Digestion Series: Part 9 - Large Intestine / Colon

Now that nutrients have passed through the small intestine into either our #bloodstream or #lymphatic system, what happens to the rest of what we ate?

The remaining material from #digestion and absorption pass into the large intestine (colon), which has a larger diameter than the small intestine.

The colon has two functions: 1) #fermentation of the remaining material and 2) water/electrolyte absorption and stool formation.

Fun fact: It takes ~4 hours for the first portions of a meal to reach the upper large intestine, and ~8 hours for the rest of the undigested portion. However, movement through the #colon is significantly slower than the rest of the digestive system, and it can take more than a week (!) for all of the remaining residues from a meal to be collected as feces.

Are you ok to talk about #gas for a moment? Bacteria in the colon are beneficial as they metabolize unabsorbed polysaccharides and other food residues. By-products of this #metabolism are gases such as hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. Other bacteria in the colon consume some these gases as part of their everyday life, but the amount of gas that we pass as flatulence is determined by a balance of the gas that colon #bacteria use versus how much gas is produced.

Yet another reason to keep our "gut bacteria" healthy and plentiful (fresh/raw foods, #Life9, etc.) so that we can hopefully push that balance more towards the bacteria using the gases versus the alternative!

Another fun fact: the colon contains the highest concentration of #microbes of any human system, with between 300 and 1,000 different species. The most abundant bacteria in the colon are members of the genus Bacteroides, including Peptostreptococcus sp., Eubacterium sp., Lactobacillus sp., and Clostridium sp.