Enzymes for Weight Loss and Overall Good Health

How You Can Supplement with Digestive Enzymes for Weight Loss

Digestive Enzymes can play a big part in weight control and reveal a hidden factor in obesity.
Working with people either choosing to practice self-treatment through the use of natural and holistic means, or to supplement standard medical care with nature's helpers (herbs, vitamins, minerals, homeopathics, etc.) is exceptionally gratifying.

One of the most difficult challenges to convey is exactly how to present this subject in a way that also embraces and includes a holistic view and approach to treating obesity.

Therapeutic Enzymes

by Matt Monarch

As precious as powdered gold, enzymes are extremely valuable for the Raw Foodist. Simply said, they prolong life! Although best known for their power as a digestive aid, their hidden potential far surpasses that function. Let me explain.

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There are two types of enzymes produced by and in our body:

(1) Digestive enzymes - to digest food

(2) Metabolic enzymes - which we depend on for life

Metabolism is the total of all chemical changes that take place in a cell or an organism to produce energy and basic materials needed for important life processes. Metabolic enzymes, perfectly named, are involved in every process of the human body. In fact, even digestive enzymes start as metabolic enzymes. Besides our day-to-day life processes of build up and breakdown, these little powerhouses are catalysts that take an active role in repairing any damage done to our body through injury, stress, poor eating or lifestyle habits, environmental contaminants, and the passage of time.

Digestive Enzymes for Arthritis Relief

By Stephanie Crumley Hill

While we think of arthritis as a disease which affects only the joints, it is a systemic disease which impacts our entire health. Inflammation is a hallmark of the disease. If you suffer from arthritis and want relief without the side effects of prescription medications, you may be able to find relief, as well as improved overall health, by taking digestive enzymes.

Defining Digestive Enzymes
Digestive enzymes are produced by your body to help you break down the foods you eat so that the nutrition contained in those foods can be absorbed and used by your body. Digestive enzymes are present in your saliva, in your stomach and small intestine, as well as in some of the foods you eat. Different enzymes target different components in food. Amylase in your saliva, for example, begins breaking down carbohydrates. While digestive enzymes are crucial to digestion, they play other important roles in the body as well. One of those roles is in helping the body reduce the duration and severity of inflammation and helping with tissue repair and recovery time. As you age, your body's production of digestive enzymes decreases. Coincidentally, arthritis is more common as you age.

Treating Diabetes With Enzymes: What We Know Now

By: Dr. William Wong, ND, PhD.

Up to a year ago, for anyone asking if systemic enzymes could help lessen the load of troubles that beset Type 1 diabetic patients, I would have told them about lowering pancreatic inflammation, and possibly helping with lower extremity circulatory issues.  I would have never suggested that the use of enzymes could decrease the need for insulin, increase energy or reverse the seemingly myriad of things diabetics suffer from.  Then we started getting information from Type 1 patients that amazed even me and that have subsequently sparked new research.  Here are two typical case histories.

Case History #1:

A Type 1 diabetic Native American patient from Montana in his mid 40's, very insulin dependent, with peripheral neuropathy in the lower extremities (LE's) and presenting paresthesia as well in the upper extremities (UE's) radiating distally to the hand.  Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD) in the LE's had already caused several toes to be amputated.

ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY, Part 6/6

ENZYMES: MODERN BIOMEDICINE

Only in the last ten years have powerful whole-food enzymes been available. Dr. Howell himself, having died in 1988, would certainly have welcomed a supplement as clean and powerful as the natural whole-food enzymes available today, which can be taken along with meals and can serve to help replace the enzymes removed in food processing.

Enzyme supplements are such a simple solution to a whole spectrum of health challenges, many of which are life-threatening, that they are generally not considered by mainstream practitioners. Most MDs are taught to look for the dramatic rescue, the quick-acting drug, the heroic procedure that can snatch the patient from the jaws of death, or whatever. That’s more sexy; it’s “real medicine.” The first problem is that most medical doctors don’t even know of the existence of whole-food enzymes, because such supplements are too inexpensive to be sold by the pharmaceutical companies. Yet.

ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY, Part 5/6

BLOOD: THE INTERNAL MILIEU

Going back to the blood now, and the idea of toxicity, remember that the blood was the carrier which deposited all the undigested food debris in various locations throughout the body. But this type of debris also has observable effects on the red blood cells themselves. Undigested fats and protein in the diet commonly cause a condition known as erythrocyte aggregation, which is simply clumping of the red cells. This causes circulation problems and may be the primary cause of chronic fatigue. It stands to reason – if the blood cells are all stuck together like globs of motor oil, they cannot flow very easily through the blood vessels. Circulation is the only way that the body’s cells can obtain oxygen, which they need every second. Clumping of red cells graphically decreases the amount of oxygen that is being carried to the tissues. We’re not just talking about fatigue any more; lack of oxygen spells tissue degeneration, premature aging, and early death.

ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY, Part 4/6

MILK – A DEVITALIZED ENZYMELESS FOOD

The absence of enzymes in modern dairy products exists by definition: milk is pronounced ‘pasteurized’ only when all the enzymes have been removed by heating. From pasteurized milk we then get butter, ice cream, cheese, yoghurt, and milk chocolate. Problem is, all these foods can’t be digested. Undigested food goes all over the body and causes chronic low-grade inflammation. And blockages. That is why holistic nutritionists generally agree that milk is the #1 cause of allergies. Don’t believe it? Take away all dairy for 60 days from the allergy or asthmatic patient. The operative word here is all. See what happens to the allergies. (Allergies: The Threshold of Reactivity)

ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY, Part 3/6

This is the continuation of the 6-Part Series of ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY.

THE SHELF-LIFE BUSINESS

Let’s talk about processed foods. How did all these artificial, devitalized foods become the main components of the American diet in the first place?

Long story. In 1910 Harvey Wiley, MD was the first head of the original FDA. Dr. Wiley was a big critic of food adulteration. He was against bleached flour, refined sugar, and the sale of adulterated, devitalized foods. He once tried to prevent the Coca Cola company from shipping Coke across interstate lines because it had white sugar in it, which Dr. Wiley correctly described as an adulterated food. Then Wiley actually began seizing shipments of bleached flour. A legal battle ensued and went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1913.

ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY, Part 2/6

SPECIFIC SHAPES

Enzymes are known to have very specific jobs to do. Their activity is compared to keys that must fit certain locks. Enzymes are long-chain proteins held together in very specific shapes by hydrogen bonds. Think of a ball of string which is held in a very weird shape by tiny strips of Velcro. If anything happens to the Velcro-like bonds, the enzyme protein unravels, losing its shape. Without the shape, the key can no longer fit the lock. Then it’s no longer an enzyme – just another foreign protein. And what do foreign proteins cause in our body? Right – inflammation. Immune response. And that’s exactly the meaning of auto-immune. The body now attacks itself because it senses there’s an alien on board. Self has become not-self.

ENZYMES: THE KEY TO LONGEVITY, Part 1/6

by Tim O’Shea, Comments by Tony

“The joy of life depends on a sound stomach whereas bad digestion inclines one to skepticism, incredulity, breeds black fancies, and thoughts of death.”  - Joseph Conrad

Why do we die? Why do we age? Why do things wear out? Do we just live our lives and then all of a sudden out of the blue a disease bug comes floating in from who knows where and causes an illness that kills us? Unless of course the right drug can be found to “kill the bug.”

ENZYMES 101

What are enzymes? We often hear about them but only a few of us really know what they are and what their significance is to our lives.


There are three major different types of enzymes at work in the human body. Within these three types are nearly 3,000 different kinds of enzymes. Each kind has certain specific tasks to carry out, and we need most all of them just to survive. Without certain enzymes we couldn't even exist. An enzyme has a somewhat complicated structure, though most cells in the body may contain up to 1,000 of them. Enzymes exist at the molecular level however, so plenty of them can fit into a very tiny space.