Food provide energy to the body. How does it work? Digestive system is the first line to turn food to nutrients and then turn it into energy for body use. Digestive system includes mouth, throat, esophagus (food pipe), stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum and anus. They are different sections of a long pipe where food pass through. In addition to this pipe, there are three organs pancreas, liver and gallbladder which are helping food digestion. Digestion starts from as soon as the food are put into mouth. Chewing breaks down the food into small pieces that are easily digested; stomach store the food and grinder them for short time; small intestines continues the breaking down process intensively and absorb them into blood stream. The unwanted food (waste) was moved to the large intestines and store them waiting to excrete. Pancreas produces enzymes to break down the food, gallbladder produce liquid to help food absoption and liver clean the blood from intestine with absorbed food.
Stomach contains acid to digest the food. This acid can burn the lining of the stomach causing inflammation and it can also go backward to the esophagus and causing damage to the esophagus lining. Large intestines also easily get inflamed causing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). If these happened, abdominal pain, tenderness can be seen. Fatigue is a common symptom for these conditions. Acupuncture can help reduce inflammation and reduce, fatigue, abdominal pain and tenderness.
