# Do some people have free-floating blood circulating around their colon? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 12, 2017, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437 "2017-05-12T09:38:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dude\_robert](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8e7dd6/32.png) [@dude\_robert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dude_robert)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/21 "2017-05-12T18:49:49Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Could be. > > But the usual colon-woo involves the 50 or more pounds of backed-up stool we all supposedly have in there\*, necessitating heroic colon-cleansing efforts. > > \*unless we consume the right Miracle Foods and supplements. > \*\*don’t forget the massive poop backup that autopsies did not actually find in the colons of John Wayne, Elvis Presley, several Popes etc. Well, I did once read about a blog of a case where a parent had a child whose bowel apparently developed some infection and died slightly. Apparently that went on for months and months without any bowel movements at all, and when the parent took her kid to the doctors, they just said the kid has autism and gave her some laxatives and sent them on their way. But then she tried some DIY method and the kids recovered I think. So it might not be all bunk. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > The thing is, the lining of the digestive track isn’t inside your body. It is _in the middle of your body_, but not _inside_ it. To visualize this, think of a doughnut. The hole is in the middle of the doughnut, but not _inside of_ it. (If someone told you to stick a toothpick in the doughnut, you would stick it through the substance of the thing, not poke it in the hole in the center, unless you were being deliberately obtuse.) The human body is topologically the same as a doughnut, only stretched and twisted around. The inner part of the digestive tract is the equivalent of the hole in the doughnut. > > The point of all this is to say that having the gut filled with blood would be literally dumping the blood outside your body. What I was saying is that I was wondering if occasionally instead of the blood pipe for an irrelevant destination went around the intestine it instead went straight through the intestine tube, so imagine a drinking straw going right through the doughnut. So that if you took a look inside with a camera, you would suddenly see a bundle of blood vessels going from one side to the other via a perfect hole in the intestine. So if you removed the vessels or rearranged them, there would be two holes in the tubing. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/22 "2017-05-12T19:07:27Z")
> [@dude\_robert](#): > > Well, I did once read about a blog of a case where a parent had a child whose bowel apparently developed some infection and died slightly. Apparently that went on for months and months without any bowel movements at all, and when the parent took her kid to the doctors, they just said the kid has autism and gave her some laxatives and sent them on their way. But then she tried some DIY method and the kids recovered I think. So it might not be all bunk. Bullshit. 100% guaranteed bunk. > [@](#): > > What I was saying is that I was wondering if occasionally instead of the blood pipe for an irrelevant destination went around the intestine it instead went straight through the intestine tube, so imagine a drinking straw going right through the doughnut. So that if you took a look inside with a camera, you would suddenly see a bundle of blood vessels going from one side to the other via a perfect hole in the intestine. So if you removed the vessels or rearranged them, there would be two holes in the tubing. Double bullshit. Artisanal bunk. If you see occasional blood when you wipe it is from a small hemorrhoid or fissure. Yes, there is always a small chance it is from a more serious cause, but spotting is common. Any standard hemorrhoid cream will take care of it. The only cure for the rest of your far more damaging maladies is to stop reading Internet health bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/23 "2017-05-12T19:10:27Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Could be. > > But the usual colon-woo involves the 50 or more pounds of backed-up stool we all supposedly have in there\*, necessitating heroic colon-cleansing efforts. > > \*unless we consume the right Miracle Foods and supplements. > \*\*don’t forget the massive poop backup that autopsies did not actually find in the colons of John Wayne, Elvis Presley, several Popes etc. > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > … > Presley \*did \*have a hyperextended colon packed with poop. Wayne did not. Those of us of a certain age may remember the great comedic character Father Guido Sarducci\* and his wacky sense of humor selling his get rich schemes. I remember one of his skits where he was pushing a game or contest called “Find-a da Pope inn-a da pizza!” **Jackmanii** makes me think of “Find-a da poop inn-a da Pope!”. Or maybe that’s: “Find-a da pizza inn-a da Pope!” ========== For younger folks that have no idea what I’m talking about I couldn’t find the pope / pizza thing but here’s an unrelated Sarducci sketch [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4) . ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/24 "2017-05-12T19:14:46Z")
> [@dude\_robert](#): > > Well, I did once read about a blog of a case where a parent had a child whose bowel apparently developed some infection and died slightly. Apparently that went on for months and months without any bowel movements at all, and when the parent took her kid to the doctors, they just said the kid has autism and gave her some laxatives and sent them on their way. But then she tried some DIY method and the kids recovered I think. So it might not be all bunk. There are doctors out there who make mistakes (because they are humans). There doctors out there who are incompetent and make lots of mistakes. And there are patients who have something very rare that gets misdiagnosed\* first because of the Zebra-trap\*\*. The solution is not to turn to “some DIY method”, but to go look for a better doctor. - One of our public TV stations made real-life medical Drama, as exciting as detective Show, about patients suffering from some strange symptoms, and their odysssey from one specialist to the next, everybody trying hard to figure out what the cause was. Sometimes it was a rare disease, sometimes it was a normal disease but with unusual symptoms. \*\* From the advice doctors give Young doctors during Training: if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not Zebras. Works well most of the time, until you are in a zoo or Africa and it actually is a Zebra = you actually Encounter a rare disease. > [@](#): > > What I was saying is that I was wondering if occasionally instead of the blood pipe for an irrelevant destination went around the intestine it instead went straight through the intestine tube, so imagine a drinking straw going right through the doughnut. So that if you took a look inside with a camera, you would suddenly see a bundle of blood vessels going from one side to the other via a perfect hole in the intestine. So if you removed the vessels or rearranged them, there would be two holes in the tubing. Yes, and those two holes for the straw - going out and going back in - are going to be a Problem with infection. And it would Show up on Camera, so please, go to a doctor, that Picture would make the journals and every medical Person would be fascinated. Also, if this anomaly occurs, there would still not be blood in your stool, because the straw itself doesn’t have holes. And if you have survived until now, we would assume that the holes between straw and Donut had somehow sealed themselves with tissue, otherwise, you’d quickly have gotten a massive infection. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/25 "2017-05-12T19:20:35Z")
> [@dude\_robert](#): > > Well, I did once read about a blog of a case where a parent had a child whose bowel apparently developed some infection and died slightly. Apparently that went on for months and months without any bowel movements at all… Yeah, not plausible. Think of how much poop a normal person makes per day, and multiply that by the # of days you think they went without a bowel movement (“months and months” = at least 120 days?). The actual volume would be less than that since your body would extract more water from the poop, but not that much less. The kid would be a balloon. A large, dead balloon. [There was a guy who suffered his entire life from “toxic megacolon.”](http://memento.muttermuseum.org/detail/giant-megacolon) During his worst bouts of constipation he would go a month without defecating. Click on his portrait at that link to see how big his belly got to be (nudity in that full-body image, but it meets the two-click rule from here). ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/26 "2017-05-12T19:22:05Z")
Wanted to add to the Child Story: The solution is not to turn to “some DIY method”, but to go look for a better doctor, even if it takes time, because the better doctor will get to the bottom of the Problem and solve it as best as he can, not use some superficial cure that masks the real Problem or even causes/ worses Long-term Problems. In this case, no bowel movement is very bad. Laxatives are a first step, but obviously Need follow-up. If there is damage to the colon cells, Absorption of nutrients from Food through the colon can be damaged, leading to wasting away. Oh, and the parents are terrible if they let a small child go for months without bowel movements. The smaller the child is, the narrower the window is before bowel Problems become life-threatening. Esp. since small children are usually active, (unlike many adults) but also likely to swallow non-Food things (which could cause obstructions). Waiting for months means the parents don’t know anything about how to manage their child’s health. The doctor who prescribed laxatives either didn’t ask properly (if nothing happened for months, I would expect a Picture to look for obstructions) and also failed with lack of referral - if he believed the child to be autistic, the child Needs a mental health specialist, not a General doctor or Internist for bowels. Also, what the heck Kind of Food did the parents give him for months? Terrible neglect. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/27 "2017-05-12T19:25:21Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > [There was a guy who suffered his entire life from “toxic megacolon.”](http://memento.muttermuseum.org/detail/giant-megacolon) During his worst bouts of constipation he would go a month without defecating. Click on his portrait at that link to see how big his belly got to be (nudity in that full-body image, but it meets the two-click rule from here). That Looks terribly painful. I wonder though, even if surgery at that time was too risky - why did nobody try massage of the Abdomen to induce movement, if the cause (failed automatic movement) was known? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/28 "2017-05-12T19:51:07Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Yeah, not plausible. Think of how much poop a normal person makes per day, and multiply that by the # of days you think they went without a bowel movement (“months and months” = at least 120 days?). The actual volume would be less than that since your body would extract more water from the poop, but not that much less. The kid would be a balloon. A large, dead balloon. Yeah, [look what happened](http://www.jokes4us.com/animaljokes/corkinpigjoke.html) with the experiment where scientists blocked a pig from defecating for just three weeks. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/29 "2017-05-12T20:52:01Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Presley \*did \*have a hyperextended colon packed with poop. Wayne did not. The mythology surrounding both John Wayne and Elvis is that their colons at autopsy contained 30, 50 or X incredible number of pounds of waste in their colons, which is (pardon the expression) crap - along with claims that they died of Colon Toxins due to constipation, bad diet etc. [Snopes](http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/fecalcolon.asp) has an article dealing with such exaggerations, which I can confirm based on personal experience. I have done numerous autopsies on people who died of various ailments, including ones in which their G.I. tracts evidently mostly shut down late in their clinical course. In no instance did anyone remotely have anything approaching the weight of colonic contents ascribed to Wayne and Presley (also, I know of no forensic pathology protocols which call for weighing the contents of the colon). And not to be a pedant, but the example cited of someone who died of toxic megacolon actually did not have this disorder. TM\* involves systemic toxicity (i.e. fever, leukocytosis etc.) secondary to a variety of bowel disorders such as ulcerative colitis and some infections. The guy in the linked article had Hirschsprung’s disease, which is a congenital motility disorder that is not typically associated with systemic symptoms. \*Toxic Megacolon, not Transcendental Meditation. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/30 "2017-05-12T21:09:07Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > \*Toxic Megacolon, not Transcendental Meditation. What’s the difference? One’s uncomfortably full of shit and the other’s toxic megacolon. Also: Didn’t Toxic Megacolon used to open for Alice Cooper? ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/31 "2017-05-12T22:46:59Z")
Below bolding all mine. > [@dude\_robert](#): > > … I remember that someone had replied and said that if the sphincter is left open too long, or is opened without anything blocking it, then the blood from the “inside of your body” will just splash out like a tidal wave, and unless you quickly close the sphincter then you will rapidly bleed to death as the entirety of the blood supply just falls out of the opened sphincter. The poster said that this happens because the sphincter connects to the inside of the body, which is “obviously” filled with blood, because it’s the inside. > > So, I am just wondering, **do some people have free-circulating, healthy blood just flowing freely about in their lower colon**? How does that blood avoid being contaminated by the feces and other substances which are not supposed to be there? > [@dude\_robert](#): > > What I was saying is that I was wondering if occasionally instead of the blood pipe for an irrelevant destination went around the intestine it instead went straight through the intestine tube, so imagine a drinking straw going right through the doughnut. So that if you took a look inside with a camera, **you would suddenly see a bundle of blood vessels going from one side to the other via a perfect hole in the intestine. So if you removed the vessels or rearranged them, there would be two holes in the tubing.** I’m kind of confused here, because that really doesn’t seem like that you were you saying. Could you clarify? If you sort of had blood vessels strung across the lumen of your intestines (which you don’t), then it would be self explanatory why the blood doesn’t come rushing out “like a tidal wave” when the (anal?) sphincter opens, and why it doesn’t become infected. Incidentally, the closest thing to what you are talking about may be varices, which are dilated blood vessels in the superficial walls of the stomach, intestines, or elsewhere. Gastric varices are a common cause of GI bleeds in patients with liver disease. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/32 "2017-05-12T23:36:45Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > … In this case, no bowel movement is very bad. Laxatives are a first step, but obviously Need follow-up. If there is damage to the colon cells, Absorption of nutrients from Food through the colon can be damaged, leading to wasting away. Not to be pedantic – well, ok, I am being pedantic – but the colon does not absorb nutrients. “Colon” means “appendix, cecum, 3 sections of large intestine & rectum” (or “:”), which, in humans, absorb only water from the material passing through. Hence, not crapping often tends to lead to hard, dry stools that are abrasive upon departure. There are cases of people (usually older) who get the runs for an extended time, become dehydrated, and then develop colon impaction from the large intestines over-extracting water from their contents. Nutrients are extracted in the small intestines, which is why they are like three times longer than the colon. (Some animals, like horses, perform fermentation in the cecum, but humans do not. Well, not intentionally, as such.) ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/33 "2017-05-13T02:37:41Z")
TMI alert: I once passed a copious amount of deep red feces. I was in a panic for about five minutes until I remembered I’d eaten a huge amount of beet salad the night before. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/34 "2017-05-13T02:58:28Z")
I believe red velvet cake can cause that as well. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/35 "2017-05-13T04:21:00Z")
> [@TSBG](#): > > TMI alert: > I once passed a copious amount of deep red feces. I was in a panic for about five minutes until I remembered I’d eaten a huge amount of beet salad the night before. [It’s always beets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2WsXIgO6A) To be more pedantic than **eschereal** , the colon _is_ a highly effective absorber of nutrients in the form of short chain fatty acids. Butyrate, a SCFA produced in the colon by bacterial fermentation of dietary fiber, is the primary energy source for colonocytes. SCFAs provide between 1.2 - 10% of the total metabolic energy supply in humans; in other primates like gorillas SCFAs can provide over 50% of total absorbed energy. Some SCFAs are used immediately by the gut while others are transported to the liver and other body tissues. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/36 "2017-05-13T20:55:33Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Not to be pedantic – well, ok, I am being pedantic – but the colon does not absorb nutrients. “Colon” means “appendix, cecum, 3 sections of large intestine & rectum” (or “:”), which, in humans, absorb only water from the material passing through. Hence, not crapping often tends to lead to hard, dry stools that are abrasive upon departure. There are cases of people (usually older) who get the runs for an extended time, become dehydrated, and then develop colon impaction from the large intestines over-extracting water from their contents. > > Nutrients are extracted in the small intestines, which is why they are like three times longer than the colon. (Some animals, like horses, perform fermentation in the cecum, but humans do not. Well, not intentionally, as such.) Sorry, I used the wrong term because I couldn’t remember the correct word for the whole length - intestine - in a hurry. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/37 "2017-05-13T21:12:50Z")
> [@dude\_robert](#): > > Well, I did once read about a blog of a case where a parent had a child whose bowel apparently developed some infection and died slightly. Apparently that went on for months and months without any bowel movements at all, and when the parent took her kid to the doctors, they just said the kid has autism and gave her some laxatives and sent them on their way. But then she tried some DIY method and the kids recovered I think. So it might not be all bunk. You sound as if you are a bit new to this internet and alternative medicine thing, so if I may, a few hints: - People lie on the internet. The lie much more and easier on the internet than in real life, because they don’t have to look anybody in the eye. So reading a personal experience somewhere is not proof of anything, it could be a lie. Reading some data somewhere is not proof of anything. That data could be invented, taken out of context and distorted, exaggerated or similar. So look for reputable sources, like serious newspapers, scientific journals, and similar. Although esp. in alternative medicine circles, it’s possible to find a non-serious site using a name / design that’s very very similar to a reputable journal or science institution site (some sites have managed to rip of scientists looking for a journal to publish). Alternative Medicine: while several pharma companies have done unethical things (raising prices, illegal experiments) or dancing across the line between legal and illegal, still the pharmacy business in western world and US is regulated by the govt. If you go to a doctor and he prescribes you a medication then that has been tested in trials to actually work better than milk sugar. When you buy that med. in the pharmacy, the govt. has inspected the factory to make sure that you get what it says, and not milk sugar or rat poision - since both are cheaper white powder you can make pills from (and in countries like India, fake medicine is a big problem and big business for criminals). But when you buy some “pure vitamins” from a guy on a website who promises you “100% it will cure cancer”, you have no way of knowing if what you get is actually pure vitamin (lovingly hand-made by somebody who believes that), or milk sugar by somebody who says what people want to believe and make hand-over-fist profit. (unless you have a fully equipped chemical lab at home to do an analysis - but you don’t sound like that). Because selling milk sugar for 100 $ per little bottle by claiming it’s vitamins is even worse than pharma companys Epi-Pens. If you wonder why so many people would lie about Alternative medicine, there are several reasons: the unscupolous can make tons of money without any regulations. Telling their believers that pharma companies and science and govt. is all one big conspiracy keeps their marks from realizing they are being scammed. Diseases are scary. If a real doctor, with tons of scientific studies, tells you “You have cancer, we don’t know why, it just happens sometimes, and we can give you a 40% chance of healing” that sounds scary, because you have no control. If a scammer tells you “You only got cancer because you ate white bread and refined sugar; but if you switch to 150% vitamins, you will be 100% healed of all cancer” that sounds much better, and you have control. However, it’s a lie, and will both make you lose money, and later your health (most scammers demand you to stop chemotherapy for purification, and because chemo is toxins and so on). But because it’s comforting, a lot of people believe the lies of the scammers, and thus spread the lies. Don’t fall for the scammers, because they cost people’s lives, not just money - many people were harmed when one greedy lawyer lied about vaccines. Many people died who could have been helped because Christian Scientists told them they just needed to pray harder. And so on. And it’s not just the marks themselves - if they are parents believing not-science, they often endanger or kill their kids. If not enough children are vaccinated, herd immunity is lost, and people who are too young or to ill from other diseases to be vaccinated die from measles, or whooping cough and similar. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/38 "2017-05-15T00:57:18Z")
> [@dude\_robert](#): > > So I was reading a forum where someone had asked about some blood they had found in their stool or had spotted flowing from their anus. I forget what it was about, but I remember that someone had replied and said that if the sphincter is left open too long, or is opened without anything blocking it, then the blood from the “inside of your body” will just splash out like a tidal wave, and unless you quickly close the sphincter then you will rapidly bleed to death as the entirety of the blood supply just falls out of the opened sphincter. The poster said that this happens because the sphincter connects to the inside of the body, which is “obviously” filled with blood, because it’s the inside. > > So, I am just wondering, do some people have free-circulating, healthy blood just flowing freely about in their lower colon? How does that blood avoid being contaminated by the feces and other substances which are not supposed to be there? I just died laughing reading this. Some people come up with the most amazingly creative stuff. So very wrong, but so very funny at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/39 "2017-05-15T01:04:00Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > I just died laughing reading this. > Some people come up with the most amazingly creative stuff. > So very wrong, but so very funny at the same time. A bit avant-garde for a haiku. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437/40 "2017-05-15T15:37:22Z")
I die reading this Amazing creative sites So wrong so funny [second stanza] Dude Robert fooled Intestine’s blood leaking out Not much to be fear’d 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-some-people-have-free-floating-blood-circulating-around-their-colon/786437.md?page=3)