What is the reason for sour and smelly stool?

Although feces are dirty things that people hate, people still excrete an appropriate amount of feces every day to maintain the balance inside the body. The main components of feces are food residues and water, which are useless to the body and must be excreted to maintain health. The state of feces is also a reaction to health. For example, what is the reason for sour and smelly feces?

Enteritis and indigestion are generally the most common conditions. It is mainly caused by improper diet. People who often eat meat tend to have sour and smelly stools and are prone to constipation. Eating more crude fiber foods can promote intestinal peristalsis and accelerate defecation, which can keep the intestines unobstructed, reduce the time that feces accumulates in the intestines, and make the stools not so smelly.

Normal stool is alkaline, and the longer it stays in the colon, the lower the alkalinity and the higher the acidity. If digestion is not good and intestinal motility is slow, it will easily cause difficulty in defecation and increase the retention time of stool in the intestine. The longer the stool accumulates in the intestine, the higher the acidity and the imbalance of intestinal flora, and the stool will be sour and smelly. Therefore, when a person's digestive function is poor, the stool is often very smelly.

The smell of stool is caused by the products of bacterial decomposition. The main components that produce the odor are indole, skatole, hydrocarbons, amines, acetic acid, butyric acid, etc. Among them, indole and skatole are the ones that produce the foul odor of feces.

It is worth mentioning that the reason why many perfumes and flowers (such as jasmine) are fragrant is because they contain a small amount of indole, but the concentration of indole in feces is relatively high, so it smells bad.

Food is digested in the stomach and small intestine, mainly by the action of various digestive enzymes. The colon does not produce enzymes, only bacteria perform digestive functions. There are many kinds of bacteria in the colon, including 70% Escherichia coli, 20% anaerobic bacilli, as well as streptococci, Proteus, Staphylococci, Lactobacillus, spores and yeast. There are also very few protozoa and spirochetes. The important role of intestinal bacteria is to produce substances that are needed for physiological purposes. For example, when food lacks vitamins, they can synthesize vitamin K, vitamin B1, B2, vitamin H, vitamin B12, B6, folic acid and racemic pantothenic acid in the intestines. It can also produce indole, skatole, and hydrogen sulfide, which make feces smell bad.

When feces accumulates in the intestines for a long time, it will spoil and smell like food left in a high temperature environment for a long time. If the intestines are warm, the stool will quickly "go bad", so it smells bad. .