subject: Irritable Bowel Syndrome - Understand More About Ibs If You Know Gastrointestinal (gi) Tract [print this page] Just like every other disease, it is quite critical that you know what causes IBS not just for the sake of knowledge but also for the protection of your health as well as the health of the people you care about.
Before proceeding to the causes of IBS, it would be best to take a look at the gastrointestinal tract since this is the system involved. You would be able to understand IBS more if you have some knowledge about the GI tract.
The gastrointestinal tract or is the bodily system more commonly known as the digestive system. It is a system of organs that is mainly concerned in taking in food, digesting it, getting nutrients and releasing waste. So basically, the function of the Gastrointestinal Tract is to digest and excrete.
In humans, the Gastrointestinal Tract is more or less 20 feet or 6.5 meters long. This can be divided in 2 parts - the upper and the lower of GI tract.
The organs composing the upper GI tract are the mouth, pharynx, esophagus and stomach. The mouth contains the buccal mucosa that has the tongue, the teeth and the salivary glands and this is where the first process of digestion begins.
The organ that comes after the mouth is the pharynx. It is considered as a hollow passageway that leads to the next organ of the upper Gastrointestinal Tract that is the esophagus. This is where food, water and saliva pass by after entering the mouth and is pushed to the stomach to be digested properly. That movement of food or bolus in the upper GI tract is called peristalsis.
The lower GI tract is composed of two organs: the small intestines and the large intestines. After being digested in the stomach, the food moves along to the small intestines. In the small intestines, the digested particles are processed wherein nutrients are absorbed by fingerlike structures called scillia. The small intestine is also considered the longest organ in the body since it is approximately 7 feet long. It has three parts that are called the duodenum, jejunum and ileum.
After absorbed for nutrients, what is left is the waste that goes to the large intestine. Its main function now is to absorb any water left in the waste and excrete it through the anus.
