Red coloring?

[GregorytheImpaler]

I found what appears to be red coloring in the toilet after passing a stool for the last couple of days. I feel the same as normal, only the coloring in the water is kind of freaking me out. The actual stool itself appears fairly normal (with slight darkening from some Pepto I took for a night I ate more than I planned). It's worth noting that I work with a couple haunted attractions, and we had cupcakes with lots of red food dye on the frosting, and thick red "blood" sauce that was also rather thick with red dye. I feel this is likely the cause of the red, since it doesn't appear to be caused by blood, nor is the red coming from the stool itself, but rather is around it in the water. When I look in the water, it mixes around in the same manner as food dye in water, leading me to believe it's probably just food dye getting passed through due to large concentrated quantities of it. Should I be concerned at all? I was thinking of holding off of eating any more leftover foods with the dye to see if the coloring goes away to see if I can eliminate that as the cause?

[airpup]

Sounds like a good idea. The stuff you eat can definetly affect the color of your stool. If you want to be sure, you could see a gastro doctor regarding the red. If there was any blood at all it would be coming from your colon, due to the red color. Other symptoms of colon cancer or other diseases would be pain in the lower abdominal quadrants, changes in bowel habits, thin 'pencil-like' stools and possible fever. Hope this helps.

[CalGal]

Hold off on the red dye and watch to see what happens over the next few days. It could be the red dye is the culprit. Reports to doc's offices of 'blood in the stool' seem to surge around Valentine's day when red velvet cakes and cupcakes are abundant.