Audio Name: hhp 15a

Duration: 36 minutes
NT777

[00:00:43]
CLASS DISCUSSION

Digestive System
● The digestive system transfers organic nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and water from the
foods that a person’s eat to the internal environment
● The gastrointestinal tract (GI tract) to the alimentary canal is essentially a tract that is
open or continuous with the environment
● The structure will extend through the torso, through the abdomen, and ends with the
anus

○
○ The lumen of this tube is continuous with the external environment
■ Therefore, whatever is in the inside of the lumen is technically exterior to
the internal environment of the bodies
● Upon entering the internal environment, nutrient molecules will be transported to the
cells throughout the body by the circulatory system
● Important Point: after a person consume foods, the food will move to the alimentary
canal or to the GI tract
○ However, it is not until the nutrients within the food had lived in the GI tract and
enter the body tissues and the circulatory system to be distributed throughout the
body that technically, the nutrients can be used to support human function
● Prior Concepts That Understands Digestive Physiology
○ Pool Substances
■ Beginning with a particular substance, remember that the pool of the
substance is not the amount that is not available to support body function
 ■ The idea is that there are ways to increase the size of the pool, meaning
increasing the amount available to do biological work as well as ways to
decrease the amount of substances available
■ The digestive system place a role here:
●

○ This is because a person can consume the nutrients or the

molecules in the food that the person eats
■ Once they enter body tissues or the internal
environment, they can be part of the pool and the
body tissues can use these nutrients to carry out
biological activities
■ There is also a way to eliminate excesses from the body to the digestive
system
● The GI tract can also be a way to help remove excesses
substances from the pool
○ The Role of Epithelial Cells
■ Epithelial cells separate compartments

■
● The ideas in this image also apply to the gastrointestinal tract
● In the lumen, the foods that were consumed would be in the
lumen and will be separated to the digestive and absorptive
processes
● During absorption, what happen is that the nutrients will cross
through the absorption cells to enter the circulatory or lymphatic
system to be distributed throughout the body
 ○

■
● In order to move the nutrients from the lumen to the blood vessels,
there has to specific transport to facilitate this movement
○ What is the human body made of?
■ Macromolecules
● These can be used as the substrate for ATP production
■ Minerals
● These are related more to sodium, potassium, calcium, chloride,
etc.
■ Water
● This is very important because it is a large substantial contributor
to the internal environment
■
● This picture proportionalized the chemical compounds that make
up human body
○ Example
■ A large proportion of human body is made up of
water, but a person also relies on lipids, proteins,
carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins to carry out
biological activities
● The idea here is that the nutrients can be brought into the body
through the foods that a person eats

■
● This figure reiterates 1 content that there are few key ideas that
are important to keep in mind in studying digestive physiology
 ● Macromolecules
○ These are made up of bonds that will link the different
monomers into the macromolecules
● The role of the digestive system is to take the large
macromolecules that are in the foods that were eaten and do the
reverse, breaking them down so that the smaller products of the
digestion can be more easily absorb from the lumen of the GI tract
into the cardiovascular system or the lymphatic system that will be
distributed throughout the body
● Carbohydrates
○ These are made up of sugar units
● Proteins are made up of amino acids
○ There are 20 different amino acids that can be found in the
food that a person eats
● Triglycerides are fatty acids
○

■ This schematic is the glycerol units and you can

see that there are 3 fatty acids that are bound to
the glycerol to form triglycerides
○ Looking at the product of digestion, there can be a
monoglyceride
■ There is glycerol and 1 fatty acid chain plus 2 fatty
acids
● The Structures that make up the Gastrointestinal Tract (GI Tract)
○ The gastrointestinal tract is also known as the alimentary canal
○
○ 1. Mouth
■ This is the first structure that the food will pass through
■ Foods will bring to the mouth and it will be chewed
■ As the person begins to swallow foods, the foods will move from the
mouth into the pharynx
○ 2. Pharynx
■ This is a common passageway for both food as well as air
■ As a person swallows a food, the epiglottis will be going to cover the
trachea so that the food will not go into the trachea, instead it will move
into the esophagus
○ 3. Esophagus
■ This is a long tube that will move swallowed food into the stomach
○ 4. Stomach
■ From the stomach, food will be going to move into the small intestine
○ 5. Small Intestine
■ This are made up of these structures:
 ●
■ From the small intestine, the food will be going to move into the large
intestine
○ 6. Large Intestine
■ This is named large intestine because it is a large structure and this will
lead to the anal canal
○ 7. Anus Canal
■ Any remains that will remain into the gastrointestinal tract can be
eliminated from the body to the anus
○ These primary structures that the food products will pass through as they were
processed by the digestive system
● Fact about Gastrointestinal Tract
○ This is about 30 feet long
■ There are couple of reasons for this
● 1. The gastrointestinal tract does have layers that are partially
contracted
● 2. There are surface areas in the small intestine because the
small intestine is convoluted
○ It maximize surface areas from the nutrient absorption
● Accessory Organs of Digestion
○ The accessory organs and tissues also helps in the digestion of food to release
the nutrients
■ However, few will not go into the structures, rather, the accessory organs
will produce secretions that will be added into the gastrointestinal tract
● Some of the important structures include:
 ○

○ 1. Salivary Glands
■ These are shown in yellow in the picture
■ These produce salivary that is secreted into the
mouth
○ 2. Liver
○ 3. Gallbladder
○ 4. Pancreas
■ Exocrine Portion
● An exocrine gland decrease products
through ducts into the lumen
● The exocrine pancreas will secrete digestive
enzymes into the lumen of the small
intestine
■ Endocrine
● The endocrine cells within the pancreas
produce hormones that will be released into
the blood
● Digestive System Processes
○ The GI system relies on 4 processes to turn ingested food into usable pieces,
meaning to extract the new nutrients and then to get the nutrients into the blood
for transportation to body cells
■ This is represented by this image
 ●

○ This shows the 4 main processes: Digestion, Absorption,

Secretion, and Motility
○

■ This represents the primary structures of the

gastrointestinal tract
● Food and water will enter the mouth from
the esophagus into the stomach
○ The small particles of food in the
stomach will move into the small
intestine
■ Then it will move into the
colon where the large
intestine are, and into the
rectum and eventually out to
the anus as feces
○ There can be both absorption and secretion
○

■ These arrows help to represent absorption and

secretion, and the proportion of absorption and
secretion that may take place in each organ of the
gastrointestinal tract
○ 1. Digestion
■ This refers to the breakdown of a whole food into absorbable pieces or
nutrients
■ 2 forms of digestion
● 1. Mechanical Digestion
 ○ This is the physical breakdown of foodstuffs
○ Example
■ Chewing a food
● You are breaking the food into smaller
pieces so that it can advance to the
remainder of the GI tract
● 2. Chemical Digestion
○ This is an enzymatic breakdown process
○ The enzymes can break the molecular bond to produce
smaller pieces of the particular food
● Important to note: both mechanical and chemical digestion will
occur in the entire link of the gastrointestinal tract
○ 2. Secretion
■ This is where enzymes and other chemicals released by exocrine glands
will be added to the lumen of the GI tract to aid in digestion
■ Secretion means that the digestive enzymes are secreted into the lumen
to help with the chemical breakdown of the food particles or some other
digestive functions
■ Example
● Amylase
○ They can break the molecular bond to create the
monosaccharides
■

○ 3. Absorption
■ This is the process by which digestive molecules and small nutrients will
move from the lumen of the GI tract to the epithelial cells and will enter
the blood vessels
● This is represented by the black arrows in this figure:

○
■ Important thing to note: depending on the type of the nutrients, it will be
absorbed in the blood or in the lymph
● CHO, amino acids, etc. will be absorbed into the blood
● Fats and fat-soluble vitamins will be absorbed in the lymph
○ 4. Motility
■ This refers to the advancement of food particles and nutrients along the
link of the GI tract
● This will be achieved through contractions of smooth muscle in the
GI tract
■ Primary functions
 ● 1. Mix the contents to aid in digestion and absorption of the
nutrients
● 2. Peristalsis
○ Moving the contents of the nutrients through GI tract from
mouth to the anus
○ 5. Elimination
■ This is the expulsion of the remaining materials from GI tract
■ Not all foods and nutrients are absorbed
● Example
○ Fiber
■ They remain in the GI tract at all times
■ In addition to the food that a person consumes, there are secretions that
are added to the GI tract lumen that are not reabsorbed
● All of these can be eliminated in the feces
● The digestive system is capable of substantial absorption
○ On average, people consume a liter of water a day and 500-800 grams of solids
○ People secretes more than 7 liters of fluid per day
■ Math
● This is 3 times the amount of the water that the person had
ingested
○ Of all the substances consumed, 99% are absorbed in the body
● Structure of the GI Tract Wall
○ The GI tract wall has the same basic structure from mid-esophagus through the
anus
○ 1. Mucosa
■ There are epithelial cells
● They are the absorptive cells
■ There are endocrine and exocrine cells
● The endocrine cells produce hormones that will travel in the blood
● The exocrine cells produce secretions that will be going to be
added into the lumen
● Some of these hormones are in the mucosa layer and some of
these come from other places like the liver, gallbladder, pancreas,
and the salivary glands
■ Muscularis mucosa
● This is a muscular layer located in the mucosa
○ 2. Submucosa
■ Within the submucosa, there are both blood vessels and lymphatic
vessels
■ There is also known as the submucosal plexus
● This is part of the nervous system that helps facilitate a
communication form 1 part of the GI tract to another as well as
communication between the different parts of the body
○ 3. Muscularis Externa
■ This contain muscles that can constrict and dilate;
● Circular muscle, myenteric plexus, and longitudinal muscle
○ 4. Serosa
■ This is a connective tissue layer