ENZYMES

All living beings need enzymes in order to maintain life. The body depends upon enzymes to help purify the blood, break down fats, cleanse the colon, maintain proper cholesterol levels and maintain peak energy levels. Enzymes are the most important element to aid digestion and to maintain health. Our bodies are home to billions of enzymes all working in intricate ways. These functions include breathing, growing, smelling, tasting, stimulating nerves, defending your body against disease, regulating hormones, and building organs, glands and tissues. Even your thinking involves enzymes.

Your immunity, vitality and longevity depend on keeping your body’s enzymes at optimum levels. One of the longest living populations on earth are the Hunza people, they subsist primarily on a raw food diet, a diet abundant with enzymes. We are born with a limited bodily (metabolic) enzyme energy potential, similar to a bank account that has to last a lifetime. The faster we use up this enzyme potential, the shorter our lives. In order for us to enjoy a long and healthy life, we must avoid enzyme depletion by making regular deposits into our enzyme ‘bank accounts’. We can accomplish this by consuming ‘live’ enzyme-rich foods. These food enzymes from raw food are not denatured by stomach acid, as some researchers have suggested, but rather remain active throughout the digestive tract. The human body has a way of protecting the enzymes that pass through the gut so that more than half reaches the colon intact. There they bring about an alteration in the intestinal flora by binding free oxygen, reducing the potential for fermentation and putrefaction in the intestines, a factor linked to cancer in the colon. In so doing, they also help to create conditions in which lactic acid-forming beneficial bacteria can grow.

Most students could be enzyme-deficient and maybe facing nutritional ‘bankruptcy’. Stress, strenuous exercise, frequent colds, exposure to extreme temperatures, and fevers deplete our enzyme accounts. Fried foods, caffeine, alcohol, drugs, tobacco and other stimulants also draw out tremendous quantities of enzymes and generate cell-damaging substances called free radicals. These free radical molecules are capable of destroying an enzyme, a protein molecule or a complete cell through oxidation by stealing electrons from other nearby molecules. Too much sunlight, radiation, chemical solvents and pesticides are more examples of cell-damaging substances that generate free radicals. People worldwide are facing catastrophic diseases directly related to mineral deficiencies because of chemical poisoning, pollution and soil exhaustion. The most serious threat to the body’s supply of enzymes is the habit of eating cooked and processed foods. Processing or cooking over 48ºC totally destroys the enzymes in the food. You will not find enzymes in foods that are in a box, bottle or can. Cooking also contributes to nutrient loss. Pasteurisation, sterilisation, radiation, freezing and microwaving either render food enzymes inactive or alter their structure. We eat ‘dead’ food. The best way to replenish our enzymes is by eating ‘live’ raw whole food, such as seeds, nuts, and organic fruits and vegetables. Additionally we can also use supplemental enzymes. People experiencing gastrointestinal disorders (e.g. heartburn, constipation, diarrhoea, bloatedness and ulcers), food intolerances and metabolic or degenerative diseases such as cancer, will especially benefit from taking supplemental enzymes in addition to an enzyme-rich diet.

Another reason why enzymes are important is that they are very necessary for the brain’s functions. The brain is deprived of alertness when food is not nourishing. Poor food takes energy away from the brain even while we’re sleeping. Many times students are troubled with sleep due to enzyme deficient denatured foods.

We are what we can digest and absorb. The food we eat cannot nourish us unless it is prepared for absorption by enzymes that digest it and break large food particles down into smaller units ready for absorption. For the body to support these enzymes, it needs nutrients. Vitamins and minerals are called co-enzymes, since they are the co-factors needed to sustain enzymes. We now know that without enzymes, the body cannot utilize vitamins and other elements.

It’s no wonder that people have weight problems: cooked food destroys 100% of the enzymes, so that only a very small percentage of the food is assimilated into the body. People who are either overweight or underweight are mostly suffering from a lack of enzymes. When the body receives living foods, which are rich in enzymes, it produces changes that work miraculously in overcoming weight problems. If the body is given an abundance of enzymes, it can stop exhausting its own supply of enzymes for the sole purpose of digestion of food. The body’s enzymes can now break down the excess fat, protein and clogged arteries and therefore have remarkable results for overweight people. It is thrilling to see what enzymes can do and how they can bring about perfect physical and mental health to us. Enzymes can be easily derived through eating living foods such as raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, sprouts, and lightly fermented products like miso and sauerkraut.

BARS
Enzyme-less diets are responsible for many of humanity’s ills, including the shortening of lives. Today, doctors are treating children for juvenile arthritis, sugar diabetes, cancer and other degenerative diseases that just a few years ago were found only in people in their 50s and 60s. We should seriously reconsider our modern diet consisting of mainly processed foods. It has long been recognized that illness is related to improper diet and inadequate nutrition and that fasting, juicing, and diets rich in herbs and raw foods help restore the body to health. There is no way that we can guard against deficiencies without enzymes. When we realize how important it is to have a healthy body and mind we will then understand the importance of staying away from food that is over cooked, processed or denatured in any way, and instead turn to living foods for nutrition. |