Amber+Caroline+and+Ryan+Revised+Notes

Digestion is the turning of food you eat into energy. It also creates waste that the body eliminates. The first place that food goes on its journey through the digestive system is the mouth. In the mouth, we chop the food into small pieces that make digestion easier. The food makes our saliva produce much more quickly. That makes digesting much easier because the saliva breaks down the food. The next stop is the pharynx and then the esophagus. Another name for the pharynx is the throat. Swallowing our foods happens in this organ. The tongue and the soft palate push the food down into our pharynx. Then the food travels down the throat and is brought into the esophagus. The esophagus is a muscular organ that carries the food to the stomach. The food goes through the esophagus because our stomach contracts and does a thing called peristalsis. The food is then delivered into the stomach. the stomach and the small intestine: The stomach is a muscular organ that not only holds food but it mixes and grids it all up. Stool left over from the digestive process, passes through the colon, first in a liquid state and then in a solid form. As stool passes through the colon, the rest of the left-over water is absorbed. the body stores the stool in the sigmoid, or the S-shaped colon. Then the waste is emptied in to rectum. This usually happens once or twice a day. The stomach's first job is to accept and store the food that enters it, and In response to the arrival of food, glands present in the lining of the stomach produce stomach acid.Muscles in the wall of the stomach help to move the food and acid around making sure that they mix thoroughly**,**and Stomach acid helps to break down the food further into smaller, easier to digest fragments. The acid also kills bacteria contained in the swallowed food or saliva.

4: The Colon: The colon is a 5 to 6-foot-long muscular tube that connects the cecum (the first part of the large intestine to the rectum (the last part of the large intestine). It is made up of the ascending (right) colon, the transverse (across) colon, the descending (left) colon, and the sigmoid colon (so called for its "S" shape; the Greek letter for S is called the sigma), which connects to the rectum. Stool, or waste left over from the digestive process, is passed through the colon by means of peristalsis (contractions), first in a liquid state and ultimately in solid form as the water is removed from the stool. A stool is stored in the sigmoid colon until a "mass movement" empties it into the rectum once or twice a day. It normally takes about 36 hours for stool to get through the colon. The stool itself is mostly food debris and bacteria. These bacteria perform several useful functions, such as synthesizing various vitamins, processing waste products and food particles, and protecting against harmful bacteria. When the descending colon becomes full of stool, or feces, it empties its contents into the rectum to begin the process of elimination. , Rectum, and Anus http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/digestive-system