Enzyme therapy is an underutilized tool required for optimal health to take place. The father of enzyme therapy, Dr. Edward Howell, has paved the way for medical and natural practitioners alike to the make the most of these “biocatalysts”, to enhance our bodies effectiveness in healing from within. These complex proteins that cause chemical changes, when in their active state, require proper pH, temperature, and enzymatic precursors for the body to nourish, clean, and maintain itself.

Enzymes work towards strengthening the digestive system and creating a healthy immune system. Through faulty digestion “Partially digested proteins putrefy, partially digested carbohydrates ferment, and partially digested fats turn rancid” according to Dr. Howell. These toxins are absorbed into the bloodstream where they travel to and end up lodged in our joints, muscles, and organs. Plant, pancreatic, and antioxidant enzymes are the main functional groups that we will discuss. Most pancreatic and all antioxidant enzymes are critical for metabolic operations that sustain every chemical reaction that runs our body at the cellular level. The plant enzymes and a few pancreatic enzymes are required to run the digestive system under optimal conditions. If our diet contains mainly cooked foods alone then enzymatic precursors, mainly minerals and trace elements, cannot be used by the body to run all other everyday metabolic processes. Instead this places a heavy burden on the pancreas to do all the work required to make enzymes to digest cooked foods. This leads to pancreatic hypertrophy that may be a factor in instigating diabetes, a life threatening, easily preventable disease affecting 1 in 8 North Americans.  Another important link to make is that diabetics not only have problems regulating insulin but are showing a distinctly lower amount of amylase within blood levels. This in turn leads to blocked, constricted, or scarred blood vessels which becomes cardiovascular disease.

Digestive enzymes are used to breakdown food particles in the lower stomach, referred to as the fundus, or pyloric stomach. The first stomach, called the antrum or cardia, is designed for foods to digest themselves through autolytic enzymes. Histamine release within the stomach happens if the food particles are partially digested and absorbed into the bloodstream where these molecules are seen as foreign antigens to be defended by our ever present white blood cells. This can lead to digestive leucocytosis which stresses the immune system.

The lack of raw natural foods that contain the enzymes required to breakdown itself within our diets cause enzyme deficiency. Therefore, cooked foods are directly related to pancreatic hypertrophy, digestive leukocytosis, and enzyme/nutrient deficiency. Enzymes die once they reach 118 degrees temperature. Therefore any form of cooking may breakdown the impermeable plant cell wall to release nutrients and enzymes but, there is a distinct possibility of killing off the enzymes needed to process the meal.

Once we chew our food properly, for at least 10 to 20 seconds per mouthful, this allows the salivary enzymes to digest our food over the next couple of hours, as the stomach activates the next set of enzymes required to continue the digestion process. Nuts, seeds, and whole grains (as seeds) contain enzymes that are activated with the addition of soil, sunlight, and temperature. In order for germination to occur water needs to be added. As a result, when seeds are eaten with raw plant based foods then the enzyme inhibitors hinders stomach enzymes from digesting food any further. The only way to eat whole grains, nuts, or seeds is to soak to germinate seeds for a few days, or consume them with an enzyme powder.  Enzymes do decrease by approximately half the amount as we age. Everyone requires enzyme supplementation from our forties onward. 

Enzymes spend the majority of their life cycle inactive. When an enzyme precursor is added, or amino acid chain set up as a lock on an enzyme is turned ‘on’, it acts as an enzyme activator, freeing the enzyme to do its assigned job. Enzyme inhibitors obstruct the enzyme by inactivating it. Most antibiotics use enzyme inhibitors to kill bacteria by inhibiting the bacteria’s key enzyme system. Unfortunately, antibiotics also inhibit our body’s identical metabolic enzyme systems simultaneously. This makes antibiotic usage over a prolong period of time, or frequent antibiotic treatments, a vicious destructive cycle that causes premature aging, auto immune disorders, auto intoxication, allergies, and inflammation over time.  Regardless, when it comes to weight maintenance both obesity and underweight individuals will benefits from enzyme therapy because digestion, absorption, and the organ cushion of the pancreas directly affect weight management.

Fasting is extremely beneficial to replenishing the digestive enzymes and allowing more metabolic enzymes to be produced. The use of pure water, freshly pressed vegetable and fruit juices, and bioavailable green formulations work well together to create a healing environment for the enzyme deprived body.

The finest solution would be to eat mainly raw, or up to 80 percent raw foods and juices. Enzyme supplementation with plant based enzymes (proteases, amylases, lipases), pancreatic enzymes (animal based enzymes), and antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, methionine reductase) should be taken daily, especially as we age. Taken with meals enzymes are used for digestion. Between meals enzymes are used for cleaning and nourishing the body throughout. Powders are the most effective approach for enzymes to digest a meal, then vegetarian capsules. Tablets with fillers should be taken 15 minutes before eating a meal to prepare the stomach for digestion. Eating enzyme rich foods such as pineapple, papaya, fruits, vegetables, sprouted seeds are indispensable to the vitality with which we deserve to live.

www.alkalizeforhealth.net/lenzymes.htm

www.dr-gonzales.com

www.ami.health.com

www.enz.com

Bibliography

Enzymes, The Fountain of Life, by Miehkle, Williams, and Lopez

Enzyme Nutrition, by Dr. Edward Howell

The Complete Book of Enzyme Therapy, by Dr. Anthony J. Cichoke

Allergies, Diseases in Disguise, by Carolee Bateson-Koch DC MD

www.garynull.com/Documents/Arthritis/Systemic_Enzyme_Therapy.htm

www.medical-library.net/specialtiesd/framer.html?/specialtiesd/_enzyme_therapy.html