To be honest, I read the following article and my first thought was to type it up and post it on the site, then I thought, do people really want to read about burps, farts and poop (gross!) But this article will offer you advice and information that broadens your perspective and shakes up your life in ways you might not have discovered on your own. Trust me, you?ll learn from it and enjoy it?farts and all.
No matter how good you look in a belly shirt, your innards are hardly a pretty sight. Your gastrointestinal (GI) track deals with the dirty work of your body: digesting food for nutrients and sending out the trash. This noisy, smelly, squishy system includes the esophagus, a 10-inch-long tube; the stomach, a fist-size bag of muscle; 20 feet of small intestine; and 6 feet of large intestine (aka the colon). With no Google map, we?re often left wondering what the hold up or (the rush) is in there and why normally dependable routes suddenly cause trouble. But because of the unappealing issues that arise, talking about your own highway problems isn?t as easy as discussing rush-hour traffic. ?There?s definitely embarrassment, and women tend to suffer in silence? Says Jacqueline Wolf, M.D., a women?s GI disease specialist at Harvard Medical School
How long does it take for food to travel through my system?
The majority of the trip averages 24 hours, says Patricia Raymond, M.D., a gastroenterologist in Chesapeake, Virginia. Once a steak hits your stomach, roughly 3 liters of hydrochloric acid begin to turn it into paste. About 30 minutes later, the food sludge travels to the small intestine, which immediately absorbs the nutrients and sends them to your bloodstream. The leftovers move into the colon, where any remaining liquid is sucked out, and they solidify into feces. This detritus takes from 1 to 4 days to snake its way through your colon and into your sewer system, depending on how much fiber your waste contains, says Michael Levitt, M.D., Director of research at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Is eating lots of fiber really that important?
Uh, yeah! Fiber is a component of all plant-based foods, such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. You don?t digest fiber, so it acts like a Brillo pad for the intestines; scrubbing out bad cholesterol and soaking up water so that waste can glide through. Chances are you?re not eating enough (the average person ingests only 7 grams daily, though the RDA is 25 = about six servings of fruit or vegetables and two slices of whole-grain bread). To stay regular, beef up your produce intake. Or take a daily 1500-milligram fiber supplement of psyllium husks, suggests Mehmet Oz, M.D., professor of surgery at Columbia University and Coauthor or You: on a diet. But if you need immediate action, try a laxative agents that help liquids mix with the cement in your pipes.
Why does my stomach gurgle when I?m hungry?
?It?s very much like the Pavlov?s dog effect,? Dr. Raymond says. ?You see the food, you smell the food, your saliva glands start to go, and your stomach starts to go.? That sets off a chain reaction of churning, grinding, and spasms in the intestines meant to help food move through the system. If there?s not much in there to move, there?s nothing to muffle the noise, so the gurgling is louder. Dr. Raymond compares the effect to the way a partially filled water balloon makes more sound than a full one. But bellies rumble even after you?ve gorged. Called borborygmi, these are simply the sounds of digestive enzymes and gas moving through the intestines.
Why do I fart? And can I prevent it?
We all expel up to 2 liters of gas a day. This gas comes from two sources: ?you either swallow air or you make it from various foods,? Dr. Levitt says. When you take in air from carbonated drinks and chewing gum, it doesn?t smell when it comes out the other end. Noxious emissions happen anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours after you eat, when bacteria that live in your colon dine on leftovers your small intestine can?t digest, creating smelly gas as a by-product.
Since everything we eat leaves a meal for bacteria, you really can?t stop natural gas production. A liquid diet would eliminate most of the fumes because fluids usually leave too little residue for bacteria to get a hold of. A more reasonable solution is to avoid foods on date night that create especially pungent odors. Sulfur-rich items like eggs, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage produce hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. Beans also create a mighty stink because we lack the enzymes to fully digest the complex sugars they contain (Beano, a natural supplement you take with food, provides the missing enzymes). The sound, however, is all you. A fart becomes audible when you tighten up, Dr. Raymond says. ?If you just relax and let the gas come out, you may have smell, but you won?t have the noise.?
Continue on part II
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