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Dark foods like beets, blueberries, dark licorice, and even a lot of spinach can cause your poop to look black, Dr. Farhadi says. “Dark foods contain certain dyes which can turn the food red or ...
Melena is a form of blood in stool which refers to the dark black, tarry feces that are commonly associated with upper gastrointestinal bleeding. [1] The black color and characteristic strong odor are caused by hemoglobin in the blood being altered by digestive enzymes and intestinal bacteria.
Generally, your stool should be easy to pass, shaped like a snake and a medium to dark brown color, Dr. Uradomo says. 3 Things Your Poop Reveals About Your Health
When it comes to consistency, your stool should not be "very hard, rock-like or painful," Rajapaksa explained. But it shouldn't be too loose either. Instead, it should be soft yet formed, she says.
The Bristol stool scale is a medical aid designed to classify the form of human feces into seven categories. Sometimes referred to in the UK as the Meyers Scale, it was developed by K.W. Heaton at the University of Bristol and was first published in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology in 1997. [4]
The strongest predictors of an upper gastrointestinal bleed are black stool, age <50 years, and blood urea nitrogen/creatinine ratio 30 or more. [8] [9] The diagnosis of upper gastrointestinal bleeding is assumed when hematemesis (vomiting of blood) is observed. [citation needed]
Blood in stool looks different depending on how early it enters the digestive tract—and thus how much digestive action it has been exposed to—and how much there is. The term can refer either to melena, with a black appearance, typically originating from upper gastrointestinal bleeding; or to hematochezia, with a red color, typically originating from lower gastrointestinal bleeding. [6]
Bile has an important role in giving stool its brown color so when a patient tells Kumar Desai, MD, gastroenterologist, hepatologist, and pancreaticobiliary specialist in Thousand Oaks, California ...