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Thankyou to all those who replied. I'm sorry but I am unable to reply
individually. I especially appreciate the fact that people shared
intimate details about their bodies in an effort to help us.


The main responses were:


*Floating stools mean that you are not digesting fat.

*It is a symptom of malabsorption often caused by lack of pancreatic
enzymes which digest fat.  Pancreatic enzymes often solve the symptom.
Also using medium chain fatty acids which are more digestible are
helpful.

*floating stools is a sign of celiac, so is big balky stools ,
and diarrhea,

*There just has to be enough fat in them to lower specific gravity a
bit for floating to occur.  Fats are more difficult for guts to handle
so harder still for impaired ones.

*My stools only float if I ingested gluten.  Otherwise
they are normal.

*gas can also make stools float.  Think about what trapped gas would
do.  The steatorrhea that people talk about causes loose pale
malordorous stools, that would look entirely dift.  than if it's just a
case of gas.

*Steatorrhea is the passage of fatty stools that are pale, bulky,
frothy, greasy, malodorous and they float.  They may be liquid or
semi-formed.  The causes of steatorrhea include:

 celiac disease (gluten intolerance)
 pancreatic disease
 cirrhosis
 other liver diseases
 malabsorption due to other causes
 giardia infection
 vascular disease
 Whipple's disease
 small bowel Crohn's
 and about a 100 other diseases

It seems some people's stools floated and others didn't. It
seems that all people are different. I wish it was as easy as saying
"You have symptom x and symptom y, therefore you must have condition z"
but there appears to be such a variety of symptoms in people.

Thanks again to all those who replied

Lauren