When you follow the Bulletproof Diet, you’re loading up on optimal vitamins and minerals, the best fats and proteins, and nutrient-dense veggies. But if your digestive enzymes aren’t working properly, you may be missing out on the performance-boosting benefits of your supercharged diet.
Digestive enzymes are necessary for breaking down the food you eat into raw building blocks to fuel your body. Bloating, malabsorption, or difficulty transitioning to a new diet can all be signs of lagging enzymes.
Matt Gallant and Wade Lightheart, founders of supplement company BiOptimizers, discuss in a recent Bulletproof Radio (iTunes) podcast episode the powerful benefits that enzymes have had on their health.
“We tried a massive amount of enzymes for 90 days, and we both transformed,” says Gallant. “We both gained muscle, both lost fat, skin improved, our brains improved, and we’re like, ‘Okay. This works.’”
Digestive enzymes are gaining popularity as health supplements, but with so many brands on the shelf, it’s hard to know where to start. Read on for a jump-start guide to digestive enzymes: what they are, when they help, and what to look for.
WHAT ARE DIGESTIVE ENZYMES?
Enzymes are proteins that your body produces to catalyze specific chemical reactions. Your pancreas, stomach, salivary glands, and the brush border of your small intestine all release enzymes that help break down your food into nutrients that your body can absorb. Enzymes also protect your gut by breaking down inflammatory compounds such as lectins, which contribute to leaky gut.
Different enzymes work to digest different compounds in your diet, such as amino acids or sugars. For example: the lactase enzyme is needed to digest lactose sugars. Since most adults no longer produce lactase, many people cannot digest dairy.[1]
WHAT FACTORS LOWER ENZYME PRODUCTION?
All the healthy food in the world won’t do you much good if your body doesn’t have the enzymes required to break it down into smaller nutrients. Pancreatic problems, damage to the intestinal brush border, or severe inflammatory digestive conditions such as Celiac or Crohn’s Disease can all axe your enzyme production.
“Anything that’s going to drive inflammation in the gut is going to cause the brush border to be disturbed, and can impact pancreatic function as well,” says Dr. Tim Gerstmar, a Seattle-based naturopathic doctor and a digestive health and autoimmune specialist.
This can range from leaky gut, to bacterial overgrowth, to minor food intolerances. Worse, with low enzyme counts, undigested proteins can pass through your gut and cause more inflammation. Low stomach acid is also linked to low enzyme production, and your body naturally produces fewer enzymes as you age. [2]
But most people are losing enzymes thanks to a more pervasive, yet common, threat, says Gerstmar.
“The single biggest dysfunction that impacts digestion is just stress,” he says.
High stress throttles digestion by sending your body into “fight or flight” mode, where your body reduces the energy it uses for digestion. If your ancestor was running from a predator, fully absorbing their last meal wasn’t a top priority. Chronic stress can lead to low levels of digestive enzymes and difficulty fully digesting meals. Undiagnosed, these low levels can lead to malabsorption or malnutrition.
An Impressive Array
Theseenzymes all contribute to the break-down of various foods, making them easier to digest and absorb.
Protein Enzymes
Bromelain comes from the pineapple plant and fruit, and has been used traditionally for its health benefits in many Asian cultures.4
Papain is an extract of papaya fruit, and it’s composed of a range of enzymes that can digest proteins, starches and fats.6 Both bromelain and papain can be used to tenderize meat.
The combination of peptidase and aspergillopepsin has been shown to support the digestion and proper break-down of gluten.5 (Digestive Enzymes is not intended to prevent or treat any disease, including Celiac, Wheat Allergy or NCGS).
Carbohydrate Enzymes
Amylase is an enzyme that digests starch, and your body naturally produces it in your gut and saliva. Starches, like in potatoes or rice, are available in excess in modern diets.8
Many sugars can be hard to digest, and those of you who avoid milk sugar (lactose) will be familiar with the problem. Lactase can support the digestion of lactose. (Digestive Enzymes is not meant to prevent or treat any disease or allergy, including allergy to dairy products).
Invertase helps break down table sugar into more easily digested glucose and fructose. The beta-glucans in mushrooms aren’t easily digestible, but beta-glucanase helps support their break-down.
More Useful Enzymes
Lipase is an enzyme that breaks down fats and oils. A too-fatty diet is sometimes associated with bloating, nausea and feeling full early. Researchers have shown that taking lipase with a meal can reduce the feeling of fullness, thereby supporting comfort levels.7
Cellulase, hemicellulase, xylanase, and pectinase all support the break-down of plant cell walls and other hard-to-digest fiber components of plants. Indigestible fiber can be beneficial for people who don’t get enough of it, but an excess can cause gas and occasional discomfort.6
Phytase is an enzyme that breaks down phytic acid, and it has been shown that the inclusion of phytase in foods can support the normal absorption of iron
Support Healthy Digestion, Naturally
What Are Enzymes?
Firstly, you should know that the story of digesting food is a story of chemically breaking things apart into tiny pieces and then absorbing them. This happens at a micro scale.2
Enzymes help break down food, join proteins together, activate compounds or deactivate harmful chemicals. There are tens of thousands of types enzymes all throughout your body, all having very different roles.1
In essence, enzymes are catalysts. They make chemical reactions happen much faster. Sometimes, without enzymes, reactions wouldn’t happen at all. They are essential to life and digestion.3
What are the units next to the enzymes on the label?
Since enzymes don’t provide energy and aren’t nutrients per se, they’re not measured by calories or weight. Instead, they’re measured by their activity. And since most enzymes are very different in how they act, they often have unique measurements. You can see these on the Digestive Enzymes label.
The activity measurement units are defined in the US by the ‘Food Chemical Codex’. Each measurement is relevant to a particular component of food; like starch (DU), lipid (FIP) or protein (HUT).
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