And when that moment arrives, what was once food says farewell to the alimentary canal that temporarily held it, and passes back into the light of day.
Gut microbial health, once a fringe medical interest, is now mainstream for human beings, as bugs in the alimentary canal are linked with conditions ranging from obesity to arthritis.
In peristalsis, the smooth muscles of the walls of your digestive organs take turns contracting and relaxing to squeeze food through the lumen, or cavity, of your alimentary tract.
Smooth muscles are used to control the flow of substances within the lumens of hollow organs, for examples, blood vessels and the alimentary canal, and are not consciously controlled.
And this brings me to your crucial accessory organs — the things apart from the alimentary canal that never come in contact with ingested material, but still play an essential role in digestion.
And here, the accessory digestive organs — namely, the liver, pancreas and gallbladder — secrete enzymes into the alimentary canal, where they ambush the mush and break it down into its most basic chemical building blocks.
Now, I'm quite sure that you're familiar with the key players here — they're the hollow organs that form the continuous tube that is your alimentary canal, aka the gastrointestinal tract, which runs from your mouth to your anus.
The large intestine — consisting of the colon, rectum, and anus — is relatively short, at about one and half meters, and it provides a nice little frame for the small intestine, here at the end of the alimentary canal.