39: What Your Poop Says About Your Gut and Root Causes

Your poop is like a crystal ball into your gut health. When you understand the different components, smells, textures and colours, you'll know where to start to begin healing your gut - often very easily.


TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• The 5 types of poop
• What different textures mean
• What smells and colours mean
• What frequency means
• How this helps you heal your gut

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Transcript

Josh Dech:

Your poop tells a story — a very important story.
The color, the texture, the smell — all of it tells a very unique story.

Now you're going to learn what your poop says about your gut health and the root causes of issues like your Crohn's and colitis.

We're going to break it down to just five types of poop.
We're going to call them rocks, logs, snakes, pudding, and tea.

We're going to talk about the different colors and what the different smells can actually mean.
We're going to talk about what it actually says about your body's overall health and some other organ systems that might be compromised.

And of course, we're going to talk about what you can learn about things like stool labs — like GI mapping.

Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn's and colitis are reversible.

Now, I've helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease, and I'm here to help you do it too.
Because inflammation always has a root cause — we just have to find it.

This is the Reversing Crohn's and Colitis Naturally podcast.

Now I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week and put the audios here for you to listen to.

If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes just click the links in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel. And for weekly updates information tips and tricks you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below.

Now if you don't know me my name is Josh Deck I'm an IBD specialist medical lecturer physicians consultant for Crohn's colitis and severe IBS and the scientific strategist and education director for the root cause for Crohn's colitis organization. And today I am showing you how to read your poop like a crystal ball.

Now the good news is you don't have to touch it like a crystal ball. We're just going to use your eyes and your nose. So let's get into this one.

There is a gold standard for poop I'm going to talk about that. When I say a gold standard what does that mean i mean best case scenario a perfectly healthy stool. What is it going to look like what's it going to sound like smell like etc.

So here's what we're going to do. We got five main textures we're talking about Rocks logs snakes pudding and tea. I'm sure you can distill down what those mean but here's what we want to know.

The gold standard the best stool you can really have is going to be snakes. This means it comes out it's one piece however long it might be and you feel very well fully voided after that.

Now we're also going to have only one to two wipes. This means you give it a wipe It's not sticky It's not wet It's not still going There's not multiples after One two and done.

It should ideally depends who you ask We say sink to the bottom Boop Down it goes It's not floating and breaking apart.

We also want to see we're going to call like a mid brown color Not too light not too dark just kind of like that milk chocolate brown. If I'm rooting chocolate for you you're welcome.

And what we also want to know I'm not going to say no smell. All poop smells unless you're outcast OG's will get that. But anyway it shouldn't linger in the bathroom. The smell shouldn't be something that's horrible that's lingering around that's just like takes half an hour an hour to close. You got to light a match and a candle. It shouldn't be that smelly.

So it should be snakes solid piece avoided one to two stools one wipe sinks mid brown doesn't stink or doesn't linger. That's what we're looking for.

Now the problem is we have anything outside of this. Remember we have these different textures. We're calling them rocks Think pellets and pebbles. We have logs which are going to be harder thicker typically a lot clumpier.

Then we have your snakes which is kind of right in the middle. Then you got pudding which is going to be a lot looser. And then tea and we all know what the texture of tea is.

And so that's sort of how we're breaking it down. You guys can go to the Bristol stool chart if you want something more medically broken down more diverse but this is a great way to look at it for now.

These are the perfect stool right here in the middle. Anything above or below is indications of forms or the spectrum variant of constipation or diarrhea. So it's just going to depend on what's what.

So here's the thing. Your texture if you guys are hearing I got a wiener dog down here who is absolutely shameless. Show your face Bruce. He's just digging digging digging right now. Um but anyway so he's that's what he's doing.

Um but here's what we're talking about. There's different textures you can get. Let's go through the round of these ones.

If we've got too many rocks it's too hard things aren't working very well it means your transit time is too slow it's too dry it's too rocky it's too clumpy.

You might be overabsorbing all the water which means you're overabsorbing toxin toxins. This also means in general you got poor digestion. It's just not working very well. You might be dehydrated. You might have again problems absorbing all these extra toxins which toxify your gut even more.

You might have too little or too much fiber. In fact there's lots of studies. We always think well I got to I got to be able to get a bowel movement I should eat more fiber. There are a lot of studies showing that those who are constipated in the rocks or the logs that you're going to have too much fiber. Cutting it back might actually be a really good thing for you.

There's a big debate about fiber and what we need but this is one textural thing we can look at. Okay dry rocky lumpy and firm.

Other thing we can see with texture we might even see something that's sticky. What does sticky mean i'm sure you've all been there You've gone to a wipe and it just takes five six seven or it sticks to the bowl leaves a streak.

This is sticky. This is going to mean there's bacterial issues typically overgrowth. You might have some issues with fat absorption. We call this fat mau absorption. So it's going to be really oily and kind of wet.

It could be a lot of excess gas that creates air bubbles in there giving it more um sort of a porousness to stick. And so this is going to show there's overgrowth.

So too hard too slow too sticky too much fat too much bacteria. Often there's other things we can look at as well.

Your color of your stool is going to show us a lot of information about you. What's going on. Consider some stools might actually be pale or almost gray in color...

 What does a pale gray stool mean? Well it's typically going to look to show issues with bile. So bile insufficiency or that your gallbladder and your liver might be congested, might not be producing enough bile. Bile contributes to the color that we see.

Now if we see this pale gray, it's typically bile insufficiency. On the other hand, if it actually gets a bit too green — because that's what bile is going to be — is a greeny yellow color.

If it's too green, maybe you have really rapid transit times. Maybe it's actually showing that your body's dumping bile or you're not reabsorbing your bile very well. This can even be called BAM or bile acid malabsorption — can be in this spectrum as well.

If it's sort of green, it might also show — could be like a detoxifying reaction. It's too much dumping into your system, and that can be what's going on there. So it can tell us your liver and gallbladder are dysfunctional.

That can be parasitic, it can be heavy metals, it can be mold that contribute to this thing which leads to these types of colors.

Now what if your stool is like yellow? It can be yellow and oily, it can be yellow and frothy and kind of airy or really loose.

Yellow again — typically going to mean fat malabsorption, pancreatic insufficiency, or even SIBO. That’s SIBO — stands for small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

So you can have too much bacteria — can lead to these yellowy colors. On the other hand, if it's like yellowy almost like a foul sweet honey smell, you could have a C. diff infection.

Really like yellow, runny, watery stools with that yellow very foul smell, and it's highly contagious. So I mean — closing the lid after you flush and then sanitize that. Wash your hands like crazy. Those spores can get everywhere.

On the other hand, now we talked about pale and gray. We got yellow — greasy, wet, oily — typically fat malabsorption. That’s fat in your stool.

That'll often be paired with a really foul smell, because you can be hyper-fermenting these fats as well, which can lead to all kinds of odd smells and textures.

Now there's two other kinds of bleeding we're going to talk about. You can have what's called like a black tar stool.

So tar can be both in texture and in color. If it's almost sticky or almost looks like coffee grounds, that can be coagulated blood.

It can be an upper GI bleed — so esophagus, stomach, small bowel. That can come out after it's been coagulated, showing black.

Or of course, there's bright red — and you're all familiar with this — which is going to be ulcers, fistulas, hemorrhoids, any kind of lower GI bleed where the blood is coming out before it coagulates and turns dark.

So this is what we want to know about color. But let's talk a bit more about smell.

Smell tells us lots about your stool and what's going on and what might be driving your issues. The more foul a stool smells, the more bacterial overgrowth you likely have.

There's a direct correlation between the smell and the amount of gassiness that you have and the amount of bacteria that's in there.

If there's big overgrowth of bacteria, they're going to produce all these extra byproducts. All a fart really is is like a trillion little itty-bitty bacterial farts that turn into one big gas bubble — and out it goes.

And so if you have a really foul-smelling gas or really foul-smelling stools, there's likely a lot of bacterial overgrowth.

Then we can pair this with other things and look at yellow, oily, greasy stool — well, that smell could also be in combination.

It could be, uh, malabsorbing fats and hyper fermentation. So keep that in mind as well. There's different types of smells.

Now if you're getting more of like that rotten egg smell, it's almost like sulfury. This can actually be an indicator that your liver is really congested.

It's not breaking down these sulfur compounds, using them properly. Now this can again be caused by toxins, metals, alcohol, mold, parasites — can all congest the liver.

If you have low levels of glutathione — you know, these antioxidants your body naturally produces — if you have low levels, sometimes you get that foul smell.

So again, back to liver and bile congestion. We have to open those up. Two of the biggest congested pathways in IBD I see ever are liver and bile ducts. We have to watch for that.

Now if you maybe have — this one's a bit more rare — but if it's almost like a sweet, even fruity kind of smell.

Now it's not going to be fruity like an apple. It's going to be still poop. But keep in mind, a sweeter fruity smell can sometimes show carbohydrate malabsorption.

And oftentimes, that can show us candida overgrowth.

Now there's other pairs. One smell doesn't always indicate a perfect issue. This is why we're talking about smell and color and all these things in different areas — because they can all mean different things in context.

Think about it. How many uses for the f-word can you think of? Like 50. All used in context. It means different things.

So all these pieces we're giving you matter in context. So apply it to what you've learned so far.

Let's talk about something else. This is a very important part of looking at your stool to see what's going on. We're going to call this components.

Now in a perfect world we go back to our gold standard poop. That's going to be a snake. It's going to be solid, one wipe, sinks to the bottom, it's medium brown, the smell doesn't linger.

Now we have components. That means it's not smooth. It's not one color. It might be multicolored. It might be chunky. It might have bits and pieces or flexcks or specks or all kinds of chunks in it.

This is telling us something. If you have chunks of food, you're not not absorbing. It can be low stomach acid. It can be pancreatic insufficiency, which is very common.

We call it EPI or exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. We see this a lot with IBD but often again is paired with liver and gallbladder congestion. So you could have some issues there.

Again, SIBO etc. So if you're seeing actual parts and pieces or undigested food, your body is not breaking it down. That can also come with rapid transit time.

Other things we want to look at — if you have other components like foam or air bubbles — this can be excess gas which again points us back to bacterial overgrowth.

But here's what's really interesting. A large thing that I see a lot of rather in Crohn's colitis is we can actually see white or even yellow flex like speckles or spots or flex.

This is a huge indicator of candida, which is a fungal overgrowth. If candida is overgrowing, you can even get — almost looks like I'm going to ruin bubble tea for everybody — you know the little pearls that come in bubble tea?

They can be that size or even smaller, but like kind of white or even yellowish. That can often be candida, which is fungus.

And if you get these little white specks or flexcks, it's a big candida issue. We need to really manage some of that and bring that fungal overgrowth down.

Other things you might be able to see — perhaps you're seeing strings or even could look like thin little worms. They can be long, they can be short, they can be rounded.

Um, or if you're even seeing something that looks like — almost like tomato skins or like bell pepper skins — like they're folded or rolled, that is actually liver flukes.

If you haven't eaten those potato tomato skins. So strings, worms, skins look like folded up — those can be parasitic as well.

We don't always see them in our stool but we can. It's very very common. I've seen people pass some pretty crazy stuff where it's almost like a golf ball and it's like the texture of petroleum jelly.

There's all kinds of wild stuff your body can pass. Depends on what's congested — bile and cholesterol and fat and parasites.

I've seen these big thick stringy — like thickness of your thumb or more — thick stringy clumpy bits which are often called mucoid plaques, which can be build up of skin and gut lining and fungus and all kinds of stuff.

Um, even worms can coat themselves and all kinds of stuff and they can be — look like these plaques.

So there's a lot of stuff that can come out of us which is a little bit terrifying sometimes but they're there.

Ultimately what we have to look at is all these bits and pieces. The smelly — I'm going to simplify this — the smellier your stool is the more bacteria you probably have.

If you're seeing undigested food it's rapid transit time or an insufficiency of digestion. So stomach acid, digestive enzymes, liver.

Almost everybody with Crohn's colitis needs to open their liver, gallbladder and bile ducts and just get things moving.

Um, lots of things we can do for that but we'll get to that um through the question if we need to.

If you are experiencing textures besides smoothness, again, it's malabsorption or it's something that shouldn't be in there — fungus, worms, etc.

Unfortunately we can't check for mold just looking at your stool. But if you're sending a stool sample like a GI map, sometimes there are things that can be measured.

Sometimes you can look at tests like an organic acid or get a urine test and check for mold if you're worried about that.

Uh but keeping in mind 70% of US homes have a mold problem. There's a good chance you do as well.

But a GI map is a stool sample that measures your gut bacteria. We call this your gut microbiome.

And it measures it — all the good and all the bad guys that we can possibly detect with our technology we have today. And we can see what's high, what's low.

Now a lot of people come to me and go, "Josh I want a GI map. I want a stool sample. It's — it's — it's — that's going to be my golden ticket out of here."

Consider this. A GI map is not all it's always cracked up to be. Context matters.

So let's look at this. Your gut down here. Your bacteria is all messed up. Okay, this is what we measure with a GI map. That's a stool sample.

You poop in a box, send it to the mail. You got to look someone in the eye at the post office and give them this present. But you send it to a lab. Okay.

Well your gut bacteria is all messed up. Why? Your gut bacteria measuring with a GI map is a downstream issue from something that started it up top.

So there are many other resources or tests that I prefer to do before I go to a GI map. Maybe it's just symptoms. Maybe it's history. Maybe it's organic acids. Maybe it's a total test. Maybe it's hair tissue mineral analysis.

But there's other things that can point to why we're down here. It's like going in for a colonoscopy. Look how inflamed you are. You're all red. It's here, here and here.

It tells me where you are inflamed, how bad you are inflamed but not why you are inflamed.

We always want to go back to roots upstream. I want to know what messed your bacteria up.

Now there are markers in there. Sometimes we can detect — well Josh what about parasites? Sometimes it's very very rare you can actually find them on stool.

They can hide in muscles, liver, lungs, pancreas, bile ducts, wherever. They don't always come out in stool. Even if they are in your bowel, we don't always see them.

There are other markers we can look at that can indicate parasites like something we call um EAP. Stands for eosinophil activation protein.

This eosinophil is a type of white blood cell often elevated — about 30% of the time they're elevated with an active parasite infection.

There's all kinds of bits and pieces we can gather in context.

So don't go rushing for a GI map just yet to try to measure a stool sample. I want to know why it happened in the first place.

But here's what I want to do. Your stool tells a lot about you. It's the window basically to your soul. It tells us all about your gut. Tells all about your body. Tells all about your root causes.

It's one of those things where if you think about it — you and I, I'm speaking the English language and you're listening in the English language — the more words I use in my vocabulary, the broader of a concept I can explain.

And once you understand it, you can go from basic words like shopping, buying groceries and asking where the bathroom is, to understanding poetry and literature, right?

Context matters around these words. The same thing with all these symptoms that we're going through. Different colors, textures, smells, components of your stool — they all tell us something. But it all is very contextual.

So I was able to go through this today to give you an idea, but you have to understand the broader spectrum.

But there's a couple of things that are easy. If your stool is oily and greasy, it's a gallbladder, liver, bile duct issue. You're not absorbing fats.

I have to sneeze. [sneezes] There it is. It's usually two but I'll get back to you.

So we know greasy stool is a giveaway. Always going to be an issue with fats. But why? Typically it's liver and gallbladder that's messed up. You're not absorbing. You're not producing enough bile.

Why? We always have to go back and ask why till we can get to the root cause. And this is really what we do here — is dive into root causes.

So I'm going to right now turn over to the comment section. So I want to make sure we can get you all some help here with all your questions.

Burning, burning questions. Get you some answers.

Stephanie had asked, random — nicotine as treatment would not be smoking but a patch. Thoughts?

I love that you're trying to concise that for text purposes. It makes it very hard to read though, Stephanie.

So the question effectively is — is nicotine a treatment in — if it's not smoking but a patch, would that be ideal?

Here's what I can say. There is a remarkable amount of research around nicotine for the use of IBD.

Smoking obviously is trash. It depletes vitamin C, B vitamins. It's highly toxic. Cancers. It works.

But the nicotine can help suppress pathways of the immune system that contribute to inflammation.

Nicotine has also been shown really beneficial for those dealing with jabby-jab effects — post, post jab. So there's lots of things that can be happening with nicotine.

Do I recommend it? No. I think there are a lot of other alternatives we can get to that are going to give you a lot better of result long term.

Now if you're looking for something short term, sure — like something like Kircu, which is like a curcumin and Ching Dai — short term but can have toxic effects long term.

What we're looking to do right now is not just manage your symptoms but actually get to the root of to why you're having them, right?

That's ultimately what we want to get to. Otherwise it's — it's a medication. Even if it's plant-based, it's plant-based medication.

Medications are short-term treatments for chronic problems, where you constantly have to reapply the band-aid over and over and over.

Whereas what we're looking for is a root cause, so you don't need the band-aid over and over and over.

So again, to answer that shortly — nicotine, can it be beneficial? Yes. Do I recommend it? Not as a first line.

There's lots of other things I'd rather do first.

Joyce had said, “Maybe I missed it but what did you say about white ball poop — fungus candida — those little white balls, white or yellow balls or like flexcks and specks can be fungal.”

Um that's something that I can tell you firsthand cuz I dealt with that for a very long time.

Fungus, fungus, fungus. So keep that in mind.

There's always something. Your stool always tells us something about you.

Now that's all I got for you guys for tonight. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your time and attention.

Check out our free resources. If you're still unsure, you don't know what to do — ask. We have a ton of them. We want to make sure you can take advantage of all of those.

We do have a question — oh we have a question on Instagram? Yeah, go ahead.

Audience (via Instagram):
Inflammation, acne scars, redness.

Josh Dech:
That's all I've got. Ah, so the comment — inflammation, acne scars, redness.

I'm going to put it together in context. If you want to add some more context there on Instagram, please do.

Here's what I will say. Acne, scars, redness, and inflammation — especially on your skin — you have seven main drainage pathways.

Detoxin is collecting your trash. Drainage is bringing it out to the curb.

Your seven drainage — that's exit pathways in your body. You're going to have your liver. You're going to have your gallbladder and bile ducts.

You're also going to have your lymphatics. You're going to have your sinuses, bowels, kidneys, and of course your skin.

Now in bowel disease, in most other gut issues, liver and gallbladder — typically junked up.

If you're having fungal issues like candida, guess what — your lymphatic system is probably going to be junked up.

My candida was all-time high. I actually had acne down my arms on both sides — exact same spot. These are lymphatic lines. I had issues there.

If you're experiencing sinus issues and those are backed up — well of course you're listening to this or watching right now because you've got gut issues. So guess what — your bowels are also compromised.

God, I can only hope your kidneys are still working. That means you’ve got kidneys and skin that are working really, really well.

So what does your body do when you have all this fungus blocking up everything else? Pulls the emergency release hatch — pushes it through the skin.

You get redness and inflammation 'cause it's toxins, which also alters the microbiome on your skin. It's pushing things out through the pores.

That's why acne develops from the inside and pushes out — not the top down. Topical does jack all for acne.

It's coming from the inside out because your body can be pushing toxins through the skin.

And there's a huge correlation between acne, cystic acne, whatever other kind — and fungus.

So if you're experiencing redness, pain, inflammation, acne, pimples, cystic — we got to look inside.

And starting with the gut, because your body might be pulling the hatch because all your exit doors are blocked and it's got to push it through the skin.

Audience (via Instagram):
Yeah, so she has a follow-up here. She says, "I have that on my face. Should I be cleansing from within?"

And then, um, "Testosterone — does that have anything to do with any of these issues?"

Josh Dech:
Okay, got it. So the follow-up to that acne question was, "I have it on my face."

Face is a common place for it. And I'm going to tie this one to the follow-up which was: "Does testosterone have anything to do with these issues?"

It can. Absolutely. Hormones play a huge role. Excess testosterone can increase what's called sebum — S-E-B-U-M — sebum production, which is oil.

If you're producing excess oil, it can clog your pores, gather toxins, etc., and can show up as acne.

Hormones have a huge role to play. On the other hand, so does your gut.

Now what I can tell you — I'll just give you some personal context. Years ago, I had really severe acne.

There wasn't an inch on my back not covered in acne. Again, down my shoulders, arms, up my neck — it was all over the place.

I was also on anabolic steroids. So I was taking testosterone injections. I was — I'm only 5' something. Look at me now. I'm what, 175 pounds? I was 215.

Like I literally could not wipe my own ass. I was quite large.

And so what ended up happening — the liver, or the testosterone rather — also junked up my liver.

And my liver had to deal with more toxicity, which then was also bunged up, which meant my liver got junked up, my gallbladders got more junked up, which continued to junk up my lymphs, etc. etc. etc.

So my acne actually got worse. Extra testosterone, extra sebum — so oil — and extra drainage issues which contributed to the acne I was experiencing.

So there's always something that's going on. There's always going to be something in there. But all these parts and pieces matter — it's just in context.

For those who are taking performance-enhancing drugs and are dealing with gut issues, I highly recommend dropping them immediately.

Because it's going to cause a lot more problems for you right now — especially if you're taking testosterone just for, um, like TRT or testosterone replacement to get back to baseline.

That's different. But then we want to ask: Why are you low in the first place? There's always a why. There's always a question.

Audience (via Instagram):
Yeah, so she's asking, "Do you recommend sea moss — Irish sea moss?"

And then there's a brand — P-U-R-A-U.

Josh Dech:
So the answer to all those things is yes and no.

Do I recommend things like Irish sea moss or other brands? No, I don't.

Because I think so much of the time we're looking for a silver bullet.

"If I take this thing, will it give me the vitamins I need to balance?"

We don't need vitamins most of the time to balance. Most of us are sick because we have toxins in our body or microbial imbalances or infections.

Taking sea moss isn't your silver bullet.

What I'd be looking to do is figure out why you're sick in the first place that's producing these symptoms, rather than trying to get something to combat the symptom.

Get to the root of what's producing the symptom.

It's kind of like saying, "Well, if I put my hands in liquid nitrogen, will I not get burned?"

How about we figure out what started the fire, right? Rather than just trying to cover up your skin from getting burned, let's put the fire out.

That's where I'm interested.

So this is why I get asked all the time, "Well, do you recommend this supplement or that supplement?"

Most of the time the answer is going to be no.

If you're not looking at something and saying, "Hey, here's the thing. Let's go with the candida train. I've got candida, fungus. It's producing these issues.

If I want to combat it, I need this thing, which will kill the candida or reduce it and get my toxins out." — That's what I'm interested in.

What you're saying is, "What can I use to stop it from producing?" for example — or coming out of my skin.

If I can identify — better yet, if I cannot identify what I'm going after, what I'm going to take to kill it or get rid of it or remove it, how long I'm expecting to be on it, and the results it should elicit — I have no business taking any kind of supplement.

So anybody who comes to work with us, I tell them — they say, "Well how many supplements do I need, for how long?"

I'm going to identify what's causing the problem, how long I expect you to be on this thing, the results I expect it to elicit, and then we can phase them out and use supplements that way.

But if you're just using it to manage your symptoms, you're on plant-based medication.

It's a lifetime subscription. And you'll never truly get better.

So you have to be very careful about that.

But we want to get to your root causes. I don't want to be just throwing supplements at you for the rest of your life hoping for the best.

We want to be targeted. We want to be specific. We want to be able to expect timelines.

Candida can take a long time — 12 to 18 months on average. So be prepared depending on how long you've had it.

There's biofilms. It catches all kinds of protective layers. It messes up with your immune system and invites other bad guys in.

It becomes a compounding issue. So it's very rare — there's no one supplement to take for candida that'll just kill it forever.

It's multi-layered. Multi-compound.

Anyway, thanks so much guys. We'll see you next time.

One of my favorite things to hear as an IBD specialist is something along the lines of,
 "I learned more from you in 15 minutes than from my doctor in 15 years."

And if this for the first time is really starting to click, and it's starting to make sense, and you're going, "Wait a minute. This might be reversible. I think there's more that I can do.

This condition came out of nowhere. It happened to me out of the blue. I was healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years and suddenly I wasn’t — and you're telling me there's no cause?"

If you're understanding finally that there is a cause — that something is driving this — I want to invite you to check the link in the show notes below.

Send me an email. Ask a question. See if a program is the right fit for you.

'Cause I promise you this doesn't have to be a lifelong sentence.

You're not doomed to this. And IBD can be reversed.