Bowel Transit Time: Measurement Details Improve Evaluations

Transit time

Transit Time Is Not About A Cross Town Bus
No, this Transit Time isn’t the time for the train to travel from Boston to the North Shore station at Beverly Farms. Nor is it the time for the Metro to swing from Downtown DC to Reagan Airport. This transit is far more important to healthy brain function. Brace yourself for this piece of digestive detail – you may wish, as many do, to keep it to yourself.

Think Irritable Bowel Syndrome, either Fast or Slow, Diarrhea or Constipation, and you will be approaching the importance of the rate/time-of-passage-thing.

ADHD, brain function, brain health, brain recovery and brain treatment all depend upon an essential, yet often overlooked bowel Transit Time measurement: It’s the time it takes food in transit from your mouth in the North to the ultimate passage through your deep South. This round-the-world GI Transit Time is measurable. Just look at your watch and mark the calender. And the good news: Transit Time is quite fixable. In so many chronic brain/chronic illnesses presentation it is dramatically broken. But no one has asked because few are looking at that significant detail.

More Than Simply Bowel Frequency
This Transit Time thing will be news to many. – And, if it is not identified and treated, all of our best interventions, be they pharmacologic, functional, nutritional, diet, or exercise won’t work – because one of the main biotransformation systems is broken or rusty. The bowel sorta works, but isn’t working efficiently because transit time is too long or too short.

My current favorite question: “How many times a day do you go #2?” – just doesn’t, just can’t cover this transit detail.

Example and Down Load For Instructions
Recently a young grad student attending James Madison University presented as markedly refractory to any meds for years. SPECT brain scan was pockmarked with diffuse cortical hypoperfusion – looked like the cortex was beaten repeatedly by a ball peen hammer. Her neurotransmitter testing showed marked serotonin decreases – but bowel health looked good. Her answer to the # 2 Question: every day, no problem.

But her Transit Time [Download this Transit Time Outline], measured by a completely unsophisticated big dose of corn right from the can at supper, appeared at the South Station 5 full days later! This, dear readers, is a seriously corrupted Transit Time! [Another recent patient with daily #2 - the TT was 10 days!]

Any bowel inefficiency directly effects brain and metabolic health. This transit time thing has something to do with every brain issue from autism and ADHD, to brain injury and depression, to hormone balance and preventing Alzheimer’s. Your brain can’t grow and heal itself without proper nutrition. Neurotransmitters and their precursors arrive at your brain and elsewhere through effective bowel function. If you bowel is rusty your liver is constipated, you can count on it – and psych meds… just don’t work.

For an interesting and arcane reference to transit time regarding physics and atomic particles, take a peek at this link which discusses sojourn time and its relationship to transit time. Physicists and mathematicians are very interested in this same topic. The passage of particles relevant to time is measured on many deep levels!

This T ransit Time news recently arrived from a presentation given by Russell Jaffe, MD, PhD [check out his bio] -who is also the director of ELISA/ACT Biotechnologies LLC, which under his direction has developed 420 assays based on the core LRA [Lymphocyte Response Assay] by ELISA/ACT technology [ELISA: Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbant Assay with an /Advanced Cell Test - the gold standard for immune dysfunction issues]. Jaffe is a remarkable lecturer, provides excellent information, with useful and practical insights backed by comprehensive references in molecular and cellular physiology.

The Science Details
Over at Google there are no less than 12,000 articles on measuring bowel Transit Time with Activated Charcoal, available at your local pharmacy for a pittance. Most of these articles don’t recommend this simple process, but rather encourage of a variety of expensive markers and higher levels of technology.

But why spend the big bucks when you don’t have to?

For your own benefit you can take 10 caps of activated charcoal [no prescription necessary] with a meal, look at your watch and count the hours until the black carbon arrives at the South End. According to Jaffe, it should be 12-18 hrs – but others stick with 18-24 hrs. Longer or shorter will bring inevitable problems with micronutrients, efficient bowel function and over time will significantly effect brain function. The charcoal is available at any pharmacy, over the counter, and *has no risks!*. It’s a bit more sophisticated than corn if you plan to tell your medical team.

Activated charcoal is not an expensive medical intervention, and will take you a long way to becoming a more informed consumer. It is not unusual to find “average Americans” with a transit time of >48 hrs. Long and short transit times are both bad news.

The fix is simple depending on the transit time: Get the right fiber, check for gluten sensitivity, heal the bowel, eat the right foods, and correct the acid-base balance [more later] in the body. And, yes, cut out the high glycemic index carbs, the trans fats, and if too slow, as most are, add more fiber to correct the rusty transit time.

Probably best to measure Transit Time on the weekend in an effort to obviate “bowel surprises.” Your answer will very likely tell you something about your brain health!