Reducing stomach acid with a proton pump inhibitor like Nexium and Prilosec can help with healing. Gastritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach. The stomach has a layer of mucus to protect it from the strong acids that break down foods. If that mucus lining has tears or is not healthy, the stomach can become inflamed.
Damage to your stomach lining can happen for a variety of reasons, including stress, an autoimmune response, or an infection. Other causes include NSAIDs, smoking, or drinking alcohol or eating foods that irritate the lining of the stomach. Inflammation can cause small amounts of bleeding, which can turn your stool black. Treatment depends on the cause.
If the gastritis is caused by smoking, stop smoking. If the cause is an autoimmune response, you may need other medications and more follow-up. Colon polyps are small growths in the colon. Polyps begin as benign not cancerous growths, but can develop into cancer over time.
Usually, they do not have any symptoms, but sometimes, they can ooze small amounts of blood. A colonoscopy can find polyps before they become cancerous.
When they are found during the procedure, the gastroenterologist will remove them. This prevents them from turning into cancer. Some people are more likely to form colon polyps because of their genetics. Other factors that are associated with polyps and future colon cancer are being overweight, smoking, and eating a lot of red meat and processed foods. Colorectal cancers can be diagnosed at any age, but it usually affects people over Obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, smoking, and alcohol use can increase your risk for colorectal cancer.
Constipation is when you have infrequent bowel movements and stool is very hard and dry. The stool may appear darkish or black. When you try to have a bowel movement, you may strain, or your stool may look like hard pellets. You may feel abdominal pain, cramping, or bloating.
Laxatives, good nutrition, and drinking a lot of fluids can all help with constipation. Black stool can have a lot of causes. They can be uninteresting iron supplementation, various foods, even alcohol or more dangerous bleeding.
The biggest consideration is your health status and underlying conditions. In some cases, your doctor may need to do an endoscopy or a colonoscopy looking into your esophagus and stomach or your colon with a tube or another procedure to check for tears, polyps, or bleeding in the colon or intestines.
Questions may relate to diseases, illnesses, or conditions you may have or that may run in your family. The stool makes its way through the colon through a series of autonomic muscle contractions called peristalsis and then out through the rectum and anus. It is because of the complexity involved in all the digestive steps described above that many different factors come into play when stool is formed.
Those factors all contribute to the overall health of the digestive system and the resulting stools. Color, along with texture, size, shape, and solidness, is one way of determining digestive health. Much of the time, the color comes from dietary content; what and how much you eat, what you drink, etc.
Yet different stool colors can also come about because of disease or as a side effect of some underlying condition. While there are no hard and fast rules about stool color and the precise cause, there are some common connections that doctors have identified.
Here are some of the possible stool colors that people can experience and their possible related causes:. But what about black stool? One of the most concerning reasons why stool might be black is bleeding in the upper gastrointestinal tract. The stool that results from this kind of bleeding is called melena, and it refers both to the black color and the tarry consistency.
The hemoglobin in the blood that makes its way through the gastrointestinal tract is reacted upon by various digestive enzymes and intestinal bacteria; the net effect of this process is black and tarry stool. There are numerous potential causes of this kind of bleeding, but one of the most common causes is having peptic ulcers, which are painful sores that can develop on the inner lining of your stomach or other parts of your digestive tract.
When sufficiently irritated, these sores can bleed, and the blood will make its way through the rest of the digestive tract and become incorporated into the stool. One much more rare possibility related to bleeding is esophageal or gastric cancer. Apart from bleeding, there are a number of other diet-related causes that can also be at play.
One possibility is dark-colored foods like black licorice or beets. Black stool can also be a side effect of taking iron supplements, a key part of treating anemia; the extra iron not absorbed by the bloodstream can travel through the digestive tract and be passed out in the stool. The same goes for iron supplements and medicines containing bismuth subsalicylate: If you think your black stools may be connected to taking either of these, talk with your doctor about safe alternatives.
If your black stools are due to a condition that is causing upper GI bleeding, your treatment will vary depending on the severity of the condition. Black stools can be caused by a variety of issues, from eating too much black licorice to bleeding in your gastrointestinal tract.
The key to identifying how serious your condition is are the other symptoms that are present. If you are experiencing nausea, stomach upset, dizziness, or abdominal pain along with black stools, contact your doctor quickly. Your diet may be the culprit behind black specks in your stool. Hard poop can be a symptom of lifestyle factors, medications taken, or an underlying medical condition.
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Gastritis that is left untreated can lead to stomach ulcers and other complications. Some people have no symptoms, while acute, suddenly occurring cases of gastritis may only result in tarry, black stool. Persistent bleeding can lead to more severe symptoms like:. Esophageal varices are enlarged veins in the wall of the lower esophagus or upper stomach.
When these veins rupture, they may cause bleeding and lead to blood in the stool or in vomit. Esophageal varices are serious complications resulting from high blood pressure brought on by cirrhosis of the liver. Most people with esophageal varices experience no symptoms unless the veins rupture. Symptoms of bleeding esophageal varices include:. Mallory-Weiss tear is a tear in the mucous membrane that joins the esophagus and the stomach.
If this tear bleeds, it can result in melena. This condition is fairly rare. It only only occurs in about seven out of , people in the US and may be caused by violent vomiting, coughing, or epileptic convulsions. Like other conditions that cause melena, symptoms of a Mallory-Weiss tear may not be obvious.
Along with tarry, black stool, some people may experience any of the following:. Blood in the stool can be a serious concern. Blood in your bowel movements is usually caused by one of these conditions:. Doctors may need to examine a sample of your stool or may need to insert a camera into your GI track to determine where the blood is coming from. Stomach ulcers caused by and infection may be treated with antibiotics. Your healthcare provider may also recommend an acid reducer.
If your doctors suspects gastritis, they may prescribe antacids or proton pump inhibitors , antibiotics that treat H. If these treatments fail to resolve your symptoms, your healthcare provider may order an upper endoscopy to take a closer look at your stomach and small intestine. Esophageal Varices requires immediate medical care to help stop the bleeding. Elastic bands may be wrapped around the varices to stop the flow of blood.
Stents , tubes inserted to manage blood flow, may be used to lower blood pressure. That can reduce the amount of bleeding. In the case of a Mallory-Weiss tear, the tear heals on its own for most people. If it does not resolve itself, you may need treatment to seal the lesion. This may either take the form of a medication that is injected internally, or a type of heat therapy known as electrocoagulation. Stool that appears black is not always a sign of a bigger health problem.
Your stool can look black as a result of food or iron supplements you have eaten. If that's the case, the color will return to normal within a day or so. If it doesn't, and if you cannot trace it back to something you have eaten, ask yourself:. If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, or if you're experiencing symptoms like nausea, vomiting, or lightheadedness, you should contact your doctor.
Though it may be surprising to see, occasional black stool is not something to worry about so long as it occurs after you eat dark-colored foods or take an iron supplement. That said, if black or tarry stools cannot be attributed to something you have consumed, or you simply feel like something is off, it's best to get checked out.
Some of the conditions that cause GI bleeding can be life-threatening unless treated promptly. Not necessarily. Dark-colored stool may just be the result of food you ate or supplements you took.
However, if you notice blood in your bowel movement, if you vomit blood, or if you feel dizzy, you should contact your doctor right away. Liver disease can damage the veins that move blood into the liver and may cause pressure to build up in these veins.
The veins then burst, allowing blood to get into your GI tract.
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