Category Archives: Questions & Answers

What You Need To Know About Digestive Enzyme Deficiency

Digestive enzyme deficiency can be due to a lack of production or because they break down before they become active.

Digestive enzymes work best when your body temperature and metabolic rate are normal. It also helps if all your hormones are in check.

Many patients I’ve seen with thyroid or adrenal dysfunction can have an impaired ability to use their digestive enzymes – even if the supply is adequate. For example, when a person has a high fever, the pancreas won’t work as well, and food isn’t digested properly.

In my experience, a critical factor in enzyme deficiency is stress. When you are stuck in the “fight or flight” state, your stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol increase. This high-stress state reduces the body’s ability to produce digestive enzymes. Some people will respond by telling me that they aren’t stressed. But the truth is, if you’re alive, you have some degree of stress. Even your ability to chew food properly and produce ptyalin, a carbohydrate-digesting enzyme in the saliva, becomes very impaired under stress.

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When your body is in the “rest and digest” mode (aka the parasympathetic mode), your enzyme output and activity increase significantly. People who meditate regularly, who do yoga, and who practice mindfulness, tend to have a lot less bloating and gas than people with high stress levels.

In addition to stress-induced digestive enzyme deficiency, eating poor quality foods can make things worse. Most raw natural foods contain enzymes to help in their digestion. For example, bananas contain amylase, which is a carbohydrate-digesting enzyme. On the other hand, a box of French fries doesn’t provide a lot of digestive enzymes.

Highly processed foods are very hard on the gut and, over time, contribute to digestive enzyme deficiency. When you start to eat healthier food, your body will produce more enzymes and break down food more efficiently. Until you understand and embrace the connection between stress and digestion, it’s hard to get your gut to a healthy place.

Taking the time to relax is an investment in making sure your digestive enzymes are of the proper quantity and quality.

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Digestive Enzyme Testing Made Simple

If you suspect that you may have a digestive enzyme deficiency, you can do some testing or take some supplements to see if either makes a difference. Digestive enzyme deficiency symptoms include skin that doesn’t look good, hair that is dull and unhealthy, weak nails, burping, bloating, and abdominal discomfort.

One of the tests used to assess the health of your digestive system is the baking soda test. Put a teaspoon of baking soda into a glass of water and drink it on an empty stomach. I’d recommend doing the test between breakfast and lunch. You should burp within thirty seconds. If it takes much longer than that, it often means that you’re not producing enough enzymes in the stomach to neutralize the ions in the baking soda.

A much fancier test is called the Heidelberg test. It means having to swallow a capsule that contains a radio transmitter. Next, the doctor will have you drink some sodium bicarbonate that should neutralize the acid in your stomach. The transmitter sends information back to the doctor. This is considered the gold standard for assessing stomach acid. In my opinion, you don’t need to do something so complicated.

A much easier test is to ask yourself whether you can feel saliva building up in your mouth when you smell or think about food. That’s a sign of proper digestive enzyme function. When you eat food, do you chew it properly, relish it, feel satisfied after, and don’t have a post-meal crash? Does the food energize you for hours? If you can answer yes to all of those questions, your enzymes are probably working pretty well.

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Next is the tummy tolerance test. This test involves taking an enzyme such as a mix of betaine hydrochloride and pepsin. Start with taking one capsule with your meal. With each subsequent meal, take an additional pill. You know you’ve hit your ceiling or threshold when you have pain behind your sternum, burping a lot, or having a lot of digestive discomfort. What you need to determine is how many capsules it takes to hit that threshold. Is it one? Two? Twenty-five? If it takes a lot of capsules, your digestive enzymes are probably not up to snuff.

Another option is doing a stool test to measure your level of pancreatic elastase (PE1). This enzyme passes through the gut unaltered. The level in the stool is a good indication of how well your pancreas is functioning. The reading should be over 500. I’ve had clients with levels as low as 15. I can’t tell you how many people with very low PE1 levels whose entire life changed once they started pancreatic enzyme supplements. It changed everything. They went from a skinny mini or a very large person to normal

body size. Their energy quadrupled. Their whole life changed just by addressing their pancreatic function.

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Signs And Symptoms That Might Indicate A Digestive Enzyme Deficiency

How can you tell if you have a digestive enzyme problem? How do you know it isn’t just allergies?

To me, telling the difference is really quite straightforward. Enzyme deficiency can cause food intolerance, which is very different from immune-mediated allergic reactions. Food allergies have nothing to do with your digestive enzymes.

Critical symptoms of enzyme deficiency include bloating, gas, a “pregnant belly,” and pain. Sometimes the pain is colicky due to incarcerated flatulence. That type of flatulence means that gas can’t escape and instead is trapped in the intestine, causing you pain. Other symptoms include nausea, erratic appetite, and feeling as if you swallowed a brick after eating a meal.

Enzymes are catalysts – they initiate reactions that are an essential part of the digestive process. Enzymes facilitate the break down of the food you eat. When the level of digestive enzymes is low, proper digestion doesn’t occur, and many different problems can result.

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Enzymes are produced in different parts of the digestive system, including the mouth, the stomach, the pancreas, and the small bowel. The extent of your symptoms will depend on which enzymes aren’t being produced in the proper amount. Symptoms also vary depending on how much enzyme is or isn’t being produced.

Some men my age have significant issues with pepsin. They are not producing enough of this stomach enzyme, and often get diagnosed with heartburn and put on an acid blocker (PPIs – proton pump inhibitors). They’re told they have too much stomach acid when in fact they don’t have enough. Dr. Jonathan Wright from Seattle discovered that years ago.

The problem with PPIs is that it blocks the ability of stomach acid to work, which has a harmful trickle-down effect on the rest of the digestive system. Unfortunately, conventional medicine is sometimes very good at ruining long-term health in the interest of short-term symptom relief.

If you’re taking pharmaceutical drugs for an enzyme deficiency, I suggest you go to a naturopath and explore getting off those drugs.

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Using Your Diet To Optimize Digestive Enzyme Levels

If you want to have high levels of digestive enzymes, there are some foods that are better than others. In general, fresh, natural foods that have been minimally processed and only partially cooked are the best for keeping your digestive enzyme levels high. If you eat overly processed food that has been prepared at a high temperature (over 117 degrees Fahrenheit or 48 degrees centigrade), the enzymes in the food are destroyed. As a result, your body has to rely on more of its own digestive enzymes to cover the deficit.

The short story is that you need to eat more healthy food and eat less junk if you want to keep your gut, including your digestive enzyme levels, in good shape. It’s just common sense. The movie Supersize Me is worth watching because it demonstrates how eating fast food can lead to fatty liver.

I can share some examples of the healthy foods I eat that are great for keeping digestive enzymes up and running. Grass-fed rotisserie lamb, roasted aubergines, very lightly cooked green beans, Greek salad with olive oil and lemon dressing, potato salad with homemade mayonnaise, and a salad of big leafy greens are all good choices. Hopefully, you get the idea. Lots of fresh food, minimally processed, and raw when possible, all add up to a healthy gut. In my experience, the hotter the temperature, the more it makes sense to eat raw food.

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I strongly recommend eating more raw foods. Raw foods contain enzymes that contribute to digestion. Also, make sure you chew your food really well. If you want more information on raw food, check out the book by Dr. Edward Howell called Enzyme Nutrition.

Having a comprehensive stool analysis is another good idea. You might find Citrobacter, Klebsiella, Candida, SIBO, or parasites. Any of these problems make digestive enzyme issues even worse and vice versa. If you don’t have enough digestive enzymes, food is only partially digested, and the fermentation necessary for a healthy gut doesn’t occur. Candida doesn’t like a gut that has a high level of enzymatic activity. Digestive enzymes help maintain a low pH (acid) environment in the stomach, which discourages harmful bacteria and yeast from proliferating.

Your stomach is a crucial organ – particularly as you get older. Keeping your digestive system in good working order is one way of staying healthy as you age.

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Digestive Enzymes: Why Managing Stress Makes All The Difference

Even the healthiest people I’ve seen probably have at least a minor digestive enzyme deficiency. If you have a heartbeat or a pulse rate, you also have stress in your life. Even the smallest amount of stress is going to impact the ability of your pancreas and stomach to produce optimal levels of enzymes.

How your body uses digestive enzyme is also affected by your level of stress. This is one way that stress impact your body’s ability to digest food properly. If you combine high stress with a poor diet, it’s just a matter of time before your health is going to hit a brick wall.

If you have fatigue, even in the absence of any GI symptoms, you need to think carefully about the kinds of foods you’ve been eating for the last few months. Think carefully about your lifestyle, including your relationships. Think about your sleep and physical activity habits. All of these factors can influence your digestive system. It’s not all about what you do or don’t eat.

To optimize your digestive enzyme, you need to tackle the stress in your life. I would estimate that a one percent reduction in stress will translate into about a six percent improvement in GI function. Everything you do to improve stress will improve your digestion. Take a look at some of my YouTube videos on stress. They explain how stress interacts with your gut function.

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I’ve said this many times. 75% of gut health recovery is lifestyle related. The other 25% stems from eating a healthy diet and high-quality supplements. Supplements are often necessary because it’s impossible to live a stress-free lifestyle. Supplements are a great addition to a gut health treatment plan. Supplements can be taken short-term, long-term, or even indefinitely for some people with chronic conditions like cancer or chronic pancreatitis.

If you are going to take digestive enzymes, make sure you take enzymes meant for both the stomach and the pancreas. Taking enzymes both with food and away from food gives the best effect. If you find a good product, digestive enzymes can make a significant difference to your digestion and overall health.

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