Did you know that the digestive system runs from the mouth all the way down to the rectum? The digestive process of breaking down food and taking out nutrients begins in your mouth by combining saliva (think, digestive enzymes) with your food, so it can safely move down your pharynx, esophagus and into your stomach. This movement down the esophagus and into the stomach occurs through a process called peristalsis. Peristalsis is a series of involuntary muscle contractions that move food through the digestive tract. Once in the stomach, more muscular contractions occur that breakdown and churn the food into smaller pieces. The duration of time that food spends in the stomach depends on the macronutrient profile of the food. Higher protein and higher fat foods take longer, which is the reason you feel fuller longer when consuming such foods.

The next stop is the bowels, which includes the small intestine, large intestine (aka colon), and rectum. First, the small intestine is where most of the nutrients are absorbed into the body. These nutrients cross the intestinal lining and move into the bloodstream where they can be processed for energy or used as building blocks. The colon pulls out water from the waste product as it moves toward the rectum to be eliminated. 

It is good to have 1 bowel movement per day, and 2 bowel movements would be ideal. If that is not the case for your body, don’t panic. The consistency of the bowel movement is more important than the amount of BMs. Using the Bristol Stool Chart below, the ideal consistency is Type 3 or 4 which is like a snake. Type 1-2 is more constipated, and Type 5-7 is more like diarrhea.