“road trip” through our digestive track
2 kinds of digestion
Food is chemically digested in the stomach, then “squirted” into the small intestine, the small intestine absorbs the main nutrients, large intestine absorbs water.
Mechanical digestion is the teeth, they shred the food, so the pieces will fit into your body to break it down. Saliva is an action of chemical digestion.
In the mouth: where digestion begins
teeth- shred and tear food
tounge- manipulates food
saliva- begins the process of digestion chemically, specfiically carbohydrates
amylase- enzyme that breaks down carbs into simple sugars lipase- breaks down carbs into simple sugars mucus- to coat food, to make it easier to transport the food down esophagus to the stomach bolus- ball of chewed-up food+ saliva+ mucus mixture mouth- pharynx- esophogas- stomach
Stop #2 the pharynx and esophagus
epiglottis- flap of cartilage that covers the air ways so food doesn’t enter
how you casn choke. food thats too big but small enough that it can get stuck peristalsis- sysmic contraction of muscles to move food theough digestive system
gag reflex is here, like a swallowing reflex
Stop 3: Stomach
stomach-store food as we digest it
begins the process of digesting proteins protiens → amino acids (pepsin) gastric juice: pepsin (enzyme)
activates pepsin + kills bacteria softens connective tissues (such. as meat) Mucus- coats stomach lin9ng to protect it against the acid and pepsin
Chyme- mixture of partically food+ gastric juice
chyme exits the stomach into the small intestine through the sphincter
Stop 4: small intestine
~ 18 ft long, taller ppl tend to have more small intestine, smaller ppl have shorter ones the main site of digestion fats/lipids → fatty acids Neutreinta pass through the intestinal cells into the blood The small intestine gets help from other organs, aka accessory organs, making the enzymes it uses to digest food
liver- produce bile to coat fats to dissolve them into the blood gallbladder stores and releases bile into the pancreas pancreas - produces amylase (carbs), fats, Trypsin, produces sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the stomach acid
Stop 5: the large intestine/ colon
process and clear solid wastes ` 1000 types of bacteria live in your gut they make the growth of harmful bacteria lessen digest some materials we cant use provide vitamins for us, like vitamin K Feces
material that your body cannot process (foreign objects) if we pass waste back too quickly, not enough water is absorbed, there's too much liquid, resulting in diarrhea
if the waste is too slow, you absorb too much water, and you end up with constipation bc of how dry it is.
Digestion track