Your colon, or large intestine, is the main hub of your digestive tract. Keeping your colon healthy, helps strengthen your body's immune system and helps prevent colon cancer.

Your colon has three main functions: the final digestion of food, eliminating digestive residue and discharging toxins and wastes from your body. This accounts for seventy percent of your entire immune system, which makes your colon’s health central to your overall well-being.

When your colon is clean and functioning normally, you experience good health and the well-being that comes with it. When your colon gets congested, stagnant wastes build up only to send poisons back up into your system, polluting your inner environment.

A good and balanced diet, helpful supplements, proper exercise, adequate rest and stress relief all contribute to your colon’s (and therefore your) overall health and well-being. But improper diet, insufficient exercise, stress, overeating and ignoring “the call of nature” can all lead to bowel problems.

Foods like meat, dairy and processed flour make it difficult for the colon to do its job. When fermented waste combines with the body’s own bile acids from the liver, carcinogens can form, which can ultimately develop into colon or rectal cancers-- the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world.

Physicians recommend screening for colon cancer after the age of 50. Even healthy individuals with no history of colon cancer, colon polyps, other bowel problems or bleeding should have a colonoscopy.

Colonoscopy is a procedure used to see inside the colon and rectum. Colonoscopy can detect inflamed tissue, ulcers, and abnormal growths. The procedure is used to look for early signs of colorectal cancer and can help doctors diagnose unexplained changes in bowel habits, abdominal pain, bleeding from the anus, and weight loss.

Most of us know from experience that an unhappy colon makes it very difficult for us to enjoy life fully. So take care of your colon and it will take care of you.