Project Ideas

I go to a lot of gastric bypass support group meetings. One of the best demonstrations I saw done to show how the surgery works (and this basically shows what happens when there is no pyloric valve) is they connected two little empty water bottles with about a 1/2 inch clear plastic tube between them. The bottles represented the stomach and the intestines. They filled the top bottle with yogurt and held it up. The yogurt moved very sluggishly. Then they added water to it, shook it and elevated it again and you should have seen the mixture shoot through the tube. It demonstrates how quickly food left the stomach with no pyloric valve to stop it and why gastric bypass patients need to chew their food well before swallowing and shouldn't drink fluids when eating (it washes their food into the intestines where nutrients get absorbed). Dumping syndrome is related because high sugar foods that go into the intestinal track at a rapid rate are a chemical disaster and pull fluid into the intestine (just like a laxative) and result in diarrhea a few hours later. The Billroth II surgery performed for ulcers is similar to the gastric bypass surgeries and results in the same GI restriction eating complications. These surgeries are being researched and considered for treatment of Type II diabetes and are being performed in some countries for that.

you might ask a chemistry instructor for some ideas or look at the experiments in a biomed lab book that pertains to the gi system. it would have experiments pertaining to chemical reactions going on in the gi system. if you search the internet some of them may be on line. i am sure that in my prior searching i have seen some chemistry lab pages. i was specifically thinking about the interaction between acids and antacids which could be demonstrated in a large beaker. years ago i had to take a course called "chemistry for the health sciences" and i am sure that we had to do some lab experiments pertaining to what kind of chemical reactions were going on in the gi system and involved enzymes and digestion.

you might check on this website for ideas: http://www.biochem4schools.org/ - biochem4schools. in the section of the website titled "biochemical aspect of physiology" (http://www.biochem4schools.org/results_topic.htm?qry=physiology) is a link on to this website: http://www.accessexcellence.org/ae/aec/aef/1994/ward_walk.php which it describes as "a walk through the gut - a classroom game to teach human digestion" which seems to be more of a game for grade school children.

• http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistrylabexperiments/general_chemistry_lab_experiments.htm - home experiments to illustrate chemical principles
  
• http://chemistry.about.com/od/acidbasedemos/acid_base_demos.htm - home acid/base demonstrations
  
• http://faculty.mansfield.edu/bganong/341.html - types of experiments done in biochemistry classes to demonstrate body processes