Lecture 8: The Digestive System pt. 2 Flashcards
(135 cards)
What does Metabolic Regulation consist of?
The liver impacting what is available in the blood for use of energy
The liver is one of the two main organs that determines what?
The composition of your blood?
What is the other composition?
Kidneys
What is specific function #1 under Metabolic Regulation?
The liver has a huge role in carbohydrate metabolism.
The organ in your body that has the most impact of regulating blood glucose levels is your liver. Why?
Bc liver decides whether to store glucose or carbohydrates that are coming in from digestive system. Whether to let them go bc we’re at the level we need, or whether we need to break down glycogen and put that glucose in the blood.
What affects the carbohydrates that are passing by?
Insulin and Glucagon.
How can the liver increase blood glucose cells?
- Break down glycogen
- take amino acids and make them into glucose (gluconeogenesis)
Both of those happen under control of what?
Glucagon (which raises blood glucose)
How can we lower blood glucose?
Insulin will stimulate liver to take glucose out of the blood, and store it as glycogen. (NOT throwing it away, we store it until we need it later)
The liver is also important in what?
Lipid metabolism
When your digesting lipids in the small intestine. We need to do things to increase the surface area. But once those things get absorbed into an intestinal cell, what happens?
We get a chylomicron.
What are in chylomicrons?
They have cholesterol, triglycerides, fatty acids in them.
What are chylomicrons made by?
They are made by enterocytes and put them in lactyls.
Where are the chylomicrons going?
They are going into the lymph and wind up in the thoracic duct and into the left subclavian vein.
What does this mean?
That the chylomicron is in the blood and gradually, all these things are going to pass through the liver.
When they get to the liver, the liver is going to do a couple of things to the chylomicron. What will the liver do?
- The liver changes the proteins
- liver removes triglycerides
- add cholesterol
This new thing that the liver just made from a chylomicron is now called a…
Low density lipoprotein
What happens to this LDL?
It’s going to be put in the blood as a system to deliver cholesterol to cells that need OR pick up excess up cholesterol from cells that need to get rid of stuff
Why is LDL bad?
LDL can be incorporated into plaques and arteries and help obstruct a blood vessel.
The proteins will be changed again to a High Density Lipoprotein. What happens to a HDL?
Cells can take or add cholesterol where it will go back into the blood and back into the liver to store cholesterol.
Where are LDL made from?
made in Liver
Where are HDL made from?
made in cells that are not Liver cells
What are enterocytes?
Epithelial cells of the intestine.
The next thing the liver is metabolically involved in is…
(Metabolic Regulation #3)
amino acid metabolism.
The liver monitor if there are too much or too little amino acids of a particular type.