does anybody know where digestion starts?
831689
Chewing in the mouth and the enzyme amylase in our saliva which further breaks down food.\n\nGuess we could mention the epiglottis too, which makes sure no food goes into our airpipe.
565260
Look all the nice pictures at\nhttp://br.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=digestive%20system&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv1-adbe&fr2=tab-web\nand\n\nhttp://www.innerbody.com/image/digeov.html
398409
The alimentary canal, or the digestive tract as it is most commonly known, is 9 meters (about 30 feet) from the esophagus to the an*s.  http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/AnnaTaran.shtml
186844
The exact same way it does a carrot, cookie, cheese... and everything else you eat.\n\n\n\nIn humans, digestion begins in the mouth where food is chewed with the teeth. The process stimulates exocrine glands in the mouth to release digestive enzymes such as salivary amylase, which aid in the breakdown of food, particularly carbohydrates. Chewing also causes the release of saliva, which helps condense food into a bolus that can be easily passed through the esophagus. The esophagus is about 20 centimeters long. The food is pushed down by a movement called peristalsis, which is the wave-like contraction of smooth muscle tissue characteristic of the Digestive system.\n\nThe food then goes to the stomach when it passes through the cardiac sphincter. In the stomach, food is churned and thoroughly mixed with hydrochloric acid and other digestive enzymes with digestive fluid to further decompose it chemically for a few hours. As the acidic level changes in the stomach and later parts of the digestive tract, more enzymes are activated or deactivated to extract and process various nutrients.\n\nAfter being processed in the stomach, food is passed to the small intestine via peristalsis. It passes through the pyloric sphincter and enters the first 10 inches of the small intestine, the duodenum, where it is further mixed with 3 different liquids, which are bile (which helps aid in fat digestion), pancreatic juice (made by the pancreas), and intestinal juice. They also add several enzymes: maltase, lactase and sucrase, to process sugars. (Bile also contains pigments that are by-products of red blood cell destruction in the liver; these bile pigments are eliminated from the body with the feces.) Most nutrient absorption takes place in the small intestine. The nutrients goes through the small intestine's wall (small, finger-like structure, that is called villi). The blood, which has absorbed nutrients, is carried away from the small intestine via the hepatic portal vein and goes to the liver for filtering, removal of toxins and help processing of nutrients.\n\nAfter going through the small intestine, the food then goes to the large intestine. The large intestine has 3 parts: the cecum (or pouch that forms the T-junction with the small intestine), the colon, and the rectum. In the large intestine, water is reabsorbed, and the foods that cannot go thorugh the villi such as fiber, can be stored in large intestine. Fiber helps to keep the food moving through the G.I. tract. The food that cannot be broken down is called feces. Feces is stored in the rectum until it is expelled through the anus
229140
ha ha ha.. 7 hrs? Even something as durable and tough as chewing gum will start getting digested after such a long time! After all, digestion does not start in your stomach but in your mouth with enzymes that break down carb-chains into smaller carb-pieces... That goes for chewing gum as well!
654462
Digestion is merely the series of physical and chemical changes that food undergoes within the body in preparation for nutrients to be absorbed. Physical changes such as chewing and swallowing, and chemical changes that involve the digestive juices (enzymes) cause the breakdown of foods. The three main types of energy-yielding nutrients dependent upon digestion are carbohydrates, protein and fats.\n\nAbsorption is the process by which nutrients are taken up by the intestines and passed into the bloodstream to be delivered to all cells in the body. Absorption of nutrients takes place mainly in the small intestine, where its surface area is comparable to a quarter of a football field and its length is 20 feet! The intestine fits into your stomach with hundreds of folds. Its surface is covered with billions of small "finger" like projections called villi. These villi are in constant motion and covered in microscopic "hair" like strands that trap the now tiny nutrients and help them move into the villi cells. \n\nMetabolism is the process of all the chemical changes that nutrients undergo from the time they are absorbed until they become part of the body or are excreted. Metabolism is the conversion of digested nutrients into the components for energy or building materials.
82972
Oh for Pete's sake, I wish people wouldn't just guess at the answers when they clearly have no idea what they are talking about.\n\nFood has been almost fully digested by the time it reaches the large intestine and it is fully digested by the time it reaches the rectum, which is at the END of the large intestine. \n\nUnless you engage in unnatural sex acts involving watermelons, the one place in the digestive tract that is guaranteed to never contain undigested food is the rectum. The rectum is the storage for food that has been fully digested. The large intestine or rectum are about as wrong as answers could be without saying "The penis".\n\n"Pit of the stomach" is not even a biological term. It's a poetic expression much like "depths of the heart".\n\nJust to make that answer even more wrong, almost all the digestion of food occurs in the small intetsine in humans. The idea that only digested food enters the intestine has no basis in reality whatsoever.\n\nIn point of fact I have no idea what the answer is supposed to be. Digestion of food begins in the mouth with the mechanical digestion of chewing and the chemcial digestion of starches by salivary amylase. It continues constantly until the food reaches the descending colon, by which stage it is fully digested.\n\nThe only place that undigested food stays is in the refridgerator or cupboard. There is no anatomical place where undigested food stays.
520807
name digestion is a serious condition. It is where in a party you are introduced to someone and though your ear hears the name and your brain registers it somehow the name itself is lost for ever!!
458884
do you mean duodenum? that is the large intestine with the small intestine being the ileum. not sur ewhich enzymes are present in each part, been a while since school. look up human enzymes
1047673
There is a fleshy flap-like structure called epiglottis that is situated in the throat, behind the tongue, at the entrance to the larynx, that is, at the point where the larynx and trachea (conduct leading to the lungs) and the esophagus (conduct leading to the stomach) meet. The epiglottis works as a valve that covers the entrance to the lungs while food is passing down the pharynx and into the digestive system; it's a safety mechanism to ensure that food particles don't damage the delicate respiratory organs. \nSo while we swallow (deglutition is the technical name for swallowing), we cannot breathe (=we're in apnea), because the entrance to the trachea is closed. \n\nThis is a diagram showing the position of the epiglottis:\nhttp://www.emedicinehealth.com/images/4453/4453-4468-10013-23657.jpg\nand here's an animation showing the right path for food (green) and the wrong path that can make one choke (red):\nhttp://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/epiglottis.gif
166498
Esophagus is one of the digestive organs. If it comes for esophagus, every food just passes through it, there's no reaction occur. If there's no reaction, that means there's no specific organ occur either. Actually, location of cilia is not far from esophagus. Cilia can be found at the upper part of nasal cavity (channel which connected between nose & trachea), used as smelling receptor.
613426
The esophagus is just the path by which food travels from the mouth to the stomach. No digestion occurs within it. The movement of food is aided by muscle contractions called peristalsis, which works the food down to the stomach for further digestion.
381009
no, infants haven't built up the needed bacterium that we acquire as teens and adults. this makes them susceptible to gastritis and diarrhea from common yeast and bugs we have no problem living with. that the number 1 reason parents should adhere to proper feeding stages. As for adults...digestion normally is in place and mature by age 12 to 15 and is complex...some foods like nuts,seeds, Rhine's or corn are very difficult to grind up, so in the large intestine it passes without being absorbed. most don't notice because they don't look. better chewing and plenty of liquid with meals will help.
75994
In anatomy of the digestive system, the colon or large intestine is the part of the intestine from the cecum to the rectum. Its primary purpose is to extract water from feces. In mammals, it consists of the ascending colon on the right side, the transverse colon, the descending colon on the left side, the sigmoid colon, and the rectum.
499853
Amylase.  It's found in the mouth, as well as stomach and small intestine.
714519
Well,the following processes take place:\n\nfirst of all you eat the plant material( cooked or uncooked.)mechanical digestion takes place in ur mouth i.e. the break down of food by teeth.then chemical digestion takes place;enzyme like salivary amylase breakdown starch into maltose.saliva is mixed with the food and formed into a bolus.then the food is swallowed.the bolus moves down the oesophagus(the food pipe) to the stomach.In the stomach,protein digestion take place(enzymes like protease breakdown protein into amino acids).then the food is carried t the small intestine where protein and carbohydrates are further broken down.Then the small soluble molecules pass through the villi into the blood stream where the nutrients are absorbed into the blood and thus carried to various parts of body.\n\nYa,I know my answer is long....but can't help it.Sorry!
122419
The "rumble" or "growl" sometimes heard from the stomach is a normal part of digestion. It originates in the stomach or upper part of the small intestine as muscles contract to move food and digestive juices down the gastrointestinal tract.