Anatomy and Physiology of Human Digestion

The food you eat must be digested before it cam be absorbed by the body cells. Digestion involves the use of enzymes to bread down large molecules called polymers into smaller ones called monomers. There are two kinds of digestion. Your teeth are involved in mechanical digestion and they physically change your food. During chemical digestion your food is chemically changed into nutrients, which are small enough to diffuse into your blood. You can find out more about these nutrients on the page titled The Chemistry of Life. This chemical process takes place as food moves through the alimentary canal, ( the tube that begins with your mouth and runs continuously through the torso till it exists . . Well you know where!)

Exactly what does happen to all that food that goes into your mouth? To see the whole story obtain the

CD-rom : A.D.A.M..,The Inside story from your instructor. Click on the family scrapbook and view The Digestive

System. Take the quiz at the end.

If this program is not available to you check out the following link and take the interactive tour. Then answer the questions that follow.

Mayo Clinic Digestive System

1. What is the function of the esophagus?

2. What does it mean to have heartburn? Is the heart really burning?

3. What organ is the site of most of the digestion and absorption of the nutrients in foods?

4. What carries the digested nutrients away from the intestinal track and to our body cells?

5. What happens to the food we can’t digest?

6. Trace the pathway of the alimentary canal (from mouth to anus).