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Found Dark Red Mucus In Stool. What Is The Underlying Cause?
Question: I'm worried about a dark red mucus appearing in my stool. I ate a bag of "Sweets and Beets" Terra chips last week and since then I have seen a red tinge in the bowl water as well as a maroon color in my stool. I ate the chips last Wed and Thursday, but now it's Tuesday with the same symptoms. Could this still be the beets?
Hello!
Thank you for the query.
Red color of the stool can in some cases be caused by food. It can happen when food is not long enough in the intestine to get digested property.
However mucus in the stool and reddish stool can be also a symptom of some large intestine disease. It takes approximately few hours for the food to get through whole intestines. So it seems quite impossible for this chips to cause your symptoms for such long time.
Your symptoms can be caused by hemorrhoids (the most common reason of fresh blood in the stool), intestinal infection, inflammatory bowels disease, colon polyps or even colon cancer.
Hemorrhoids can give also itching around the anus, lump near the anus.
Colon cancer, polyp or inflammatory bowels disease can give also abdominal pains, diarrhea, constipation, weight loss, weakness, low hemoglobin level.
As you are close to the age of 50, colon cancer risk rises. So I would suggest you not to wait anymore and get tests done. You should start with blood work, stool tests and abdominal ultrasound. Next step should be colonoscopy.
Hope this will help. Feel free to ask further questions.
Regards.
Thank you for the query.
Red color of the stool can in some cases be caused by food. It can happen when food is not long enough in the intestine to get digested property.
However mucus in the stool and reddish stool can be also a symptom of some large intestine disease. It takes approximately few hours for the food to get through whole intestines. So it seems quite impossible for this chips to cause your symptoms for such long time.
Your symptoms can be caused by hemorrhoids (the most common reason of fresh blood in the stool), intestinal infection, inflammatory bowels disease, colon polyps or even colon cancer.
Hemorrhoids can give also itching around the anus, lump near the anus.
Colon cancer, polyp or inflammatory bowels disease can give also abdominal pains, diarrhea, constipation, weight loss, weakness, low hemoglobin level.
As you are close to the age of 50, colon cancer risk rises. So I would suggest you not to wait anymore and get tests done. You should start with blood work, stool tests and abdominal ultrasound. Next step should be colonoscopy.
Hope this will help. Feel free to ask further questions.
Regards.
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Above answer was peer-reviewed by :
Dr. Mohammed Kappan
Answered by
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