No matter how you feel about neutral colors and earth tones, when it comes to poop, some shade of brown is what you expect and want to see. When you see another color when you have a bowel movement, such as black, it can be disconcerting. Getting to the bottom, literally, of what is causing your poop to be black, or another unexpected color, can often bring great relief.
To illustrate this I will tell you about a friend who once came walking out of the bathroom looking stricken. She said to me, both of us young nurses, “I think that there is blood in my poop.” I believe that she wanted me to go have a looksee to confirm her fears. Before I got up to head in there, I asked, “Did you, by any chance, happen to eat a lot of beets in the past day or so?” She turned the color of a beet herself, heaved a huge, relieved, sigh, and headed back to the bathroom to flush the blushing poop.
Black stools, or poop, can be caused by a number of things, some of them harmless and some causes for concern. Like the case of the beet red poop, what you ingest can affect the color of your bowel movements. The things most likely to cause poop to look black, or blackish green, are iron supplements, spinach in large amounts, Pepto Bismol and other products with bismuth. Eating a lot of blueberries, or black licorice can also lead to poop that looks black. If you have a bowel movement that is black in color and you can trace in back to one of these culprits then you can generally rest easy that the color of your stool is being affected by what you have eaten.
Black stool become worrisome when none of the above reasons are present in your recent history that would lead to black poop. This could mean that you have occult, or old, blood in your stool. If you are having tarry, black stools, is can mean that you are bleeding somewhere in your upper digestive system. Bleeding in the lower digestive tract comes out looking like blood. Blood that has mixed with digestive enzymes and has been in the bowels for a day or two, having made the journey from farther upstream, will look black. Black stool caused by occult blood is called melana, and though the word may look kind of pretty, melana generally smells really bad.
What can cause bleeding in the upper digestive system that can result in black poop? A gastric ulcer, or an ulcer in the stomach can cause bleeding that will result in black poop. Also, the frequent use, or over use, or over-the-counter, NSAID pain medications, such as ibuprofen, or Motrin, and Tylenol can irritate the stomach lining, causing it to bleed which leads to black poop. Stomach irritation from the use of NSAID’s usually causes a belly ache, too, so if you are taking a lot of a pain reliever consider cutting down to see if the black stool is resolved.
Bleeding can also occur as high up as in the esophagus. Esophageal varices are somewhat like varicose veins in the esophagus. These swollen blood vessels are almost always a result of portal hypertension caused by cirrhosis of the liver. This is a very serious condition, and if one of these varices burst, blood will either be vomited up, or pooped out. In rare cases, blood in the stool is caused by a tear in the esophagus brought on by violent vomiting or coughing.
Determining the cause of melana is important and requires a trip to your doctor. He or she will want to do a rectal exam, as well as getting a small stool sample to test for blood. If blood is found in your poop, further tests, such as a barium enema or barium swallow, blood tests to check your red blood cell count, and ultrasound or x-ray studies may be needed.
Black poop can be a scary thing and if you can think of no benign thing that can be causing it, you need to have it checked out, no matter how embarrassing that prospect may be. If you are bleeding from somewhere in your digestive tract, the location and cause needs to be found to begin treatment, and as with most things, the sooner that is done, the better. And that is the scoop on black poop.
Amber J. Tresca
Black Stool-What Causes It?
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