Questions why: why the turd brown

If you are a happy parent of a 4-7 year old baby, then the questions from the series "why the grass is green", "why the sky is blue" and "why the shit are brown" is not news for you. But if the grass and sky from the school program in physics is more or less clear, then the poop puzzles even a fairly educated and erudite parent.

Why are the turd brown?

Let's remember from the lessons of biology what constitutes feces. The food, previously ground and moistened with saliva in the oral cavity through the pharynx, enters the stomach, where it is emulsified and digested with pepsin and renin enzymes (in children until they reach 1 year of age) and hydrochloric acid. Then from the stomach partially digested food is evacuated to the small intestine. In his initial department - the duodenum - comes bile. Bile is a secret of the liver, accumulated in the gallbladder, yellow, brown or greenish, with a sharp bitter taste. This explains why the shit is brown. Bile interacts with food remnants and substances that are secreted by bacteria living in the intestine, forming a substance of sterocilin, which gives the corresponding shade.

By the way, in the absence of stercobilin, feces will have a white or grayish color. The color of feces can serve as a diagnostic sign, allowing to identify problems with the gallbladder, liver or pancreas.

With the question of why the turd is brown, we sorted it out. But what if there is another color?

• If your feces have red color - this may be a signal that you have internal bleeding. You should immediately consult a doctor! By the way, if the source of bleeding is the esophagus or stomach - the feces will be black and with a sharp unpleasant odor. But do not panic at once. Maybe you just ate beets for lunch?
• A yellowish shade of feces suggests that you eat too fatty foods. And they will also have an unpleasant smell.
• The green color of the feces indicates the presence of a bacterial infection in your digestive tract. Or you are an avid vegetarian and eat a lot of grass and green vegetables.

Interesting Facts

• If you swallow a bone, you will certainly find it in your feces, because the cellulose from which it is made is not digested in our body. What is interesting, only the shell will be undigested - the insides of the ossicles are perfectly digested and absorbed into the blood.
• Sometimes children can ask a question not only about why the shit is brown, but also about why they "smell" so. The smell is given to the rich in sulfur compounds, which secrete bacteria that live in our intestines (indole, skatole, mercaptans), as well as hydrogen sulphide.
• The feces of meat eaters smell worse than vegetarians.
• The feces of the birds are white, since their kidney ducts open into the intestine and do not have a separate opening, as in humans. And uric acid, excreted by the kidneys, has a white color and pasty consistency.
• Scientists can get a lot of information about a person by studying his feces - up to age, health status, culinary preferences, etc.
• In Islam, the toilet is called the house of Satan and is considered an unclean place. They enter the toilet always with the left leg, all hygienic procedures are carried out with the help of the left hand, and they leave the toilet with the right foot. Traditions…
• In India, there is no toilet paper. For the purpose of hygiene, use water and your own left hand.
• And in ancient Rome, instead of paper used a wet sponge, put on a wooden stick. It sounds good, but after using the sponge was placed in a special tray with salt water, where she waited for the next visitor to the toilet.
• Feces three quarters of water. And the remaining quarter is the dead bacteria from our intestines, cellulose, dead cells and mucus.