Health

Snacking on almonds boosts gut health

A team of researchers from King's investigated the impact of whole and ground almonds on the composition of gut microbes. The study published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Medical research

Alterations to gut mucus may trigger ulcerative colitis

Ulcerative colitis is the most common type of inflammatory bowel disease, characterized by chronic ulcers and inflammation in the colon and rectum. Symptoms can be lifelong and range from mild to life-threatening. There is ...

Neuroscience

Pain-sensing gut neurons protect against inflammation

Neurons that sense pain protect the gut from inflammation and associated tissue damage by regulating the microbial community living in the intestines, according to a study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Neuroscience

Study finds unexpected protective properties of pain

Pain has been long recognized as one of evolution's most reliable tools to detect the presence of harm and signal that something is wrong—an alert system that tells us to pause and pay attention to our bodies.

Medical research

New research details the microbial origins of Type 1 diabetes

Almost a decade ago, UO graduate student Jennifer Hampton Hill made a fortuitous find: A protein made by gut bacteria that triggered insulin-producing cells to replicate. The protein was an important clue to the biological ...

Overweight & Obesity

Are midlife women doomed to gain weight?

Weight gain is a common complaint of midlife women, with more than two-thirds of midlife US women being over the ideal weight threshold. Aging-related metabolic changes promote weight gain in both sexes, but women face additional ...

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Gastrointestinal tract

The digestive tract is the system of organs within multicellular animals that takes in food, digests it to extract energy and nutrients, and expels the remaining matter. The major function of the gastrointestinal tract are ingestion, digestion, absorption, and defecation. The GI tract differs substantially from animal to animal. Some animals have multi-chambered stomachs, while some animals' stomachs contain a single box. In a human adult male, the GI tract is approximately 6.5 meters (20 feet) long and consists of the upper and lower GI tracts. The tract may also be divided into foregut, midgut, and hindgut, reflecting the embryological origin of each segment of the tract.

The remainder of this article focuses on human gastrointestinal anatomy; see digestion for the process in other organisms.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA