Why Is Taking Digestive Enzymes Important?
Poor digestion is one of the most health issue complaints. It’s difficult to find people over the age of 20-25 with proper digestion. If you are not employing supplemental enzymes to digest food, or if at least 20% of your food is cooked you have poor digestion.
The purpose of digestive enzyme excreted by the body is to help food enzymes break the food down. Our body was never meant to do all the digesting it has to do when we eat a completely cooked meal. To produce the digestive enzymes necessary for the work of digestion, the body must give up its own life force and this causes ageing faster. To conserve the enzyme we still possess, we need to stop using them, this can be accomplished by adapting a program to stop the tissue destruction: Eat more quality live foods, raw fruits and vegetables. The most powerful step is to use the correct supplemental enzymes for our personal needs.
Why Digestive Enzymes Don’t Work Correctly In The Body?
One of the causes is diseases which may prevent proper digestive enzyme production.
- Pancreatic problems, including cystic fibrosis, pancreatic cancer, and acute or chronic pancreatitis.
- Brush border dysfunction, the most severe is long standing Celiac disease, where the brush border is flattened or destroyed. Other diseases like Crohn’s can also cause severe problems.
But even in the absence of any obvious disease, things still may not be working properly.
- Low-grade inflammation in the digestive tract (such as that caused by food allergies, intestinal permeability, dysbiosis, parasitic infection, etc.) can lead to deficiencies in digestive enzymes.
- Aging has been associated with decreased digestive function, though I personally wonder if this is a result of aging or aging badly.
- Low stomach acid, if you have low stomach acid, it’s likely that you won’t have adequate digestive enzymes either.
- Chronic stress. This is the most common reason for digestive enzyme problems. Our body has two modes: sympathetic “fight or flight,” and parasympathetic “rest and digest.” When we’re in “fight or flight” mode, digestion is given a very low priority, which means digestive function (including digestive enzyme output) is dialled down. Chronic stress =constant “fight of flight” mode = impaired digestive enzyme output.
The Role Of Enzymes In Digestion:
Chemical digestion could not take place without the help of digestive enzymes. Enzymes speeds up chemical reactions in the body that break down large food molecules into small molecules. Digestive enzymes are essential to nutrition and overall good health. They help your body absorb nutrients from the foods you eat. Without them, certain foods can lead to uncomfortable symptoms, food intolerances, or nutritional deficiencies.
Digestive enzymes are released, or secreted, by the organs of the digestive system. These enzymes include proteases that digest proteins and nucleases that digest nucleic acid Examples of digestive enzymes are:
- Amylase, produced in the mouth. It helps break down large starch molecules into smaller sugar molecules.
- Pepsin, produced in the stomach. Pepsin helps break down proteins into Amino Acids.
- Trypsin, produced in the pancreas. Trypsin also breaks down protiens.
- Pancreatic lipase, produced in the pancreas. It is used to break apart fats.
- Deoxyribonuclease and ribonuclease, produced in the pancreas. They are enzymes that break bonds in nucleic acids like DND and RNA,
How Do I Know If I Should Be Taking Digestive Enzyme Supplements?
The best way to know is by having a stool test to measure how well you’re digesting foods and how well your pancreas is producing digestive enzymes.
Other symptoms that suggest you might have problems with digestive enzymes are:
- Gas and bloating after meals
- The sensation that you have food sitting in your stomach
- Feeling full after eating a few bites of food
- Undigested food in your stools
- Floating stools (an occasional floating piece is fine, but if all your poop consistently floats, that might be a sign something is wrong)
- An “oil slick” in the toilet bowl (undigested fat)
- constipation or not going daily to the toilet
Although digestive enzymes supplements are normally taken with meals for digestive purposes, when taken in between meals on an empty stomach, they may have the potential to stimulate the immune system, manage arthritis, reduce inflammation, improve liver health, and more.