6. Dietary Supplements or Medications
According to MIT Health, taking certain vitamins and supplements can make your poop smell bad in addition to making your body smell bad (like the B vitamins thiamin and choline).
Antibiotic medications, for example, can also cause your poop to smell worse than usual. (More on this below. ).
Why Do Farts Smell?
Farts are a normal part of the digestion process and occur while your body is digesting food or after its swallowed air. Farts are usually smelly because you ate something like beans, broccoli or eggs, which contain high levels of fiber and sulfites. Smelly farts can also be a symptom of gut flora fluctuation, medication, constipation or illness, per the Cleveland Clinic.
Speak with your doctor if your smelly farts are accompanied by other symptoms like constipation or diarrhea as these could indicate a more serious medical problem.
Wait, Why Does Poop Smell?
You might have noticed that the majority of your BMs smell the same. So to start, why does poop smell?.
Your regular stool’s smell is determined by the microbiota in your gut. Specifically, what kind of bacteria you have and how they ferment the foods you eat,” Michael D. Professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and gastroenterologist Brown, MD, tells LIVESTRONG com.
Because it was “given to you by your mother,” this microbiota is hard to alter, according to Dr. Brown adds. Following the cessation of antibiotic or probiotic use, your gut microbiota will return to its “normal” state. “.
1. Certain Foods and Alcohol
What you eat can either make a particular poop more pleasant or putrid. Dr. Brown says these typically include:
- Carbohydrates: Highly fermentable, so they will influence smell
- Onions and garlic are major offenders when it comes to odor-producing foods because they contain sulfates, which decompose into sulfur-smelling compounds and give off an unpleasant odor.
- Beans and legumes: contain an enzyme that prevents them from being digested and increases gas production (which also explains why your farts smell so horrible).
And that rotten-egg smell? Typical for foods high in sulfates. High-fat foods, dairy products, meat, and alcohol are additional sources of sulfate, according to New York City internist and gastroenterologist Niket Sonpal, MD.
Drinking alcohol can also affect your guts microbiome and your poop. In fact, a 2017 study in Alcohol Research found drinking alcohol increases gut inflammation, leading to bacterial overgrowth.
It’s inevitable that your BM will smell; there’s no stopping it. However, restricting or avoiding these kinds of meals and beverages may help to keep your poop from smelling particularly awful.
When youre dehydrated, your risk of constipation increases. Drinking water helps move stool through your digestive system more easily. So when poop sits in your colon for too long, it can start to acquire a different (and stinky) smell, per the Mayo Clinic.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, dehydration can result from taking certain medications like diuretics (also known as water pills), sweating excessively, and losing water more quickly than you drink it.
