Why It’s so important to look at your stool
. . Stools can reveal a lot about your health if you learn to read them. Digestion happens.
· Air or bubbles in the stool can mean that we have a gut or flora imbalance and that gas producing bacteria are overgrown and competing with the healthier flora.
· Alternating bouts of diarrhea and constipation can be cause by irritable bowel syndrome, food allergies, red meat, spices, sugar, alcohol, stress, lack of fiber, irregular bowel habits.
· Color: Stools are usually the color of the food.
· Constipation can occur leading to impaction--the presence in the rectum of a mass of feces too large to pass. Fecal impaction is usually the result of poor bowel habits, a diet with too little liquid and roughage, too much protein and inadequate physical activity.
· Diarrhea, whether acute or chronic, can disrupt the bowel's normal rhythm and lead to irregularity. It can mean that your large intestine is not functioning properly. The large intestine is in charge of removing excess water from the feces. Rule outs can include food poisoning, lactose intolerance, anxiety, stress, too many antacids, antibiotics, parasites like Giardia or Coccidia, Balantidia, Coccidoidiomycosis or other parasites, viruses, bacterial overgrowth, inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome. A healthy bowel will take about a quart and a half and condense it down to 1 cup of stool. That’s pretty amazing.
· Frank red blood (obvious bright red bleeding) can be a sign of hemorrhoids, colitis, Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, colon cancer or be caused from impacted stools passing through the rectum telling us we need to drink more water.
· Horrible smelling stools—too much protein, flora imbalance.
· If the stools are black, tarry and sticky (called melena), this can mean that there is bleeding from the small intestine. These types of stools usually have a distinctive bad odor. If you’ve ever smelled a dog with Parvo, corona or rotavirus, you know what I mean.
· Light green stools—Too much sugar, fruits or vegetables and not enough grains or salt (or in the case of animals, too much grass)Mucous can reveal diverticulitis and gut inflammation due to allergies or parasites.
· Oily or greasy looking stools that usually float and can be large can mean that your pancreas or small intestine are not functioning well enough and not releasing enough digestive enzymes. Normal stools are about 1% fat. When this percentage increases to about 7%, the stool will look oily and greasy. This is called steatorrhea. High fat meals can cause this to happen but should be temporary.
· Pale or clay colored stools can mean that your gallbladder or liver is not working correctly.
· Pencil thin or ribbon-like stools can mean you have a polyp or growth on the inside of the colon or rectum.
· Presence of food: If the stool breaks up easily and you can see bits and pieces of the food you ate, maybe you are not chewing your food thoroughly enough. This can cause GERD, acid reflux, abdominal bloating and diarrhea.
· Red or magenta stools-- ingestion of beets.
· Very dark stools: Too much red wine, too much salt in the diet, not enough vegetables. Blueberries, Pepto Bismol (the bismuth in it) and iron pills can also be responsible for dark stools.
How many bowel movements do you have each day?
Use the bristol chart to tell me all about your daily movements. The text I have above should be some assistance to you. PLEASE DON'T Pictures of your stool. This is not that kinda of site. You can tell us about it, smell texture, sound it made when it hit the bowl, but please no pictures
What is a Normal Stool
A normal stool should be brown to light brown, formed but not hard or too soft, cylindrical but not flattened on any side, fairly bulky and full bodied but not compact, easy to pass, and it shouldn’t have an extremely foul smell. Each bowel movement should be in one piece, about the size and shape of a banana being tapered at the end.
Sometimes this will not be discernable if the feces breaks up in the toilet. Some people feel that if the body is absorbing all the minerals from the food that the stool will float. Others believe that the stool should sink. I think the important thing is that there are no air bubbles in the stool and that it doesn’t drop like a brick in the toilet. It should be somewhere in between. An occasional deviation from this pattern is acceptable. Any chronic deviation from the above pattern is not healthy and should be dealt with.
