The Rainbow of Poop: What Stool Color Means for Your Health

You glance down at the toilet bowl and pause. That can't be normal, can it? Your poop is a color of the rainbow, but brown.

Brown poop is considered the “normal” color, but shades can vary from light brown to black. The color results from bilirubin, a pigment made as your liver breaks down worn out red blood cells. Bilirubin mixes with stercobilin, giving feces its characteristic brown hue. Still, at least on occasion, everyone’s poop differs from the mundane brown.

What gives poop its greenish, yellowish, whitish, and even blackish tints? Read on to learn why your poop palate sometimes paints outside the lines.

The Green Poop Machine

Avocados, green veggies, chlorophyll supplements, and green food dye can all tint turds. Shades of green are typically harmless, suggesting food passed too quickly to be fully broken down. But if it persists, see your doctor to check for:

Infection: Salmonella, E. coli, and Giardia bugs can cause greenish diarrhea, stomach cramps, bloating, nausea, and vomiting. Stool testing identifies the germs.
Bile issues: Diseases of the liver, cystic ducts, or pancreas slow bile production, so less greenish-brown pigment colors stool. Pale poop and dark pee also occur.
Bowel inflammation: In ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, the immune system mistakenly attacks the GI tract, inflaming and narrowing it. Bloody diarrhea, urgency, cramping, weight loss, fatigue, and low-grade fevers may also happen.

When Yellow Snow Is in the Toilet

Yellow stool often floats, given excess fat content. Trouble digesting and absorbing fats, as with celiac disease and cystic fibrosis, sends extra fat into the bowel.

Celiac patients can’t tolerate gluten, a protein in grains like wheat. Eating it sparks immune system attacks on the gut. Switching to a strict gluten-free diet lets the GI lining heal. Quick medical follow-up for nutrient deficiencies may also be needed.

Pancreatic enzymes also help digest fats, as well as carbs and protein. Low levels cause yellow, greasy stools. See your family doctor if this persists for over a week.

Yellow poop also shows up with giardiasis, an infection caused by a microscopic parasite lurking in contaminated food and water. Symptoms like diarrhea, gas, bloating, nausea, or cramps also occur. Once diagnosed, prescription drugs clear it up.

Too Pale to Function

When pale poop keeps showing up, the biliary system needs a check. This plumbing network includes the liver, cystic and bile ducts, gallbladder, and pancreas.

Liver diseases affect bile production and flow. Bile salts provide the typical brown poop color. If bile’s impeded, stools look unusually pale.

Cirrhosis scars liver tissue so it can’t make bile properly. Chronic alcohol abuse is the top cause. Biliary duct inflammation also backs things up. Gallstones and tumors can too.

In pancreatitis, pancreatic enzymes start digesting the organ itself, instead of food. Causes range from gallstones blocking ducts, to alcohol abuse, to high blood fats.

Symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, appetite loss, weight loss, upper abdominal pain, and fever. Pale poop with dark urine and yellow skin warrant prompt medical care.

True Black Poop

Jet black stools often result from eating black licorice, blueberries, or taking iron, bismuth medicines, or activated charcoal. Usually it seems normal otherwise.

Tarry black stools signal bleeding in the upper GI tract. Blood from stomach ulcers or cancer turns black as it reaches the lower intestines. Upper belly pain, vomiting blood, weakness, or dizziness point to critical digestive bleeding. Go to an emergency room or call 911.

Beet It!

After eating beets, it may look like you’re bleeding out from down under. Bilirubin in bile typically mops up any red colors before poop exits the body. So when bright red beet pigments make it out unaltered, it seems quite shocking!

Other foods that might redden stools include gelatin desserts, juices from cherries or cranberries, an excessive amount of food dye, or red drink mixes like Kool-Aid. Cut back if it bothers you.

True red stool signals lower GI bleeding, however. Culprits include hemorrhoids, diverticular disease, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), post-polyp removal, intestinal infections, anal fissures, colon cancer, and more.

Bloody stool deserves prompt medical attention, especially if clots or weakness occurs. Call your family doctor or gastroenterologist. Rectal pain and itching also warrant checks for hemorrhoids or minor tears.

Orange You Glad You Didn’t Panic?

Halloween shades in the porcelain throne may alarm you unnecessarily. Beta-carotene pigments that turn veggies like carrots orange pass through undigested in poop too. Other natural food colors can produce red, purple, blue, green, or orange tones as well.

Certain nutrients and meds tint turds orange too. Overdoing vitamin C, iron, or blackstrap molasses might be at fault. Antacids with aluminum hydroxide or calcium carbonate affect stool color for some users.

A gallbladder problem could also be the cause if you didn’t recently OD on butternut squash. Orange poop plus light clay-like stools point to slowed bile production. Gallstones or sludge, infection, and cancer can be to blame. Upper belly pain and nausea frequently occur too. Your Poop Tells All

Shades of brown are considered “normal” stool, but many colors are innocuous too. Still, lasting changes deserve your doctor’s input to explain what’s going on. Monitor what precedes odd colors as well.

Keep tabs on symptoms like diarrhea, constipation, upper abdominal discomfort, darkened pee, etc. Write down all your meds and supplements too. Such clues help pinpoint causes of Technicolor turds.

Just one bout of blue poop after downing cotton candy or popsicles likely calls for no concern. But if every bowel movement looks spotlight-worthy and symptoms linger, take note and make an appointment.

Above all, remember that poop offers insight about your health. So inspect before you flush to stay attuned to what normal means for your digestive system. If something looks off, speak up so you don’t feel poopy. Staying silent means distress could potentially progress.

Your doctor is accustomed to poop and the alphabet of gastrointestinal woes behind it. So don’t feel embarrassed about bowels behaving badly. Getting checked out quickly keeps little issues from becoming big ones.