lesson
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Have you ever wondered if you could swallow a bite of banana while hanging completely upside down like a bat?
Amazingly, the food would still travel straight to your stomach without getting stuck or falling out!
How does your throat push food upward against gravity?
Meet the Bolus and the Food Pipe
When you chew food and mix it with wet saliva, your tongue shapes it into a soft, round ball called a bolus.
When you swallow, this bolus enters your esophagus (also spelled oesophagus), a stretchy muscular tube that connects your throat to your stomach.
📊Interactive diagram
Your esophagus isn't just an open slide that food drops through — it is an active muscular pump.
The Squeezing Wave: Peristalsis
The walls of your esophagus are lined with strong rings of muscle that work automatically.
This continuous, wave-like squeezing and relaxing of muscles that pushes food along is called peristalsis.
📊Interactive diagram
In 1899, two British scientists, William Bayliss and Ernest Starling, discovered that gut muscles always squeeze behind food and relax in front of it to keep things moving in one direction.