Healthy Digestive Enzymes

Having healthy digestive enzymes is one of the keys to good health.

Digestive enzymes are catalysts that speed up digestive processes by breaking down the food we eat into its building blocks. The body can then rebuild these blocks into the specific amino acids, proteins, fats, glucose, and storage molecules that it needs. The enzymes for digestion are produced all along our digestive tract, by our salivary glands, stomach, pancreas, and the jejunum and ileum of the small intestine.

Our store of digestive enzymes arrives as part of our heritage at birth. And the foods that we eat are what keeps this supply constant. The raw food that we eat. If we eat any raw food!

Raw food means fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, raw seeds, raw, unpasteurized milk, unpasteurized cheeses, raw meat. Okay, some of these foods aren’t available raw or aren’t that safe raw. In fact, raw seeds, grains, and legumes have antinutrients in them that need to be converted through soaking in an acidic medium, and sprouting to render their nutrients bio-available. The grains and legumes also become more appealing once they’re cooked until tender. Raw leafy greens also have antinutrients that are converted through cooking. So our options of eating foods with digestive enzymes are already low.

The Standard American Diet (note that it’s acronym is SAD!) offers very little in the way of food enzymes. Canned, frozen, irradiated, microwaved, boiled, roasted, fried, steamed foods have lost most if not all their active enzymes. Foods that are picked before they are ripe and then freighted long distances are also low in enzymes. Eating such poor foods creates stress on those organs in our body that have to make digestive enzymes, such as our pancreas and stomach and small intestine. And if we eat non-foods – such refined, mineral-stripped foods as white sugar and sodium chloride – and stimulants – such as black tea, coffee, and alcohol – we tax and burden our digestive system even more, drawing from the body’s store of enzymes, minerals, and vitamins to assist the liver to remove them from our body.

To help your digestion, have some raw foods with every meal. This is where the custom of starting the meal with a salad began. The French people like to have a salad between the main course and the dessert. That’s another good place for adding more enzymes.

An additional way to assist your digestion and increase your body’s store of enzymes is to take digestive enzymes with each meal. Interestingly, this does not cause the body to downregulate the amount of digestive enzymes it produces; it just supports digestion and lessens the burden on the digestive organs.

Best of health, naturally,
Nina