Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to bowl your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and we are continuing our
Speaker 1: journey from nose to tail, from snout the sphincter, from
Speaker 1: tongue to taint. I don't know, I'm running. That's great.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good too. Yeah. So anyway, we are continuing
Speaker 1: this epic journey through the digestive system. We began at
Speaker 1: the nose really at the beginning of sensing the things
Speaker 1: that you might eat, and we continued on through chewing.
Speaker 1: We talked about swallowing, about the forming of the bullus,
Speaker 1: we talked about the stomach, and I believe that's where
Speaker 1: we left up. Yeah, yeah, when we last last left
Speaker 1: the cime. That's that's what the bullets became, was lulling
Speaker 1: around in digestive juices. Um. These digestive juices rich and
Speaker 1: ensign and acids with the pH level of two, which
Speaker 1: is just one above the acids in the stomach of
Speaker 1: a vulture. By the way, uh so, yeah, the result
Speaker 1: was a thick, creamy substance which we do call clime.
Speaker 1: So if you think of this digestive journey as a
Speaker 1: ride at a theme park, then you can kind of
Speaker 1: think about this next part of the ride. Um through
Speaker 1: the small intestine is the point in the theme park
Speaker 1: where you start to queue up that long line. So
Speaker 1: we're we're up at the top of the peak right
Speaker 1: about the we're just slowly reaching the edge and then
Speaker 1: we're gonna tip over and it's just gonna be this
Speaker 1: epic ride all the way out, yes, and we are
Speaker 1: about to slide into the intestines. And it's me quite
Speaker 1: a ride because, as Mary Rich describes, the intestines and
Speaker 1: gulp of the walls are bologny, pink and lush with
Speaker 1: mucostal folds. These are circular folds that help regulate the
Speaker 1: flow of digestive food. And then the whole shebang is
Speaker 1: covered in alimeter along projections called villa, which are kind
Speaker 1: of like tiny little fingers sticking out um and she
Speaker 1: actually likens it to little loops on terry cloth, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a good description. They helped to increase
Speaker 1: the surface area that the food passes through, and they
Speaker 1: are also covered with another type of villai called microvilli.
Speaker 1: So you have a ton of surface area here and
Speaker 1: we always you know, hear about when you're you're in
Speaker 1: school about the small intestine being sort of an ironic
Speaker 1: name for it because it's not so small, right right,
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty big. In fact, if you were to
Speaker 1: take it stretch it all out. Don't do this because
Speaker 1: it's really hard to put it all back once you're done.
Speaker 1: But if you were to take your small intestines out
Speaker 1: and stretch it out flat, just flatten it down, it
Speaker 1: would cover a tennis court, an entire tennis court. The
Speaker 1: Williams sisters could take on another opposing team I don't
Speaker 1: know enough about tennis to fill that team on an
Speaker 1: antic Cornicovi and Pete Sampras why not uh, And they
Speaker 1: could play on the surface of your intestines the entire game.
Speaker 1: They'd have to get used to it because you know,
Speaker 1: presumably that micro villa I would really be sticking to
Speaker 1: the soles of their shoes. Well, I mean, if we
Speaker 1: spread it out, then I'm thinking we get a smooth surface,
Speaker 1: we get rid of those ripples, We're gonna iron out
Speaker 1: this intestinal tissue. I don't know. I think you'd have
Speaker 1: to treat that small intestine tennis court. Probably they're gonna
Speaker 1: have to wear special shoes or maybe go barefooted, but
Speaker 1: that might be a little weird for them. Oh man,
Speaker 1: can you imagine the sounds that would make, Like can
Speaker 1: you imagine watching Wimbledon and hearing the squishing and then
Speaker 1: the grunting, right, because some of the players grunt. But anyway,
Speaker 1: we get into an entirely different territory when we start
Speaker 1: talking about grunting, and we talked about the intestines um,
Speaker 1: that just kind of gives you a good light of
Speaker 1: the land, like what does this actually look like inside
Speaker 1: of your body? And it's But the thing is one
Speaker 1: of the things about the small intestines and the colon
Speaker 1: which if you're just here, you're just tuning in to this,
Speaker 1: this is these are the final two steps in our journey.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do this episode and then we're gonna do
Speaker 1: an episode on the colon um. So we're almost there.
Speaker 1: We're almost to the Promised Land. But the thing is
Speaker 1: that so many people don't want to think past the stomach.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of like, oh, I ate some
Speaker 1: delicious food, it's in my tummy. Now my tummy is
Speaker 1: where stuff happens, and then everything else don't want to
Speaker 1: hear about it don't want to know. Well, that's because
Speaker 1: a small intestine in the colon are kind of where
Speaker 1: the sausage making happens. And nobody likes to think about
Speaker 1: sausage making, right, Yes, political or actual sausage making. Right.
Speaker 1: This is where I mean in a sense, this is
Speaker 1: where gross things are continuing to happen. It's it's the
Speaker 1: final journey in which the things that we ate, uh
Speaker 1: look less and less like what we consumed and more
Speaker 1: and more like the poop that's going to come out
Speaker 1: at the end. Yeah, And on this journey right now,
Speaker 1: as he said, we've got that ball of crime and
Speaker 1: now it's queuing up at the pyloric valve. This is
Speaker 1: a portal into the first section of your small intestine.
Speaker 1: Now remember that this first of all this time formerly
Speaker 1: was Haggis, right, and now it's strip by saying it
Speaker 1: was Haggis and it remains yes, And through a process
Speaker 1: called peristalsis is being pushed through now from the pyloric
Speaker 1: valve into the small intestine. Only a little bit at
Speaker 1: a time, though, because the remaining parts continues to get
Speaker 1: broken down until it's just the right consistency where it
Speaker 1: can get pushed through um the kind that boards the duodenum.
Speaker 1: This is the first part of the small intestine gets
Speaker 1: hosed with bile which is discharged through the gall bladder,
Speaker 1: the liver and the pancreas through ducks that lead to
Speaker 1: the small intestine. All right, biling it up, Yeah, biling
Speaker 1: it up, getting hosed. The reason for this is that
Speaker 1: it's going to get broken down even further into nutrients
Speaker 1: in the form of food molecules. And also there's just
Speaker 1: there are also some enzymes from the pancreas in there
Speaker 1: as well, happing to break things down because again it
Speaker 1: continues to be a matter of we have consumed food,
Speaker 1: we have consumed energy and food form, and the whole
Speaker 1: trip through it has to be broken down, has to
Speaker 1: be taken apart, it has to be disassembled. It's like
Speaker 1: a it's like a chrysler that has been taken to
Speaker 1: a chop shop and by the end of it, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be nothing left but an empty shell out on
Speaker 1: sin are blocks. Yeah, and you've got a couple of accomplices, right,
Speaker 1: and you've got you know, with the liver, the gall bladder,
Speaker 1: and the pancreas adding their own little chopping to this.
Speaker 1: Chunk shop. Then this kind, this this haggis moves into
Speaker 1: the jenna junum, and this is the middle section of
Speaker 1: the small intestine that carries food through really rapidly with
Speaker 1: wave like muscle contractions towards the ilium. Ilium is the
Speaker 1: last section and is the longest part of your small intestine.
Speaker 1: It is where most of the nutrients from your food
Speaker 1: are absorbed before getting emptied into the colon. This is
Speaker 1: really important because this process accounts for the absorption of
Speaker 1: of the nutrients in your food that happens here in
Speaker 1: the small intestine. Yeah. So so again, when when we
Speaker 1: say that it's an important part of the process, it's
Speaker 1: it's really, in a sense of the most important process.
Speaker 1: This is where the energy absorption is really taking place.
Speaker 1: This is where the money is being made for your body.
Speaker 1: And and it's also going to be important later on
Speaker 1: in some strange things we're going to discuss in the
Speaker 1: colon section. It's true they are going to be a
Speaker 1: little bit strange um, but completely normal in some ways. No, no, no, normal.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, well, it'll all makes sense in
Speaker 1: the end, but literally, but but yeah, just keep in
Speaker 1: mind that the upper intestines. This is where the important
Speaker 1: stuff is happening. This is where the nutrients are being
Speaker 1: absorbed for the most part. And I really dig this
Speaker 1: idea of these blood vessels and the walls of the
Speaker 1: intestine scooping out those food molecules, those nutrients, and then
Speaker 1: delivering them to the rest of body, because if you
Speaker 1: look at pictures of this, it's sort of alien like
Speaker 1: the way that these are coursing through the walls and
Speaker 1: the intestines sucking that out. Um. But yeah, they are
Speaker 1: carried up through the portal vein into the liver for
Speaker 1: further processing and storage. So again you have other parts
Speaker 1: of the body that are getting in on this and
Speaker 1: also important here getting in on the filtration system, getting
Speaker 1: on some more on their removing of toxins and other
Speaker 1: bad stuff from what you ate. Indeed, they're continue to be,
Speaker 1: you know, since you can continue to be police present
Speaker 1: throughout the digestive process to weed out some of the
Speaker 1: bad eggs. All right, So we're gonna take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: little more about the small intestines, about wind it's important
Speaker 1: what it's doing, and some of the really crazy kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that we've discovered about in recent years. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, we are, and we're talking about the small intestines.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the the upper stories of your intestinal area.
Speaker 1: This uh often UM ignored, often um excluded portion of
Speaker 1: the human anatomy. We don't necessarily want to think about
Speaker 1: what's going on there, but especially the upper intestines, vital
Speaker 1: things are