Facts About Digestive System

 

How many of us know the facts about digestive system?  How our digestive system works?  What are the facts that affect its functionality?  What has digestive system got to do with our good health?

Well, we can never deny that it is important to have a healthy body.  We would also agree that we have to eat a well-balanced diet combined with regular exercises to maintain our wellness.  But do we actually practise what we have said OR are all these just common preaches!

I believe many of us do not actually understand how our bodily organs work.  We fail to put in efforts to learn about our body and its organs.  We seem to think that things happen naturally and will be taken care by themselves naturally.

How wrong we are!   Whether we are ignorant or merely lazy, the result is disastrous.  Therefore it is not surprising that on average 62 million people consulted the doctor for problems connecting to digestive system every year.

No wonder there’s a quote found in an ancient Egyptian tomb that read :

One quarter of what you eat keep you alive, the other three quarter keeps your doctor alive.

Therefore allow me to share some knowledge on facts about digestive system.

 

Why Digestive System Important

Our digestive system consists of several organs that work together to convert the food that we eat to energy and nutrients.  This is the process of digestion.

Digestion is an essential process because without proper digestion, we will become ill.

In fact, poor digestion usually end up with acid reflux, indigestion and heartburn.

 

What The Digestive System Does

There are two processes that take place during digestion.  Mechanical digestion and chemical digestion.

Mechanical Digestion – this is a physical process whereby large pieces of food are broken down to smaller pieces.

Chemical Digestion – this process breaks the large molecules into smaller ones and convert food into new substance.

These two processes are necessary to incorporate, absorb and finally discard the unused portion of our meal.

 

Information About The Digestive System

The moment we put food into our mouth digestion process begins.  Our teeth start to chew and mash the food.  It is important to thoroughly chew the food so as to ease the digestive process.

The tongue will then evenly break down the food and push it down the throat.

During the process of chewing, the salivary gland will produce saliva to help the chewed food move down the esophagus easily.

Esophagus is the long tube leading to the stomach.  When we swallow, the food squeezes down the esophagus into the stomach.

The stomach which secretes stomach acid and powerful enzymes will break down the food further.  Once the food is sufficiently processed, it will next move to the small intestine.

The small intestine is made up of duodenum, jejunum and ileum.  The duodenum performs the continuous breaking down of the food using enzymes released from the pancreas and bile from the liver whilst the jejunum and ileum handle the absorption of nutrients into the blood stream.

The pancreas which secretes enzymes to break down proteins, fats and carbohydrates also makes insulin which metabolises sugar.

The liver’s main function in the digestive system is to absorb nutrients from the small intestine.  Bile produced by the liver which was secreted to the small intestine is responsible for digesting fats.  In fact the liver is the body’s chemical factory because it transforms various chemicals that are needed by the body.  The liver also detoxifies harmful chemicals.

Gallbladder is the organ that stores bile produced by the liver.

The large intestine (colon)  connects the small intestine to the rectum.  It is responsible for processing waste.  As waste (the leftover from the digestive process) passed through the colon water is removed from it.  This made the waste solid.  This waste is then emptied into the rectum.

The rectum holds the waste (faeces) until you push it out of the body through the anal canal.

The anus is the final digestive tract where waste leaves the body.

So every time we put something into our mouth the whole digestive process takes place.

With today’s modern diet, food that we consume are mostly overcooked and highly processed.  Most of the food is the cause of our bad health.  Our food intake has become so toxic and highly acidic that it actually damages our digestive tract.

Furthermore, our blood stream is congested with mild poisons as a result of consuming genetically modified food, sugar, injected meat and many more.  The thought that we have to eat to keep our body healthy resulted in a reverse effect.  Our immune system is actually so busy attacking these poison whilst our body constantly tries to balance itself.

 

How to Help Your Digestive System

Hence it is our duty to equip ourselves with health knowledge.  We have to realize that our diets should be more alkaline than acidic.  In fact a healthy diet should be 80% alkaline and 20% acidic.   Unfortunately the opposite happens.

For our information, alkaline increases oxygen in our body thus resulted in good health.  In the absent of oxygen, cells weaken, mutate and die.  This has been shown by Noble Prize work of Dr Otto Warburg in 1931.  Few years later, Dr Linus Pauling a two time Noble Prize winner showed that cancer cells cannot grow in an oxygen rich environment.

As a final say we need to understand how our organs work especially regarding our digestive system as it plays vital functions to attain good health.  We have to be concerned with the food we take.  We cannot just eat for the sake of eating.  We have to eat well to live well.  We need to learn the facts about digestive system!

 

 

 

Should you have any views, suggestions or comments, please pen them in the comment box below.  I look forward to your constructive insights.

If you find this information useful, please click the share button so that  more people could benefit.  Keeping healthy is our responsibility.  Creating awareness is our joint commitment.  Let’s work together towards a healthier community.

 

Your friend in health,

Norleila