Enzymes

The Fourteenth Edition of Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines an enzyme as "... an organic catalyst produced by living cells but capable of acting independently. Enzymes are complex proteins that are capable of inducing chemical changes in other substances without being changed themselves. Enzymes are specific in their action. They will act only upon a certain substance or a group of closely related chemical substances and no other. Each enzym e has an optimum temperature at which it acts with greatest efficiency, and it is influenced by the reaction of the medium in which it acts, there being an optimum degree of acidity or alkalinity. Enzyme activity can be retarded or inhibited by low temperatures, high temperatures, and the presence of salts of heavy metals, dehydration, and ultraviolet radiation. Several hundred enzymes have been identified but as many as a thousand are thought to be present in mammals."
Dr. Edward Howell has been involved with enzyme research for much of his professional career, finally authoring a cutting-edge book called Enzyme Nutrition. In this book he states, "Life could not exist without enzymes. Enzymes convert the food we eat into chemical structures that can pass through the membranes of the cells lining the digestive tract and into the blood stream. Food must be digested so that it can ultimately pass through cell membranes. Enzymes also aid in converting the prepared food into new muscle, flesh, bone, nerves, and glands. Working with the liver, they help store excess food for future energy and building needs. They also assist the kidneys, lungs, liver, skin and colon in their important eliminative tasks. Perhaps it would be easier to write about what enzymes don't do, for they are involved in almost every aspect of life."
There are three main types of enzymes: 1) metabolic enzymes, which perform countless tasks inside our bodies, 2) digestive enzymes, which digest the foods that we eat, and 3) enzymes present in living and raw foods which initiate digestion, helping us digest our food. Metabolic and digestive enzymes are manufactured by our bodies while the enzymes present in living foods are manufactured by the plants. By consuming foods rich in live enzymes, we allow our bodies to use the energy of manufacturing digestive enzymes for other metabolic functions.
The heating of food above 118 degrees Fahrenheit destroys the naturally occurring enzymes in the food. This is of great concern to those individuals seeking optimum health and longevity because the body must work to manufacture enzymes that the cooking of the food has destroyed.
Dr. Howell writes, "All uncooked foods contain an abundance of food enzymes which correspond to the nutritional highlights of food. For example, dairy foods, oils, seeds and nuts, which are relatively high in fat content, also contain relatively higher concentrations of the enzyme lipase which aids in the digestion of their fats. Carbohydrates, such as grains, contain a higher concentration of amylase [digests carbohydrates] and lesser amounts of lipase and protease [digests protein]" (Howell pg. 35).
The banana is an excellent example of how a food is capable of digesting its own ingredients. "The banana has about 20 percent starch when green. The enzyme amylase changes the banana into 20 percent sugar when the fruit is kept warm for a few days and becomes speckled. The amylase in bananas works on banana starch, but not readily on other starches, such as potato starch.
Professor Artturi Virtanen, Helsinki biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, showed that enzymes are released in the mouth from raw vegetables when they are chewed: they come into contact with the food and start digestion. These food enzymes are not denatured by stomach acid, as some researchers have speculated, but remain active throughout the digestive tract (Holford, page 91).
So what's the big deal about getting these digestive enzymes from the diet as opposed to using the body's organs to supply the digestive enzymes? According to the research of Dr. Howell, enzyme expert, each individual has what he calls an "enzyme potential" or "enzyme bank account" and when it runs out, the organism's life ends. How does one's enzyme bank account get depleted? According to Dr. Howell, it is by "heavy withdrawals, and skimpy deposits" of enzymes.
Many researchers are now convinced that each of us is given a limited enzyme potential at birth (i.e. our genetic potential). This supply, similar to the energy supply of a new battery, has to last a lifetime. The faster you use up your enzyme supply, the shorter your life. A great deal of our enzyme energy is wasted haphazardly throughout life. The habit of cooking our food and eating it processed with chemicals, and the use of alcohol, drugs, and junk food, all draw out tremendous quantities of enzymes from our limited supply. Frequent colds and fevers and exposure to extremes of temperature also deplete the supply. A body in such a weakened, enzyme-deficient state is a prime target for cancer, obesity, heart disease, or other degenerative problems. A lifetime of such abuse ends in the tragedy of death at middle age (Howell pg. ix).
"The length of life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential of an organism [emphasis mine]. The increased use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential" (Howell). One of the keys to a healthy, long life is to consume dietary enzymes so that the body conserves the metabolic enzymes and uses them for other functions.
"The remarkable thing about the eventual bankruptcy of the enzyme account is that it can proceed quite painlessly, without immediate symptoms. The only warning may be a belated malfunction or a breakdown in some organ far removed from the digestive tract. But the diagnostician, unaware of the importance of enzyme nutrition, would have difficulty in connecting such a referred process to the true, underlying cause. This is how an assortment of human ailments may get started" (Howell pg. 73).
Enzymes can also disarm free radicals. "Apples, mangos and grapes contain enzymes called peroxidase and catulase which help disarm free radicals" (Holford, pages 91-92). Some mushrooms, sweet corn and raw honey also contain these enzymes along with amylase. However, when these foods are cooked, the beneficial enzymes are destroyed.
Some foods contain enzyme inhibit ors. For example, lentils, beans and chickpeas contain trypsin-inhibitors that prevent protein from being completely digested. However, this anti-enzyme factor can be destroyed either by sprouting or cooking. The same is true for grains rich in phytates that can bind beneficial minerals. If these enzyme blockers are not inactivated, they can create an enzyme drain on the body and cause intestinal gas. Nuts with brown skins, such as almonds, contain enzyme inhibitors. Soaking the nuts (from 8 to 12 hours depending on the type of nut) deactivates these inhibiters.
"Previously, food was considered to have no effects except for the production of heat and energy from fats and carbohydrates and the repair of tissue by proteins. Now it is known that food can change organs and tissues, including glands, for better or worse. The fact that food can change the size and weight of these important glands (pituitary, testicle, ovaries, pancreas, adrenal, and thyroid) has been demonstrated over and over again by careful experiments during past years. Professor Jackson and co-workers at the University of Minnesota fed white rats a diet containing 80 percent sugar (enzyme free) and reported marked differences in the size and weight of all principal organs and glands" (Howell pg. 104).
"Heat-treated, enzyme-free refined items of food caused the most drastic deviations in pituitary gland size and appearance. When animals were fed diets greatly restricted in enzymes, the damage in the pituitary was identical or similar to that found in human beings subsisting on conventional food with greatly lowered food enzyme intake" (Howell pg. 106). The Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, edition 17 (page 1516) says the following about the function of the pituitary gland: "The pituitary is an endocrine gland secreting a number of hormones that regulate many bodily processes, including growth, reproduction, and various metabolic activities. It is often referred to as the master gland of the body." It has been proven that a predominantly cooked-food diet can make one's "master gland" a gland that regulates so many bodily functions, shrink! Do you think that this could be a contributing factor in the cause of some of the diseases of modern society? Many researchers do.
Dr. Howell explains how a predominately cooked food diet causes an enlargement of the pancreas. "The pancreas must send messages to all parts of the body looking for enzymes it can reprocess into digestive enzymes. It may even invade the warehouse of the precursors. In a pinch it will beg, borrow or steal them. When it finds them it has work to do. Changing metabolic enzymes into digestive enzymes means extra work for the pancreas. It must get bigger, just as muscle grows from more exercise. Either way, your brain, heart, arteries, all organs and tissues suffer from an enzyme labor shortage" (Howell pg. 81). The pancreas also must secrete insulin to deal with the massive amounts of processed sugar that the average person consumes nowadays. This combination of enzyme-free food and a large amount of processed sugar leads to the overburdening of the pancreas which can then lead to enlargement and dangerous disease of this organ.
Dr. Howell has assessed more than fifty reports submitted in the scientific periodical literature on nutrition and brain weight over a number of years. He found that animals fed a diet, "armed to the hilt with various vitamins and minerals," but completely free of food enzymes had consistently lower brain weights than animals fed a diet consisting of a mixture of cooked and uncooked foods ( Howell pg. 76).
I hardly ever indulge in cooked foods, but when I do, I consume a dietary supplement of plant-based enzymes in veggie capsules. These pills help me digest the enzyme-free food so that my body does not have to generate as many digestive enzymes, therefore lessening the st rain on my digestive system. If you decide to supplement your diet with digestive enzymes, beware of animal-based enzymes. They may come from the pancreas of a pig or other animal. One popular product is ox bile (from the stomach of an ox). These enzymes only work in a particular pH, unlike plant enzymes, which work under a broad range of acidity or alkalinity, as do our stomachs. Another factor is that animals carry disease, and enzymes that come from an animal cannot be sterilized (because the heat would destroy the enzymes) so they could possibly cause us more harm than good. For these two reasons I suggest the use of plant-based enzymes.