Chewing also breaks food into small pieces, creating a large amount of surface area–digestive enzymes can only work on the surface of our food. When we wolf down our food, it takes much longer to digest.

This is why many recommend chewing slowly and more often than usual. As the saliva moistened food slides down the throat, it comes to a fork in the road. One fork is the trachea, which connects to the bronchial and lung area. The other is the esophagus leading into the stomach. The act of swallowing closes a flap over the trachea and opens the upper esophageal sphincter allowing the food to bypass the airProbiotics  and enter the esophagus to the stomach. The esophagus undergoes contractions to push food down to the lower esophageal sphincter, which opens to let the food into the stomach and shuts to prevent stomach acids from coming up that creates acid reflux (heartburn). The stomach secrets acid enzymes while mucous protects the inner walls. The walls churn to mix the acid and food, creating a liquid or pasty solution, depending on the food type, which the small intestine can handle. The small intestine is small in circumference only. It's estimated that the surface area of the small intestine could cover a tennis court. It fits in the body because there are many folds containing villi. Villi are tiny projections containing smaller micro-villi that pull nutrients into our blood streams and the help of liver and spleen activity. The liver and gall bladder contribute fat emulsifying bile into the small intestines and the pancreas contributes more enzymes to support the absence of food enzymes. 

Enzymes are active proteins that break down food into Nitrobuild Plus absorbable nutrients. The remaining mixture arrives into the large intestine, which is shorter and more circumference. The large intestine has three phases for creating waste, which arrives into the colon where a bacteria colony awaits to finalize fermentation and fiber extraction. Mucous is created andin this process to help slide the stuff along, then the waste is ready for eliminating and a bowel movement. Wise men, poets and philosophers have long honored the process of digestion as the basis of good health, sound sleep and a happy attitude. “I am convinced digestion is the great secret of life,” said the prolific and quotable Reverend Sydney Smith. “Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both!” toasts Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Milton wrote, “His sleep was aery light, from pure digestion bred.” Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and mystic, placed the highest importance on complete and thorough digestion. He described digestion as the annihilation or breaking down of the outer world, which is food, into nothingness or chaos. A primary task of the human ego, according to Steiner, was the building up of that pregnant chaos into compounds that bear our own imprint. But let’s begin more prosaically and Gray’s Anatomy, which describes the digestive tract as a “musculo-membranous tube, about thirty feet in length, extending from the mouth to the anus, and lined throughout its entire extent by mucous membrane.” 

Mucous membranes are soft and velvety tissues, plentifully supplied and blood; their entire surface is coated over by the secretion of mucus, which serves to protect them from foreign substances and which they are brought into contact–in the case of the digestive tract, and the food we eat and our digestive secretions. Note also the word “musculo.” The muscles that encase the digestive tract work autonomously, andout our conscious involvement, in a series of peristaltic (wavelike) contractions to mix our food and digestive juices and move it along as digestion occurs. The Incredible Journey Digestion begins in the mouth as food is chewed and mixed and saliva. Saliva keeps the mouth moist and usually contains a starch-digesting enzyme, ptyalin, which breaks down starches into the simple sugar, glucose. Place a bit of cracker on the tongue and in a moment it will taste sweet, due to the action of this enzyme. The introduction of food into the mouth–or even the smell of food–stimulates increased production of saliva and also signals to the stomach and small intestine that food is on the Probiotics . Chewing is an important first step in the digestive process, especially for fruits and vegetables, as it breaks down membranes of cellulose (indigestible for humans) and liberates the nutrients they surround. When we swallow, chewed food is forced into the pharynx, a muscular apparatus that moves the food into the esophagus, the tube from the mouth to the stomach. The esophagus is also a muscular organ, which propels the food down to the stomach by a series of wavelike contractions. Small glands located in the mucous membrane of the esophagus secrete alkaline compounds that further lubricate the food. 

The esophagus is the narrowest part of the digestive tract and esophageal secretions ensure a smooth passage. Food enters the stomach via the cardiac opening, so called because of its proximity to the heart, via a circular muscle or sphincter that opens to allow food to pass through. When empty or contracted, the interior walls of the stomach form numerous folds. These disappear when the stomach contains food and is distended. The stomach must begin to open up as food enters; this process of relaxation begins and the sphincter muscle at the cardiac opening in response to commencement of eating. The stomach has two main functions–the storage of food until it can pass into the intestines and the mixing of food and digestive enzymes, a process that turns the bits and chunks of food that enter the stomach into a relatively smooth and thick fluid mixture called chyme. Mixing occurs due to the action of muscles that encase the stomach. Periodic contractions churn and knead the food into chyme and rhythmical pumping moves the food toward the pylorus, the opening at the lower end of the stomach. The mucous membrane of the stomach is densely packed and glands that secrete hydrochloric acid and pepsin, a protein-digesting enzyme. The role of hydrochloric acid is to create a sufficiently acid environment for pepsin to be activated. If we do not produce enough hydrochloric acid, then we cannot fully digest protein. The parietal cells that create hydrochloric acid also produce a large protein called the intrinsic factor, necessary for the assimilation of vitamin B12. The pumping action of the stomach moves the chyme through the pyloric valve into the duodenum, the first section of the small intestine. 

The small intestine is about 25 feet long and one inch in diameter; it fits in coiled fashion in the abdominal cavity. It has three parts: the first twelve inches is called the duodenum (which means “twelve” in Latin), the jejunum, which is about 10 feet long, and the ileum, the last portion of the small intestine, which is about 15 feet long. While the environment in the stomach, especially the lower part of the stomach, is highly acidic, the environment in the small intestine is alkaline. The entrance of food into the duodenum stimulates the production of two hormones, secretin and cholecystokinin, which communicate important messages to the stomach, the pancreas and the gall bladder. They tell the stomach to moderate its contractions so that the chyme does not arrive too quickly, but in measured amounts; and they signal the release of digestive secretions from the pancreas and gall bladder. It is in the first two sections of the small intestine that most digestion and assimilation occur. Absorption takes place via the villi, small projections in the mucous membrane. Each villus has a network of capillaries through which the broken-down components of the food are absorbed. The nutrients then pass through the epithelial cells in the inner lining of the villi, at which point they enter the capillaries. The small intestine is attached to the rear abdominal wall by a thin sheet of membrane called the mesentery, which carries blood vessels to nourish the small intestine and carries absorbed nutrients to the liver and other parts of the body. Once again, muscular contractions move the chyme along. Whenever a section of the small intestine becomes stretched, peristaltic movements (waves of contractions) occur at spaced intervals. 

These not only move the chyme along but also mix it and digestive secretions. At the end of the small intestine is the ileocecal valve. As and the connection between the stomach and the small intestine, various hormones and feedback mechanisms regulate the passage of chyme through the ileocecal valve into the large intestine. When the ileum becomes stretched and full, the valve opens to allow the passage of chyme and if the large intestine is too full, the valve remains closed until the bowel empties. The small intestine actually meets the large intestine at a kind of T junction. To the left is the cecum, a kind of holding tank, and to the right the bowel. Attached to the cecum is the appendix, once considered a non-functioning or “vestigial” organ but now recognized as serving an important immunological function. The appendix contains a high concentration of lymphoid follicles that produce antibodies to help keep the bacteria of the colon from infecting other areas of the body, such as the small intestine and the bloodstream, particularly in early life. The large intestine or colon is five to six feet long and a diameter of about two inches and is divided by sharp turns into three major parts–the ascending colon on the right hand side of the body, the transverse colon which runs from right to left across the upper abdomen, and the descending colon which carries the mass of digested food downward to the rectum. 

The purpose of the large intestine is threefold: storage of waste materials and undigested food from the small intestine–not just the breakdown products of what we take in but the residue of secretions, sloughed-off cells and dead bacteria that accumulate during the digestive process; the absorption of water and electrolytes from the food residue; and the further decomposition of solid materials by the action of millions of bacteria. Combined contractions of circular and lengthwise muscles surrounding the colon roll over the fecal materials to ensure that all of it is exposed to the intestinal wall, so that all the fluid can be absorbed. Special cells called goblet cells lining the large intestine secrete mucus that protects the walls of the intestine, helps maintain alkalinity and provides a medium to hold the fecal matter together. The final stage of this incredible journey is the movement of the now solid fecal matter from the transverse colon via strong contractions down the descending colon and into the rectum, a process that occurs only a few times each day–usually upon arising in the morning or immediately after breakfast. When these movements force a mass of fecal matter into the rectum, the desire to evacuate is felt. The Second Brain “Have you ever wondered why people get butterflies in the stomach before going on stage? Or why an impending job interview can cause an attack of intestinal cramps? And why do antidepressants targeted for the brain cause nausea or abdominal upset in millions of people who take such drugs? 

The reason for these common experiences is because each of us literally has two brains–the familiar one encased in our skulls and a lesser-known but vitally important one found in the human gut. Like Siamese twins, the two brains are interconnected; when one gets upset, the other does, too.” So writes science journalist Sandra Blakeslee for the New York Times. Indeed, the human digestive tract contains over one million nerve cells, about the same number found in the spinal cord.