An Article About The Digestive System

The digestive system is the group of organs in your body responsible for metabolizing food, or breaking it down into the basic nutrients that are in it and making use of the energy, or calories, in the food.

The digestive system is a series of organs that extends from the mouth to the rectum. It is basically a series of tubes that food flows through as it is processed, or digested. Parts of the digestive system include the teeth, tongue, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, small and large intestines, and rectum.

The mouth part of the digestive system is the point of entry of food into the digestive system. Of primary importance here are the teeth, which break up large pieces of solid food into much smaller pieces that are easily processed further down the line. This is why it is important to chew food thoroughly. The tongue is used to manipulate food to and from the teeth, and then push the food into the esophagus.

The esophagus is a long tube that connects the mouth to the stomach. Chewed up food in the esophagus is forced down into the stomach by a process known as peristalsis. This is a series of contractions of muscles in the tissue of the esophagus that push food down like waves push driftwood to the beach. This is why you can swallow while upside down and the food will still reach your stomach.

The stomach is the organ that most people think about when they think about the digestive system. The stomach also uses peristalsis to push food along. The stomach breaks food down into increasingly smaller pieces with the help of stomach juices, which are secreted by glands on the wall of the stomach. Stomach juices consist of enzymes and hydrochloric acid. Some of these enzymes start to digest proteins and fats, and break them down into their components, which are amino acids and fatty acids, respectively.

From the stomach, food moves to the small intestine. The small intestine is a twenty foot long tube which is coiled up to make it seem smaller. The broken down food that leaves your stomach gets processed by a new set of gastric juices in the small intestine, including bile and new types of enzymes. While food is passing through the small intestine, the body absorbs nutrients such as sugars, vitamins, and amino acids through the wall of the small intestine. This is where carbohydrates are broken down into their component sugars.

The food then goes to the large intestine. What's left of the food at this point is everything that wasn't digestible. Fiber is an example of indigestible food content. The top of the large intestine is the colon, which processes the water out of the food product that enters the large intestine. What's left of the food is then compacted by the large intestine into feces, which are pushed, still by peristalsis, out of the rectum.
The digestive system is a complicated and highly specialized array of organs, each doing their part to provide for the body's nutritional needs. All digestion of food happens here, so without it our bodies would have no energy and no building blocks to maintain the rest of the tissue in our bodies.