Enzymes Explained by Edward Howell

In general an enzyme is a protein that functions as a catalyst to mediate and speed a chemical reaction.

(2003) Book Summary by Nicholas Calvino => Enzyme Nutrition: The food enzyme concept by Dr. Edward Howell (1985) <= book=”” summary=”” by=”” nicholas=”” calvino=””></=>

Aging and enzyme depletion go hand in hand, and by restoring vital enzymes.

The length of life is inversely proportional to the rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential of an organism. The increased use of food enzymes promotes a decreased rate of exhaustion of the enzyme potential.

Enzymes are the life force present in every biological system.

Heat over 48c kills 100% of enzymes naturally occurring in raw foods. The boiling point of water is 100c. (ref - what are Enzymes)

Enzyme supplementation is recommended for anyone who consumes a cooked food diet or in the aid of other health conditions.

There are three main categories of enzymes: ➜ digestive enzymes ➜ food enzymes ➜ metabolic enzymes

Food enzymes

From raw food start food digestion in the stomach so that contents reaching the duodenum (first section of the small intestine) are easily broken down further, assimilated and absorbed. Natures plan calls for food enzymes to help with digestion instead of forcing the body’s digestive enzymes to carry the whole load. If food enzymes do some of the work, the enzyme potential can allot less activity to digestive enzymes, and have much more to give the thousands of metabolic enzymes that run the entire body. If the human organism must devote a huge portion of its enzyme potential to making digestive enzymes, it spells trouble for the whole body because it drains the pool of enzyme machinery needed to make the metabolic enzymes. This has systemic repercussions. The difference between a healthy and unhealthy food is largely related to its enzyme content. No food in its natural state, full of enzymes, is bad. Whether this be milk, butter, meat etc… Metabolic enzymes run every aspect of human biology from moving the muscles to thinking thoughts.

Digestive enzymes

Have only three main jobs: Digesting protein, carbohydrate and fat. Proteases are enzymes that :

➜ digest protein. ➜ amylase digest carbohydrate. ➜ lipases digest fat.

Enzymes emerge as the true yardstick of vitality. Enzymes offer an important means of calculating the vital energy of an organism. That which has been referred to as vitality, vital force, vital energy, vital activity, nerve energy, nerve force, strength, vital resistance, life energy, life and life force.

The body is dependent on enzymes. Enzymes are catalysts that lower the energy required to drive a reaction. Enzymes are temperature dependent. While enzymes do more work with increasing temperatures, they are used up faster. This is why the body temperature is increased in the case of fever (aka the enzymes of the white blood cells are more active).

The extra work enzymes do during a fever, however, causes some of them to wear out to an extent that the system excretes them in the urine. In other words, accelerating enzyme activity or depleting enzymes always comes at a cost to the biological organism. These costs, however, can be offset if the organism has an ample reserve of enzymes or if enzymes are repleted. Since antiquity, enzymes from raw foods have been the source of deposits to our vitality account that has allowed us to live healthy, free from chronic disease.

Duration of life varies inversely with the intensity of metabolism.

In fact, we have recently seen scientific papers showing that by consuming less calories, rats and fruit flies (Daphnia sp.) are able to expand their lifespan and limit damage to their DNA. The mechanism of this phenomena is unknown, however, we propose it is the rationing of enzymes that is partly responsible for the pancreas “must steal, beg, and borrow these entities stored in the whole body to make the enzyme complex necessary to digest food devoid of intrinsic enzymes that aid in the digestion of food and liberation of nutrients and vital energy”.

We believe there is evidence suggesting, that when the enzyme potential is exhausted beyond a particular point, it triggers the end of the lifespan.

If you take in reinforcements of enzymes in your early years, your later years will be healthier and happier.

By eating food with their enzymes intact and by supplementing cooked foods with enzyme capsules, we can stop abnormal and pathological aging processes.

We suggest that if we postpone the debilitation of metabolic enzyme activity, what we now call old age could become the glorious prime of life. Enzymes, thus, may be the fountain of life so earnestly sought for and so mysteriously allusive. It is the destruction of enzymes by heat and the lack of raw foods in the diet that contributes to this factor. For example, human milk has a good amount of lipase which assists the baby in digesting the high fat content of milk, which it certainly needs. Bovine milk also contains scores of enzymes (35+ different known enzymes), most of which are destroyed by pasteurization (due high temperatures), that are health promoting. It is interesting to note that the negative health effects of drinking milk only began to surface after the pasteurization of milk and cultures that drink milk raw do not seem to suffer heart disease, atherosclerosis and other disadvantages now associated to our enzymeless milk.

Less than 50 years ago before mass pasteurization of milk, the raw milk diet was in vague and was reported to have success in treating a variety of ailments.

Grains are naturally endowed with amylase and some protease and lipase. Raw honey has considerable amounts of amylase (the amylase being derived from the pollen of flowers, rather than from the bee). In other cultures, the use of fermented foods, aged cheese, aged meat, sprouted grains and raw fruits and vegetables provide an enzyme rich diet. Fermented foods (examples such as miso, Kabitofu, Toyu, Natto, Tempeh, masato, malakachisa, tofu, certain soybean products such as Soy Sauce) are loaded with enzymes. The presence of these foods in these cultural diets have been associated with tremendous health benefits and disease protection. We must think of food enzymes as part of our food and necessary.

Food enzymes have always existing in all foods and for that reason are believed to fulfill a biological need. Therefore, enzymes are a fourth class of essential nutrients, along with macronutrients (fats, proteins, carbohydrates), vitamins and minerals.

Enzymes must be handled with care as they are fragile and vulnerable to excessive heat and/or light. “A cooking stove, which is a human invention, does not come permanently attached as a part of the anatomy of a newly born infant!” It is becoming evident that those diseases which are human trademarks, such as cancer **and **heart disease, are the products of perverted metabolism induced partly by the hidden machinations of food enzyme deficiency.**

Sugar is an enzyme and nutrient thief. Being almost 100 percent pure, this high-calorie dynamite bombs the pancreas and pituitary gland into gushing forth a hyper-secretion of hormones comparable in intensity to that artificially produced by drugs and hormones. The glands know the organism has been loaded up with calories, but in despite of searching, the nutrients that normally go along with the calories cannot be found in the body. Evidence suggests sugar can cause liver enlargement and lesions in the pancreas and pituitary which can disrupt enzyme machinery and hormone regulation. In 1971 an editorial in Food and Cosmetics Toxicology cited many references implicating sugar as a causative factor in :

➜ atherosclerosis ➜ coronary disease ➜ kidney disease ➜ liver disease ➜ platelet adhesiveness ➜ increased blood lipids ➜ shortened lifespan.

As in other countries, the rise in sugar consumption parallels the increase in coronary heart disease. Studies in 1972 at the University of Hawaii showed that ¾ of pigs fed a high-sugar diet developed heart disease.

Calorie indexes, and science, make not distinction between the amount of raw and cooked calories. As a general rule, cooked foods are much more fattening than raw foods, even of the same type (i.e. raw vs. cooked bananas). Fat is not fattening, especially when present in it’s raw state. Fatty foods, in their raw state, are naturally endowed with copious amounts of lipase, an enzyme which helps break down and metabolize the fat.

Enzymes are the workers and hormones are the **foreman. Hormones** can have no effect without the work being done by the enzymes they direct. Therefore, **enzyme deficiency affects the endocrine system in three ways:**

➜ by overstimulating the glands by improper assimilation of nutrients. ➜ is undernourishing the gland by the same mechanism. ➜ is attenuating the hormone response by depleting enzyme reserves and activity.

Allergies are a primary indication for enzyme therapy. Food allergy results when the protease, amylase, and lipase in the blood fall below a certain level (according to Dr. A.W. Oelgoetz n a report published in the 1936 Medical Record), allowing unhydrolyzed food substances to accumulate in the blood (allergy appears to be due, in part at least, to absorption of incompletely digested protein molecules). Also, when scavenger enzymes are not able to handle the load of waste removal, nature may throw some of the unwanted material out through the skin, nose, throat or other orifices.

Dr. Oelgoetz recorded positive responses to using enzymes in conditions such as Chronic angioneurotic edema, allergic eczema, pancreatic indigestion, allergic headache, allergic vomiting, chronic urticaria (hives), allergic edema, allergic colitis and pancreatic achylia. Other conditions noted to respond to enzyme therapy is psoriasis, bronchial asthma, food asthma, food eczema, hay fever, and loose bowels.

Enzyme supplementation

Vegetarian enzymes are made by a fermentation method using cultured fungi, such as Aspergilli. Are especially valuable for aid in pre-digestion in the Food Enzyme Stomach because they digest best in a mild acidic environment, whereas, animal derived enzymes work best in a basic environment and therefore are not active until they reach the duodenum.

Shortened lifespan, inferior health of the organs, and nagging illnesses; and all due to an enzyme-deficient diet. The political and financial powers that benefit from the use of highly denatured, refined, enzymeless, life-less food would have us to believe that cooking, refining, bleaching, radiation, etc. . . are safe. While true, these means may increase the safety of food from a microbial/parasitic/infectious standpoint, they are not safe to maintain human vitality and wellness.

A diet that contained 75% raw 25% cooked calories would be a vast improvement, however, impractical with today’s food supply.

Give me enzymes and give me life!

(2003) Book Summary by Nicholas Calvino => Enzyme Nutrition: The food enzyme concept by Dr. Edward Howell (1985) <= book=”” summary=”” by=”” nicholas=”” calvino=””></=>

GoogleBooks.1985 - Enzyme Nutrition: The food enzyme concept by Dr. Edward Howell

ref - Enzyme pioneer Dr. Edward Howell   (mirror)

ref - 2003.Book Summary by Nicholas Calvino   (mirror)    (mirror2)

Dr. Edward Howell died 1988 aged 90

Dr. Edward Howell studied what a bad diet can do to the pancreas, the organ that produces most of our digestive enzymes.

➜ He looked at the results of 12 different studies involving eight researchers and 370 animals.

➜ He found that the animals fed a diet of cooked food had a pancreas weight three times greater than the rats that ate a raw food diet. They were working their pancreases to death.

➜ Compare it to an enlarged heart. Poor circulation and blocked blood vessels can force the heart — a muscle — to work so hard it becomes oversized.

➜ Likewise, the animals in this study developed an enlarged pancreas trying desperately to produce the enzymes they werent getting in their diet.

➜ The poor pancreas got bigger trying to handle all the work it had to do. Thats not healthy. Its a huge strain. The pancreas is a vital organ. When your pancreas gives out, your number is up. (src)

Dieticians and nutritionists go to all this trouble categorizing foods according to content, telling you that this food has so many mg. of calcium, that one has so much protein, or they talk about calories, or food combining, or eating for your blood type, or some Zone, or any number of trendy notions. But it actually matters much less what’s in the food than how much of the nutrients eventually ends up in your cells. If the food was never broken down in the tract, well then, it went right through you. Or worse, it’s still in there. It doesn’t matter what we eat, it only matters what we digest. (src)

ref - Interview with Dr. Edward Howell on Enzymes  (mirror)

Biotechnology

Has become one of the most important technologies in twenty-first century contributing every aspect of our life and industry. Biotechnology can contribute to the problems of our human culture and civilization from health, food, energy, environment, and to materials issues. Biotechnology is therefore playing a key role in pharmaceutical, medical, chemical, electronics, energy, and environment industries.

For the development of biotechnology, deep understanding and fusions in biology, chemistry, enzymology and engineering are required. One fundamental area of biotechnology is enzyme engineering which covers enzymology, enzyme technology, and engineering of enzymes. Enzymes have been used for food preparations such as cheese and alcohols from long time ago. In 1970s, immobilized enzymes have accelerated the development of enzyme engineering. In 1980s, the understanding of enzyme reaction in organic solvent has created a new area in enzyme engineering. Also with the energy and environment crisis, bio-based chemicals and bioenergy have opened a new area in enzyme engineering.

The microorganisms were widely used among ancient people. The manufacture of cheeses, breads, alcoholic beverages, and many other applications depends upon microorganisms which were found from ancient text of Babylon, Greece, Egypt, China, and India. Enzymes were the main components in microorganisms for the food manufacturing and other applications.

From the early of nineteenth centuries, enzymes have been investigated by scientists in a more systematic way. The technology development for the separation of enzymes from microorganisms is one of the important technological advancements. The disruption of microorganisms by mechanical means (e.g., high-pressure homogenizer) allowed the isolation of intracellular enzyme.

Enzymes can function both inside cells (intracellular) or outside cells (extracellular).

Extracellular enzyme activity

For example, the enzymes that function in our digestive systems are manufactured in cells - but work extracellularly. Spiders and flies are two examples of animals that have taken extracellular digestion a step further. They secrete an enzyme soup into or on their food. In spiders, this is injected into the prey’s body. The enzyme soup digests the prey’s body contents (specific enzymes breaking down proteins to amino acids, lipids into fatty acids and glycerol and polysaccharides into monosaccharides) and the spider simply sucks up the resulting already digested food.

Intracellular enzyme activity

Enzymes that act inside cells are responsible for catalysing the millions of reactions that occur in metabolic pathways such as glycolysis in the mitochondria and in the photosynthetic pathway in the chloroplast. The lysosome contains many enzymes that are mainly responsible for destroying old cells. (src)

However, isolation of these intracellular enzymes was quite expensive.

The next technological advancement is recombinant DNA technology. This technology together with protein engineering allows new and better enzyme variants to be quickly produced. Since around 1990, directed evolution has been used as a powerful tool for enzyme engineering. This method contributed a lot in the development of enzymatic processes for industrial applications to harness the capability of naturally occurring enzyme since in most cases, natural enzymes are not optimized for industrial reaction conditions.

Current issues and recent advances in enzyme engineering is the computational design. The computational design of enzyme is another method that has been developed around year 2000. This is accomplished using computer models to suggest sequences and structures that can work for the desired properties of the enzyme. Understanding the mechanism of enzymes in detail and the structure of functional enzyme can make enzyme technology jump one more step. At present, the study of enzymes is still one of the important issues to the scientific community and to the industry sector in general. Artificial enzymes, catalytic antibody are examples of current issues in enzyme engineering. Recently, synthesis of ammonia through enzymes was reported (Brown 2016), which can be a breakthrough of enzyme engineering in chemistry and chemical industry. Enzymes are continuously utilized for many industrial applications including their recent usages in chemicals production as well as their traditional roles. Many challenging issues are still waiting.

Modern enzyme technology was started when it was shown that sugars can be obtained from starch using an alcohol precipitate of malt extract. The compound in the precipitate which can yield dextrins from starch was later called diastase. By the mid-nineteenth century, more enzymes were discovered including pepsin, invertase, and peroxidase. After enzyme technology became established, enzymes as catalyst for industrial use were widely investigated.

Taka-Diastase (Dr. Takamine succeeded in crystallizing and isolating adrenaline) was patented for industrial application: amylolytic enzyme produced by Aspergillus oryzae (fungus that has been used for thousands of years to make soy sauce). Now enzymes are being utilized for various applications from pharmaceuticals to diagnostics.

Approximately 5000 enzymes have been characterized so far, while more than 300 enzymes are commercially available and supplied from enzyme manufactures. Depending on the reactions they catalyze, enzymes are grouped according to the report of the Nomenclature Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry (1984)

Enzymes are named by adding the suffix—ase to the name of their substrate. However, there are also enzymes that have been given names that do not denote their substrates such as pepsin and trypsin. To avoid ambiguities, International Union of Biochemistry (IUB) assigned each enzyme a name and a four-level number. The Enzyme Commission (EC) numbers (ref - repository) divide enzymes into six main groups depending on the reactions they catalyze. For this EC number system, the first, second, third, and fourth number refers to the class of enzyme, subclass by the type of substrate or the bond cleaved, subclass by the electron acceptor of the type of group removed and serial number of enzyme found, respectively.

The quantification of enzymes is often difficult to determine in absolute terms such as grams, since the activity changes due to conformations and the environments such as temperature and pH. More relevant parameter is to express the enzyme activity in terms of the activity unit (U).

Enzymes have numerous applications in food, medical, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries. The industries have grown rapidly over the past decades and are expected to continue their growth. Table shows the applications of biocatalysts and its production scale. For this enzymatic processes, various enzymes have been applied.

Biocatalysts in industries are generally used to produce their natural products and derivatives. Pharmaceutical sector especially dominates applications of biocatalysts (Straanthof 2002).

Approximately more than 200 microbial-origin enzymes are used commercially. Commercial enzyme production has grown during the past decades in response to increasing demands and application for enzymes. Table shows the leading enzyme manufacturers. The enzyme manufacture is relatively concentrated on a few countries such as Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, USA, Japan, Russia, and Korea.

Enzymes have been used from old days which resulted in more understanding in enzymes, increasing demand and applications. However, many researchers in academia and industry are still looking for more applications and better technologies. The relationship between structure and function has been extensively investigated, but still remains as one of the hottest current issues in enzyme engineering. Recently, CRISPER (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)- Cas system is widely investigated as a novel and powerful tool for studying gene regulation, gene expression, genome-wide screening after the introduction of DNA lyases long time ago and requires molecular understanding of the system to improve the specificity and other properties for further applications.

The advent of new genetic engineering technologies, namely CRISPR Cas, is now about to change the game substantially. It will probably open a new chapter of the GMO dispute.

GMO Free Europe (Conference September 6th and 7th 2018 in Berlin)

ref - internal article GMO Explained

Sources of Enzymes

The first step in enzyme production is the selection of the enzyme source. Enzymes can be derived from microorganisms through fermentation processes, as well as plant and animal sources. Microorganisms are attractive sources of enzymes since they can be cultivated in a large scale (Fogarty 1983). Enzymes produced from microorganisms have, in many cases, better properties such as high stablity than enzymes from plant or animal sources.

Identification of microorganisms that are suitable for the enzyme production starts by screening a wide variety of Generally Recognized As Safe (aka GRAS) organisms if possible (FDA).

Animal tissues and animal secretes are also a potential source of enzymes. Rennin, also known as chymosin, is one of the industrially important animal derived enzymes. Rennin, aspartic protease, obtained from the stomach or abomasums of calves, is used for cheese production and as a digestive aid.

At present, two different approaches have been widely used independently or in combination to improve the enzymes, changing amino acid sequences of enzymes: rational design and directed evolution. Rational design uses the knowledge of enzyme’s structure-function relationship to modify the structure and improve the function. Directed evolution is similar to evolution and natural selection in the nature that random mutagenesis is introduced to an enzyme and the mutants with desirable properties are selected.

Fermentation Process

Enzyme production is still an important field of biotechnology. Patents and research articles are increasing in numbers and the sales for enzymes would be close to a billion of dollars annually. Fermentation processes for microbial production of enzymes can be carried out through solid state culture or using submerged culture of microorganisms. Most enzyme manufacturers (ref) have produced enzymes using Submerged Fermentation (SMF) techniques. Submerged fermentation is defined as fermentation in the presence of excess water. This fermentation technique offers better monitoring and control over the process parameters, such as temperature, pH, aeration, and dispersion for efficient growth.

The total design of new biocatalytic enzymes for reactions not catalyzed by native enzymes is a big adventure in enzyme engineering. Recent advances in computational protein design have opened the new era for designing any enzymes for any target reaction. David Baker is a leader in this area. His team developed the Rosetta computational de novo enzyme design methodology.

Nothing to do with article, encyclopedically, Penicillin is the first found antibiotic from nature and nowadays it is one of the most bulk produced antibiotics approximately 30,000 tons/year.

The status of enzymes in the production of bulk chemicals seems very limited but there is significant success story despite the belief that enzymes can be only applied for the synthesis fine chemicals. The belief has background that enzymes are very expensive and limited life span due to low stability compared with conventional chemical catalysts.

src - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC250089/

src - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21741818

src - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0141022987900160

src - https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9780306436529

src - https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja01143a033

src - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0958166902003609

src - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283661800727

src - https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/current-opinion-in-chemical-biology

src - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282272769_Glucose_Isomerase_Production_of_High_Fructose_Syrups

ref - Ένζυμα – Το κλειδί της μακροζωίας  (aka Enzyme Nutrition: The food enzyme concept by Dr. Edward Howell (1985) in Greek)    (mirror)    (mirror2)

ref - Ο μεγάλος ρόλος του ήπατος

ref - Πεπτικά ένζυμα - Ολα οσα θα επρεπε να ξερατε

ref - youtube videos

A user repied, with a story : In the past, go to the gym, meet people making resistance training (heavy weights), a guy doing this training, needed five days (aka 120hours) to recover from the exercise. When he started taking Digestive Enzymes, recover in one and half day (aka 36 hours).   (ref)

Digest Enzymes

Mammals naturally produce multiple different enzymes in these families that encounter food at different places in the digestive process: first in the mouth, then in the stomach, and finally, within the small intestine.

Digestive enzymes facilitate the chemical breakdown of food into smaller, absorbable components. Enzymes called :

➜ amylases - break down starches (carbohydrates) into sugar molecules. ➜ proteases - break down proteins into amino acids. ➜ lipases - break down fat into its component parts.

To date, several formulations of digestive enzymes are available on the market, being different each other in terms of enzyme type, source and origin, and dosage.

The called ‘Digestive enzymes’ are secreted in the stomach are gastric enzymes. Produced by the gastrointestinal system to degrade fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, to accomplish the digestion and, afterwards, the absorption of nutrients.

Pancreas produces pancreatic enzymes, divided into three groups : ➜ proteolytic enzymes - mainly trypsinogen and chymotripsinogen and their active forms trypsin and chymotripsin. ➜ amylolitic enzymes - pancreatic amylase. ➜ lipolitic enzymes - principally lipase.

Pancreatic supplementation **enzymes are primarily extracted from **porcine or bovine sources.  Is the therapy of choice for the management of exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI) in chronic pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer, cystic fibrosis (CF) or diabetes.  (src) (ref)

Currently, the animal-derived enzymes represent an established standard of care, however the growing study of plant-based and microbe-derived enzymes offers great promise in the advancement of digestive enzyme therapy.

Unfortunately many people today are enzyme deficient due to factors such as aging, emotional and physical stress, poor food choices, and over-eating.

One capsule after main meals or (others suggest) fifteen minutes before meal. You avoiding also things like carb and protein farts!   (ref)   (ref - Greek)

origin - http://www.pipiscrew.com/?p=13781 enzymes-explained-by-edward-howell