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Do you have a healthy colon?

What Is A Healthy Colon?

Your colon (also known as your large intestine) is about 5 feet long and functions like a powerful storage and waste disposal site in your body.

Involuntary muscle contractions push digested material through your colon. It also stores waste until it's time to excrete it and absorbs any leftover nutrients (like water, electrolytes, and vitamins) from digested foods and sends them back into your body's system to be used.

A healthy diet full of fiber and probiotics (good bacteria and yeast), plenty of rest and water, and regular exercise keeps your colon healthy.

But the Standard American Diet that lacks fermented foods, lack of exercise and inadequate amounts of water and fiber mean that most people do not have healthy colons and proper elimination. This causes a buildup of waste material on your intestinal walls that creates an environment where toxic pathogens can thrive, leading to illness and disease.

If you want to improve the overall health of your body, then you must start by improving the health of your colon!

Signs of Colon Health

If you want to confirm that your colon is indeed truly healthy, read through our checklist below.

Some indicators of a healthy colon:

• Clear skin without blemishes
  
• Daily elimination
  
• Mild-smelling breath
  
• No mucous, partially digested food, or blood in your stools
  
• Elimination time between 18 and 24 hours
  
• A big bowel movement in the morning
  
• A smaller bowel movement later in the day
  
• Stools expelled effortlessly
  
• Soft, well formed stools, often in a long tube shape

The Elimination Test

Besides checking for the physical signs of a healthy colon every time you eliminate, you can monitor your elimination time (how long it takes food to be digested and excreted) to evaluate your colon health.

The easiest way to test your elimination time is to prepare beets. Their red pigment is so strong that it colors your stools, and you will know how long your body took to process them.

1. Prepare fresh beets (we prefer fermenting them, since unfermented beets are too sweet and can feed candida) to eat. Make sure you eat the whole vegetable and not just the juice because it travels through your system very quickly.
   
2. When you eat the beets, make note of the time and day.
   
3. Look at your stools until you notice the red pigment from the beets. Ideally this will be 18 to 24 hours after you first ate them.