|
 Digestion / Internal THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM AND HOW IT WORKS The digestive system prepares food for body use, and eliminates any unusable parts. Muscles, nerves, and glandular secretions are essential for the digestion process. Digestion of food begins in the mouth, continues in the stomach, and is completed in the small intestine. In each of the three organs, digestive juices act on the food to help change it for body use. Six accessory are teeth, tongue, salivary glands, liver, gall-bladder and pancreas. After you put food into your mouth, there is a nerve at the back of the neck, which says to the brain "Hey Brain! There's food in my mouth", so the brain sends a message to the salivary glands to start producing saliva, so digestion begins. That is why it is important to have well maintained / healthy teeth. They are not in your mouth only to make you more attractive when you smile, but to masticate the food, and with the help of your tongue, to mix the good with saliva. Digestion begins as the starch is changes to sugar (maltose), the enzyme is ptyalin. To drink whilst you have food in your mouth onlllly moistens the food, making it easier to slip down the oesophagus to the stomach. It is important to remermber that we want the food to be broken down by the saliva, not by fluid taken into the mouth, as the secret of good digestion starts with the combination of chewing your food slowly and allowing the tongue to help mix the saliva with your food. Gulping food and eating junk food is very bad. To chew your food slowly and well, so that you van taste your food, is an important step. After the food has been mixed around inside the mouth by the tongue, and masticated by the teeth, it is broken down by the saliva, and passes down the oesophagus into the stomach, after which the process continues through the small intestine and the large intestine, Waste matter (faeces) is passed through the anus which is at the base of the rectum. The processing of a meal usually takes approximately four hours. |
