Stool Color And Candida Issues

Greetings. New Zealand naturopath, Eric Bakker, author of Candida Crusher, formulator of the Canxida range of dietary supplements. Thank you so much again for checking out my video. And thank you also for all my fans out there, all the emails I’m getting. I’ve been getting lots of good comments on YouTube. I’m getting lots of comments on Facebook. Yeastinfection.org, we’re getting some nice feedback. I’m also now a member of various closed group communities on Facebook. One recently that I’ve joined is the Swedish Group, so that’s at Candida Cleanse Sweden, and I think we’ve got about 2,500 members on that Facebook page. I’m quite happy to be part of different Facebook forums. If you’re involved in any Facebook groups, please let us know.

We’ve got an email question from a lady called Linda Dearsly and Linda lives in Connecticut in the USA. Linda is asking me about the different colors of stool. What do they mean? She’s a bit alarmed because her stool sometimes is quite a light color and she wants to know what the heck that means. I was going to call this video the 50 Shades of Poo. I thought I better not do that because it might offend a few people. Instead of calling it the 50 Shades of Poo, we’re just basically going to call it What’s wrong with my stool? It’s a funny color.

Let’s talk a little bit about different colors of stool. Normally, a bowel motion will be brown color. If you’ve got that brown tan color to the stool and you’re passing out 12 to 18 inches of bowel motion a day, cigar shaped, low odor, easy to pass, you’ve got good bowel function. You’ve generally got good bacteria. You’re eating a reasonable amount of fiber. You’ve got a good balance in your autonomic nervous system. You’re probably not under too much stress. Stress has a significant effect on the shape of the stool. I’ll probably discuss it in another video.

For example, irritable bowel syndrome, we know that 50 percent of IBS is stress related. People with IBS can sometimes have diarrhea, constipation. People with normal bowel like me will generally have a bowel motion in the morning and generally have a bowel motion in the afternoon. I consider two bowel motions a day to be quite good. Very good indeed.

A good friend of mine that practiced in Africa for many, many years and then went over to the UK, the Island to practice, noticed some massive changes in what he found in bowel function. Indigenous people living in underdeveloped countries eat five, six, seven, ten times more fiber than people who live in the western developed nations. Consequently, they pass out more, cleaner, smaller, more frequent motions and they don’t have to wipe their bum. Because they’ve got a clean, dry stool.

In the western world, we’re one of the very few creatures that actually use toilet paper. Probably the only creature. You don’t see dogs or cats wiping their bottoms with toilet paper or certainly you wouldn’t see birds or any animals doing it.

The humans have got this funny desire every time we go grocery shopping to throw the toilet paper in the shopping trolley and to use that. I hope this isn’t embarrassing you too much. Part of my job with patients is to talk a lot about poos and urination and stool odor and all that sort of stuff, so I don’t find that foreign. My apologies if you’re getting offended by this, but it’s all part of normal human health is to have a good bowel motion. And I can tell you, there’s nothing more satisfying than having a good poo, getting up and feeling like you’ve cleaned right out. It’s really a sign of good health is to have good bowel function.

The brown color as I mentioned before I got off track is really what happens. Red blood cells die and they form part of the bowel pigment that gets produced by the liver and stored in the gall bladder. Bile is secreted into the small intestine during the digestive process. An increase or decrease in bile can certainly change the color of stool. Excess bile can make it greasy, yellowy, greeny color sometimes. Insufficient bile can make it a very pale or white color. It can signify liver disorder. It can signify a biliary obstruction. It’s an obstruction of the bile passage or bile traveling through it. We see that sometimes with gall bladder problems, with gall stones we will see that.

Let’s start with the color green, green poo or green stool. That could mean that you’ve had something like a green smoothie where you’ve had a high chlorophyll load. You’ve drunk something. You’ve had spinach. I eat a lot of spinach, so it’s not unusual to have a green colored stool. Don’t freak out. You’re not Kermit the frog. Think carefully what you had to eat prior to that bowel motion or even what you had two meals prior because that can usually give you an indication for color. It’s not unusual for teething babies to have green stool.

I noticed when I practiced earlier as a homeopath that children that required the homeopathic medicine chamomile, would sometimes have that green spinach, chopped up stool. Children who teethe have a problem with eating food and they can be quite picky and fussy and that can dictate the color of the stool. It can sometimes be green in children.

Generally, green will mean spinach or leafy greens, so it’s the way your body processes the food. It’s not really a big problem. Food may be moving through the large intestine too quickly. It could be due to diarrhea. The bile pigment might not be breaking down properly, especially if you’re eating quite a heavy load of green food. You may not be producing sufficient bile to really help to render the color of that different from green, so don’t freak out too much with that.

Light colored, white or clay colored stools. We just spoke about that before. Lack of bile pigment. That needs investigating. If you consistently got white bowel motions or very pale or chalky – you’ll find dogs sometimes have that. If you give a dog a lot of high fatty foods to eat or too much meat consistently, it can have chalky white stools. I’ve noticed that with dogs sometimes. My wife likes her dog. We’ve had dogs for a few years. Of course, what you feed the dog, you’ll notice what will come out the other end. A big thing with bowel motions is observation. What you eat is what you excrete. Just be a good observer. And a lot of people won’t look into the toilet pan after they’ve had a motion. It’s important to do that from time to time.

Another tip that I mentioned on a previous video. Flush the toilet. Have a motion. And then if you see any oil slicks or that bluey, yellowy, oily color in the water around the stool, it will generally mean you’ve got an issue with your bile. You’ve had potentially too much fat to eat or more fat than your body can break down. Again, you may need a liver cleanse or a gall bladder flush. Many women when I ask them that question, they say, “Yes, Eric. I’ve got a lot of oil floating in there.” And that can coincide with burping, reflux, lots of farting and gas, bloating and all these things. If you have that with that oil slick, then you need a gall bladder flush. Yellow, greasy, foul smelling stool and sometimes have a really smelly stool. Excess fat in the stool. Malabsorption. Celiacs can often get these greasy, smelly stools, especially if they have gluten. They can really notice this stool. Protein in bread can really do that.

Black stool. What if it’s black? You’re not Darth Vader. You’re not coming from outer space or something. Black stool can mean for some people something like eating too much licorice. Licorice can produce black stools. Some medications. Pepto Bismol, for example, can do that. Bismuth is a supplement some people take as part of a bacterial eradication for helicobacter, so that can produce black stools. Black stools can also signify a blood loss. You could be passing out blood higher up in the digestive system and it’s mixing with digestive enzymes, turning it black or dark color. So by the time you excrete it, it’s black. If you’re passing out red in the stool, especially around the outside of the stool, it’s more likely to be a hemorrhoid.

Red in the stool. Be careful. If you see red particles in the stool, it could be a bit of tomato. It’s not uncommon. Sometimes people email me “I’ve got liver flukes. I’ve got weird stuff crawling in my stool.” When I tell them to look at it carefully, it could be little bits of rice that they’ve just swallowed that weren’t digested properly. Bits of corn or bits of tomato. Be careful not to think you’ve got some evil bugs crawling inside your digestive system. It may be that you haven’t chewed food properly. You’ve got to really chew food properly. Chew, chew, chew. That will help to break down the food properly and out to mix with enzymes, so you’ll digest it and absorb it properly and excrete the waste properly. Chewing will be good pooing. If you know what I mean.

Bright red. Bleeding in the lower intestine, the large intestine in particular or the rectum, often from hemorrhoids. Red food coloring can do it. Beets is a classic. If I eat beets, I’ll even urinate out a red color. The red from the beets can come out through the urine. It can come out through the stool. If you eat beets, don’t freak out. You’re not bleeding to death internally. It’s just the beet color. And that may occur for one to two days after eating beets. Drink mixes sometimes can also create that problem.

I think we’ve gone through just about everything. Red stool. Cranberry can sometimes cause the red stool as well with people. I think that gives you a little bit of information there for the person who asked me that question. I hope that gives you a satisfactory reply to the colors of stool. One of my favorite sayings, “Small stools, big hospitals. Big stools, small hospitals.” I’ll leave you with that. Thanks for tuning in.