Regular exercise and the maintenance of a healthy body weight may be important for the health of the colon and the rectum. A study carried out in 1997 examined the risk for colorectal cancer among a group of female nurses and found that moderate exercise, such as a 60 minute walk, on a regular basis reduced the risk of developing the disease by about 50 percent. That same study further indicated that the nurses with the highest body mass indices were nearly twice as likely to develop colon cancer as those subjects with the lowest body mass indices. Another study carried out a few years later in 1999 similarly indicated a possible link between regular exercise and colorectal health and additional research focusing on this topic is ongoing.

The rat rectum tissue section presented in the digital image above was labeled with Oregon Green 488 conjugated to the lectin wheat germ agglutinin. Fluorescent wheat germ agglutinin conjugates are often used as probes for the Golgi network in mammalian cultures and tissue samples. The tissue section was also stained with Alexa Fluor 568 conjugated to phalloidin and Hoechst 33342, which target F-actin and DNA, respectively. Images were recorded in grayscale with a 12-bit digital camera coupled to a Nikon Eclipse 80i microscope equipped with bandpass emission fluorescence filter optical blocks. During the processing stage, individual image channels were pseudocolored with RGB values corresponding to each of the fluorophore emission spectral profiles.