small intestine

It's involved in enzymes.

Then you have the small intestine, and you have the large intestine.

So let's start with the stomach.

What enzymes does the stomach produce? Well, primarily one called pepsin, and pepsin has everything to do with digesting protein.

But if you're not digesting protein, okay, because you don't have enough acid, you're gonna have all sorts of things that are going to occur lower in the digestive tract.

For example, um, that acid is also necessary to activate the gallbladder to release bile, and if you don't have that activation, then we don't have enough bile, and then we don't get the necessary detergent to help extract the fat-soluble nutrients from the fat that you eat.

And then we have undigested protein material that ends up in the small intestine.

And now, uh, both the pancreas and the small intestine have to overcompensate, and they have to produce more enzymes to help break down this material.

Fun fact, your stomach acid is so strong that it could actually dissolve a metal spoon.

After a few hours in the stomach, that soup made of food moves into the small intestine, which is a long, coiled tube about 20 feet long.

This is where most of the magic happens.

Tiny finger-like bumps called villi soak up all the nutrients from the food into your blood.

Your blood is kind of like a delivery system.

Trucks, or blood cells, carry oxygen and nutrients into all the different cells in your body.

The trucks get resupplied at the lungs for oxygen and in the small intestine for nutrients.

You can learn more about the bloodstream by listening to our episode all about blood.

But your tummy is making noise most of the time.

[gurgling] The next stage of digestion happens in the small intestine.

The intestine.

It's a squiggly tube.

The small intestine isn't so small.

That's right.

Even though it's called the small intestine, it's actually really long.

In grown-ups, about seven meters long.

Where does this slimy apple soup go next?

The stomach opens a tiny valve and squirts the chyme into the small intestine.

And Finn, this is where the real magic happens.

Plus, the small intestine has the most ironic name in the world.

Why is it ironic? Is it not actually small?

small?It is massively long.

If you stretched out an adult's small intestine, it would measure about 22 feet.

That is longer than a huge great white shark coiled up right behind your belly button.

Well, our digestive system works in much the same way.

Most of the absorption of nutrients happens in our small intestines, and the length of the average human adult's small intestine is about seven meters.

Plus, inside our small intestines, there are a bunch of little folds and little absorbing fibers with absorbing fibers on them.

And no, I didn't misspeak.

The fibers have fibers.

That's how hard our intestines work to increase their surface area.

Last episode, I was all

impressed that lungs have a total surface area of 75 square meters, while the small intestine has a surface area of 250 square meters.

Blood flow gets backed up between the colon and the portal vein and the liver gets congested or vice versa.

That portal vein, mesenteric vein gets backed up because the liver is congested and can't handle that influx of fluid.

The colon and the mesentery, right, the mesenteric vein within the mesentery or within the mesocolon down in the small intestines and the large intestines around that area.

get distended.

And when they get distended, it mechanically irritates the lumbosacral trunk and the nerves that are inside the pelvic bowl before they've exited it.

So if our sciatic symptoms are more in the foot and the lower leg on that lateral side, then the lateral side of the foot is more associated with the intestines.

So we can look to the intestines.

the ascending colon, the descending colon, or the small intestines, and the duodenum tends to be like the biggest drivers there.