All shades of brown and even green are considered normal. Only rarely does stool color indicate a potentially serious intestinal condition. Stool color is generally influenced by what you eat as well as by the amount of bile — a yellow-green fluid that digests fats — in your stool.
Light yellow or grey poop: This can be a sign of infection or inflammation, that your body is not absorbing nutrients properly, or a blocked bile duct. Black or red poop: This might happen if you eat black licorice, beets, colored drinks, or iron supplements.
The liver releases bile salts into the stool, giving it a normal brown color. You may have clay-colored stools if you have a liver infection that reduces bile production, or if the flow of bile out of the liver is blocked. Yellow skin (jaundice) often occurs with clay-colored stools.
“Healthy stool is usually considered a soft, formed bowel movement that is typically brownish in color,” says Dr. Cheng. “Stool may be indicative of a health problem if someone notices a change in their bowel habits with constipation or diarrhea, or notices a change in color of their stools.
Stool Color Changes Facts
Normal stool color is brown. This is due to the presence of bile in the stool. Normal stool color can range from light yellow to brown to almost black. If stool is red, maroon, black, clay-colored, pale, yellow, or green this may signify a problem.
Well, here is a brief answer: peanut butter-colored poop is normal. It is neither an indication of illness nor any underlying medical condition. It is perfectly normal unless it is accompanied by diarrhea, pain when pooping, abdominal cramps, poop floating, or bleeding.
Common causes include: Chronic diarrhea Constipation Hemorrhoids Crohn's disease The skin of the anus can stick to the stool and make it difficult to clean the anorectal area after a bowel movement. Leaky gut Leaky gut is also known as fecal incontinence.
All shades of brown and even green are considered normal. Only rarely does stool color indicate a potentially serious intestinal condition. Stool color is generally influenced by what you eat as well as by the amount of bile — a yellow-green fluid that digests fats — in your stool.
If your stool is not normal-colored (light or dark brown), it means you have some gut issue, whether it's just food that didn't sit right, food poisoning, or a virus. But sometimes it can be a sign of bleeding (red/black stool), or a liver or gallbladder issue (very pale stool), so don't ignore a discoloration.
Fatty liver disease: If you notice dark urine and pale poo, seek urgent medical attention.
Healthy Poop Should Sink in the Toilet
Floating stools are often an indication of high fat content, which can be a sign of malabsorption, a condition in which you can't absorb enough fat and other nutrients from the food you're ingesting, reports Mount Sinai.
The color of your stool depends on a couple of things: your diet and how much bile is in it. Bile is a yellow-green fluid that helps digest fats. A healthy stool, then, should reflect a mixture of all the colors of the food you eat and that bile. Almost any shade of brown, or even green, is considered OK.
She goes on to explain,"when you are wiping more than two or three times, that is called faecal smearing.. "So it is essentially when too much faecal matter stays at the entrance of the anus even after you have finished your poo."
If the staining only happens occasionally and after you use dry tissue to clean yourself after a bowel movement, this may be due to inadequate cleaning. When you have a bowel movement, there will be faeces that stains the inner lining of the anus. We need to clean the anus of this faeces to prevent skidmarks.
Wiping thoroughly and washing your hands after a bowel movement are the two most important ways to prevent odor and the spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria. For people who have solid bowel movements, this will mean wiping with toilet tissue.
Dry, hard stools that are painful or difficult to pass. Abdominal swelling, bloating, pain or an inability to pass gas. Frequent nausea or vomiting with or without fever.
Fatty poops are different from normal poops. They tend to be looser, smellier and paler in color, like clay. They might float. You might have an occasional fatty poop after eating a fatty meal.
Explosive, or severe, diarrhea causes a person to pass liquid or loose stool more frequently and forcefully than regular diarrhea. Explosive diarrhea occurs when the rectum fills with more liquid and gas than it can hold.