Essay Sample about Digestive System

You eat a lot of food. Your food starts out as a whole piece and then comes out as feces. But how does the food become that? How does it turn into something completely different? How does it change? The answer is your digestive system. Your digestive system is the part of your body that will break down foods and use the process of digestion to get the nutrients through your body and get rid of the unneeded stuff. 

Your digestive system starts with your mouth. The average adult has about 32 teeth. Every one of those teeth help break down food and stuff to a much smaller form. The first set of teeth that you get are called your milk teeth or baby teeth. After you lose your baby teeth new teeth grow in called adult teeth. If you lose an adult tooth you will not grow any back in its place. You will only get two sets of teeth but sometimes a person might have a third row of teeth behind your second set of teeth. People with a third row of teeth have hyperdontia. Not only your teeth break down your food though. The liquid in your mouth called saliva can also help break down the foods. The way it does this is by breaking away the majority of the carbs and the fats in the food that you eat. If your tongue is dry it can't taste anything that is why your saliva is so important. Your saliva helps keep the tongue wet and moist. When the tongue is more moist it makes it easier for the tongue to help push back the foods.

When your food has been broken down enough you will swallow it. The throat helps push the food down towards your stomach. The way it does this is because of all the muscles in the throat. The muscles push the food down the go back up a little bit then push back down again. The muscles will repeat this until all the food has successfully been dropped into the stomach. The reason that doesn't fall down the wrong tube and go into your lungs is because of your sphincters. Your sphincters are little openings that allow foods to pass through to different sections of your body. If a sphincter doesn't work properly it may result in your food or water going down the wrong tube and landing in your lungs which can cause some serious problems. 

Once your food gets in the stomach the big part of the process begins. Your food reaches the stomach and splashes down into the liquid in the stomach. This liquid is called stomach acid or also called gastric acid. The acid helps break down the food even more. The stomach acid also kills any germs that may have been on your food when you ate it. Your stomach acid burns up all the food but not your stomach why? This is because all of the little cells that are living inside your stomach walls help produce special mucus and enzymes that help secrete the stomach acid so it won't burn your stomach. 

Sometimes the acid in your stomach can rise up through your throat like a bubble. When this happens you may feel a burning or stinging feeling a lot. This condition is called gastroesophageal reflux disease. Your stomach is very important so when you get an infection or a disease like peptic ulcer disease you will want to treat it as soon as you can. Peptic ulcer disease is a disease that forms from having open sores inside of your stomach or the first part of your smaller intestines. The most common cause of peptic ulcer disease is when you have a bacterial infection that will eat the protective lining of the walls of your intestines. If you take pain relief pills you're more likely to develop peptic ulcer disease than those who don't take pain relief pills. There are many foods that you may think are ok and won't hurt your stomach but there are actually many foods that will harm it. Some of the foods are spicy foods, mint, alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, and even citrus fruits. Citrus fruits harm your stomach because they have so many acids in them. The acids can worsen your stomach’s acid reflux. Even though there are many foods and drinks and stuff that can hurt your stomach there is also a ton of stuff that can help the stomach. Foods like cabbages and bananas and even grape fruit seed can all heal your stomach. These foods heal your stomach by repairing the lining in your stomach. Other than those foods, there are also many medicines that may harm your body. Things like ibuprofen can harm your stomach. An overdose of ibuprofen can cause stomach pain but multiple overdoses of it can be fatal.

 Your stomach is built up into four separate sections. These four sections are called the cardiac region, the fundus, the body, and the pylorus. Each one of these sections has its own separate function. The first section is called the cardiac region. The cardiac region is located where the esophagus meets the stomach. The cardiac region lets food pass through the stomach. The fundus is a section of the stomach that stores stuff. The things that the fundus stores are undigested foods and left over gases that were released from the processes of digestion. The section of your stomach called the body or also called the corpus is the section of the stomach that contracts and mixes up the foods in your stomach. The part in between the small intestines and your stomach is called the pylorus. The pylorus is a valve in your stomach that will open and close during the process of digestion. When the pylorus opens and closes it allows all the partly digested foods to pass from the stomach to the small intestines. 

Sometimes you can throw up blood. Very rarely when somebody throws up blood it might be black. When you throw up black blood it is called black vomit. Black vomit can become black if when you are throwing up blood the blood might get oxidised by all of your stomach acids. When the blood you're throwing up is utilized in the stomach acid that is what turns it black. So if you throw up you might want to see the color because if it is black or brown or even red you can be in a life threatening situation. Humans can only have one stomach and without it you might ot live that long. There are some animals that have a different amount of stomachs than we do, for example the baird beaked whale can have 10 or more stomachs whereas the platypus has no stomachs at all. 

After the food is done being broken up even more in the stomach they go through a hatch in the side of your stomach and go into your small intestines. Your small intestines absorb all the nutrients and liquids from the food. It does this so the rest of the body can use it for energy. If the small intestines were to be stretched out and laid on the ground they would be 22ft long. Your small intestines are made up of the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum. 

Your small intestines have a lot of jobs to do but the main job in aborbtions. The small intestines absorb all of the nutrients and liquids from your foods. The walls of the small intestines are what absorb all the liquids and nutrients. After all of the liquids and nutrients have been absorbed the muscles in your small intestines start to push and shove the digested food foods towards your large intestines. But sometimes this process can go wrong. You may suffer from a certain form of IBD (irritable bowel syndrome) called Crohn's disease. Crohn's disease is a condition that can cause inflammation in your small intestines or even your entire digestive tract. Another serious thing that can happen to the intestine is a virus called ebola. Ebola can cause massive blood loss in the intestines. After the food is pushed down into the large intestine one of the last parts of the process of digestion begins. The large intestines also are responsible for sucking out all the liquids and nutrients that the other parts of the system could not absorb. Similar to the stomach and small intestines, the large intestines are made up of multiple parts/sections. The first part of the large intestine is a special pouch called the cecum. The cecum is where the appendix is located. The next part is called the colon. The colon is responsible for absorption of stuff like fibers and thongs like that. The last main part of the large intestine is the rectum. The rectum is the place that holds all of the feces before it is ready to come out. One the feces is ready to be released the part called the anus uses its muscles to push out all of the feces out of the body. So that's how your food turns into feces.