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Spongy Yellow Objects in Stool

I have been noticing with every bowel movement, there is a rectangular, light yellow piece of matter about an inch long, smooth, with rounded edges and I think white on the inside. The consistency of a cooked kidney bean. It doesn't look like ANYTHING I have eaten. I have no other symptoms but have been experiencing more than normal mucuous during my movements over the past month or so.  I've been going crazy trying to find something on the internet. They have become more frequent over the last few days (although I have noticed it a few months back a couple of times). Any clues??? I don't feel sick or have any abdominal pains, other than what I attribute to the foods I've eaten????
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Avatar universal
It’s most likely a ghost tablet”
Don’t worry it’s normal!
Just the excretion of extended release medication (E.g XR such as some SRIs and SNRIs) Wellbutrin, Pristiq, and others.
Medication is still absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract but that is the left over that comes out.
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Avatar universal
Hello everyone!  I feel compelled to respond with my own anecdotal story to offer another possible cause of the misery you may be suffering; not understanding why.  About 10 years ago, I too exhibited the same symptoms many of you are relating in this feed and let me tell you, at many points I was so desperate I came very close to dispelling the evil thing by cutting it out-even if I had to do it myself!  I lay writhing on my floor for days, writhing in unspeakable agony and finally dragging myself to my vehicle and alerting the hospital 2 hours away (I live in a remote area of the mountains) of my impending arrival for emergency gall bladder surgery.  However, halfway to my undeniable fate, I determined to take control and rid myself of this death wish.  I returned home, called my long time holistic practitioner friend and through tears begged for an answer.  The answer for the source of the pain was gall stones and the cure was the following.  Three days of alternating raw apple cider (not cider vinegar; cider) and distilled water every two hours.  Evening of third day, take juice of fresh grapefruit or lemon (1) followed by a chaser of 1/3 to 1/2 cold pressed extra virgin olive oil.  Lay on your right side with a heating pad wrapped in a heavy towel (so as not to risk burning) on the right side of your body.  Sleep this way for the night.  Morning time, have epsom salts in warm water and within 15 minutes to 2 hours the bathroom will become an amazing exploratory lab as you literally pass anywhere from a few to dozens of colored bile stones.  Women who have borne more than a couple of children may have dark brownish-red (iron from overproduction for baby), green, and other varieties.  These colors represent calcium and cholesterol deposits with a myriad of other ingredients.  They are imbedded within the liver/gall bladder and the cider loosens them and the olive oil enables them to pass more easily as they soften through the bowl and out into the toilet-thank GOD!   In this manner, my husband, myself, family and friends have regularly held these fasts which have yielded upwards of more than 70 small and large stones; the largest being bigger than a quarter!  Yes, we took a picture.  Doing this annually has helped me to overcome heredity gall bladder disease.  It has rescued my gall bladder from sure destruction and removal and I am one of only 3 or 4 among my 11 siblings, 2 parents and 2 children who have kept my gall bladder inside my body.  
I am not a doctor, but I did follow the advise and researched this for many years.  Some of the reading sources are from doctors who wrote books such as the Liver Cleanse diet (can't remember authors here as I am traveling and do not have access to my home library) and the book Tissue Cleansing through Bowel Management by Bernard Jensen, nutritionist-with pictures.  These books are thorough and give great in-depth details on an obscure, unpleasant, but very necessary subject.  So, there's my story and if it helps even one patient looking to restore health from inside out (this is how it really is), I hope it brings the euphoria you feel after passing through these horrific experiences...
Good luck and blessings to your journey!
Ginny E
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Avatar universal
Do any of you take Metformin? I have come to a conclusion that the yellow object that I am seeing in my diarrea stool and at other times are the Metformin tablets that I am taking. I know that other diabetes med are not digesting and are just being dumped.. what a waste of money.  Anybody? I pulled one out and broke it open and it was a powder inside. This morning two showed up again and only this time one wasn't even stained yellow, just white.
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2 Comments
I have recent started Metformin as well and have had a lot of diarrhea.  I found one of these corn-nut things last week and one today as work and freaked out.  Now I see others having the same issue.  From the looks of the inside i'm thinking undigested pill.  I will talk to my dr. at the beginning of august and see what he thinks and post again.  Thank you everyone for sharing.  A bit of comfort received.  #disinfectfolks  
Some pills have a casing that can come out in our poop with the active part of the pill being absorbed.  ?
Avatar universal
I dont understand why the numbers and symbols got in my post. Hope u can read it
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Avatar universal
Well i like the last answer. In the past several months i have really changed my diet. Cut out tons of sugar and lots of carbs and of course no soda and lots of lemon water. Salad for supper 95% of the time. So with that being said, it does sound likely that my body is throwing off fat or cholesterol stuff. Mine actually looks like a grape and with the same texture. At this point i don't think I'll worry about it. But i just happen to have a colonoscopy scheduled for today, so I'll probably mention it.
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Avatar universal
I am having many of the symptoms that are mentioned above and I would like to offer another possibility. I wanted to confirm and that is why I found this site. It may be cholesterol that has been ejected from the liver and is passed in the stool. It normally happens when you eat a oily or fatty food. Your body prepares for the fat by clearing out the cholesterol in your liver and if you haven't had fatty food in awhile it turns into explosive diehard and even vomiting. This is the reason that fish oil lowers cholesterol. But one of the writers is correct it may be several things.
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Avatar universal
Die off symptoms with Candida Abilicans, systemic yeast infection. A mother who has it can also transfer it to baby while passing thru birth canal.
But you all may already know about all this by now.
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Avatar universal
I am having this same problem  !!  I feared something terrible was wrong with me! This has been occurring noticeably for the last 3 days.  I have never seen these large "corn nut" looking like things in my stool before.  They are about an inch in size and yellow in color.  I started taking Chromium Picolinate for my sugar recently and I am going to stop taking that  I also take Metformin and I cannot stop that.   I am just concerned by the sudden appearance of these shapes in my stool.  I have not spoken to a dr about this    ***@****
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2 Comments
Im having the same experience!! I take Metformin too...soo maybe its linked.
Did you ever find out what it is.  Im experiencing your description.  Recently diagnosed with diabetes. Stage 1, prescribed metofornin but i dont use it.  Too many side effects
Avatar universal
THE ANSWER... there is no one answer!

It's probable a multitude of answers. I've noticed the descriptions are varied (except for "something floating in stool"). I have seen everything from "small white curds", to "Chiclet shaped", to "oblong", to "like a birds egg", to "lima bean shaped", and etc. Most likely, for the affected people, they are there all the time, it’s just during bouts of diarrhea they are more evident

I posit that just as there are a variety of symptoms, there are a variety of causes.

For me, it seems to be the metformin XR. For others taking any kind of medicine, I’d recommend the previously mentioned “water test” or the more comprehensive “lemon juice and water test”.

I’ve been around the web awhile, and usually know dependable sites. If your go to MedlinePlus, a service of the US National Library of Medicine and the National Instututes of Health (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/) I believe most people will find their answers. Go there, do a search for “tablet” & “stool”, and you’ll get 209 results. Add a medication you’re on, and get fewer results. The point is, for most of these listed medicines, if you search down the page you’ll find something to the effect of “if you are taking certain extended-release tablets (Afeditab CR, Procardia XL), you may notice something that looks like a tablet in your stool. This is just the empty tablet shell, and this does not mean that you did not get your complete dose of medication.”

For the people NOT taking meds, it could be the casein, stuff precipitating out of the stomach, or other issues.

At any rate, I’m not going to worry any more.

Tim A
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Avatar universal
I have had a milk “allergy” since I was a child.  Doctors told me that I was not lactose intolerant; I was allergic to milk.  In fact, before I was diagnosed with the allergy, I would get so sick that I would wind up in the hospital, completely emaciated from not keeping any food down.  And of course, my parents and my doctors were feeding me dairy to build my system back up, wondering why I could not get well.

Yet, when I had allergy testing done just earlier this year (the first time I’ve had it done as an adult), I tested negative for milk allergies!  I made them try it again at a higher concentration.  Still, nothing.  My allergist told me that dairy issues were commonly misdiagnosed, and that my issues sounded more digestive then allergy-related.

I’ll be honest, I am still not clear on the difference between milk allergy and food intolerance and food sensitivity.  But since I showed no allergic reaction to milk or casein, I definitely feel that “allergy” is the wrong word to describe what I have. From what I’ve read, allergic reactions tend to occur pretty quickly after you eat and tend to be severe, while the intolerance/sensitivities tend to occur during the digestive process. (After you eat, it takes about six to eight hours for food to pass through your stomach and small intestine, but complete elimination from the body typically takes 24-72 hours.) But I’ve also read that having allergies can lead to the digestive problems, so it goes round and round. And these issues are so often misdiagnosed so who knows WHAT we really have. We have to be our own detectives.

Here is an awesome site that discusses allergies/intolerance: http://www.theallergysite.co.uk/dairy.html

And here is a study about casein and milk allergies:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119209344/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

I found it very interesting that, in the first blog I found, many of the people afflicted by this didn’t drink milk or didn’t “do dairy at all.”  That suggests that they have had problems with milk in the past, just as I have. But little did they (or I) know that avoiding dairy does not mean you are avoiding casein.

Following are some things I learned about good ol’ casein.

CASEIN
(kāˈsēn)
Well-defined group of proteins found in milk, constituting about 80% of the proteins in cow's milk, but only 40% in human milk. Casein is a remarkably efficient nutrient, supplying not only essential amino acids, but also some carbohydrates and the inorganic elements calcium and phosphorus. The calcium caseinates form an insoluble white curd when acidified by hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid, or when milk is soured by bacterial contaminants. Acid casein is used widely in cheese, adhesives, water paints, for coating paper, and in printing textiles and wallpaper. In neutral solutions the enzyme rennin converts one of the caseins to an insoluble curd; most of the protein in cheese is rennet casein curd. When treated with formaldehyde the curd forms casein plastic, used for manufacturing imitation tortoiseshell, jade, and lapis lazuli.
(The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004)

The Wikipedia entry on casein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein.


Okay, so now I knew a little bit about casein.  I started to wonder why this started happening to me after I moved to TX.  It had never happened before that (unless some pods went unnoticed, which is possible, but certainly it hadn’t gotten as extreme as it got here).  I began to realize that my diet became a lot different here in the South.  I had never had much Mexican food before but I found that I really liked it.  I knew that cheese bothered me but I have always just dealt with that and had it in limited doses.  I expect some discomfort and gas when I have dairy, so when I splurged, I made sure I was hanging out by myself that night. But what could have prompted such an extreme response?

Casein is a protein found in milk, but it is used in LOTS of other processed foods.  It is often listed as sodium caseinate, calcium caseinate, or milk protein, whey, whey protein concentrate, and many more.  The biggest and baddest source of casein (in my experience) is called Milk Protein Concentrate (MPC).  This is basically the heroin of casein!!  I read about it as my casein research linked to more and more articles.

You can find these casein proteins in food that is creamy.  Scientists have isolated the specific proteins that give foods a creamy, dairy-like consistency.  So when people buy “fake” cheese, they are actually getting those concentrated proteins. What was I buying late night in the grocery store?  Kraft singles.  Poison for me.  Velveeta? Poison for me.  QUESO (oh no!!)? Yup, definitely poison for me.  Never, before I moved, had I ingested so much CONCENTRATED casein!  I could always handle fresh dairy like small amounts of milk and tiny amounts of fresh cheeses now and then, but the concentrated proteins tear me up.

Here are some disturbing articles about the controversial use of MPC.  Granted, the source is Family Farm Defenders, who are very biased, so use your own judgment.  They slam Kraft products pretty bad. But I can testify that Kraft products make me sicker than just about anything else (Kraft Singles, Velveeta, and Kraft salad dressings).
http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/pmwiki.php/MilkProteinConcentrate/MilkProteinConcentrate

And here’s another anti-MPC article:
http://www.vtce.org/mpc.html

Some more casein-containing foods that surprised me were: salad dressings (Not just the thick ones either!  Creamy Italian used to be my fave but that can be chock full of it!), cheese flavored chips (Doritos, I will always  remember you…), protein shakes and “health” drinks (watch out for these!! Slim-fast, Ensure, and a lot of protein body-building drinks are really packed with milk proteins. For those without this sensitivity, it is good protein. For the rest of us, not so much.), etc.

I really recommend reading this page for some info about where casein may be hiding: http://web.mit.edu/kevles/www/nomilk.html

Casein is also known for breaking down into casomorphins, which can have an opiate-like effect on the body.  (http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-casein.htm) Hence, comfort foods!!  A lot of fast food chains have been accused of using caseins intentionally for this purpose, profiting from the good feelings (and literally addictive qualities) of caseins.

Here’s an article that addresses this and other casein issues:
http://danmahony.com/bigfood2.htm

I have also noticed that many of my worst reactions have occurred around days that I drank beer.  I read in couple of the resources that when you have intolerance and sensitivity, any extra strain on your digestive system can make your problems worse.  Since alcohol wreaks havoc on even normal digestive systems, it’s a good idea limit your alcohol intake if you’ve had foods you shouldn’t have had, or vice versa.  You will be sorry if you don’t.

I am still looking for info and modifying my diet as I find MORE things with casein.  Ugh.  It is crazy how much of it I was ingesting before.  No wonder I couldn’t isolate what was bothering me.  It was basically everything I ate! But knowing is way more than half the battle.  Way more. I can’t possibly provide every piece of info that exists about casein and this health issue.  So please research on your own.  Please.  For your issues, all this could be completely off base.  But all I can tell you is what makes sense to me.  And removing casein from my diet (or minimizing it, at least) has improved my life SO much!

So good luck!!  

~The Caseinator~
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1 Comments
WOW!!! Thank you SO MUCH for posting all of this info. I can't tell you how grateful I am for you to solve this mystery for me! This had only been happening to me for just over a week. All of the sudden these 'things' were in the stool. Diarrhea most of the time. No normal trip to the bathroom any more.  I didn't know what to think but knew it HAD to have come out of ME. Finally I did the gross thing that everyone else here apparently found them self doing and fished one of those babies out. (Oy!) It opened and I saw the white in it I nearly fainted thinking parasite. That is all that kept coming to mind. Omg- I was beside myself. AND... like many others, had to do the disgusting keyword searches (google must love me by now) and finally found THIS page and your two posts. Guess what- the thing that had changed for me in the last week or so? We had a party a week ago. One table was a Chip Buffet with different types of chips and all kinds of dips. Was our party, so all unopened jars, etc came home. I hadn't had tortilla chips and dips in many years. (I had fell into Septic Shock 2 yrs ago- literally died for a few and "my body" had changed in how it responds to things now. I have been eating the chips and salsa and... creamy fake cheese dip daily and sometimes twice in a day. Looked at the jar ingredients and listed THIRD was MPC. THIRD... meaning there is a lot of it in there. Jar is now in the trash. Thank you Super Hero The Caseinator- thank you!!!
Avatar universal
*I'm really sorry if this doesn't help you, but I'm hoping it does!  I'm trying to share my story with people who are having similar problems.  My life has changed so much since I found out what was wrong!*

Here is the problem I have been having: cramping, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, followed passing small (one inch x one half inch) pod-like (chicklet-shaped, bean-shaped) objects in my stool, which always float and are filled with a white, powdery substance.

I would get very dizzy and nauseated, followed by very intense stomach cramps.  Then I would have explosive diarrhea, almost completely liquid.  It had a very strange musty smell, almost like mold or mildew.  Really, really weird. This kind of thing kept happening. One night it was really bad and I was in the bathroom for hours.  Then I started vomiting.  The vomiting was the most violent I’ve ever experienced.  It was awful.  

That is when I saw them.  Bright red pod-looking objects in the toilet.  There were 2 or 3 of them, and they were about an inch long, a half inch wide, and a quarter inch thick.  Kind of chicklet-shaped.

The outside of the pods varied in color.  I rarely saw red ones after the really severe bout of vomiting.  By this time I had seen white, orange, yellow, and even green ones.  I saved one for the doctor’s office, then cut open the other one, scared to death of what I might find.  The outside of it was soft and kind of see-through, like the consistency of a gummy bear.  I saw that inside was a white powdery substance. And it looked like it was dry, as if the pod was completely sealed as I passed it!  That freaked me out even more.

I told 2 doctors and my allergist.  They looked at me like I was nuts and told me it was probably a pill casing, or some kind of intestinal problem.  Finally, I saved a couple of the pods.  I had never really examined one before, and I was horrified that it might have some kind of eggs or something in it.  I mean, at this point, what could it be but some kind of parasite??

I brought the pod to my doc in a stool-sample container they had given me and asked them to please send it for testing. They did.  The result?  Negative.  Um, WHAT??  Negative for what??  What IS it?? That’s all they could tell me.  They couldn’t tell me what material it was or what was in it.

A few months ago, through some variation of gross keywords, I found a blog in which people were talking about the same symptoms, desperately searching for answers from one another!!   (http://www.************.com/strange_spongy_white_object_in_stool_t127457.html)
I was so relieved that I started to cry at my computer.

At that point, I was pretty convinced it was something really terrible.  Something incurable, that I would probably have to deal with until whatever-it-was killed me. The blog was the first thing I found that even remotely described what I was dealing with. But everyone was as scared as I was, or even more scared, and there weren’t really any answers.  I read about people going to doctor after doctor and getting no answers. Some even got colonoscopies and CT scans, others had been to ER several times. I read and read, and followed many scary leads and links until I finally found one that made sense.

It was a link to the Google Book Search Page for the book Diseases of Infancy and Childhood by Luther Emmett Holt, John Howland, specifically a section called: “Curds” in the Stools.

The undigested masses appearing in the stools of infants taking milk are usually spoken of as “curds.” These may be small, soft and white, and may make up a large part of the loose stool.  An excess of mucous is usually present. [This was true with me too!]  Such masses are composed almost entirely of fat.  There are also seen, but much less frequently, larger smooth hard masses of a yellowish-brown color, but white on section. They are usually present in small numbers in a stool, the rest of which might be quite normal. These hard or “bean curds,” so called for their resemblance to lima beans, are composed chiefly of protein, usually with an envelope of fat. They are undoubtedly formed in the stomach, where the casein coagulates in masses, some of which are so firm and hard that they pass the intestine without being digested.  Curds of this description are rarely seen unless proportion of casein in the food is high.

Curds of the first variety, if numerous, call for a considerable reduction in the amount of fat.  The large, smooth, hard curds, if numerous and persistent, may usually be made to disappear by boiling the milk.  This causes the precipitation of the casein to occur in smaller masses which are more readily attacked by the gastric and intestinal secretions.
(http://books.google.com/books?id=_naiaUtPQ28C&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=lima+bean+stool&source=web&ots=8BG0dxGEQ5&sig=-6In0CkcropdpKo8waeeGcfhyRw)


Here are more Google links leading to other sources I found that discuss casein curds (casein coagula).  They, like the first source I cited, are written in the context of occurrence in infants in children.  (I am still looking for data about this issue in adults.)

http://books.google.com/books?id=pi1YAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA807&lpg=PA807&dq=casein+stool+curd&source=bl&ots=IbOrlA9ERg&sig=OwBH0DwvmogksS1vJO3X-hcM7wY&hl=en&ei=F7cASrChH4ustgfInrmPBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7

http://books.google.com/books?id=UMwfAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA181&lpg=PA181&dq=casein+stool+curd&source=bl&ots=aKxnnM_bJS&sig=-jm9HdZK1Qv6YesqX_W7BzVHDd0&hl=en&ei=F7cASrChH4ustgfInrmPBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

http://books.google.com/books?id=StcEAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA7-PA134&lpg=RA7-PA134&dq=casein+curd+stool&source=bl&ots=mOIKdK9q9Z&sig=t5J0X4FYTluwY6lOuO-HE3HQzbA&hl=en&ei=0rwASunHGtKLtgeipqmYBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

Continued in my next post …
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My comment is on your next post (part 2)
Avatar universal
The posts above dolly04 are over a year old, but anyway, I had to chime in because I have the same thing - actually was too embarrassed to ask the question. How long has this been going on with you? It's been going on since July 08 for me :(
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Avatar universal
I too have had these small , yellow , spungy objects in my stool. I thought at first it was undigested corn, but this is nearly every day now. I am curious what people think it may be from
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I have just noticed that I see small, yellow, spongy objects that look like corn.  but I do not eat corn?  what causes these corn like objects in had stools?
Avatar universal
The samething I saw in my stool the same way you thid described  100%
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Avatar universal
Wow, check out my posting today CB122 let me know what you think.  I have not gotten and responses yet but ours sounds familiar.
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