Assuming I eat some food which needs 4 hours of digestion in the stomach. 3 hours and 55 minutes later I eat something else which can get more easily digested but still needs, let‘s say 1 hour, of digestion. How does our stomach know what to pass on and what to keep?
In: 5
Everything gets dumped into the small intestine. Digestion happens there, too. The stomach breaks down proteins mostly. The carbohydrates and fats are digested mostly in the intestines.
The stomach doesn’t know anything. It’s more or less like a bag of digestive juices with an opening at the bottom and the time food spends in the stomach is determined by how long it takes to go down that hole (into the small intestine). It’s about how liquid the food is and how backed up the initial section of the small intestine is. Food flow though the intestine is usually pretty steady unless there’s a blockage or something happens that triggers the body to evacuate it.
So an actual answer to your question: HOW does the stomach know….
>“The gastric emptying rate is a carefully regulated process consisting of different phases. Metabolic load, neural regulatory mechanisms and hormonal influence achieve a balanced emptying of contents from the stomach into the duodenum for absorption in the small intestine.
Which in ELI5 means there is a feedback loop between the cells lining the stomach and various hormones that interact with the nervous system.
The cells lining the stomach have sensors in them that detect what’s happening and signal the nervous system all kinds of things….like “it’s time to feel full and stop eating”, or “it’s time to pass the food into the intestines”, or “this food is spoiled and we need to throw it back up”.
Thank you for all your explanations! I think I have a better overall understanding of that process. 😎
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