In bowel movements, color depends immensely on an individual’s diet and health. All shades of brown are usually associated with a healthy-looking stool. Anything other than that commonly cause alarm to some individuals.
What Causes Green Bowel Movement?
Stool color is typically impacted by what an individual digests. Body functions also play a huge part in the change of fecal appearance.
- Green vegetables, particularly broccoli, asparagus, and spinach are made up of green pigmentations. These may be responsible for green feces. In retrospect, these vegetables are good for the human body as their green pigments, called chlorophyll, act as anti-carcinogen.
- Another cause is an occurrence called rapid intestinal transit. Proper human digestion involves food going through the small intestine first where it is enveloped in bile, a yellow-green fluid that breaks down fats. As it travels to the large intestine, bile gets chemically altered by enzymes. This changes the color of the feces from green to brown. However, it is not always the case.When food goes through the large intestine too rapidly, the enzymes responsible for changing fecal color are not able to act on it.
- Digestion of iron supplements or iron-rich food may also contribute to green bowel movement.
- An infection such as Salmonella-related diarrhea can cause rapid intestinal transit.
- Ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that causes a patient’s large intestine and rectum to be inflamed, leads to diarrhea which, in turn, causes rapid intestinal transit.
- Bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine which leads to bile acid deconjugation that becomes the reason for fat malabsorption. This storage of fat gets left inside the small intestine to ferment, causing foul-smelling stools and diarrhea.
Green Bowel Movement Treatment
There are several home remedies available to treat green bowel movement:
- For bacteria-related causes, it is important for the patient to go on a diet similar to that used in yeast overgrowth. This diet should be low of simple sugars; cereal and grains; and starchy fruits and vegetables.
- Grape Seed Extract (GSE) is a bitter herb that is preferred by doctors in alternative medicine. It is an effective cure against several microorganisms including Salmonella, Giardia, and E. coli.
- Also called the Russian Penicillin, garlic is known to be a cure against infections caused by Salmonella, brucella, E. coli, and hafnia—microorganisms that are known causes of diarrhea.
- Peppermint, in capsule form, targets microorganisms that are main causes of small intestine bacterial overgrowth, and has proven to alleviate symptoms of IBD.