differently when you take a probiotic, but I definitely feel different if I don\u2019t poop every day.\u201d Sauceda\u2019s method of tracking is entirely free. \u201cYou don\u2019t need a fancy camera to look at your poop.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You can buy a smart ring to track your sleep activity or a smartwatch to monitor your heartbeat, so perhaps it makes sense that health tech\u2019s next frontier has come for your toilet. Behold: Dekoda, Kohler\u2019s new toilet cam. No, not that type of toilet cam: this one only shoots pictures down at what is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[7431,15834,3287,254,2761,37,17493,12239,17494,6200],"class_list":{"0":"post-29642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-cameras","9":"tag-chasing","10":"tag-claim","11":"tag-give","12":"tag-gut","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-ideal","15":"tag-insights","16":"tag-pooptracking","17":"tag-wellbeing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}