Functions of the intestine as a part of the digestive system
The intestine, which arises from the small intestine and the large intestine, is an organ of the digestive system.
Today, I want to talk about what kind of role it plays as a part of the digestive system in our body.
Small Intestine
The small intestine is made up of three sections: The duodenum, the jejunum, and the ileum.
These three sections in total take up to 6.35m in adults, and function as a digestive system of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates.
Even though digestion is often thought to be happening in our stomach a lot, in fact, 90% of our digestion occur in the small intestine.
To do this, the small intestine secretes many kinds of enzymes, including trypsin, chymotrypsin, lipases, and amylaze.
Not only digestion, though, the small intestine also plays a part in absorption of water, electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals, in addition to the substances like lipids and carbohydrates.
Water is often absorbed through the use of osmosis, and electrolytes are absorbed by diffusion and active transports. Vitamins and minerals, which can be absorbed without any digestion, are absorbed with dietary fats and diffusion.
Large Intestine
Small intestine alone seems to work enough to complete our digestion and absorption, but in fact, the large intestine also plays a large part in our digestive, and absorption system.
The large intestine is about 1.5 meters in length, and divided into two sections: The cecum, and the colon.
The colon is further divided into 5 sections, which are the ascending colon, the transcerse colon, the descending colon, the sigmoid colon, and the rectum.
Mainly, the large intestine has 4 main functions:
- Reabsorption of water and minerals
- Formation and temporarily storage of the faeces
- Maintaining and managing over 500 kinds of bacteria
- bacterial fermentation of indigestible food
From this, we can clearly see that the large intestine function along with bacteria; even the faeces include bacteria in addition to undigested food and mucus.
Therefore bacteria is a very controversial factor of the function of intestine. In fact, bacteria not only affects the large intestine, but also our immune system and hormone release.
Conclusion
The small intestine and the large intestine have similar functions to absorb nutrients from the ingested food.
However, the intestine is not that simple; especially in the large intestine, the bacteria plays a very important part in maintaining our overall health.
Next week, I want to talk more about the intestines’ hidden role in controlling our health.
Disclaimer: This blog is only research done by a high school student. It SHOULD NOT be considered as any medical recommendation.
