What happens in the colon ?

What happens in the colon?
The colon is part of the digestive system, which is
also known as the gastrointestinal tract or gut.You will
see from the diagram that the gastrointestinal tract is
like a long tube that starts at the mouth and ends at
the anus. The gut breaks down the food we eat so
that our body can absorb its nutrients to give us good
health and energy. The first stage of breaking down
food is chewing. As food is swallowed it goes down
the oesophagus into the stomach, where digestive
juices break it down further over 2-4 hours. The stomach
then empties the food into the small intestine, where
the main digestion and absorption takes place. The
waste products from this process, which include liquid
and undigested parts of food, are then pushed into the
large intestine. This is made up of the caecum, the
colon – the ascending, transverse, descending (distal)
and sigmoid colon – and the rectum. The colon
absorbs some vitamins and minerals and water from
the liquid waste to make solid faeces (stools), which are stored in the rectum until they pass out
of the body through the anus in a bowel movement. The colon also normally contains good
bacteria which ferment and digest some of the hard-to-digest parts of food. This helps us to
absorb additional key nutrients.

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