The large intestine is the final section of your digestive system, where your body absorbs water from food waste and prepares it to leave your body. It's called “large” because it's wider than the small intestine (about as wide as your wrist), though it's actually much shorter, only about five feet long compared to the small intestine's twenty feet.

After your stomach breaks down food and your small intestine extracts most of the nutrients, what's left is a watery mixture that enters the large intestine. As this waste moves through, the large intestine pulls out water and minerals your body can still use. What remains becomes solid waste, which your body stores temporarily before elimination.

The large intestine works slowly and methodically. Food might pass through your stomach in a few hours and your small intestine in several more, but it can spend 12 to 24 hours in the large intestine as water gets absorbed.

The large intestine is also home to trillions of helpful bacteria that aid digestion and produce certain vitamins. These microscopic organisms are so important that scientists sometimes call the large intestine a “bacterial garden.”