Once upon a time humans hunted and grew their own food. They received all the nourishment the body needed to function properly in a simple, natural manner. How? The body was able to digest and absorb all of the nutritional benefits from the food they ate due to the fact that the food was raw, or cooked under 118 degrees. Fast forward to today—a world of fast food restaurants, frozen aisles, processed foods and all the bloating, IBS, weight gain and other nutrient deficient ailments that result from the modern way of eating. The difference between digestion then and digestion now is a combination of processed foods, cooked foods and the essential enzymes that are lost when our food’s natural state is altered.
The human digestive tract is a remarkable chemical processing system that can free up to 90% of all the nutrients in whatever food passes through it, converting them to forms far more readily absorbed. On the other hand, cooking foods over 118 degrees, which destroys the enzymes in the food, can greatly disturb and even stop digestion and reduce its efficiency to ”starvation levels.” Even if you eat nutrient-rich foods, you could be feeling the effects of starvation! Due to the cooking of food, a paddle-lock effect has now locked in the nutrients and will only be un-locked if enzymes are brought back into play which will in turn un-lock the cooked food and release the nutrients. Your body may be starving for nutrients and you may be experiencing conditions like bloating, decreased energy, premature aging, lowered immune response, and even weight gain if your digestion is compromised and you are unable to break down the foods to useable energy.
To illustrate the my point, reference exhibit A- The McDonalds hamburger I’ve had sitting on my desk since 1999. Almost 15 years old, the $.79 paperweight hasn’t aged a bit! In fact, it looks as if I had bought it yesterday. So how has it not disintegrated, molded, shriveled up? The hamburger lacks enzymes. So whether I ate it in ’99 or took a nibble from it today, my body (my pancreas, to be exact) would have to work extra hard to produce the necessary enzymes—some of which I may not have—in order to digest.
While eating raw fruits and veggies is a great way to provide your body enzymes, a form of supplementation (as long as they come from real, whole foods) will greatly improve digestive woes, improving both the nutritional absorption and metabolism of food. Total Digestive Enzymes is a great solution for this, providing every nutrient needed for digestion, including plant based enzymes and minerals to break food down into useable constituents, and friendly bacteria to aid in assimilating those constituents into the bloodstream.
Simply put, Total Digestive Enzymes ensure that what you eat is utilized completely by the body. The formula also contains five strains of beneficial Probiotics or Flora (good bacteria), to aid in maintaining the mucosa lining in your digestive system, along with essential herbs to help in digestion (Slippery Elm, Ginger, Ulmus Rubra, Zingiber Officinale, and Black Strap Molasses)— all of which have key digestive ingredients, and are blended together to create one of the best formulas on the market today.