Here’s how to tell within seconds if the “blood” you see in your bowel movements is actually undigested beet juice.
I juice beets all the time, and I experience “stool beeturia” as a result.
Perhaps the biggest telltale sign that the red in your poops is from the beet pigment betain, is that it has a glowing, neon-like quality.
Even veteran beet eaters can still wonder if the red in their stools is blood, especially if they’ve recently had a digestive problem.
This is the same glowing, neon-like quality you see when a glass fills with the juice of a fresh beet being juiced.
Pictures of glasses of beet juice on the Internet don’t do this pigment justice.
Shutterstock/bitt24
Most website images of beet juice in glasses seem to be beet juice blends.
Read the descriptions; almost always, there are other items juiced into the beverage, such as carrots, blueberries, apples, celery or some leafy green.
This suppresses that glowering, neon-like color. If you juice ONLY beets, you’ll be struck by the amazing crimson glare.
It’s beautiful and bright. This quality is retained in your stools when betain does not get absorbed.
Blood in the stools does not look like this.
Though blood in the stools may be fresh (and “bright red”), it lacks that glow, that neon-like feature, that distinct ruby-magenta or crimson-magenta color, whereas blood is simply a solid red.
There’s a difference between crimson-magenta and solid red.
The exact color of betain in BMs seems to be 80 percent crimson, 20 percent magenta, with neon. This hardly describes blood, fresh or old.
As a woman, I’ve seen blood in the toilet with (NOT in) my stools as a result of menstruation.
If blood is being discharged from my vagina at the same time I’m having a bowel movement, the blood will sometimes get “mixed” with the poops.
I know what this looks like all too well. And it cannot pass for betain. Quite simply, betain often just GLOWS.
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Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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