I don’t mean potty-mouth “poop,” I mean your-body-AMAZING “poop”!!!
I know poop probably doesn’t make you think about how
incredible your body is, but it should!! Your
body’s ability to take valuable nutrients out of
WHATEVER you eat and turn it into living tissue
is nothing short of AMAZING. And so is your
ability to eliminate whatever is NOT of use to
you!! All of this together is the extraordinary
work of your digestive system.
Digestion, the act of breaking down the food we
eat for use in the body, starts before you even
put food in your mouth. Chemicals in your saliva
are prepared simply by smelling, seeing, or even
thinking about food. AMAZING!! Once you put
something in your mouth, your saliva and your
teeth begin the actual breakdown process. After
chewing something thoroughly, your tongue
pushes the food toward the back of your throat
and into the opening called your esophagus.
The esophagus is like a stretchy pipe about 10
inches long that connects your mouth to your
stomach. Once the food is in your stomach, it is
broken down into a liquidy mixture. The muscles
of your stomach along with gastric juices break
all the little balls of food that you have
swallowed into smaller pieces. The juice in your
stomach is also pretty AMAZING! First, it’s acidic
and would cause severe burns to your skin, but it
doesn’t damage your stomach at all because the
walls of your stomach are protected by a special
mucus layer. The juice needs to be acidic to help
break down the food, but it also can kill harmful
bacteria that might have been in the food you
ate.
From your stomach the mixture moves on to
your small intestine which isn’t really small at all.
It’s between one and two inches around and 22
feet long!!! It’s all packed up in there though in
some AMAZING way so you would never guess
how long it actually is! The small intestine breaks
down the food even further and begins to
absorb the nutrients, vitamins, proteins,
carbohydrates, and fats from your food. Your
food may spend several hours in this phase
where it becomes very watery. The nutrients
move on to be used by the body and the
remaining waste product proceeds to the large
intestine.
The large intestine is about twice as wide as the
small intestine (about three to four inches
around) but only about five feet long (but also all
packed up inside you). Here is where most of the
water is reabsorbed for use in the body, leaving
a solid material… a poop. The large intestine
pushes the poop into the rectum, the last stop in
the AMAZING digestive system, where it is
stored until you are ready to go to the
bathroom.
It’s important to know that every step along the
digestive system requires clear communication
from your brain via the nerve system to run
efficiently and effectively. Misalignment of spinal
bones can distort that communication and keep
any part or all of your digestive system from
working the way it was meant to. Your family
chiropractor checks your spine for vertebral subluxation
and adjusts you when necessary. This
ensures that your nerve/communication system
works efficiently and allows your digestive system
to do its work. AMAZING!!
