Admittedly, poop is not the most interesting subject to talk about. However, poop, and more specifically yellow poop, is an issue that confronts many people on a daily basis.
First, your poop is supposed to be brown in color. The color of stool is important because it is a pointer of the efficiency of your digestive system and general health. The mechanics of how poop gets its color will be discussed at a later point during the article, but suffice it to say that when you are dealing with yellow stool, you have a reason to be worried.
Causes of Yellow Poop
There are a number of reasons why you might be having yellow poop, the key reasons are listed below:
1. Bile Salts Disorder
When you have yellow poop, it could mean there is a reduction or absence of bile salts in your system. The bile salts, which are produced in the liver, are chiefly responsible for the coloring of your stool. In their absence, your stool takes on two colors: a pale shade of brown or a yellow hue. It is important to note that an absence of bile salts could be a pointer of two diseases, either Hepatitis or Cirrhosis. This is the worst case scenario though. On the other end of the spectrum, the presence of yellow stool could be a pointer to a blocked bile duct on account of gallstones, inflammation or a blockage of a bile duct.
2. Pancreas Problem
The second reason that you might be having yellow poop, which actually is yellow colored diarrhea, is that your pancreas could be in trouble. During digestion, the pancreas produces many enzymes, and one of these enzymes is lipase which breaks down fat during digestion. In the event that excess fat is unbroken, then you have stool that is colored yellow. This stool has an oily sheen to it, is bulky and floats on the surface of the water, and lastly it has a foul odor.
3. Celiac Disease
The third reason that you might be dealing with yellow stool can be attributed to what is referred to as Celiac disease. This is a condition where the body’s auto immune system attacks the small intestines owing to the presence of gluten - a protein that is found in wheat, rye and barely. When this happens, the small intestines will be unable to absorb a myriad of nutrients including bile salts, and this is thought to be a plausible reason as to why one’s stool may have an abnormal color. Persons who have Celiac disease are best advised to avoid gluten to combat this problem.
4. Stress and Anxiety
Lastly, stress is also a possible reason why you might be dealing with diarrhea. In a nutshell, stress has been known to speed up the physiological processes of the body such as digestion. When this happens, it’s not hard to understand how the nutrients in a person’s system can be rushed through the digestive system, and bypass processes such as absorption in the small intestines. The results of this hurried up exercise will be all too obvious - yellow diarrhea/stool. The only solution to combating anxiety as a cause of yellow poop is to face it head on by taming it. Once anxiety is managed, digesting food no longer becomes a problem, and incidences of yellow stool are significantly reduced.
How to Deal With Yellow Poop
When you are dealing with yellow stool or diarrhea, the correct approach lies in understanding the cause of your running stomach. To this end, cases of diarrhea are broadly classified into two groups: acute and chronic cases.
In acute cases of yellow stool or diarrhea, the incident is thought to be a one-off within a few hours and could be attributed to eating bad food or eating food that does not agree with one’s digestive system. The solution to dealing with an acute case of diarrhea is quiet simple – simply drink plenty of fluids, especially water, to replace the loss of water from your system. This helps in clearing up the system, and the body should be back to normal soon.
In chronic cases of yellow diarrhea, things might not be straight forward. In managing cases of chronic diarrhea, prevention is better than cure. You are encouraged to consume large amounts of pro-biotic yogurt so as to ensure that your intestines have plenty of healthy bacteria.
Other possible solutions to chronic diarrhea include eliminating certain foods such as gluten from your diet to carrying out advanced tests on stool to determine what exactly the underlying issue is.
Lastly, in extreme cases, surgery might be an option when dealing with infections of the gut.