green bowel movement
Please do not use any information on this site as individual medical advice. Consult your doctor with all queries.
Green bowel movements - what causes this?
Firstly, if you have had a green bowel movement there is no need to be overly worried. There are generally two causes for a green bowel movement:
- something you have ingested, such as large amounts of green, leafy vegetables, green or purple artificial colouring, or iron supplements
- a variation in the gut transit time, particularly fast transit caused by diarrhea and IBS.
The colour of a bowel movement generally depends on the colour of the food eaten and the state of the bile that is produced by the liver. Bile is green in color and is only changed to brown through a proper digestive process, which takes time.
So, if the food is travelling too fast through the intestines there is no time for the bile to be chemically changed, and so it will remain green until it is expelled from the body.
The basic message is that a green bowel movement is not in itself generally cause for alarm, especially if it's just a sign that you've been eating too many popsicles. However, if it is a sign of severe diarrhea then you may want to see your doctor.
Please remember that all medical information on the internet is not designed to replace your relationship with your doctor and should not be used to diagnose any medical problem.
Green bowel movement tales
The tale of...Jennifer
Not directly related to my IBS (or is it??), but when I was a child, my parents were alarmed to find I was producing bright green stool, thus resulting in a trip to the doctor's office. Needless to say, the doctor had never seen this before and we went down a trail of tests, eventually ending up in a conversation between my parents and doctor about diet.
In the end it ended up being a combination of ingesting large amounts of grape juice and Kraft cheese slices. And ever since the doctor has been using this as a model and when other parents come with the same problem they usually find out it's because of the grape juice and Kraft singles.