Enzymes what is it?
Enzymes which are usually proteins help to begin, aid in and accelerate every chemical reaction in the human body. Enzymes are the body’s main workforce, much like a construction company building a skyscraper. They may have made all the necessary plans and bought all the right materials but without a crew, nothing gets done. Enzymes are, in essence THE substances which make life possible.
Studies at multiple universities have shown that the faster the beings metabolic rate, the shorter the life span, regardless of the species. To ensure our survival, our bodies must have the necessary ingredients. Our bodies must have Enzyme Activity factors with which it can continue to create enzymes. When your body looses the ability to produce enzymes you cease to exist.
These days’ people eat a primarily cooked food diet. 99% of these foods are cooked at temperatures of 212 degrees or more. When food is cooked at these temperatures
Just about every single person eats a diet of mainly cooked foods. Keep in mind that whenever a food is boiled at 212 degrees, the enzymes in it are 100% destroyed.
If enzymes were in the food we eat, they would do some or even a considerable part of the work of digestion by themselves. However, when you eat cooked, enzyme-free food, this forces the body itself to make the enzymes needed for digestion. This depletes the body’s limited enzyme capacity.
it’s one of the paramount causes of premature aging and early death. I also believe it’s the underlying cause of almost all degenerative disease.
To begin with, if the body is overburdened to supply many enzymes to the saliva, gastric juice, pancreatic juice and intestinal juice, then it must curtail the production of enzymes for other purposes.
If this occurs, then how can the body also make enough enzymes to run the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, muscles and other organs and tissues?
When you consume high temperature cooked foods your body must steal enzymes from other organs in your body, the heart, brain, kidney, lungs, etc. These ensuing metabolic dislocations (Enzyme Deficiencies) can be directly linked to chronic, incurable diseases including many cancers, heart disease, diabetes and many more. The majority of people alive today suffer from Enzyme Deficiency Stress. This is a direct result of not adding raw foods to our daily diets.
This “stealing” of enzymes from other parts of the body to service the digestive tract sets up a competition for enzymes among the various organ systems and tissues of the body.
The resulting metabolic dislocations may be the direct cause of cancer, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and many other chronic incurable diseases.
This state of enzyme deficiency stress exists in the majority of persons on the civilized, enzyme-free diet.
He thrived in one of the most lethal environments the world can offer. Yet they did not suffer from cancer, arthritis and other degenerative diseases known to be related to enzyme deficiency. This is a direct result of the Eskimo consuming a diet consisting mainly of raw foods. Even the meat they would eat was barely cooked on either side at low temperatures and raw in the middle. Subsequently, the Eskimo people have never had a tradition of shamans, medicine men or any other type of medical healer.
For example, consider the primitive Eskimo. He lived in an environment just as frigid as that of the Neanderthal Man. And yet, the Eskimo never suffered from arthntis and other chronic diseases.
However, the Eskimo ate large amounts of raw food. The meat he ate was only slightly heated and was raw in the center. Therefore, the Eskimo received a large quantity of food enzymes with every meal.
In fact, the word Eskimo itself comes from an Indian expression which means, “He who eats it raw.”
Incidentally, there is no tradition of medicine men among the Eskimo people. But among groups like the North American Indian, who ate cooked food extensively, the medicine man had a prominent position in the tribe.
There’s so much evidence that I can only briefly summanze a small
fraction of it. Over the last 40 years, I have collected thousands of scientific documents to document my theories.
To begin with, human beings have the lowest levels of starch digesting enzymes in their blood of any creature. We also have the highest level of these enzymes in the urine, meaning that they are being used up faster.
There’s other evidence showing that these low enzyme levels are not due to a pecularity of our species. Instead, they are due to the large amounts of cooked starch we eat.
Also, we know that decreased enzyme levels are found in a number of chronic ailments, such as allergies, skin disease, and even serious diseases like diabetes and cancer.
In addition, incriminating evidence indicates that cooked, enzyme-free diets contribute to a pathological over-enlargement of the pituitary gland, which regulates the other glands. Furthermore, there is research showing that almost 100% of the people over 50 dying from accidental causes were found to have defective pituitary glands.
Next, I believe that food enzyme deficiency is the cause of the exaggerated maturation of today’s children and teenagers. It is also an important cause of overweight in many children and adults.
Many animal experiments have shown that enzyme-deficient diets produce a much more rapid maturation than usual. Animals on cooked diets are also much heavier than their counterparts on raw diets .
Another piece of related evidence is that farmers use cooked potatoes to fatten pigs for market. The’ve found that pigs on cooked potatoes fatten faster and more economically than pigs on raw potatoes.
This evidence shows the great difference between cooked calories and raw calories. Indeed, from my work in a sanitarium many years ago, I’ve found that it was impossible to get people fat on raw foods, regardless of the calorie intake.
Incidentally, another effect associated with food enzyme deficiency is that the size of the brain decreases. In addition, the thyroid overenlarges, even in the presence of adequate iodine. This has been shown in a number of species. Of course, you can’t prove it on human beings. The evidence, however, is very suggestive.
Next, consider that the human pancreas is burdened with enzyme production far in excess of any creature living on a raw food diet. In fact, in proportion to body weight, the human pancreas is more than twice as heavy as that of a cow.
Human beings eat mainly cooked food, while cows eat raw grass.
Then, there is evidence that rats on a cooked diet have a pancreas about twice as heavy as rats on a raw diet.
Moreover, evidence shows that the human pancreas is one of the heaviest in the animal kingdom, when you adjust for total body weight.
This overenlargement of the human pancreas is just as dangerous — probably even more so — than an overlargement of the heart, the thyroid and so on. The
overproduction of enzymes in humans is a pathological adaption to a diet of enzyme-free foods.
The pancreas is not the only part of the body that oversecretes enzymes when the diet is cooked. In addition, there are the human salivary glands, which produce enzymes to a degree never found in wild animals on their natural foods.
In fact, some animals on a raw diet do not have any enzymes at all in their saliva. The cow and sheep produce torrents of saliva with no enzymes in it.
Dogs, for instance, also secrete no enzymes in their saliva when they’re eating a raw diet. However, if you start giving them cooked starchy food, their salivary glands will start producing starch-digesting enzymes within 10 days.
In addition, there’s more evidence that the enzymes in saliva represent a
pathological and not a normal situation. To begin with, salivary enzymes cannot digest raw starch. This is something I demonstrated in the laboratory.
The enzymes in saliva will only attack a piece of starch once it’s cooked. Therefore, we see that the body will channel some of its limited enzyme producing capacity into saliva only if it has to.
Incidentally, there is some provocative animal research which I have done in my own laboratory some years ago. If you’d like, I can explain it now for your readers.
To me, the most impressive evidence that people need enzymes is what occurs as a result of therapeutic fasting. As you know, I spent some years in a sanitarium working with patients on various fasting programs.
When a person fasts, there is an immediate halt to the production of digestive enzymes. The enzymes in saliva, gastric juice and pancreatic juice dwindle and become scarce. During fasting, the body’s enzymes are free to work on repairing and removing diseased tissues.
Civilized people eat such large quantities of cooked foods that their enzyme systems are kept busy digesting food. As a result, the body lacks the enzymes needed to maintain the tissues in good health.
Most people who fast go through what is called a healing crisis. The patients may feel nausea, vomiting and dizziness. What’s happening is that the enzymes are working to change the unhealthy structure of the body. The enzymes attack pathological tissues and break down undigested and unprocessed substances; and these then get thrown off through the bowels, through vomiting, or via the skin.
When people get enzymes from food, aren’t they destroyed by stomach acid and therefore of little or no value?
HOWELL: This is not true. Although most nutntionists claim that enzymes in food are destroyed in the stomach, they overlook two important facts.
First of all, when you eat food, acid secretion is minimal for at least thirty minutes. As the food goes down the esophagus, it drops into the top portion of the stomach. This is called the cardiac section, since it’s closer to the heart.
The rest of the stomach remains flat and closed while the cardiac section opens up to accommodate the food. During the iime the food sits in the upper section, little acid or enzymes are secreted by the body. The enzymes in the food itself go about digesting the food. The more of this self-digestion that occurs, the less work the body has to do later.
When this 30 to 45 minute period is over, the bottom section of the stomach opens up and the body starts secreting acid and enzymes. Even at this point, the food enzymes are not inactivated until the acid level becomes prohibitive. You see, food enzymes can tolerate chemical environments many times more acid than neutral.
Do animals also have a special section of the stomach where food digests itself?
HOWELL: Absolutely. In fact, some creatures have what I call a food enzyme stomach.
There are the cheek pouches of monkeys and rodents, the crop of many species of birds, and the first stomachs of whales, dolphins and porpoises.
When birds, for instance, swallow seeds or grains, these grains lie in the crop for 8 to 12 hours. As they sit, they absorb moisture, swell up and begin to germinate. During germination, enzymes are formed which do the work of digesting the seeds and grains.
Whales, dolphins and porpoises have a first stomach which secretes no enzymes. Whales, for examples swallow large quantities of food without chewing it. The food simply decomposes and digests itself. In the flesh of the fish and other marine life the whale eats is an enzyme, called cathepsin, which breaks down the fish once it has died. In fact, this enzyme is present in almost all creatures.
After the whale’s catch has liquefied itself, it passes through a small hole into the whale’s second stomach.
It mystifies scientists how the whale’s catch can get through that small hole into the second stomach. They have no idea that self-digestion was at work.
Bananas, avocadoes and mangoes are good sources. In general, foods having a higher calorie content are richer in enzymes.
There are some foods, seeds and nuts, that contain what are called enzyme inhibitors.
These enzyme inhibitors are present for the protection of the seed. Nature doesn’t want the seed to germinate prematurely and lose its life. It wants to make sure that the seed is present in soil with sufficient moisture to grow and continue the species.
Therefore, when you eat raw seeds or raw nuts, you are swallowing enzyme inhibitors which will neutralize some of the enzymes your body produces. In fact, eating foods with enzyme inhibitors causes a swelling of the pancreas.
All nuts and seeds contain these inhibitors. Raw peanuts, for example, contain an especially large amount. Raw wheat germ is also one of the worst offenders. In addition, all peas, beans and lentils contain some.
Potatoes, which are seeds, have enzyme inhibitors.
In eggs, which are also seeds, the inhibitor is contained mainly in the eggwhite.
As a general rule, enzyme inhibitors are confined to the seed portions of food. For instance, the eyes of potatoes. The inhibitors are not present in the fleshy portions of fruits or in the leaves and stems of vegetables.
There are two ways to destroy enzyme inhibitors. The first is cooking; however, this also destroys the enzymes. The second way, which is preferable, is sprouting. This destroys the enzyme inhibitors and also increases the enzyme content from a factor of 3 to 6.
Some foods, like soybeans, must be especially well heated to destroy the inhibitors. For example, many of the soy flours and powders on the market were not heated enough to destroy the inhibitors.
