Your Digestive System
We’re often told to eat food that is good for us because our body needs the vitamins and minerals. How do our bodies turn the foods we eat into vitamins and minerals used for all of our bodily functions? Learn more about how the digestive system transforms your favorite meals.
Your digestive system is made up of several parts, including:
- Mouth: Chewing is the first step in breaking down the foods you eat. It breaks your food into smaller pieces that can pass through the other parts of your digestive system, and it also uses saliva to begin chemically breaking down your food.
- Pharynx: More commonly called your throat, this is where food goes when you swallow. From here, food, drink, or air can either pass into the esophagus for digestion or into the trachea for respiration. Of course, proper digestion and breathing require food to stay out of the trachea and lungs and move into the esophagus.
- Esophagus: This is a muscular tube that connects your mouth and throat to your stomach. The muscles in your esophagus push food down into your stomach through a series of contractions. At the bottom of your esophagus is the lower esophageal sphincter, a valve-like muscle that prevents acid and food from flowing back up into the esophagus once it’s reached the stomach.
- Stomach: Resembling a small bag or pouch in your body, the stomach is responsible for holding, mixing, and grinding your food into a liquid that can be passed on to the small intestine. Your stomach wall secretes digestive enzymes that help break down the solid foods you eat into this liquid or paste.
- Small intestine: As in the esophagus, a series of muscle contractions help push food—or rather, the liquid your food has become—through the small intestine. As your food moves through the small intestine, it is broken down further by chemicals produced by the liver and pancreas. In addition to breaking down your food, the small intestine is also responsible for absorbing the nutrients in the liquid. These nutrients pass through the walls of the small intestine and into your bloodstream, where they are delivered to the other parts of your body for use.
- Colon : Anything that is not absorbed in the small intestine is passed on to the colon. The colon, also known as the large intestine, is five to seven feet long and is responsible for turning your body’s waste from a liquid to a solid so that it can be efficiently eliminated.
- Rectum: When the colon becomes full, the waste is emptied into the rectum in preparation for elimination. This eight-inch chamber between the large intestine and the anus holds stool (the solid form of your food waste) until elimination and sends a signal to the rest of your body that you need to have a bowel movement.
- Anus: This is the opening from which stool is released from your digestive system. An internal and external sphincter in the anus ensure that stool remains in the anus until it’s ready to be expelled.