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Vitamin Code Story
The Importance of Enzymes
There’s an aspect to Raw Food-Created Nutrients that is important, and
it’s called the food enzyme theory. First, some background:
Back in the 1930s, when biochemists were discovering the last batch of
vitamins and minerals like vitamin K and vitamin B6, researchers were
also learning that proteins act as catalysts for all chemical reactions
in the body. They called these proteins enzymes. Scientists initially
identified eighty enzymes eighty years ago; today more than 5,000
enzymes have been discovered. Our minds can barely comprehend how
complex the role of enzymes are when you consider that a single human
liver cell contains at least 1,000 different enzyme systems.
Enzymes not only initiate chemical processes in the body by removing
parts, adding parts, or just snipping off a piece to change their
makeup, they do so quickly and efficiently. Without enzymes, life would
slow to a standstill because chemical reactions inside our bodies
wouldn’t happen fast enough unless enzymes were part of the mix. Enzymes
seem to be particularly important for proper digestion, followed by
tissue and organ repair.
Enzymes do their work by reducing the energy required for the individual
reactions to take place. In other words, enzymes make it easier for two
proteins to react together, which is an incredible circumstance when you
consider that hundreds of thousands of reactions take place in the body
every minute. For example, your central nervous system is busy
processing information while your digestive system is processing your
last meal. Your immune system is handling the many germs and particles
that have entered your body, your heart is beating, and life-giving
cells are being made and replaced as other internal systems carry out a
multitude of other intricate processes. All of these functions involve
thousands of different enzymes.
The late Edward Howell, M.D., and author of the seminal book Enzyme
Nutrition, was among the pioneers who began studying the role of enzymes
in the late 1920s and early 1930. After extensive clinical and
laboratory research, he began sounding the alarm about the importance of
eating the right foods to ensure a proper level of enzyme activity
within the human body. He was particularly attentive to the role that
digestive enzymes play in keeping us healthy because when the digestive
tract goes off the rails, life can be miserable. Just ask anyone
suffering from food poisoning or diarrhea resulting from the intestinal
flora imbalance caused by taking antibiotics.
Digestive enzymes break down food so that our bodies can use the
nutrients contained within that food. When food is swallowed, it moves
to the stomach and then to the small intestine, followed by the large
intestine. At each step along the way, specific enzymes break down
different types of food. For example, an enzyme designed to digest
protein has no effect on starch, and an enzyme active in the mouth may
not be active in the stomach. Ideally, though, these enzymes work
together, digesting food and delivering nutrients to cells to maintain
their health.
To make sure that our bodies have the digestive enzymes needed to break
down the proteins, starches, and fats in the foods we eat, Dr. Howell
declared that it’s very important to eat certain raw and fermented foods
high in enzyme content. The enzymes in raw food help jump-start the
process of digestion and reduce the body’s need to produce digestive
enzymes, he believed.
Raw foods are best since some enzymes are deactivated—a nicer word than
destroyed—at a wet-heat temperature as low as 118 degrees Fahrenheit and
a dry-heat temperature as low as 150 degrees. It could be a design of
nature that foods and liquids at 117 degrees can be touched without
burning yourself, but liquids over 118 degrees will burn you. Thus,
there is a built-in mechanism for determining whether or not the food we
are eating still contains its enzyme content, according to Sally Fallon,
author of the book, Nourishing Traditions.
Cooking food destroys important enzymes, said Dr. Howell, and a diet
composed exclusively of cooked food puts a severe strain on the body,
drawing down its reserves. If the body is constantly overstimulated to
produce enzymes that ought to be in foods, the result over time will be
inhibited functions of the body and/or nutrient deficiencies. Humans
eating an enzyme-poor diet, comprised primarily of cooked food, use up a
tremendous amount of their enzyme potential in the outpouring of
secretions from the pancreas and other digestive organs.
The result, according to Dr. Howell, is a shortened life span, illness,
and lowered resistance to stress of all types. He pointed out in his
book Enzymes for Health and Longevity that humans and animals on a diet
comprised largely of cooked food, particularly grains, have poorer
health that is evident when certain organs are examined postmortem.
“Dr. Howell formulated the following Enzyme Nutrition Axiom: The length
of life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of the
enzyme potential of an organism. In other words, the increased use of
food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme
potential. Another sage rule can be expressed as follows: Whole foods
give good health; enzyme-rich foods provide limitless energy,” wrote
Sally Fallon in Nourishing Traditions. Unfortunately, our diets do not
consist of these health-giving foods, and even if they did, the grains,
fruits, and vegetables coming from our soil-depleted field don’t hold a
candle to the nutritious bounty found in harvested crops prior to World
War II.
While we could all stand to include plenty of raw foods in our
diets—bountiful salads teeming with greens, tomatoes, and onions instead
of cooked broccoli, baby carrots instead of crinkle-cut potato chips and
sour cream dip, and a bowl of in-season strawberries and blueberries
instead of a heaping helping of vanilla ice cream—the reality is that
few people think “raw” when planning their menus. This is where
supplements made from raw ingredients—such as Vitamin Code Raw
Food-Created Nutrients —supplement the body with enzymes missing from
cooked foods.
Enzymes are delicate dynamos. Delicate because many enzymes start to be
destroyed when they reach a temperature of 118-140 degrees Fahrenheit,
and they are obliterated when they stay at that temperature for even a
miniscule period of time, which eliminates most steamed and cooked
vegetables. Dynamos because these powerful biochemical catalysts are
necessary for digestion, breathing, talking, moving, cellular energy,
tissue and organ repair, neutralization of toxins, and brain activity.
Dr. Howell said that although the body can manufacture enzymes, the more
you use up your enzyme “potential”—meaning a regular diet of cooked,
canned, or processed foods—the more you place yourself at risk for
developing nutrient deficiencies that translate into serious health woes
further down the line.
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