Functions of the Stomach in Aiding Digestion

Our digestive system is in place to feed all your body systems the nutrients and energy from the food that you eat.When you start eating, your mouth secretes saliva to help breakdown the chemicals in the food.

 Saliva also makes the food mushy and easy to swallow.As you chew the food, the tongue will push the food around, mixing the food with the saliva, before swallowing the mushed-up food.

The food is pushed to the back of the throat and into the opening of the gullet also called the esophagus, which is the second part of the digestive system.

The esophagus is a flexible pipe about 10 inches or 25 centimeters long.

It moves the food from the back of your throat to the stomach.

The muscles in the walls of the esophagus move the food by a series of wavy contraction, slowly squeezing the food down to the stomach.

Three Functions of the Stomach:

•     It stores the food for a while
•     It breaks down the food into a greater liquid form
•     It empties its contents into the small intestines bit by bit

The stomach muscles act like a cake mixer, mixing and churning the ingredients around until they become smaller and smaller pieces.

It also secretes acidic gastric juices from the stomach walls to break down the food and kill any harmful bacteria that may have came down with the food.

The stomach connects with the small intestine which is a tube of about 22 feet or 6.7 meters long!

The small intestine continues to break down the food particles even more, so that the body can absorb all the nutrients such as vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates and fats.

Three organs, the liver, pancreas and gallbladder, are connected to the small intestine to help in the absorption of these nutrients.

These organs secrete enzyme juices to help to digest the food and allow the small intestine walls to absorb the nutrients.

The pancreas secretes enzymes that help in digesting fats and proteins.

The liver secretes bile that helps to break down and absorb fats into the bloodstream.

The gallbladder stores the bile and releases it according to the need.

Your food should remain in the small intestine until it becomes a watery mixture, so that the nutrients can pass from the intestine into the blood behind the intestinal walls.

Once the nutrients are in the blood, they are carried to the liver for processing.

The liver will remove any harmful substances or wastes, from the blood and releases the nutrients to the rest of the body.

After the nutrients had been absorbed, what remains in the small intestine is the leftover waste product that cannot be used.

These go into the large intestine which is about 5 feet or 1.5 meters long. It is fatter than the small intestine.

The large intestine begins with a small protruding organ called the appendix.

Lately, researchers have found that the appendix secretes germicidal juices into the large intestine when the waste matter coming from the small intestine becomes potentially harmful to the body. The function is similar to that of the tonsils.

The appendix samples the kind of germs or harmful substances that may have passed through and stimulates the body's protective mechanism.

The large intestine carries the waste through the colon, which is the last part of the large intestine.

The colon will absorb some of the water out of the waste product, before it goes out of the body.

The waste product becomes less diluted, turns more solid, and will be flushed out of the anus as stools.

In Cancer treatment of patients, it is important that the digestive system is working properly, especially the liver and kidneys.

To do that, you should drink adequate amount of water, and eat foods that are full of nutrients such as fruits and vegetables.

Cancer patients need to rejuvenate with huge amounts of vegetable and fruit juices which are easily digestible and absorbed into the body through the digestive system.

The roughage from the vegetables and grains acts like a broom to push out the waste products easily from the digestive tract