Good appetite and good digestion are the basic standards for a healthy person.
This time, Dr. Clove will start from the [entrance] of the digestive system and show you about saliva, a key member of our health.
Saliva makes people eat smoothly.
If the mouth is compared to the gate of the digestive tract, then saliva is the concierge, keeping the mouth and esophagus moist so as to greet food smoothly.
Perhaps when it comes to saliva, many people will feel sick, but the composition of saliva is really simple, almost all of it is water:
The name of saliva should be [saliva], which is mainly secreted by salivary glands and has a water content as high as 99%.
People’s salivary glands secrete 1-2 liters of saliva every day, as much as two or three bottles of mineral water.
It is precisely because there is so much water in saliva that food and saliva can be fully mixed when chewing and become soft small food balls, reducing your chance of choking and helping you swallow the food smoothly.
Therefore, without saliva, food is not good.
Saliva Makes Life Taste
If there is no saliva, I’m afraid a lot of food will be tasteless.
The taste buds on the tongue are used to feel various tastes, but most taste buds are hidden deep and not all over the tongue.
Some experiments show that if one closes one’s eyes and puts dry sugar and salt into one’s mouth, it is often difficult to distinguish them from taste.
However, once saliva moistens it, with the continuous release of small molecules on sugar or salt blocks, taste receptors on taste buds will be awakened, and we will taste sour, sweet, bitter, salty and other tastes ().
Saliva helps digestion
Saliva is also a kind of digestive juice. Digestive enzymes can participate in the process of digesting food. The most representative digestive enzyme in saliva is [salivary amylase].
The human body is a precise biochemical body, and countless complicated biochemical reactions are going on every minute and second. The process of digesting food is one of them.
Enzymes act somewhat like matchmakers. They can [match] some substances and accelerate some chemical reactions in the human body.
Saliva amylase breaks down chemical bonds between monosaccharides in starchy substances to produce a [sweet] taste. When tasting delicious food, it tells the brain that the food is safe. Therefore, the brain directs the oral cavity and esophagus to swallow the food.
Therefore, before the eaters enjoy the delicious food, don’t forget to thank the three feet for coveting.
Saliva is a good guardian of teeth.
Teeth are the hardest part of the human body, but without saliva, they will be much more fragile.
Dr. Clove said earlier that 99% of saliva is water, but don’t underestimate the remaining 1%, which is very important to dental health.
There is some calcium carbonate in the remaining 1% of saliva. If saliva is excessively diluted by water, the content and proportion of calcium carbonate are insufficient, enamel will be easily eroded.
A more representative example is [infant bottle caries], which is caused by long-term and inappropriate use of bottles to drink milk.
Some people think that sugar is the bad thing, but in fact, even if only drinking water in bottles for a long time, it may also lead to an increase in the incidence of dental caries in infants.
In addition, it is precisely because of this 1% special substance that saliva becomes a buffer for oral pH, which can maintain the pH value at about 7.
If the oral environment is alkaline for a long time, it is easy to accelerate the formation of dental calculus. If the environment in the oral cavity is acidic for a long time, it is easy to cause enamel damage and dental caries.
Everyone’s teeth usually last for decades, so a stable microenvironment is needed, and saliva plays an important role.
See here, will everyone still abandon their saliva?