The Work of Enzymes
Keith Giaquinto
Food enzymes are becoming a new buzzword in health and wellness. However, not many people really understand what they do in the body, or that there is a difference between plant and animal enzymes.
Say you want to build a house and you have all of the raw materials you need to build it sitting in a big pile. The raw materials (wood, concrete, tools, windows, electric, etc.) are not going to build the house itself. You need the workers to put it all together. If you had two workers building the house, you can see that the house will be built in a certain time frame with a certain amount of efficiency. What if you added 100,1,000, or even 10,000 workers to the same raw materials and project? The house will be built a lot quicker and more efficiently. That is what enzymes do in the body. They get work done. What two major systems are heavily dependent on enzymes? The digestive and immune systems require enzymes for normal function.
If your patient's body is under stress, this increases sympathetic tone in the nervous system and can perpetuate subluxations. The patient's body can become sympathetically dominant, which decreases digestive function and absorption of nutrients at the same time increasing leaky gut, toxicity, and immune function to clean up the mess. These two systems can become exhausted quickly and can spin the patient into a chronic health challenge.
Enzymes are the only nutrients in the body that have the capacity to perform work. Carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water are the raw materials the body needs for energy, growth, repair, and maintaining homeostasis, but they do not perform any work themselves.
“if your patient's body is under stress, this increases sympathetic tone in the nervous system and
can perpetuate subluxations. 99
Enzymes require certain things in order to perform their job. They require the right:
• Temperature • pH A substrate to work on • Water
This is important to remember if you are using food enzymes in your practice because plant enzymes work in a broader pH range (3.0 to 9.0) than animal enzymes (pancreatic 7.0 to 9.0).1 When the body digests food, the pH in the stomach becomes acidic and then becomes alkaline in the duodenum. This means that food or plant enzymes can work in both the acid environment of the stomach and the alkaline environment of the small intestine. Animal enzymes can only work in the small intestine. Plant enzymes therefore are more beneficial because they can predigest food in the stomach—in the acidic environment. This can help your patient's body get nutrients past an incompetent digestive system, which speeds up the recovery process. Animal enzymes only work in the duodenum where the environment is alkaline, missing the opportunity to predigest food in the stomach.2 By having your patients take food enzymes on an empty stomach, which is one hour before or two hours after meals, you can help support the immune system.
For seminar information, more on enzyme nutrition, or to order the book Enzymes: The Key to Health, referenced in this article, visit www.foodenzymeinstitute. com or call 800-662-2630. Chiropractors have access to the Food Enzyme Institute's Director of Clinical Sciences, who is available to answer questions as they incorporate enzyme nutrition into practice.
References
1. Loomis, Dr. Howard F., Enzymes: The Key to Health. Madison, 21st Century Nutrition Publishing, 1999. Page 77.
2. Loomis, Dr. Howard F., Enzymes: The Key to Health. Madison, 21st Century Nutrition Publishing, 1999. Page 97-98.
Dr. Keith Giaquinto has more than 12 years of clinical experience as a chiropractor and internal health specialist. He frequently lectures to companies and groups in his community on topics of health and wellness. He has created a new patient lecture system for growing your practice through lecturing. You can contact him at www.drkeithgiaquinto.com
