Latest / The Shivan Show with Shivan Sarna / Do Digestive Enzymes Really Work? Why Most Fall Short | Steven Wright

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Do Digestive Enzymes Really Work? Why Most Fall Short | Steven Wright · The Shivan Show with Shivan Sarna

• 0:00
  Over the years, and actually every month, I host a lot of webinars and masterclasses.
• 0:04
  Some of those conversations need a bigger audience.
• 0:08
  This is one of them.
• 0:09
  Stephen Wright is my dear friend.
• 0:11
  He's co-founder of Healthy Gut.
• 0:13
  He's here to talk about digestive enzymes.
• 0:16
  This is one of the most underutilized tools when it comes to good digestive health.
• 0:21
  And as you get older, your digestive enzymes naturally diminish.
• 0:25
  If you've tried diet after diet and your list of safe foods keeps getting shorter and shorter, he makes a case that it might not be the food's fault.
• 0:32
  It might be what your body is actually breaking down.
• 0:35
  And this is where digestive enzymes, good ones, come in.
• 0:38
  You'll learn why enzymes so often let people down, what to look for on a label, and how to think about dosing.
• 0:44
  Here's Steven.
• 0:45
  All right, let's start with a warning.
• 0:47
  The rabbit hole on digestive enzymes is deep.
• 0:50
  And at the end of it or during it, you may question some truths that you hold dear or some dogma that you believe in.
• 0:57
  I hope you'll come to realize that food matters.
• 0:59
  However, what you digest matters just as much.
• 1:03
  Also, I believe you'll come to matter or you'll come to realize that probiotics matter, but digestive enzymes probably matter even more.
• 1:10
  And in the end, when we get through some of the complexities, I think there's freedom for you.
• 1:15
  There's results and probably just an overall easier life, especially when it comes to gut health and food.
• 1:22
  All right.
• 1:22
  So who am I?
• 1:23
  I'm Stephen Wright.
• 1:24
  I'm a health engineer.
• 1:25
  If you have never heard me talk or you don't know anything about me, I trained at the Kalish Functional Medicine Institute for a while.
• 1:31
  We had a consulting practice where I saw over 350 tough cases.
• 1:36
  I've been sick on and off my entire life and battled a bunch of issues, including a bunch of GI related issues, which has cost, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
• 1:46
  I've been researching and writing about gut health since 2009, specifically focused on nutrition, supplementation, advanced lab testing, and the like.
• 1:55
  And in the recent years, the last four years, our company, Healthy Gut, has served over 14,000 customers, 150-plus top doctors, and I have over 2 million views on the socials and everything.
• 2:08
  Let's start with an idea here.
• 2:10
  What if it's not the food's fault?
• 2:13
  Let me know if you resonate with any of this, because this is what happened for me.
• 2:18
  And this is what I see a lot of people do.
• 2:20
  You end up jumping from healing diet to healing diet, especially over the years.
• 2:25
  You end up excluding more and more foods each year.
• 2:27
  When it comes time to add foods back in, you struggle.
• 2:29
  You end up jumping from healing diet to healing diet, especially over the years.
• 2:31
  And often you feel like you're doing everything right, yet you still might have some low energy digestion issues with foods.
• 2:39
  Maybe you can't gain muscle or get fully healthy.
• 2:41
  And if those aren't enough, maybe you also have recurrent infections like SIBO or Candida.
• 2:47
  If this is the case, the first thing I just want to set the table on is potentially the
• 2:54
  For someone who matches any of these criteria, it might not be the food.
• 2:59
  It might not be the diet's fault.
• 3:00
  It might not be that special type of food, whether it's a nightshade or a histamine producing food.
• 3:07
  I want to just call out the fact that maybe you've already heard of digestive enzymes and maybe you've been let down by them.
• 3:13
  The use of digestive enzymes and what I'm about to walk you through is the reason why they're literally taught in every single healthcare practitioner program out there.
• 3:23
  From health coaching to nutritionists to chiropractors to Western medical MDs, even gastroenterologists use digestive enzymes.
• 3:34
  So digestive enzymes are known to be critical for our health.
• 3:39
  And yet, unfortunately, they have a bad rap from patients and practitioners, and they've earned that because oftentimes they just don't work in real life.
• 3:48
  And that's what I want to dive into today.
• 3:51
  Some new science, some new ideas around why you might be wanting to try digestive enzymes again and which one's the right one for you and how to dose it.
• 4:00
  Let's start with the basics.
• 4:02
  What are enzymes?
• 4:03
  Enzymes are made by every living cell and their goal or their job is to speed up the reactions that happen.
• 4:11
  These are chemical reactions and they're speeding them up.
• 4:13
  Now, each enzyme has specific functions it's allowed to do.
• 4:18
  So we need all kinds of them, thousands and thousands of them.
• 4:22
  There are metabolic or systemic enzymes which are found in the cells and around the body.
• 4:28
  And then there's digestive enzymes.
• 4:30
  And digestive enzymes break down whole foods into absorbable structures.
• 4:34
  Now, there are some enzymes like proteases, which are found in digestion but also used systemically inside the body.
• 4:42
  And so oftentimes, people will call these enzymes proteolyic enzymes if they're taking a protease without food.
• 4:52
  So in general, what I want to say here is that we have enzymes inside of our cells.
• 4:56
  They keep us alive every single day.
• 4:58
  When it comes to supplemental enzymes, if you take enzymes with food, typically that's a digestive enzyme.
• 5:05
  If you take enzymes away from food, you're going to be using them systemically.
• 5:09
  or proteolyically.
• 5:11
  So since we're diving into digestive enzymes today and not systemic enzymes, let's go into the four major types.
• 5:18
  So there's four categories, if you will, or four areas.
• 5:22
  The mouth where we have salivary amylase, which is a carbohydrate digesting enzyme.
• 5:27
  There's also microbiome enzymes in there.
• 5:30
  There's the stomach in the primary enzyme there is pepsin for protein.
• 5:34
  And then the small intestine, we have pancreatic enzymes as well as brush border enzymes.
• 5:39
  And then in the large intestine, we have more microbiome enzymes.
• 5:43
  And microbiome enzymes, we'll talk about them in a second, but they're really cool and gaining a lot of interesting new traction.
• 5:50
  You may be wondering, just like myself, how do enzymes like literally work?
• 5:54
  Like how does, why would they matter to me?
• 5:56
  So this is fat.
• 5:58
  Fat is the easiest digestion process that we have.
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  Protein is the next and carbohydrate is the hardest.
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  So the fat needs to mix with bile.
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  Bile basically spits.
• 6:09
  splits up or emulsifies the fat molecules into these littler molecules.
• 6:15
  And then the lipase comes in and it, it cleaves off the, the back or the, the, the setup here, the backbone, the glycerol, and then you have fatty acids and glycerol.
• 6:24
  So that's, that's how lipase works.
• 6:26
  And that's why bile is extremely important for digestion as well.
• 6:31
  Protein digestion and proteases are the,
• 6:35
  The next easiest to understand, this is kind of like a 3D structure of what a folded, chewed protein, like a piece of steak or chicken or a bean or a legume.
• 6:45
  Now, when it goes into the stomach, the hydrochloric acid denatures it.
• 6:50
  Now, denatures is basically another word for unfolding it.
• 6:53
  So that's why you can see it's sort of unfolded into squiggly lines that are more able to be accessed.
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  The pepsin comes in and it starts to break up these squiggly lines as it leaves the stomach and then it goes into the small intestine.
• 7:08
  Now in the small intestine is where we get the pancreatic enzymes.
• 7:12
  These are trypsin, chemotrypsin, and other proteases.
• 7:15
  And they begin to take these bigger chunks of the squiggly lines and they turn them into smaller and smaller pieces.
• 7:21
  So smaller and smaller peptides basically.
• 7:24
  So these are typically considered amino acid structures.
• 7:28
  This might be, but these are just giant big chunks of protein.
• 7:32
  And then we got to get them all the way down to little peptides that can actually go across the bloodstream into the body.
• 7:38
  So carbohydrate digestion is even more complex.
• 7:42
  This also includes any sort of fiber slash plant material falls into this bucket.
• 7:47
  So in the mouth, we have salivary amylase.
• 7:50
  So as you're chewing, this is one of the reasons why chewing is so important, as well as smelling your food can actually begin to stimulate this amylase production and release.
• 7:59
  So the amylase starts working on the carbohydrates in the mouth.
• 8:03
  It goes down into the stomach.
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  The stomach is a different pH.
• 8:07
  And so the amylase kind of gets turned off for a little while.
• 8:12
  And then at the top of the small intestine, the pancreas releases a bunch of amylase.
• 8:17
  And that begins to work on the same sort of process we've seen in all the other molecules.
• 8:22
  These big, long chains, polysaccharides would be another way to say this.
• 8:27
  And it's chopping these up into smaller and smaller chains.
• 8:30
  So the pancreatic amylase and the salivary amylase are working to
• 8:34
  to chop these up into smaller bits.
• 8:37
  And then the cosal alpha glycodesis are your brush border enzymes.
• 8:42
  And so these are things like lactase, invertase, maltase.
• 8:46
  And these brush border enzymes in the small intestine break these dipeptides usually.
• 8:53
  So poly meaning long chain multidisciplinary.
• 8:56
  dipeptide meaning two or tripeptide would be here, but most of the brush water enzymes are on dipeptide usage.
• 9:04
  And then it gets it down into things like glucose that can be drawn right into the body.
• 9:09
  Anything that is not broken down continues down the digestive tract into the bottom of the small intestine and into the large intestine, the colon, where the microbiome enzymes begin to work on it.
• 9:22
  Let's look at this in a different way.
• 9:23
  I just think it really helps to visualize this stuff because it's a deep rabbit hole and it's kind of complex, but when it clicks for people, it's so powerful.
• 9:33
  And it can help you figure out what you're reacting to, what you need more of, and how to live an easier and simpler life.
• 9:39
  So again, carbohydrates, we have the amylase here, nothing really happens to the stomach.
• 9:44
  Then we have the pancreatic amylase that dumps in.
• 9:46
  We have disaccharides, which are the brush water enzymes.
• 9:50
  And then they're breaking that down in the small intestine into monosaccharides, which are absorbed.
• 9:55
  The lipids or the fats are just hanging out, hanging out, hanging out until they hit the small intestine.
• 10:02
  Then bile salts begin to turn them into smaller droplets.
• 10:05
  Lipase breaks them down and then we absorb them.
• 10:09
  proteins are hanging out till they hit the stomach.
• 10:12
  Then the HCL denatures them or unfolds them.
• 10:16
  Pepsin begins to cleave them into these polypeptides.
• 10:20
  Then we have pancreatic proteases that come in and they turn these polypeptides, many chains of peptides into single chains of peptides.
• 10:29
  And then we have other pepsidases that turn them into amino acids, which we can then absorb.
• 10:36
  Okay, we're going to continue to get personal.
• 10:38
  Have you ever been bloated?
• 10:40
  Like really bloated?
• 10:41
  Have you ever had diarrhea or constipation?
• 10:43
  Or maybe have a combination of all of it?
• 10:45
  Maybe you have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
• 10:49
  I have answers for you.
• 10:50
  The ones that I couldn't find for so many years.
• 10:54
  The website, my website, SIBOSOS.com, has a ton of free information, some premium courses you can take, small group coaching, and discounts on supplements and other health products.
• 11:06
  What changed everything for me was working with Dr. Allison Seebecker, and she is involved in so many of these projects.
• 11:13
  She is a true and legitimate SIBO expert.
• 11:16
  So if you'd like to work with us, you'd like to find out more, even just want to just take a little look and see if maybe that might be you, then check it out.
• 11:24
  You'll see the links in the description, and I hope you don't have SIBO, but if you do, I'm glad we found each other.
• 11:31
  At the end of the small intestine is where the microbiome starts.
• 11:35
  About 10% to 20% of your microbiome is in the upper small intestine.
• 11:42
  And then the upper large intestine is where the majority of your microbiome is.
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  And whatever doesn't get better.
• 11:49
  broken down and absorbed at this point is going down into the large intestine where our microbiome is.
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  And what's crazy is that our microbiome, it's so symbiotic to us.
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  We're aware now that it's so beneficial for so many areas.
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  It's literally like another organ.
• 12:07
  Well, the species in our microbiome are able to secrete their own enzymes in order to make use of the plant matter.
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  Usually it's almost always plant matter, although there is usually a little residual protein and fat that make it down here.
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  But the majority of it is this fermentable matter from some type of plant usually.
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  And so these species actually make enzymes to break that down further into more usable
• 12:37
  uh, molecules basically for the rest of the microbiome.
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  If they don't break it down, it tends to ferment and it tends to cause dysbiosis and it grows species that we don't want.
• 12:50
  So many of you have probably heard of lactobacillus.
• 12:53
  Lactobacillus are a big genius of, of, it's a big part of our gut.
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  Basically it's a big important keystone species.
• 13:01
  Um, sometimes they're kind of demonized.
• 13:03
  Sometimes they're, they're like put on a pedestal in general.
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  We need them.
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  We just don't need a ton of them.
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  They're like everything else in the microbiome community.
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  Everybody needs to live in harmony.
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  People who have gas, there are plenty of studies that show if you take a enzyme called alpha galactidase and the people who really.
• 13:22
  Um,
• 13:22
  commercialized this, the first, at first, and most people have heard of it, is beano.
• 13:27
  So beano is this enzyme right here that the lactobacillus species make.
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  And it's really good at reducing gas, it's reducing bloating, things like that, especially when it comes to things like beans and cruciferous vegetables.
• 13:42
  Xylanase is also made by lactobacillus.
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  And xylanase is really good at
• 13:52
  colorful parts of the plant.
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  If you have not enough xylanase, sometimes those polyphenols can cause phenol intolerance.
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  And so some people are helped by xylanase if they have salicylate or phenol related issues.
• 14:09
  Cellulase is the big workhorse down here.
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  And cellulase is like a generalized enzyme that breaks down the plant matter into smaller chunks of plant matter.
• 14:20
  And in general, more cellulase equals less gas.
• 14:24
  There's bacillus subtilis and lactobacillus that also make phytase.
• 14:30
  Phytase is a phytic acid breaking down enzyme.
• 14:33
  Phytic acid you may have heard of.
• 14:35
  There are entire diets based around the idea that you should not consume phytic acid from seeds or nuts or beans or the part of whole grains, things like that.
• 14:45
  Well, our body is not that fragile.
• 14:48
  We are built with all these redundant mechanisms to take care of it.
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  And so phytase breaks down phytic acid and makes it so it's not harmful.
• 14:56
  If you don't have these bugs and you don't have enough phytase, then you may have more issues.
• 15:01
  Okay.
• 15:01
  So that's sort of a little bit about where everything is at and the categories of enzymes.
• 15:06
  Okay.
• 15:07
  You might be asking the question, how come these enzymes don't eat us from the inside out?
• 15:13
  Like enzymes are what are decaying the tree in the woods.
• 15:16
  The fungi in the wood are decaying the tree.
• 15:18
  Like enzymes are everywhere.
• 15:20
  How come they don't eat our pancreas up or they don't eat our small intestines up or our stomach or something like that?
• 15:26
  And there's three generalized ways in which enzymes are controlled by nature as well as our body.
• 15:33
  The first is cofactors.
• 15:35
  Zymogens are inactivated types of enzymes.
• 15:39
  And then apoenzymes are enzymes without enough cofactors.
• 15:42
  Cofactors are typically minerals, but they can be other organic materials.
• 15:46
  There is a temperature range that enzymes are best used in, and then a pH range in which activity is sort of constrained by.
• 15:54
  Let's go a little bit deeper.
• 15:56
  Cofactors give enzymes energy to work.
• 15:59
  This is a protease.
• 16:00
  We have to break the protein, the peptide bonds, excuse me, into amino acids.
• 16:05
  So we're going to need a protease enzyme.
• 16:08
  This is an inactivated enzyme.
• 16:10
  Now, this could be a zymogen or it's probably an, well, it has to be an apoenzyme.
• 16:15
  Sorry.
• 16:15
  An apoenzyme is the enzyme without the mineral.
• 16:19
  or the cofactor in this case.
• 16:20
  So the first it mixes with the cofactor, it creates a holo enzyme or an activated whole enzyme.
• 16:28
  Then it runs into the peptide bond and it interacts with it over here, breaks it apart into a different byproduct.
• 16:38
  And now you have a different byproduct, an amino acid, and then you have the free enzyme.
• 16:43
  and it can go back and do more work.
• 16:45
  Now, without this cofactor here, the enzyme can maybe do part of this reaction or can do it really slowly, or it may not do it at all.
• 16:55
  It really depends on the different enzyme, and they're all...
• 16:59
  It's all very convoluted, but in general, you need a cofactor for every enzymatic reaction.
• 17:06
  The more cofactors you have, generally, the more efficient, faster, and more powerful the reaction that you're trying to get will happen.
• 17:16
  Okay, so this is pancreatin.
• 17:18
  Now, pancreatin, you may have heard of.
• 17:20
  Pancreatin is the name of basically an extract.
• 17:25
  In this case, the number two here is a beef extract.
• 17:28
  The number one is a pork extract.
• 17:31
  This is the pancreatic enzymes that,
• 17:34
  especially in this case, it's protease.
• 17:36
  A pancreatin is typically made up of protease, lipase, and amylase from our pancreas.
• 17:42
  If it's called pancreatin on a supplement label, that means it was an extract from a pig or a cow.
• 17:48
  And as you can see here, if you were going to take a pancreatin supplement,
• 17:53
  you would always wanna take the pig supplement because the pig supplement is, 6,000 is the level of activity and activity means the ability to degrade this amount of protein.
• 18:06
  So in other words, if the pH is a seven, the beef pancreatin can break down about 6,000 units of protein.
• 18:13
  If the pH is a seven, the pig version of pancreatin can break down 9,000.
• 18:20
  So that's really important because, number one, if you're going to use these types of supplements, you always want to take the pig so it's stronger.
• 18:27
  But number two, the pH really matters when it comes to the enzymes that are produced in mammals.
• 18:36
  So this is true for humans.
• 18:38
  Our pancreatic enzymes work best between six and eight as well.
• 18:43
  And so do pig and cow.
• 18:45
  Remember, stomach acid and what's happening in the stomach is going to be 1.5 to 2.
• 18:49
  And then when we dump into the small intestine, if the acid worked, if everything worked properly, the bicarbonate and the bile salts are going to raise this pH up to around a seven, which is why the activity peaks around a seven.
• 19:04
  If your acid level in your stomach are off and you either make too much bicarbonate or too little bicarbonate and you overshoot this window of range, the enzymes begin to work way less efficiently.
• 19:15
  So this is really important just for safety measures inside of our own body in a way.
• 19:20
  But also it's important to know that that's why stomach acid is so important to enzyme production or enzyme usage.
• 19:28
  All right, so this is a fungal enzyme, it's a fungal protease.
• 19:32
  And as you can see here, fungal proteases act almost, well, they're all different.
• 19:37
  Every single fungal protease has different pH curves and temperature curves.
• 19:42
  So you can see here that a fungal protease starts to really ramp up around a 4.5.
• 19:49
  So its activity is already kicking butt at the optimal pH at a five already.
• 19:56
  It's doing really well.
• 19:58
  and then it's gonna stop around, or it's gonna start to peak around a nine and come back down to an 11.
• 20:03
  Now, some proteases go down to two, some fungal proteases go down to two, they look like a curve like this.
• 20:09
  Some are good from like eight to 11.
• 20:11
  They all have different ranges, which is why we'll talk in a minute why you'll want a blend of fungal proteases so that you can cover this entire range because you have no idea
• 20:21
  what the pH inside your body is.
• 20:22
  And if you're dealing with some sort of GI issue, some sort of chronic condition or aging, your pH may not be optimal.
• 20:30
  And so we want to make products and you want to take products that work no matter what.
• 20:34
  Now, this is temperature gradient.
• 20:36
  You can see here that the temperature falls off at 70 degrees Celsius.
• 20:40
  Of course, that's, you know, that's pretty hot.
• 20:42
  It's much hotter than the human body, but it's just good to know that
• 20:46
  Temperature does matter for the activity amount.
• 20:49
  Again, the left side here is the amount of activity, the ability to break down a given amount of protein.
• 20:57
  So temperature and pH really matter, even fungal enzymes.
• 21:01
  And fungal will mean any sort of vegan or vegetarian enzyme.
• 21:06
  So I guess right now is a great time to mention fungal enzymes.
• 21:10
  And fungal enzymes come from the fungus that they're named after.
• 21:15
  And what happens is they put this crazy controlled set of conditions with like cellulose and basically they need something to break down.
• 21:25
  The fungus needs something to break down and then they have humidity and they have temperature.
• 21:30
  And depending on how they control all these things,
• 21:33
  the fungus will release different types and different strengths of proteases based on the temperature and the pH to try to break down that cellulose.
• 21:42
  When that happens, when that release of enzymes happens, the companies then spin everything up several times.
• 21:49
  They centrifuge it.
• 21:50
  They run it through screens.
• 21:51
  They do all kinds of filtrations so that the biomass and the fungal parts, the fungi, end up in certain areas of the plant
• 22:00
  And then the enzymes, because they're much smaller and much lighter and have different properties, they can actually screen those out in a different direction.
• 22:07
  And so there's no like mycotoxins or fungus in the actual enzymes.
• 22:14
  You are not what you eat.
• 22:15
  You're what you actually break down and what you absorb.
• 22:18
  And then you are what your microbiome or your microbes eat.
• 22:22
  What I really want you to begin to think about is while food matters, and I don't want you eating like a really crappy diet full of...
• 22:30
  processed foods and chemicals and food additives.
• 22:33
  However, even the best diet in the world full of like organic salmon and broccoli or whatever while caught stuff, you can still end up malnourished, inflamed and have bad bugs eating your food.
• 22:48
  And here's how that works.
• 22:49
  Your microbes can be better fed than you are if your enzymes don't break down the food in the right areas.
• 22:56
  And the ways you might know about this is that you have these recurrent infections like SIBO and candida, where essentially you're not breaking your food down and absorbing it fast.
• 23:07
  fast enough.
• 23:07
  And so you're leaving food out in the wild.
• 23:10
  And when you leave food out in the wild, whether it's out in front of your house or your apartment or inside of your gut, nature will respond.
• 23:18
  Any sort of food causes a bloom of life.
• 23:23
  And so if one of the ways to combat recurrent infections and to keep a proper healthy microbiome is don't feed it fuel to become dysbiotic.
• 23:34
  Don't take away the fuel that it needs to overgrow.
• 23:39
  And so here's what I mean.
• 23:41
  This is sort of like a chart.
• 23:43
  And this is from the Bariatric Institute, National Bariatric Institute.
• 23:48
  This is a chart top to bottom measured in feet of kind of where things are absorbed.
• 23:54
  So in a gastric bypass, this orange area is cut out.
• 23:58
  We don't need to focus on that, but what's really interesting is you can see here that certain elements like iodine and fluoride and copper are absorbed in the stomach.
• 24:07
  So is alcohol, so is water, some supplements, molybendium.
• 24:11
  The duodenum, the top of the small intestine is only about a foot.
• 24:17
  And in that first foot, the total feet here is usually like 22 to 28 feet, depending on the person.
• 24:26
  In the duodenum, look at all these vitamins and minerals that you're trying to... Hopefully is already liberated or being liberated.
• 24:33
  And then you're taking them up.
• 24:35
  So we got...
• 24:36
  all kinds of vitamins and nutrients.
• 24:38
  And then right past that, at the bottom of the duodenum, we have fats.
• 24:42
  We have those monosaccharides, which are the glucose, things like that, amino acids, peptides.
• 24:47
  And then we have all these vitamins and minerals here.
• 24:50
  Then you get into the middle of the small intestine, the jejunum, which is about eight feet long.
• 24:55
  So approximately eight feet
• 24:58
  times longer than the duodenum.
• 24:59
  So eight times the amount of possibility to absorb nutrients as well as feed the wrong bugs.
• 25:07
  You have more monosaccharides, more fats, more proteins.
• 25:10
  And then the ileum is the bottom of the small intestine.
• 25:13
  And this is about 12 feet.
• 25:14
  So now we're 12 feet.
• 25:15
  So 12 times the duodenum.
• 25:18
  about 50% larger or longer, excuse me, not larger than the jejunum.
• 25:22
  And then you have some more nutrients right here, magnesium, K, D, B12, things like that.
• 25:27
  And then remember, this right here is where the microbiome is.
• 25:31
  It's starting right here.
• 25:32
  And so bile salts are reabsorbed.
• 25:35
  and then recirculated.
• 25:37
  And the microbiome is beginning to bloom right here.
• 25:40
  And then the microbiome enzymes are kicking off.
• 25:43
  They liberate more things, right?
• 25:45
  They liberate more nutrients, biotin, vitamin K2, some minerals here.
• 25:50
  They also create short-chain fatty acids, which are absorbed and they go systemic.
• 25:54
  If you don't have the enzyme release and the enzyme activity to break your food down in the time required to travel the distance, if you miss...
• 26:04
  the breakdown in duodenum, you put a bunch of pressure on the body to try to absorb this stuff later.
• 26:10
  And it becomes very hard because you don't have as much receptors or possibilities.
• 26:14
  Then you also create this bloom of food in the ileum, the jejunum, which is typically where your SIBO or your candida would be hanging out.
• 26:25
  And so less enzymes are going to mean less nutrients absorbed and also more fuel for overgrowth.
• 26:33
  So I would wager, and we can't necessarily test for this yet, but if you have microbiome dysbiosis, such as low lactobacillus numbers, you will likely have, like I don't know of another way, you would get your microbiome enzymes.
• 26:46
  So you'll have low microbial enzymes.
• 26:49
  If you have small intestinal inflammation,
• 26:51
  such as villous atrophy from celiac disease, you're going to have low brush border enzyme.
• 26:56
  Or if you have non-celiac gluten sensitivity and you just have like this chronic inflammation, but you don't have full celiac disease, you're going to have low brush border enzymes.
• 27:06
  If you have improper stomach acid, you're going to trigger improper release of pancreatic enzymes and improper acidity or pH effects.
• 27:15
  activity of those enzymes from the pancreas.
• 27:18
  You could also have a sluggish or blocked pancreas.
• 27:20
  You could be aging just as our ovaries and our testes shut down.
• 27:25
  So do our digestive organs.
• 27:27
  We make less enzymes over time.
• 27:30
  You could be stressed with poor parasympathetic tone or bagel tone, and then you will make less enzymes.
• 27:35
  Or you could just be battling various chronic health conditions, whether they're gut related or not gut related and have low enzyme release or low
• 27:44
  once the release happens.
• 27:46
  So what does it feel like to have low enzyme?
• 27:49
  You again, probably have chronic health conditions.
• 27:51
  You probably have gut problems.
• 27:52
  You don't have to have all of these, but you could have one or more.
• 27:56
  Low energy is often, you know, because you're not basically absorbing your protein and your glucose like you should.
• 28:02
  You have low nutrient status if you do a micronutrient panel, and then food sensitivities are typical.
• 28:08
  What can you do?
• 28:09
  Well, if you want proper enzyme production release activity inside of your own body, you can do a few things.
• 28:17
  Number one, you can smell your food.
• 28:19
  Make sure to actually inhale through the nose when you're eating or right before you eat.
• 28:24
  This begins a cascade of signals telling your body to prepare and release these enzymes.
• 28:30
  Number two, chew your food.
• 28:32
  The longer you chew your food, sure, you make it into smaller bite-sized pieces, but you also give the amylase more time to work
• 28:40
  before it descends into your stomach, which has a different pH, and that stronger pH inactivates it.
• 28:46
  You can make sure you have proper stomach acid.
• 28:49
  If you don't have proper strong stomach acid, the pepsin is not likely to be released or activated.
• 28:54
  And then when you dump the food from your stomach into your small intestine, it'll be at too high of a pH, and the bicarbonate will raise it into a pH window that makes it harder for the pancreatic enzymes to do their activity and their work.
• 29:10
  You could take plenty of minerals.
• 29:12
  Minerals are typically the cofactors needed for digestive enzymes.
• 29:16
  So if you have low micronutrient status or low mineral status, that's going to harm your capacity to give cofactors to your enzymes.
• 29:24
  And then you can also properly supplement with enzymes.
• 29:28
  So let's talk more about these things.
• 29:30
  All right.
• 29:31
  So how would you choose an enzyme?
• 29:32
  There's a thousand different enzymes on the market.
• 29:36
  Knowing what you've heard today, the reason why enzymes fall out of favor and people start to get really excited about probiotics or prebiotics or whatever it might be is because there's a whole bunch of enzymes that are not worth your money.
• 29:50
  They're not worth your time and they have not taken in anatomy and science to building their product.
• 29:56
  The criteria I would propose for you choosing an enzyme is you'd want all three categories of enzymes.
• 30:02
  You want microbiome enzymes, you want
• 30:04
  brush border enzymes, and then you want pancreatic enzymes.
• 30:07
  If it doesn't have all three, you could have an issue in one of those areas, take an enzyme that doesn't have one, and then still have gas, bloating, nutrient absorption issues.
• 30:18
  And so the problem is we don't have good testing.
• 30:21
  We don't have granular enough testing to be able to run a simple panel on you
• 30:27
  and know that you have low microbiome enzymes, or know that you have low pancreatic enzymes or low brush border enzymes.
• 30:33
  There are markers like elastase that you can get on a stool test.
• 30:37
  If that's low, that suggests you have low pancreatic enzymes.
• 30:41
  However, you...
• 30:42
  there's no test that I'm aware of for brush water or microbiome enzymes.
• 30:46
  So since we don't know what is going on inside your body, you might as well take them because there's no harm in taking them.
• 30:53
  It doesn't shut off internal production.
• 30:56
  Whatever you don't use, you either eliminate or recirculate and it gets used later.
• 31:00
  And there's no downstream effects.
• 31:02
  There's no issues long-term that anybody's found with enzyme usage.
• 31:06
  So you might as well get the full picture of categories
• 31:11
  That way you don't accidentally supplement with something that you think is working, but it's not working.
• 31:16
  And I think that's probably like the number one error in enzyme usage in healthcare provider offices, as well as in patient populations.
• 31:24
  Now, number two is you want a broad pH range of enzymes.
• 31:28
  Remember, if it's a pancreatin or a animal extract, you want a pig to begin with.
• 31:34
  But if it's a pig or a cow, it only works between say like,
• 31:38
  I don't know.
• 31:38
  It works best between five and eight or so on the pH window.
• 31:43
  Outside of those ranges, it doesn't do a lot.
• 31:45
  So the best ones, in my opinion, are fungal based enzymes because we can stack them together to create a really wide pH window that you'll see in the gut, everything from a two to an 11.
• 31:57
  Now you want to find products that are like that.
• 31:59
  Next, you wanna make sure that that product contains cofactors.
• 32:02
  Why would you bet that you have the cofactors necessary for the enzymes to work?
• 32:06
  You've done everything so far to try to make the right food choices, to feel as good as you can, and then to take a product that doesn't include more cofactors to make sure these enzymes can actually do their work, I think it's just a serious oversight.
• 32:19
  Next, if the supplement does not show milligram units on the supplement facts label, you should definitely not use it.
• 32:27
  It is not coming from a company that knows enzymes and knows how they work.
• 32:33
  And then lastly, you don't want any unneeded flows, fillers, or extras that may block enzymes or cause any extra reactions.
• 32:41
  So let's dive in and let me show you what I'm talking about.
• 32:44
  This is really nuanced and it really sucks from a consumer standpoint.
• 32:48
  But this is a very popular brand.
• 32:50
  I'm not going to say the brand name.
• 32:52
  But as you can see here, they didn't even decide to trust us with activity units.
• 32:57
  They just put milligrams.
• 32:59
  Now, that's probably because you have to list stuff on a supplement facts panel from the most amount to the least amount.
• 33:06
  So they have the least amount of invertase, which is a brush border enzyme, and the most amount of organic flaxseed, which is really cheap and not an enzyme at all.
• 33:17
  So don't trust any product that does not list ingredients.
• 33:21
  The activity units, this is an activity unit over here.
• 33:24
  This is the unit that measures how much it can break down.
• 33:28
  So this is a different company supplement label.
• 33:31
  Now you can see they've done a really good job.
• 33:34
  They have all kinds of enzymes in here, right?
• 33:36
  They have amylases, bromelain is a pineapple enzyme.
• 33:40
  Bromaline also has a very small window of pH activity.
• 33:43
  Beta-glucanase is more of a brush border.
• 33:45
  We have proteases that are going to work.
• 33:47
  All these proteases here are designed to work across a wide spectrum of pH.
• 33:52
  And they're listing the amounts of the activity.
• 33:56
  Now, these amounts are, many of them are pretty low.
• 34:00
  Some of them are pretty high, like this lipase amount is really decent at 1,000.
• 34:04
  Cellulase is pretty decent at 500.
• 34:06
  Phytase at 10 is pretty decent.
• 34:08
  The biggest issue, though, that I see is that they're putting in maltodextrin.
• 34:12
  They're putting in medium-chain triglycerides.
• 34:14
  So, again, I wouldn't trust a product that are using all these other ingredients to fill the capsule up.
• 34:20
  All right, here's a few more very famous brands.
• 34:24
  I would not take this one on the left.
• 34:25
  Why?
• 34:26
  Why?
• 34:26
  the only brush border enzymes and microbiome enzymes they included was lactase and cellulase.
• 34:32
  So otherwise, all they have is fungal amylases, fungal proteases, and then they have lipase.
• 34:39
  But
• 34:40
  They're missing maltase, invertase.
• 34:43
  They're missing alpha-galactatase.
• 34:45
  They're missing phytase, xylanase.
• 34:47
  They're missing all kinds of microbiome enzymes and all kinds of brush border enzymes.
• 34:51
  So luckily, you know, they listed the units.
• 34:55
  Again, this is a really good amount of cellulase.
• 34:58
  But unfortunately, they also filled it with rice flour, silica, magnesium steroid.
• 35:03
  This brand on the right, now here you can see that they put HCL inside their product.
• 35:09
  I don't love it when they do that because I think you need to be able to tailor your enzymes to your body and to your meals.
• 35:16
  And then they used a mixture of different types of enzymes.
• 35:20
  So this is ox bile.
• 35:21
  This is pancreatin.
• 35:22
  So this had to come from a pig or a cow.
• 35:25
  Now they don't list it.
• 35:26
  They should be listing what this comes from, where it comes from.
• 35:29
  Papaya extract, pineapple extract, again, pepsin.
• 35:32
  Normally this is from a pig.
• 35:34
  The issue is there's no brush water enzymes in here and there's no microbiome enzymes on this one.
• 35:39
  It's nice that they gave you bile.
• 35:40
  It's nice that they gave you HCL.
• 35:41
  But again, you're probably not likely to see great results with this.
• 35:44
  And then they filled it with all this other crap down here, which is really frustrating.
• 35:49
  That's enough of what not to do.
• 35:51
  Here's two brands that I think are doing it correct.
• 35:55
  They're doing it right.
• 35:56
  They have pancreatic enzymes.
• 35:58
  So let's look for the pancreatic enzymes.
• 35:59
  We have amylase, amylase.
• 36:02
  We have protease, protease.
• 36:04
  We have lipase down here, lipase,
• 36:07
  right here.
• 36:08
  Multi-strain blends for pH.
• 36:10
  TheraBlend is a multi-strain, multi-PH blend.
• 36:15
  ActiveBlend is a multi-PH strain blend.
• 36:17
  You get a wide spectrum of coverage.
• 36:19
  I can't say exactly the pH coverage of these brands.
• 36:22
  Where are the brush border enzymes?
• 36:24
  Okay.
• 36:24
  We got lactase.
• 36:26
  Great.
• 36:26
  We got maltase.
• 36:27
  Great.
• 36:28
  We got invertase.
• 36:29
  Great.
• 36:29
  Those are the three most important.
• 36:31
  Sucrase and invertase are the same thing.
• 36:33
  And then maltase.
• 36:34
  Awesome.
• 36:35
  Now microbiome and specialty ones.
• 36:37
  We got pectinase, xylanase, hemicellulase is just another version of cellulase, beta glucanase, and then alpha galactidase, right?
• 36:47
  Same thing over here.
• 36:48
  We got phytase, xylanase.
• 36:51
  Alpha Galacta days.
• 36:52
  And guess what?
• 36:53
  Everybody listed their units, right?
• 36:56
  We got our units, 23,000, 24,000, 120,000, 80,000.
• 37:01
  This is what we want to see.
• 37:03
  We want to see units.
• 37:04
  We want to see blends of each type.
• 37:08
  And then we want to see all three types.
• 37:09
  Now, do they have cofactors?
• 37:12
  Sure enough, they do.
• 37:13
  They have this ATP Pro here with ATP, magcitrate, phytase, and CoQ10.
• 37:19
  Those are some cofactors that are helpful for some of the enzymes, not all of them.
• 37:25
  And then this AES absorption system is full of minerals for cofactors.
• 37:31
  You can see here, this is 25 milligrams of basically cofactor inclusion, 287 milligram of cofactor inclusion.
• 37:39
  So the more cofactor inclusion, the more likely that you're going to have consistency meal to meal, body to body.
• 37:46
  The other thing is no extra ingredients, no extra ingredients, just the capsule, right?
• 37:52
  That's perfect.
• 37:52
  These are what you want to see.
• 37:54
  These are not the only two brands that are doing this, but these are some of the top two trusted brands in the world that are doing it right.
• 38:01
  And this is what you want to see on a digestive enzyme product that you expect to work on.
• 38:06
  when you take it.
• 38:07
  Okay, so how do you want to dose your enzymes?
• 38:09
  Because this is the other big issue I see people do.
• 38:12
  They spend the time, they spend the money to get a really nice enzyme.
• 38:16
  It doesn't work in the first couple of days and then they're pissed, right?
• 38:20
  They're upset.
• 38:21
  It's probably going to end up in the supplement graveyard.
• 38:23
  I want to stop that because the truth is there's no toxicity limit, no known upper limit.
• 38:29
  So you taking four, five, six, seven capsules at a meal of a digestive enzyme for a little while to get yourself out of a health rut or a flare is not a big deal.
• 38:40
  You're not breaking anything inside the body.
• 38:44
  Also, enzymes are not dosed via weight or height.
• 38:48
  This is sometimes used in certain types of supplements and certain types of drugs.
• 38:52
  That's not necessarily true for digestive enzymes.
• 38:55
  It's more about symptoms and outcomes.
• 38:58
  So just know that the supplement facts panel, all those six supplements we just looked at,
• 39:03
  They are first and foremost legal advice.
• 39:06
  Now, I think every company is trying to do their best.
• 39:09
  They're able to put an amount in a capsule that should work for health-related support.
• 39:15
  However, it's not health advice, whatever's on the panel, whatever's in one capsule, nor is it health advice tailored to you, which is why we have to play with our dosages based on symptoms and outcome.
• 39:28
  And do not assume that if you're a woman who's only 100 pounds and who's 5-0, that you need less...
• 39:36
  number of capsules than a man who's 280 pounds and who's six foot two or something.
• 39:42
  It really comes down to what are your symptoms and what are the outcomes?
• 39:46
  Meaning outcomes meaning can you tolerate food?
• 39:48
  How do you feel?
• 39:49
  How are your bowel movements?
• 39:50
  How are your whatever you don't want?
• 39:52
  Is it getting better?
• 39:54
  So please play around with the doses of your enzymes.
• 39:56
  If you don't feel comfortable, work with your healthcare provider.
• 39:59
  they will help you titrate up and down to find your proper amount of enzymes.
• 40:04
  And that could be the biggest breakthrough that you could have from this whole talk.
• 40:07
  So please take this advice and use it with any product you have that's enzyme related.
• 40:12
  The final take-home points here are digestive enzymes, in my opinion, are as important as the food you eat.
• 40:17
  They literally set the table for dysbiosis or microbiome health.
• 40:22
  They literally unlock nutrients from your food, whether it's organic or not.
• 40:27
  And they do allow you to tolerate sketchy foods better.
• 40:30
  it's easy to lose our enzymes, especially as we age, especially if you're 45 and up, it's easy to lose them due to stress, other health issues.
• 40:39
  The majority of enzyme products are not built for real life results.
• 40:43
  So please take a look at the five criteria, take a screenshot of that, go back and make sure that your product from your provider or wherever you're buying from meets that criteria.
• 40:53
  The dose of the enzyme product matters.
• 40:55
  So please play around.
• 40:57
  A lot of people are under dosing what they need to really see effects from enzymes.
• 41:02
  So I hope this talk was helpful.
• 41:04
  I hope it gets you results.
• 41:06
  When you get your enzyme dosing done, like when you get the right product and you get the dose created for you, right?
• 41:13
  you will notice effects in days.
• 41:15
  It will not take months.
• 41:16
  It does not take weeks.
• 41:18
  So if you are taking a product and you start upping the dose and you don't see improvements in things like food tolerance, gas bloating, digestive upset, things like that, then it's likely a product that's not going to work for you or the dose is too low and you have to keep working with your provider to get to the right dose.
• 41:36
  This has been the new science and the new information on digestive enzymes.
• 41:41
  If you have any questions about this stuff, I love this.
• 41:43
  I am passionate.
• 41:44
  I will take digestive enzymes for the rest of my life.
• 41:46
  I believe they're an anti-aging tool to make sure I'm never malnourished from the food.
• 41:51
  And I believe that they're a way to make sure that my microbiome is getting the stuff it's supposed to be getting and not getting too much food and getting too fat and happy down there.
• 42:00
  You can reach out and support at Healthy Gut.
• 42:02
  Follow me at healthygut.com for more information on topics like this.
• 42:06
  All right.
• 42:06
  Thanks.
• 42:07
  So that's a wrap on today's episode.
• 42:09
  Thank you so much for being here.
• 42:10
  It genuinely means everything to me.
• 42:13
  If something in this conversation sparks something for you, share it with a woman or a guy in your life who needs to hear it.
• 42:19
  That's how this show grows.
• 42:21
  That's how we heal the planet together.
• 42:22
  And that's how we really connect.
• 42:24
  For more resources, free tools, and everything we talked about today, head over to SiobhanSarna.com.
• 42:29
  That's S-H-I-V-A-N-S-A-R-N-A.com.
• 42:34
  It's all there waiting for you.
• 42:35
  And until next time, keep asking the questions, keep finding the answers.
• 42:39
  You deserve the full picture and the very best.
• 42:42
  Namaste.