The Digestive System

• Ingesting: Although all animals ingest — take something into the body
through the mouth — only humans appear to enjoy food as they ingest
it. The perception of subtle flavors is more closely connected to olfaction
than digestion. The perception of the five basic flavors is also considered
neurosensory.

• Digesting: Eating is fun, and ingestion is bearable, but neither provides

biological molecules that your cells can use. That task is accomplished by
the interaction of physical and chemical forces. The digestive tract is a
muscular tube lined with chemical factories that operate under the
direction of their own dedicated neural structures and under hormonal
control. The digestive system processes everything down the same track,
extracting fuel, biological molecules and monomers, and micronutrients
from whatever you eat.

• Exporting nutrients to the body: The end products of digestion are

biological molecules, such as glucose, that are absorbed across the
digestive membrane into the blood and then distributed in the body.

• Eliminating: The elimination of digestive waste is part of digestion.

The esophagus has two sphincters — one at the top
and one at the bottom — that control the
movement of the bolus into and out of the
esophagus. The pharyngoesophageal sphincter,
composed of skeletal muscle, takes part in the
muscular actions involved in swallowing. Peristalsis
propels the bolus along the esophagus. The lower
esophageal sphincter surrounds the esophagus just
as it enters the stomach.
• Food remains in the stomach about two to six hours,
during which it’s churned in an acidic substance that
the stomach secretes called gastric juice, ground up
by thousands of strong muscle contractions, and
offered in tiny pieces to protein-digesting enzymes.

• Stretch receptors in this layer send nerve impulses to

the brain when the stomach is full.

• Gastric glands in the mucosa secrete the components

of gastric juice. The mucosal coat is corrugated,
increasing the surface area inside the hollow. The
folds are called rugae.

• The chyme squirts into the small intestine through

the pyloric sphincter, between the lower part of the
stomach, called the pylorus, and the top of the small
intestine, called the duodenum.
The small intestine

• The intestine is a long muscular tube (6

meters) that extends from the pyloric
sphincter to the anal sphincter

• The intestine has structures that maximize the

surface area available for the exchange

• The lumen is lined by villi, a structure that’s

specialized for import and export processes
and that’s characteristic of tissues in body
locations where substances are exchanged

• Villi are fingerlike projections of the mucosa

that multiply the surface area available for
exchange. Each villus has its own assigned
capillary for absorbing materials from the
intestine into the blood

• Microvilli are even smaller projections on the

epithelial cells of the mucosa
The large intestine
• Chyme oozes from the small intestine to the large intestine (also
called the colon), passing out of the ileum through the ileocecal
valve into the cecum, the first portion of the large intestine
• The material is now called feces
• The large intestine is about 2 meters and is positioned
anatomically like a “frame” around the small intestine
• In the large intestine, water is reabsorbed from the feces by
diffusion across the intestinal wall into the capillaries. The
removal of water compacts the indigestible material in the colon,
forming the characteristic texture of the feces. In addition to
undigested food, the feces contain other bodily wastes to be
excreted. The brown color of feces comes from the combination
of greenish-yellow bile pigments, broken down hemoglobin, and
bacteria
• Your intestines are home to unimaginably large numbers of
bacteria, including hundreds of species
• Some of these bacteria produce beneficial substances, such as
vitamin K, which is necessary for blood clotting

Passing through the colon and rectum

• As the colon completes its work, peristalsis moves feces into the
rectum, which is located at the bottom of the colon. Stretch
receptors in the rectum signal to the brain the need to defecate
(release feces) when the rectum contains about 142 to 227 grams
• Pushed by peristalsis, the feces pass through the anal canal and
exit the body through the anal sphincter
• It processes and eliminates toxins. Toxic
byproducts of some drugs, including
alcohol, and other substances arrive
from the digestive organs through the
portal vein. It processes and eliminates
metabolic waste. The liver removes
dying red blood cells from the blood and
converts the hemoglobin to bilirubin and
other byproducts. These are delivered to
the intestine and excreted with the
feces. (The iron is recycled.)

• It stores glucose in the form of glycogen

and reconverts it when blood glucose
levels get low. This function is mediated
by insulin and glucagon.

• It stores vitamins and minerals.

• It produces many kinds of protein,

including protein hormones, the plasma
proteins, and the proteins of the clotting
cascade and the complement system, as
well as the production of alpha and beta
globulin.
• Mucus: mucus glands secretions which keep everything in the digestive tract moist, soft, and slippery, protecting the digestive membrane and
its underlying structures from abrasion and corrosion.

• Saliva: is a clear, watery solution that the salivary glands in your mouth produce constantly. Saliva moistens food and makes it easier to
swallow. It’s also a component of the sense of taste — a food substance must be dissolved in the watery solution for its chemical signals to act
on your taste buds. Enzymes in saliva start starch digestion even before you swallow food. The combination of chewing food and coating it
with saliva makes the tongue’s job a bit easier — it can push wet, chewed food toward the throat more easily. Saliva cleans the inside of your
mouth and your teeth. The enzymes in saliva also help to fight off infections in the mouth.

• Enzymes: Thousands of enzymes are involved in digestion. Enzymes are specialized in their function — a given enzyme typically catalyzes one
or only a few specific reactions. Digestive enzymes specialize in reactions that break specific molecules apart into component chemical
entities. They can be broadly classified as proteinases and peptidases, lipidases, and various kinds of carbohydrate-active enzymes. Enzymes
are part of the digestive fluids’ gastric juice and pancreatic juice. The suffix -ase indicates an enzyme that breaks a molecule apart.

• Gastric juice: is secreted from millions of tiny gastric glands in the gastric mucosa and enters the hollow of the stomach through gastric pits on
the mucosa’s inner surface. Gastric juice contains hydrochloric acid (HCl), which is extremely acidic and kills bacteria that may have entered
the body with food. It also contains the powerful proteinase pepsin, which can work only in this highly acidic environment.

• Pancreatic juice: contains many types of digestive enzymes.

• Bile: is a very alkaline, bitter-tasting, dark-green to yellowish-brown fluid produced by the liver. Bile may remain in the liver or be transported
to the gallbladder for storage before being expelled into the duodenum. The function of bile is to emulsify fats — that is, to create an
environment in which lipid-based substances can be mixed in a watery matrix for transportation and to make them available for chemical
reactions to break them down. Bile’s high alkalinity helps neutralize the strongly acidic chyme that comes into the duodenum from the
stomach. Another purpose of bile is to help absorb the fat-soluble vitamins K, D, and A into the blood.
Any Questions?