Greetings, it's Eric Bakker, the naturopath from New Zealand.
Thanks for coming back to my channel.
Right.
We're going to do an interesting video this morning that probably I've made a video like
this a few years ago, but I'm not sure if it's still sort of floating around on the
internet.
So, we're going to talk about the color of stool.
All right?
It's very interesting.
So people like you me often get to talk about poop all the time to patients, the color of
poop, the texture of poop, what it smells like.
It's probably not your cup of tea.
All right?
Probably not the type of job that you would like to do.
But for me, well, it's just part of being the kind of health care person that I am.
I mean, we talk about bowel problems all the time with people.
After all, we all have to poop.
If we don't poop, then we die apparently.
So, when I started thinking about this video, I thought, "What am I going to call it?
Fifty Shades of Brown?
The Scoop on Poop?"
Don't know.
But anyway, this is one of the areas I often have a lot of fun with when I used to do my
public presentations many years ago.
So, talk about this and show people different colors on the screen and things like that.
So, let's talk a little bit about the color of stool and what it means.
The different colors I put down here are brown, green, dark brown, black almost kind of color,
a yellow and a red color.
So the browns are the most common color that you'll see.
All right?
But you'll see all sorts of shades of brown from very pale, tan, cream, sort of right
up to dark brown, even like black.
The brown color is quite normal and it's bile basically being produced by the gallbladder
and spent blood cells.
So the brown color is a consequence of bacteria acting upon the stool to make it that color,
but also red blood cells that are used up make it that sort of dark brown color.
So, that's the normal color that it should be.
The texture should be sort of not too soft, not too hard.
If you bake cakes or do a lot of baking, you sort of get to work out textures of things.
So stool is a bit the same.
When you look at it enough times and you're enough times, you get to know there's a certain
texture of the stool, so you don't want it too sloppy, too loose.
You don't want it to firm or hard.
Go to Google and have a look at the Bristol Stool Chart, B-R-I-S-T-O-L, Bristol Stool
Chart.
It'll give you an idea because you had sheep pellets on one end and you've got the cow
pats on the other end.
All right?
And sort of got the normal cigar shaped stool in the middle.
So it's important not just to look at the color of the stool, but also the texture and
the odor and everything about the stool.
Some people's bowel motions are pretty, pretty nasty.
You can't really go near the bathroom for sometimes a whole lot of time because it's
pretty bad.
My dad was like that and you'll probably know maybe a family member or friend like that
where it's pretty nasty and you can't get anywhere near that bathroom.
See, that's a problem because that tells me the person's got a real issue with their diet.
They're obviously eating far too much of one thing, they're not eating the right kind of
food.
It could have been medical complaint, but more likely it's just like my dad, they'd
eat a whole packet of cookies and maybe three cups of coffee with three or four sugars in
each coffee.
Well, that's a problem.
Your guts not going to like that much.
And it's going to produce pretty bad bowel motions.
So same with people who eat far too much fat.
Some people like huge amount of steak and lots of fat on it.
And if your gallbladder or liver and stomach aren't up to that kind of capacity, you can
have pretty nasty bowel motions.
So brown is the color we want.
One to two bowel motions a day is quite normal, easy elimination.
Not a lot of time spent there really in the bathroom and there should be a good sense
of relief.
When you've had a motion, you should feel really emptied out.
That's what a healthy person has.
Couple of habits I've tried to work with patients over the years to try and correct, the bad
habits, is particularly going to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet and trying to force
that motion out really quick, because you want to go and do something else, right?
This is a habit that some people have, especially with overactive thyroids.
They'll often try and force bowel motions out.
Other people will sit there for ages reading a newspaper, or they'll be going through their
mobile phones.
Ladies probably don't do that but I'll tell you know, the guy toilets, you go to the men
toilets, you'll be hearing a guy, all of a sudden, you'll hear a random conversation
coming out of the cubicle and there'll be a guy talking on his phone to some other guy
or woman or something.
Anyway, got sidetracked there.
But brown is good.
All right?
Brown is a color we want.
Green.
Ever heard of green stools?
It can often happen with a diet change.
So the person rapidly changes their diet over to a high vegetable diet.
You'll find some babies or young children commonly get green stools, which I'll explain
in a minute.
Some adults get it, too.
So when you're first sort of got my kind of work and someone says, "Guess what?
I had a green bowel motion."
You might think, "Well, maybe they're off their head or something, because I've never
heard of green bowel motions."
But green bowel motions aren't that rare, they're quite common.
So it takes time for bacteria to act on stool.
Sometimes if a person's got a problem with their bile, especially their gall bladder,
they can have a green stool problem.
With children, often it means they're eating too quick, too fast, too high veggie intake
and their liver and tiny gall bladder hasn't gotten enough oomph or power to convert that
greeny color to a brownie color because of the bacteria.
Insufficient bacteria or some sort of weakness going on there, or the stills going too quick
through the gut for it to be modified from a greenish color to a brownish color.
And that can happen sometimes with diarrhea or infectious disease, which is quite common
with kids.
They tend to have much faster moving digestive tracts than adults do.
So green stool can happen like chopped spinach, for example.
I've seen that with some children who are getting sick, basically children with all
kinds of immune dysfunction this can happen.
But adults as well, of course.
The dark color, really dark brown, sometimes bordering on black.
That can be a cause of concern, especially if it's a tary stool and it's like really
loose and sticky and smelly and big.
A really problematic stool that could indicate Melnea, which is like a bit of blood in the
stool.
So that will definitely need investigation, especially if the patient's very fatigued
or extremely tired with those kind of stools.
It can be internal bleeding, it could be a lack like iron.
In some cases it can be taking far too much iron supplement.
And in children, we know that iron supplements can kill them, really young children, so you
need to be careful.
So very suspicious looking dark or sludgy kind of black stools, you need to be straight
off to the doctor and get that checked out because it could be anything, but it's always
worth checking out.
What about yellow stool?
Yellow, isn't that a weird one?
Or really pale stool.
That can indicate a pancreatic dysfunction or liver dysfunction.
So, you can see how the colors can indicate different organ kind of problems.
Pancreatic dysfunction can occur, especially if the person feels a bit nauseous or queasy
or burpee or bloaty, or they don't feel quite right in the upper digestive system.
There could be some pain radiating towards the back that could indicate gallstones.
That's not uncommon, especially in women, sort of forty, fifties.
Gallstones are relatively common today.
So yeah, the patient may need checking out for gallstones, especially if they fat a lot
and they bloat a lot and the stools are a yellowy color.
In that case, I'd look at the tongue of the person to see how flabby it is and how scalloped
the edges are because that could often indicate a liver problem.
So I have a look at the tongue and then also the diet.
I mean, are they drinking a lot of wine?
Far too much wine?
Are they eating a lot of crisps, too much fatty food, too much cheese, too much processed
cheese with that plastic on it?
That's this crap, that stuff.
But you get my point.
Just too much rich stuff and that can make the digestive organs have to work in overload.
And in that case, the stool will change because the digestive capacity is not really there
anymore.
And that will come often associated with again, tiredness or fatigue or sleeping disturbances.
So that's the yellowy or pale kind of stool.
Especially if the person's losing a lot of weight or getting thin and poor appetite and
nausea, I'd be thinking a little bit more about pancreas and then I'd be doing an amylase
test, be checking the enzymes in the stool to see what the amylase is to see if they've
got enough pancreatic power to really work on the food.
Red stools can come about, but rarely and that'll be bleeding.
So the brighter the blood, the more likely to be a hemorrhoid or a lower down problem.
The darker the blood, the more likely it's bleeding from higher up in the digestive system
where it's been acted upon with enzymes or bacteria that will be higher up in the gut.
But lower down, especially with wiping, if you notice red, that will denote often a hemorrhoid.
So that's a bit my take on the different stool colors, but there's way more to it than that,
but that's just a real quick brief overview on the scoop on poop.
Thanks for tuning in.
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