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Enzymes
By
Wayne
Goldin
(as posted to the Wellpet List)
The
tiny and enormous difference between raw and cooked foods
Virtually all chronic degenerative diseases are caused or
aggravated by digestive problems. After the most extensive
study on nutrition ever undertaken by the government, the
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs
concluded in its 1978 report entitled "Diet and Killer
Diseases," that the average American diet is responsible
for the development of chronic degenerative diseases such
as heart disease, atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, stroke,
etc. Many of the most common health complaints revolve around
a 20-foot, mucus-lined tube that directly interfaces us with
our environment. This is no mystery: This is the gastro-intestinal
tract, affectionately abbreviated "GI." The job
of the GI is to alchemically transmute the food we eat into
our flesh, blood, actions, thoughts and feelings... with a
little help from our friends the salivary glands, the pancreas,
the liver, and most importantly RAW FOOD -- all of which provide
(now we're getting to the point)
ENZYMES.
Enzymes are delicate dynamos. Delicate because they are destroyed
by temperatures over 118 degrees (some by as little as 105
degrees), which means that they may not survive even light
steaming. Dynamos because they
are powerful biochemical catalysts; they speed burning or
building reactions in the body according to need. They are
specialized proteins, often with long complicated names ending
in -ase.
The
three primary digestive enzymes are protease, lipase and amylase
which digest, respectively, protein, fat (lipids), and carbohydrates
(which includes sugars). Amylase comes from the salivary glands:
carbohydrates start digesting right in our mouth. Have you
ever chewed a piece of bread or potato for an extra moment
before swallowing, and tasted how sweet it is?
(It is a good idea to chew our foods thoroughly; literally
making juice in our mouths before swallowing.) Lipase is synthesized
principally in the liver and protease comes from the pancreas.
Although
the enzyme-producing organs continue to function over the
entire course of a healthy life, they eventually wear down,
especially with the "standard American diet" (which,
in the naturopathic community, we call SAD.) Dr. Francis M.
Pottenger's nutritional studies have shown that a regular
diet of cooked or canned foods causes the development of chronic
degenerative diseases and premature mortality. Professor Jackson
of the Dept. of Anatomy, University of Minnesota, has shown
that rats fed for 135 days on an 80 percent cooked food diet
resulted in an increase pancreatic weight of 20 to 30 percent.
What this means is that the pancreas is forced to work harder
with a cooked food diet. "Although the body can manufacture
enzymes, the more you use your enzyme potential, the faster
it is going to run out..." wrote Dr. Edward Howell, who
pioneered research in the benefits of food enzymes. A youth
of 18 may produce amylase levels 30 times greater than those
of an 85 year old person.
Enzymes
are what make seeds sprout. Sprouts are, in fact, one of the
richest sources of enzymes. Other excellent sources are papaya,
pineapple and the
aspergillus plant. Science cannot duplicate enzymes, because
they are the stuff of life itself. Only raw food has functional
"live" enzymes. Therefore the liver, pancreas, stomach
and intestines must come to the rescue and
furnish the requisite digestive enzymes to the individual
nourished solely on a cooked food diet.
This
extra activity can be detrimental to health and longevity
because it continually taxes the reserve energy of our organs.
Furthermore, cooked food passes through the digestive tract
more slowly than raw food, tends to ferment, and throws poisons
back into the body. Colon cancer is second only to lung cancer
as a killer in America and is related, in various ways, to
eating enzyme-deficient cooked food. Prolonged intestinal
toxemia may manifest the following symptoms: Fatigue, nervousness,
gasto-intestinal discomfort, recurrent infections, skin eruptions,
hormonal disturbances, headaches, arthritis, sciatica, low
back pain, allergies, asthma, eye, ear, nose and throat disorders,
cardiac irregularities, pathological changes in
the breasts, and so forth. All of these conditions have been
shown to respond to therapy directed to correcting the bowel
toxemia. Of course, it is important to have fiber in the diet
to scrub the colon walls clean, but even more important are
the enzymes which will allow proper digestion and assimilation
of vital nutrients. Cooked food often passes into the bloodstream
as unsplit molecules that are deposited, as waste, in various
parts of the body. If it is a fat molecule we know it as cholesterol
plaque; if calcium, arthritis; if sugar, diabetes. White blood
cell count rises dramatically after ingesting a meal of canned
or cooked foods ("digestive leukocytosis"). Elevated
WBCs are correlated to bacterial infection,
inflammation and depressed immunity. Raw foods do not produce
this reaction. All raw foods contain exactly the right enzymes
required to split every last molecule into the basic building
blocks of metabolism: Amino acids (from
protein), glucose (from complex carbohydrates) and essential
fatty acids (from unsaturated vegetable fats).
You are what you ate: Eat living foods (at least once daily!).
Wayne
Goldin
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