Dr. Trisha Pasricha

It's all kind of in that same area because the esophagus travels through your chest cavity on its way down to the abdominal cavity.

Okay.

And then when you have heartburn, you're sort of referring it to that general area and you don't know exactly where it's coming from.

Is it the back or the front?

And you perceive it as just being from your chest, but actually your esophagus is hiding all the way in the back.

Wow.

I'm going to take this liver out here too, just so you can see better where the esophagus is going.

So goodbye liver.

So it's behind the liver.

So it goes all the way back and then it connects here to your stomach.

So this organ here is your stomach.

That's where the food gets broken down and acidified and broken into these really small pieces.

From the stomach, that piece of food is going to enter the small bowel first.

That is this long, windy tube that goes all the way around and is kind of bunched up in your abdominal cavity.

That's where all the nutrients get absorbed.

So everything that your body wants, everything that it needs.

Yeah, you're right.

It's long, but it is smaller in caliber.

The large bowel, sometimes called the colon, is this larger C-shaped organ here.

So it is shorter than the small bowel, the colon, but it's wider.