Everybody poops. Almost nobody talks about it.

People sit on symptoms for months out of embarrassment — and some of those symptoms have deadlines. PoopRx exists to close that gap: plain answers, real citations, and a clear line for when something needs more than a website.

The embarrassment delay is real, and it's measurable

In a survey of 2,371 UK cancer patients, 35% of people with rectal bleeding waited more than 3 months before telling a doctor — compared to just 9% for urinary bleeding, a symptom that's arguably just as alarming but far less taboo[1]. The pattern isn't limited to one country: a 19,000-person, six-country study found that people who felt more embarrassment, fear, or reluctance to "waste a doctor's time" had 2-3x higher odds of delaying care for symptoms including rectal bleeding [2]. Embarrassment shows up differently by sex — more women cite it as a reason to avoid colonoscopy [3], while men more often minimize the symptom entirely ("I assumed it would go away") [4] — and there's now a validated psychological scale that measures exactly this barrier and predicts who skips screening [5].

Here's the nuance that actually shapes what we build: in the largest of these studies, fewer than 6% of people who delayed named embarrassment or fear as the reason. Most delay instead came from not recognizing the symptom as serious in the first place[1]. That's not primarily a "get over your embarrassment" problem — it's an information problem. A clear, cited, easy-to-find explainer may do as much work as any amount of destigmatizing.

What we do

• Plain-English answers to the questions people actually type at 2am, backed by real citations — not vibes, not a content farm.
• A visual, mascot-led wizard instead of a wall of clinical text, so getting an answer doesn't require finding the words for it yourself.
• Clear, specific "when to worry" lines on every page — not a vague "consult your doctor if concerned," but the actual thing that would change the answer.
• A baby stool-color checker inspired by the same idea behind Taiwan's national newborn screening card — a simple color reference that catches biliary atresia while treatment still works well [6]. To be precise: that program's 89.7%/99.9% accuracy was measured with a printed card compared in person, not a phone or computer screen — we don't claim our screen-rendered version inherits those numbers, which is why every pale-stool page also says "check in daylight, and call your pediatrician if you're unsure."

What we are not

PoopRx is not a diagnosis, not a doctor visit, and not a substitute for one. Nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship, and nothing here should talk you out of seeing a real clinician — especially for anything on a red-flag list. See the fullmedical disclaimer for the complete terms.

Who's behind it

Our rules

• Every claim gets a citation. If we can't source it, we either flag it as unverified or we don't publish it.
• No ad pixels on health pages. The wizard, results, and articles stay free of ad trackers — architecturally, not just by policy.
• Your answers never leave your device. The wizard runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to a server by default.
• We say "we don't know" when we don't know. Popular stats with no real source behind them get flagged, not repeated — see the myth vs. fact page for an example.