Anatomy of the GI Tract
A 25-foot long, one-way tube that food/nutrients travel through.
What is the GI tract?
An organ that stores and concentrates bile to aid in breakdown of fats.
What is the gallbladder?
The physical breakdown of food into smaller pieces.
What is mechanical digestion?
The total of all chemical reactions occurring in the body at any time, including both catabolic and anabolic reactions.
What is metabolism?
Vitamins A, D, E, & K.
What are fat-soluble vitamins?
An organ that is involved in both mechanical and chemical digestion, that is about the size of the fist but can stretch to hold over 75x its empty volume.
An organ that takes up about 1/4 of the abdominal cavity and comprising 2% of body weight; it produces and exports bile and filters blood.
What is the liver?
A complex process that reduces food into its chemical building blocks to be absorbed to nourish the cells of the body.
What is chemical digestion?
What is ATP?
Actually 1,000 calories, or one kilocalorie.
What is a nutritional calorie?
A structure involved in both digestion and respiration that connects to the esophagus and larynx.
What is the pharynx?
An organ that produces over a liter of juice each day that contains digestive enzymes and bicarbonate ions, aiding in the digestion of sugars, proteins, and fats.
What is the pancreas?
The primary digestive organ in the body, where most breakdown of food molecules and almost all absorption occurs.
What is the small intestine?
The amount of energy expended by the body under resting, awake, fasting, comfortable conditions.
What is basal metabolic rate?
Substances the body needs for growth, repair, and metabolism that the body cannot produce on its own.
What are essential nutrients?
A broad, serous membranous sac that holds abdominal organs in place within the abdominal cavity.
What is the peritoneum?
The component of saliva that allows you to digest carbohydrates and initiate digestion.
What is salivary amylase?
Chemical digestion of this begins in the mouth and is completed in the duodenum.
What are carbohydrates?
The metabolic state occurring when food has been recently eaten and the body is digesting and absorbing the nutrients.
What is the absorptive state?
Inorganic compounds that are not produced by the body, but required for nerve impulse conduction, muscle contraction, bone structure, oxygen transport, and metabolic processes.
What are minerals?
The mucosa, submucosa, muscularis, and serosa.
What are the four layers of the wall of the GI tract?
The salivary gland that responds when eating something sour, causing a sharp sensation in the corners of your mouth by your ears.
What are the parotid glands?
Digestion of this begins in the stomach by first unfolding them in order for their bonds to be broken by enzymes until liberated into individual amino acids for absorption.
What are proteins?
The metabolic state that directs glucose energy to the brain and begins fatty acid and ketone breakdown for other cells; the body might begin to breakdown fat stores and muscle proteins for energy.
What is starvation?
The hormones that increase hunger when the stomach is empty and decrease hunger when fat stores are adequate.
What are grehlin and leptin?