Gulp

Mary Roach is a modern science writer and the author of Gulp:  Adventures on the Alimentary Canal.  The book was fascinating from top to bottom.  She started at the top, the mouth, the chewing, the tasting, the bolus formation, and the swallowing.  She goes on to the esophagus and the stomach.  She tackles questions like why doesn't the stomach eat itself?  What would it feel like to have stomach acid spread on the skin of your wrist?  Why is crunchy food so appealing?  Even more interesting was the small intestine where the villi absorb most all of the nutrients and the peristaltic action moves things along.  Some animals eat things twice.  Gross, am I right?  If rats, for example, aren't allowed to eat their own body products, they don't gain enough weight to maintain life.  And the most expensive coffee you can buy is the coffee made from the beans that have passed through the civet, a small wild cat in Indonesia.  That is correct, someone picks out the coffee beans from the cat box and sells it for huge amounts of money.  And then we get to the large intestine and rectum.  Fascinating.  Stories about "hooping" (smuggling cell phones, drugs and office supplies into prisons via the body's natural pocket) followed by the miraculous abilities of the anus.  This sensitive body part can tell, with almost 100% accuracy, the difference between a solid, a liquid and a gas.  A handy talent for us, right?  The process of elimination is as complicated as the process of swallowing - a mixture of muscle tension and muscle relaxation that has to be well coordinated to work properly.  So think of that the next time someone calls you an a$$hole because it just might be a compliment.  And then the story of Elvis, the poor man, who died in the act of responding to nature's call.  That is not how I want to die. Suffering from constipation most of his life, he ended up with a mega colon.  At his autopsy they found he was impacted the entire length of his descending colon and half of his transverse colon.  Four months earlier he had a medical procedure in which he was given barium.  At the autopsy they found that barium was still there.  The large colon, which removes most of the liquids from our digestive tract, had turned that barium into cement.  The poor, poor man.  Mary Roach says constipation is way worse than diarrhea.  And wouldn't you know, there is an inexpensive, easy, drug - free cure (not treatment but cure) to a common cause of diarrhea.  The medical community and especially the medical insurance industry is not behind this cure because it's icky.  So even though fecal transplants have been used successfully since 1958 insurance won't cover the minimal costs.  At the end of the book she says she underwent a colonoscopy without sedatives so she could get a full view of her organs.  Crazy you say?  I admire her for it.  Maybe I'll try it myself.  I highly recommend this book and this author.