REGINA BARBER: Are you following Short Wave yet? It's the best way to get new episodes as soon as they drop. Look for the Follow button at the top of our show page in your podcast app of choice. Or in Apple, it's a plus sign. Give it a little tap, and you're good to go. All right, here's the show.
ANNOUNCER: You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.
BARBER: It's time to talk about something we all have in common-- our poop, starting with the interesting shades it might come in.
TRISHA PASRICHA: A silver poop is so rare, but it is possible, that it was written up in the New England Journal of Medicine a few years ago. And what had happened was there was a person who was simultaneously experiencing two emergencies.
BARBER: And who better to talk about it with than Dr. Trisha Pasricha, a gastroenterologist and medical journalist? Talking with her was a good reminder to me that paying attention to your stool could save your life, especially in the case of silver poop.
PASRICHA: They had an ulcer in their stomach, and it was bleeding, and it caused their poop to turn that tarry, sticky, shiny black. But at the same time, there was something blocking their bilirubin. So then they had this white stool mixed with the shiny black. And it came out this, like, silver bullet, beautiful, diamondy-silver poop.
BARBER: As fun and interesting as it may look, it's also a sign to take immediate action.
PASRICHA: Yeah. Take a pic, but definitely go right to the emergency room.
BARBER: Trisha says there's another reason to keep an eye on your number 2's. Since the 1990s, the rates of colon cancer have increased among people under 50 years old. In 2018, the American Cancer Society lowered the recommended age for people screening from 50 to 45 years old, which can mean a colonoscopy.
