The Importance of Food Transit Time for Your Gut Health
| “Do I really need to know my food transit time?” “Does it really make a difference with my gut health and immune system?” And when I reply, I get very surprised looks… |
What is Food Transit Time? |
| It is the time that takes for ingested food to travel through our gut – this time also affects the amount of harmful degradation products (bacteria and toxins) produced along the way. This means that transit time is a key factor in a healthy digestive system. How are we not paying attention to it? |
| There is a study from the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, which has been published in the renowned journal Nature Microbiology. |
| And this is what they say: |
| Food must travel through eight meters of intestine from the time it enters the mouth of an adult person until it comes out the other end. And recent studies focused mainly on the influence of the bacterial composition of the gut on the health of people’s digestive system. |
| This study measured the products of bacterial activity in the urine after following food’s transit time through the colon. |
| The effect of food’s transit time |
| What it shows it that intestinal bacteria prefer to digest dietary carbohydrates, but when these are depleted, the bacteria start to break down other nutrients such as proteins. |
| Researchers have previously observed correlations between some of the bacterial protein degradation products that are produced in the colon and the development of very serious diseases including colorectal cancer, chronic renal disease, and autism. |
| To make it short, their study shows that THE LONGER FOOD TAKES TO PASS the colon, THE MORE HARMFUL bacterial breakdown products are produced. And conversely, when the transit time is SHORTER, a HIGHER AMOUNT higher amount of the substances that are produced when the colon renews its inner surface, which is really a be a sign of a healthier intestinal wall. |
| What we now commonly know is that the healthier gut has the most diverse gut microbiome. But after this study we also know that the gut is the healthiest when there is a long transit time.They believe that a rich bacterial composition in the gut is not necessarily synonymous with a healthy digestive system, if it is an indication that food takes a long time to travel through the colon. Which makes it even more important to test gut microbiome. |
| How can you measure your transit time at home? |
| You can do that simply by eating a moderate serving of beets or taking four activated charcoal capsules and observing their appearance in the stool. |
| The time between when you ingested the beets or charcoal to the time it first appears in your stool, and then stops appearing in your stool, is your colon transit time. |
| People living in rural African and Asian societies have a colon transit time of between 12 to 24 hours. In our culture, the average colon transit time is much longer. If a long transit time is found, it indicates suboptimal colon health. If a very rapid transit time is found, it may indicate poor absorption and assimilation of nutrients. Both conditions need correction before serious chronic conditions arise. |
| You can order Activated Charcoal from our dispensary called FullScript. Just click HERE to REGISTER and ORDER. Sending LOVE, Dr. Inna |
| Reference:Henrik M. Roager, Lea B. S. Hansen, Martin I. Bahl, Henrik L. Frandsen, Vera Carvalho, Rikke J. Gøbel, Marlene D. Dalgaard, Damian R. Plichta, Morten H. Sparholt, Henrik Vestergaard, Torben Hansen, Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén, H. Bjørn Nielsen, Oluf Pedersen, Lotte Lauritzen, Mette Kristensen, Ramneek Gupta, Tine R. Licht. Colonic transit time is related to bacterial metabolism and mucosal turnover in the gut. Nature Microbiology, 2016; 1:16093 |
Dr. Inna lukyanovsky, PharmD
Doctor of Pharmacy, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Gut Health Expert and Best Selling Author of the book "Crohn's and Colitis Fix."
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