6 tips to improve digestive system
6 tips to improve digestive system
1. Chew to break your foods until it become fully paste.
2. Eat slowly and take long time to eat your meal, minimum of 30 minutes.
3. After eating wait for 5 min before washing your mouth.
4. Don’t brush your teeth immediately after finish your meal, keep minimum 20 minutes gap after finish your meal.
5. Don’t drink water while eating foods.
6. Don’t drink water immediately after finish your meal, keep minimum 20 minutes gap after finish your meal.
Digestion process is a long process and the process start from your mouth. And this is the only area you can control . And internal body parts is doing the other process of digestion.
Through chewing, the teeth tear the food and mix it with saliva. Saliva is 99.5 % water and 0.5 % solutes (includes many chemicals). This is the first process of digestion of any food. So if you do it properly then other all digestion process can be smooth and perfect. And if you don’t do this first process properly. Then it will affect to all other digestion process. And your foods can not be digest properly.
(1) What is digestion process
Your foods are too large to absorb across the plasma membranes of the cells. And the food should break down first including both chemically and mechanically. This process is digestion process.
A. Mechanical digestion – Teeth should be use to break down by the foods before it swallow. The smooth muscles of the stomach and small intestine then churn the food, so it thoroughly mix with the enzymes that catalyse the reaction.
B. Chemical digestion- This is a series of catabolic (decomposition) reactions that break down the large carbohydrate, lipid, and protein molecules of food into smaller molecules.
(2) The digestive system divide into two main sections
A. The gastrointestinal tract (GI)
The GI made up of the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. The GI holds the food from the time it eat until it prepare for excretion. Muscular contractions in the walls of the GI tract break down the food physically by churning it. Secretions produced by cells along the GI tract break down the food chemically.
B. Accessory organs
The accessory organs include the teeth, tongue, salivary, glands, liver, gallbladder, pancreas and appendix. Teeth aid in the physical breakdown of food. With the exception of the tongue, the accessory organs lie outside the GI tract, and produce or store secretions. That aid the chemical breakdown of food. these secretions release into the tract through ducts.
(3) How digestion system works
A. The mouth
For the most part digestion in the mouth done by the salivary glands, teeth and tongue. The salivary glands produce most of the saliva. When food enters the mouth, secretion increases so salvia can lubricate, dissolve and chemically breakdown the food. Through chewing, the teeth tear the food apart and mix it with salvia. After chew, food swallow and travels down the stomach. Saliva is 99.5 % water and 0.5 % solutes.
The water in saliva provides a medium for dissolving foods so they can taste and so digestive reactions can carried out. The bicarbonate and phosphates buffer chemicals that enter the mouth and keep the saliva at a slightly acidic pH of 6.35 to 6.85. The enzyme salivary amylase initiates the breakdown of polysaccharides ( carbohydrates ).
This is the only chemical digestion that occurs in the mouth. But the food usually swallow so quickly that only 3 to 5 % of the dextrin broken down in the mouth. The salivary amylase continues to act on the polysaccharides in the stomach for another 15 to 30 minutes. Until stomach acids inactivate the enzyme.
After chewed, food swallowed ( deglutition) and travels down the oesophagus . The food pushed down by muscular contractions in a process called peristalsis.
B. The stomach
A few minutes after food enters the stomach. The stomach acts as a storage area. Here foods may sit for an hour or more with only salivary digestion continuing. The main chemical activity of the stomach is to begin the breakdown of proteins. This accomplished by the gastric juice, which is made up by the enzymes pepsin and rennin and hydrochloric acid(HCL). Hence a protein chain of many amino acids broken down into fragments amino acids.
Rennin helps solidify casein, a milk protein. Thus it can be held in the stomach long enough for pepsin to break it down. Pepsin is most effective in the acidic environment of the stomach ( pH of 1 ). The HCL in the gastric juice ensures an acidic medium.
A less important enzyme is gastric lipase. This enzyme breaks down the butterfat molecules in milk. Because this enzyme works best at a pH of 5 to 6, adults rely on an enzyme in the small intestine to digest fats.
The stomach release its contents into the duodenum two to six hours after ingestion. Food rich in carbohydrates leaves the stomach in a short period of time. Protein-rich foods are slower, and fatty foods are the slowest of all for emption out. The stomach is impermeable to the passage of most materials into the blood(with the exception of some water, salts, certain drugs and alcohol). So most substances are not absorbed until they reach the small intestine.
C. The small intestine
Chemical digestion in the small intestine depends not only on its own secretions but also on the activities of three organs outside the GI tract the liver , gallbladder, and pancreas.
Carbohydrates in the form of dextrin are reduced to disaccharide maltose by the enzyme pancreatic amylase. Two other disaccharide, sucrose and lactose, are also reduced.
Proteins that may have escaped reduction in the stomach are dealt with in the small intestine. The pancreatic enzymes trypsin and chymotrypsin digest intact proteins into proteoses and peptones, and break them into dipeptides ( containing only two amino acids) and divide some of the dipeptides into single amino acid.
Fats digest in the small intestine. Bile salts break down the globules of fat into droplets ( emulsification) so the fats splitting enzyme can attack the fat molecules. Then the enzyme pancreatic lipase hydrolyse each fat molecules into fatty acids, glycerol and glycerides.
The product of digestion are ready for absorption.
D. The large intestine
Digestion is almost complete by the time the chyme reaches the large intestine. Bacterial action results in the synthesis of vitamins K and some of the B vitamins. Any remaining proteins and amino acids are broken down by bacteria into simpler substances , fatty acids, hydrogen sulphide, skatole and indole. Together with intestinal water, some of it is absorbed. What is left is passed out of the body.