Bowel Transit Time: What It Tells About Your Health

Most people believe that if you defecate at least once a day, you are guaranteed to have a healthy digestive system. The idea of this is that the food you eat daily gets digested and the excess or waste is eliminated.

According to a wellness consultant site called Eat Heal Love, this can only be proven true if you pass the bowel transit time test. You may have a question in your head now what "Bowel Transit Time" means.

Bowel transit time is the travel time of the food in your digestive system until it gets eliminated from the body in a form of stool. In regards to the first paragraph, daily defecation doesn't mean you already have a healthy digestive system. It could be that the stool you are eliminating daily are long time deposited stools in your large intestines.

The transit time may vary depending on the food you eat and how well hydrated your body is. According to Medline Plus, the ideal bowel transit time should be between 12 to 14 hours but some would take 24 to 48 hours which is still in an acceptable range. Anything that's far beyond 48 hours is considered an unhealthy digestive system or a very poor bowel movement.

If you have a bowel transit time of more than 48 hours, you could be experiencing a poor digestion. This lowers down your immune system because the waste that remains in your body becomes toxic and gets circulated back in the whole system. Worst thing is it increases your risk of getting certain types of cancer like colon cancer.

If you also have a bowel transit time lesser than 10 hours, you are suffering from poor nutrient absorption. This also affects your immune system where your body is not getting enough nutrients.

How to perform the bowel transit time test?

You can perform a bowel transit time test at home by ingesting a cup of corn kernels. It is recommended to start your test early in the morning. By the time you see some of those corn kernels in your stool, calculate the transit time from ingestion to elimination. The result will tell you how healthy your digestive system is.