How long digestion takes place

Women's Health. Primary Care. Mental Health. More Button Icon Circle with three vertical dots. It indicates a way to see more nav menu items inside the site menu by triggering the side menu to open and close. Sarah Fielding. This article was medically reviewed by Jason R. Our stories are reviewed by medical professionals to ensure you get the most accurate and useful information about your health and wellness.

For more information, visit our medical review board. In general, it will take four to six hours for your stomach to digest food. In fact, these high fiber foods help your digestive track run more efficiently in general. The quickest to digest are processed, sugary junk foods like candy bars.

Your body tears through them in a matter of hours, quickly leaving you hungry again. Digestion is the process by which your body breaks down food and pulls out the nutrients your body needs to operate. Anything left is a waste product, which your body removes. As you chew, glands in your mouth release saliva. This digestive liquid contains enzymes that break down the starches in your food.

When you swallow, the food moves down your esophagus — the pipe that connects your mouth to your stomach. A muscular gate called the lower esophageal sphincter opens to let the food move into your stomach. Acids in your stomach break down the food even more. This produces a mushy mixture of gastric juices and partially digested food, called chyme.

This mixture moves on to your small intestine. In your small intestine, your pancreas and liver contribute their own digestive juices to the mix. Pancreatic juices break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Bile from your gallbladder dissolves fat. Vitamins, other nutrients, and water move through the walls of your small intestine into your bloodstream. The undigested part that remains moves on to your large intestine. The large intestine absorbs any remaining water and leftover nutrients from the food.

They enter the bloodstream and travel to various areas of the body where they are used to repair and build. The unabsorbed and undigested food that remains then moves to the large intestine. Here, some more nutrients and water are absorbed. The remainder is stored in the rectum until it leaves the body through a bowel movement. To enjoy a healthy digestive system and to prevent constipation and diarrhea , try the following:.

Fiber-rich foods, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, help move food through the digestive system more rapidly. They also help prevent constipation, feed gut bacteria, and help with weight loss. Processed and fast foods are often high in fat, making them difficult to digest.

They are also rich in sugar, which may upset the balance of bacteria in the gut. These types of food also contain additives that can cause stomach upset in some people and contribute to poor health.

Drinking enough water and other liquids, such as teas and juices, can prevent constipation and keep food moving through the digestive system. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that help restore the balance of bacteria in the body by reducing the growth of harmful bacteria in the gut.

The following foods are rich in probiotics:. Make sure to include fiber-rich and prebiotic-rich foods to feed the probiotics you ingest as well as the healthy bacteria already in your colon. Engaging in daily exercise benefits the digestive tract, as well as the rest of the body. Some people find that a gentle walk after meals reduces bloating, gas, and constipation.

Being stressed can slow down digestion and contribute to symptoms such as heartburn , cramping and bloating. To reduce stress levels, engage in meditation, deep breathing exercises, and yoga. Even a few simple deep breaths before you eat can help. Gastric juices, acidic fluids, and enzymes breakdown your food at a molecular level and turns it into a creamy paste called chyme. At the start of your small intestine, fluids lubricate the chyme and neutralize its acidity.

Enzymes further break the chyme down and digest the proteins, fatty acids, and carbohydrates present. These smaller molecules are then able to absorbed by the body into the bloodstream. Those components are passed into the large intestines. The large intestines then extract water and electrolytes from the indigestible food matter. And then send it further down the tube.

Which sends a response for your body to head to the bathroom. The foods with the longest time to digest are bacon, beef, lamb, whole milk hard cheese, and nuts.