Transcript The Digestive System

The Digestive System
By: Mike Phelan
Mouth
• Teeth break up food
into smaller pieces
• When food enters the
mouth, the teeth start to
grind up the food so it has
an easier time traveling
down the esophagus. To
keep this part of your body
healthy, people should not
chew tobacco or smoke to
prevent mouth cancer. Also,
if you brush your teeth
every day, it helps get rid of
plaque build-up and keeps
your gums from developing
gingivitis.
Saliva
• Moistens food
• Starts to break down
food
• In the mouth, saliva starts
working and it, too, starts to
break down food. It also
moistens the food to help it
go down the esophagus.
Use the tips to keep your
mouth healthy to prevent
unhealthy saliva and too
much bacteria in the mouth,
causing the immune system
to work harder, making it
more susceptible to
disease, from severe dental
problems to bad breath.
Esophagus
• Lined with muscles
• Pushes food to the
stomach
• Mixes food
•
Once the food is broken down
enough in the mouth, the tongue
pushes the food down the
esophagus. Then the muscles in
the esophagus push the food
toward the stomach. It is
important to keep this
passageway healthy. To keep it
healthy, people need to visit the
doctor about once a year to
check to see if they have any
allergies. If they do, then when
they eat that food, their
esophagus begins to close.
Also, if someone has a cold then
they could get a sore throat, so it
is good to take allergy
medicines.
Stomach
• Can hold 2-4 liters of
food
• Stores food
• Turns food into a
soupy liquid with
chemicals
• Churns food
Once the food has passed down
the esophagus and into the
stomach, it goes to work by
churning food into a soupy liquid
with the help of chemicals.
When it’s done, it stores the
food until it is ready to go into
the small intestine. To keep your
stomach healthy is really simple
– all you have to do is eat a
balanced diet and drink a lot of
liquids. By doing this, you stay
thin and give your whole body
nutrients. Plus eating junk food
can cause heartburn. This
happens when some foods relax
the valve that prevents the
stomach acids from entering the
esophagus and lets the juices
come up and irritate your
Small Intestine
• Broken down into small
enough particles to allow
the nutrients in the food
to go into the
bloodstream
• 2-4 cm. in diameter
• Villi absorb
The small intestine’s main job is to
absorb nutrients so that they can
go into the bloodstream. They
can do this because of villi.
There are thousands of villi that
cover the inside of the small
intestine. This would not be able
to happen if it had not been for
the mouth, the esophagus, and
the stomach that food has
passed through, because now it
is small enough to be absorbed.
Keeping this healthy is important
because if you don’t, then your
small intestine cannot allow food
to pass through so smoothly.
The way to prevent this is a
healthy diet and exercise.
Large Intestine
• Water and salt is
absorbed
• Things it doesn’t
absorb are feces
• Muscles move feces
to the anus
• After the small intestine
absorbs most of the food,
it passes it on to the large
intestine where the water
is taken out. The water is
absorbed into the
bloodstream and brought
to the cells, just as in the
small intestine. Drinking
lots of fluids and eating
fiber is a good way to
make the large intestine
work better.
Anus
• Exit point for feces
• Strong muscles to get
rid of solid waste
•
The anus is the exit point for all
the feces, or food that has not
been absorbed into the
bloodstream. The anus is lined
with muscles that move the feces.
It works similar to the esophagus,
but it is getting rid of feces instead
of moving food to the stomach.
Keeping your anus healthy is as
simple as good hygiene and a
balanced diet. If you don’t eat
right, you can develop diabetes,
and since during diabetes there is
not enough insulin produced, it
causes there to be a lot of waste
(since insulin transports glucose to
the cells), making the anus work
harder than it has to.
Pancreas
• Is an organ
• Outside digestive tract
• Produces chemicals that
help digestion of
carbohydrates, fats, and
proteins
• Helps neutralize stomach
acid
• The pancreas is an organ
that is outside the digestive
tract. It makes chemicals that
help digest fats,
carbohydrates, and proteins.
Also, it neutralizes stomach
acids. To keep the pancreas
healthy is simple – by just
eating right, it can prevent it
from working harder than it
needs to neutralize stomach
acid. If you eat a lot of fatty
foods, for instance, over time
it can cause people to
develop diabetes, which is
where the pancreas does not
Liver
• Produces bile
• Stores fats and
carbohydrates
• The liver is an organ that
creates bile and then
moves it on to the
gallbladder where it is
stored. The bile that is
produced breaks down
fats during digestion. By
eating a healthy diet you
can make the liver work a
lot less, because if you’re
eating fatty food, it
causes the liver to
produce more and more
bile to break it down.
Gallbladder
• Stores bile
• Releases bile into the
small intestine
• Bile breaks down fats
• The gallbladder is the
place where all the bile is
stored after it is produced
from the liver. The bile is
produced to break down
fats during digestion.
Lastly if you eat healthy,
like you need to do for
almost every other body
part, it will keep the
gallbladder healthy and not
have to work as hard since
healthy foods don’t have
fat, and then the
gallbladder doesn’t have to