the.com/digestion
a nine-meter slow-motion riot where your body dismantles dinner into the molecules that are you
means the process by which your body breaks down food into nutrients it can absorb and use, from the moment you swallow to whatever exits at the other end
from From Latin 'digerere,' to separate, dissolve, or arrange — literally 'di-' (apart) plus 'gerere' (to carry). So digestion is, at root, a carrying-apart: dinner ferried into its component parts. The word reached English through Old French in the medieval period, and that same 'gerere' shows up in cousins like 'gesture' and 'register' — all of them, in their way, about carrying something.
- gut neurons
- 500 million neurons; a second brain in your belly
- acid strength
- stomach acid can dissolve metal, pH near one
- slow journey
- food takes up to three days to exit
- new lining
- stomach rebuilds its wall every few days
- microbe majority
- gut bacteria outnumber human cells in you
gastric bypass surgery — surgical procedure that reduces stomach size by 90%, causing weight loss by limiting food intake and calorie absorption
hydrochloric acid in stomach — chemical with ph 1.5-3.5 that breaks down proteins and kills bacteria during the first 2-4 hours of digestion
small intestine villi — finger-like projections covering 250 square meters of surface area in the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum for nutrient absorption