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What would happen if we did not have a digestive
system? |
Question Date: 2014-06-10 | | Answer 1:
The digestive system is my favorite system!
Without it you would not survive. Our digestive
system is how we break down food into nutrients
that feed our cells and give us energy to move,
talk, grow, think, reproduce, and all the other
crazy things that humans do.
Although each of the parts of the digestive system
has specific and important functions, shockingly,
you can survive without some of the parts. For
example, morbidly obese individuals can have their
stomach entirely removed in a procedure called a
gastric bypass. In this surgery, the small
intestine is linked directly to the esophagus thus
“bypassing” the stomach. You can also live without
your appendix. In fact, it sometimes negatively
impacts health as it can become infected (have you
ever known someone who had their appendix burst?).
The appendix was thought to be a “vestigial
organ” meaning that at one point in evolutionary
history, we humans had a need for it, but now we
don’t; however, there is recent evidence that the
appendix is an important hotbed for beneficial
bacteria that help us digest food. (The appendix
may not be so bad after all!, read on the link to
learn about click
here
| | Answer 2:
A complex digestive system was evolved very early
on to recover and sort nutrients in food. It was
one of the first parts of organisms to evolve,
even much before complex brains. If you had no
digestive system, you would have no ability to get
the nutrients and sugars in food, and you would
die. The digestive system is very long, however.
Some people have gotten into car accidents and
damaged their intestines, and had to have part of
them removed. The entire digestive system may be
over 30 feet long (it's all coiled up).
Thankfully, we can live with only part of a
digestive system. However, if you have a
significant part removed, your food passes through
faster and you get less nutrients out of it, so
you have to eat a lot more food than normal people
and you have to go to the bathroom very
frequently.
| | Answer 3:
To answer your question, let's think about the
purpose of the digestive system for keeping us
alive. We use our digestive system mostly to take
in nutrients, energy and water. All living things
require nutrients, energy and water, but not all
living things have digestive systems the way we
think of in the human body.
So, if we didn't have digestive systems, but
wanted to keep on living, we would need a
different way of taking these things in. Maybe
this would look like plant life, where we take
energy from the sun and water and nutrients from a
root system. Or maybe it would look like fungi,
which take up small sugar and amino acid compounds
through their cell walls and break them down for
energy. Or maybe something altogether different
and unknown. All we know as that for life (as we
know it) to exist, organisms must receive external
water, energy and nutrients. Evolution has
produced several systems that work quite well for
a vast number of organisms, but perhaps there are
other options that nature has either discarded
over time in place of more successful systems, or
which nature hasn't gotten around to testing yet.
Fun to think about!
| | Answer 4:
This is an interesting question. The digestive
system is responsible for the breakdown of food
into components that can be absorbed and
assimilated into the body, and is connected to the
excretory system, which excretes waste, or
material that is not used by the body. Without the
digestive system, then, we wouldn't really have a
way of acquiring the compounds and energy
necessary for our bodies to function.
| | Answer 5:
For humans, and most highly organized animals
such as birds, mammals, and mostly other animals,
the digestive system is the most important part of
the system. We have something called a complete
gut (we have a mouth and an anus). When we eat our
food it travels down the esophagus down to our
stomach and intestines. In the small intestine 90%
of our food is absorbed back into our body. If we
didn't have a digestive system the food wouldn't
be absorbed the way we need it to be for bodily
functions. We needs nutrients, such as vitamins
and proteins to carry out functions. Most
primitive animals did not have a digestive system
or a complete gut, but they lived because their
structures are so far less advanced that they
didn't need a proper digestive system. Another
reason is that we eat a lot of different types of
food which need to be broken down. Our digestive
system allows us to eat the variety of foods
because it can break down the foods and then
absorb essential nutrients back into our bodies.
You hair, skin, nails, body weight, body
structure, strength, and overall health mostly
comes from the food you eat, which is why it is
very important to eat healthy. The food we eat is
our fuel and if we eat the wrong "fuel", such as
chips, donuts, and other excessive sugars and bad
carbohydrates, our digestive system doesn't have
the right nutrients to absorb back into our
bodies. Our digestive system is very critical in
our overall health. Click Here to return to the search form.
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