Your Digestive Tract

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  Mouth: Digestion starts here—where digestive enzymes in your saliva start to break down the food you're eating into a form your body can absorb.

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  Throat (pharynx and esophagus): Carries the food to the stomach.

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  Stomach: Mixes and grinds the food you've swallowed, secreting acid and powerful enzymes in the process to break down the food into a liquid or paste.

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  Pancreas: Factory for digestive enzymes that break down proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

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  Liver: Secretes bile and processes the blood that carries the nutrients absorbed from the small intestine. Cleanses the blood of many impurities.

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  Small Intestine: Almost 20 feet long, your small intestine continues to break down food as it passes through, using enzymes from the pancreas and bile from the liver. Nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal walls and into the bloodstream. Everything else passes into the large intestine.

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  Large Intestine: It’s a muscular tube, 5–7 feet long, that connects the small intestine to the rectum. This highly specialized organ is responsible for absorbing water and salts and processing waste and toxins in the form of stool. Stool passes through the colon, where any remaining water is absorbed. It ideally takes 24 hours for stool to move through the large intestine.

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  Bile: Serves two main purposes: 1) helps absorb fats and 2) carries waste from the liver that cannot go through the kidneys.

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  Rectum: Chamber at the end of the large intestine that receives the stool and notifies the brain when the stool is ready to be released.