Digestive

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When food is eaten, it is not in a form that your body can use as nourishment. Food must be broken down, sorted, and reprocessed into small molecules of nutrients to be absorbed by the blood and dispersed throughout the body. The digestive system processes food into useable nutrients to nourish cells and fuel the body's activities. The digestive system is able to split the food into its constituent parts: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. Made up of about thirty feet of pipes and tubes, and more than six organs, the digestive system processes hundreds of pounds of food each year. Starting at the mouth and ending at the anus, it also separates out extra materials and detoxifies the blood.

Our teeth cut, tear, crush, and grind each mouthful of food to begin the process of digestion. In the mouth, the salivary glands respond to the thought or presence of food by producing a fluid that uses specialized enzymes, amylase and lipase, to begin the process of chemical digestion. The tongue mixes the food and rolls it into a soft ball, called a bolus, and pushes it towards to esophagus. Once we swallow, digestion becomes involuntary. While passing through the esophagus, wavelike muscular contractions of the alimentary canal, known as peristalsis, push the food onwards toward the stomach. The stomach is a large muscular chamber that mixes the food using digestive juices and enzymes such as pepsin, which breaks down proteins, and lipase, which targets fats. The hydrochloric acid in your stomach dissolves stomach contents and kills bacteria. The resulting mixture, called chyme, is sealed in the stomach by ring-like sphincter muscles until it is released in short bursts into the duodenum. The duodenum is the first of three sections of the small intestine. It produces large quantities of mucus, which protect the inside lining of the small intestine from the acidity of the chyme. The small intestine is the site where the majority of digestion and absorption of nutrients actually takes place. The nutrients that are extracted as the food passes through the remaining two sections of the small intestine, the jejunum and the ileum, are carried to the liver by villi that line the intestine walls. The villi possess microvilli, whichincrease the surface area of the tissue available to absorb nutrients. Anything that remains in the digestive tract, is passed onto the large intestine, where it forms feces.

Why the liver? The liver is actually the bodies largest internal organ and it is often considered the gateway to the body. All the foods that we eat, good and bad, any medications, and all the chemicals we take in daily, including hundreds in water and thousands in food, pass through the liver. The liver affects almost everything: energy, fatigue, overall well-being, etc... The liver performs biological miracles! A person can loose up to 75% of their liver and it is still capable of regenerating itself into a whole liver again. Even the ancient Greeks knew about the livers amazing abilities! When Prometheus gave fire to the humans, it is said that his punishment from the great Greek god Zeus, was to be chained to a rock where a vulture would peck out his liver. The liver would then regenerate itself overnight. The liver performs three main functions: digest materials, manufacture proteins, and detoxify the blood. Your liver decides what is allowed to be in the body. "We all may know that skim milk is good for your bones, fish is good for your muscles, and olive oil is good for your heart. But only a weird cartoonist thinks that your bones actually bathe in milk or there's a blood vessel that transports fresh olive oil through a side door in the aortic chamber. Everything we eat and drink has to be broken down into different chemicals before it can get to work on helping (or, in the case of some foods and drinks, harming) your body." And that's what the liver does. The sugar in your blood only supplies you with about ten minutes of energy! The liver replenishes that. It creates helpful glycogen from sugary carbohydrates and converts proteins we receive from our food to new proteins for our blood.

 Other organs play a key role in digestion including the gallbladder and pancreas. The pancreas creates enzymes to be used in the duodenum and the gallbladder secretes bile, an acidic waste product from the liver that is helpful is dissolving fatty matter.

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 * 1) http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=4787616
 * 2) http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/digestive_system.html
 * 3) http://www.sjhsyr.org/sjhhc/hidc07/Encyclopedia/2/19221.htm
 * 4) http://www.freewebs.com/soaring_sphincter_travel_agency/Liver.jpg
 * 5) http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/anatomy/digestive/
 * 6) http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/
 * 7) http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/digestive-system-article.html