ENZYMES

DIGESTIVE ENZYMES Are Essential to Health and Wellness

For everyone, daily food source enzymes are the most important supplement we can consume. Digestive enzymes replenishes your enzyme supply to help your body break down fats, carbohydrates and proteins; convert foods to useful nutrients; and complete proper digestion. Digestion is just a small part of what we need to know about the role of Digestive enzymes. Your body relies on properly functioning enzymes to manage your weight, overcoming sickness, improving vitality and longevity. To understand the importance of consuming supplemental enzymes we need to understand how proper enzyme levels are crucial to a healthy body.

ENZYMES

The Key to Unlocking Your Health Potential

Enzymes are complex protein molecules that are found in every cell of all living beings, from simple single cellular organisms to highly complex multi-cellular organisms, including human beings. Enzymes are in simple terms, "biological units of work" that play a vital role in every activity in our bodies including the winking of the eye, the beating of the heart and the capacity of the immune system. None of the known health benefits of sunlight, air, water, food and even supplements themselves are available without enzymes. They act in certain ways in the body to do specific jobs such as

1. Digest food
2. Break down toxins
3. Cleanse the blood
4. Strengthen the immune system
5. Build protein into muscle
6. Eliminate carbon dioxide from the lungs
7. Reduce stress on the pancreas & other vital organs.

Enzymes can be grouped into four categories: metabolic, digestive, food and supplemental enzymes.

Metabolic Enzymes: (Internal source)

These are energized protein molecules, which have been termed the "life force" of body. This type of enzyme exists throughout our body inside the cells that make up the organs and tissues; and outside the cells in our blood and lymph. They catalyze and regulate every biochemical reaction within the human body, including energy production, metabolism, respiration, nerve function, reproduction, immunity and digestion. Simply put, these body functions would not be possible and life would not exist without enzymes. Plus, it seems that we inherit a limited enzyme potential at birth. As we age and continue to eat processed foods, our ability to replace these vital enzymes diminishes.

Digestive Enzymes: (Internal source)

The human body naturally produces biological digestive enzymes to transform food into energy for the body's use by breaking down complex proteins, fats and carbohydrates into smaller, simpler, and more usable forms needed by the body.  Without them, the nutrients in food are unavailable for use in the cells of the body. The digestive system secretes a few digestive enzymes in the mouth and stomach, but most are secreted by the pancreas and small intestine. These digestive enzymes are produced as they are required their purpose is to aid the food enzymes in digestion.

The Enzyme-Digestion Team

Food Enzymes: (External source)

Food enzymes are enzymes supplied to us through the vegetables, fruits, grains, and other raw food we eat. Nature has placed them there to aid in our digestion of foods. They are fuel for the living that provide us with essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins, minerals and including enzymes.  These raw foods we eat contain only just enough enzymes in each particular food to assist in the breakdown of that food. Or do they? Due to today's poor growing conditions there is a lack of food enzymes available in our fresh foods. For this reason, people who consume a 100% fresh and raw must also supplement their daily diet with food source enzymes.

Modern food processing destroys nearly all of the naturally occurring enzymes in food. Whether food is canned, pasteurized, genetically engineered, cooked, or packaged, enzymes must be systematically removed from our food supply for economic and practical reasons. They are nutritionally incomplete. This adds to the burden of the pancreas and immune system to replace those lost food enzymes, robbing the body of energy production, enzyme reserve and function.

Supplemental Enzymes: (External source)

Supplemental enzymes can be divided into two general categories - those derived from animal pancreatic enzymes and the newer type derived from various fungi, also called "plant enzymes".  These are designed to assist us in the process of more completely breaking down our food. The increased use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential. The use of enzymes as a supplement with meals has been popular for some time. We need food source enzymes to be introduced back to the body through the ingestion of more raw foods (naturally occurring enzymes) or in the form of enzyme dietary supplements. 

Each of four categories of enzymes is absolutely essential for health and life. It involves understanding that enzymes are one of the key elements of life and health. We may not have any choice over the limited biological enzyme reserve that we inherited at birth.  By making wise food choices and taking nutrition enzyme supplements, we can choose to reserve them. The choice is ours!

Could Your Enzyme Potential Be Lacking?

Sometimes healthy eating habits are not enough to ensure that we absorb the full nutritional value from our food. The body depends upon every category of enzymes to help purify the blood, break down fats, cleanse the colon, maintain proper cholesterol levels and maintain peak energy levels.

The following situations can leave an individual's enzyme potential lacking in necessary enzymes.

Nutrient deficiencies.

1- Enzyme production decreases with age
2- Cooking of foods at high temperatures.
3- Stress can and hard physical labour in hot temperatures can deplete enzymes
4- Illness can inhibit enzyme production
5- Injury can tax enzyme levels
6- Athletes have a greater need for enzymes

How can one determine if they may have insufficient digestive enzymes?

1- Excessive appetite and food cravings. 
2- Hunger and sugar cravings soon after meals. 
3- Abdominal fullness, bloating or heaviness after eating.
4- Indigestion or nausea following large, heavy, fatty or meat containing meals.
5- Diarrhea or constipation.
6- Undigested food seen in bowel movements.
7- Weight gain.
8- Anemia, iron deficiency or other signs of nutrient deficiency.

Every choice we make in our diet and lifestyle complements or sustains the activity of enzymes or it insults or diminishes the activity of enzymes. The faster you use up your supply of biological enzymes activity, the quicker you will run out. Experiments at various universities have shown that regardless of the species, the faster the metabolic rate, the shorter the lifespan. In the 1930s a physician named Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. undertook a series of  lab controlled studies, which lasted 10 years and involved over 900 cats, to ascertain the effects of a raw food (raw meat and raw milk) versus a cooked food (pasteurized, evaporated and condensed milk) diet on a cat's physiology. The results were both profound and enlightening. The result consequence of eating a cooked diet verses a raw diet and the obvious parallel between cat and human nutrition.  Showing how inherited degenerative diseases are caused by improper nutrition that weakens the genetic code we pass to our children.

Other evidence that suggest we may be wasting our reserves of enzymes is presented in the book Food Enzymes for Health and Longevity by Dr Howell lists over 400 scientific studies on the value of enzymes for improving health from 1904 through 1938. Studies show that our body has to adapt and start making more digestive enzymes thus reducing the availability of many of the other metabolic enzymes needed to run and maintain our body's systems and cells. Food source enzymes, along with a healthy lifestyle, can help repair, restore, and strengthen by improving the immune system.

Unlike animal source enzymes, plant-sourced enzymes work in a wide range of pH environments thus provides a wider range of activity throughout the gastrointestinal tract. When selecting supplemental digestive enzymes we want ones that will "do the job", that means start and complete the task of digestion, not just getting it started and leaving you to suffer from a half completed job. Digestive Enzymes allow the body to get maximum nutrition from the diet and support efficient digestion. Alleviating the metabolic burden on an inefficient digestive system and provides enzyme reinforcements by fortify your own enzyme potential.

Digestive Enzymes are designed to be ingested with food to assist in the digestion and the absorption of the nutrients.   They also can be taken between meals to build up one's biological enzyme reserves, or to aid in specific health issues. But digestion is just a small part of what we need to know about the role of Digestive plant source enzymes.

Digestive enzymes help to:

 

Break down, so we can absorb, the nutrients we need to build cells and bodies.

Reduce bloating, gas, and heart burn that result from poor digestion.

 
Digest proteins, poor digestion of which causes many health problems.

Decrease inflammation, "leaky gut", allergies due to poorly digested foods, migraine headaches, growing pains, asthma, and others.

Supplement the declining supply of digestive enzymes as we age.

 
Allow the immune system to better deal with virus, yeast (candida), fungus, bacteria, and cancer by freeing it from involvement in the digestive tract.

Improve circulation, rework scars, improve healing, and help with all health problems caused by incomplete digestion of foods due to insufficient digestive enzymes.

SUMMARY

Why Supplemental Digestive Enzymes are Necessary

Today the average American diet is essentially devoid of food enzymes. Our bodies need proper levels of active enzymes in order to conduct a variety of tasks, including digestion.  While enzymes occur naturally in our bodies and in many plants, they can be destroyed by pesticides, pollution, some processes used to cook or irradiate foods, and chemical additives. It's been estimated that 80% of diseases are caused by improperly digested foods and their by-products being absorbed into the body.

Nutrition cannot be explained without describing the part that enzymes play. No mineral, vitamin, or hormone can do any work without enzymes. To have a healthy body you need both workers (enzymes) and building materials. The building materials are proteins (amino acids), minerals, and vitamins. All of these are necessary to build a healthy body.

Nutritional enzyme supplements are an effective way to assist the digestive process and relieve the stress placed on your body. For everyone, daily food source enzymes are the most important supplement we can consume.