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How your gut keeps food moving without instructions from you

After you swallow, food travels through your gut, a tube inside you. You don't push it. What does?

Food stretches the gut's wall. Nerves there sense the stretch. They make muscles behind the food squeeze and muscles ahead relax. That pushes the food forward.

Your brain signals the gut too, but you don't decide those signals. The gut's own nerves help control the squeezing.

Source: niddk.nih.gov

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