Esophagus: Transferring to Stomach

Anatomy of the Esophagus

The esophagus connects the back of your mouth to your stomach. It is the passageway by which your (hopefully well-chewed) food makes its way to the stomach.

As you swallow your chewed bite, it passes by the pharynx, the passageway to the lungs. To keep food from entering the lungs, a little flap closes over the windpipe as the food passes by. This is the body’s clever way of getting a dual purpose from the beginning of the tube: one for air, the pharynx, and one for food, the esophagus.

Medically speaking, the food that is swallowed into the esophagus is now called a “bolus.” A bolus is typically defined as a lump of soggy chewed food.

If you are chewing, chewing, and chewing some more, your food becomes more like water that’s being swallowed, rather than a soggy lump. However, this term is good to know because it shows that the food that you eat is starting to go through the first of its many transformational stages.

The esophageal section of the tube passes through the diaphragm to the stomach. The stiffness of the esophagus serves to protect the tube from being clamped shut by the diaphragm.

The primary function of this stiffness is to prevent anything too bulky from passing into the stomach. As you might have experienced, if you swallow a bite of food that is too large too quickly, there is pain involved, and you don’t do it twice. The esophagus does its job of protecting the stomach and beyond, by providing this physical barrier.

This is a simple, yet still important stage of digestive function.