DIGESTION 101:  What your mom never taught you— probably because she didn’t know either

 

When you see food, your brain starts preparing you for digestion. Hopefully you will have hydrated before you started eating (because you should never drink during the meal as it will dilute the power of your digestive enzymes)!

As you chew, saliva squirts out of your salivary glands in your jaws into the mouth and mixes with food. That is step one toward the goal of turning solid food into liquid fuel (energy). 

When you finally swallow your liquified bite, it slides down your wet throat and falls into your stomach, which is like a skin bag. 

As soon as you started to chew, your accessory organs (liver, gallbladder and pancreas) squirted their bile and enzymes into your stomach, mixing with the water already there from hydrating before the meal. 

The food begins to dissolve in the stomach until it is completely liquified. It takes about two hours for your stomach to then drip the liquid fuel down into the small intestine - so never lay down - stay vertical or you may develop heartburn, reflux or or G.E.R.D. 

It takes food about 6 hours to move through the small intestine. That is where all the elements of the liquid fuel (sugars, carbs, fats, proteins, minerals, vitamins) get used/ absorbed - creating energy. 

What is left afterwards is the indigestible, non-soluble sludge, which enters the large intestine on your right side just below the belly button level.

This sludge (poop) moves against gravity up to the top of your right intestine, across from rib to rib to the left side and then down the left side where all the little bits compress and dehydrate, preparing to exit your rectum and finally out your anus, once you awaken and start hydrating.

When that happens, the newly swallowed water triggers the dam to open and floods the colon to flush you out, hopefully emptying easily and completely, leaving you feeling empty and energized for your day.