How does your body turn food into poop? Human digestive system
How does the food you eat turn into poop? This process begins in your mouth, when food is mixed with saliva chemical digestion begins. In saliva there is an enzyme called amylase, which is responsible for breaking down carbs. While mechanical digestion begins just when food is chewed.
The epiglottis is a flexible flap at the end of the larynx in the throat. It works as a switch between the larynx and the esophagus, letting air into the lungs and food into the esophagus. The esophagus is a tube made of muscles that run from the throat to the stomach and is about eight inches long.
The esophagus uses a process called peristalsis, which involves moving food from the mouth to the stomach. This process looks like a sea wave going through the muscle. Then the food enters the stomach, which is a round, hollow, "J" shaped organ, which is located between the esophagus and the duodenum. The stomach has three mechanical jobs:
First, the stomach has to store the food it has received in liquid and for this to happen, the muscle in the upper stomach has to relax so that it can take in a lot of food. The inner layer of the stomach is full of wrinkles known as rugae, these allow the stomach to stretch and make room for large meals, helping the digestive system to grasp and move food during digestion.
The second job of the stomach is to mix the liquid from the food with the digestive juice it produces. The muscles of the lower stomach mix these things by accident and break the food into small three-millimeter pieces.
Finally, the stomach slowly empties this acidic mixture into the small intestine; This is an organ in the gastrointestinal tract, where most of the final absorption of nutrients and materials from food takes place, is located between the stomach and large intestine, receives bile and pancreatic juice through the pancreatic duct to aid in digestion.
The duodenum is the first part of the small intestine. It gets food that has been partly digested from the stomach and starts to absorb nutrients. The duodenum is the smallest part of the small intestine. It is about 9 to 11 inches long and roughly horseshoe-shaped.
When pancreatic juice and bile are released into the duodenum, they help the body digest fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Now that the food is in the stomach, it has a long way to go. The small intestine becomes 20 times longer as a person grows, while in a newborn it measures a little more than 200 centimeters, in an adult it reaches up to 6 meters. In adults, the inner walls of the small intestine show mucous folds, called “Plicae circulares" These folds are common in the early stages of life, but they shrink over time.
Digestion is very important as the body needs nutrients from food and drink to function properly and stay healthy. Nutrients include proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and water. Your digestive system breaks down nutrients into pieces that your body can receive and use to increase energy and cellular repair. Proteins break into amino acids, fats into fatty acids, and glycerol carbohydrates into simple sugars. What's left, which is mostly liquid, moves into the colon.
In this part of the small intestine, food particles become even smaller. Nutrients from food go to other organs of the body, water is taken up by the colon, while bacteria in the colon break down what's left, and the colon moves leftover material into the rectum. The rectum is like a storage support for waste. The muscles of the rectum move waste, called stool, out of the body through the anus.
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