Page 164 - The Cell in 40 Topics

et us imagine that you have eaten a pleasant dinner. You may
never have considered how you will digest that wide range
of foodstuffs. You may not even be aware that each one of
them must be processed by different enzymes.
It’s of course perfectly normal that someone who has never received
special training on this subject should be unaware of these facts. Yet one
organ in the body does possess all this information. It knows which foods
will be digested by which enzymes; and dispatches the right chemical se-
cretion to the foodstuffs, at just the right time, with no confusion or error
ever arising.
This organ is the pancreas, one of the most important organs in the
body. It decides how many sugar molecules there should be in the blood
flowing through your veins. If the number of sugar molecules in the blood
has declined, the pancreas immediately takes steps to raise that number;,
and these measures save the life of the individual concerned. If the number
of sugar molecules rises, then it takes steps to reduce their number.
With the enzymes it sends to the digestive system, the pancreas plays
a most important role in human life. At the same time, the enzyme that pre-

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