These are vital for digestion, the process of breaking down food into its component parts — fats into fatty acids, proteins into amino acids, carbohydrates into simple sugars. There are four types of digestive enzymes:
1) lipase, which breaks down fat
2) protease, which breaks down protein
3) amylase, which breaks down starch
4) cellulase, which breaks down plant cellulose.
The pancreas secretes these concentrated enzymes to thoroughly digest your food. This is why we never want to drink with our meals; the liquid dilutes the digestive enzymes, which then causes maldigestion and leaky gut. So if you drink with your meals make sure it is just enough to keep your mouth moist and only water. You can drink your liquids 30 minutes before a meal or one and one half-hour after to ensure proper digestion.
Why is it important to break down fats, proteins and starches into their component parts? For the same reason that a building cannot be built without all of its component parts. We need thorough digestion for good health.
Here’s an example: When someone drinks milk and lacks enough lactase, the enzyme which breaks down lactose into its component simple sugar, the lactose starts to ferment, causing gas, irritable bowels, possible diarrhea, aggravated candida problems, and the potential for increased intestinal permeability (“leaky gut”).
The same is true with the milk protein casein. Most people lose the enzyme to digest casein at around age 4.7 As a result, casein becomes a sticky glue-like substance that interferes with intestinal assimilation. It also coats the respiratory tract with mucus, bad news for allergy, asthma or sinus sufferers.
 Another good reason for breaking down food into its component parts is to avoid immune stimulation complexes. These complexes can trigger many allergic reactions. If you eat a food that you are sensitive and it is totally digested into its component amino acids and fatty acids, there is no allergy provoking component to any basic building block of food or else your body would have an allergic reaction to every meal you eat. This means that even if one is sensitive to tomatoes he is not allergic to its simple amino acids or fatty acids because all component parts are neutral or non-allergenic. A persons severe allergic reactions are triggered by larger protein molecules which consist of multiple amino acids connected together. This is why complete digestion of these larger protein molecules can help to reduce the allergic reaction to foods.
If digestion is incomplete, larger food particles can enter the bloodstream via “leaky gut” — trigger problems such as allergies, asthma, joint pain, arthritis, inflammatory bowel conditions, neurological symptoms, etc.
In one study, a cooked-food diet — devoid of enzymes — led to enlargement of the pancreas, an organ that secretes digestive enzymes, and eventually exhaustion and degeneration of pancreatic tissue. Man is the only animal with a cooked-food diet. The following chart shows the result: Our pancreas makes up a much bigger percentage of body weight than it does for other animals, indicating how overworked our digestive glands really are.8
 
                                      Body Weight         Pancreas Weight
                                           (Grams)                   (% of Body Weight)
Sheep                           38,505                       0.0490
Cattle                         455,265                       0.0680
Horse                         543,600                       0.0603
Man                             63,420                       0.1400
 
Enlargement of the pancreas is a possible cause in the development of diabetes, blood sugar problems, pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas) and pancreatic tumors. In one study, 86 percent of the diabetics examined were deficient in amylase, the enzyme that converts starch to sugar. After adding amylase to the diet in oral digestive enzyme form, 50 percent of the diabetics who used insulin could now control their blood sugar without insulin.9

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