Stomach small rounded mass of chewed up food) enters the stomach through the oesophagus via the lower oesophageal sphincter. The stomach releases proteases (protein-digesting enzymes such as pepsin) and hydrochloric acid, which kills or inhibits bacteria and provides the acidic pH of 2 for the proteases to work. Food is churned by the stomach through muscular contractions of the wall called peristalsis – reducing the volume of the bolus, before looping around the fundus and the body of stomach as the boluses are converted into chyme (partially digested food). Chyme slowly passes through the pyloric sphincter and into the duodenum of
Cholic acid in bile acid synthesis), and cholesterol does the opposite. This is why chenodeoxycholic acid, and not cholic acid, can be used to treat gallstones (because decreasing bile acid synthesis would supersaturate the stones even more). Cholic acid and chenodeoxycholic acid are the most important human bile acids. Other species may synthesize different bile acids as their predominant primary bile acids. Cholic acid, formulated as Cholbam capsules, is approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for children and adults with bile acid synthesis disorders due to single enzyme defects, and for peroxisomal disorders (such as Zellweger