Monday, October 09, 2006

Mouth and salivary glands


After you take your first bite of pie, your salivary glands produce enough digestive juices (saliva) to begin breaking it down chemically. Besides the salivary glands in the lining of your mouth, you have three pairs of larger salivary glands — the parotid glands, sublingual glands and the submandibular glands. Together they produce 1 to 3 pints of saliva a day.
Not all of the work is chemical, though. As you savor the sweet apple tang, your teeth work to grind the pie while your tongue mixes it with saliva. This combination transforms it into a bolus — a soft, moist, rounded mass suitable for swallowing.

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