Digestion Flashcards
What is digestion
The breaking down of ingested food into useable nutrient molecules that can enter the vascular (within our blood) or lymphatic systems (within lymph)
What does the digestive system consist of?
- Gasterointestinal tract (GI)
- The accessory digestive organs
What is the gastrointestinal tract?
a tube from mouth to anus that breaks down the food and absorbs it.- breaks down proteins to a.a etc.
What are the accessory digestive organs?
Teeth (breaks food), tongue, liver, pancreas
What is the purpose of the accessory digestive organs?
help breakdown by mechanical( churning) or chemical means (HCL in stomach)
another term for GI TRACT?
Alimentary canal
What does the liver do?
produce bile salts- which are essential for the breaking down of lipids
What does the pancreas do?
through exocrine secretion,
-Panceratic enzymes are secreted into the digestive tract to help break down
What does the digestive process consist of?
- Ingestion
- Propulsion- smooth muscle contraction which send food particles down tube
- Mechanical breakdown- with teeth and churning in stomach
- Digestion- enzymes breaking food molecules
- Absorption
- Defecation- faeces
What is the summary of digestion of 3 main foodstuffs?
Carbohydrates
Proteins
Fats
What are carbohydrates structures?
-Either monosaccharides (e.g glucose), disaccharides (e.g. lactose) or polysaccharides (glycogen, starch)
What needs to happen to the disaccharides and polysaccharides before they can get absorbed?
need to be broken down into monosaccharides to be absorbed by the epithelial cells that line our small intestines.
How does the digestion of carbohydrates occur?
- Starts digestion in mouth
- Amylase from the salivary glands begins the breakdown of starch in the mouth, forming shorter oligosaccharides.
- This process is completed by amylase from the pancreas.
- These shorter chain sugar molecules are then converted to monosaccharides by the brush border enzymes in the small intestine, where they are absorbed.
What enzyme do you have in the small intestine?
pancreatic amylase
-releases more amylase so carbohydrates can be broken down more into smaller units.
What happens to remaining dissachardies that haven’t broken down?
- Epithelial cells that line the small intestine have enzymes embedded on their [l;asma membrane (integral proteins).
- Can break down into monosaccharides
- referred to brush border enzymes
How are the monosaccharides absorbed?
- easily via across brush border cell layer
- from lumen to cells by a process of facilitated diffusion or active transport
- Intergral proteins which acts as gates on plasma membrane
- releasing monosaccharides into blood supply where needed
What are proteins?
chains of amino acids
What happens in the digestion of proteins?
proteins need to be converted into dipeptides or single amino acids before they can be absorbed.
What is the process of breaking down proteins?
- No protein breakdown in the mouth
- Start the digestion in the stomach
- pepsin enzymes (HCL + pepsinogen) in the stomach breaks proteins into polypeptides and free amino acids.
- Pancreatic enzymes continue this breakdown
- Which is completed by brush border enzymes in the small intestine.
What happens when proteins are remaining?
they break down in the small intestine
- Enzymes on the brush border cells (integral proteins in the plasma membrane of the brush border)
- Absorbed pass the cell.
- enter blood supply
What are fats?
-most ingested fats are triglycerides that need to be broken down into monoglycerides and fatty acids.
How are fats digested?
- There is limited digestion of the fats in the mouth and stomach
- As fat is not solute in water would form big globules in water that could not be digested by enzymes
- therefore it is emulsified (broken into smaller bits) by bile salts
- bile salt emulsifies lipids- allow easier access to enzymes to the thiglycerides to break them down,
- These small fat spheres are split into monoglycerides and fatty acids by pancreatic lipase, which form ‘micelles’ that are absorbed.
- Fatty acids in micelles are in lymphs
- Micelles pass through brush border cells which are then transported to your lacteal which has lymph running through it and goes through lymphatic vessels to then around the body.
What is a triglyceride?
3 fatty acids bound together to a 1 glycerol molecule.
What else are micelles called?
chylomicron
Why is the digestion of proteins and carbs different to fats?
because they are pumped through the blood into the capillaries and to the rest of the body.
Compared to fats which go through lacteal, lymphatic vessels then blood.
What are the micronutrients?
- Vitamins
- Minerals.
How many essential nutrients are needed from our diet?
40 different as our bodies cannot synthesise them fast enough.
What does the body require (nutrients wise)?
- even though there are 40 essential nutrients needed, our body requires 100s.
- Therefore we can use these 40 nutrients and convert them to the many molecule types that we need
How does the body convert the nutrients?
-Liver- which is one of the main chemical factories.- as the blood from GI tract runs through the portal system in the liver.
How are carbohydrates mostly obtained?
from plant products
What are the 2 forms of carbs?
:Simple- monosaccharide and disaccharides- sugars
:Complex- polysaccharides- starch, fibre
What happens with the absorbed monosaccharides that are not glucose?
they can be converted to glucose by the liver.