Dr. Trisha Pasricha

If there's been a big change to you, like suddenly that yellowish green poop is accompanied by diarrhea, fever, pain, then it becomes not so normal.

Purple poop is a question I get.

We often get these compounds called anthocyanins in our diet.

They're present in berries, they're a pigment, you can get it in red wine.

The next day, two days later, kind of depending on how quickly your bowels are moving, you might get a little purple poop because of something you ate two days ago.

That wouldn't bother me so much.

Beets are a classic masquerader.

If you have beets, they're going to look maroon.

But everything I've said so far could be normal sort of depending on the context.

If there's other signs and symptoms, it could be more worrisome.

When in doubt, run it by your doctor.

When we enter the reds, maroon, like I mentioned, bright red, dark red, and even shiny black, tarry, kind of sticky black,

That's abnormal.

I want you to run that by your doctor.

Even if the most common answer and the most common reason and what they think is going on is just something like hemorrhoids or a little skin tag, that's fine.

Get the reinsurance.

Just have someone check it out.

Because what we don't want to have happen is that we're missing a bigger problem that we've brushed aside as no big deal, probably hemorrhoids.

We see this all the time.

And then we could miss something more important.