1. When you swallow, your food is inside a 30-foot food tube. It’s a winding canal that leads from your mouth to your rectum.

2. Those hunks of food must be broken down into simpler substances. Your cells can’t use the food you eat. The process of breaking down chemicals into something your body can use is digestion.

3. This process takes place in the food canal. As it is broken down, it is absorbed into your blood and blood carries it to cells throughout the body.

4. There are two basic ways of getting fuel:

• Create your own food using sunlight through the process of photosynthesis

• Eat living or formerly living things. (Animals) Digestion starts with your teeth and tongue.

5. Types of teeth

a. Incisors (8) work like scissors. They cut.

b. Canines (4) sharp, pointy teeth that are used for ripping and tearing.

c. Bicuspids (8) have two points. They grind.

d. Molars (8) they grind.

6. Mouths contain many kinds of bacteria. Your mouth is the most contaminated part of your body. Bacteria in your mouth devours food you and it produces acid. The acid attacks the enamel of your teeth.

7. The hardest substance in your body is enamel which covers your teeth. Once enamel is gone it cannot be replaced by the body.

8. The jobs of the tongue:a. Tasteb. Chewc. Helps with swallowing

9. Your tongue and cheeks keep food between your upper and lower teeth. Your tongue rolls the food into a ball. Your teeth batter down the food into bits. As this takes place, salivary glands make a saliva that is squirted into the food to soften and moisten it. Your mouth makes about a quart of saliva a day.

10. Saliva contains chemicals called enzymes which breaks down starches into sugar.

11. There are 700 different enzymes in your body. Amylase (enzyme) changes starch into sugar.

12. The jobs of enzymes:a. Controlling the release of energy in

the body. Ex. One piece of chocolate cake can raise a 100 lb persons temp. to 117 degrees.

b. Food breakdown

13. When you are done chewing, you swallow. When you swallow doors close above and below the back of the throat at the pharnyx. Food cant go into your nose or lungs. The door that covers your trachea to stop food from going down is called the epiglottis. The mouthful of food goes down the esophagus, approximately 10 in, long. Food does not free fall into the stomach. The food is squeezed down the esophagus by muscles. That’s why you could swallow standing on your head.

14. It only takes 2-7 seconds for your food to travel down the esophagus to your stomach. There is a valve at the bottom of the esophagus that controls the amount of food that goes into your stomach.

15. Glands are bags of liquids in your body. Some are large and some are small.

16. Glands dump their liquids through ducts into your mouth, stomach and small intestines and they will help with digestion. After leaving your esophagus, food goes into your stomach for 3-4 hours.

17. Your stomach can hold 1.5 quarts of food.

18. In your stomach, food is in a strong acid, while the stomach churns it about.

19. Your stomach walls are three layers of smooth muscle (involuntary). Millions of tiny glands in the stomach walls make a liquid. The acid and the enzymes in the liquid digest the food.

20. The acid can break down meats and kills bacteria. Your stomach has a mucous lining, which protects it from the acid. Any breaks in the lining and in a couple of hours the stomach will have eaten a hole in itself

21. When you are tense or nervous, extra acids go into the stomach. These acids cause ulcers.

22. Ulcers are sores inside your stomach.

23. The opening in the bottom of the stomach is called the pyloric valve.

24. Opens every few minutes to allow a couple of spoonfuls of food into the small intestine.

25. Now the food is mashed up into a milky liquid called chyme.

26. The small intestine is a 20 ft. long curly tube with a shaggy lining. It has millions of tiny villi on the inside surface.

27. Villi are fingerlike things that absorb the valuable parts of the useful food in to the bloodstream.

28. Your small intestine has its own digestive juices which are used for the final food breakdown. The walls hug and squeeze food along in an action called peristalsis.

29.All of the squishing and squeezing makes a lot of noise. That’s your gut rumbling. It takes 8 hours for food to make its way through the small intestines.

30.Most digestion takes place in the small intestine. The unused food that leaves the small intestine and travels into the blood stream goes to your liver.

31.You have two large glands that put juices into your small intestine. These two glands are the liver and pancreas.

32. The liver is the largest gland in your body. It is reddish-brown in color. It is located on the right side of your stomach.

Jobs of the liver:1. Make bile. Bile dissolves fat into tiny pieces so it can be digested. The bile leaves the liver and is stored in the gall bladder.2. The gall bladder stores the bile until it is needed in the small intestines.3. The liver stores food. Blood picks up nutrients and other food in the small intestine. The food goes to the liver and the liver stores it.4. The liver releases the stored food into the bloodstream slowly day and night

33. Food is stored in many parts of your body. This stored food is called fat. Fat is under your skin to keep you warm. Fat is about 1/7 of your weight.

34. Your pancreas is shaped like a carrot. A duct takes the pancreatic juice into the small intestine.

Job of the pancreasa. Makes chemicals that

digest all types of foods.

35. Your intestines contains a whole population of bacteria. Bacteria are tiny microscopic creatures. Only a few bacteria mean trouble to humans.

Why bacteria is good:

a. Devours remains of food in your intestines.

b. Secrete vitamins K, B12, thiamine and riboflavin.

36. Bacteria are not only in your food canal, but also in every crack and crease on your surface. There are more bacteria living on you, than there are people living on earth. Your body’s bacteria could fill a regular size soda can.

37. The non useful food parts move out of the small intestine and by the appendix. There is no known job for the appendix.

38. The unused parts and water move into the large intestine.

39. The jobs of the large intestine:a. Recycles water for body use.b. as the water is absorbed, the mass becomes fairly thick.

40. The end of the large intestine is called the rectum.

41. The jobs of the rectum:

a. Stores waste until passed from the body.