What is the Digestive System?

 What is the digestive system people ask? To me the digestive system is fascinating and it has really interests me. The digestive system involves the breakdown if food into liquids. It is known as the GI tract. The digestive system is important because your body needs nutrients from the food to stay healthy. The system breaks down the nutrients from the food you eat to small components to store energy, help you grow, and repair any broken down parts.

        Proteins are turned into amino acids, fats break are turned fatty acids and glycerol, and carbohydrates broken down into simple sugars. Each part of the digestive system helps move and break down food into smaller parts. Once the food is broken down into smaller parts, the nutrients can be removed from the mixtures and used for the body. There are many different parts to the system including, mouth, esophagus, stomach, pancrea, liver, gallbladder, small intestine, and large intestine. All of these elements work together transporting your food throughout the GI tract to complete the process of breaking down food.

        First the food goes to your mouth which chews the food. The salivary glands in your mouth make saliva which moistens your food so it can easily move down your esophagus. After you swallow, peristalsis pushes down the food you swallowed through the esophagus into your stomach. In your stomach there is an acid called gastric juice that breaks down the food. The strong muscles in your stomach mix food with the gastric juice that helps break down the food to make it chyme, the chyme then is transferred to your small intestine. The pancreas makes a digestive juice that contains enzymes that break down carbs, fats, and proteins. The then pancreas delivers juice to the small intestine through tubes called ducts.

        The liver makes another juice that is called bile. Bile helps absorb fats and break down some vitamins. The liver then transports the mixture to the gallbladder for storage is not used, or the small intestine for use. The gallbladder is used to store bile from the liver between meals. When you eat, the gallbladder delivers the mixtures into the small intestine for use. The small intestines mixture contains bile and pancreatic juice to complete breakdown of food. It moves water from the bloodstream to help break down. It also absorbs water for other nutrients and for the use of the food. Then the food goes to the large intestine. The bacteria helps break down remaining nutrients. Parts that are still not used, go to waste.

        As you can see the digestive system is very complex and the food you eat goes through a lot to get all the nutrients and vitamins out if it to become useful for the body. It is truly fascinating to see what it has to go through to become useful for the body.  When I was in 7th grade I first learned about the body and that bugun my interest. I really became very interested when my teacher was talking about the digestive system, it really caught my attention about how the body works.

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