Question

Jeffrey recently decided he was going to change his eating habits and try to lose a significant amount of weight in a short amount of time. Jeff has chosen to decrease his carbohydrate intake to 2 grams/day, decrease his fat intake to near 0, and consume primarily proteins. Concerning Jeffrey, answer the following questions: Diagram the positive feedback loop that occurs in the GI tract that allows the body to begin to digest all of these proteins. Make sure to include all components of this process

Answer 1

Positive feedback is a vicious cyclic process where the output amplify the input/stimuli to produce more such outputs. It elps to amplify the response to the stimuli until the negative feedback response takes over.

This happens in pepsin conversion from pepsinogen which is an inactive form of enzyme that catalyses protein digestion in the stomach. When one molecule of pepsinogen gets activated it triggers the conversion of more molecule by positive feedback mechanism. This cascade effect occurs till the stomach has enough pepsin molecules to digest proteins. The reason for pepsinogen-pepsin system is to avoid digestion of stomach by itself. Pepsin is a efficient to digest the very cells that produce it. Mucus helps to protect the stomach lining once pepsin is activated.