Human Digestion Summary

There are a lot of factors that can affect the amount of time it takes for food to travel through ones digestive tract. Diet is one major thing that can affect the amount of time it takes for food to travel because different foods digest at different rates. We need to look out what we do to burn calories as well to figure out how we digest, physical activity burns calories, so in turn physical activity will help us digest food and pass it through our digestive tract. Robin (n.d.), “Many factors can affect transit time, including your diet, medications, prior surgeries, gender, level of physical activity and stress level, as well as any chronic or acute illnesses that affect your gastrointestinal tract. It takes varying amounts of time for food to pass through the different areas of your intestinal tract, which includes the stomach, small intestine and large intestine.”

In the digestive system we have a few body parts that aid in the digestive system. Let’s start with the mouth which we put our food and liquids in. the mouth chews the food and breaks it down to be digested faster. Now on to the stomach which stores our swallowed food and stores it with stomach acids and other liquids to help break down the food before it travels to the small intestine. In the small intestine we are still mixing the food with digestive fluids from areas like pancreas and liver. The small intestine will absorb digested nutrients into the body’s bloodstream. The large intestine is after the small intestine and takes whatever nutrients and liquid are left and changes it all into waste that will be passed.

Carbohydrates start to break down in the mouth with enzymes in saliva, once that is complete they get further digested in stomach and then enter the small intestine to be converted into sugar molecules and then absorbed by small intestine to blood stream. Proteins are initially broken down by chewing and then enzymes in the stomach soften the proteins during the mixture of...