As Gut As It Gets Marvel at your digestive system. Consider it a rite of passage, as it were

Think your smartphone is a feat of engineering? It’s got nothing on your incredibly efficient, astonishingly complex digestive system

YOUR DIGESTIVE SYSTEM IS LIKE a food-processing plant; when all the parts are working well, you don’t even notice the near-constant activity. But if something goes wrong, the result is bloating, pain, constipation and other digestive disorders. So a healthy digestive system is not to be taken for granted.

The good news for runners is moving your body helps you move your bowels. The muscles in your digestive system are positively affected even by brisk walking, says professor of medicine Dr Sandra Fryhofer. When the muscles in your body are active, the squeezing of muscles in your gut (peristalsis) can be stimulated, which helps things along. In a study of 62,000 women, those who were physically active were half as likely to experience constipation as those who worked out less than once a week. So it’s worth knowing how the system works, what upsets it and what keeps things moving.