Color me dirty

CEBU, Philippines - What’s the color of your poop?

After doing it in the toilet, do you ever take time to see what it looks like?

Admit it. You did, didn’t you? I know that your grandmother may have told you that it’s not proper to talk about your poop with other people, but we all have to face the fact that there is wisdom in poop; or at least, one that would give us an idea on what’s happening inside our body.

Our poop doesn’t just reveal what we had for dinner the previous night, it also tells us about the health of our insides. The color and texture of our poop says a lot.

The following are the colors that are either the most common or the most alarming:

Brown is the most normal color for poop. It says that your food was properly digested and the bile secreted by our body to help breakdown the fats in our food, is properly processed and used up. Usually, a brown stool is easy to excrete with not much moaning and groaning, plus, it does not smell as bad. This is the stool color that we should strive for, if there is such a thing. Experiment with your diet and see which one would best help you achieve this color.

Green stool may be caused by too much greens in your diet, but it can also mean that your food is moving way too fast in your intestines like when you’re having diarrhea. A green stool may also mean that you may be suffering from a number of conditions, including food poisoning, inability of your body to properly absorb the nutrients from your food, antibiotic and laxative use, bacterial overgrowth, and even cancer. So, if you’re seeing green for quite a while, check with your doctor.

Grey or clay-colored stool does not necessarily mean that you’re having a grey day, but it could mean that something is obstructing your bile duct, thus the lack of color on your stool. Bile is a compound produced by our liver to help digest the fats in our diet. With the absence of bile in our intestines, our stool would come out grey or pale with fats clinging all over it, a condition known as steatorrhea. You may also check with your doctor to see if your liver is ok, or for any growth or other foreign material blocking the release of bile into your intestine like cysts, tumors, or gallstones.

Black stools indicate internal bleeding affecting the upper part of your intestines up to your stomach. This could either mean that you have an ulcer; you are are taking too many analgesics, most especially aspirin; or that you may be suffering from gastritis due to drinking too much alcohol, a fiery hot diet, incessant cigarette belching, or you are suffering from a bacterial infection in your stomach. But then, there are also some cases wherein the black color is caused by having too much iron in your diet or of the presence of the chemical bismuth in your system. Bismuth is used in cosmetics, medicine, and in medical procedures, making its presence in our system not unusual.

Red or maroon color in your stool indicates that you have internal bleeding in the lower portion of your intestinal tract down to your rectum. Red indicates blood in your stool, which is why you should check with your doctor. You may have ulcers or may just be painfully suffering from plain hemorrhoids. However, it may also be caused by what you ate, like bloody red gelatin, tomato juice, spaghetti with fiery red sauce, or beets. But, just so you’ll know, serious conditions that would produce bright red streaks in your poop includes colon cancer and inflammatory bowel disease.

Yellow stools have the worst smell ever. It indicates that your body was not able to absorb the fats that you ate last night, or that you had too much fat in your diet. Often, yellow stools are sticky as evidenced by some of it being left in the insides of the toilet bowl, so stubborn to be removed that you’d need a major cleaning after every session. If your body is unable to absorb the fat then you may have a problem with your pancreas, ranging from pancreatitis to cancer. Check with your doctor.

We may not see what’s happening inside our body but there are ways of knowing if trouble is brewing inside, and the unlikeliest of our messengers is one that most of us shun the most. Looks like, even our waste has some use after all, so take a second look before you flush them down the toilet.

Reference: Medicinenet.com (FREEMAN)