HOW DO DIGESTIVE ENZYMES WORK IN THE STOMACH?
The stomach has two distinct divisions: Fundus (upper part) and Pylorus (lower part). The eaten food remains in the upper part for approximately one hour. This is where predigestion takes place. The fundus is where digestive food enzymes begin to break down the food into carbohydrates, fats and protein.
Raw foods supply their own digestive enzymes, thus saving the stomach from supplying all the enzymes. Cooked foods, which have no enzymes, must wait in the fundus until the stomach supplies the enzymes. Predigestion by food enzymes occurs in every creature on earth. The only exception is the human being on an enzyme free diet.
The upper section has no peristalsis (movement of food), acid, or pepsin and therefore, if enzymes are not provided in the diet, only minimal digestion can occur. The lower stomach (pylorus) performs the second step in digestion, but of protein only. In the lower part of the stomach, pepsin (a powerful digestive enzyme) and hydrochloric acid continue the digestive process.
The predigested food now enters the small intestine. Here, the pancreas and small intestine cells secrete their enzymes to further break down the food into glucose (carbohydrates), fatty acids (fats) and amino acids (proteins) for absorption into the villi (absorption cells in the small intestine).
The human stomach is really two stomachs with separate functions. Our stomachs have been provided with the means of permitting outside enzymes to help with the burdens of digesting food. Thus, we don't have to make all of our own digestive enzymes to digest our food. This will allow us to make more metabolic enzymes as needed and make us more healthy.
When we eat raw foods the enzymes in the food are activated by heat and moisture in the mouth. Once active, these enzymes digest a significant portion of our food and make it small enough to pass through the villi (small projections found in the small intestines) and into the blood.
Metabolic enzymes found in the blood then take the digested 45 known nutrients and build them into muscles, nerves, bones, blood, lungs, and various glands. Every cell in the body depends on certain enzymes. Each enzyme has a specific function in the body which is referred to as enzyme specificity.
A protein digestive enzyme will not digest a fat and a fat enzyme will not digest starch. Enzymes act upon chemicals and change them into another chemical, but remain unchanged themselves. Simply stated our chemicals are changed from their original identity by the enzyme to another chemical with a different identity. Without enzymes nothing in our body would work.
DOES OUR BODY PRODUCE LESS ENZYMES AS WE GET OLDER?
Bartos and Groh (researchers) enlisted 10 young men and 10 old men and used a drug to stimulate the pancreatic juice flow. The juice was then pumped out and tested. It was found that considerably less of the enzyme amylase was present in the pancreatic juices of older men. It was determined that the enzyme deficiency of the older group was due to exhaustion of the cells of the pancreas.
Other research indicates that not only are there fewer enzymes in the pancreas but also in the trillion cells in our body as we age. The pancreas must borrow these entities stored in the cells to make the enzyme complex. This could be a definition of "old age" because old age and debilitated metabolic enzyme activity are synonymous. If we postpone the debilitation of metabolic enzyme activity, then we might delay the aging process and possibly increase the life span to its genetic potential.