Your digestive system is a super smart system that has a lot of influence on how good you feel. How does it work exactly?
Do you want to improve your digestion? To start with, it is useful to know how your digestion works.
1. Your digestion already starts in your mouth, which is done by adding saliva. Your tongue pushes the food into the esophagus.
2. Once you swallow the food, it enters the esophagus. The food is slowly pushed towards the stomach in the direction of the sphincter.
3. Nutrients enter the liver through the blood. The liver processes the nutrients and converts them into energy or building materials. The liver also produces bile to digest fatty foods and neutralizes toxic substances such as alcohol.
4. The stomach kneads the food and mixes it with gastric juice, which consists of hydrochloric acid and enzymes. Hydrochloric acid kills pathogenic bacteria and enzymes take care of digestion. The stomach passes a small amount of food through a small sphincter to the small intestine.
5. The gallbladder stores bile between meals. When eating fatty foods, bile moves from the gallbladder into the small intestine to help the digestive enzymes digest the fat.
6. In the small intestine, enzymes from the pancreas and gallbladder are added. These break down the food into smaller particles:nutrients. They enter the blood through the intestinal wall. Food that cannot be. digested, goes to the large intestine where it is converted to poop.
7. First it is a water thin mush. The colon takes fluids and salts out, creating thick poop that can be sent to the rectum. As soon as your rectum is full, a signal is sent to your brain that you need to go to the toilet.
8. Pancreatic juice contains digestive enzymes that help the small intestine to digest sugars, proteins and fats from food into small substances that the intestine can absorb. The pancreas also makes insulin and glucagon. These are hormones that keep your blood sugar in balance.
A complicated story. Do you want to know exactly how you can positively influence your digestion? You can read it in the October issue of Santé. Do you want Santé on the mat from now on? View the offers for our subscriptions.
