Pale and yellow stools here

[Lori707]

I was just diagnosed with ulcertative colitis. For 6 months I had yellow and pale yellow stools. Me being a web freak, I learned that it's the liver that secretes the bile into the stools that makes the color brown. My color brown came back for a couple days and then went back to pale. My GI doc keeps saying not to worry but HUH? How can I not worry? Anyway, my blood tests come out fine but my urine dipstick shows bile in my urine. My keytones were high but now they're okay. So what's the scoop?  
Anyone have an idea? What should I do next?



This discussion is related to yellow stool and dirrhea.

[CalGal]

Typically when a person gets alterations in the color of the stool - normal brown to 'whitish' - it does mean that for whatever reason the bile isn't mixing with food in the duodenum. When the stool goes whitish that's usually due to gallbladder issues - not ALL the time, but a heck of a lot of the time. And it's usually a result of spasms of the common bile duct or the muscular opening of the common bile duct into the duodenum (the sphincter of Oddi).

If by 'pale' you mean light brown that isn't typically of concern as the amount of bile will vary during the day. But if the stool is whitish, or grayish-white, that's something different.

If you have bilirubin spilling into the urine it usually means that you should be seeing elevated levels in the blood, too, so how recently were the blood tests and the urine tests run?

If you're having any upper right quadrant pain, you need to push your doc on the issue. The tests that are usually done to check out the gallbladder are an ultrasound and a HIDA scan with CCK injection.