Digestive System

The Digestive System

The digestive system takes in food, breaks it down, and absorbs nutrients into your body. Nutrients are substances that your body uses for energy, growth, reproduction, and repair. Nutrients include vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

There are two types of digestion:

1. Mechanical Digestion: Mechanical digestion is when your body physically breaks down food, such as when you chew food in your mouth. Your stomach also breaks down food mechanically when it squeezes and churns.
2. Chemical Digestion: Chemical Digestion is when your body breaks down foods using chemical reactions. Your body produces the enzymes throughout your digestive tract to speed up these chemical reactions. Enzymes are special proteins that provoke chemical reactions.

Digestive Tract

1. Mouth: Digestion begins in your mouth, where chewing (mechanical digestion) stimulates salivary glands to release saliva (chemical digestion), which breaks down food into a soft ball. The ball gets pushed to your…
2. Esophagus: That’s where it gets pushed down by a squeezing action, or muscle contraction, called peristalsis into the…
3. Stomach: The stomach is a giant muscle, and it squeezes and churns the food, helping to break it down (mechanical digestion). The stomach also releases enzymes and chemicals that break the food down (chemical digestion). The food mixes with the digestive juices to produce chyme (a pulpy mix of food and acid), which moves to the…
4. Small Intestine: The first part of the small intestine is called the duodenum, and it contains digestive juices released from the pancreas and liver, called bile. While bile breaks up fats, the pancreas releases digestive juices that chemically break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. The duodenum is where most of the digestion in your body takes place. Nutrients are also absorbed into the bloodstream in the small intestine. Next stop for chyme is…

Large Intestine: This is where most of the water is absorbed into your body. As the water in the chyme gets absorbed, undigested parts harden into waste. The end of the large intestine has a part called the rectum which leads to the anus--the last part of the digestive tract. Together, they control when we go to the bathroom to expel fecal material (waste).