# From mouth to out. How fast?



## Matt b (Feb 27, 2011)

Lately I have been wondering how long it takes for me to digest food and have a bowel movement.Is there any particular thing I can eat and look for in my bowel movement so I can know the transit time? I read somewhere where a man swallowed one of those tiny cameras doctors used to see your stomach and he passed it the very next day. His doctor said that was not normal and it should of taken longer. The only reason I am wondering this is because I saw what looked like prunes in my bowel movement today. Well I only ate prunes many days ago and just the day before the bm.So either it takes forever for me to digest food or it goes very quickly.Also is it normal to see undigested food in your stool? Prunes are high in fiber so I figured it was normal but I'm not sure.


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## em_t (Jun 8, 2010)

Try eating a tablespoon of sweetcorn with you main meal and see how long it takes to appear in your stools. That will tell you your transit time. Remember though your transit time will not be the same everyday and may be influenced by what you eat - ie: high fibre foods. I find undigested food in my stool all the time, its nothing to worry about. I find it happens more with vegetable skins and fruit skins which are difficult to digest anyway.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

Stuff that needs to be ground up (tough fiberous foods) come out the way you swallowed them. We all have some undigested food in the stool. Some stool colors and consistencies make it easier to see than others. Usually you notice it more in looser and lighter stools so I'd probably go with next day rather than a week in there, but it can vary.Normal mouth to anus transit time varies from 16-72 hours. So passing the camera the next day isn't all that unusual.Including corn in a meal (and not chewing it all that well before swallowing) is a typical DIY transit time test.We only really digest food for a few hours after we eat it. Once it goes to the colon the bacteria feed on what is left and the body removes the water that was added to make us able to absorb stuff in the small intestine. So most of the transit time we aren't actively digesting the food, just processing it before elimination.


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## enoughalready! (Apr 21, 2011)

Last year I was given a bag of ripe passionfruit and was greedy and had several. Anyhow, THREE MONTHS LATER I found the passionfruit seeds in my poo! Where the heck had they been all that time?! I don't have diverticulosis. I can only assume I had some sort of impaction and other material was somehow bypassing the impaction and coming out. And then eventually something shifted the impaction and hey presto - passionfruit seeds. And they definitely were passionfruit seeds (they are large, black and a distinctive shape). I had only eaten tha passionfruit once, on that one day 3 months previously. I find this very disturbing from the point of view of having "old" stuff sitting around inside me. Surely this cannot be healthy and maybe produce toxins that could cause polyps or other pre-cancerous conditions? i dunno. This is why these days I take movicol and do anything and everything possible to keep things moving all the time!


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