yellow stool

willabec · Post by **willabec** » Sat Jan 29, 2011 10:59 am

what does it mean when your stool lighter/yellow in color? my gi dr. said it does not really mean anything but when i read on the internet (yes sometimes that can get you into trouble) it means low bile out put i believe...it's been a while since i have read up on it. i know sometimes the foods you eat can make it change color, but i did not eat anything different and today, loose and yellow- can you say frustration!

TooManyHats · Post by **TooManyHats** » Sat Jan 29, 2011 11:16 am

The liver constantly secretes a bright green fluid called bile into the small intestine or it is stored in the gallbladder.

Bile is needed to absorb fats and fat soluble vitamins. It also helps to soften stools and is responsible for giving stools their characteristic brown color.

As bile makes its way through the intestines, it progressively changes color from green to yellow to brown, due to the action of bacteria in the large intestine on the bile salts.

Green stool often indicates that food has passed through the intestines faster than normal (called decreased bowel transit time), before it could be changed from green to brown.

Diarrhea decreases bowel transit time, so any condition that causes diarrhea can result in green stool.

The same would hold true for yellow.

willabec · Post by **willabec** » Sat Jan 29, 2011 11:23 am

so does that mean when i do have a yellow stool or not the normal brown color, that i don't have enough bile? does that mean that there is something wrong with my gallbladder? if so, i would think i would have those problems every day...maybe there is something wrong with it that it can't help digest fats??

jmayk8 · Post by **jmayk8** » Sat Jan 29, 2011 11:29 am

i constantly go from yellow unformed stool, to green, to yellow and back again. I kept telling my dr that there HAS to be a prob with my gallbladder but after an abdominal scan he said it 'looks' normal

Post by **tex** » Sat Jan 29, 2011 12:05 pm

Yellow stool is nothing to be concerned about. What color stool do babies have? Yellow, of course. If you really want to see a yellow stool, try taking Cipro.

Normal amounts of bile, (containing normal amounts of bilirubin), turn the stool it's characteristic brown color, if everything is working normally, and transit time is normal. If anything changes, stool color can change, but that doesn't mean that anything really bad is going on.

Bile fatty acids are normally reabsorbed in the terminal ileum. If the terminal ileum is inflammed, (as it often is, with MC), then the stool may contain excess amounts of bilirubin. If transit time is very short, the bilirubin will not have time to cause the chemical changes that result in the normal color changes, and the stool will be green. If transit time is somewhat better, but still not normal, and/or the terminal ileum is reabsorbing bile fatty acids at a normal rate, then the stool color will progress to yellow or orange. As transit time slows down some more, the color will approach the normal shade of brown.

Incidentally, the terminal ileum is where all vitamin B-12 is absorbed, also, so if someone is malabsorbing bile fatty acids, then you can bet that they are also malabsorbing vitamin B-12, and that's why we can sometimes develop severe B-12 deficiencies, while at other times, we seem to absorb it normally.

Why worry about it? It will take care of itself, as the gut heals, and there's not much you can do about it anyway, other than to do the things that we do to help control the inflammation in the gut. The problem will resolve when your MC symptoms are fully controlled.

Tex

hoosier1 · Post by **hoosier1** » Tue Feb 01, 2011 10:18 pm

Eating GD/DF/SF free I am seeing yellow/green stool much less frequently. Give it time.