# How does food turn to brown stool ?



## Guest (Apr 17, 2009)

I know our stomach , and on down , breaks down , and digest's our food , and turn's it in to stool.My question is > Why doesn't it just look like the food we ate ? Only digested form ?How does the food turn to brown stool ?Why is it basically brown ?Sorry for the wierd question.


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## pendragon (Apr 18, 2009)

Hi Glenda, You're not the only one who's wondered this! My understanding is that the brown colour comes from the breakdown of bilirubin by bacteria in the gut. (Bilirubin is present in bile, which is normally greenish in colour.) The actual brown colour is caused by the final product of this breakdown, stercobilin.I think that with diarrhea, the stool often appears yellow or even green because it has passed through too fast for this conversion to take place.Bilirubin is also the cause of the yellow skin colour in jaundice, and the dark yellow colour in bruises.


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## cherrypie09 (Jan 20, 2009)

Hi. Ive IBS-D. My BMs always come out too fast and is nearly always green or yellow and very mucousy.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Yep, most of the color comes from the bile we add to the food to digest it.Bile starts out greenish or yellowish and sometimes when the stool moves too fast it comes out those colors rather than the brown it eventually turns into.Bacteria in the gut change the color in the bile from yellow/green to dark brown over time. People that stop producing bile get pale clay colored stools. Think of putting all the food for the day in the blender and then leaching a lot of the stuff out of it. The fibers and other stuff we don't absorb tend to be pale. Some of the the things we want out of our food (like the beta carotene that makes carrots orange) are the same things that give the food it's color.Some people have fewer of these bacteria than others so their stool is less brown than others. I think one of the reasons they call some colors "baby poop gold" is that you start off with no bacteria in the gut and it takes awhile to get enough of the kind that change the color to make the stool brown rather than yellow.Some foods are strongly colored enough, and the color isn't absorbed from the food enough, that they can alter the color of the stool.


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## Guest (Apr 18, 2009)

Great Answer's , Thankyou.Most of the time mine are the traditional brown colored.Then on day's when my "D" is at it's worst they turn brownish yellow and seem to have oil on the water.One time they were BLUE. I went to the grocery store and bought some sweet tart candy (Craving sweet's) and the tart's were Blue. Next bowel movement was Blue. Won't do that again.Thanks for the great answer's , I appreciate it.


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