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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Why does mouldy food make you sick?
Bread gets mouldy pretty quickly. My parents (both of whom are nurses) throw out a loaf of bread after a spot of mould is seen (because "if you can see one spot, it means the whole thing is covered in ...
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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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Blood urea nitrogen and usage of proteins?
I have been reading some books and am getting slightly confused. Here is roughly what I have read.
The greater the blood urea nitrogen the greater the usage of proteins (since blood urea nitrogen ...
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Does inhaling glue (glue sniffing) reduce appetite?
I have heard from many homeless people that they sniff glue just to reduce appetite, as it comes cheap and is more affordable than actual food.
Is this true, and if yes, why? This is totally opposite ...
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Can sugar be absorbed orally within seconds? [duplicate]
Whenever I feel a little light headed or tired, it helps to eat something sweet.
Specifically, simply chewing or sucking on a sweet seems to aleviate the symptoms within a matter of seconds and then ...
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Influence of eating at late night on sleep
I have often heard the saying that one shouldn't eat a mountain of food because blood will go to the stomach and it'll be difficult to sleep well because the stomach can't rest at night.
I see that ...
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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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Can reptiles digest grains?
As a caretaker of a turtle, I sometimes struggle understanding the logic behind the inclusion of corn, soybean, and wheat meals in reptile food, such ingredients seem truly aberrant from what a ...
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how food moves in horizontal coils of small intestines [duplicate]
This is a very very basic question, and I am looking at it more from point of view of physics. The small intestine is a highly coiled structure, which means it has horizontal coils as well. I can ...
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How can heart disease cause dizziness after eating?
I have been reading several articles explaining dizziness after eating (see here and here), and both articles gloss over something that I found pretty remarkable.
Both articles claim that "heart ...
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Are nutrients absorbed in human esophagus?
Following this question regarding absorption in human oral cavity (sadly not yet fully answered), I'm curious if any nutrient absorption occurs during the descent of food through the esophagus.
And ...
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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 ...
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Why does anxiety cause diarrhea or constipation?
Anxiety sometimes cause diarrhea, sometimes constipation, and sometimes both. It's interesting because it seems their underlying neurophysiology is somehow different. What are underlying physiological ...
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Can swallowed fingermails, hair, or skin get caught in your appendix? [closed]
There is a common saying in my place: If you eat your skin, hair or nails, it will be deposited in the cecal (Vermiform) appendix, and can cause appendicitis. (This is mostly told to children to ...
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How is satiety measured?
I am aware of satiety only through experience, rules-of-thumb and possibly myths. For example: white bread is not filling, a pasta meal can be filling but because we "burn" carbs quickly pasta itself ...
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Food allergen-related skin reactions and intestinal inflammation?
Are there any connections between food allergen-related skin reactions causing intestinal (or more broadly, gastrointestinal) generalized inflammation?
If such a link exists, is it related to any of ...
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Does eating antacid (such as Magnesia) before meal have any impact on digestion? [closed]
During an anatomy lecture I heard of the importance of the acidity of gastric acid (e.g., killing microorganisms, dissolving food, being a factor for triggering further processes). If a healthy person ...
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Did the Britons 100 years ago have different intestinal flora and fauna?
Note: this is not a question about history, but about human digestive system over time :)
I know a lot of colleagues who traveled for business trips to India. All of them caught terrible diarrhea ...
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What happens to lactic acid I eat?
Let's say I drink some Kefir Milk, what happens to the lactic acid in the Kefir Milk that has entered my digestive system?
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Question about what the liver does NOT do
Which of the following functions is NOT performed by the liver?
a) Storage of vitamins and minerals
b) converts glucose to glycogen
c) converts toxins to harmless chemicals
d) produces bile
I chose ...
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Is there a biological reason for spreading food intake into breakfast-lunch-dinner?
I keep hearing over an over how humans can satisfy their entire daily caloric need in one sitting at a fast food restaurant. At the same time I'm looking at the kitchen plates, cups, etc, and they ...
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Are there any fungi that can digest humic acids?
Humic acids are a complex group of organic substances, that are generally known to be hardly biodegradable. Fungi as agroup are known for breaking down complex organic matter like cellulose or lignin. ...
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what is the effect of soda water on digestion?
what is the effect of soda water on the process of digestion? As it has been seen that after drinking soda the process is increased...I just want to know that what is the chemistry behind this?
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Absorption rate of Infrequently eating animals?
Clearly, creatures such as us humans, after vastly increasing the entropy of our food, expel most of the mass that we consume.
Some creatures, however, do NOT get the opportunity to eat nearly as ...
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What are the pros and cons of eating earth (soil)?
I wonder if there are any benefits to eat earth. What I mean by earth is the topsoil that is sometimes on vegetable (I eat organic vegetables and some of them like spinach are full of topsoil).
I ...
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Does adding milk to cereal make it harder for our body to absorb the vitamins and minerals from the cereal?
I add about 3/4 cups of Blue Diamond almond milk (unsweetened) every morning to a single serving of Cheerios. The milk contains filtered water, and I read that drinking water with food at the same ...
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why can't we digest cellulose [duplicate]
I have a very tricky question....all the veg and fruit
cells contain cell wall and it is made of cellulose when we eat how our body digest though we
don't have the enzymes to breakdown 1-4 beta ...
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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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How suddenly does lactose-intolerance onset?
How quickly can the loss of lactose tolerance onset in an adult?
Such as being able to process lactose normally to having notice symptoms associated with the inability to process lactose.
I am not ...
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Is lemon water an alkalizing agent in the body?
I was recently having a discussion with someone about whether lemon water actually increases the pH of your body (by which I assume they mean the blood); their claim was that once Citric acid was ...
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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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Why are diabetic people often overweight?
I was looking at diabetes the other day, and I noticed something strange. Lower amounts of lipase are a symptom of diabetes, as is overweightness. However, since lipase is the enzyme that breaks down ...
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Do animals get sick from eating dirty food or eating off the floor?
Humans have very strict tradition of hygiene, such as washing hands before eating, using utensils, and in general keeping as much distance between food and dirt as possible.
At the same time, most ...
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Why does the stomach ache if you take a brisk walk after lunch or dinner
After eating your lunch or dinner, if you take a brisk walk, most of the time your stomach aches. Why does that happen? What happens with respect to the body metabolism?
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Why are my faeces black in color after eating Oreos
Why are my faeces black in colour the morning after I eat some Oreos?
Day 1 : Eat a handful of Oreos & the next morning your stool is black.
Day 3 : Eat a handful of cocoa flavored biscuits &...
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By what mechanism does coeliac disease cause excess fat in the feces?
Wikipedia states that “Severe coeliac disease leads to the characteristic symptoms of pale, loose and greasy stool (steatorrhoea)”. However thumbing through the causes and the pathophysiology it did ...
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Why do antibiotics have a special importance when taking lactulose?
“Before taking lactulose, tell your doctor and pharmacist what prescription and nonprescription medications you are taking, especially antacids, antibiotics including neomycin (Mycifradin), and other ...
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Why do antacids have a special importance when taking lactulose?
“Before taking lactulose, tell your doctor and pharmacist what prescription and nonprescription medications you are taking, especially antacids, antibiotics including neomycin (Mycifradin), and other ...
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How does lactulose cause the removal of ammonia from the colon?
Lactulose is also used to reduce the amount of ammonia in the blood of patients with liver disease. It works by drawing ammonia from the blood into the colon where it is removed from the body.
[Source]...
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E. coli, risk of infection?
There has been a warning about E. coli contaminated water in South Florida. Now I'm wondering are there empirical data or historic cases which show a correlation between E.coli levels in tap water and ...
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Would non-human carnivores be able to survive on farmed foods?
Certain creatures that are considered carnivores are non-obligate carnivores and are technically omnivores (such as wolves/dogs). How different is the potential digestive ability of these species ...
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By what mechanism does an obstructed bile duct cause excess fat in the stool?
By what mechanism does an obstructed bile duct (for example gallstones) cause steatorrhoea (excess fat in the stool)?
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Can animals use the nitrogen in chitin to build proteins?
Fungi and insects contain chitin, which is about 6% nitrogen.
Can an animal - like me - make use of this as a nitrogen source to build proteins?
Are there any animals that can do this?
Are there ...
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How is the appropriately-stratified gut microbiome acquired in organisms performing horizontal transmission?
I am studying horizontal transmission of primary symbionts in insect reproduction. This reminded me of an earlier question I had asked, in which I learned that humans analogously acquired their ...
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What is the energy balance of cooking?
If I cook some food, I get apparently several energetic advantages:
thermal : the temperature of the food is closer or superior to the temperature of my body or internal organs, so I do not have to ...
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How compatible are mammalian digestive systems?
I'm interested in what kinds of nutrients mammals extract from food and would like to know how similar are the outputs of these systems.
For example, if it is possible to successfully replace one ...
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Long term liquid food diet by blending/grinding all quality foods one would normaly eat, not any weight loss or prepared drinks
I want to know what are the effects of not using your teeth to grind foods but preparing it before eating with blending and grinding them into a liquid.
Here I am not talking about any weight loss or ...
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Are there grass or fiber eating birds?
My understanding, that may be wrong, is that cellulose/fibre has little nutritional value to many animals because it's hard to break down thus making consumption inefficient. However, Ruminating ...
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Excretion of small kangaroos while in the pouch
How is the excretion of small kangaroos done when they are in the pouch of their mother, fastened onto her teat? My question is what happens with the products; do they accumulate in the pouch?
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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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