What can cause blood in stools (apart from cancer?)

Hemorrhoids.

Non-cancerous ulcers and fissures, among other things. Do get checked. Good luck! :)

Yep, Hemorrhoids

They usually recommend testing to make sure there’s nothing wrong. Don’t over worry it, but go get it checked out. My husband had blood in his stools 25 years ago, and is still among the living; he was never treated for cancer or any other ailment related to it.

Anything that can cause cracks in the lining of the bowel. Hemorrhoids and anal fissures are quite common, but problems further up can do it, too. If you have colitis or even gastritis, you can see blood in the stools. As others have said, definitely do get it checked out. Chances are, it’s probably nothing serious, but you don’t want to miss anything. And the tests aren’t as bad as people say they are. :-)

NSAIDs can cause ulceration. Do yo take Alleve or anything similar?

if your stool is dark, it could be something so simply as taking NSAIDs. Could also be crohn’s or ulcerative colitis. If you wiped and saw blood, most likely it would be hemmorhoids.

hemmoroids,kidney problems,constipation, and straining while you go.

Haemorrhoids ussually cause bright red blood that you will mostly see on the toilet paper. A simmilar cause is an anal fissure which is a crack or tear in the anal canal. It is incredibly painful.

Diverticular disease is also another very common cause of blood in the stool. Diverticular disease is where pockets form in the wall of the bowel and as you become older it is more likely that you will develop them. The blood may be bright red or darker red but will be plainly identifiable as blood.

Inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis can also cause blood in the stool but is most often combined with very watery diarrhea multiple times a day.

Colorectal polyps (small growths in the bowel wall that may turn into cancer) can also cause blood in the stool although it would probably be in such small quantities that you would not see it with naked eye (hence the occult feacal blood test you took

People who have liver disease sometimes develop rectal varices that can bleed profusely although the most common place for varices to devolop would be the oesophagus and stomach.

As others have said ibuprofen, aspirin and other NSAID’s can cause damage to the lining of the stomach and the duodenum. While the extreme would be an ulcer there is a whole range of things it can cause including gastris and small errosions (ie not big enough to be an ucler yet). Alcohol can also cause gastritis.

I assume you had a positive fecal occult blood test. Anything from a nosebleed to hemorrhoids can cause a positive test. Also false positives are common.

Get the whole colon examined, though, and not just the large colon. It costs a more, but I think with blood, it is called for.

@skfinkel There’s only one colon.

The follow up test for a positive fecal occult blood test is a colonoscopy. If the patient is anemic or having upper abdominal symptoms then an upper endoscopy is possibly indicated. The overall risk of a malignancy with a positive fecal occult blood test is still very low.

The reason feacal occult blood (FOB) tests are sent to help identify people with bowel cancer is that if caught early it is incredibly easy to treat, however there are often no detectabe symptoms until it is fairly adevance. If caught early the cancer may be contained entirely with in a single polyp and will be removed completely during a colonoscopy or by removing a small section of the bowel and no chemotherapy or radiotherapy is required.

FOB tests are ussually not the first line of diagnostic testing for other sources of bleeding in the GI tract as often there will be other more obvious symptoms. Having personally seen bleeding ulcers, variceal bleeds, mallory weiss tears and dieulafoy lesions etc I can honestly say that most people will be at the ER long before a FOB would have a result. Also other causes of bleeding from the colon tend to more obvious (particularly from UC or from a bleeding diverticular) that there is no need to look for hidden (ie occult) blood.

@lightlyseared is correct. If there is an overt source of bleeing doing a fecal occult blood test (can you tell I live in the US?) is pointless. I shake my head when I get calls from ER physicians with a patient who is puking blood and they ordered a fecal occult blood test.

its feacal

@Rarebear Ha! That’s funny. Do they do a gastroccult, too?

@Rarebear my main bug bear is junior doctors who don’t know what malaena looks like

@Lightlyseared Or smell like…

@lightlyseared fecal

@Dr_Dredd and @Lightlyseared I’m in the GI lab now. We just scoped someone who came in with a history of “black stools”. Here is the conversation:

Me: “So you have black stools?”
Her: “Yeah, they’re black.”
Me: “Black like this scope?”
Her: “Heavens no. Not that black!”
Me: “How black.”
Her: “They’re just dark.”
Me: “Dark like dark brown?”
Her: “Yes, that’s it!”

Needless to say, the colonoscopy was negative.

@Lightlyseared I spell faecal as you do. You must be English whilst @Rarebear must be American. “I say feacal and you say fecal, I say tomatoes and you say tomartoes,......Let’s call the whole thing off” (humming tune) LOL

@Lightlyseared What is malaena?

@Dr_Dredd Aaaarrrrkkk – You are turning me off!!

@Rarebear Your patient doesn’t sound too bright.

@Rarebear do you have Marmite in the US? It looks pretty similar (but I imagine it tastes nicer spread on toast)

@Theby If you are bleeding from the stomach (say from an ulcer) the blood will be digested before it is passed as stool. It is black tar like stool that has a very distinctive smell. It would be a good sign you should be going to ER.

@Lightlyseared My FAECAL matter looks and smells perfectly normal. LOL

@Theby
Mine too. Even the taste is normal.

@ragingloli Are we not getting into a dangerous space here? LOL

@lightlyseared. We do have marmite, and I’ve actually had it and liked it. But I ate it in New Zealand, not here.

@theby Melena is the most vile, gross, evil looking and smelling stuff you’ve ever laid your eyes and nose on.

@Rarebear I just looked up melena on a medical dictionary. Sound absolutely revolting! By the way as a kiwi I always eat Marmite. It’s pretty weak compared to Vegemite that is popular here in Australia. Both Marmite and Vegemite have very high levels of sodium and both have been declared “unhealthy” foods by the Australian Health Department.

@Rarebear I’ve got to say, for me, the fermented gastric contents of someone with gastric outlet obstruction or faecal vomit is worse (particularly when you get covered with the stuff)

@Lightlyseared Faecal vomit! Did you just say, faecal vomit? How is that possible?

@Theby If you have an obstruction in your bowel somewhere then all that food you put in the top can’t make it to the bottom and it’s gotta go somewhere.

Forgot about fecal vomit. That’s one thing that’s grosser than melena.

@Lightlyseared I didn’t realize obstructions could become so large that they could actually be vomited up and be fermented at the same time. I once didn’t pass faeces for 9 days. No wonder my doctor was anxious to “get me going” again.

@lightlyseared is correct. Marmite does kind of look like melena.

@Rarebear This is all a bit much for me to comprehend. It’s just after 8am here and I have been up all night again. I’m off to bed. God knows what I will dream about. I’m sure it won’t be sugar plum fairies. Goodnight all.

@theby Yes, put a bunch of GI docs in a room and strange conversations start.

Just saw @lightlyseared’s profile. S/he is a nurse, which is even worse as far as fecal vomiting ane melena is concerned. As the doc, I can just scope ‘em. @lighlyseared has to clean ‘em! (Although I’ll usually stick around and help).

This is fun! (For a layperson.)

Who said Fluther has lost its spark?

@Rarebear I just dragged myself back to the computer in an anoetic state. Poor @Lightlyseared, having to clean up that type of mess. Although I am assuming it is not too common. I used to work in a psychiatric hospital years ago. Now, it you want to see faecally disgusting situations that is the type of place to work. There is nothing worse than entering a psychiatric ward in the morning where the patients consider the first person through the door in the morning is up for a game of “dodge the turds!” Oh, and the bathroom. Some patients would typically get out of the bath and leave their calling cards for the aides to clean up. You had to be pretty quick to catch said card before it was sucked down (and therefore clogged) the plughole. Oh, the joy. On my first day at the hosptial I walked down to my assigned ward and grabbed the sticky (?) doorhandle. What’s this? Is it chocolate? I think as I put my hand to my nose. Yep, you guessed it – faecal matter!! I could go on and on but I think my brain is now closing down. Once again, goodnight all. Have an interesting day. (I think “interesting” sounds better than “good.” Don’t you?

As the old Chinese curse goes “may you live in interesting times”

It is also known that alcoholic poisoning could cause that effect as well.

@Theby @Lightlyseared We’re living the dream.

My decision to stay out of the medical field reaffirmed.

@chyna Oh man, you ain’t read nothing yet. Just get me going—I dare you…

@Rarebear No, thanks. I can’t even look at anything that bleeds. That was an issue pre-menopause. :-)

This was the most disgusting, yet informative, discussion I’ve ever seen on Fluther.

@chyna Affirmations are good things. @Rarebear I’m daring you! Tell me more about the complicated and oddball world of medicine…please? I find these strange medical facts. I’ll start the ball rolling with a short yet interesting snippet. I once looked through an ophthalmoscope into a man’s eye. It sparkled… like diamonds. I was told that the man used too much salt in his diet and it was salt crystals sparkling in the man’s eye. Wierd, huh! @MissAusten I have to agree with you!

The grossest thing I ever saw as a medical student was an infected surgical incision in a morbidly obese patient. They had to remove the staples to drain the infection, so there was pus all over this guy’s skin. I almost threw up then, and I still remember it to this day.

@Dr_Dredd The poor man! It’s amazing how many infections still seem to catch hold when everything is supposed to be sterile. I was reading about a poor woman who had an operation. I think the operation was on her back region. Anyway after the operation she was in more pain than before. She went to countless doctors seeking to find the reason for the pain. They all basically told her she was a hypochondriac. One doctor finally decided to give her a scan and a surgical instrument was found to be still in her body and pressing on a spinal nerve. Whenever I have an operation I am petrified that the anaesthetic will only paralyse me but I still feel the pain. That has apparently happened on quite a few occasions. One poor woman had a c-section and felt everything. What a nightmare!

BTW, this really isn’t a general a general question anymore, is it? It went very social very fast. Do you think the moderators will chastise us? LOL :D

To be honest I’m surprised they haven’t already.

Hemorrhoids, polyps (benign or malignant), tears in the anal canal such as fissures are usually the cause, there are several other causes as well. I had a problem with bloody stools/blood in toilet water for more than 15 years, this condition is very common but you should get it checked.

Upper gastrointestinal problems usually don’t leave blood on the toilet paper/water but can make the stool dark (one exception is an ulcer bleeding very profusely). I know this because that’s how my dad died, he had stomach ulcers that eventually turned cancerous. Chances are you have a common problem and the likelyhood of it being cancer is very low.

I love Fluther!

Unfortunately this thread is very relevant to tonight’s events…elderly father just told me there’s blood in his stool. Considering I just found this out 15 minutes ago, reading this thread has been a great primer on what to expect tomorrow when I take him to the doctor…we were ready to call 911.