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Watch to learn more about the journey of what you eat!

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How your digestive system works - Emma Bryce

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Read and get a deeper understanding about how Digestion works!
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The digestive system is the series of tubelike organs that convert our meals into body fuel. There are about 30 feet (9 meters) of these convoluted pipeworks, starting with the mouth and ending with the anus. Along the way, food is broken down, sorted, and reprocessed before being circulated around the body to nourish and replace cells and supply energy to our muscles.

Changing Food to Fuel

Food on the plate must be converted into a mashed-up, gooey liquid for the digestive system to be able to split it up into its constituent parts: proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. Our teeth start the process by chewing and grinding up each mouthful, while the tongue works it into a ball-shaped bolus for swallowing.

Moistening saliva fed into the mouth from nearby glands starts the process of chemical digestion using specialized proteins called enzymes. Secreted at various points along the digestive tract, enzymes break down large molecules of food into smaller molecules that the body is able to absorb.

Once we swallow, digestion becomes involuntary. Food passes down the throat to the esophagus, the first of a succession of hollow organs that transport their contents through muscular contractions known as peristalsis.

The esophagus empties into the stomach, a large, muscular chamber that mixes food up with digestive juices including the enzyme pepsin, which targets proteins, and lipase, which works on fats. Hydrochloric acid likewise helps to dissolve the stomach contents while killing potentially harmful bacteria. The resulting semifluid paste-chyme-is sealed in the stomach by two ringlike sphincter muscles for several hours and then released in short bursts into the duodenum.

The first of three sections of the small intestine, the duodenum, produces large quantities of mucus to protect the intestinal lining from acid in the chyme.

Measuring about 20 feet (6 meters) in length, the small intestine is where the major digestion and absorption of nutrients take place. These nutrients are taken into the bloodstream, via millions of tiny, fingerlike projections called villi, and transported to the liver.

What's left in the digestive tract passes into the large intestine, where it's eaten by billions of harmless bacteria and mixed with dead cells to form solid feces. Water is reabsorbed into the body while the feces are moved into the rectum to await expulsion.

Other Key Players

Other organs that play a key role in digestion include the liver, gallbladder, and pancreas. The pancreas is a gland organ located behind the stomach that manufactures a cocktail of enzymes that are pumped into the duodenum. A duct also connects the duodenum to the gallbladder. This pear-shaped sac squeezes out green-brown bile, a waste product collected from the liver that contains acids for dissolving fatty matter.

The liver itself is the body's main chemical factory, performing hundreds of different functions. It processes nutrients absorbed into the blood by the small intestine, creating energy-giving glycogen from sugary carbohydrates and converting dietary proteins into new proteins needed for our blood. These are then stored or released as needed, as are essential vitamins and minerals. The liver also breaks down unwanted chemicals, such as any alcohol consumed, which is detoxified and passed from the body as waste.

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The digestive system is the series of tubelike organs that convert our meals into body fuel. There are about 30 feet (9 meters) of these convoluted pipeworks, starting with the mouth and ending with the anus. Along the way, food is broken down, sorted, and reprocessed before being circulated around the body to nourish and replace cells and supply energy to our muscles.

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I have learned that the Digestive system plays a huge role in the body and how important it is in the body system.I have learned how the process of digstion occurs. Also, how important it is to keep it healthy for the whole body to function.

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1. What is the function of the digestive system?
Answer:
> Its function includes digestion and absorption. The food that we intake is dissected into smaller molecules which are later absorbed into the body.
2.  What are the main organs for digestion? Give their primary functions
Answer:
>Salivary glands-  A tissue in our mouth that expels saliva that  moistens the food to help in chewing and swallowing and  keeps the mouth clean.
>Pharynx- A part of both Digestive and Respiratory system.  Its muscular walls function in the procedure of swallowing and serves as the pathway from the mouth to the esophagus
>Esophagus-  It transports food and liquid  from pharynx to the stomach and prevents the diffusion of substances from the food to the blood.
>Stomach- The stomach emits acid and enzymes that digest food. The main function of the stomach is to break down and digest food in order to extract nutrients.
>Small intestine- The nutrient absorption  occurs here. Together with the esophagus, large intestine, and the stomach, it forms the gastrointestinal tract.
>Large Intestine- Its major function is to assimilate the water from the indigestible  matter and escorts the waste material to the rectum.
>Rectum- acts as the temporary storage for feces before its is eliminated through the body from the anal canal.

3.  What are the accessory organs of the digestive system? Identify their important roles in the digestion process
Answer:
>Liver- Before the blood is passed from the rest of the body, the liver filters the blood coming from the digestive tract.
>Gallbladder- It stores bile, produced from the liver until it is necessary for digesting fatty foods.
>Pancreas- converts the food that we eat into fuel for the cells. It has an exocrine function which helps digestion and endocrine function that regulates blood sugar.