Questions tagged [digestive-system]
Organs that play a role in digestion and/or absorption of nutrients: breaking down of food into smaller components that can be absorbed and used as for sources of energy, cellular/tissue building blocks, or cofactors for vital biochemical reactions.
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What inactivates pepsin in infants?
In infants, rennin helps in digestion of milk. Pepsin is also present in their stomach.
Why do infants need rennin for milk digestion, at the first place? Why does pepsin not act on the milk ...
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Do humans produce rennin?
At school, we've been taught that human infants produce rennin/chymosin (which aids in the digestion of milk). More specifically, it is the peptic cells in the stomach which secrete prorennin, the ...
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Are humans the only animal that requires "clean water"?
I've seen a number of animals - dogs, cats, squirrels, ducks and geese, etc drink from puddles, some of them were muddy, others had green flora growing under water. Same goes for lakes and rivers. A ...
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What nutrients can humans absorb in the mouth?
For instance, I realise being able to absorb simple sugars in the mouth is pivotal in the rapid action of oral glucose gel. Thus I was wondering what nutrients in general can be absorbed directly ...
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Is there evidence to suggest that nutrients in vitamin capsules are not as readily absorbed as the same nutrients in whole foods?
I recently fell ill with a cold, and began to take a vitamin C capsule each day to help my immune system. When I noticed no change in my condition, I began to incorporate an abundance of citrus into ...
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How does botulinum toxin enter the blood stream from the digestive tract?
To my understanding, large polypeptides such as botulinum toxin cannot pass the intestinal lining intact. How, then, can it enter the bloodstream and cause botulism poisoning?
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Do intestinal flora have the same DNA as their host?
Please bear with me, this is not my professional field and I might be mixing things up. In an explanation why seeds won't start growing in one's intestines, the explanation given was that foreign ...
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Does freezing microorganisms such as probiotics kill them?
Does freezing microorganisms such as probiotics kill them? If not, what is the process that allows them to "come back to life" after the temperatures are increased?
As an example, lets say you ...
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Why do people say that trans fatty acids are bad for your health?
I've heard from several sources that trans FAs are bad for you and their consumption will lead to cardiac problems, and that they are indigestible.
But I also learned from biochemistry that they are ...
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Do omnivore mammals vary food preferences based on dietary needs?
I'm wandering if mammals that can eat many different kinds of food (omnivores) vary their preference for food not only based on the availability, but also based on dietary needs?
I'm looking at this ...
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How does the human stomach handle a mix of digested and undigested food?
As I understand it, the stomach digests the bolus into chyme and then passes the latter on to the small intestine. This process takes between 40 minutes and a few hours.
However, what happens when ...
user6268
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What is an simple way to burn glucose for visible effect?
I want to make a partially working model of the digestive system that could digest complex carbohydrates. My ultimate goal is to be able to cut up some bread, put it into the model, operate it, and ...
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Energetics and Products of Pepsin/HCl Protein Digestion
What are the energetics of protein digestion during which the enzyme pepsin is "activated" (whatever that means) by HCl? I've looked and been unable to find anything like a chemical equation that ...
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What is the biological basis for tiredness after eating? [duplicate]
I can sometimes feel quite drowsy after some "meals" (e.g. a cold cut & cheese sandwich with juice on the side) and less drowsy (or maybe less often) after others (such as a salad).
This ...
user12939
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Is there nutrient absorption in the large intestine of hindgut fermenters?
In hindgut fermenters, plants are digested in the caecum by microbes. I want to know whether hindgut fermenters can absorb the nutrients obtained from the digestion in the large intestine because the ...
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Gastric and intestinal gas exchange
A very long time ago, I happened across research into using an oxygenated liquid in the stomach and or intestinal cavity. I wondered what further results came about of that research, and am having ...
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Why porifera is classified to have an incomplete digestive system although it has no organs?
Why are we using the term "incomplete" for digestive system only? We could have also said that for circulatory system that it is either incomplete or present as a simple system. What I mean ...
