FEATURED ARTICLE

"Enzymes and Digestion: A Key to Superior Health"

A key for achieving and maintaining peak health is insuring full and proper digestion of the foods you eat. By the time we reach the age of thirty or so, our body's ability to fully and completely digest what we eat has become greatly compromised. Whereas most food factors, including vitamins, suffer only minor or no demonstrable harm from heat preparation in the kitchen or factory, enzymes are completely destroyed by manufacturing or culinary operations. Enzymes can withstand no cooking, boiling, frying, roasting, stewing, broiling, or pasteurizing. Heat destroys them to the extent of not 99% but 100%!

Because today's modern diet includes huge amounts of hard-to-digest high-protein foods, as well as numerous enzyme deficient foods, our digestive organs are constantly overworking themselves in an attempt to digest the foods we eat. In order for the body to digest food completely and effectively, there must be a sufficient quantity of enzymes available. As little as a century ago, when our society was basically agrarian and people still ate plenty of organically grown raw fruits and vegetables as a way of life, incomplete digestion was virtually unknown as a medical problem. That is because organically grown raw fruits and vegetables contain huge amounts of their own active food enzymes.

These natural enzymes, which are found in all raw foods, begin digesting food the moment it is put into the mouth and is chewed. After the food is swallowed, enzymes continue predigesting the food while it is being held in the upper (cardiac) portion of the stomach (it is held there for an hour or so before it moves to the lower (pyloric) portion (in a sense, we really have two stomachs with two separate and distinct functions), breaking the food down into its most simple state, and releasing the vital nutrients from the food so that our bodies can assimilate and use those nutrients to maintain peak health.

However, today, because of modern agricultural practices which employ a myriad of herbicides, pesticides, synthetic chemicals, etc., and because the soil throughout America's vast farmland has been leached of much of its vital mineral content, even our raw foods are almost grossly lacking in the important quantities of enzymes necessary for proper food digestion.

Furthermore, if the food you eat has been heated to 118 degrees F. or higher, it really does not matter much whether it was organically grown or not, because any enzymes in that food have been totally and completely destroyed. Considering the fact that cooked and heat-processed foods now make up the predominant part of the average American diet, this means that the vast majority of what we eat these days is completely devoid of the vital enzymes that are absolutely essential to the digestive process. Because of this, the human body ends up severely overtaxing itself in order to produce enough of its own enzymes to aid in the process of digestion. According to Dr. Edward Howell, America's foremost medical expert on the role of enzymes in digestion and human health, the human body even goes so far as to shift from producing vital metabolic enzymes to producing digestive enzymes, in order to make up for the enzyme deficiencies in the foods we eat.

This works fine for a while - the body in its youth can often handle this problem to a sufficient enough extent to get by without ill effect. But by the time middle age rolls around, the overworked pancreas and other digestive organs can no longer produce sufficient quantities of either the crucial metabolic enzymes or the essential digestive enzymes. In a sense, the body's enzyme "bank account" becomes so severely overdrawn that the body itself begins to break down prematurely.

Thanks to the pioneering work of medical researchers and biochemists like Dr. Edward Howell, enzymes are now finally beginning to be recognized as the premier element in human health and well-being. Vitamins, minerals, and trace elements have long been known to be essential to human health and longevity, but what has only been discovered in the past 50 years or so is the fact that without enzymes, the human body simply cannot utilize vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and other nutrients. Enzymes are the body's nutritional delivery system. Without them in sufficient quantities, nutrients simply cannot be effectively delivered where needed in the human body.

In short, your stamina, energy level, ability to utilize vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, and your body's self-healing immune capability all depend directly upon the quantity of enzymes in the blood, organs and tissues. Without enzymes, not one single metabolic process can continue. In fact, having sufficient numbers of enzymes throughout the body is absolutely essential to the body's ability to break down toxins, build protein into muscle, eliminate carbon dioxide from the lungs, fend off attack from invading organisms, and much more.

From:   aomega.com/ahs/newsletters/nl030407.htm

see  also:  Enzymes