This story is part of a series exploring human anatomy and physiology complexities. Each story in this collection showcases discoveries reshaping our understanding of the body's inner workings, ...

Dear Doctors: I’ve been having a lot of bloating and intestinal gas. A friend says this can mean that you have too much bacteria in your small intestines. How does that happen, and how do you fix it?

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Christopher Damman, University of Washington (THE CONVERSATION) Microbiome research to ...

In this short science video, I use a fun model to show just how long your small intestine actually is and why it is not very small at all. I stretch it out so you can see its full length, then compare ...

The terms "intestinal barrier" and "intestinal permeability" describe two different aspects of the same anatomical structure, the intestinal wall composed of four layers, the mucosa, the submucosa, ...

Increased meat in ancient hominin diets, beginning about 3 million years ago, meant that guts (large and small intestines) could become shorter because they could extract more expeditious calories in ...

When parts of the small intestine are diseased or die, the treatment can involve surgically removing the affected tissue. Although lifesaving, the procedure - referred to as a radical small bowel ...