How are carbohydrates digested in our body!!!

 

Digestion of carbohydrates begins in the mouth and continues through the stomach and the small intestine.

There are basically three types of carbohydrates that are digested by the human body and they are sucrose which is found in the cane sugar or we can say the normal sugar we eat, second is lactose or the carbohydrate part present in milk and dairy products. The third type of carbohydrate that we intake is a polysaccharide which is starch which we intake as grains.

In layman terms carbohydrate is the part of diet such as sugar, dairy and grains. The former two are disaccharides and only starch is polysaccharide.

After knowing what carbohydrates  we are intaking now should know how these are digested in our digestive system.

Firstly, all the food we take weather be it carbs, fat or proteins they undergo hydrolysis(breakdown of a chemical compound due to water) and in case of carbohydrate it goes as follows.

R”-R’ + H2O → R”OH + R’H

Here hydrolysis is breakdown the carbohydrate to monosaccharide. Now if we see in the process of hydrolysis there is requirement of two components. First is water i.e H2O which is gained by outside i,e drinking water or the result of metabolic reactions in the body.

Second and the most important component of the reaction are digestive enzymes. They are important because if they are not produced or are produced in low amounts the respective carbohydrate type will not be digested and will cause various complications

For better understanding we can take the example of lactose intolerant people, those people have deficiency of the digestive enzyme to break down lactose (the milk carbohydrate) so they cannot digest milk or dairy products and can result in diarrhea, bloating etc.

Organs and parts of the body where carbohydrate digestion takes place

1.           Mouth- Carbohydrate digestion starts in the mouth itself by the enzyme present in our saliva called salivary amylase or α-amylase or ptyalin. But, the food stays in our mouth only for a short time span so only 5 % of the starch gets digested there.

2.         Stomach – from the mouth the food in the form of bolus goes through the oesophagus to the stomach. The alpha- amylase is still active sometimes in the stomach till the acidic gastric juice deactivates it and some digestion might occur in the fundus region of the stomach.

3.         Small intestine- The carbohydrate is almost 30-40 % digested in the stomach and the mouth and then it reaches the duodenum part of the SI in the form of chyme. In the duodenum the pancreatic amylase which is similar to the salivary amylase but many folds stronger acts into the carbohydrates and breaks it into maltose and small glucose polymers.

4.         The enterocytes of the SI- The enterocytes  line the villi of the small intestine and they contain the enzymes like (sucrose, maltase, lactase and α-dextrinase) which break down the polysaccharide to their respective monosaccharide which are water soluble and they are then absorbed to the portal blood circulation.

Conclusion

 The carbohydrates digestion takes around 4 to 5 hours including absorption. Large amount of time is taken by green leafy vegetables because they have complex carbohydrates including cellulose which cannot be digested by humans. The digestion of carbohydrate breaks down polysaccharides to simple sugar monosaccharide and thus may spike the blood glucose levels.

People with diabetes and other digestion enzyme related issues like lactose intolerance may need to monitor their amount of carbohydrate intake.

P.S - Share with people you think might like it and comment your thoughts.

Stay safe until next time.


 

 

 

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