So where do you get your enzymes?

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THE HEALTH REVOLUTION --ROSS HORNE-- FIFTH EDITION

CHAPTER SIX ENZYMES


Have you watched a jumbo-jet rise into the air, its wheels folding
neatly out of sight as it speeds away to some distant land?

Powered also by carbon and hydrogen (from food), combining with the
oxygen from the atmosphere, are the microscopic cells of the body,
each one a thousand times more complex than any jumbo-jet. Reflect
again. Imagine, as you read these words, the chemical and electrical
processes going on inside your brain. Imagine the same processes,
stepped up, in the minds and bodies of two tennis players contesting
a hard match, or say a jazz saxaphone player improvizing a hot solo--
senses racing, fingers moving in a blur. Thoughts, actions and
reactions--how can they occur so fast, billions of body cells so
perfectly co-ordinated?

ENZYMES!

Every one of the countless processes within the body requires energy,
released without the severe heat Of fire, with exact precision, at a
speed too fast to comprehend. Enzymes make this possible.

As school students all know, chemical reactions can be speeded up by
the use of catalysts--chemicals which, without changing in form
themselves, can influence other chemicals to combine and change at
great speed. Because they remain unchanged, catalysts can be used
over and over again. Enzymes act as catalysts in the body, enabling
the release of energy and the operation of metabolic processes to
occur at lightning speed.

Enzymes, however, have characteristics surpassing those of
chemical catalysts and appear to hold the key to the mystery of life
itself. They have been described as possessing properties
intermediate between dead colloids and living cells, and to carry
outside of the cell certain properties belonging to living matter.
Unlike simple chemical catalysts, enzymes are consumed. Enzymes
perform two separate but overlapping functions in the body:

1. The constant metabolism to do with tissue maintenance and general
body functions.
2. The digestion of food.

All living organic matter, animal or vegetable, lives only because of
enzyme activity, and upon death it is decomposed and returned to the
earth by enzyme activity.

Enzymes, which are protein-like substances, are produced in countless
forms by the body, and countless thousands of combinations or
systems. Each enzyme exists for a specific purpose and there is not
one body process--thought, digestion, movement or growth--that can
occur without enzyme activity. Life, animal or vegetable, cannot
exist without enzymes. For all intents and purposes, life and enzyme
activity are one and the same. Enzyme levels in the body can be
measured, and it is a fact that even though vitamins and mineral
levels remain fairly constant throughout life, enzyme levels do not;
they are highest in young adulthood and decline with age. Enzyme
levels rise in acute illness, if the body has the resources, but are
always low in chronic disease.

Dr Edward Howell, of Chicago (now of Fort Myers, Florida) in his
book The Status of Food Enzymes in Digestion and Metabolism*
says: "The fact that the enzyme content of organisms is depleted with
increasing old age is forcibly presented when fluids or tissues are
examined at different ages. After full mature growth has been
attained there is a slow and gradual decrease in the enzyme content
of organisms. When the enzyme content becomes so low that metabolism
cannot proceed at a proper level, death overtakes the organism". This
decline in enzyme production is explainable by the silting up and
degeneration of the body cells which, it appears, is the cause of the
problem and not a result of it. (See next chapter.)

*Reprinted in 1980 by Omangod Press under the title Food Enzymes for
Health and Longevity. See also Enzyme Nutrition, E. Howell (Avery
Publishing 1984).


Dr Howell describes how the digestive enzymes secreted by humans
eating cooked foods, are much stronger than those secreted by animals
eating raw food, and how the human pancreas is hypertrophied due to
overwork. He says: "A separate and distinct organ, the food enzyme
stomach, is widespread in Nature. It was evolved specifically to pre-
digest food by food enzymes before the body's digestive enzymes come
into contact with the food. I have also documented that three
outstanding, authoritative texts, Gray's Anatomy, Cunningham's
Anatomy and Howells Physiology have recorded that the human stomach
consists essentially of two parts--the upper section and the lower
section, with different physiological duties. The upper part of the
human stomach performs the same function as the food-enzyme stomach
of animals, which is the predigestion of food by food enzymes".

The enzyme content of natural food is proportional to the amount
of energy (calories) contained. Raw vegetables do not contain a great
quantity of enzymes and so salads do little to compensate for the
destruction of enzymes in cooked food. Fruit is high in enzyme
content. Fruit will ripen rapidly then decompose rapidly in hot
weather, while vegetables may only wilt and shrivel. Animal protein
foods, meat, fat and dairy products when raw contain valuable enzymes.

Whereas the enzymes of the body's digestive juices or of
manufactured enzyme supplements are much stronger than enzymes in raw
food, the consumption of raw food stimulates the secretion of weaker
hydrochloric acid into the stomach so that exogenous enzymes in the
food can perform longer and with greater effect before being
neutralized.

Dr Howell describes experiments which show that it is possible for
unsplit, complex substances such as bacteria, yeast cells, proteins
and fats to be absorbed into the bloodstream and lymph. Such
substances in the body fluids are foreign and therefore antigenic,*
provoking allergic responses and leucocytosis, the increase in the
blood's white cells. The experiments showed that enzymes in the blood
serum, if adequate, complete the digestion of these substances. It
was shown too, that when enzyme levels were low and symptoms of
allergy were present, these symptoms subsided and enzyme levels
returned to normal after large doses of pancreatic enzymes were
administered orally to the patient.

*Antigens are described in Chapter 19, The Immune System.

The regular consumption of cooked food results in the enlargement of
the pancreas, and hypertrophy of this organ is the most pronounced in
people who consume large amounts of cooked grains (including rice).
By comparison, as a percentage of total body weight the human
pancreas is over twice the size of the pancreas of herbivorous
animals, the only explanation being that humans consume cooked food.
Experiments at the University of Minnesota showed that when rats were
put on a diet containing 80% heat-treated carbohydrate carefully
constructed to contain all nutrients and vitamins, the pancreas and
sub-maxillary glands increased in weight 20-30% in a period of 155
days.

Thus, notwithstanding the fact that cereals of one kind or another
constitute the basis of the diets of most humans, this form of food
cannot contribute to optimal nutrition. What constitutes optimal
nutrition is discussed in later chapters.

Accompanying the hypertrophy of the pancreas brought about in the
digestion of cooked food are changes in the gonads, adrenals,
pituitary and other ductless glands. A study of people killed
accidentally showed that all of those over 50 had a defective
pituitary gland, which is the master gland of the body.

To say that enlargement of the pancreas demonstrates the capability
of the body to adapt, is an argument valid only in the short term.
Our object is health and longevity. It was proposed by a health
professional in a lecture I heard recently, that manufactured dog
food, scientifically prepared to contain a perfect balance of
nutrients, was capable of providing perfect nutrition for humans too.
Why not? Laboratory animals fed similar scientifically prepared food
appear to maintain good health. Such observations however, are not
valid because the test animals are always young ones whose lives are
terminated before degeneration is evident. In experiments where rats
have been kept several years on manufactured food only, the animals
have been observed after only two years to develop a variety of
pathological conditions, commonly suffered by aged humans, including
blindness in half of them, followed by death soon afterwards.

To conclude with some further remarks from Dr Howell: "At first
thought it might be presumed that hypertrophy of the pancreas is a
desirable accommodation. But there is always the tendency for the
hypertrophy of excessive function to proceed to the atrophy of
exhaustion. An atrophy of the pancreas occurs in many terminal
wasting diseases".

Dr Howell's whole argument is that if throughout life the enzyme
production within the body is overstrained, in the later years it is
inevitable that enzyme levels will diminish sooner than they should,
thus accelerating degeneration and old age. Referring to an
experiment at Cornell University in which it was shown that the
lifespan of rats could be almost doubled by dietary manipulation, Dr
Howell said. "After reviewing this work, I cannot see how it is
possible to escape the conclusion that when the enzyme reserve (I use
this phrase interchangeably with the term vitality) is drawn at a
more rapid rate it will be exhausted sooner and consequently life
will end earlier".