Yellowish bowel movement

[louise123_uk]

My last bowel movement had whole sections that seemed to be an yellowy sort of colour! Ive read that this can be due to liver disease! Im 26, and do drink, sometimes to excess in the past the way alot of people my age sometimes do... could I have given myself liver failure?

I had bood tests done the other day for irregular periods (so unelated to this), and one of the tehings it said they would test for is liver function (apparently this is fairly standard) and now im terrified its going to come back saying I have impaired liver function!!

Has anyone else had anything like this and its turned out to be nothing?

[nomorepanic]

I have yellow bowel movements and it is nothing to worry about apparently!

[xfilme]

a lot of it comes down to the colour in the food you are the day before x

[RLR]

Stool color is actually very insignificant and we only focus on chronicity of stools that appear tar-like and otherwise suggestive of either occult bleeding or malabsorption in some manner. Other clincally supportive data, however, must accompany this clinical sign.

You need to understand that liver failure is most commonly an end-stage disease, okay? It occurs in patients who are either at the end-of-life status or a liver affected by certain strains of hepatitis, not healthy strapping young people who find an oddly colored stool. It's important to realize that in the absence of actually observing and treating patients who are extremely ill, you have no reference point regarding what is inconsequential and what constitutes great concern. Reading passages on the internet simply won't provide you with a substitute for possessing the education, training and experience of a physician. If medicine were that simplistic then a lot of physicians, including myself, wasted a tremendous amount of time practicing to do what you seem to suggest is as attainable as merely gathering information from an internet site and applying the implications to your situation. Not possible.

You'll be just fine. Your stool will return to normal and its color can very often be associated with your diet. Milk, in particular, will produce yellow stools, as will other products. If you regularly or excessively consume alcoholic beverages, then the only values in your liver profile that will likely be out of range is the spread between AST and ALT. Also realize that a serum liver profile examines things like enzymes and bile levels, but does not evaluate liver function. In any event, your liver is fine.

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)

[nomorepanic]

If you regularly or excessively consume alcoholic beverages, then the only values in your liver profile that will likely be out of range is the spread between AST and ALT. Also realize that a serum liver profile examines things like enzymes and bile levels, but does not evaluate liver function. In any event, your liver is fine.

I also thought that the MCV and the GammaGT would show excessive alcohol consumption as well or am I wrong?

[StandFree1903]

I do know that if you eat lots of Oreo's they turn your stools black, I ate loads once and my stools were black and I really freaked out, until my mum told me that many things can change the colour (thank god she is a nurse) and a few days later they were back to normal .

[Catalyst]

If you've eaten food with high fat content recently, they can do this too.