Natural Techniques for digestive enzymes - PrepZymes

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Digestive problems comprise the number one health problem in North America. These concerns, encompassing everything from hemorrhoids to colon cancer, result in more time lost—at work, school, and play—than any other health problem. They also appear to be occurring with greater frequency—while many of them were almost unheard of in our grandparents’ times, they are cropping up more and more and at an earlier and earlier age.

One way to help maintain digestive health is to be sure you get enough nutritious foods and digestive enzymes. Enzymes are essential to a healthy body because they transform food into nutrients.

Enzymes

Enzymes are the sparks that cause or speed up the essential chemical reactions our bodies need to live.

The human body produces millions of enzymes every second. Enzymes are necessary for providing cellular energy, for repairing all tissues, organs, and cells, for stimulating the brain, and for digesting foods. This includes the absorption, transportation, and metabolism of nutrients as well as the elimination of waste. Humbart Santillo, B.S., M.H., in his book Food Enzymes (1993), quotes a Scottish medical journal that says it well: “Each of us, as with all living organisms, could be regarded as an orderly, integrated succession of enzyme reactions.”

Three classes

Three classes of enzymes are metabolic enzymes, digestive enzymes, and food enzymes. Metabolic enzymes catalyze, or spark, the reactions within the cells. The body’s organs, tissues, and cells are run by metabolic enzymes. Without them, our bodies would not work. Among their chores are helping to turn phosphorus into bone, attaching iron to our red blood cells, healing wounds, and seeing that our hearts beat.

Digestive enzymes are secreted by the pancreas and break down foods, allowing their nutrients to be absorbed into the bloodstream and used in body functions. They ensure that we get the greatest possible nutritional value from foods.

Digestive enzymes include protease, which digests protein; amylase, which digests carbohydrates; lipase, which digests fats and oils; and maltase, which digests malt sugars and grains.
Food enzymes are enzymes supplied to us through the foods we eat. They include digestive enzymes, but also enzymes unique to the particular foods. Food enzymes help us “predigest” foods; that is, start breaking down foods before our bodies’ enzymes begin to do so.

According to Santillo (1993), the enzymes found in raw foods digest 5 to 75 percent of the foods themselves without the help of other enzymes. This way, our bodies’ digestive enzymes have help in the digestive process, and we do not use as many of the body’s “in-house” enzymes.

The importance of enzymes

Enzyme theory is based on the pioneering work of Dr. Edward Howell in the 1920s. He wrote two books on the subject and theorized that humans are given a limited supply of enzyme energy at birth, and that it is up to us to replenish our supply of enzymes to ensure that their vital jobs get done. If we don’t replenish our supply, we run the risk of ill health.

Current research shows that as we age, we produce a reduced number of enzymes.

Enzyme theory became more popular as the Western diet became more dependent on processed and cooked foods. Enzymes are extremely sensitive to heat; food enzymes are destroyed at temperatures above 118 °F. Pasteurizing, canning, and microwaving all destroy enzymes. This means that cooked and processed foods contain few, if any, enzymes, and that the typical diet found in industrialized countries is enzyme-deficient.

When we eat cooked and processed foods, we could well be eating for a shorter and less-than-healthy life.

Nutritional studies have shown that a regular diet of cooked and canned foods causes the development of chronic degenerative diseases. This points back to the importance of eating raw fruits and vegetables. Only raw foods have functional “live” enzymes. And the more raw foods you eat, the more live enzymes you get.

Decades ago, Dr. Howell advocated the consumption of large amounts of plant enzymes. More recent studies have examined the effectiveness of plant enzymes in a wide range of conditions (Gardner 1988).

The benefits of enzymes

The benefits of providing the body with more enzymes are many. As noted, getting more enzymes aids the body’s own enzyme supply, which may lead to a healthier life.

Recent studies (Leipner and Saller 2000) show that enzyme therapy could reduce the adverse affects caused by radiation and chemotherapy. Most widely known is that digestive enzymes help us digest foods more completely. This means that we utilize more nutrients (which might mean that we eat less and maintain a stable weight) and experience better health.

There is another advantage to being sure that foods are well-digested. When foods are not well-digested, they remain in the stomach and can rot and putrefy.

This results in a buildup of waste in the colon. This fecal matter begins to decay, producing bacteria and toxins. The toxins eventually seep through the bowel wall, where blood capillaries pick them up and distribute them throughout the body. This can result in health problems. These problems include constipation, stomach bloat, poor digestion, gas, fatigue, weight gain and weight loss, headaches, and more. Using digestive enzymes ensures that your foods are more completely digested, helping to eliminate potential problems due to toxins.

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