The Body Temple: Your Food Tube
“It’s just a simple tube?”
by Jack Hoehn | 18 December 2024 |
A newborn’s first job is to find some oxygen, the second is to find a nipple. Little puppies and little people expend their first newborn energy looking for something to eat. I’ve read several articles on the digestive system that begin with “It’s just a simple tube.” What could be more direct than mouth, stomach, and flush? Is it really “as simple as pie”?
Lips
Well, let’s start with lips. Simple? Soft, movable, multi-functional, for sure. They are not made of ordinary skin. Facial skin has 16 layers; lips are designed to be thin and sensitive with only 3 to 5 layers. This is why you can see the red of your blood vessels through your lips. They also have no hairs or sweat glands like ordinary skin. At least 12 different muscles make the lips not only able to suckle but also to whistle, and they are essential for intelligible speech sounds. But lips communicate with no sound at all by the unmistakable communication with smile or frown or when pursed into the shape of an anticipated or even distant kiss. Your “simple” little pair of lips are so expressive that deaf people can learn to understand your speech just by “reading your lips” without perception of any sounds at all. Lips are necessary for chewing by holding food in the mouth and keeping liquids from spilling out. Babies born with defective lips can’t suckle. Two of the 12 cranial nerves serve the lips. The 7th or facial nerves control the movements, and the 5th or trigeminal nerve controls the sensitive touch that makes human lips sexual. Lipstick is a cosmetic enhancement to mimic the vasodilation and engorgement of the lips that occurs during sex. Lips, simple?
Teeth
Moving from the “simple” lips, we quickly find teeth. Breaking down foods into particles small enough for the molecules needed for nutrition starts with teeth. Teeth are strong and white like bones, so perhaps evolution just makes use of bone for breaking down food. But surprise, teeth are unlike any bone! Bones are made of collagen made strong with calcium phosphate. Teeth have a different kind of calcium called enamel, the hardest substance in the body and much more durable than any bone, which protects the tooth from physical, thermal, and chemical forces. The dentin underneath is more bone-like, but in the real bone of the mandible there is another unique creation called cementum that keeps your teeth from falling out as long as they are healthy. Teeth, simple?
Tongue
And then you find this big muscle in your mouth that is necessary to manipulate the food so that you can chew it, and then position it so you can swallow it And oh, yes, it also tastes your food. What else would let you know that “simple as pie” was pie? And the tongue also makes speech possible working with lips and vocal cords. Tongue, simple?
Spit
Oh, I almost forgot. A dry tongue or teeth don’t work very well, so let’s remember to evolve at the same time as tongue and teeth some spit from very large saliva glands. And while we are evolving the spit, could we also evolve some digestive enzymes into the saliva? We need those enzymes as essential in beginning the process of digestion of dietary starches and fats. These enzymes also play a role in breaking down food particles entrapped within dental crevices, thus protecting teeth from bacterial decay. There is just so much for “evolution” to remember, for a “simple” digestive tube!
Swallow
But at last we’ve taken in the food that tastes and smells good, and we’ve chewed it enough with teeth and tongue, mixed it with digestive enzymes, so now we have to get it past the lungs and into the stomach, so let’s just swallow it.
“The reflexive and voluntary actions of over 30 nerves and muscles produce this coordinated movement [swallowing]. Typically, individuals give little thought to the process of swallowing; however, its complexity can lead to significant issues….”
This National Institute of Health article on deglutition, or swallowing, suggests that this is such an important function that human fetuses start “evolving” this function at 15 weeks in utero, months before they need to swallow their first gulp of milk.
Such is the power of the word “evolution” that scientists reflexly use the word for the development of complex life skills designed for every baby as if it were an example of “evolution” instead of impressive evidence of design! Shrugging off the digestive system as “just a simple tube” leads to minimizing the complex, coordinated, reflexive, and voluntary action of over “30 nerves and muscles” as just “evolving” in every human fetus six months before swallowing will be needed. Palatoglossus, geniohyoid, vallecula, levator veli palatini, specific muscles and all their nerves, anyone?
Is this simple? Someone is being “simple,” but swallowing is not! “Doth thou mock me? I mock you not, by heaven (Shakespeare, in Othello).” I mock you not “by heaven,” nor by my Bible. I challenge the dishonesty of “simplification in service of dogma” with the plain sciences of anatomy, physiology, and their obvious specified complexity, good sirs.
Stomach
Now we begin the 40 feet of gut under your lungs. Is the stomach at the start of the gut just more tube? Yes, it is “tubular”—but is has a valve at its entrance and a valve at its exit, permitting time for the hydrochloric acid to kill the viruses and microbes that sneak in with your food. This is done with highly specialized parietal cells located in the corpus of the stomach, generating an H+-concentration in the gastric juice that changes the pH of the blood and body tissues from a pH of 7.4 to the stomach acid pH of 1. But that pH difference is not 7 times more acidic—it is an H+-concentration 3 million times greater than in blood and tissue. This amazing process in the “simple tube” is controlled by “a complex system of endocrine cells and neurons. (Click here for details).”
Intestine
The gastric acid of the stomach then has to be neutralized in the duodenum by secretions of bicarbonate (think baking soda) from the pancreas. Then different enzymes also in the bile from the liver complete the digestion of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates in the small intestines. The mucosa of the small intestine is intentionally thinner than that of stomach and large bowel because its design is to let in nutrition. Whereas the large bowel and stomach need to be thicker to make a larger barrier to keep out infection from the outside. Each area of the digestive tube specifically is designed for its intended function: thin for absorption, thick for protection. Just where needed.
This “simple tube” of the gut is not simple. It is obviously carefully and purposefully designed.
The colon, or large bowel, is where bacteria live that make essential vitamins for us, such as thiamine, riboflavin, and vitamin K. Water and bicarbonate salts are absorbed from the digested food. The appendix is not a leftover evolutionary remnant but is essential in fetal life and has a high concentration of lymphatic cells thought to be important in the immune system even after fetal development.
Hemorrhoids
As with the appendix, most think that the fact that the end of the digestive system has large veins is just a problem. But please remember that there is an engineering problem in keeping you continent. Your stool is being dried out in the colon but some times it is still partly liquid. A muscle can constrict and hold back solid stool, but you need a gasket to hold back liquid stool, so venous bags full of blood form a seal that holds back liquid, while permitting the escape of gas that is created by the bacterial fermentation going on in the colon.
If gas were not permitted to escape past the liquid-filled valve of the hemorrhoidal veins, we would either be constantly bloated and distended with (forgive me—I’m not trying to gross you out) intermittent explosions of both gas and liquid stool running down our legs day after day after day. We may be embarrassed by having to “pass gas”—but think about life if we didn’t have this intelligent design to let this happen without also at the same time passing both liquid and solid stool. The “simple tube” ends with a thoughtfully engineered system. These ingenious hemorrhoidal veins are liquid-retaining, gas-escaping valves.
Jesus told us to worry more about our thoughts and words and votes than our food.
“Don’t you understand yet?” Jesus asked.
“Anything you eat
passes through the stomach
and then goes into the sewer.”
”But the words you speak
come from the brain, thoughts, emotions, impulses—
that’s what defiles you.”
“For from the brain
come evil thoughts, murder,
adultery, all sexual immorality,
theft, lying, and slander.”
“These are what defile you.
Eating with unwashed hands will never defile you.”
(Matthew 15:16-20)
But we can worry more about our spiritual defilement and whom we put in charge of our nation and our church, because of the intelligent design of the not-so-simple “tube” we call the digestive system.
The illustration from pxhere.com.
[This is #16 in a series on worship guided by science. (#15 Breath is here.) (# 14 Mind is here.) (#1 is here). Jack is also known as Dr. John Byron Hoehn, MD (Loma Linda University), CCFP (Canada), DTM&H (London).
Jack’s Adventist Tomorrow—Fresh Ideas While Waiting for Jesus in its second edition continues to be the most popular book Adventist Today has published.
Readers say: “It challenged my assumptions and gives me hope for a more relevant church.”
“It has been a genuine pleasure and a relief.”
“Added very richly to the Adventist soul itself.”
“ Love the book.” “I bought 3 copies.”
Deanne Hoehn has published a delightful book called Loving You—I Went to Africa, about their 13 years as medical missionaries.
Readers say: “One can (vicariously) share the excitement of observing wildlife in their natural habitat that most of us only read about. Great storytelling, great read, hard to put down.”
“I wanted to read all day and yet didn’t want the story to end. What a treasure.”
These books and others are available at SHOP in the menu at the top of the page. All sales go to support Adventist Today.]
To comment, click/tap here.