Understanding Digestion and How It Works
Your digestive system is a series of hollow organs spread throughout your body that are joined and look like a long, twisting tube. This “tube” called your digestive system starts at your mouth and ends at your anus. The rest of the system is made up of your stomach, your small intestine, the mucosa in many tiny glands that produce juices that aid in digestion, the organs, the liver and pancreas, that also produce digestive juices and many nerves and of course the blood that carries the nutrients absorbed from the food and liquids that we consume.
It is important that digestion takes place in our bodies because our bodies need the nutrients that are taken from the food we eat and the liquids we consume in order to grow the cells that make up our organs and to feed the cells by providing energy to them. Digestion’s purpose is to provide growth and energy. Digestion itself is a process in which the food and drink we consume is broken down into useable molecules that can be absorbed by nerves and blood cells. The process of digestion involves mixing of food, storing of food, breaking down of food and absorption of food and liquids. The first step in digestion is when we see or smell food or drink that is pleasing to our palates. We salivate when we see or smell such foods or drinks. This saliva is the first step in dissolving large particles of food into smaller ones. First the mouth has to take in the food and drink, move it around and chew it to make it small enough to swallow.
Not only does digestion include the movement of food and the breaking down of food by chewing but there is also a chemical process by which food is broken down into molecules by the body. This chemical process involves juices that the body manufactures specifically for this function.
The movement of food through the digestive system is performed by the hollow organs of the digestive system. These organs contain muscles in the walls that propel food and liquid and also have the capability to mix the food as it moves it. The movement action of the esophagus, stomach and the intestine is called, “peristalsis”. The movement is much like the movement we observe in the waves of the ocean.
The first movement occurs by choice as we choose to swallow what we have in our mouth or we choose to spit it out. Just watch a baby eat to remind yourself that swallowing is voluntary!
Once this first swallowing occurs from then on, all the movement in the digestive system is voluntary. We have no control over the movement of the food, nor do we usually feel the movement happening.
The stomach is amazing as it has three very important tasks to perform in the digestive process. The tasks are to: store the food and liquid it receives, to do this it has to relax in order to receive large volumes (especially at Thanksgiving and other holidays). Then it mixes the food and liquids and lastly it empties the contents of the stomach slowly into the small intestine.
In the small intestine, the juices contributed by the pancreas, liver and intestine, mix and push the contents further for more digestion. The digested nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal walls and what is left over inside the small intestine becomes waste product (undigested parts of food which is fiber and older cells). These waste products are propelled out of the small intestine and into the colon, where they sit for a day or two, until the feces are expelled out of the colon in the form of a bowel movement.
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