Introduction to Enzymes

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Enzymes are the spark of life... a critical energy that runs your entire body. Without them, you couldn't digest or absorb food, all your cellular functioning would stop.

At the foundation of all body functions, enzymes are essential activators in chemical reactions that are continually taking place within your body. They are specific catalysts that join with coenzymes (vitamins and minerals), to be used by your body.

Vitamins and minerals are familiar to us all, but many don't know that they're not activated, until they join with enzymes.

We have potent, affordable supplements that can enable your body's natural inner healing powers to restore your health and vitality.

Enzyme Supplementation is Necessary

As shown in recent medical research, enzyme supplementation is necessary: proper dietary supplementation is essential for complete nutrition. Our Standard American Diet and ways of thinking are causing needless ill health and numerous deaths. Unfortunately, even a good diet combined with mainstream supplements, does not contain enough specific nutrients for optimal health.

A predominantly raw food diet would provide you with adequate amounts of enzymes for health, but our society eats mainly processed and cooked foods, and this destroys many enzymes. Some supplemental vitamins, minerals & herbs are essential, and can do their job properly only if the necessary enzymes are accessible. If you're not feeling benefits from your vitamins, the necessary enzymes are probably not available.

Research has shown that after 27 years of age, the body's production of enzymes begins to slow and the cycle of aging begins. As enzymes enable the body to create the necessary reactions for health, adequate levels in the body contribute to an energetic lifestyle.

We have potent, affordable supplements that can enable your body's natural inner healing powers to restore your health and vitality.

Natural Enzymes Supplementation Therapies
To Prevent Disease and Allow Healing

For the prevention and treatment of discomforts and disease, we at Life-Enthusiast Co-op, along with our members, have had wonderful results with our products. We believe in our products enough to use them on ourselves, our families and our friends.

Let Us Help You Heal

Enzymes taken on an empty stomach will get into the blood and clean it. Enzymes taken with meals will thoroughly digest food. Deficiency diseases can be eliminated or avoided with the proper nutrition taken on a daily basis.

It's important that you use potent, medical grade, plant-based enzymes -- available individually as well as a complex of sucrase, lactase, protease, amylase, lipase, cellulase, and maltase -- and probiotics.

Benefits of Enzymes Supplementation

At birth, you have an enzyme reserves, that decrease throughout your life, from an enzyme deficient diet. As we become enzyme deficient, we age more quickly. The more we feed our enzyme reserves, the healthier we'll be.

A nursing mother provides her baby with all the enzymes it needs to digest her milk. Have you ever noticed that the stool of a breast-fed baby doesn't stink? It's only when a baby starts eating cooked, processed food that the stool begins to stink.

This happens because the cooked food won't digest entirely & properly, and travels undigested into the small intestine. (Once we cook food at high temperatures of 118 degrees F. or more, enzymes are destroyed and no longer work.) It's the beginning of the toxemia cycle (undigested food putrefying in the bowel tract that continues to poison the blood), which is the root of all disease.

It's been estimated that 80% of diseases are caused by improperly digested foods and their by-products being absorbed into the body ("Survival into the 21st Century" by Viktoras Kulvinskas).

The saying 'You are what you eat' is only partly correct. The truth is, you are what you digest. We cannot expect to be healthy if our digestive system isn't functioning properly. Enzymes are essential to a healthy digestive system and a healthy body because they help transform undigested food into nutrients. An enzyme acts in certain ways in the body to do specific jobs such as:

1. Digest food
2. Break down toxins
3. Cleanse the blood
4. Strengthen the immune system
5. Build protein into muscle
6. Contract muscles
7. Eliminate carbon dioxide from the lungs, and
8. Reduce stress on the pancreas and other vital organs.

Enzymes are the workers in your body -- they carry out every chemical reaction. To have a healthy body you need both workers (enzymes) and building materials. The building materials are proteins (amino acids), minerals, and vitamins. All of these are necessary to build a healthy body. Trying to function without all the necessary enzymes is the reason for most body malfunctions.

Who Should Take Enzymes

If you're sick or trying to recover from an acute or a chronic disease, taking enzyme supplements would be beneficial. People with hypoglycemia, endocrine gland deficiencies, obesity, anorexia nervosa, and stress-related problems, could all benefit from multiple and individual enzyme supplementation. During all acute and chronic illnesses, enzymes are used up more rapidly than normal.

Individual enzymes have also been used to alleviate skin ailments (psoriasis, acne, eruptions, stretch marks, etc.), chronic inflammation, cardiovascular disease, circulatory problems, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, high cholesterol, fatigue, Epstein-Barr Syndrome, asthma, allergies, arthritis, swelling, bee stings, joint mobility, diabetes, respiratory ailments, viruses, bacteria, mutant cells, fever, all types of infections (including colds, flu, sore throat, yeast), parasites, Candida albicans, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, tumors, depression, anxiety, ADD/ADHD and insomnia.

What if you're already healthy and active? You may already be taking vitamins, minerals, and other concentrated foods. What makes all of these elements work? Enzymes.

Athletes and other active individuals can benefit by taking enzyme supplements because any time the body temperature is raised, as during exercise, enzymes are used up more rapidly than normal. Carbohydrates are burned more rapidly, and more nutrients are needed for fuel supplies. The active individual usually eats mostly cooked food so it's like burning the candle at both ends. Enzymes are used up rapidly and little is brought in to replenish the supply.

As you grow more health-conscious, you strive for a greater enjoyment of life. More energy, and a stronger mind and body will be needed to face the stresses that the future will bring. Enzymes can be instrumental in achieving such a goal.

How To Know If Your Enzymes Are Working

One way to tell is what you DON'T experience: no indigestion, no bloating, no stomach gas, no heartburn, or flatulence caused by incomplete digestion.

What you WILL experience is an increase in formed bowel movements - at least 1 to 2 times a day, usually after every meal - "one meal in, one meal out." Also, these movements will not have a foul odor. When this happens, it means your food is being digested properly and used by your body instead of sitting in your intestines to rot and putrefy.

You may experience mild symptoms of cleansing such as acne, bloating, gas, dull headaches or queasiness. These are only temporary. If you experience discomfort, make sure you drink 8 to 10 glasses of water a day to reduce the cleansing symptoms and get at least 15 to 30 minutes (or more) of exercise daily.

It's been clinically proven that the more enzymes you take, the quicker your body can repair, restore, and strengthen itself. Sometimes this may take only a few days or weeks. (Allergy symptoms usually disappear 1 hr. after taking Amylase!) However, for minimal usage, you must wait at least 3 to 4 months before evaluating your results. It takes time to re-educate the body's natural ability to repair, restore, and strengthen itself, so be patient.

You'll also notice changes in your body. Your body can do magnificent healing on its own, given the proper nutrients.

Dr. Bernard Jensen wrote in his book "Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management" that "...the greatest healing power comes from within out. We find that healing comes according to the one law...; that is 'Hering's Law of Cure.' It states that 'All cure starts from within out and from the head down and in reverse order as the symptoms have appeared.'"

Do you understand what that means? This means we have to return over the same "track" we traveled to get the disease.

Let me repeat: Your body can do magnificent healing on its own, given the proper nutrients.

Another important thing to remember is to include L. Salivarius and L. Plantarum in your daily regimen of dietary supplements. These two friendly bacteria work to restore the proper balance of bacteria in your intestinal flora, attacking many of the unfriendly bacteria and other detrimental "invaders" while promoting the growth of beneficial organisms. These hard-working probiotics (pro = for, biotics = life) produce a variety of substances that can prevent cancerous tumors, deactivate viruses, produce natural antibodies, reduce cholesterol, and enhance your immune system.

Most Americans have a very pronounced enzyme deficiency. This lack of enzymes leads to all sorts of medical complications. The following is a quote from Dr. Edward Howell, author of Enzyme Nutrition. He was the recognized leading expert of enzymes and their supplementation.

"Our Body's life force, vitality, vital force, strength, nerve energy or what ever you choose to call it has enzymes at its core. Without the life energy of enzymes we would be nothing more than a pile of lifeless chemical substances - vitamins, minerals, water and proteins. In both maintaining health and in healing, enzymes, and only enzymes, do the actual work. They are what we call, in metabolism, the body's labor force. Each one of us is given a limited supply of bodily enzyme energy at birth.

This supply, like the energy supply in a new battery, has to last a lifetime. The Faster you use up your enzyme supply, the shorter your life. A great deal of our enzyme energy is wasted haphazardly throughout life. The habit of cooking our food and eating it processed with chemicals; and the use of alcohol, drugs, and junk food all draw out tremendous quantities of enzymes from our limited supply.

Frequent colds and fevers and exposure to extremes of temperature also deplete the supply. A body in such weakened, enzyme-deficient state is a prime target for cancer, obesity, heart disease, or other degenerative problems. A lifetime of such abuse often ends in the tragedy of death at middle age."

The first person to actively study enzymes was Dr. Edward Howell in the 1930s. He determined that your quality of life and energy level depend on enzymes. If you're low on enzymes then you will have health problems.

Types of Enzymes

There are three major classes of enzymes:

1. metabolic enzymes (enzymes which work in blood, tissues, and organs),
2. food enzymes from raw food, and
3. digestive enzymes.

Nature has placed enzymes in food to digest everything you eat: starches, fats, protein, fiber, sugars, and dairy foods - instead of forcing the enzymes secreted in our bodies to do all of the work.

There are seven categories of food enzymes:

1. Lipase, which serves to break down fat;
2. Protease, which works to break down protein;
3. Cellulase, which assists to break down fibers;
4. Amylase to break down starch;
5. Lactase to break down dairy foods;
6. Sucrase to break down sugars; and
7. Maltase to break down grains.

There are two ways to preserve and replenish our enzyme level: by eating raw food and by taking enzyme supplements.

A Story About Long Life

Here's a short story you might enjoy about one of the longest lived men in Western history as written in J. Oswold Empringham's book, "Pandora's Box -- What To Eat and Why."

Westminster Abbey was begun by King Lucius in A.D. 170. The vaults are crowded with illustrious dead whose monuments cover the walls of the vast church. One of the smallest slabs -- more interesting than all the fine marbles to princes and poets -- says: "Thomas Parr of ye county of Salopp, born A.D. 1482. He lived in ye reigns of ten kings: Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, James I, Charles I. Buried here November 15, 1635. Aged 152 years."

Before Parr was interred in Westminster, his history was carefully investigated. The parish register of his native village proves he was baptized in 1483. Legal documents and court entries show that he inherited a small farm from his father in 1560, and that he took a wife three years later when eighty. He married again in 1605 at the age of 122. When over 130 he pleaded guilty, in court, to the charge of being the father of an illegitimate child. He was a farmer all his life. His great age attracted the notice of the King who invited him to the palace for a visit, as the King wished to investigate his exceptional longevity.

Parr's last days were spent in the palace. History says his perfect faculties and marvelous memory made him a matchless entertainer. No wonder -- what reminiscences a man, who lived in ten reigns, must have had! After Parr's death, Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, made an autopsy, by order of King Charles, to find out why he lived so long. The great surgeon's report in Latin, still preserved, states that Parr died from acute indigestion brought on by indulgence in unaccustomed luxuries. All of the old man's organs were in perfect condition and Harvey describes the colon as normal in position and in other respects like that of a child.

Modern microbiologists say that in this report Harvey unknowingly reveals the secret of Parr's long life, because his minute description of the intestines proves that the congenital, protective flora had not been lost.

The Choice is All Yours

You've learned about a simple, convenient supplement that ...

• assures complete digestion
• reduces chronic illness
• strengthens the immune system

You've discovered a 100% natural method to ...

• dissolve fats
• eliminate gas and toxins
• resist disease
• slow aging

You've found that enzymes asssure ...

• good digestion
• natural energetic stamina
• strong immunity

Today you discovered that enzymes save lives: no illness is incurable. The information contained herein is not intended to diagnose disease nor to provide specific medical advice. Its intention is solely to inform and to educate. If you have any questions about the relationship between nutritional treatment and your health, seek the advice of a qualified health practitioner.

Bibliography

1. Howell, Dr. Edward. Enzyme Nutrition: The Food Enzyme Concept. Avery Publishing Group, Inc.: Wayne, NJ. 1985.
2. Howell, Dr. Edward. Food Enzymes for Health & Longevity. Lotus Press: Twin Lakes, WI. 1994.
3. Jensen, D.C., Ph.D., Bernard. Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management. Bernard Jensen, D.C., Ph.D.: Escondido, CA. 1981.
4. Santillo, MH, N.D., Humbart. Food Enzymes: The Missing Link to Radiant Health. Hohm Press: Prescott, AZ. 1993.

The ABC's of Understanding Enzyme Blends

by Dr. April Hernandez, DC

In the world of alternative medicine there is a fast emerging sector of supplements that falls under the heading of enzyme therapy. Among the various therapies you will see that there is one in particular called "systemic oral enzyme therapy." This differs from digestive enzyme therapy because it is taken without food and is meant to work on the body.

The confusion, as of late is among the "systemic" blends. If you read the label, it may say a proprietary blend of x, y, z. of 1500mg. Then it may be marketed for something like anti-inflammatory properties. Now on the very next shelf, you can read the same xyz ingredients and same mg's but marketed for cardiovascular. Many companies try to explain what is called fibrinolytic properties. This is simply the enzyme's ability to eat scar tissue and debris. One enzyme may say it is "more fibrinolytic" than the other. Even with this information written, it appears to be very unclear in the consumers' mind because of the questions I receive. Furthermore, this very point, if misunderstood, misrepresented or mismarketed can wipe enzyme therapy off the map forever.

I wish to explain this using my brand of enzyme called ABC systemic oral enzyme of 1500mg.

The first blend of ABC has 10x of A, 2x of B, and 3x of C.

• A = Bromelain which has anti-inflammatory properties.
• B = Nattokinase- which is also anti-inflammatory and may thin the blood
• C = Lipase- which digests fat

All wrapped up in a daily dose of 3 of 500mg capsules.

Now, since it is high in A- 10x of Bromelain, it is correctly marketed for its anti-inflammatory properties. It would "systemically work" on the body's widespread inflammation safely. This would be properly and safely taken by sports figures to help their muscles and even if a handful were taken, the small amount of 2x Nattokinase, would not thin the blood too much for the person to hemorrhage. If another company takes the exact same mix and misrepresents this blend as a blood thinner, YOU would pay a lot and have to take a ton of it before it could put a dent into the blood. If it were incorrectly marketed, a person who was on medical blood thinners may feel that they could drop their medication and take the enzyme blend. If the consumer advisors for the incorrectly marketed enzyme blend told him the wrong dose, the blood may never thin like the medicine and this person could die.

The second blend of ABC has 2x of Bromelain, 10x of Nattokinase, and 3x of Lipase.

If this blend were to be marketed as a blood thinner, that would be ok as long as only a small amount were prescribed to the client to prevent hemorrhage. If this were marketed as an anti-inflammatory for sports and the person thought just because the ingredients were the same, he or she may mistakenly take handfuls of the enzyme, not knowing that he is thinning his blood to the point of inducing a hemorrhage. The 10x of the Nattokinase puts this blend in the category far from a systemic enzyme.

The Third and final blend has 2x of Bromelain, 1x of Nattokinase and 10x of Lipase. It is correctly marketed for weight loss because it is High in lipase, which breaks down fat. If it were marketed any other ways a person may have to take a whole jar before any anti-inflammatory properties were visible.