Your esophagus has 1 main purpose: to move food from your throat to your stomach. Here's how it works.

The right specialist or healthcare team can help you manage long-term or chronic digestive conditions, such as GERD, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, and Crohn's disease.

Digestion is a multistep process that begins the moment you place a piece of food in your mouth or sip some juice.

Pancreatitis is an inflamed, swollen and irritated. If you don't recover from an acute pancreatitis attack, the inflammation gets gradually worse, you have chronic pancreatitis.

In blind loop syndrome, food is not able to follow the normal digestive route. Instead, it bypasses a section of your intestine.

The Bernstein test (esophageal acid perfusion test) is used to see if you have gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

A toxic megacolon is a rare yet life-threatening complication of severe colon disease or infection. It is diagnosed when your colon has expanded by more than 5 to 6 centimeters.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) means that you have fat deposits inside your liver. These deposits may keep your liver from doing a good job of removing toxins from your blood.

Smoking can harm your digestive system in many ways. It weakens the sphincter and allows stomach acid to flow backward into your esophagus.

If the rectum drops out of its normal place within the body and pushes out of the anal opening, the condition is called rectal prolapse.