Shocking Discovery: Man Dies with $650 Worth of Coins in Belly

1. Digestion

2. BOSTON - French doctors were taken aback when they discovered the reason for a patient’s swollen belly: He had swallowed around 350 coins - $650 worth - along with assorted necklaces and needles. The 62-year-old man came to the Hospital in France in 2002. He had a history of major psychiatric illness, was suffering from stomach pain and could not eat. His family warned doctors that he sometimes swallowed coins, and a few had been removed from his stomach. Still, doctors were awed when they took an X-ray. They discovered an enormous mass in his stomach that turned out to weigh 12 pounds. It was so heavy it had forced his stomach down between his hips. Five days after his arrival, doctors cut him open and removed his badly damaged stomach with its contents. He died 12 days later from complications. One of his doctors said the patient had swallowed the coins over about a decade. His family tried to keep coins and jewelry away from him. Con’t. Man who ate coins dies with $650 in belly

3. “When he was invited and came in some homes, he liked to steal coins and eat them,” the Dr. said The patients rare condition is called pica, a compulsion to eat non-food. Its name comes from the Latin work for magpie, a bird thought to eat just about anything. Pica can take the form of eating dirt, ashes, chalk, hair, soap, toothbrushes, burned matches and many other things. The Dr. once treated a patient who ate forks. AP By Jeff Donn

4. 4 Stages of food processing: • 1. Ingestion - eating • 2. Digestion - breakdown of food to small nutrient molecules Ex: glucose, amino acids, fatty acids & glycerol • 3. Absorption - uptake of the small molecules by cells lining the digestive tract Ex: from small intestine to bloodstream • 4. Elimination - disposal of undigested materials left over from food we eat 2 Types of Digestion: • 1. Mechanical - physical processes such as chewing, exposes food to chemicals • 2. Chemical - breakdown of food by enzymes (hydrolysis)

5. Chemical digestion- Hydrolysis breaks a food molecule down by adding atoms from water molecules (H2O) to the bonds between monomers.Specific digestive enzymes (hydrolases) catalyze hydrolysis.