Bill Cosby always jokes that any man over 40 cares about whatever comes out of his body (Then switches to the PG “When I clean my ear I look at the Q-tip and say ‘Hmm…good Color.’”)
I’m not talking when you feel sick and get diarrhea. Just when you feel normal the stools are very different and I wonder what the explanation is.
Mom always said “Cheese binds you up” and “Eating a bag of all-sugar candy will give you the runs”. But I think maybe she just didn’t want to spring for nachos or licorice whips at the ballpark.
Dr. Spock said you can tell how long it takes for a baby’s food to be digested by giving it a bit of chocolate syrup, which turns the diaper dark. (I guess that was so they didn’t worry too many days about the effects of the kid eating something like a crayon).
So, are those accurate? And what other similar knowledge is out there?
If your doodie gets dark (think black) hie yerself to the Dr. - thats a pretty sure sign that you’ve got blood in your stool and you’re probably bleeding internally. (If it’s black, it’s probably higher up in the GI tract becasue your body has had a chance to digest it, hence the black color. Lower down and it will tend to be more red.)
There are other things that can cause black stool, though, like eating certain dyes or taking certain medications. The best indicator for a GI bleed is the smell. Blood in the stool gives it a certain very rank, very distinctive smell.
Eating a lot of sugar, more than you’re used to, does often give you osmotic diarrhea. (That’s also why you shouldn’t give pets candy; they can’t digest the sugar and get the runs.) Sudden high intake of fruit (or eating not-quite-ripe fruit) also gives you diarrhea, I assume through a similar mechanism. There’s a reason it’s called the green apple two-step, you know.
Once a couple of years ago I had, for two days, blue-green diarrhea. It was a really nice color, but any ideas on WTF caused it? I felt fine, it went away, it hasn’t happened again.
That happened to me a few times; when I was on a nutritional supplement kick and tried some spirulina (ew) and another time when I’d been drinking a nutritional drink called “Superfood”, and another when I’d had some asparagus.
As an aside, when I was taking a lot of vitamins and supplements, my urine turned the color of a florescent highlighter. It was so bright that I thought if I turned the lights out, the bowl would glow.
Note that it’s easy to say “if you eat x/have condition y then your BMs will be like z”. But going from “If your BMs are like z then you have x.” is much, much trickier. All sorts of things can cause the runs.