Enzyme Supplementation

by Dr. Timothy P. Kelly

        

Image and explanation courtesy of Wikipedia

 
Human glyoxalase I. Two zinc ions that are needed for the enzyme to catalyze its reaction are shown as purple spheres, and an enzyme inhibitor called S-hexylglutathione is shown as a space-filling model, filling the two active sites.

   There are several different kinds of enzymes. The ones I focus on typically are digestive enzymes and systemic enzymes.
   Digestive enzymes like hydrochloric acid and pepsin are the primary things you need in your stomach to help digest proteins and minerals. They also help to sterilize the stomach and kill parasites, bacteria, mold, micro spores, etc. Ideally your stomach is the only place in your body that's acidic, and it should be extremely acidic. After the mouth the stomach is the beginning of all chemical and digestive reactions in your body. You need all the atomic energy in there to break up the molecules and to get things ready and assembled for digestion. If you put protein like meat in water it will just set there; it won’t break down. Put the same protein in a strong hydrochloric acid and it will dissolve relatively quickly, and that’s what you want to have happen. You want things to dissolve relatively quickly. You don’t want food just sitting there rotting in your stomach. That's the reason you need to avoid drinking fluids during your meals. They will dilute the acids. As you can imagine, taking antacids while you are trying to digest foods pretty much puts a stop to everything.
   Digestive enzymes work in the stomach to digest food, while quality systemic enzymes are enterically coated to prevent contact with the stomach acid. This way they pass through the stomach into the intestines where they are absorbed by the body.
   We are born with the ability to produce a certain amount of systemic enzymes. Systemic enzymes fight inflammation, fibrosis (scar tissue), and viruses; modulate the immune system; and cleanse the blood. These enzymes are a kind of scavenger hunter. They go after foreign protein, things that shouldn't be there. They’ll go after scar tissue, a cyst, bacteria, parasites, viruses. Virtually anything that doesn't belong in your body is like food to these enzymes. We’ve even seen systemic enzymes kill heartworms in cats. And when you are young you can bump into things, fall, scratch yourself, and your body healed easily, and quickly, often not leaving a scar when you thought it would. You

didn’t have aches or pains, you healed so easily. But as they get older, the typical person does not ingest enough systemic enzymes and the body realizes it’s running out of them. So it begins to ration them, because if you completely run out, you can’t survive. Three days after you run out of enzymes you are dead. Your body always needs enough in reserve for the unexpected.
   So you get into your 20’s and you don’t heal as quickly. You get into your thirties and you notice you scar more easily. You may even be developing permanent aches and pains. The reason you are running out of these enzymes and not replenishing them is because you are not doing what you used to do, what all other animals do in nature, you aren’t eating living things.
   When you pick an apple off of a tree, you get enzymes. When you eat an apple fallen from the tree a few days ago, you’re getting fewer enzymes. If you eat an apple off the shelf at the grocery store, well, you get the idea. It’s not rotten, it may have everything else you need, but the enzymes are gone.
   Fish eat other fish, giraffes eat leaves, lions eat living prey, and we eat dead food. And we don’t heal like we should and we don’t digest our food like we should. We need these enzymes.
   In Germany and Japan, two countries with the best health care in the world, you would be given systemic enzymes for almost any treatment. If you had kidney problems, they would include these enzymes in your treatment. If you were in an auto accident driving on the autobahn and sustained a spinal cord injury they would give you a retention enema with the equivalent of about 300 enzyme capsules to save you from major damage and reduce the possibility of major paralysis.
   Dr. Kelly recommends Betaine HCl and Pepsin from Thorne for digestive enzymes and Vitälzym X for systemic enzymes.

Dr. Timothy P. Kelly

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