Why is the poop red?

If you have children or elderly people at home and want to know whether they are healthy, you don’t have to go to the hospital and spend money to do some routine examinations. In fact, you can tell whether they are healthy by looking at their stool at home. Stool is one of the three major routine examinations. Stool can be used to determine whether there is something wrong with a person's body. Some people would say that if red stool appears, does it mean that the body is unhealthy? Then let's take a closer look at what happens if the stool is red?

Dark red stool: The stool is evenly mixed with blood and is dark red, also known as jam color. Common in amoebic dysentery, colon polyps and colon tumors.

In addition, certain special diseases, such as thrombocytopenic purpura, aplastic anemia, leukemia, hemorrhagic fever, etc., can also cause blood in the stool due to coagulation disorder. This blood in the stool is generally dark red, sometimes bright red, and is often accompanied by bleeding in the skin or other organs. Another situation is that normal people who consume excessive amounts of coffee, chocolate, cocoa, cherries, mulberries, etc. may also have dark red stools.

The stool is light red: like the stool in meat washing water. This type of stool is most common in the summer due to eating certain pickled foods contaminated by halophilic bacteria. Common diarrhea is caused by Salmonella infection.

Bright red stool: common in lower gastrointestinal bleeding. If the outer layer is sticky with blood in a small amount and is accompanied by severe pain, which disappears after defecation, it is anal fissure. If the blood is bright red, in varying amounts or in the form of blood clots, attached to the outer layer of the stool and not mixed with the stool, and the blood or blood clots can be washed away with water, there may be internal hemorrhoid bleeding.

Another characteristic of hemorrhoid bleeding is that a small amount of blood often drips or spurts out after defecation and stops on its own later. If the blood is bright red and mixed with the stool, it may be caused by intestinal polyps or rectal cancer or colon cancer. The bloody stool of rectal cancer is often mixed with erosive tissue. The bloody stools of colon cancer are characterized by fresh blood in small amounts accompanied by large amounts of mucus or pus.