Are Digestive Enzymes Safe to Take?

When dealing with finding the right enzyme supplement for you it’s best to narrow it down to the type of enzymes that are healthiest for you and necessary for your needs as far as digestion goes. Raw food contains the enzymes needed to digest it. However, most of us don’t live on a raw food diet. When we cook our food, the enzymes in the food are destroyed and our body has to make them in order to digest our food.

This puts stress on our system especially since people eat more processed foods and meals higher in calories and fat. Digestive enzyme supplements help you digest your meals more efficiently and deliver the nutrients from your food to your body. Enzyme supplements are clinically proven to reduce the effects of bloating, gas, occasional heartburn and occasional acid reflux.

Your body makes and uses thousands of enzymes every day—so it may seem odd that many enzymes are sold as dietary supplements. “Enzymes” may sound like something magical, and in some sense they are. Cells are the basic chemical unit of life and can do what they do only because enzymes enable them to do it. Enzymes regulate virtually every chemical reaction in our bodies and in all living cells everywhere.

Enzymes are proteins, and they make things happen. When secreted in the digestive tract, they help break down carbohydrates, fats and dietary proteins and detoxify alcohol. Each enzyme is designed to do a specific task—enzymes are not general workers. “Proteolytic” enzymes such as pepsin and trypsin work on proteins, amylase on carbohydrates, and lipase on fats. When they are not helping to break down compounds, they help synthesize them.

Though enzymes do not replace specialized or restrictive diets, many people take enzymes in the form of dietary supplements to replace the enzymes their body is lacking, or to fortify the enzymes found in their food to ensure complete digestion of each meal. If you don’t digest the food, you can’t absorb the nutrients. If you don’t absorb the nutrients, you can’t get all the fuel you need for repair, growth and learning.

In the body, enzymes made by intestinal bacteria work synergistically with our own inherent enzymes to support optimal wellbeing and digestive health. This is also the same with supplemental enzymes and probiotics. These supplements may be taken together (at the same time) to support digestive health.

It’s been estimated that the human body consists of about 10 trillion cells, and the intestines of each of us are inhabited by 10 times as many microorganisms. These organisms support regularity, aid the immune system, produce vitamins like B and K, and fuel our digestion through their production of enzymes, including lactase, protease, and amylase. Each of us has a unique little ecosystem that exists in our digestive tract and it appears to be influenced by both genetics and diet. Just like most things in life, the key seems to be balance.