How long does food take to go through your system?

[Lizzie]

I am (rightly or wrongly) trying to control my symptoms by diet and keeping a diary of what goes in and what comes out, but I am finding it impossible to work out the connections between the two. I thought that food is meant to pass through vegetarians within 24 hours at most and meateaters take a little longer?

I really don't understand how the digestive system works. Today I got a terrible fright when I studied the contents of the loo, thinking I must have had a massive haemorrhage (bit of a hypochondriac!). Then I realised there was a lot of undigested beetroot there but I haven't eaten beetroot for nearly three days. I haven't been constipated in the meantime, either, so does anybody know, can some food just sit there for days while later meals get digested properly around it somehow?

 

[ameslouise]

Hi Lizzie - Here is an old thread from 2010 that talks about transit time:

http://www.crohnsforum.com/showthread.php?t=9317&highlight=transit

It's different for everyone, depending on disease, location of disease, missing parts, etc. I am missing my entire colon and about two feet of the end of my small intestine. Spinach goes thru lightening fast - about 15 minutes. Other food takes more than 24 hours. Weird.

And for god's sake woman! I don't ever eat beets anymore! Gives me a heart attack every time!!

- Amy

 

[Lizzie]

Thanks for the link. Most of the problems there seemed to relate to stuff going through too fast. (That isn't my problem any more since I changed my diet really radically.)

I'm curious about the pain thing because I often get pain shortly after eating, but I'm not clear what is causing it - as my problems are in the rectum it may be the previous meal or the one before that rather than what's just been eaten.

It has occurred to me now that maybe eating beets is not so clever!

 

[tiloah]

Thanks for the link. Most of the problems there seemed to relate to stuff going through too fast. (That isn't my problem any more since I changed my diet really radically.)

I'm curious about the pain thing because I often get pain shortly after eating, but I'm not clear what is causing it - as my problems are in the rectum it may be the previous meal or the one before that rather than what's just been eaten.

It has occurred to me now that maybe eating beets is not so clever!

When I had an abscess/massive inflammation in my TI, I would get excruciating pain about halfway through a meal, which usually led to me vomiting, despite that the food I had just eaten could not possibly be the problem. I figured out that when I eat, it gets my digestive system working again, so whatever had been stuck at the area of inflammation would start to be pushed around again leading to the pain. Owwiee!

Sometimes I eat "marker" foods to see how long it takes to go through. I won't eat these things for weeks and then eat them and however long it takes to show up in the toilet is how long it takes to go through me. For example, when I eat a poppy seed muffin I usually see the seeds in the toilet about three hours later. I can do the same thing with corn, lettuce, sesame seeds, etc. Although some of these foods are "bad news" foods that should be avoided.

 

[tiloah]

I find this especially fascinating because the problems at the end of my digestive tract are what causes food to go through me so quickly, but it seems like it shouldn't go through say, my stomach any faster than a normal person. Also it varies, because sometimes food will be in the toilet in a couple of hours, and other times food will still be in my stomach (I can burp it up/vomit it) hours later. Very odd.