Well… Yes. Your stomach can dissolve pieces of metal if you have ever swallowed any. But hey.. never try to test that out now. Don’t worry scientists have already done that for you, they have already studied that in an artificial environment your stomach acids can corrode even a razor blade. You might not even realize how awesome our entire digestive system is and especially the stomach.
As you know the stomach produces acids which help us in digestion. Stomach acid, also called gastric acid or gastric juice, is composed of Hydrochloric acid (HCl), potassium chloride (KCl), and sodium chloride (NaCl). The pH of a healthy stomach is usually 1.0-2.0. This low pH level of stomach fluids typically keeps it free of microbes. But at the same time, these pH levels put stomach acid in almost the same category as battery acid, which can dissolve steel.
Unbelievable right !!! well, the most amazing part is yet to come.
So let's say you're eating a piece of steak and it goes into your stomach the moment it gets in it converts into dirty mushy liquid stuff.
What you need to think about is that your stomach is also just made of some flesh right? Does it get eaten away? Well, the answer is 'YES'. Your stomach acid would have happily eaten away your stomach.
When things don't go right, you tend to get ulcers. Which are nothing but just open sores caused by a lot of stomach acid getting in contact with the stomach wall. Normally it does not happen. WHY?
Because your stomach has a super cool protective lining consisting of a layer of mucosal protein. This is nothing is just a layer which is covered with some magical sugar molecules in a chemical bond which resists the acid from getting in touch with the stomach.
So now the question is does this arrangement always work perfectly? Well not always, when our food habits, Sleep, and Exercise are disturbed we get indigestion and gastric issues and it fails sometimes. This means that the stomach lining is not a perfect protector always. The stomach acid does get through sometimes and causes damage to the stomach cells.
Check the figure of how your stomach lining looks like when it's healthy and this is how the stomach cells look like when they get damaged. But these interesting cells are never lazy they keep regenerating themselves so the moment there are any damaged cells newly regenerated cells take up their place and this way the entire stomach lining is replaced about every three days.
An amazing part of creation !!!