Digestive Enzymes - Health 101

Digestive enzymes break down our foods into absorbable & utilizable components. Each enzyme has a very specific function - it is necessary we get all the enzymes - they are not interchangeable. Poor digestive health is rampant, and unfortunately undetected & underemphasized in western medicine. Digestive health is critical to disease prevention & recovery.

We have 2 main ways of getting our digestive enzymes:

The food we eat: cooking denatures enzymes, so we need to eat plenty of raw fruits and vegetables. Another issue here is soil depletion - our foods can be filled with toxins which destroy enzymes & because the soil is over tilled can be depleted in precious nutrients.

Good foods to eat:: Pineapple, papaya, sea vegetables, greek yogurt (un flavoured please), mango, wheat grass, shitake mushrooms, sprouts, cabbage, apples, cherries, peppers, unpasteurized honey, apple cider vinegar - which is great as a salad dressing!

Our body makes enzymes in the mouth, stomach, intestinal tract & pancreas. Enzymes are made with proteins, which have been broken down into their building blocks called amino acids. With poor protein absorption & an over burdened pancreas from years of poor lifestyle choices, enzyme production is compromised.

Drinking too much water (fluids) with meals - dilutes these enzymes.

The body is reliant on protein availability to form digestive enzymes - and we emphasize the importance of getting sufficient protein in our diets for our bodies to be able to perform its thousands of functions. With poor protein bioavailability we decrease our ability to make digestive enzymes, and with insufficient enzymes, we can't break down the nutrients to their usable form - a cycle of bodily breakdown.

We now know that digestive enzymes serve many critical roles in the body - beyond digestion. They are now thought to be key in ridding the body of toxins, reducing autoimmunity (diseases such as arthritis & lupus) & inflammation, and speed the healing of the body after injury or surgery. More and more research is uncovering the importance of these enzymes in the anti ageing process, and they are now being used to boost cancer treatment.