You just can’t eat very well without your esophagus. It’s really the beginning of your digestive system, if you don’t count the mouth, that is. It’s job is pretty simple: it propels food toward the stomach while making sure the stomach contents stay where they belong. The esophagus is able to do this because it uses muscles in consistent waves of relaxation and contraction to keep everything moving and staying where it needs to be.
Here are some more interesting facts about the esophagus to consider.
1. It’s Not a Volunteer
When you’re eating food, then you’re voluntarily putting something into your digestive system to process. You’re spurred onto volunteering food thanks to the feelings of hunger that come about during the day. Even the process of mashing and smashing the food is considered voluntary since you could swallow items whole if you really wanted to do so. Once you swallow that food, however, the involuntary system of the esophagus takes over. You don’t have to think about pushing food into your stomach. It’s just going to happen.
2. It’s a Real Killer
Sometimes the stomach is able to overpower the efforts of the esophagus to keep food down in place. This happens a lot for someone who has a partial hernia of the upper stomach. The acids of the stomach can wind up traveling up the esophagus and the lining of this tube isn’t able to resist those acids like the stomach lining can. The end result is the possibility of an ulcer, bleeding, or scarring that may one day lead to cancer.
3. Talk About a Tear
The esophagus is one flexible tube. It can take a lot of abuse and keep chugging along. Have you ever swallowed a large pill or a piece of food unexpectedly and felt those items get pushed all the way down? It’s actually very rare for the esophagus to tear. It can happen, however, when there is frequent vomiting or dry heaves. If food gets stuck in the esophagus for some reason below where air flows in an out, then a tear can happen as well.
4. That’s Some Tasty Juice
It isn’t just the muscles of the esophagus that are helping food be able to hit your stomach. There’s also the fact that saliva has been included with the food so that it can slide down the tube, a lot like a tube water slide. If you were to just swallow dry food, it would be much more difficult to get the food items to move down into the stomach and you’d be left gasping for air or reaching for a glass of water to get those food items unstuck.
5. Get Checked
When cancer does hit the esophagus, it can be very difficult to detect it during its early stages. It often has no symptoms at all. For this reason, if there are any challenges in swallowing or unusual physical symptoms that can’t be explained by anything else, go to the doctor and get a check-up. It might just save your life.
The esophagus is a pretty amazing 8 inch structure in most adults. Now go enjoy a snack and let your esophagus get to work.