How Big Is The Outlet On Your Stomach?

[cassa333]

How big is the outlet on your stomach? I mean from the bottom into your intestine?

Is there a 'plug'or valve or something stopping the food just sliding down out of your stomach or is it so small that nothing can get through untill it is mushed down to dribbly liquid?

Thanks

[Buenchico]

You're referring to the pyloric sphincter:
http://www.innerbody.com/image_dige02/dige22.html

[cassa333]

Thanks :)

So the muscle contracts and relaxes to allow food to flow through when it has mushed down a bit then?

How does that compare with someone who has had a gastric bypass then? because that musle isn't attached to the new smaller stomach!!

[Sqad]

\\\\How does that compare with someone who has had a gastric bypass then? because that musle isn't attached to the new smaller stomach!!

What a very good question. Bypass operations on the stomach were mainly performed for gastric ulcers which are now almost entirely treated medically. The bypass operation (gastro-enterostomy) had major problems directly attributed to loss of the pyloric valve...e.g...diarrhoea and feeling of fullness after a small amount of food (dumping syndrome).

A surgical dilemma.

[cassa333]

It just seems to me that in a normal stomach connection the food doesn't regurgitate and is kept in the stomach untill it has been broken down then passes through into the intestines but in a bypass stomach that stopper isn't there so the food slips though easily (?) and although the stomach is smaller the food goes down more easily!!!

Is there a benefit that the stomach is tilted so that food doesn't drop straight through and hit this connection and pass through too quickly?

[Sqad]

\\\\Is there a benefit that the stomach is tilted so that food doesn't drop straight through and hit this connection and pass through too quickly?\\\

LOL......I have never thought about it.........although there are various shaped stomachs, depending upon the build of the individual.

The sphincter would soon close if it received a message from the brain saying that the stomach was attempting to evacuate it's contents before digestion had finished.

[cassa333]

Thank you sqab :)

But what about a bypass stomach? If there is no sphincter in that one and the stomach isn't tilted then the food would go in and hit the connection immediately and would damage or stretch it surely?

[Sqad]

cassa......in a bypassed stomach, the tilting isn't that important as the intestinal join is made at the lowest part of the stomach.....like the plughole in your sink.

[Canary42]

I just love the expression "mushed down to dribbly liquid".


Very evocative.

[cassa333]

Canary that was the bst I could come up with cos I can't spell the word I wanted to use lol

Sqab, but if there is no plust a hole then srely having the food hit the hole at full blast can't be any good?

[cassa333]

See I can't even spell the simple words now lol

should have read ...if there is no plug then surely the food hitting the hole at full blast can't be any good.??