Digestive enzyme

“ A diet for a healthy person that wants to remain healthy should not exceed the digestive capacity of the individual, either in terms of quantity or quality. All foods that can not be efficiently digested should be removed from the regular diet and relegated to the "sin" category, including those you are allergic to and those for which you have inadequate digestive enzymes. I have encountered very few people that can efficiently digest cooked meat, chicken, or fish, but some can, and some can with the assistance of digestive enzyme supplements. ”

“ The enzymes themselves are not used up in the process, so if time enough is allowed, a very small amount of enzyme can bring about the decomposition of a very large amount of material. In our bodies the whole digestive process consists of a succession of decompositions of complex materials into simpler ones under the speeding-up influence of enzymes. We have a number of different kinds of foodstuffs to be decomposed and a corresponding number of enzymes. ”

“ We find illustrations of such antiferments in the gastro-intestinal tract, by the presence of which the digestive enzymes are restrained from attacking the proteins of the tissue cells, composing the lining membranes of the intestine. Apparently, there is no reason why the enzymes pepsin, trypsin, etc., which digest so vigorously the various protein foodstuffs should not attack with equal avidity the related proteins present in the mucous membranes of the stomach and small intestine. ”

“ Active enzymes are produced by bacteria growing in the infusion of dung, in addition to digestive enzymes which may be originally present in the dung; the bacterial enzymes are produced more rapidly in a dilute infusion, as employed in the puer wheel, than in the dung itself. The enzymes are of various kinds, proteolytic, peptolytic, lipolytic, etc., but the proteolytic and lipolytic are the most important. These have a solvent action on the fibres of the skin, but little or no action on the hyaline layer, at the concentration usually found in the puer liquor. ”

“ In pancreatic digestion, proteids are exposed to the action of an enzyme of much greater power than pepsin, one endowed with a far greater range of activity, and consequently proteolysis as it occurs in the small intestine becomes a broader and more complicated process. As you well know, the ferment trypsin manifests its power not only in a more rapid transformation of insoluble proteids into soluble and diffusible products, but there is a diversity in the character of the many products formed which testifies to the profound alterations this ferment is capable of producing. ”

“ Once in the stomach, chewed food has to be churned in order to mix it with hydrochloric acid, pepsin, and other digestive enzymes. Manufacturing these enzymes is also considerable work! Churning is even harder work than chewing but normally, people are unaware of its happening. While the stomach is churning (like a washing machine) a large portion of the blood supply is redirected from the muscles in the extremities to the stomach and intestines to aid in this process. ”

“ The proteolytic power was proved to be due to a specific ferment or enzyme, now universally called trypsin, which digests proteid foods to the best advantage in the presence of sodium carbonate. Digestive proteolysis in the human body was thus shown to be due mainly to the presence of two distinct enzymes, the one active in an acid fluid, the gastric juice, the other in an alkaline-reacting fluid, the pancreatic juice, but both endowed with the power of digesting all varieties of proteid foods, with the formation of a large number of more or less closely related products. ”

“ Few seem to realize that each type of food requires specific and different digestive enzymes in the mouth, stomach, and intestine. Carbohydrates, fats, proteins--each requires differing acid or alkaline environments in order to be digested. Proteins require an acid environment. Starch digestion requires an alkaline environment. ”

“ According to this view, then, a part at least of the directly toxic substance is produced in the living body by enzymes present in the so-called toxin obtained from the bacterial culture. Recent researches go to show that enzymes play a greater part in fermentation by living ferments than was formerly supposed, and by analogy it is likely that they are also concerned in the processes of disease. But this has not been proved, and hitherto no enzyme has been separated from a pathogenic bacterium capable of forming, by digestive or other action, the toxic bodies from proteids outside the body. ”

“ Not only do they themselves offer difficulty, but they smear over the other food masses and make it hard for the digestive juices to get at them. Although the enzyme for digesting fat is secreted by the pancreas, its successful working depends on the presence of bile from the liver. If there is an obstruction of the bile passages, so that bile cannot be poured out into the small intestine, the digestion of fats stops and, along with it to a considerable extent, all the other digestive processes of the intestine. ”

“ Thus, very recently, Bertels40 and Dubs41, working under Salkowski’s direction, have called attention to the peculiar behavior of pepsin to chloroform; their results showing, first, that small amounts of this agent tend to increase the proteolytic power of the enzyme, while larger amounts decrease its digestive power. ”

“ Response to chemical stimuli is well illustrated along the digestive tract. That the chemical stimuli in digestion may be more or less specific is shown by the observed differences in the enzymes of the pancreatic juice dependent on the relative amounts of carbohydrates, fats, or proteins in the food, the specific enzyme in each case being increased in the juice with the increase of its corresponding foodstuff. ”

“ The so-called enzyme action, ascribed by physiology to the various digestive juices, is in reality the product of an activity of the lower part of man's astral organization, for which the relevant juices exercise the function of physical 'carriers'. In the field of macrotelluric phenomena, the metamorphosis of the atmospheric moisture extending beyond the different cloud-stages up to the stage of pure warmth is an example of the activity of the same forces. ”

“ The destructive action of the digestive enzymes leads us to believe that it is in inactive form that secretin is absorbed. Like epinephrin, it cannot pass through the digestive tract. Bayliss and Starling state that it is destroyed by one hour’s tryptic digestion. Lalou62 worked with the action on secretin of pepsin, dog’s gastric juice, pancreatic juice, succus entericus and erepsin, and found in each case a destructive effect, even almost after mixing; and after five minutes over 75 per cent. of the activity had disappeared. ”

“ This danger is particularly great when, by the artificial admixture of corporeal juices, complications are set up, that intensify the destructive action of the digestive enzymes on the material, and when their supplementary action is not suitably controlled. ”

“ Stress also inhibits the churning action in the stomach so that otherwise digestible foods may not be mixed efficiently with digestive enzymes. For all these reasons, undigested proteins may pass into the gut. ”

“ An animal's prac- tical digestive powers, therefore, depend entirely upon the specific enzymes its digestive liquids contain. Lacking this or that enzyme it can not digest the things that depend upon it, and usually its instincts are correlated with its enzymes so that it does not fill its stomach with food it can not digest. A few analyses of the digestive liquids of in- sects have been made, enough to show that their digestive processes depend upon the presence of the same enzymes as those of other animais, including man. ”

“ It is now recognized by scientists that all processes of fermentation and digestion found in plant and animal life are due to definite chemical compounds known as enzyms. The action of digestion is truly a chemical one, and could take [141] place without the body as well as within, if we could manufacture the proper enzym and could produce the exact conditions of temperature, moisture, etc., that are found in the human digestive economy. ”

“ We find processes of digestion strictly comparable to those of the alimentary canal of an animal in the case of the insectivorous Nepenthes, Drosera and other similar plants, and in the saprophytic Fungi. Those which now concern us recall the utilization of the glycogen of the liver, the stored fats and proteids of other parts of the animal body being like them intracellular.
Enzymes.—The agents which effect the digestive changes in plants have been studied with much care. They have been found to be mainly enzymes, which are in many cases identical with those of animal origin. ”

“ The processes of nutrition are truly complicated, and we can readily conjecture that their harmonious working is dependent in large measure upon the integrity of many closely related operations. Enzymes must be elaborated in due proportions, both in digestive secretions and in tissue cells; proper conditions for enzymolysis must prevail at the places where the reactions take place, since enzymes are extremely sensitive to their environment and fail to work unless all the requirements are fully met ”

“ Enzymes are extremely sensitive to acids, bases, or salts, their activity being often enormously enhanced or, in other cases, entirely inhibited, by the presence in the reacting medium of very small amounts of free acids, or bases, or even of certain neutral salts. For example, pepsin, the enzyme of the stomach will act only in the presence of a slightly acid medium and is wholly inactive in a mixture which contains even the slightest amount of free alkaline material; while trypsin, the similar enzyme of the intestine, acts only under alkaline conditions. ”

“ Gastric digestion is to be considered rather as a preliminary step in proteolysis, preparatory to the more profound changes characteristic of pancreatic digestion, in which the ferment trypsin is the important factor. We can thus see how, as in the case of Czerny’s dogs, an animal may be perfectly nourished without a stomach, digestive proteolysis being carried on solely by the pancreatic fluid. ”

“ In this process there is no sign of direct oxidation, but hydrolysis appears in the foreground, and by this means the rock protein is broken asunder into small fragments of definite shape, each of which can be used in the construction of fresh protein. Especially noteworthy is the harmony of action between the enzymes of the digestive tract and those of the living tissues of the body. ”

“ The agency which breaks down protein into these simpler substances is called an enzyme, and protein must always be so liquefied or digested by enzymes before it can be absorbed through membranes; hence the necessity of digestion in the stomach of animals preparatory to absorption of food through the intestines. Now, animals, including fish, require a certain amount of new protein to support the body activities, which, failing, the animal would immediately perish. But the hazards in the existence of any animal often make it obligatory to do without food for a shorter or longer period. ”

“ The nourishment is first digested in the cavity of the digestive tube by secreted juices, and its treatment is completed within the amœboid cells of the cæcum.
In higher animals, the digestion of food is due to several digestive ferments (rennet, pepsin, trypsin, enterokinase, etc.) produced by divers organs (stomach, pancreas, intestines) . The phagocytes also manufacture several digestive ferments; their principal digestive juice is a soluble ferment of the trypsin category, to which Metchnikoff gave the name of cytase. ”

“ So far as is at present known the unorganised ferments in the dung, besides those which are secreted by the bacteria, are mostly digestive ferments114 —pepsin, pancreatin, and trypsin—certain quantities of which pass out of the animal’s body in an unchanged condition. Of these, pepsin only acts in an acid solution, and, although fresh bate liquor is faintly acid to litmus, it quickly becomes neutralised by the lime in the skins, so that the action of this ferment can only be limited in extent. ”

“ The insulin-cycle overworked pancreas may eventually not be able to secrete enough enzymes to allow for the efficient digestion of foods high in protein. As stated earlier, poor protein digestion leads to a highly toxic condition from putrefied protein in the intestines. This condition is alleviated by eliminating animal proteins from the diet and taking digestive aids such as pancreatin pills with meals to assist in the digestion of vegetable proteins. ”

“ There is no doubt that fats present in fine emulsion can be decomposed in the stomach. The action proceeds in a medium which is slightly acid or neutral, being entirely prevented by the presence of strong acids and alkalis. Many workers believe this gastrolipase to be of pancreatic or intestinal origin, and suppose that it gains entrance to the stomach by a reflux flow through the pylorus. Evidence is accumulating to show that this view is correct. By means of pepsin and gastrolipase proteins and fats are dealt with. No specific enzyme for carbohydrates has been found in the stomach in man. ”