Re: digestive enzymes

Thanks very much for your response.

The biggest issue is that the supplemental enzymes shut down the body's own production of those enzymes.

Any idea over what period? I was using digestive enzymes with each meal for three or four months and when I stopped my digestion seemed to continue to work well, not at all impeded.

Everyone is different, but I don't recommend them for more than a few weeks.  Also keep in mind that problems sometimes do not become really evident for long periods of time such as B12 deficiency anemia from a strict vegetarian diet that may not show up for 6 years.  And people do not always associate their health issues with what they are doing.  For instance when people use alkalinizers to reduce heartburn not realizing they are making the problem worse.  Or how people take steroidal medications for inflammatory or autoimmune conditions not realizing again that the steroids make these conditions worse.

A second problem is if the enzymes contain cellulase or hemicellulase.

I don't expect to have a problem with the (tiny?) increase of monosaccharide metabolites. I can't imagine my cellulose digestion increasing my sugar digestion by a substantial amount.

From what I was told by an enzyme manufacturer is that enzymes are catalytic.  So these particular enzymes can produce more than a little sugar with a meal.  In addition, most enzyme supplements also contain amylase, which further increases sugar production.  This would be more of an issue for someone with diabetes or reactive hypoglycemia.  

But there is still the other problem that I am more concerned with is the predigestion of fibers, which will reduce the fiber levels needed by the flora to thrive.  The flora provide numerous benefits including controlling pathogens, vitamin production, fatty acid production for the body, production of the majority of the body's serotonin, etc.

The beneficial flora in the intestines ferment these fibers to produce anti-fungal acids, and pathogen killing bactericides and peroxides. Therefore, starving the flora by predigesting the fibers just encourages pathogen overgrowth in the intestines and candidiasis.

I haven't had problems with biome imbalance, so a reduction of cellulose reaching the intestines isn't too worrying for me. How much reduction of cellulose are we talking, anyway? Surely not a complete digestion of all ingested cellulose?

Depends on the amount of enzymes and the amount of fibers.  Maybe not all the fiber, but that is like saying I can eat one cookie a day since I am not eliminating food from my diet totally.  Just like we need a certain amount of food to be healthy so do the flora.

Anyway, if I find I experience fungal or pathogenic overgrowth, I'll try to avoid cellulase. (Maybe there are enzyme supplement formulations that leave out cellulase? Why would they include celluses in the first place?)

I know some companies claim the enzymes help fight Candida, but I disagree since the sugars from the digestion of the Candida would just feed the survivors.

So, my main concern would be "atrophying" my body's enzyme production. I'd love to look into that in more detail if you had any references you could point me to.

I don't know where they are off hand and don't have enough time to go looking for them right now.  I believe I did post a reference on this not too long ago on this forum.