Fair warning: this post is kind of gross.
If you asked someone to describe themselves using colors, there's usually two approaches. The first is metaphorically: for me, I'm sunshine yellow with splashes of vibrant red and ice blue. The other is physically: my skin tone is creamy tan. But the approach most often forgotten is out internal colors. Yes, our body's host a rainbow in of themselves.
I don't mean eye, hair and nail color; I'm talking about fecal matter and urine, mucus and rheum, blood, and sexual discharges. All of these can help determine a person's health status.
Fecal matter is normally a brownish color, concrete but malleable and easy to remove from the body. However, if the color is different that can be an indicator of poor health. Green/yellow fecal matter usually means infection although sometimes it's because of large consumption of green dye. Red fecal matter can be a sign of internal bleeding, colon/intestinal cancer or high levels of stress and sometimes it's due to over-eating red dyes.
Urine should be clear to slightly yellow. If it's dark, dark yellow or green that's a case of inflection. And red urine usually means internal bleeding or cancer. It may seem disgusting but looking into the toilet before you flush can be a great way to prevent serious health problems from exacerbating. There's a reason doctor's ask for stool and urine samples.
Next is mucus and rheum. Mucus, a fancy word for "boogers," and rheum, an even fancier word for "eye boogers" or "sleep dust," are usually small, crusty and range from yellow to green in color. Over production on mucus or rheum can be caused by inflection. Many people with pink eye need to scrap some rheum away before taking medicine optically. And everyone knows that a runny nose is the first sign of a cold.
Blood should be maroon red when it's exposed to oxygen. If you can see your veins under your skin they should be blue. This is why in most horror films, aliens/demons/monsters have green or black blood - a sign that this is clearly not human. If for some reason you're blood isn't red when above the skin, you should immediately call 911. Because something is not right. In my research, I didn't find a case of non-red blood.
And last of of our internal colors is sexual fluids. For men, seminal fluid should be a whitish-grey color but there have been cases of yellow and red fluids. Red fluid often happens when blood is mixed with the sperm, and can be cause for alarm because somewhere, some tissue has been torn. Yellow seminal can be natural due to over eating sulfur but can always be a clue to some forms of cancer including testicular.
For women, vaginal emissions should be clear or white. But it can be red if it's close to her menstrual cycle or if she has an inflection. There have been cases of blue vaginal fluids, but this is usually caused by liver disease, types of cancer or unhealthy amounts of stress.
If you noticed, there's a reoccurring theme of inflection and cancer, two things you really don't want to have and more often than not, lead to death. I, personally, always check before I flush and whenever I blow my nose. After all, early detection prevents further harm.
So, the next time you're asked what color you are, answer scientifically and healthily.
