What Are Digestive Enzymes? Don’t Ignore THIS

Author's Bio: Marcie Vaske, MS, LN, CNS

Do you eat a healthy meal but end up after the meal, feeling bloated, tired, like your food is sitting in your stomach?

Sound familiar?

The problem might not be what you're eating, but how your body is actually digesting the food.

In today's video, we're going to talk all about digestive enzymes, what they are, how they work, how to take them, and why ignoring them can actually be sabotaging your health and your energy.

But first, don't forget to hit the subscribe button down below for more supplement videos. So let's get into this.

[Video Transcript Below + Supplement Links Discussed In Video]

What Are Digestive Enzymes?

Digestive enzymes are actually proteins that your body makes to help break down your food into smaller particles so that your body can absorb the minerals and nutrients out of it. Now, throughout our digestive system, there are different areas of our digestive system that actually make digestive enzymes.

You start producing them as soon as you put them in your mouth, and most of them happen in your stomach because they come from your pancreas.

But a few that I'll highlight is Amylase. It helps to break down the carbohydrates or sugars that we consume. It breaks it down into simple sugars so that our body can use the nutrients. And then we have Protease. Protease breaks down proteins into our amino acids. And of course, there's Lipase that breaks down our fats into fatty acids.

Now, these enzymes are naturally produced and our saliva, our pancreas, our stomach, and our small intestine. And without having these enzymes, any even good foods turn into foods, that could be a big issue and cause a lot of digestive upset.

Why Digestive Enzymes Are Important for Gut Health

So why do these digestive enzymes, why are they so important for gut health? Well, as I just shared, enzymes is the first step to breaking down our foods. They do a lot of that work, and when those enzymes are working efficiently, we're able to break our food down. Well, we're able to process it and get nutrients out of the foods that we're consuming. Therefore, our gut lining stays healthy and our gut microbiome.

But if these enzymes start not producing as efficiently, we start having a lot of gut distress, and there are some reasons that we have less enzyme function. One of them can just be age. Of course, stress is a huge issue when it comes to reducing digestive function, digestive enzymes. Also, there's inflammation or just simply a poor diet. But if you have all of those lined up in a row, you're probably going to struggle with some digestive enzyme function.

Now, before I jump into what are some signs of actually being low in digestive enzymes, my name is Marcie Vaske and I'm a licensed nutritionist with Flusso Nutrients. At Flusso Nutrients, we just work really hard to educate you on different types of supplements so that you can make the best choice for yourself. So let's lean into what are some signs that you may be low in digestive enzymes.

Signs You May Be Low in Digestive Enzymes

Feeling full or bloated after meals

The number one sign could be that you feel full or really bloated after you eat a meal. So you just kind of feel like, oh, my food is sitting for so long, or you don't get hungry within several hours of eating. This is a sign that your food is just sitting in your gut just hanging out, try and make it through, or that you notice undigested food in your stool. Now, sometimes what happens is that the food moves through very quickly or that the body is just unable to break down the foods that you're consuming into smaller particles.

Frequent burping or gas, sometimes an hour or two after eating

Another sign is if you burp or have gas frequently, especially after meals, it might not happen right away. Maybe you burp more like an hour later or you're having more gas a couple hours later.

Feeling tired or sluggish after meals

Also, if you feel very tired or just kind of sluggish after you eat just really full and weighted down, this is another sign that enzymes might not be functioning the way you want.

Oily or floating stools

Or after a bowel movement, your stools look oily or they're floating. This is a sign that your fats are not breaking down properly.

So these are just all signs that your body is giving you to give you clues into what is going on and how can you help it. Now, of course, there are digestive enzyme supplements, which I will share with you, but I always like to talk about how can we support our digestion with food first.

Supporting Digestive Enzymes Through Food

Fruits

So there are some ways that we can help support our digestive enzymes just by choosing the right foods. Now, first, there are some fruits that can be very helpful On our digestive enzymes, we have pineapple, papaya, kiwi or mango. All great for helping to support that digestion of our food.

Chewing thoroughly

Another key thing is to make sure you're chewing thoroughly. Now, of course, sometimes we are in such a big rush when we're going to eat our lunch, for example, during the day, trying to get back to our desk, trying to get all the things done that we're just scarfing food in. This can cause issues with digestion. So making sure you just slow down, chew your food, enjoy your food. This puts your stomach and your digestive system into a more calm state, meaning that then your body can actually do the job it needs to do. When you're rushing around trying to eat fast, I mean just think how your body feels. That's how your stomach feels.

Stress management 

Of course, supporting your stress. Try to manage your stress. The more stress we have, the harder it is on our digestive enzymes and even our hydrochloric acid. So by having more stress, we're going to reduce those enzymes. So try to manage it. Find ways to either say no to stuff or to take time for yourself, and maybe it's only 15 minutes a day, but find that time that's dedicated for you.

Supporting the microbiome

Now, we also want to think about supporting our microbiome. So by eating fermented foods such as sauerkraut, keefer, kimchi, miso, these are all great items that you can add in to get some really good beneficial flora supporting the environment of our stomach and our intestinal tract. And lastly, try to avoid chronic overeating. That puts a big burden on our digestive system.

Avoid chronic overeating

And also if you're overeating on ultra processed foods, that's going to be a double burden. So trying to choose those real whole foods, good proteins, good carbohydrates, healthy fats, those are all going to be great for supporting your digestion. And then obviously, trying to work at just becoming satiated, not over full.

When to Consider Digestive Enzyme Supplements

Now, if you've worked on a few of the things that I just talked about in terms of maybe adding in different fruits like a pineapple, a few pineapple chunks, or some papaya or mango or kiwi, and that's not really doing much. You've taken your stress down, you're getting enough sleep, you're eating better foods, but it's just not doing the trick. This is where supplements can come in handy.

So I often recommend for my clients who are really struggling with this are digestive enzymes that have a broad spectrum so that you're getting many different enzymes to help support all the digestion, and they're very easy to take. You'll just take one or two per meal. Typically, the best time to do this is 10 or 15 minutes before you eat the meal. But for some people, enzymes work better when they take a couple bites of their food and then take their enzymes.

So I am always telling my clients, you kind of have to play around and experiment when you're first starting them, but the gold standard or the typical way of doing them is going to be 10 to 15 minutes before you eat. So I will link digestive enzyme down below in the comment section that if you're interested or having some of these symptoms and you've done some of the changes that I talked about, you can fall back on an enzyme for a period of time and see if that supports you better.

Conclusion: Digestive Health as a Foundation for Overall Wellbeing

Now, of course, our digestive health is ultimately the most important as a foundation of overall wellbeing. So we want to make sure we're digesting our food so that we can actually get the minerals and the vitamins out of the great foods that you've already chosen to consume and help you be your very best self.

Thanks for watching.

Check out the high-quality supplements we discussed in this video - links below for your convenience!

1) Digestive Complete: https://flussonutrients.nutridyn.com/digestive-complete

2) ALL PROFESSIONAL QUALITY SUPPLEMENTS: https://flussonutrients.nutridyn.com & https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/flussonutrients