Skip to main content






Why Enzymes are Important for Good Health?

by: Garry Nixon

Enzymes are a type of protein which helps to catalyze a chemical reaction. Individual enzymes have unique chemical structures which can speed up the reaction of specific substrates. All body functions involve enzymes including digestion, respiration, transportation and detoxification. If some critical enzymes experience deficiency or malfunction it can lead to serious illness or death.

There are two types of enzymes which are particularly important to our health, the digestive and antioxidant enzymes. Digestive enzymes help to break down food, enabling our body to absorb the nutrients necessary to sustain life. Antioxidant enzymes help to protect the body from attack by free radicals. Free radicals are linked to degenerative diseases such as aging, cancer, heart disease and other major illnesses.

There are three further categories for digestive enzymes: amylase, protease and lipase. Saliva, pancreatic and intestinal secretions contain amylases. These work to break down sugars or carbohydrates. There are different types of amylase which break down different types of sugar. For example, there is lactase which helps to break down lactose while sucrase helps to break down sucrose. Stomach acid as well as pancreatic and intestinal secretions contain proteases which help to break proteins down into amino acids. Lipases are found within pancreatic and intestinal secretions which help to digest fat.

Superoxide dismutase or SOD is the most important antioxidant enzymes in our body along with catalase. SOD helps to breakdown superoxide into hydrogen peroxide while catalase helps to breakdown hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. SOD, catalase and other antioxidant enzymes are more powerful free radical scavengers than Vitamin C and E since they won�t turn into free radicals themselves while performing their functions.

Our body naturally synthesizes both digestive and antioxidant enzymes. You can find these enzymes in a variety of foods such as fruits, vegetables, sprouts and fat containing foods. Although enzymes are sensitive to heat and therefore are destroyed by cooking. Several studies have shown that our body�s ability to produce these enzymes decreases as we age. This is why enzyme supplements can help the elderly or those who eat mostly cooked food to assimilate more nutrients from their foods and protect them against free radical damage.

Remember to read the label carefully when purchasing enzyme supplements. First consider the source of the enzymes; whether they are plant-based, animal-based or extracted from microbes. Vegetarians want to find enzymes that are extracted from a plant or microbial source in a vegetarian capsule. Next you want to consider whether the enzyme supplement is made up of a single enzyme or a mixture of enzymes. Single enzyme supplements like bromelain can also be used for other purposes such as anti-inflammatory. If you need the enzymes for a digestive aid then it is better to use a mixture of enzymes including amylase, protease, and lipase which can help break down starch, protein and fat. Also having a mixture of antioxidant enzymes such as SOD and catalase can give you better benefits than a single enzyme.
Learn more on enzymes at Weight Loss Wand



To find other free health content see e-healtharticles.com
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Does Exercise Really Keep Us Healthy?

Exercise has long been touted as the panacea for everything that ails you. For better health, simply walk for 20 or 30 minutes a day, boosters say — and you don’t even have to do it all at once. Count a few minutes here and a few there, and just add them up. Or wear a pedometer and keep track of your steps. However you manage it, you will lose weight, get your blood pressure under control and reduce your risk of osteoporosis . If only it were so simple. While exercise has undeniable benefits, many, if not most, of its powers have been oversold. Sure, it can be fun. It can make you feel energized. And it may lift your mood. But before you turn to a fitness program as the solution to your particular health or weight concern, consider what science has found. Moderate exercise, such as walking, can reduce the risk of diabetes in obese and sedentary people whose blood sugar is starting to rise. That outcome was shown in a large federal study in which participants were randomly assigned ...
1 comment
Read more

8 Perfect Sleep-Better Foods

Forget what your mom told you: A glass of warm milk before bed might actually keep you up, rather than lull you to sleep . See, the protein in the milk will boost alertness--and unless it's skim, the fat will slow your digestion, making your rest more fitful. Not exactly the best shut-eye remedy. (Sorry, mom.) Nothing makes it harder to fall asleep than knowing how important it is to fall asleep. So when the pressure's on, try chowing down on one of these snacks before bedtime to ensure some serious shut-eye; they're all hand-picked and approved by the Eat This, Not That! nutrition team. These 8 sleep-better foods and drinks have been shown to induce feel-good relaxation chemicals, calming your nerves and slowing your racing brain. You can thank us ... tomorrow morning--after a long, restful night. NONFAT POPCORNPop a bag half an hour before bedtime: The carbs will induce your body to create serotonin, a neurochemical that makes you feel relaxed. Skipping the butter-fat w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Future foods will cater to personal health

Wouldn't it be great if you knew which foods you should be eating based on your own personal health profile? What's for dinner? In the future, you should know exactly what's best for your body, experts say. We know that certain foods are bad for people with particular conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. Advising a generally healthy person on foods that will prevent future disease, on the other hand, is far more complicated, and represents one of the challenges for scientists working in food science. In the future, people should be able to tailor their diets and supplements to their particular biochemistry, said experts presenting at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science this week. Right now the food industry is centered on products, said J. Bruce German, professor and food chemist at the University of California, Davis. That means profits depend on lowering the cost of production and making things cheaper....
Post a Comment
Read more