Enzymes – The Spark of Life!

Enzymes are the sparks of life that keep us alive. Most people have depleted their stores of digestive and metabolic enzymes. But you can get that spark of life back in your body.

What is an enzyme and why are they important? Enzymes are huge proteins that speed up chemical reactions. They are the sparks of life. They keep chemical processes going fast enough to keep us alive. To a certain extent they recycle themselves in that they’re not used up during the chemical processing. However eventually they can be depleted.

Let’s identify the classes of enzymes.

1. Digestive enzymes: The body makes less than two dozen different digestive enzymes but it uses more of its enzyme potential supplying these digestive enzymes for cooked food than it uses to make hundreds of metabolic enzymes to keep tissues and organs functioning optimally. Because of the increased need for more digestive enzymes when humans eat cooked food, they are much more concentrated in the saliva and pancreatic juices than the digestive enzymes of animals on raw natural food.
2. Metabolic (systemic) enzymes work in the tissues to facilitate the chemical processing in each cell. The body makes hundreds of different types of metabolic enzymes. Metabolic enzymes are also known as systemic enzymes.
3. Food enzymes are found in raw foods. Most raw food comes supplied with approximately 75 percent of the enzymes that are needed to digest that food.

The greatest nutritional deficiency in the American diet – the missing link:

Minerals are the keys that turn these enzyme protein sparks on. Vitamins are actually coenzymes, partners to help enzymes work. Oh – so that’s why taking all those vitamin and mineral supplements isn’t sparking my energy enough. Enzymes are the missing link. Why didn’t anyone ever suggest I take enzymes, so vital to life? Then the 3 partners working together, vitamins, minerals and enzymes might actually revitalize me.

How are digestive and food enzymes used in the body?

 Since raw foods come with approximately 75% of the enzymes needed to digest them the body has to add only 25 percent more enzymes to complete digestion of that food.

The first digestive enzyme is secreted in the mouth in the form of ptyalin in the saliva. Thorough chewing of the food provides the ptyalin with the best opportunity to initiate digestion of food starches in the mouth.

When the food reaches the stomach it sits in the upper portion of the stomach where the food enzymes become activated to continue the digestive process. After approximately 30 to 45 minutes the stomach secretes acid to digest proteins in the food. This acidity then inactivates the food enzymes temporarily.

As the food moves into the small intestine the pancreas secretes sodium bicarbonate, which changes the mixture back to an alkaline pH. Now the food enzymes become active again and continue the digestive process. The pancreas also secretes pancreatic enzymes to digest specific components of the food. The small intestine cells secrete enzymes and the gallbladder and liver secrete bile to help digest fats.

As the food you ate moves through the digestive tract, it can only be thoroughly digested if digestive enzymes are plentiful. If it is not thoroughly digested, larger food particles may enter the blood stream. Then your body perceives these larger particles as foreign invaders and launches an attack which may manifest as food allergies or an auto-immune disorder. And thus the downward spiral to disease and disability.

How does enzyme deficiency come about?

Read The Great Enzyme Bank Robbery to find out.

Enzyme articles in this series, including this one:

1 Enzymes the Spark of Life
http://dr-jo-md.com/bewise/enzymes-the-spark-of-life

2 The Great Enzyme Bank Robbery
http://dr-jo-md.com/bewise/the-great-enzyme-bank-robbery

3 Big Enzyme Leak
http://dr-jo-md.com/bewise/big-enzyme-leak

Blessings,

Dr. Jo