Has your curious child ever asked you why their stools are brown? When it's old enough tophysiological processes in the bodyIf you want to be able to understand it, you can also give it a scientific answer. Here is the simple explanation from Dr. Hannibal Person, an assistant professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Washington School of Medicine and medical director of the Gut-Brain Health Program at Seattle Children's Hospital, which he gave to a 9-year-old boy.
Why are healthy stools always brown?
Three quarters of stool is water, the rest is undigested food. Once poop leaves the digestive system, it is usually brown, regardless of what you have eaten or drunk, because it contains the brown pigment stercobilin, which your body produces.
Stercobilin is a breakdown product of hemoglobin - an iron-containing protein in red blood cells that enables oxygen to be transported throughout the body. Without sercobilin, our stools would likely look pale or even white. This is because most of the substances that give food many different colors are completely broken down during the digestive process.
Red blood cells only survive for about 120 days before they are finally broken down in the spleen. When they break down, the hemoglobin they contain produces a yellow protein called bilirubin.
Bilirubin ultimately reaches the liver via the bloodstream, where it is modified and excreted from the liver into the small intestine in the form of bile. Bile, a yellow-green liquid, helps the body digest and absorb fats. As digested food passes through the small intestine, the body absorbs some of the bilirubin. The rest of the bilirubin is converted into stercobilin and disposed of by the body. This stercobilin combines with the things you digest and makes your stools brown.
What causes stool color?
Of course, the stool is not always brown. It may be a different color depending on what you eat and how quickly the product travels through your body.
People with digestive problems often have diarrhea – that is, loose stools. It can be green or yellow because it contains a lot of bile. When feces move through the body too quickly, the bilirubin in the bile does not have enough time to break down into stercobilin, thus turning the feces brown.
Eating a lot of something, especially if it's difficult for your body to digest, can make your poop look weird. For some people, eating beets causes red stools or reddish urine.
Our bodies cannot possibly absorb everything we eat and drink. Some foods, such as corn kernels, cannot be fully digested by humans. They may even come out in the feces the same size and color as when they were eaten.
Although it may seem gross, it's a good idea to take a regular look at the poop before flushing to make sure it's brown and mushy. If most of the feces are an unusual color, e.g. B. black or white, that could be a sign that yousee a doctormust. The same applies to feces that are too hard or too runny. If your poop is red and you haven't eaten beets, that could also be a cause for concern.
