Facts About Enzymes in Digestion

The body of every animal and plant is a real chemical factory. The man was able to use the food, breathe, grow and move exclusively due to chemical changes that occur in cells, tissues and organs of the body.

Here is an example of chemical life processes; you eat a piece of bread, a cake or potatoes. The starch in the food is changed into sugars that go into the blood. There, they dissolve with the help of oxygen from the air we breathe and our body gets energy.

What is enzyme

Chemists have found that a chemical process like this and any other in a living organism – can be done only because it supports a very small amount of some proteins produced by living cells. This protein is called an enzyme. For one enzyme is said to be specific, which means that it is set to perform just one specific task. Each enzyme begins just one chemical process.

Diastase

Chemical changes, as we have said, take place in all living beings, including plants. Thus, when the seeds of wheat, barley or other grains begins to grow, it produces enzymes that convert starch into sugars. This change is called the degradation of starch into sugars, and the enzyme that performs this operation is called a diastase.

Though we know what is the role of the enzyme, we still do not know everything about them. They are organic compounds, which means that substances always contain carbon and hydrogen, and often the oxygen and nitrogen.

There are a number of different enzymes, but only a small number of the enzyme is separated from the juices of plants or animals.

More important than vitamins

Fact is that they are much more important than vitamins, which would rather be attributed to the function of the excipients in the service of enzymes, which are actually used to perform functions in the body. Interestingly, enzymes, although created only by living cells, can carry chemical changes without living tissue.

5000 enzymes

Many enzymes combine individual molecules of trace elements such as manganese, iron or zinc, without which these enzymes are unable to function. In the thirties of the last century, enzymes for the first time gain the attention of biochemists, and then have been identified around 80. To this day it was discovered more than 5000 enzymes.

Eskimos endurance

Research of traditional cultures have shown that almost all involving raw, enzyme rich foods in their kitchen, not only vegetables but also raw animal proteins and fats in the form of dairy products from untreated (raw) milk, raw fish and offal of animals. Eskimos diet contained large amounts of raw fish that has undergone a process of “pre-digest” and as such contributed to their endurance. Cultivation of dairy products in almost all pre-industrial cultures enriched the content of enzymes in milk, cream, butter and cheese.