1. THE HUMAN DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
Created by Olivia and Savannah
The human digestive system is a series of organs and
glands that process food.
2. The Digestive Tract and its Structures
The process starts in the mouth where
food is broken down by chewing.
After being swallowed, the food enters
the esophagus. That is a long tube that
goes from the mouth to the stomach.
The esophagus uses wave like muscle
movements to force food from the mouth
to the stomach.
The stomach is like a mixer, mashing all
the food into smaller pieces. It does this
with strong muscles and gastric acids in
the walls of the stomach.
After leaving the stomach food enters the
small intestine. It breaks down the food
mixture and your body absorbs all the
vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrat
es, and fats.
3. CONTINUING THE DIGESTIVE TRACT
The pancreas, liver and gallblader help you
digest your food. Those organs send different
juices to the first part of your small intestine
called the duodenum. Those juices help digest
the food and allow it to be absorbed.
The pancreas makes juices that help the body
digest fats and proteins. Juice from the liver
called bile helps to absorb fats into the blood
stream. The place where bile is stored until the
body needs it is called the gallblader.
Then the food goes through the final parts of the
small intestine. Your food can spend as long as
4 hours in the small intestine and it will become
a very thin watery mixture. The it will go into your
large intestine.
4. Continuing the Digestive Tract
While that is going on your nutrients rich
blood is coming to the liver to be
processed. The liver filters out harmful
substances or wastes turning some into
more bile. Your liver also helps figure out
how much nutrients will go to the rest of
the body and how much will stay in
storage.
Now getting back to the large intestine. It
has a tiny tube with a closed end coming
off of it, called the appendix, that is part of
the digestive track. After most nutrients is
removed from the food mixture, the waste
is left. That is the stuff your body can’t
use and needs to be passed out of the
body. It passes the part of the intestine
called the colon.
5. CONTINUING THE DIGESTIVE TRACT
The colon is where the body gets one last chance
to absorb the water and some minerals into the
blood. As the water leaves, the waste becomes
harder. As it keeps moving along it becomes a
solid, also know as poop. The large intestine
pushes the poop into the rectum, the last stop of
the digestive track. The poop stays there until you
are ready to go to the bathroom. When you go to
the bathroom the poop goes out through the anus.
6. INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER SYSTEMS
The digestive system interacts with the
integumentary system. The vitamin D
activated in the skin play a big role in
absorption of calcium in the digestive tract.
The muscular system defiantly plays a big
part in the digestive system. Muscles are
important in chewing, swallowing, and
moving of digestion products in the
gastrointestinal tract.
It also interacts with the circulatory
system. This is because the bloodstream
carries absorbed nutrients to all body cells.
