The Digestive System

Physically, your digestive system runs from your mouth to your anus. It is a series of muscular tubes, organs and glands that work together to take the food you eat through our body. They break it down into smaller and smaller molecules and extract the nutrients in a form your body can use for growth, maintenance and energy; then excrete the waste.

From an energetic perspective, the digestive system includes the pancreas, which is a major energy point and closely linked to the solar plexus.

The digestive system is also referred to as the ‘little brain’ or the gut brain, as it contains the enteric nervous system, which functions in the same way as our brain proper and is closely linked in particular to the limbic brain.

Diagram of the digestive system:

In the Mouth, we make an Important contribution to the digestive process:

• Chewing breaks down food into manageable chunks and increases the surface area that can be worked on by your digestive juices. The longer you chew, the easier it is for the food to digest.
• Chewing also gets your saliva flowing, which lubricates the food pieces and starts breaking down carbohydrates

The Oesophagus takes the food from the mouth to the stomach, using the process called peristalsis – a rhythmic series of wave-like, squeezing muscle movements that is used through a lot of the digestive system.

The Stomach produces highly acidic (less than 2 pH) gastric juice, at any hint of food. Pieces of food mix with the stomach acid which

• continues breaking down the cell walls of the food
• helps kill any harmful bacteria or viruses
• activates enzymes that start digesting proteins

The churning of the stomach also helps break down the food into smaller pieces and mixes it with the gastric acid, to produce ‘chyme’.

Our stomach walls are protected from the highly acidic environment by mucus, which also lubricates the stomach and reduces friction. In fact, the inner walls of the whole digestive system are lined with a layer of cells, called mucosa. This layer lubricates and protects the system and contributes enzymes to help digestion.

The small intestine is the part of the digestive system where most of the nutrients from food are absorbed, after further digestion.

In the first section (the duodenum):

• the acidic chyme is neutralised and brought back up to a pH of 7-8.
• the pancreas, liver and gall bladder contribute: Pancreatic juices contain enzymes, and bile, from the liver, helps break down fats. The bile is stored in, and secreted by, the gall bladder.

Glucose and amino acids are absorbed into the capillaries of the intestinal wall. They then travel into the liver, where toxins are neutralised (made safe) then sent to the kidney as urea. Fatty acids and glycerol pass into the lymphatic system from the small intestine and eventually into the blood.

Then the chyme, mostly liquid by now, goes through a valve into the large intestine.

The large intestine, or colon, absorbs water and electrolytes. There are also many types of beneficial bacteria here, helping with the digestion process.

The chyme becomes increasingly solid and is moved along the colon by peristalsis, and into the rectum. Waste solids (faeces) are stored here till they are ready to pass out of the digestive system, through the anus.

This description is obviously highly simplified. In fact, the digestive system uses a whole series of complex, connected chemical reactions to do its job and there are many factors that can interfere with the process, and even bring it to a halt.

It is affected by the food we eat and the environment we live in, and intimately connected with the other systems in the body. A well-functioning digestive system is vital to good health and our feeling of well-being.