Enzymes and Health

Without enzymes life would cease to exist.  While nutrients may be present in the diet, the enzymes are the work force of the body and the catalysts for every process.

Is the food you're eating digestible?  If you eat mostly cooked food (over 121 degrees F), it may not be.  Studies have shown that raw food is easier to digest and healthier than cooked food, because it still contains enzymes.

Even raw food isn't as healthy today as it was thirty years ago, because natural enzymes are being systematically eliminated from our food through mineral depletion of the soil.  This forces the plant to sacrifice its own enzymes to replenish the soil.  So today's plants lack essential enzymes right from the start.

Enzymes are the spark of life--they operate your entire body.  You could not digest or absorb food, walk, talk or even breathe without them.  Enzymes are living substances that must be activated by a certain pH range, a certain temperature range, moisture, and coenzymes (vitamins and minerals).

Vitamins and minerals are familiar to most people, but they don't realize that vitamins aren't activated until they join enzymes.  You can swallow pounds of vitamins and minerals but without enzymes, nothing works and you're wasting your hard-earned money.

Plant-based enzymes initiate the work of digestion in the stomach.  They also work in the small intestine and blood.  All people need plant enzymes.  Unlike drugs, which control body chemistry, these enzymes enhance the nourishment of the body so it can heal itself.  Enzymes will not interfere with drugs already being taken, but they may decrease the needed dosage.

Enzymes are the workers in your body--carrying out every chemical and electrical reaction.  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 structure.  

The first person to actively study enzymes was Dr. Edward Howell.  He determined that people who eat a large proportion of raw foods do not become as ill and are able to recover from illness more quickly than those who eat mostly cooked food.

It's a misconception among some doctors that you don't need enzyme supplements because your body makes its own enzymes.  While it's true that your body does produce enzymes, if they aren't in the right place at the right time they won't do you any good.  You need to take a good digestive enzyme so your food will be thoroughly digested and your liver will get the nutrition it needs to produce enzymes on its own.

Also, many doctors believe that you can't take enzyme supplements because they're destroyed in the stomach.  That isn't true--they're merely deactivated by the stomach's acidity.  

Then when the food and the deactivated enzymes reach the small intestine, the body's alkaline reserve reactivates these enzymes at a high, more alkaline pH.  This is where pancreatic enzymes join activated plant enzymes.

Plant enzymes help absorb and assimilate your food.  When your body functions properly, food is digested into tiny particles of nutrition that go into your blood and then into your cells.  If you lack any of the necessary enzymes, however, this doesn't happen.  People need to eat right AND take enzymes or they will never get a sufficient amount of them.  Unfortunately, few people do either one.

If your body can't break food down properly, because of a lack of enzymes, particles of undigested food sit in your stomach and enter directly into your blood.  Whatever you don't digest becomes a poison.

There is an enzyme deficiency with most conditions naturopaths treat.  Enzyme supplements help clean your body by eating harmful bacteria, viruses and debris.  Once a person gets the right enzyme, the symptoms of their conditions often go away.

For example, the vomiting that often accompanies pregnancy can be treated with enzymes.  Some have healed their ulcers in two weeks with enzymes.

The lack of certain enzymes causes very specific problems.  A lack of sugar-digesting enzymes--sucrase, maltase and lactase--can even lead to severe problems such as diarrhea and asthma.  The lack of these enzymes has also been linked to attention-deficit disorder, mood swings, violent behavior and other mental and emotional problems.

People who are deficient in protease, the protein-digesting enzyme, tend to be very anxious and have low blood sugar.  They usually also have edema (abnormally large amounts of fluid in the tissue) and suppressed immune systems.

Protease is one of the major enzymes in the immune system, so it's often helpful in treating all types of bacterial and viral infections.

Dr. Howard Loomis, the foremost living expert in enzyme research, had a woman bring in her little boy who couldn't walk, talk or hear.  Another doctor had told her that her son was a lost cause and should be institutionalized.

Dr. Loomis put him on enzymes, including protease, and in a few weeks the fluid cleared in the boy's ears and he was able to hear and speak.

A large percentage of folks have been told by their doctors that they have mental problems and need antidepressants because their doctors couldn't find anything physically wrong with them.  Do people just "go nuts"?  Or is there an electrical short-circuit somewhere within the body? 

Many health-care practitioners believe that abnormal brain chemistry and electrical imbalance lead to mental problems as a direct result of abnormal body chemistry, poor nutrition and hormonal imbalances.  All these can be corrected with enzyme therapy.  When given the proper enzymes, the brain can heal itself.

While science hasn't yet discovered a "magic pill" for all mankind's ills, enzymes are surely nutritional, electrical, biochemical "magic".  It behooves us all to supply our systems with these very necessary elements that we are simply not getting from the usual sources any more.  

Below is a link to a product I have found to be a wonderful source of plant-based enzymes.  Hopefully you will come to realize as Dr. Howell did also, "Without enzymes, there is no life."