Liver Disease And Kidney Problems Disease

Liver Disease And Kidney Problems Disease.....

The normal stool varies in health, according to age and to some extent with the diet. A fluid diet produces soft stools; a dry diet gives a hard stool. A heavy protein diet will make a stool offensive and dry; a milk diet will render it dry and crumbly and pale in color. Certain vegetables may alter the color, spinach producing a greenish stool and carrots a reddish color.

Certain drugs taken may affect the stools; astringents, such as tannin acid contained in tea, will decrease the quantity, iron and bismuth will render the stool grayish black; laxatives and purgatives are intended to increase the quantity and the fluidity.

The characteristics of a normal stool are:

Frequency—one or two a day.

Quantity—in the adult about four ounces . Consistency soft solid.

Color—light brown.

Odour—characteristic but inoffensive.

Variations in disease. The quantity is increased in intestinal catarrh, diarrhea, and whenever peristalsis is stimulated. It is decreased when peristalsis is sluggish, as in constipation, and in conditions in which fluid is being lost, as in sweating, vomiting and excessive bleeding.

The consistency is always in relation to the quantity: increased quantity produces fluidity; decreased quantity renders the stool hard and solid, as water has been excessively absorbed. Very hard stools are described as soybean. Gritty particles occur when faucal collections have formed as in diverticulitis.

The term 'sheep droppings' is used to describe little hard round knobby bits of faces which have probably been passed through a Spastic colon. Ribbon like stools is those which have been passed through a constricted colon, which may be due to spastic constipation or may indicate the presence of a growth. A soft solid stool may sometimes be, grooved as it is pressed past a prominence in the wall of the rectum.

Raceway ter stools are a special type of fluid stool which has a turbid appearance with little flecks of mucus in it, characteristic of cholera.

Odor. Sour-smelling stools occur in digestive disorders, and the stools are offensive whenever there is excessive decomposition or tissue destruction as in ulcerative enteritis and jaundice.

The color varies rat her more considerably. Bile, which normally colors the stool brown, is absent in jaundice, and so the stools are clay or putty colored.

Green stools suggest digestive disorder.

The more common abnormal constituents which are occasionally present in faces are:

Blood, which alters the color of the stools, may be red blood, clots or Melina which gives tarry black stools and which can only be demonstrated by laboratory tests.

Mucus, which may be in flakes or shreds, or as epithelial casts. Pus.

Sloughs, usually indicating separation of ulcers, as in typhoid fever. Gallstones, little grey particles, usually searched for after an attack of billiard colic.

Undigested food, fat as globules; curds, from undigested milk; and substances such as fruit stones, skins, fish bones, etc. Intestinal worms.

The stools of an infant. During the early days, me conium is passed, which is a dark green fluid; during the first two months of life, the stools are like beaten-up egg in color and consistency, slightly sour and number¬ing three to four a day. They then gradually become slightly faeculent, and at the age of about six months have become of a fairly thick consistency and slightly brown in colour.