What is bile?
Bile is a fluid composed of water, electrolytes, bile acids, cholesterol, bilirubin and other organic molecules. It’s produced and excrete by your liver into the gallbladder. Here some water and electrolytes are drawn out, causing it to become concentrated. Concentrated bile remains stored in your gall bladder until partially digested fats enter the duodenum. These fats cause the release of a hormone that stimulates your gall bladder to contract. And gallbladder contractions cause stored bile to be delivered into the small intestine.
What is the function of bile?
Bile serves two major functions, it helps your body eliminate certain types of waste and it participates in the digestion and absorption of fat. Bile performs as a waste removal system for excess cholesterol and bilirubin (from breakdown of hemoglobin) by transporting them out of the liver and into the lower digestive tract. Once there, they join other digestive waste for removal within your feces.
Bile also plays a vital role in the digestion and absorption of fat and fat soluble vitamins. Bile acid is the component of bile involved in this task. The function of bile acid is to cause fat to break apart into smaller droplets and become suspended in a water environment to counteract fat’s tendency to clump together and separate out (as in oil and water don’t mix). This creates more surface area access for lipase digestive enzymes to split fat into fatty acid and glycerol molecules, which the form required for absorption.
And without bile’s digestive assistance steatorrhea occurs because of incomplete fat digestion.