Kathryn Cross, IFR. It's tempting to think of feces as simply the used-up remains of the food you ate — the stuff that makes it through after digestion.
In reality, this stuff is present, but 50 to 80 percent of your poop excluding water is actually bacteria that had been living in your intestines and was then ejected as food passed through. Many of the bacteria in poop are still alive, but some are dead — carcasses of species that bloomed as they fed on the indigestible plant matter you consumed, then died shortly afterward.
But it's not all bacteria. Your poop also includes some of this indigestible plant matter — like the cellulose in vegetables — with the exact proportions dependent on your diet. Your poop also contains small amounts of your own tissue: intestinal lining cells that were sloughed off during digestion.
And, of course, there's water. Nina Helmer. Your feces' color is the result of a chemical called stercobilin. That chemical ends up in your poop in two ways: it is byproduct of the hemoglobin in broken-down red blood cells, and it also comes from bile, the fluid secreted into your intestines to help digest fat.
Chutkan says that in a person with an optimally-functioning digestive system, "the ideal stool is a deep chocolatey color — like melted chocolate.
Without stercobilin present, poop would be a pale grey or whitish color. We know this because people who have liver disease or clogged bile ducts causing little or no bile to get to their intestines have light-colored feces, a condition known as acholic stool. Other colors of poop can be a sign of other conditions. Yellow stool can be the result of a parasitic infection, or pancreatic cancer. Black or dark red poop can be an indication of bleeding in the upper GI tract — or of eating beets.
Green feces can also be the sign of an infection. If your poop is blue, it's probably just because of blue food coloring. Hey Paul Studios. Because of anatomical differences, men and women's GI tracts work a little differently.
These differences are so significant, in fact, that Chutkan says she could perform a colonoscopy and correctly guess the patient's sex without knowing it beforehand.
For starters, women have wider pelvises than men, as well as extra internal organs such as the uterus and ovaries in the region. As a result, their colons hang a bit lower than men's, and are a bit longer: on average, by ten centimeters. Other abnormalities with bowel movements may be a sign of a digestive problem. The information on this site should not be used as a substitute for professional medical care or advice.
Contact a health care provider if you have questions about your health. Learn More Specifics. See, Play and Learn No links available. The bicarbonate that the large intestine secretes helps to neutralize the increased acidity from the formation of fatty acids. Intestinal bacteria also produce large amounts of vitamins, especially vitamin K and biotin a B vitamin , which are absorbed into the blood. Although this source of vitamins provides only a small part of the daily requirement, it makes a significant contribution when dietary vitamin intake is low.
An individual that depends on absorption of vitamins formed by bacteria in the large intestine may become vitamin-deficient if treated with antibiotics that inhibit other species of bacteria while targeting the disease-causing bacteria. Other bacterial products include gas flatus —a mixture of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with small amounts of the gases hydrogen, methane, and hydrogen sulphide.
The bacterial fermentation of undigested polysaccharides produces these gases. When the rectum is full, the nerves sense this fullness and then inform the brain whether this is due to gas or stool.
When we need to go to the toilet, the brain tells the anal sphincter muscles, via the nerves, to relax. As the muscles relax, the anus opens and the rectum empties.
In some neurological and spinal conditions the brain cannot tell whether the bowel is full of waste faeces or just wind. This can lead to accidental leakage. The anal canal is about 3 — 4cm long in women and sometimes slightly longer in men.
The internal and external sphincters form 2 concentric rings which run along the length of the anal canal. The internal anal sphincter IAS is made of smooth muscle and we do not have voluntary control of this muscle. It works automatically to keep the anus closed until we are ready to have a bowel movement. The external anal sphincter EAS is made of striated muscle the same as the pelvic floor muscles ; we do have voluntary control over the EAS — allowing us to hold on if we are aware of wind or diarrhoea.
The pelvic floor muscles are layers of muscle stretched like a sheet from the pubic bone in the front, to the bottom of the backbone coccyx. There are 3 openings through the pelvic floor in women and 2 in men -the anus back passage , the vagina in women birth canal and the urethra bladder outlet. The muscles support these 3 openings, but if they are weakened or not in good condition they cannot support the openings effectively.
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