Search

Why you should turn your poop blue

A new trend has taken over social media, and this time it involves “blue poop”. But, this viral trend might actually be beneficial. The Blue Poop challenge involves eating food made with blue food colouring - usually two muffins - for breakfast to turn your poop blue. Why, you might ask? Because the viral challenge, started by nutrition research company ZOE, wants you to find out the state of your gut health by tracking how long it takes for food to travel through. “Poop is like a message from your gut, and it has a lot to say,” gut health nutritionist Amanda Sauceda, RDN, said in a <a href="https://joinzoe.com/bluepoop">video</a> about the challenge. How does it work? You can bake the muffins using a <a href="https://joinzoe.com/bluepoop/bake-blue-muffins">blue muffin recipe</a> on ZOE’s website, and you should eat two for breakfast and record the time. When you see the blue or green-tinted poop, write down the time again so that you can find out just how healthy your gut is via the <a href="https://bluepoop.joinzoe.com/why">ZOE website</a>. The recipe can also be altered to be gluten-free, but the company advises to use enough blue dye for the test to work. Why blue poop? Dr Sarah Berry, leader of nutrition sciences at King’s College London, worked with ZOE to publish a study asking participants to eat specially-tinted muffins to measure their transit time. “There are several scientific ways of measuring gut transit time, such as swallowing a special capsule or small wireless device,” Dr Berry said in a statement. “But these methods are complicated and invasive and can’t easily be done at home. Our data shows that transit time, tracked with blue dye, is an indicator of gut health, and is better than other non-invasive methods.” <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> My blue muffins for the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bluepoopchallenge?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bluepoopchallenge</a> <a href="https://t.co/PA1zvK3U4c">pic.twitter.com/PA1zvK3U4c</a> — Livia Văduva (@shamrockraver) <a href="https://twitter.com/shamrockraver/status/1394747513467514880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 18, 2021</a></blockquote> Scientists found that transit time - the amount of time it takes for food to move through your gut - varied from under 12 hours to several days, with an average of around 29 hours. According to <a href="https://joinzoe.com/post/bluepoopchallenge">ZOE</a>, the tests showed that shorter transit times were generally linked with better health, having less abdominal fat, and healthier responses to food. Gut transit time is affected by diet, lifestyle, hydration, and the gut microbiome - the trillions of bugs living in the gut. Those who took more time to poop had more microbes that fed on protein and fewer fibre-loving bugs that produce short-chain fatty acids, helpful molecules that are linked to better gut health. “Interestingly, we also found that people with longer transit times were more likely to have a greater diversity of microbes in their gut, which is often associated with better gut health. This suggests that more microbiome diversity may not always be a sign of better health for people who don’t poop very often,” it said in a statement. “People with the very fastest transit times, suggesting they had diarrhoea, tended to have a less healthy gut microbiome,” the statement continued. Professor Tim Spector, epidemiologist at King’s College London and scientific founder of ZOE, said: “The Blue Poop Challenge is a simple way to find out what is going on in your gut. All you need are a couple of blue muffins and a spirit of curiosity to take that first step,” Image credit: ZOE / Instagram

Body

Why is my poo green?

It’s happened to many of us at some point in our lives: we finish our bowel movement, look down in the bowl and have a moment of panic when we see an unusual colour. Poo can be found in many colours other than brown, with green poo often eliciting concern. But it’s surprisingly common and is usually no reason to be alarmed. Why poo is usually brown The brown colour of poo initially comes from the red of blood. Haemoglobin is the red protein in blood that transports oxygen around the body. It’s eventually broken down into a substance called bilirubin. In the liver, bilirubin is used to form bile and is released into the small bowel to help digest food. Bile then passes into the colon and the bilirubin is broken down by bacteria. The final stage in the process is the addition of a substance called stercobilin, which gives poo its brown colour. All shades of brown are considered normal. Green poo in adults Stool colour is very heavily influenced by the substances in the gut that digest food and what you eat. Green stools contain <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2305176">significantly more bile acids</a> than brown stools. If food is moving through the bowel very quickly – if you have diarrhoea, for instance – there isn’t enough time for the green bile to break down completely, giving stools a green colour. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2621.2004.tb09947.x">Green leafy vegetables</a> such as spinach and lettuce contain large amounts of chlorophyll (green pigment) bound to magnesium. This can lead to stools turning green. Some green food dyes such as <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Natural-green-3">natural green 3</a> contain chlorophyll (green pigment) bound to copper which can <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/98/25/14601">turn stools a dark green</a>. Why do babies have green poo? A newborn’s first stool, called meconium, is very often dark green. <a href="https://fn.bmj.com/content/97/6/F465.long">Green stools in formula-fed infants</a> are often due to formulas containing <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3876420">high amounts of iron</a>. But even for breastfed infants it’s <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12318490">normal</a> to have yellow-green or green poo. In fact, it’s normal for babies’ poo to be many different colours. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/col.21919">One study</a> found pale stools were caused by partially digested milk fats, yellow stools were due to stercobilin (which is also involved in making poo brown) and other similar compounds, and dark stools due to bilirubin or the presence of meconium. What about other colours of poo? Blue Some food dyes, food additives and naturally occurring colours are unable to be completely broken down in the gut and this can distinctly colour poo. Children who have consumed a lot of blue-coloured drinks, for instance, often poo blue. Blueberries can also turn poo blue because of a type of antioxidant called anthrocyanin. Most anthrocyanins in blue berries are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/03602532.2014.978080">broken down</a> by the time they reach the colon, so kids with blue poo will either have consumed quite a lot or the berries are moving quickly through the gut. Children with diarrhoea have a very rapid gut transit and stools often come out the same colour as the food that went in. Orange Orange stools can be due to beta carotene, a compound found in particular vegetables such as carrots and butternut pumpkin. Poo can also be <a href="https://health.ucsd.edu/news/features/Pages/2018-05-11-listicle-what-color-is-your-poop.aspx">orange</a> because of the effects of antacids containing aluminium hydroxide, a naturally occurring salt. Yellow Yellow-coloured poo is often normal but a greasy, foul-smelling yellow stool that floats on the toilet water can mean it contains an excess of fat. Occasionally, this can arise from conditions such as undiagnosed coeliac disease, where the immune system reacts abnormally to gluten and the small bowel doesn’t properly absorb fat. Pale, cream or clay-cloured Abnormally pale or clay-coloured stools can indicate a blockage of bile from the liver to the small intestine. This means it doesn’t go through the last stage of getting its brown colour, through the addition of stercobilin. This results in poo having a very distinct pale cream appearance. <a href="https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/52/5/360.full.pdf">One in 14,000 Australian babies</a> are born with a condition called biliary atresia, where the bile ducts outside and inside the liver are scarred and blocked. Bile is unable to flow out of the liver, which can lead to liver scarring. Biliary atresia can be treated with surgery but early diagnosis is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22933100">important</a>. Pale coloured poo may also indicate the presence of an intestinal <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19825279">parasite</a> or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013661/">bacteria</a>. Red Red poo could be due to red food colouring, tomato juice and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/713000">beetroot</a>. However, bright red blood in the poo usually means internal bleeding from the bowel. Causes of red blood in the poo can include conditions such as haemorrhoids and anal fissures (small, thin tears) but may be the sign of a more sinister bowel cancer. Black There can be a number of harmless causes for black poo such as eating black licorice. Medications are another reason. Iron tablets and many antibiotics can turn poo black. (Antibiotics are also known to turn poo into <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3736790/">different shades</a> of green, white, pink and orange.) Black, tar-like poo can indicate bleeding from higher up in the digestive tract, such as from an oesophageal or stomach ulcer. Should you be worried? Changes to the colour of your poo are usually temporary. Getting rid of the culprit – by finishing the medication or removing the responsible food from the diet, for instance – should be able to return poo colour to its normal shade of brown. If the odd colour persists, it may signify an underlying medical condition and warrant further investigation. Black, red and very pale poo are the more concerning colours and should be checked out by your GP. Written by Vincent Ho. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-my-poo-green-120975">The Conversation.</a>

Caring

What happens to your poop on a cruise ship?

Each year tens of millions of people around the world sail away by boat to their cruise destinations. Not many people know what happens when they flush the toilet though. If you’re one of the many people who cruise every year then you should know what happens each time you flush the toilet. It is easy to assume the sewage is just dumped out straight into the ocean, even kept below deck in septic tanks to be released somewhere else or even left until we get off the boat at the end of our holiday. However, the answer isn’t far off. Not so long ago, cruise passengers’ remnants were thrown overboard through “storm valves” attached to the ship. These days, cruise lines must follow strict international maritime laws which requires vessels to be three nautical miles (5km) away from land before letting go of treated sewage, according to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollutions from ships via MARPOL (Marine Pollution). The environmental manager for Carnival Cruise Lines, Natalia Vecchione told <a href="https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-ideas/cruises/what-really-happens-to-your-poo-when-staying-on-a-cruise-ship/news-story/c4f45391a07a51863efc3d5633d51c8e">news.com.au</a> that each ship has a wastewater treatment system as well as an environmental officer on-board to make sure all matters run smoothly. So, while it may seem like the answer to where our bodily fluids go on a cruise ship is difficult, it actually turns out it is not all that different to our home sewage systems. “When you flush the toilet, the wastewater is sent to the wastewater treatment systems on-board. The systems on-board treat the wastewater similarly to how it is treated on land. It goes through a multistage process including biological treatment and disinfection,” Ms Vecchione explained. “Also, the treatment units are designed and approved to stringent International Maritime Organisation standards and they’re installed and operated in accordance with the manufacturer’s rigorous instructions and procedures.” To put it more simply, when a passenger or staff member flushes the loo, all the sewage goes directly to the treatment plan on the ship, which treats and disinfects it until it is safe to drink and pump it back into the ocean – far, far away from dry land. Ms Vecchione said Carnival Cruise Lines goes the distance, choosing to dump their sewage 12 nautical miles (22km) away rather than the expected three nautical miles. “Once treated, when the ship is far enough from land, the treated water is discharged. And, once it’s discharged, the sea water one metre behind a ship is chemically indistinguishable from the water one metre in front of the ship,” Ms Vecchione said. “Respecting and protecting the waters we sail in and the environment of the destinations we visit goes beyond being an operating necessity, it is also the right thing to do.”

Cruising

What your poop tells you about your body

While it’s not the most pleasant of topics (and we wouldn’t recommend bringing it up at a dinner party), the truth is that there’s really no easier way to discover what’s happening inside your body than seeing what comes out of it. Poop and pee are, and always will be, a consistent indicator of health. So don’t flush quite yet, have a look at this helpful infographic to find out what exactly your body is trying to tell you. <img src="http://img.mindbodygreen.com/image/upload/c_limit,w_637,f_auto/ftr/poopinfo.jpg"/> Related links: <a href="/health/wellbeing/2015/10/how-to-lose-weight-after-60/"></a> <a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/health/wellbeing/2015/10/how-to-lose-weight-after-60/">How to lose weight after 60</a> <a href="/health/wellbeing/2015/10/how-to-lose-weight-after-60/"></a> <a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/health/body/2015/11/how-to-stay-asleep/">5 tips to stay asleep all night</a> <a href="/health/wellbeing/2015/10/how-to-lose-weight-after-60/"></a> <a href="http://www.oversixty.co.nz/health/body/2015/11/best-outdoor-exercise-options/">The best ways to exercise outdoors</a>

News

Our Partners

Over 60

News

Shop

Catalogues

Contests

Entertainment

Travel

Health

Lifestyle

Finance

Property

Games