can u tell me something interesting about our digestive system?

Question

this is 4 my biology project

Answer 1

tis's our digestive system interesting fact...
Digestive System Function Facts

We eat about 500kg of food per year. 1.7 liters of saliva is produced each day.

The esophagus is approximately 25cm long. Muscles contract in waves to move the food down the esophagus. This means that food would get to a person's stomach, even if they were standing on their head.

An adults stomach can hold approximately 1.5 liters of material.

Every day 11.5 liters of digested food, liquids and digestive juices flow through the digestive system, but only 100mls is lost in faces.

In the mouth, food is either cooled or warmed to a more suitable temperature.

Hundreds of different kinds of enzymes are needed to properly digest food. Cooking destroys food enzymes, forcing the body to make its own. Over time the body may tire of this extra work, leaving room for possible indigestion.

STOMACH: secretes some enzymes and hydrochloric acid (HCL) to break down protein. Within 2-6 hours, all food is emptied into the small intestine.

SMALL INTESTINE: over 90 percent of digestion and absorption takes place in the small intestine. The acid of the stomach is neutralized and food is mixed with enzymes, bile and pancreatic juices.

LIVER: aids in digestion and detoxification of food impurities and inspects nutrients before allowing them into the bloodstream.

GALL BLADDER: stores bile used to break down dietary fat.

PANCREAS: produces digestive juices and helps control blood sugar.

Digestive problems cost Americans $50 billion each year in both direct costs and absence from work.

70-year-olds may produce as little as half the enzymes they produced when they were 20.

By age 50, many people will produce only 15% of the HCL they released at age 25, and about a third of all people over the age of 65 secrete.


THE FACTS ABOUT FLATULENCE

Most of us pass somewhere between 200 and 2,000 ml of gas per day
(average, about 600 ml) in roughly 13-14 passages. These
emissions are composed of five gasses: nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2),
carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen (H2), and methane (CH4). Nitrogen
usually predominates, followed by variable concentrations of
carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane, and very low levels of
oxygen. Gas gets into our guts by air swallowing (which accounts
for very little), production within the bowel and colon (which
accounts for a lot), and diffusion from the blood. As far as
those who study these things can figure out, most air that is
swallowed comes out the way it went in: it is belched or
"eructed," as the textbook informed me. Most of the nitrogen is
accounted for by diffusion from blood to bowel; it may give
flatus some of its bang but little of its bite.


We are more interested in the gases produced in the bowel's
interior space or lumen -- the carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and
methane (all of which are negligible in the atmosphere). These
gases accumulate when the digestive system's assortment of
resident bacteria, acting like microscopic gas factories, begin
the task of digesting our latest meal. It is unclear whether
carbon dioxide is a direct or indirect product of bacterial
metabolism, but CO2 can account for up to 50%-60% of the gas in
flatus, usually in association with hydrogen, which is definitely
a product of bacterial fermentation. Methane, too, is
exclusively a bacterial leftover. However, to make the H2 and
CH4, the bacteria need what Levitt and Bond call "exogenous
fermentable substrates" -- in English, that's carbohydrate and
protein. And here's where the science becomes useful in
answering my questions.


"Gas is basically produced by foods that have indigestible or
excess carbohydrates, which are not absorbed when they get to the
colon, explains Van Thiel. "Beans, for example, have complex
carbohydrates that are maldigested. And the same holds true for
mushrooms. Many people don't realize that mushrooms contain a
unique sugar called raffinose, which humans can't break down.
Cabbages and onions do the same thing." As a group, vegetarians
produce more gas than meat-eaters because the intestinal enzymes
can't digest the cellulose in vegetables' cell walls. However,
the colon's bacteria relish the stuff. The outcome: When a group
of young men, in the service of science, feasted on a diet rich
in pork and beans, their flatus elimination increased from 15 ml
to 176 ml per hour!


Great, so this is where the gas comes from. But what about the
odor, the noise, the frequency -- the embarrassing stuff? The
amount and odor of flatus, says Van Thiel, are largely accounted
for by the type of bacteria we have in our guts. Newborn infants
and germ-free rats have no intestinal bacteria, although the
infants acquire them almost immediately. "Unless you're
hermetically sealed, which is essentially what those germ-free
rats are, you take in bacteria within hours of being delivered;
and they immediately begin to replicate in the advantageous
environment of the intestinal system. And it appears as if the
kind of bacteria you acquire in your neonatal life basically
persist with you." While the bacteria that make up the
intestinal flora are generally the same in everyone, "that's like
saying people are generally the same," says Van Thiel. They do
the same job but in their own way.


The reason this is important is that different bacteria digest
different kinds of carbohydrates. Some make more methane; others
help hydrogen to combine with sulfur (from other foods or water)
to make hydrogen sulfide. According to Levitt and Bond, only
about one-third of us excrete CH4, a capability that, again, seems
to depend on the bacteria floating around us at birth. There's
an easy way to determine whether you produce methane or not: if
you do, your stools will float. This is because CH4 gets trapped
in the stool, making it less dense than water. Better the
relatively odorless methane, however, than hydrogen-sulfide,
which has the unavoidable odor of rotten eggs. "The only notable
fact about methane is that it burns with a blue flame," says Van
Thiel, "and that's why crazy college kids who like to, uh, ignite
their flatus have to be methane producers. And those who make
more methane are more like flamethrowers than those who don't."


That answers the odor question, but what about the noise? "What
makes the loud ones?" I asked the accommodating
gastroenterologist. The loud ones are basically a function of
three things, he told me: the volume of gas, the force with which
it is expelled, and the presence of hemorrhoids or other
anatomical features that could resonate. "People with large
hemorrhoids, for example, will have louder flatus than people
with lax sphincters. Vegetarians, who actually pass a lot of
gas, frequently have quiet, frequent flatus because they have
large, bulky stools and looser sphincters. They will be detected
socially only if it's foul-smelling; whereas, carnivores may have
less gas but, since they have tighter sphincters and may be more
constipated, have high drama flatus."


So what's to be done if we wish to alter our flatulence profiles?
Paradoxically, studies show that many people who complain of
discomfort from "too much gas" have essentially the same gas
volume and composition as normal controls. However, they seem to
suffer from disordered intestinal motility, with more gas being
refluxed back into the stomach, as well as an abnormal pain
response to bowel distention. While anticholinergic agents have
been prescribed for this problem, their efficacy has not been
proven. Thus, the path of least resistance is to stop eating the
offending foods.

Answer 2

a million> Taurine is an amino acid. All i comprehend approximately that's that cats can basically synthesize it from animal ingredients, yet different animals can synthesize it yet in any different case. 2> I in no way heard of those chemical compounds, yet some breads have l-cycsteine, that's made out of hair, in specific circumstances human hair. once you purchase bread, purchase the stuff with as few substances as attainable, even no depend if that's extra high priced. 3> Milk is composed of pus with the aid of fact the cows are saved consistently pregnant (how else do you think of they produce milk) and are consistently milked. they are given hormones to improve milk production and antibiotics to stave off an infection. The mechanical milking and the surplus milk they produce reasons infections brought about mastitis. in view that I went vegan, I examine labels obsessively. that is magnificent what crap is going into foodstuff. If i purchase processed ingredients, I make effective i comprehend what each component is or i do no longer purchase it. you will possibly do nicely to do an identical, whether it expenses you extra.

Answer 3

the exps say,that if your could spread out an adults digs-sys,it would cover the area the size of a tennis court.it is also the location of approx 70% of your immune system,inclu good/friendly bacteria and the non-friendly also,such as fungals(the bad ones) when the balance is off-set,85% good and 15% bad,is when sickness etc starts,,,so "they"say.but "not"according to the current ama ideals/philosphy on health.that,s why we are all so healthy,these days,from the lack of prescp drugs etc,,,which ultimately destroy/alter this delicate balance of 85-15 in our digestive tract/system.

Answer 4

If you were to count them, there are more bacteria (single cells) in our body that our own cells. Most of these reside in our gut. THere are hundreds of different kinds of bacteria there. It is a very complicated ecology that if it wasn't there we would starve.
We don't understand it hardly at all.