ENZYMES
Years ago someone said something to me that at the time I dismissed as a naïve, silly unlearned notion. They suggested that you must eat live foods if you want to add to your life. Now, I was raised in a pharmacist’s home. I learned at an early age that our bodies require vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates, fats etc. I also was told that the source of these did not matter. Though my family usually ate a salad with dinner, everything else was cooked to death. As a young person, I seldom ate live foods and I still had all the energy I needed.
Now that I am much older, I understand this truth. The key is to recognize what is alive in live foods and what is dead in dead foods and that is ENZYMES. Enzymes are major (and often missing) key to optimal health. The reason that I had ample energy as a young person while eating an overcooked diet of dead food is that I was living off my enzyme reserves. For every chemical reaction that occurs in the body, enzymes provide the stimulus. In other words, as stated by Edward Howell, M.D., who pioneered enzyme therapy in the United States, “Enzymes are the substances that make life possible. No mineral, vitamin, or hormone can do any work without enzymes. They are the manual workers that build the body from proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. The body may have the raw building materials, but without the workers, it cannot begin.”
Enzymes are involved in every process of the body. It is enzymes that digest all of our food. Enzymes in the blood take prepared, digested food and build it into muscles, nerves, blood and glands. Enzymes work in our immune system to attack waste materials and poisons. Without enzymes there would be no breathing, no digestion, no growth, no blood coagulation, no sense perception, and no reproduction. As we become enzyme deficient, we age faster. The more we store up our enzyme reserve, the healthier we will be.
There are two ways to preserve and replenish our enzyme level: by eating raw food and by taking enzyme supplements. All raw natural foods have an abundance of enzymes. However, at 129o F, all enzymes are destroyed. Baking bread kills enzymes. Pasteurization kills enzymes. Canning kills enzymes. Enzymes are destroyed when our food comes into contact with hot water! Americans eat most foods cooked. Because of this, our systems have to produce all the required enzymes, thus causing an enlargement of the digestive organs. To supply essential enzymes, the body draws on its reserve from all organs and tissues, causing a metabolic deficit.
The pancreas is a gland that has two basic functions: first and most importantly, it produces enzymes used with digestion; second it produces insulin that regulates sugar metabolism. The more our foods lack enzymes, the more the pancreas must produce them. If we introduce to our digestive system only overcooked, un-chewed food chunks the pancreas must work overtime to create the needed enzymes to assimilate this dead food. Eventually, the pancreas can fail to produce the required enzymes as well as the needed insulin. When this happens, we become one sick puppy struggling with blood sugar problems, inflammation and toxic problems and digestive problems. All because we failed to eat and chew healthy, raw natural foods.
Our bodies require metabolic enzymes, plant enzymes, and digestive enzymes. Plant enzyme deficiency predominantly from cooked-foods may result in general inflammation, pancreatic hypertrophy (enlargement), a toxic colon, and allergies. Because of inflammation, conditions such as bronchitis, sinusitis cystitis, rhinitis, and arthritis may occur and may be accompanied by fever, redness, swelling, and pain. Plant Enzyme Therapy can increase the absorption of nutrients and reduce the demand upon the pancreas as well as reduce the inflammation overload.
Pancreatic enzymes are animal enzymes that include protease (digest protein), amylase (digest starch), and lipase (digest fats). These enzymes function in the intestine and the blood. By supplementing the body’s own enzymes with pancreatic enzyme therapy improved health is promoted. Sometimes, partially digested protein molecules due to this lack of enzymes are able to absorb into the bloodstream. The immune system treats these molecules as invaders. When this occurs, unnecessary stress to the immune system and toxic overloads will increase. Undigested protein in our system often is the root cause for many medical conditions such as allergies or even cancer. Pancreatic enzyme therapy has shown beneficial results in a variety of disease conditions including inflammation viral diseases, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and cancer.
As we get older the more we should supplement with quality, professional enzymes. Most Naturopathic clinics use both plant enzyme therapy and pancreatic enzyme therapy to support the healing process. These therapies work well with other modalities. For example, in our clinic we use energetic remedies to correct the basic flow of information and energy within the body. This is like renewing the blue prints to the building or restoring the system’s software. Then we use nutritional and herbal supplementation and diet plans to provide the basic building materials needed to renew the body. Enzyme therapy then provides the workers to follow the blueprints and use the basic building materials to rebuild the structure into restored health. Other therapies such as correcting pH or detoxification are used to provide a positive work environment for the workers (enzymes) to utilize the nutritional support. Often people struggle to gain major results in their health while taking many supplemental nutrients because they do not have the foundational enzymes to allow their supplements to work.