Besides watching the consistency of your poop with the Bristol Stool Chart to assess your state of health, the color of your stool can tell you a lot as well. Assessing your stool over a few days time can help you to get a better sense of if the color is related to what you ate or to biological function. Here’s a quick overview:
Brown = normal.
Light clay colored = too many antacids or perhaps liver dysfunction.
Green = possibly you ate a huge mass of leafy greens, but more likely it indicates the stool is moving too quickly through the digestive tract. Green can mean Crohn’s disease or that you’ve been on a round of antibiotics.
Yellow = gallbladder dysfunction, possibly from a viral, bacterial, or parasitic infection.
Red = either you ate beets or you have bleeding in your lower GI tract.
White = perhaps indicating malabsorption of nutrients or an excess of mucus. The barium used in x-rays can also turn stool white.
Black = heavy meat consumption or bleeding in the upper GI tract.
