What is jaundice?

Jaundice is when your skin and eyes turn yellow, like when a banana gets ripe and changes color.

Imagine you have a special delivery truck that brings your body's yellow stuff, it’s called bilirubin. This truck usually drives smoothly, taking the yellow stuff to be processed and removed. But sometimes, something blocks the road or slows down the truck, so the yellow stuff starts to build up in your blood.

This happens when your liver, which is like a big cleaning station, can’t work as well as it should, maybe because it's tired or has a little traffic jam. Or maybe there’s a problem with how the bilirubin is being delivered or taken away from your body.

If you have too much bilirubin, it leaks into your skin and eyes, making them look yellow, just like when you spill orange juice on white paper!

Sometimes, babies get jaundice because their bodies are still learning how to handle the yellow stuff properly. It’s not magic, it's more like a little traffic jam in the body!