The Importance Of Enzymes

Enzyme therapy is an important and critical step in restoring health, especially when recovering from cancer. Enzymes help to remedy digestive problems and are critical in the elimination of all toxins from the body. If not eliminated properly, toxins build-up and worsen disease. Cancer cells release waste as all cells do, and it is critical that cancer waste products are properly excreted from the body.

PLANT ENZYMES

Plant enzymes and pancreatic enzymes are used to improve digestion and to aid in the absorption of essential nutrients. They are found naturally in a healthy whole food diet. Enzymes are the ‘substances that make life possible.’ No vitamin, mineral, nor hormone can function without the presence of enzymes. Enzymes literally ‘build’ the body using proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Without the aid of enzymes, the body cannot properly utilize any required nutrients.

Plant enzymes stimulate the digestive system. Pancreatic enzymes work for proper function of both the digestive system and the immune system. With proper digestion, which includes efficient elimination, many acute and chronic diseases can be prevented all together.

THE DIGESTIVE PROCESS

The human body manufactures approximately twenty different digestive enzymes. These enzymes digest protein, carbohydrates, sugars, and fats. When you eat, you digest your food in stages. Digestion begins in the mouth. This is one reason why you shouldn’t drink during a meal; the fluid washes away the initial digestive enzymes. Digestion then moves into the stomach, and finally passes through the small intestine. During each stage of digestion, specific enzymes break down the different types of foods.

This digestive process ideally remains magically balanced throughout the body. At each point along the way, a different degree of acidity allocates which enzymes function while others are not needed. Your body knows exactly what to do and when to do it given the right tools. Tools such as natural foods saturated with enzymes.

PLANT ENZYMES

Plant enzymes are derived from the plants you eat. They can also be supplied through natural supplements, but only substitute those enzymes found naturally in food. It is best to eat your enzymes, but if you aren’t eating enough enzymes, supplement with the natural plant enzymes themselves.

Plant enzymes become active in the mouth and in the stomach. Fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds provide plentiful plant enzymes. Eating raw foods or supplementing food enzymes can aid in thirty percent of protein digestion and help digest ten percent of the fat you eat in less than one hour. The body knows what to do when fed properly.

Cooking destroys plant enzymes. Plant enzymes are more heat sensitive than vitamins. They are the first to be destroyed above 118o Fahrenheit.

Proper chewing of food also helps enzymes begin immediate digestion. Chewing liberates cellulase, one of the plant enzymes found in food. If you don’t chew properly, the cellulase is never released. Cellulase is also lacking in packaged foods because of processing. Some supermarkets and salad bars spray fresh fruits and vegetables with sulfites, which destroy the cellulase enzyme. Carryout and fast foods contain no cellulase.

PANCREATIC ENZYMES

Pancreatic enzymes are animal derived enzymes that work hard in the intestines and within the blood. Amylase is a pancreatic enzyme. Enzyme supplements aid digestion in the intestines by sharing the workload of the body’s own pancreatic enzymes active there. They do not, however, work in the stomach, the domain of the plant enzymes. If plant enzymes are not adequately digesting food in the stomach, pancreatic enzymes pick up the extra workload, placing stress on the intestines. The better your food is digested within the mouth and stomach, the easier it is on your intestines.

Pancreatic enzymes, whether from food or natural supplements, promote health by more efficiently converting food to usable nutrients and energy, which is the sole purpose for eating.

ENZYMES AND CANCER

Too much undigested protein escaping from the small intestines into the bloodstream can cause disease. This protein is attacked in the blood as if an invader. Circulating immune complexes (CIC’s) form, making you sick. This is where healthy pancreatic enzymes come into play. They break down the CIC’s so they can pass through the kidneys for proper excretion. Because of their ability to ‘clean out’ foreign proteins, pancreatic enzymes can also purge infections, viruses, and scar tissue, and aid in the defeat of cancerous tumors.

Pancreatic enzymes expose toxins at the site of disease cells. Here, the toxins are identified as foreign substances and then destroyed by the body’s own natural immune system. When cancerous cells, for example, shed toxins, pancreatic enzymes help destroy the residue in the bloodstream preventing toxic circulation throughout the body. Elimination is critical when healing an illness.

Pancreatic enzymes also stimulate natural killer cells, T-cells, and anticancer agents. These enzymes actually enter disease cells in their reproductive phase where they are not completely formed and are more susceptible to being destroyed. Vitamin A increases this effect because it releases enzymes in the digestive system. The combination of the two digestive enzymes has been known to dissolve malignant tumors.

DIGESTION ISN’T JUST IN THE STOMACH

Let me share a story about why enzymes are so important.

Bill was a cab driver who experimented over a period of years with various nutrients from the health food store. Taking one vitamin at a time, he’d see how they affected his health. One evening he reported what he thought were unrelated events.

Bill had taken some pancreatic enzymes and his nasal allergies cleared up. His question, ‘Could digestive enzymes be effecting his nasal passages?’

Another way to phrase this question,‘Can digestion of foreign protein take place in the nasal passages or other tissues in the body outside of the digestive tract?’ Yes, it can.

Pollen is approximately fifty-percent protein. When it enters the body, this or any other foreign protein will cause toxic reactions if not properly detoxified or properly digested. Foreign or undigested protein is highly toxic to the body.

There is no reason that the process of digestion must be confined to the digestive tract. On the contrary, there is abundant biological proof that proteins can be digested (broken down into their constituent amino acids) anywhere the proteolytic, or protein digesting enzymes, are present under the right conditions of temperature, moisture, etc. Thus, digestive enzymes could effectively digest foreign protein anywhere in the body if these enzymes are present and in contact with these foreign proteins. Therefore, these proteolytic enzymes are an integral and necessary part of the immune system.

So, digestion can take place anywhere in the body where these enzymes are found.

It is well known that these enzymes are produced in the pancreas and enter the small intestines just below the stomach through the common bile duct where they do digest the foreign protein going through the intestinal tract. What is not well known is that the normal healthy person produces an excess of these enzymes over and above the amount needed for digestion of food protein, and that the excess is picked up by the blood and carried to every cell in the body. These enzymes are found in the blood of all normal, healthy people.

ALLERGIES AND CANCER

People with allergies appear to develop cancer at a much higher rate than people who are relatively free from allergies. This correlation is better understood when it is realized that both are caused by toxicity in the body. Statistically speaking, there is never any cancer at the juncture of the common bile duct and the small intestine. There is certainly cancer above this point in the mouth, esophagus, and stomach. There is cancer below this point in both the small and large intestines, but there is a curious relationship here. In direct proportion, the further down the intestinal tract from the common bile duct, the greater the incidence of cancer.

What enters the intestines through the common bile duct that has such potent anti-cancer effect?

The protein digestive enzymes.

ENZYMES AND CANCER

Pancreatic enzymes can be found in the blood of the normal healthy person, but they cannot be found in the blood of the cancer patient. The enzyme producing capacity of the cancer patient has been reduced and/or is overloaded by the food proteins that are using up the total proteolytic enzyme output so that none remain to be picked up by the blood.

Vegetarians have a much lower incidence of cancer than do meat eaters because they are not overloading their digestive capacity. People on a high protein diet require more hydrochloric acid producing capacity in the stomach and a higher output of proteolytic enzymes than do vegetarians.

Statistics support the fact that fifty percent of Americans over forty do not produce enough acid in the stomach. These same figures are accurate for enzyme production as well.

Foods containing natural enzymes are: • Citrus Fruits • Tomatoes • Pineapple • Cranberries

Citrus fruits such as oranges, grapefruits, papaya and kiwi, tomatoes, pineapple, and cranberries contain the digestive enzymes needed for proper food assimilation. ‘Eat them anyway you can’: canned or fresh, juiced or dried. Just remember to eat one serving with every meal because these foods aid natural digestion.

GOOD DIGESTION

Many health problems start with improper digestion. Good digestion is where proper nutrition begins! Always strive to eat the best foods you can afford to purchase, but if you’re not digesting your foods and breaking them down into their vitamin and natural nutrient contents, your body won’t benefit from the nutrition it requires from food. The same concept applies to vitamin and mineral supplements, and to herbs. If you do not assimilate them in the stomach, they do you little good.

In the past, daily meals included at least one food from the following: baked ham with pineapple, fish served with lemon, turkey with cranberries, and lamb with red wine. Foods rich in digestive enzymes should accompany every meal. This is the way the body naturally digests what is eaten. No more heartburn, indigestion, and acid stomach churning and bubbling its way back up your throat. These ‘acid reflux’ conditions usually result from eating too much over-cooked food without proper natural digestive enzymes to help aid in their digestion.

Indigestion, you say? Drink apple cider vinegar in water. One-tablespoon of vinegar to one-cup water. Hold your nose if you have to, but get as much of the solution down as you can. One glass of a rich red wine will do the same thing for poor digestion. Nature has always provided natural digestive aids.

STOMACH ACID IS A GOOD THING

Years ago, scientists experimented in the laboratory trying to recreate artificial stomach acids. The researchers took a raw piece of meat and dropped various acids on it, attempting to break it apart. Nothing could dissolve the slab of meat, not even the strongest acids available. The acids put holes in the meat, but nothing dismantled the muscle into mush. The stomach, however, contains the most powerful acids on Earth; acids capable of dissolving raw meat in less than forty-five minutes. And not by destroying it, but by dissolving it into a usable resource of nutrients. No scientist has ever duplicated the powerful capabilities of the stomach itself.

The lining of the stomach is so strong, it protects the potent acids it contains from escaping into the body. The stomach is lined with miraculous mucin cells. If the lining wears thin, a hole will form, permitting the acids an exit. This can create a burning sensation and stomach ‘ulcers.’ The mucin lining can easily be replaced and repaired by eating foods that produce mucin. The best and most effective mucin producer is cabbage, red or green. Raw cabbage will replace the mucin lining of the stomach immediately. If you have an ulcer, eat cabbage every day for two weeks and presto, the ulcer will disappear like magic.

Make available these foods at every meal and eat your digestive enzymes so you can throw the antacids away.

Posted August 2004 | Permanent Link


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