Improving Digestive Health through Natural Digestive Enzymes

Digestive Enzymes are essential components of your gastrointestinal system. Enzymes found in saliva, the stomach and pancreatic juices collaborate with each other to break down the complex molecules in the food you to eat simpler substances that can be absorbed by the gut. Deficiencies in these enzymes will easily lead to indigestion. In worst cases, failure of the gut to properly break down and absorb the food you eat can cause diarrhea and disease-causing nutritional deficiencies. Your digestive system equipped with an armament of natural enzymes that all aid in proper digestion, and these include the amylases, lipases and proteases. Aside from those that your body normally produces, enzymes may also be derived from a variety of foodstuffs in your diet. Like those in your gut, these food-derived enzymes, which include bromelain, papain, betaine hydrochloride and actinidain, are also very helpful in ensuring good digestion and absorption of nutrients.

Amylase
Amylases are enzymes that destroy or hydrolyze chemical bonds found in carbohydrates. Found in saliva, as well as in gastric and pancreatic juices, amylases break down complex carbohydrates like starch in plants and glycogen in animals into simple sugars that your gut will have no trouble absorbing.
Lipase
The pancreas produces and secretes an enzyme called lipase that degrades triglycerides and cholesterol in the food that you eat. Any shortage in lipase will cause deficiencies in the oil-soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K). In addition, stool will tend to be very oily and foul smelling, a condition called steatorrhea.
Protease
Trypsin, chymotrypsin, elastase and carboxypeptidase belong to a group of enzymes called proteases. They break down big and bulky proteins found in meat to much simpler and smaller amino acids (building blocks of all proteins) that can then be absorbed by the body.
Bromelain
Bromelain is a protease found in pineapples. Drinking pineapple juice or eating the fresh fruit delivers great amounts of this enzyme, which aids in the digestion of proteins.
Papain
Papaya contains large amounts of an enzyme called papain, another kind of protease that helps in protein digestion. Unfortunately, most of the papain is found in the sap of the papaya tree, which is toxic when consumed, rather than in the fruit itself. Supplement companies are able to extract papain from the sap and market this as digestive aid pills. The proteolytic nature of papain is also being used commercially as an effective meat tenderizer.
Betaine Hydrochloride
This substance found in beets increases the secretion of stomach acid to promote the activation of enzymes naturally found in your body. Betaine hydrochloride is a useful supplement if you have low stomach acid (hypochlorhydria).
Actinidain
Similar to papayas and pineapples, kiwifruits are also blessed with a natural proteolytic enzyme called actinidain. When kiwifruits, papayas and pineapples are consumed together, their enzymes work in synergy to boost digestion. Since enzymes from these fruits are activated at different regions of the gastrointestinal tract, they take turns in ensuring that each segment of the gut is supplied with enzymes that aid in digestion.

What to Expect with Supplemental Digestive Enzymes

Digestive enzymes are found in every living creature. These enzymes are used by the body to break down the chemical bonds in foods, allowing the various nutrients to be used to nourish the body. Digestive enzymes are found in saliva, the stomach and digestive tract, as well as in the cells. There are four different glands which secrete digestive enzymes: the salivary glands, glands in the stomach, the pancreas and a number of glands in the small intestines.

Why Supplemental Digestive Enzymes Are Needed
Raw foods contain a large number of digestive enzymes to help the digestive system process them. Many of these enzymes are lost when this food is cooked. Heavily processed foods also lose most of their digestive enzymes in the processing. Raw vegetables retain most of their nutritional value and digestive enzymes when they are steamed, however if you do not steam your vegetables you end up losing the beneficial digestive enzymes found naturally in them. Science has determined that foods lose digestive enzymes at a dry heat temperature of 150 degrees and a wet heat temperature of 118 degrees, during the cooking process. For this reason, fresh vegetables should only be lightly steamed until they are hot, yet still crispy.

Effects of a Lack of Digestive Enzymes
Many upper gastrointestinal tract complaints can be alleviated by maintaining healthy levels of digestive enzymes. Some of these include heartburn, gas, constipation and bloating. Proper levels of enzymes can also keep you from developing ulcers and allergies. If you find yourself constantly tired and lacking energy to get through the day, you may find that you need to supplement your body’s digestive enzymes. Also, if you find yourself getting sick, catching a cold or the flu easier than you used to, you might try a digestive enzymesupplement to help revive your immune system.

Improved Health
Because they help break down the foods we eat so the body can more fully process and use the nutrients in food, enzyme supplements can help to improve your health. When the body doesn’t have to produce and abundance of these digestive enzymes, it becomes able to rebuild and regenerate. This benefits your immune system. When you take digestive enzyme supplements, you will see decreased episodes of GERD/esophageal reflux and indigestion, experience less severe food allergies and find relief from lower back pain and sinusitis. Properly balanced levels of digestive enzymes will also help relief the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease.

Increased Energy Levels
When your body’s systems don’t have to work overtime producing digestive enzymes, it becomes better able to repair itself and replenish your energy levels. Medical science states that 80 percent of your body’s energy usage goes toward the digestive process. This means that if you can help it out with supplemental digestive enzymes, there will be more energy to use towards constructive daily pursuits, such as work and exercise.

Digestive enzymes enhance nutrient absorption, gut health and longevity
A survey of holistic practitioners by Ed McCabe, author of Flood Your Body with Oxygen, for the order of nutrients' importance consensus was: Oxygen, water, enzymes, minerals, and vitamins.

Jon Barron, author of Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, presented the essence of the late Dr. Edward Howell's message: "A person's life span is directly related to the exhaustion of their enzyme potential. The use of food enzymes decreases that rate of exhaustion, and thus results in a longer, healthier, and more vital life."

That's a clear and important concept. But it's not widely appreciated. Enzymes are energized, active protein compounds that are involved with every aspect of digestion and all cellular metabolism throughout our bodies. Without enzymes, food, minerals, and vitamins are useless.

In fact, every activity in our body from creating cellular energy to building bone and muscle to hormonal production and distribution, and even thinking are governed by enzymes.
How enzyme potential is exhausted
There are three basic types of enzymes: Metabolic, digestive, and food. Metabolic enzymes patrol the blood stream to perform all the processes of cellular metabolism needed for life. Some come in with raw food, while most are created in the pancreas.

Organic raw foods contain the enzymes necessary for their digestion. The more raw foods eaten, the less one overworks the pancreas, which produces enzymes that are injected into the small intestines to extract food nutrients.

Before that, chewing releases enzymes in our saliva that begin the digestive process. If our food is not cooked and its enzymes are intact, this process of pre-digestion accounts for more than half of breaking down consumed food into absorbable nutrients.

That process is interrupted when the acid digestive juices of our stomach are initiated, usually in around an hour, but picked up again in the small intestines where the pancreas comes into action.

The pancreas gets overworked if not enough enzymes come in with our food. Many enzymes are eliminated from cooking and processing foods. Not chewing food well minimizes saliva enzymatic production.

This forces the body to depend more on pancreatic proteolytic enzymes for digestion. The pancreas' proteolytic enzymes are needed to break down waste products and inflammatory scar tissue from immune system activities in our bloodstream.

This increases the burden on the pancreas and depletes or inflames the pancreas, resulting in lower protease or proteolytic enzymes, triggering a cascade of disease and aging symptoms. This is what is meant by exhausting our enzyme potential.
How to recover maximum enzyme potential
Chew food more than usual. Increase your consumption of raw, unprocessed foods. Try to enjoy your meals without stressing.

Even if you eat organically produced meats, the complete proteins of cooked meat are harder to break down, forcing the pancreas to work harder producing proteolytic enzymes.

Supplement enzymes with each meal. Enzyme supplements should contain papain for breaking down complete proteins, amylase for starches and carbohydrates, lipase for fats, lactase for dairy, and cellulose for fibers.

But there are enzyme supplements that should be taken away from meals to go directly into the bloodstream and eat up normally resistive waste products, scar tissue, and even cancer cells. Bromelain and serrapeptase are two such easily purchased proteolytic enzymes.