The Skinny on: Digestion
Digestion starts before you eat! When you smell, see or think about food, the process of digestion starts. Saliva starts to form in your mouth and digestive juices start flowing. Mouth (aka grinder) Chew, Chew, CHEW! Chewing your food is the first step to break down food. Enzymes in saliva start to break down carbohydrate molecules ready to be absorbed (but not protein or fat yet). Esophagus (aka funnel) After swallowing the bolus (ball o’ food), the food travels down your esophagus and peristalsis (muscular movement) keeps it moving down. Keep bites small and slow so they travel down this tube without discomfort and pass into the stomach. Stomach (aka food storage and food processor) Before surgery the food would hit your stomach and churn around with gastric juices, enzymes and acids that start digesting protein and fat, and finish carbohydrates Digestive (like kneading bread). Juices Food
Now that you have a gastric bypass pouch, your food and digestive juices are separated (thus slowing digestion). If you have a sleeve, you have a very small amount of digestive juices making digestion slower. Digestion
Intestines (…or what’s left of them) Once your food has moved on from the pouch (or sleeve) and reaches the small intestines, it meets up with those digestive juices (for fats and proteins) and the rest of your meal gets broken down and absorbed into the bloodstream. When PROTEINS from food are not broken down, they sit LONGER in your pouch = feeling FULLER, LONGER! Gastric Bypass Pouch Your pouch holds food until it moves through to the Rev. Mar 2012 connection (or meet up) of your intestines and excluded stomach where it meets up with digestive enzymes. Rev. 5‐2012 Gastric Sleeve Your sleeve holds food until it moves past the pyloric sphincter muscle to the rest of the intestines. The portion of the stomach that was removed made hunger/appetite hormones so the sense of appetite and physical hunger is reduced. MUSC Bariatric Surgery Program ~ www.muschealth.com/weightlosssurgery