Food is the most important thing for the people, and food is digested and absorbed in our digestive system. In order to complete these two functions, the digestive system needs many different organs of the whole body to work together, including oral cavity, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver and gallbladder.
The following 9 truths about the digestive system may surprise you.
1. Eating does not depend entirely on [gravity]
When we eat, food does not simply rely on gravity to go down through the esophagus into the stomach. When food enters the upper end of the esophagus through the oral cavity, the muscles of the esophagus will be stimulated, causing wavy peristalsis, pushing food along the esophagus through the cardia to the gastric cavity.
Relying on muscle peristalsis, even if your body is upside down, food can still reach your stomach smoothly. Of course, no one will eat upside down. People are more concerned about why the food they eat is not digested.
People often hear of insufficient gastric motility or dyspepsia. Is what dyspepsia? Please click on the following link: What if your stomach is not good?
2. Gas-loving bacteria
Gastrointestinal gas is mainly a mixture of inhaled air, gas produced by food digestion itself, and gas produced by bacterial fermentation of food residues in the gastrointestinal tract. These substances will be pushed forward along the digestive tract and into the large intestine.
Then, a large number of bacteria in the intestinal tract began to work, Various gases are produced in this process, Eventually discharged from the body (commonly known as [farting]). These gases include carbon dioxide, hydrogen, methane and hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell). Most of them do not have the special smell of what, while the remaining individual [troublemakers] stink and bring some troubles to people from time to time. If you want to know more about these gases, you can click on the following link:
4. [Behind] Ulcer
Parietal cells in the stomach secrete a large amount of hydrochloric acid every day. People are not unfamiliar with hydrochloric acid, because this powerful chemical is often used to remove rust from steel plates or iron wires. In addition, some cleaning products (such as toilet cleaners) also contain hydrochloric acid. However, the concentration of hydrochloric acid in the stomach is much lower than that of these daily chemicals. Its main function is to kill bacteria entering the stomach with food and help digestive enzymes in the stomach to function better.
In a healthy state, the stomach wall is covered with a layer of mucosal barrier to avoid the erosion of the stomach itself by these acids. When the defense and repair functions of this barrier have problems, ulcers will occur.
In 1982, Marshall and Warren of Australia discovered that the culprit causing ulcers was Helicobacter pylori, a microorganism that lives in the gastric mucosa. Thanks to this discovery, doctors began to treat ulcers with methods targeting Helicobacter pylori, greatly reducing the chance of ulcer recurrence. They were awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of this important discovery.
Do you want to know more about Helicobacter pylori? Please click on the following link:
5. If you are not hungry, you will growl.
Intestinal sounds are caused by intestinal peristalsis. Under normal circumstances, the number of intestinal sounds per minute is 4-5, which is difficult to detect unless examined by stethoscope. When hungry, the gastrointestinal tract is empty, and the sound of intestinal sounds or gastric peristalsis is especially loud without the cover of food. In addition, some pathological conditions will cause obvious changes in bowel sounds. Weakening or hyperfunction of bowel sounds is helpful for clinicians to diagnose diseases.
6. Miraculous [Enzyme]
Our daily laundry detergent contains various enzymes, which help break down various stains on clothes. The human digestive system also contains many similar enzymes.
The digestive system uses these enzymes to break down food. Proteases can catalyze the breakdown of various proteins, amylases can catalyze the breakdown of various carbohydrates, and lipases are mainly responsible for catalyzing the breakdown of various lipids. For example, saliva contains amylases and lipases, and gastric juice and small intestinal juice contain proteases.
7. The small intestine is the [home]
The stomach can stir and mix food well, By muscle contraction, large pieces of food are ground to form pasty chyme. Because the stomach plays an important role in mechanical digestion, people usually think that the stomach is the most important organ in digestion and absorption. However, in the very important chemical digestion process, the role of the stomach is very small.
Chemical digestion refers to the decomposition of food into small molecular nutrients that can be absorbed by the human body and enter the blood through chemical reactions.
The small intestine accounts for three quarters of the length of the digestive tract, where most of the digestion and absorption processes take place. Relying on various powerful digestive enzymes, the small intestine absorbs most nutrients into the blood.
8. Small intestine is not [small]
The length of the small intestine varies from person to person, About 4 ~ 6 meters, with an average diameter of about 2.5 centimeters, based on the above data, it can be estimated that the surface area of the small intestine is less than 1 square meter. However, surprisingly, the actual surface area of the small intestine is half the size of a badminton court due to numerous annular folds, finger-shaped villi and microvilli protruding from the villi surface on the inner wall of the small intestine.
The presence of these folds and villi enables the small intestine to absorb food better.
9. There are strange tricks in the intestine
Endoscope is a kind of detection device used to examine internal organs of the body (such as digestive tract and respiratory tract) and cavity (such as chest cavity and abdominal cavity). As early as the 19th century, German physicians invented the original version of endoscope, which is used to detect ears, nasal cavity and urethra.
In 1868, German doctors used an endoscope to observe the human stomach cavity for the first time. Unlike the endoscope he uses today, the metal material he used at that time was not easy to bend, making it difficult to reach into the body. To observe the inside of the stomach, the clinician hired a skilled sword swallow who could easily swallow the endoscope (47 cm long and 1.3 cm wide).