The human digestive system is a unique sequence of tubular organs that helps to break down our meals into body fuel for our energy needs.
Food, Digestion & Energy needs
The foods we eat contain the nutrients that nourish, energize, and provide building blocks throughout the body. In the food, nutrients are available as larger complex molecules. Digestion is the process by which these large complex molecules are breaking down into simpler molecules that can be easily absorbed by the body for its energy requirements.
Digestion involves mechanical as well as a chemical breakdown of foods. The mechanical processes are chewing and grinding; chemical processes are denaturing of proteins by acid and enzymes that are use to break complex molecules.
Human Digestive System
The entire human digestive system is about 9 meters long. In a healthy human adult, the digestion process can take between 24 to 72 hours. Physiology of food digestion varies between individuals and affected by the food characteristics and meal size.
The human digestive system is consisting of the digestive tract; a sequence of hollow tubular organs joined from the mouth to the anus, and other supportive organs help the body to break down and absorb food.
Organs that take part in the digestive tract are the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine (or colon), rectum and anus. In the mouth, stomach, and small intestine, there is a lining called a mucosa with tiny glands that produce digestive juices to help digest food.
There are two solid digestion supportive organs; they are the liver and the pancreas. These organs produce digestive juices that are releases into the intestine through ducts (small tubes).
Another organ that takes part in digestion is the gallbladder, which stores and concentrates the liver's digestive juices (pile acid) until they are required for the intestine. In addition, the nervous and circulatory systems are playing an important role in the digestive system.
Importance of Digestion
The foods we eat are of larger molecules of nutrient that is unsuitable for the body to use to nourish, because our body needs smaller molecules of nutrients. The digestion is the body to nourish and energize utilize the process of breakdown of the foods we eat into smaller molecules that can be easily.