How to test bowel transit time at home
You can use sesame seeds or activated charcoal to test your, or your child’s, motility, and bowel transit time at home. When you are struggling with constipation it is important to know your transit time. This can help you to figure out what is working for you or your child so you develop a protocol that works. You need to know how long it is taking from when you first eat your food until you digest your food and it comes out of the bowel movement transit time can give you clues of problems that can be happening.
I have a video on testing your bowel transit time at home if you are interested in watching it.
If the the transit time is very rapid, under 12 hours or even under 8 hours, then there is concern that you might not be getting the benefit of the nutrients in your food.
If the transit time is longer than 24 hours or 36 hours or even longer than that, you’re probably struggling with constipation.
This can lead to problems with gas because your food sits in your intestines and ferments. Constipation can increase the absorption of toxins in our diets. Food is commonly spread with glyphosate, Roundup, with kills off our gut bacteria and causes leaky gut. We have all sorts of things that are toxins in our environment and the longer your food stays in your body the more problems it can cause if you’re absorbing those things.
Bowel transit time is a good clue to tell you if your constipation is improving or if your constipation is getting worse when you do different things like change diet or add fiber or eat less fiber.
It can be a really helpful tool to know what your Transit time is and if it is improving or worsening depending on the interventions that you’re doing.
One of the ways that you can test your Transit time is by using sesame seeds. You take a teaspoon of sesame seeds and you add them to a cup of water. Stir and then drink. We’re looking for how long does it take before you see those sesame seeds coming through in your stool. You want to do this right after you have your first bowel movement of the day. You want to drink this down and look to see how long it takes from when you first start seeing the sesame seeds until you’re no longer seeing the sesame seeds in your stool.
Ideally, you’re going to have one, two, or three bowel movements a day.
If you’re having less than one, then you’re struggling with constipation.
If you’re having more than three bowel movements a day, then that’s also a sign that you are having gut issues and that that you need to work on. You are not going to get enough absorption of the nutrients in your food. So then you’re going to want to do some things like adding some fiber like chia seeds flax seeds things like that that maybe can help slow down the transit time.
Adding more roughage in your food a really tricky thing when you are struggling with constipation. If you’re struggling with constipation fiber can improve in some people but it can also make it worse in others. I have a video on fiber.
Fiber will absorb out some of the fluid and so if you have stools that have already been sitting in your colon for a few days, and then you add fiber on top of that, it can really cause worsening constipation.
If you do add fiber, you want to do it slowly and increase it slowly. So you want to do this only when you reach the point where you are seeing the sesame seeds go between 12 and 24 hours, peeking around 16 hours.
Other options beyond the sesame seeds you can also use activated charcoal. So you could do a teaspoon of activated charcoal, which is a couple of grams. You can mix the charcoal with water or you can make an activated charcoal lemonade. I have a recipe for activated charcoal lemonade here.
Activated charcoal lemonade is something that you might be able to get your child to drink because the black lemonade is kind of fun and funky.
You’re going to want to do less charcoal if you’re doing this for a child, but you can do anywhere between a half a teaspoon to teaspoons.
You’re going to want to watch and see, when do you start seeing the charcoal in your stool. How long is it until you’re no longer seeing charcoal in your stool?
You can also do activated charcoal and pills tablets, taking anywhere from six to twelve pills.
You have to be cautious with us because charcoal absorbs everything. This is why if you end up getting some kind of a toxin or a poison and you go to the ER will they will give you activated charcoal because it absorbs so much. You don’t want to take activated charcoal if you’re taking medicine or you don’t want to take it at the same time. You want to separate your medicine out by a few hours to make sure that you’re not absorbing your medicine and not getting the benefit of your medicine.
If your stools are lighter colored and it might be harder to see the sesame seed, then the black charcoal might be easier to see and vice versa. If you have very dark stools than the sesame seeds might stand out really well and be able to see them.
If you find out that you are getting to 36 hours and you have not passed the sesame seeds or the charcoal, that is concerning and we need to work on it. That is definitely constipation and we need to work to get your Transit time sped up because you’re going to end up having a lot of bloating, gas and you’re going to have a lot of other gut problems. You don’t want it to go that long.
Ideally, you want to have one, two, or three bowel movements a day. That sounds like a lot, but every time you put food in your digestive system, your body is wanting to push out the excess.
I have a video on the Bristol stool chart that can help you to know what your goal bowel movement should look like. If you’re passing hard balls of stool or lumpy stools, then that is also, definitely a sign of constipation and slow transit time.
If you’re passing really liquidy watery stools, then that is a sign that your Transit time is really rapid because basically thr stool is coming through your digestive system so quickly that all of the water is not getting absorbed out.
Both of those ends of the spectrum can cause problems.
If you have a child who has been struggling with withholding or they’ve got megacolon, then you probably want to be on the side of really liquidy stools even though they might not get all of the benefits of their food for a little while. We need to shrink their colon down so they begin to feel the urge to go and the stool is too soft to hold back in.
On the Bristol Stool Chart a 4, sausage-like stool is ideal, but a 3-5 is a good range.
This test is easy and something you can do at home. You can also repeat it every few weeks as you do an intervention to see how effective it has been and if you need to make adjustments. It’s going to give you some really good clues that are going to help you to figure out what kind of interventions you need to do to be able to go to get your bowel movements regulated.
