Human Digestion

Human Digestion

Do you ever wonder what happens to your food once it is in your mouth? Well I know that I have and soon you will know just what happens to the food that we eat. "For us to use the food that we eat the body has to break it down into smaller portions so it can be process or turn into excrete waste."(www.enchantedlearning.com) It is very important that everything works in the digestive system, which is a basic functions, the path and disease of the system are vital to daily life. I'm going to take you on a journey and try to explain the digestive system on the way.

There are a lot of functions of the digestive system, which is also called the gastrointestinal tract or the alimentary canal. The work begins when it enters the mouth; here is where the teeth, tongue, and salivary glands break down the food. They are the first ones to begin the digestive process which transform into a bolus. The food is broken down into different types of energy sources that parts of the body can use. Then the food goes down into the pharynx, or as we know it the throat, is common passage for food and air to travel.

After leaving the pharynx the food then makes it way down to the esophagus and then to the stomach. As the food travels down there is a little tissue there that will help the food along so it want get into your wind pipe, it is called the epiglottis. Once the food is in the stomach, the bolus is mixed with the acid secretions to transform it into chyme, which is a semiliquid food mass. The purpose of the stomach really is to get the food chemically ready for the small intestine. The process of this will take one to four hours, but it all depends on what you ate and how big the portion was.

When the process food leaves the stomach and goes into the small intestine, the pyloric sphincter opens up. In the tube shaped organ or the small intestine, the majority of this organ is the absorption of nutrients. The small intestine has three parts to them and also has three other parts that help break the chyme. The three parts of the intestine are duodenum, jejunum, and ileum which play a part in receiving and absorbing the things for the process. The other three organs, which are located near the stomach, which plays a part, are the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas.

The liver produces bile, a yellowish-brown substance that combines bilirubin that gives the waste it color. The bile then gets stored in the gallbladder until it is ready to be use or till the food gets into the small intestine. The pancreas produces insulin that will help get the sugar into the cells for energy. All the fluid and other materials that weren't needed get store in this organ. Yes, the last stop on the digestive train, which is known better as the large intestine.

The large intestine consists of six parts, but I'm only going to talk about the two basic