Podcast 491: Unlocking the Power of Enzymes

MARTIN: Hi, everyone. Martin Pytela here for Life Enthusiast podcast. Today, it’s my honor and a pleasure to be talking to someone I’ve known for over 20 years, Patrick Buehl, a formulator of enzymes, CEO of Enzyme Experts, and also inventor of other brands. Patrick, hi!

PATRICK: Hi, Martin. How are you today? Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: Oh, cheerful. You know, talking to old friends is a good thing.

PATRICK: Yes, absolutely.

MARTIN: Today, I feel we have a mission to make people supremely aware of serrapeptase, why they need it, how they need it, and why your product is actually better than the rest of them out there. But before we get to that, I would like to say, well, so I’ve known you for over 20 years. Could you talk about some early days when you were inventing enzymes? How did you get into this?

PATRICK: Well, I’ll make a quick story of that. I pull my earlier interest and knowledge about enzymes from growing up in a feed store. From the tender age of 10. For 18 years, I found out what it really meant to catalyze events and to help animals properly assimilate the foods they consume into their most usable forms. And fast forward a couple years later, I was given the opportunity to manage the sales for the world’s very first systemic enzyme product, and I saw some flaws immediately in that formula. Everything was animal drive. They operated a much narrower pH and temperature range. I offered a vegetarian alternative. The company didn’t want that, so I began formulating products on our own, and that’s how serrapeptase and all of our other products were born.

MARTIN: Awesome. Well, there’s a ton of research on serrapeptase itself, right?

PATRICK: Yes. Serrapeptase is loaded with research. It’s derived from the enterobacterium Serratia E-15, and it’s been produced, Martin, and the reason we use it is to mimic the enzyme that silkworms use to escape the cocoon. So it has a number of different effects.

MARTIN: Yeah, actually, remembering silk, I mean, it’s stronger than steel. Weight for weight, right?

PATRICK: Yes, absolutely. Nature has developed something that we borrowed from to help the body recover from things like inflammation and scar tissue and just generally clean the whole human system up and help it heal itself.

MARTIN: I’m thinking of the word fibrinolytic, as in dissolves fibrin. Fibrin being the scar tissue. I have so many stories from customers and friends and myself using this to deal with injuries and what not. But let’s put some science ahead of it first. Yeah?

PATRICK: Yeah. Well, there’s a ton of clinical evidence that involves Serrapeptase. I want to throw a personal experience in, real quick as well.

MARTIN: Sure.

PATRICK: And this kind of turns the science into a personal story for me. It was about 15 years ago, I was diagnosed with nine massive pulmonary embolisms, and the medical community’s answer to that was to put me in ICU right away and load me up with anticoagulants, which western medicine likes to refer to as blood thinners.

MARTIN: Is it like Heparin or something like that?

PATRICK: Heparin or Warfarin. The talk was, yeah, listen, you’re going to need to be on Warfarin for the rest of your life. And I mentioned briefly about my growing up in a feed store and farmers and that type of thing. Well, Warfarin was the active ingredient in those days in rat bait, and that’s what we used to use.

MARTIN: Still, it’s interesting, Patrick, I just want to stop on this point. A farmer will spend money on learning how to feed his animals so they perform better, right. So they will actually fine tune the feed to get performance, whatever they target.

PATRICK: Yeah, super important. And that happens. That happens unfortunately, not as much as it should with human beings. Our system’s not set up for cures. It’s set up for spending more money. We treat our animals a lot better than we treat ourselves, and that’s one of the platforms that I developed this brand on, is making sure that we’re providing answers to modern day health challenges. And those have changed, Martin, over a couple decades, the modern day health challenges have certainly changed and evolved, and we just try to stay on top of that with products like Serralone that contains serrapeptase. That’s the only enzyme in Serralone.

MARTIN: You’ve made some pretty complex products, too, right? Where the serrapeptase perhaps provides some of the lifting weight or some of the main lifting power. But,

PATRICK: It does. Serrapeptase is defined as a proteolytic enzyme, Martin. So it will help break down anomalous proteins all throughout the entire human system. It will not, however, degrade any live tissue. It works on dead cellular material and proteins that just should not be in the system, and that’s what makes it so effective. So it is a cornerstone in a couple of our product formulas like Naticor and Zymitol. But as a standalone, it’s an incredible ingredient and product to help people rid their system of inflammation.

MARTIN: All right, so let’s talk about the specifics. So there you were with pulmonary embolisms. And?

PATRICK: Well, so I used serrapeptase. I used Serralone. We had loads of anecdotal evidence, Martin, all over the place and clinical evidence to support that it could help break these clots down. What we didn’t expect however, on the third day, the hospital tagged me AMA or “Against Medical Advice” because I refused anticoagulants or blood thinners. I knew we had the cure right in our hands, and Serralone was one of those. And what had happened was on the third day, they wanted in ICU, they wanted to do a CAT scan with contrast to show me that I was probably going to meet my demise right there in the hospital if I didn’t take action with anticoagulants fast.

PATRICK: Martin the only thing that they learned was this, that on the third day, those nine massive clots that were blocking four quadrants in my pulmonary system were already 75% degraded. And following that, the next day, I was released. In a two-week follow-up, I had 100% clearance, Martin, with no pharmaceuticals whatsoever. They touted me as a medical miracle. And I know what the miracle was. It was the awareness that natural products do the healing and help your body recover and heal on its own.

MARTIN: Yeah. But I remember this friend of mine who at age 55, was told, you have emphysema. He was having trouble. I mean, two flights upstairs, he had to stop after two flights of stairs, let’s put it this way. And went to the doctor, was told that he had emphysema and to expect that in one year he’ll be dragging an oxygen bottle around because it’s going to be a quick trip to hell. And he was using Zymitol, which is primarily serrapeptase. And the next year, instead, he was skiing with people half his age in the Alps.

PATRICK: Yeah, thank goodness. Thank goodness, and I’m glad. I love to hear stories like that, Martin.

MARTIN: And I remember there were multiple doctors using your products, writing all these testimonials. Louise Hamilton was one of them, right? Remember?

PATRICK: Yes. We’ve had just so many different testimonials come in. Another remarkable one that comes to mind is a gentleman from Kenosha, Wisconsin, that had a blocked right carotid artery. He was due for surgery in three days, a colleague recommended he call us, and I had the opportunity to speak with him, and here’s a guy that wouldn’t, he absolutely refused to believe that anything outside of Western medicine could help him. But his friend convinced him to speak to me. He bought into the protocol and said, listen, it can’t hurt.

The surgery was to take arteries out of his leg and replace the blocked arteries and his carotid. And it’s a risky surgery, and the percentages are high that something could go wrong. He took the product for three weeks, went in for his pre-op check and imagery, only to learn that 98% blockage was reduced to a 6, to a 13%, which is normal for any adult. No longer a candidate for surgery. Took him right off the surgery list. So that cardiologist started recommending the same protocol for all his surgery patients and candidates. 50 patients in a row no longer needed surgery because of this.

MARTIN: Yeah, this poor surgeon was putting himself out of business.

PATRICK: Yeah. And thankfully, there are open minded individuals like him that really put the emphasis on patient care instead of a status quo.

MARTIN: And so what dosage would this guy take?

PATRICK: Well, so with these enzymes, depending. So what he took, he was up to, so serrapeptase in Serralone, 48,000 units of activity level per capsule. He was taking ten capsules three times a day for two weeks. We started off at one capsule three times a day, Martin, and each, every fourth day, increased it by one TID (Three times a day) till we hit ten, and we remain there for two weeks.

MARTIN: Yeah. That’s awesome. And, yeah, there’s actually, you just threw in the number. That’s kind of interesting about enzymes and serrapeptase, too, where you actually need to understand how many units you’re getting in a capsule, because I remember I can buy serrapeptase that’s 10,000 units per milligram or 100,000 units per milligram or numbers like that. Right?

PATRICK: Right. I think what a lot of companies like to do, and I’m familiar with just about every single one of them. Prior to our initial work, Martin, there really wasn’t a good vegetarian alternative to that very first product. And now the landscape has a lot of options. The one thing that people should pay attention to, as you’re mentioning, is activity level. If you have 100 grams of serrapeptase and it only has one unit of activity level per gram, it’s not going to do the justice you need. But higher activity levels, 48,000 units of activity per capsular doses, is really going to get you where you need to be. So that’s what you can look out for, is activity level and proper disclosure of that on the label.

MARTIN: Right. Yeah. Some companies just say, I’m sending you 200 milligrams of Serrapeptase per capsule.

PATRICK: Which may not have any,

MARTIN: Yeah, that’s sort of like saying I’m sending you a gallon of water without telling you how many minerals are in that water.

PATRICK: Right, right. Is it acidic water? Is it pH stable? Is it alkaline water? Sure. You’re going to have some questions, right? I think the same can be said for any type of supplement or complementary or integrated products we want to take. What I learned a long time ago is I wanted this company to be a lot more than a company that sells products. We’ve really gotten pretty good and resourceful at educating the people that we serve, and it brings us great joy to be able to do that and then find all these incredible results that just keep coming in day after day.

MARTIN: Yeah. Okay, so here we are talking about Serralone, which is serrapeptase on its own. So if somebody is already on serrapeptase or a proteolytic enzyme, I guess Serralone would be the most affordable way to lift the enzymatic power, the lysing power. Right?

PATRICK: Yeah. This is probably right now the best value in serrapeptase at that activity level on the American market or anywhere on a global scale.

MARTIN: You’re so right. Because I remember I was thinking, well, am I with the right brand? So I started looking at prices, and a lot of companies cost exactly twice the amount per unit as compared to yours.

PATRICK: Yeah, I think you’re right. And a lot of that, listen, we weathered price increases and supply chain issues through the pandemic. We haven’t had a price increase in twelve years, Martin. So that puts us in a unique position to be able to offer these products at an incredible value.

MATRIN: Yeah. Okay, so what do we have here? Serralone is a serrapeptase of a known potency. But that’s not the whole story, right? Not only is it an enzyme, but you, I think, are the only company in the enzymes that I know of anyway, that actually does energetics or vibrationals with an infusion process, right?

PATRICK: Right. Yes, yes. Thanks for bringing that up. When we created our first product, when I formulated the first product, Zymitol, I had a conversation with a theoretical physicist, Doctor Yuri Krohn, and we talked about the ability of subtle energy to help improve the health challenges of anybody that they come in contact with. So in an agreement in partnership, that way, we created frequencies specific to each and every one of our formulas that would help them enhance the goal of why ever the formula was created in the first place. We did a little test. We sent a bunch of bottles out to people to test the infused product and the uninfused product, and by a landslide, without any doubt or hesitation, the infused product really captured more health challenges than the uninfused. And I was very confident, Martin, and the formulas to begin with, that they were the best in their class period at the time. But the subtle energy process took them to an entirely different and very distinct level of being able to heal people.

MARTIN: Yeah. It’s quite something, we are usually not aware of it, right? But the difference between a meal cooked by grandma with love and the fast food something, cooked by a pimple-faced teenager who just as soon be somewhere else. It’s quite remarkable just how much nicer it is to be eating food cooked with love. Yes, there goes the subtle vibration of just that, right? Just the reverence of the act of cooking with love. And here we have this technological equivalency, at least that’s how I think of it, where we are able to take the highest intention that we have for this product, put it into a vibrational frequency, and then beat it into it. Right?

PATRICK: That’s exactly what it is. I think that we’ve always tried to operate on three different pillars. One would be authenticity. We want to be authentic in everything that we do, but another one is love, if we can literally, or figuratively add love and authenticity to our products and everything that we do, and also gratitude for the ability to be able to help people. That’s what really makes this brand a lot stronger. We infuse that in the most literal method into the products with an energy chamber, which helps every single enzyme or every ingredient do its job a lot better. It’s kind of like maybe driving a car down the road and the road itself is the journey to better health. We’re going to want to be in that Lamborghini rather than a Ford Pinto to get to the end goal of perfect health. And that’s what the subtle energy does for us.

MARTIN Speaking of racing, it just came to my mind. There was this motocross champion in the Czech Republic and a friend of mine, I come from there, right? So I have a friend, and he contacted me and said, this fellow fell off his bike three weeks before the world championship and mangled his ankle. We sent him a bottle, a large bottle. I think he was on 30 capsules a day. The doctor told him there’s zero chance he’ll be functional in less than six weeks. This guy was on his bike in the world championship and won. Three weeks.

PATRICK: Wow, that’s an incredible story.

MARTIN: It’s just but witness to the possibility of speeding up healing.

PATRICK: Yes. I think a lot of times people get stuck in the belief that I am sick or I can’t get better or whatever the dilemma may be that’s challenging them from recovering fully. These products with the energy infusion help bridge that gap. I think, Martin, we all have the innate ability to heal ourselves within. It’s that inner light that connects us all full of healing energies and wisdom. If we can’t quite get there, our products and the energy infusion bridge that gap so you can still get to your goal without having to really be in that awareness completely. Think of it this way, without subtle energy, serrapeptase is already super powerful, but with the infusion, it’s like fine tuning the engine of that high performance car we were talking about. It just works better and faster for sure. And like you mentioned, it’s not something you’re going to see in any other typical enzyme formula. This sets Serralone apart from any other serrapeptase product on the market, period.

MARTIN: Yeah, I don’t know if there are studies to confirm it, but I remember this woman was buying 600 capsules a month from me. And so next time she called, like the third or fourth month or whatever, she called, and I said: “What are you doing with it?” And she says: “Well, I’m taking 600 a month.” And I said: “Well, what?” And she says: “Well, look, I’m in the entertainment industry, and this product is adding about ten years to my career.” Now, I don’t know what entertainment. I speculate she might have been a stripper or Las Vegas dancer or I don’t know what. But she was able to have the physical appearance and movement ability to keep up with people ten years younger.

PATRICK: Yeah, that’s incredible. I mean, just the base of enzymes, right? What do they do? What does any enzyme do? Enzymes catalyze every single event that makes any action fast enough to sustain human life. And it’s not just human life, we find them in every living thing. But by the time we reach our late twenties, Martin, our metabolic enzyme stores that we were gifted with at birth really deplete. So that’s when we begin to see the signs of aging, wounds start to heal slowly.

MARTIN: That’s why most professional football players, hockey players and whatever fade out by 33.

PATRICK: Absolutely. Your body just can’t keep up. Those actions are so slow that it really makes you age. Wounds heal slower. Injuries heal much slower, if at all, the older we get. When we supplement or reintegrate enzymes back into the system, it helps to speed all those reactions up to a level that creates healing and longevity. The original thought with this line was an anti aging line, and that’s always been the backbone of every single formula. But we’ve contoured the individual formulas to give rapid results for people and certain health conditions or challenges.

MARTIN: Yeah, reminds me, a woman called me back three months after she started. Again, 600 capsules a month, we’re pushing it. This is an important point. You do much better taking a large amount for a short amount of time than a small amount for a long amount of time. You really need the wave. But anyway, so this woman was taking it because of a fibroid tumor. She had something the size of her fist that was reduced or completely cleared in three months, and she called and she says, you know what? All of my stretch marks are gone. You should be selling it for that.

PATRICK: Oh, nice. Absolutely. I think that every time, almost every time that someone takes the product for a particular indication, there are off-label things that happen. That’s the beauty of enzymes. They sustain life. We may have things going on. We all live with pain, right? We all live with certain pains and we don’t even notice them. But once they’re gone, at some point you’re going to say, wow, I certainly feel better. Or maybe you don’t even know why but you have more energy, you’re not fatigued. That’s the power of enzymes. And yeah, you’re so right.

I started to talk about Malan’s protocol. The gentleman from Kenosha with the blocked carotid. And everybody is at a different pace depending upon the condition that we’re trying to address for them. But we will gladly, Martin, design an individual protocol for any health challenge that anybody has, and we can work through you to help people with that. I think that we’re one of the companies that stand by what we believe in. So everybody’s cousins.

MARTIN: Yeah, I guess to me, the main rule would be don’t be afraid to go high with this.

PATRICK: Right. There is no LD50 or toxic dose on any of the enzymes that we use. That means they’re safe to take at any dose, whether it’s a gram or 25 pounds a day. You’ll never have any side effects with enzymes, with properly formulated enzymes. If you get too many and you’re a little toxic, you may have toxic overload, end up with some die-off that causes things like a loose stool or maybe nausea. But outside of that, you’re never going to have a problem.

And if you haven’t had enzymes in your system for a while, we have to build them back up. We get into a loading phase to replenish your system, titrate back down eventually to a regular daily dose. And I think the changes for everybody vary, but there’s always significant change as long as people participate actively in their own health. And I’m sure that anybody listening to your podcast is already there, Martin. People are interested in better health naturally, and as long as we can get that participation, you simply cannot fail with enzymes.

MARTIN: Okay. So I’m thinking this serrapeptase will deal with fibrin or scar tissue. So any hardening. So I’m thinking that would be the hardening of the arteries. Would it work on hardening of the joints, too?

PATRICK: Well, what serrapeptase and Serralone will do for the joints is remove dead cellular material that’s blocking your joint capsule, not allowing for proper synovial fluid movement through that joint capsule. It gets in there, clears the pathway, so your body can heal itself. It has a very direct approach on joint health. You will end up in a situation where the direct and indirect results of a product like Serralone become evident in joints, because you can all of a sudden, I think back to a story, you may remember this, Martin, where we had a gentleman with rheumatoid arthritis. His hands were frozen shut into a fist by taking the product for just three days, he had full fluid movement and zero pain. It just went away like that. And there’s so many more.

MARTIN: Astounding, right? So that must mean that also all the other inflammatory conditions, like soft tissue problems, fibromyalgia comes to mind, or.

PATRICK: We can take a look at indications just like that. Rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, sports injuries, sprains, strains, any other type of autoimmune disease. Like you said, fibromyalgia, MS, lupus.

MARTIN: I guess it’s time for us to put a disclaimer on this. So this is not medical advice. We’re not prescribing, and we’re not healing a specific illness. What we’re dealing with now is the physiology, the underlying physiology at the cellular level.

PATRICK: Absolutely.

MARTIN: Don’t be calling us on this saying, well, you told me that you’ll heal my x condition. That will happen by the fact that your body can repair at the cellular level.

PATRICK: Yes, agreed. We are wellness experts, Martin, and I think it is important to disclaim this. To some degree, we are consultants and we stand by everything we talk about, but we’re not licensed medical doctors. So I encourage people, have conversations with your providers. It’s okay to get them involved. They should be open to anything as far as an integrated approach is concerned, to help get you back on your feet, whatever that looks like and whatever health challenges that you’re facing.

MARTIN: I remember printing this report. I’m trying to remember the fellow’s name. Was it Hofstadter or something like that? There was a report about the gift from the worm, about Serrapeptase. Right? Like it’s a serrapeptase story.

PATRICK: It might have been Ralph Holsworth.

MARTIN: There you go. That’s the name.

PATRICK: Yeah.

MARTIN: How do you spell the last name?

PATRICK: It’s h-o-l-s w-o-r-t-h. Holsworth.

MARTIN: Yeah.

PATRICK: Doctor Ralph Holsworth.

MARTIN: I remember that came back, what, 40, 50 years ago, right?

PATRICK: Yeah, it was a while ago. Well, that one wasn’t that long ago. This was probably right at the turn of the millennium, late nineties. He was actually part of cabinet member Tommy Thompson, who was the head then of health and human services. He was part of his team and trying to straighten out the health crisis in this country.

MARTIN: Right. So anyway, they put out these reports that every doctor should read but probably doesn’t because it’s not a pharmaceutical.

PATRICK: Yeah. I think that’s what’s important for us, is to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. We do our research and we just encourage everybody, don’t even take our word for it, just experience the products, because they truly speak for themselves.

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, that’ll do it. I remember the words coming back with, I poop better, I sleep better, I stress less. I mean, the stories go, right, all kinds of symptomology that’s associated with the fight or flight side of reactions in the autonomic nervous system. Most of that seems to be lowered as soon as the serrapeptase comes into the picture.

PATRICK: Absolutely. It affects everything that we do as a proteolytic enzyme, and sometimes it can get to be a pretty broad category. But I think for the most part for your listeners that are focusing on how can this product help me? Inflammation, scar tissue, advanced fibrin. There’s a lot of challenges that we can really get into, but sticking with anomaly proteins and healthy blood are certainly two big ones.

MARTIN: So I guess we can say that we have two bottles. We have 180 count and 300 count bottles available. The productions, well, we have them available. Who knows what the next batch will cost. But right now we have this available. So the 180 is an excellent way of starting because that will prove the point. The 300 is probably the bottle you’ll want to be on for maybe three or four bottles to burn through all of that, whatever buildup of unwellness you’ve packed on. If you don’t feel like Tom Brady, you’re probably lacking some enzymes.

PATRICK: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the 300 count. Listen, if we haven’t been taking or supplementing with any type of systemic enzymes, then it’s going to take a couple more doses to get through that. So the 300 count would be the best bet. If someone is currently taking a systemic enzyme protocol, we can get away with the 180 and supplementing with whatever they’re doing to get that extra proteolytic stick.

MARTIN: I don’t know what else to be said?

PATRICK: What else?

MARTIN: The products were made with a good deal of care. The ingredients were selected with years and years of testing and practice. We have 25 years of history with this.

PATRICK: 25 years. It’s a brand that continues to thrive. Do you want to touch on inflammation a little bit?

MARTIN: Sure. You go ahead and let’s just talk about. I mean, I can say this, right, inflammation is the body’s response to an injury.

PATRICK: Absolutely.

MARTIN: Something broke you and your body’s trying to repair you, but sometimes it’s really unpleasant because inflammation comes with redness, heat, swelling, pain, and loss of function. Anyway, take it over.

PATRICK: Yeah, it is absolutely a natural response. It’s super necessary to protect the body from any type of foreign invader or injury or whatever’s going on. And I think that sometimes, especially in the way of autoimmune diseases, right. Sometimes that stuff just goes astray and you need a reset. And the only way to do that is to catalyze that with the proper enzymes. And remember, enzymes catalyze every single event in the human body that makes life possible. So with the integrative approach of enzymes, we’re going to live longer, we’re going to be healthier and just be stronger. It’s really, really something that we’ve built decades worth of business on. And we’re filled with gratitude for the opportunity to be able to help people through these health challenges, no matter what they are, Martin.

MARTIN: Yes, that’s the interesting part, just being here and being able to offer the alternative to the, well, let me explain. So you twist your ankle and you’re told, Tylenol or Advil, ice it, and just suffer through it. With the enzymes, you will be able to be on your feet way sooner with much less pain and no residual post injury loss of function, which is a big deal. Like when you break something, where you injure something, the body repairs it with the fibrous tissue, the scar tissue, and that actually is not as functional as the original stuff that was there. So when you fix something by bailing wire and chewing gum, so to speak, the fibrosis, it’s not going to be nearly as well functioning as the original design. This is where the fibrinolytic enzyme shines.

PATRICK: Yeah, absolutely. And this is where it all happens. Enzymes are the alpha and the omega for health. They’re the beginning of good health and the end of it.

MARTIN: Yeah, I remember reading a story which was something like, we’re not sure if we know that enzymes are high in young people, we know that enzymes are low in old people. We are not sure that it’s the time or it’s the decline of enzymes that causes what we know as aging. So if we put the enzymes back into the old guy, will he function like he was young?

PATRICK: Well, I think the answer to that question is yes. And it may not be just a direct path to that. To really understand the impact of aging on metabolic enzymes, the ones that were gifted with at birth and supplementation, there are some physiological processes and implications. I think the origin and production of metabolic enzymes we could touch on from a genetic information standpoint. The blueprint for metabolic enzymes is found right within our DNA. Our DNA holds so much information. I can’t remember this study, Martin, but it goes something like this, and I’m paraphrasing all over the place, but there was a study done on DNA and the amount of capacity it has to carry information. One strand, 1 gram of human DNA. And the researchers were able to download a copy of one of the researchers’ books onto this strand of DNA. And they did that, I believe, over a billion times and never reached capacity for the amount of information that DNA can hold. And your DNA holds the answers. And when we add enzymes back in to help recatalyze these events, that’s the missing key on so many different situations.

MARTIN: Well, I think we should end it on this.

PATRICK: Perfect.

MARTIN: I think that if you’ve been listening to us carefully, you will have heard a bunch of stories that talk about faster recoveries. I have been taking these enzymes as part of my daily regimen, but I’m thinking, hmm, I’m probably not taking enough, because even though I’m holding on, I’m not feeling as youthful as I was 25 years ago. I’ve been taking something like four a day. Maybe I need to take twelve for my maintenance and see what happens. What do you think?

PATRICK: Well, listen, I can tell you that I take six capsules daily. I can also tell you that I’ll be 60 in March. And I don’t have any attachment to any pharmaceuticals. I haven’t taken a pharmaceutical medication in years and years and years. I’m super healthy, and I put that all in the hands of the enzymes that we produce and that I take. So six a day for me, is enough, is fantastic. But every six months, I’ll go through a steep loading phase and a titration back down to a maintenance dose, like two, three times a day. And real quickly, I think it’s important to note that enzymes have a pretty short half life, Martin. It’s much better to take one capsule three times a day than it is to take ten capsules once a day. Not that you’re not going to get the same type of result, but what’s going to happen is you can increase the value of the product that you take with a properly formulated systemic enzyme product. Twice a day is pretty, pretty darn good. Three times a day is better. Once a day, it’s going to cost you more product to get the same results. So splitting up the doses 1 hour prior to or after any meal. And I generally tell people, Martin, right before you go to bed with some water, and then as soon as you wake up, the last thing you do at night, the first thing you do in the morning, and wait an hour to eat after you take them in the morning, and certainly don’t eat an hour before you go to bed. And that’s where you’re going to find your very, very best results.

MARTIN: Yeah. You want to get these enzymes to pass through your stomach into the small intestine for absorption.

PATRICK: Absolutely. Pass through that stomach lining, like you said, in the small intestine, where they become systemic.

MARTIN: People told me that when they take it with food, they digest better. Many of their digestive problems have gone away. So I guess you’re using a systemic enzyme for a digestive function, but what the hey.

PATRICK: I think we can make a quick distinction there. What is the difference between a digestive enzyme and a systemic enzyme? Well, there are a couple main things. And really, in a systemic enzyme formula, the activity level that we spoke about earlier, Martin, is going to be dramatically increased in a systemic product because we’re making that pass, like you said, through the stomach lining into the small intestine, where it’s absorbed into the blood, and now it’s passed through the entire human system at a cellular level. Digestive enzymes generally have a little bit broader array of enzymes because we want to capture each type of food that we consume, whether it be a protein, a carbohydrate, or a fat. The proteins are the proteolytic enzymes, like serrapeptase. For digestion, the amylolytic enzymes break down carbohydrates. And to break down fats, we need the lipolytic enzyme. So generally, you’re going to have all three categories in a digestive enzyme and many different variations of those types of categorical enzymes at much lower activity levels, because you don’t need increased activity level to break down food. When you take them systemically at higher activity levels, we get them through the entire system. They make their last pass through the pancreas, where they’re excreted back out into pancreatic juices, and that’s when we utilize them as digestive enzymes. But yes, like you mentioned, certainly people do take them with meals along with systemic they act as a digestive and a systemic enzyme, and it works amazing. But for better value, we suggest taking them around meals. So the energy that they have to deliver to the human system is reserved for the health challenges and not just breaking down the food we consume. We want that to be the last thing they do instead of the first thing, so that energy is used for the health challenge.

MARTIN: Right on. Okay, well, Patrick. Patrick Buehl, the formulator of enzymes, the brand that’s on the serrapeptase is Generation Plus. 

PATRICK: Yes.

MARTIN: Patrick has started another company called Enzyme Experts, and we will be offering those products when they become available. The Generation Plus products have been with us for 20 years and are awesome. So come and visit us at Life Enthusiast, life-enthusiast.com. Patrick, thank you very much for being with us today.

PATRICK: Thank you so much for the invitation, Martin. It’s greatly appreciated.

MARTIN: Thank you. Bye bye for now.

PATRICK: Bye.