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Ever felt your stomach is like a magician’s box—all the yummy foods and frosty drinks disappear as soon as they touch your mouth? Sure enough, it’s science, but it’s no less than magic! Like a blender, your stomach transforms those tasty nibbles into something your body uses for energy. Let’s take a trip down and see how the food in the stomach turns into energy vials!
When you bite into a pizza or burger, you rarely consider what happens afterward; you just eat while your body takes care of the rest. Isn’t it so convenient? But did you know your body takes the food on an adventurous journey through a long, twisty path called the digestive system? Interesting, but it’s not as simple as that.
Are you ready to unravel the chain of incidents and understand how food gets digested in the stomach? Fasten your seat belts, as this journey is filled with lots of twists and turns!
What is the digestive system?
If you’ve ever wondered what happens to the food in the stomach, know that it undergoes digestion. Simply put, digestion is the process of breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and eliminating waste. However, no task is complete without a team effort. Even though the digestive system pulls the strings, the following are the key players:
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Mouth: This is where the party starts! Your teeth mash and grind your food, breaking it down into smaller pieces. Your tongue helps move the food around and mixes it with saliva, making chewing easier.
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Oesophagus: This long muscular tube, extending from the mouth, pushes the food down to your stomach.
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Stomach: It’s a sac-like structure that churns and mixes the food with powerful juices, breaking it down even further.
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Small intestine: It’s the longest part of the digestive system, where the food gets mixed with special juices from your pancreas and liver, which help break down proteins, fats, and carbs into tiny particles your body can absorb. Tiny finger-like projections called villi line the small intestine, soaking up all the essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals from the broken-down food.
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Large intestine: The leftover parts of the food that your body can't absorb travel here. The large intestine absorbs water from this leftover material, making it solid waste.
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Rectum: This is the last stop on the digestion highway. It stores waste until you're ready to remove it from your system.
So, that's the amazing digestive system team! They work together to keep you fueled and healthy. Make digestion smoother with The Good Bug’s range of prebiotics and probiotics . Now, let’s witness the real magic and see how the food in the stomach gets digested!
What happens to the food in the stomach?
Did you know our body prepares for digestion even before we take our first bite of the food? Visualising the splendid spread or smelling the aromatic dish sets the stage for the digestive process. However, the real action occurs once the food reaches the stomach after chewing. Let’s take a closer look at how food gets digested.
Initiation of digestion
Digestion begins in your mouth, the oral cavity, where your teeth grind and mash the food into smaller pieces. Saliva also joins with its special enzymes and breaks down carbohydrates in the food, especially sugars and starches. Enzymes make complex sugars simpler for your body to absorb later.
Once your food is well-chewed and mixed with saliva, you swallow it, pushing it down to the stomach through the oesophagus. So, by the time the food reaches the stomach, the initial stages of mechanical and chemical breakdown are complete. Now, the stomach is ready to take over and give your food a good churn!
Digestion progress in the stomach
The well-muscled stomach is like a heavy-duty blender, taking over the food transformation process from the mouth and oesophagus. But before the food enters the stomach, it has to cross a checkpoint called the lower esophageal sphincter (LES). It’s like a gatekeeper that only opens to let food through and prevent it from coming back. Imagine if all the food you chewed came back to your mouth or you ended up vomiting continuously. Quite disgusting, right?
Finally, the food reaches your stomach—a J-shaped muscular sac with thick, strong walls. These walls are lined with powerful muscles that constantly contract and relax, churning and squishing the food. Besides muscle power, the stomach uses gastric juice (a combination of digestive enzymes and stomach acid) to break down food further. If enzymes transform complex food molecules into simpler pieces, stomach acid breaks down proteins and creates an acidic environment that keeps harmful bacteria at bay.
The combined effect of muscle contractions and gastric juices turns the food into a mixture called chyme, which leaves the stomach and enters the small intestine. Now, let’s see what happens to the chyme in the small intestine.
Keeping this process smooth can be challenging. Incorporating probiotics from The Good Bug can greatly affect how well your digestive system handles food.
Nutrient absorption in the small intestine
Like the checkpoint, the food in the stomach (chyme) exits through a small valve-like opening called the pyloric sphincter. It opens a little at a time to let small amounts of chyme enter the small intestine. The first part of the small intestine is called the duodenum, and it's here that the real magic of nutrient absorption happens.
Though the chyme enters in a digested form, it must go through another round before your body can absorb all the good stuff. The small intestine throws another enzyme party with the help of two other organs—the pancreas and the liver!
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Pancreas: It produces a variety of powerful digestive enzymes, including trypsin, amylase, and lipase, which help break down proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, respectively.
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Liver: The liver produces bile, a greenish-yellow liquid, which is stored in the gallbladder and released into the small intestine. Bile, along with lipase, helps break down fats into fatty acids and glycerol, making them easier to absorb.
The small intestine’s inner lining is covered with millions of tiny finger-like projections called villi. Their huge surface area allows for maximum nutrient absorption. By the time the chyme leaves the small intestine, most of the nutrients have been absorbed by the villi and transported into your bloodstream. But what happens to the leftover material? Let’s find out what the large intestine does with it.
Removing the waste through the large intestine
We’ve reached the final leg of the digestive journey, and this is where the large intestine steps in. After the villi in the small intestine have absorbed all the nutrients, the remaining material moves to the large intestine or colon through a one-way valve called the ileocecal valve.
The large intestine isn't as interested in breaking down food anymore—its main focus is water absorption. It soaks up all the excess water from the leftover material and solidifies the waste products into what we know as poop. The colon is also home to several good gut bacteria, which break down the remaining material and produce beneficial vitamins like vitamin K.
The final stop on the digestive journey is the rectum. This muscular sac acts like a temporary storage unit for the waste products, which are now solid and ready to be eliminated from the body through defecation.
Our incredible digestive system is like a symphony, each organ playing a vital role in turning food in the stomach into the energy that keeps you going. And if it goes out of tune, you can expect to experience digestive woes like bloating , constipation , or diarrhoea . Teamwork makes the dream work, and you should be awed by the fantastic job your body does every single day.
Taking care of your digestive system is like giving your body a high five! Eating a balanced diet, staying hydrated, and managing stress are all great ways to keep your gut happy and healthy. And if you're looking for extra support, The Good Bug offers a variety of resources and products to help you keep your digestive system singing its happy tune. Visit our website today and explore how we can help you feel your best from the inside out!
References
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/digestive-system-how-it-works
https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/digestive-system.html
https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/videos/814-digestion-of-food
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21758-stomach
https://www.uofmhealth.org/conditions-treatments/digestive-and-liver-health/your-digestive-system
