Systemic Enzymes vs. Digestive Enzymes
First of all, what is an enzyme and why are they important?
Enzymes are substances that do not undergo changes in a chemical reaction themselves, but they make possible or speed up chemical reactions in the body. In other words, they are catalysts.
There are multiple thousands of different enzymes in the body. Practically nothing moves without them. Without enzymes, it would take you about 15 min to blink your eyelid and half an hour to bend your elbow.
The body takes the basic enzymes we know of, like protease, amylase, lipase, serrapeptidase, bromelain, and papain, and through what is known as the enzyme cascade, makes some 2 to 3 thousand different kinds of enzymes. From those, there is another cascade making 25 to 35 thousand more. There are about 1300 different enzymes in each cell, making cellular processes move along.
They are ubiquitous in the body, but nobody ever talks about them except for digestive purposes. It is all on automatic. But without them, you could not use any of your ingested vitamins, minerals, herbs, or food.
Most enzymes are large, long protein chains bunched up in a specific way with internal cross-links to make very specific shapes. If you ever heard the term globular protein, that is what it is referring to. It's like they are crumpled up into a glob instead of staying in a chain, but the pattern of crumple is very specific to make an exact shape.
So now you understand when someone says: Enzymes are globular proteins that catalyze the body’s internal chemical reactions. They work like a lock and key mechanism. That is why the shape is so important.
Some enzymes require a vitamin or mineral to work with. You have probably heard the terms co-enzyme and co-factor. Those are the members of an enzyme complex that works together to speed something up or make it possible. All the components work together to make something happen.
The other kind of enzyme is called a ribozyme. Ribozymes are actually RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) molecules that can possess catalytic activity and are the things that catalyze the creation of protein by helping to make the peptide bonds. They are active in the ribosomes, hence the name. If you remember, ribosomes are like little organs (organelles because they are really small, being part of a cell) where genetic material expresses the genes by regulating protein synthesis according to the genetic blueprint.
Peptides are made in the ribosomes by linking together amino acids. When there are over 50 amino acids, then it is no longer named a peptide, but becomes a protein. Size matters.
Now, an enzyme is an enzyme. There is no difference between a systemic enzyme and a digestive enzyme structurally. Where it winds up working determines whether it is digestive or systemic.
Although this is true, food digestion does not require such a sharp lock-and-key mechanism, so the body shunts worn-out enzymes that have been working in the system and have lost shape somewhat to the pancreas to use as digestive enzymes.
If you take an enzyme supplement with food, it will most likely become a digestive enzyme because it won’t ever leave the digestive tract. It would just go to work breaking down the food in its immediate environment.
If you take the enzymes on an empty stomach, there is more of a chance it will make it through the intestinal wall intact and into the “system” of your body. So the former would be a digestive enzyme, and the latter would be a systemic enzyme.
But enzyme supplements on the whole have a hard time getting past the stomach intact. The pH of stomach acid is about 2, which is very acidic. Battery acid is about 4 to give you some idea. That’s why the pancreas shoots digestive enzymes into the duodenum and the small intestines after the food is sterilized and somewhat liquefied by Hydrochloric acid (HCl) in the upper stomach. Some enzymes can stand up to a pH of 4, but you lose a lot of the enzyme supplement when it encounters a pH of 2.
For this reason, good enzyme supplements are enterically coated with an acid-resistant material that breaks open in the alkaline environment after it goes through the stomach acid. Now don’t let the capsule fool you. It’s not the same as an enterically coated tablet. The bits of enzyme are coated, and then that is encapsulated.
Enzymes on their own eat things up, but not at random. They are adaptogens for the immune system and healing systems. They keep healthy levels of good things that could cause big problems by eating up the excess.
If the amounts of these things got too high, they would start attacking the body as well as the intruders, or healing factors could very easily go overboard making you swell up and get red all over instead of just where it is needed and for as short as you need it. Use your imagination on that.
Enzymes can be taken at the same time as any vitamin or herb or supplement, or even drug, and it will increase absorption, enhance effectiveness, and speed up its working.
This is great most of the time, but some drugs shouldn’t be boosted like that. If you are taking Coumadin or Warfarin, which thin the blood by preventing clotting, enzymes making them more effective could make the blood dangerously thin. Plus, enzymes have their own blood-thinning capacity, as they eat up all the garbage and can dissolve biofilms.
The thing to do in that instance is to get your doctor's help in proper dosing, by testing blood thickness against the dosages to gradually wean off the drug and increase the enzymes safely.
If the body makes enzymes, then why do we need to take them? Good question! The body only has a finite amount of enzymes it can make in a lifetime. When we are young, the body doles out enzymes by the tablespoon; by the time you are 27, it cuts it back year to year to make them last. By the time you are 50, it doles them out with a dropper.
Wow, doesn’t this make sense about why we just get slower as we age and things just don’t work as well? We also see that if you have an accident which requires a huge amount of enzymes to heal and get over, that afterward things get slower as a whole.
If enzymes keep the body working optimally, and then you lose that because they diminish so much, just use your imagination as to what can be helped by boosting the amount of enzymes back up. Anything, even old age!
Enzyme therapy has been studied and used in Germany, Japan, and India for almost 70 years. They have found no toxicity level at any dosage. There is no LD 50 or LD 100 for enzymes. Those are tests to show what the lethal amount of a substance would be to kill 50% (LD50) of a population being tested or 100%(LD100). Tests in Germany, when they gave subjects the equivalent of over 3000 capsules a day for 2 weeks, had not one single seriously bad reaction. Instead, the subjects visibly looked better, and all their blood work came back showing they got much healthier. The worst thing that can happen is you get the runs, or you might feel discomfort if blockages or fibrosis begin to get eaten up.
Even though other countries have been benefiting from this info, we are just getting around to noticing this in the US. But it is grassroots here. You probably won’t hear anything about it from your medical doctor. I have a few friends that are health and medical researchers on their own, and they introduced me to the subject.
Initially, I was going to delve into how to read an enzyme product label because all the units for enzyme amounts were different. Well, they are different because they are not volume or weight measurements, but activity measurements. For example, nattokinase is given in FU’s. That is the amount of fibrin units it will dissolve. It just shows how much a dose can do. I found out that on average, 2,000 FU of nattokinase is the equivalent of 100mg.
That is a simple example. I tried to give other examples, but they were complicated by the fact that the unit given for other substances stand for the method used or the organization that set the standard for a unit. Which even further complicates labeling since internationally there are several groups and references.
In May 2007, an attempt was made in the United States Pharmacopeia, the standard reference accepted by regulators and practitioners, to standardize labels, and now USP units can be used. A USP unit measures the functional ability of an enzyme to break down units of whatever it is supposed to break down under certain controlled conditions, so that labels can be compared. But there is still no guarantee of what is in the final product.
So, at this point, since labels on enzyme products are kind of useless anyway, I was glad to abandon the subject. The manufacturer of the raw material may have tested and reported the activity as he packaged it, but the maker of the supplement is not required to retest it before he packages it, and there are a lot of do’s and don’ts regarding keeping enzymes alive.
Unfortunately, it is hard to tell whether an enzyme supplement is good by the label. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I can help you a little there since I have found some effective ones. Zymessence from Dr. Wong Essentials works wonders. This formula uses enzymes from animal sources, which can work for days longer in the system, causing a nice cumulative effect. It makes sense because humans have animal bodies.
But vegetarian-sourced enzymes, although they only last in the system about a half a day, do work and do add some additional benefits as digestive enzymes. In fact, Zymessence does contain papain and bromelain, which are plant-based as well. Allegany Nutrition has several enzyme formulas that are good, including plant-based digestive enzymes.
So how much should you take? Well, there is this thing called the Go No Go Law. Below a certain level, nothing happens. You need to take a physiologically significant amount of enzymes to do anything, but there is a level where everything takes off, and everything starts happening. The way you find this level is to take the recommended dosage and gradually increase it till you notice something happening.
With some products, this could get up there to 30-50 capsules. The maker of Zymessence actually created his product for himself because he got sick of eating that many capsules a day. With his product, he cut the serving size down to one capsule 3x a day.
Ideally, you want to take enzymes at least 30 min before or 60 min after eating a meal. And if you are having an acute thing that is being addressed by a higher dose of enzymes, after the flare-up is handled, you can go to a lower maintenance dose.
Now combine all this information with what you know about herbs, healthy eating, and living. Wow, by my calculations, this is a game changer! Right? Wouldn’t you want to boost your body’s ability to utilize all the good things? Not to mention the side effects of cleaning up your whole system and speeding things up.
I hope this excites you as much as it has me. I would love to hear the feedback of anybody who tries out any of this information. Please let me know!