The diet you consume is not in the form that your body can use. So it must be converted and that’s accomplished by your digestive process.
Digestion is a process by which the food you eat is broken down into substances that can be absorbed. This process is accomplish via the action of digestive enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions.
Dietary food conversion starts in your mouth and ends in your small intestine. After food is swallowed, the rest of the digestive process is involuntarily controlled by hormones and nerves.
The first stop for food is your stomach. During this digestive juncture, food gets mixed up with digestive juice. And how long this digesting mixture stays in your stomach largely depends on the type of food you’ve eaten. Carbohydrates are moved on to your small intestine quickest, than protein and fat.
When the time is right, your stomach slowly empties its contents into the small intestine. Food digestion in the small intestine involves more juicing, which helps food digest even more. Digestive enzymes here are provided by your pancreas, liver and intestine itself.
Once digested food meets the necessary state for absorption, it moves through your intestinal walls into the bloodstream to be used by cells all over your body. And anything that’s leftover is pushed into your colon for expulsion.
To digest protein, it starts with enzymes in your stomach juices. And then several enzymes contained in pancreatic and intestinal juice complete protein’s breakdown into amino acids.
Digesting fat begins by dissolving it into the watery content of your small intestine. Bile, from your liver, further dissolves it into tiny droplets, which allows for pancreatic and intestinal enzymes to break it into smaller fatty acids and cholesterol. They then combine with bile acid to move into the cells of the intestinal mucosa. While there, these fat derivatives are reformed into larger molecules and carried off to fat storage depots.
Complex carbohydrate digest by making use of enzymes in your saliva and pancreatic juice in your small intestine. It is a two step process, first using saliva and pancreatic juice enzymes to digest it into maltose. Then an intestinal enzyme splits it into glucose for absorption into the bloodstream. From there, it is deposited into your liver for storage and future energy needs by your body.
Simple sugar only has a one step digest requirement. Intestinal enzymes digest it into glucose and fructose, which are absorbed through the intestinal wall into your blood.
Food digestion is a complex process, but this diet blurb gives you a basic digestive idea of what food must go through for your body to digest its benefits.
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