Life Span Nutrition
An Introduction - Part 2

THE LIFE SPAN AND AGING-OXIDANT ENZYMES

    Historically, the enzymes in the human body have been classified into two broad groups: the digestive enzymes and the metabolic enzymes. This was a valid classification. I say it was because this classification was developed and taught before we realized the devastating impact of synthetic chemicals and toxic metals on human biology.

    From an ecologic viewpoint, it seems to me, it is useful to separate enzymes into life span enzymes (enzymes that support life span molecules) and aging-oxidant enzymes (enzymes that facilitate the destructive-oxidative function of aging-oxidant molecules). Just as nature designed some molecules to assure that no life form lives forever, it designed some enzymes for the same reason. Similarly, life span enzymes were designed to sustain the living organisms for their life span.

 ENZYME BANK FOR LIFE 

    Each living organism is blessed by nature with a lifetime complement of enzymes, an enzyme bank so to speak. Living tissues have a capacity for producing enzymes, but this capacity is clearly limited. We can be prudent with this bank and live well for our life span, or we can be frivolous and waste this finite life resource, age prematurely, and get weak and ill. How can we be prudent with our enzyme bank account? The same way we can be prudent with our regular bank account: by spending it with care and with love for our enzymes.

    The principal threat to life on planet Earth is the destruction of its life span enzymes.

    If life on our planet is to survive in more or less the same form as we see it today, we will have to think differently about enzymes, the enzymes in our food chain, the enzymes in our tissues, and the enzymes of other living things around us.

    We rigorously and systematically destroy enzymes in our food with food-processing technology and denature (cook) them by our high-temperature cooking. Fresh vegetables and fruits are exceptions to this only when they are not laced with pesticides or wrapped with chemical fumigants. Our fruit industry "polishes" as many fruits as it can to make them look pretty, and in the process embeds deeply into their skin toxic designer killer molecules.

    Most of the environmental pollutants are poisons for life span enzymes. But this is not where the tragedy of systematic destruction of life span enzymes ends. Many of these enzymes are damaged in such a way that they become instruments of molecular destruction. Many environmental toxins and most drugs convert life span enzymes into aging-oxidant enzymes.

    Rarely do we recognize that what poisons insect enzyme also poisons food and human enzymes. Almost all commonly used pesticides (organophosphate and chlorinated compounds) kill insects by poisoning their enzymes, called choline esterases. What we rarely recognize is that most of the insect choline estrases are identical to human choline estrases. What kills the bugs also kills us. If that is true, it may be asked, why don't people also die?  

    Insects die quickly because there is so little of them to be killed by pesticides. People die slowly because there is so much of them to be killed.

    Certain enzymes in our body serve the specific function of detoxifying synthetic and natural chemicals that gain entry into our bodies. One such group of enzymes is called mixed function oxidase system. In a healthy child, these enzymes function as life span enzymes and neutralize or detoxify drugs and other synthetic molecules. When a child is put on barbiturates and other drugs for long periods of time, these enzymes gear up to handle the drug overload. In scientific jargon, this phenomenon is called enzyme induction and refers to formation of excessive quantities of enzymes which now begin to destroy an individual's own molecules (auto-enzymity?), much like the induced immune system begins to destroy a person's own cells and organs in autoimmune disorders. Another system of enzymes in the body is called cytochrome P 450 system. This system is also designed to detoxify foreign chemicals. Many drugs inactivate these enzyme systems, and such destructive potential of many commonly used drugs, such as Tagamet used for stomach ulcer, is rarely recognized. Failure of this enzyme system has been documented to cause serious chemical toxicity with unrelenting immune injury and chronic illness.

FOOD COMPOSITION AND ENZYME SHIFTS

    The subject of digestive enzymes in fresh, uncooked, unprocessed foods is an essential but poorly understood aspect of human nutrition.

    Cats and dogs in the wild are carnivorous, and their saliva contains little if any amylase enzymes for digesting carbohydrates. By contrast, the saliva of domesticated cats and dogs fed high-carbohydrate, high-sugar foods contains large quantities of amylases and other digestive enzymes. How does this happen? The answer is simple: Enzymes in living organisms actively respond to the food they eat. In The Cortical Monkey and Healing, I wrote:

Biology is forever changing; we change one thing in one way, we change everything in some way.

     Wild cats and dogs eat unprocessed food that contains its own digestive enzymes. By allowing the enzymes in their food to partly digest their foods, they in effect conserve their own digestive enzymes. Similarly, the weight and size of rat pancreas varies with the nature of food eaten by rats. A wild rat has a smaller pancreas than a laboratory rat who is fed a heat-processed, enzyme-free diet. (Edward Howell, Enzyme Nutrition, Avery Publishing, 1985).

LOST WISDOM, LOST ENZYMES 

    A tragic casualty of our infatuation with the "science" of nutrition is the lost wisdom of the ancients. How could we so arrogantly dismiss their wisdom as "old wives tales"? (Show me a person who snubs others with this phrase, and I will show you a person who has been robbed of his capacity for quiet reflection on the nature of things). I consider the wisdom of the ancients in matters of human nutrition the bedrock of all strategies for sound nutrition for the life span. True bits of nutrition science (structure and function of nutrient molecules) must be woven into the texture of the cumulative wisdom of mankind vis-a-vis the relationship between food and the human condition.

    The ancient knew of many ways to enhance the nutritional value of their foods. Soybean makes for an illuminating case study.

    Soybean is an excellent sources of minerals such as magnesium, calcium, molybdenum and others. It has a rich content of some "life span oils". In our recent research studies with positively and negatively charged soybean glycolipids, my co-researcher and nutrition scientist, Gary Viole, and I have observed some extraordinary benefits of these natural products for patients with irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's colitis and related chronic inflammatory bowel disorders. And, of course, soybean has high-quality proteins. It comes close to being a perfect food. But there is something more to it.

    Soybean is a seed. Like all other seeds, it is rich in enzyme inhibitors. Here is another master stroke of nature. Seeds are nature's tiny parcels of future life. They must be preserved. They must be protected not only from the vicissitudes of their environments but also from the enzymes within them. These enzymes are designed to cause auto-digestion and breakdown (the law of death in nature). So Nature gave them outer shells and inner molecular safety in the form of enzyme inhibitors.

    The ancients seemed to have intuitively known about these nutritional aspects of soybean, even though little comes down to us about their insights in these matters in a well- documented form. Why else would they hold it in such high esteem? Also they seemed to have recognized the problem of enzyme inhibitors in soybean. Why else would they be so inventive about the matters of antidigestive (enzyme inhibitors) aspects of soybean? Why else would they prepare soybean dishes in so many ways with the specific result of neutralizing and predigesting it?

    The ancient Chinese mastered the art of neutralizing enzyme inhibitors and predigesting soybean with several fungus enzymes, mostly from Aspergillus species. They literally "cooked" their soybean with fungus enzymes. There is, however, a critical difference between cooking soybean (and other foods) with heat and cooking them with fungus enzymes: Cooking with heat destroys life enzymes while cooking with enzymes increases the life enzyme content of foods.

    Tofu kan, yuba, and tofu p'i were the names they gave to their soybean dishes prepared for the specific purpose of increasing its digestibility by adding to it life enzymes of fungi (and for conserving their own digestive enzymes). They enhanced its nutritional value and at the same time spared their own enzymes. They were prudent about their own life enzyme banks. The Chinese also used soybean curd to prepare another dish called kabitofu. The people in Philippines called their favorite partially digested soybean dish toya. The well-known tofu is a "cheese" made up of partially digested soybean. Natto is the name given to a similar product. For many centuries, people of Java treated their soybean with enzymes and named their dish tempeh.

    The Japanese were not to be left behind in this competition for saving their life span enzymes. They perfected miso, a fermented soybean food used as porridge at breakfast. The Japanese also experimented with other grains and made miso with barley and rice.

    The principle of predigesting foods with natural substances to enhance its nutritional value (conserving the life enzyme bank account in our jargon) is not the sole cultural heritage of people of the Far East. Yogurt was the prime predigested food of ancient India. Cheeses were the pre-digested foods of early Europeans. They prepared their cheese to enhance its nutritional value and for specific taste goals by treating it with specific bacterial enzymes.

    Predigestion of food is an old discovery of man. In almost all of his cultures and in all eras of his history, man has used the principle of predigesting his food by borrowing digestive enzymes from other forms of life. Today we find some of its early applications repulsive, even barbaric. Jivaros Indians of the Amazon River basin prepared nijimanche by thoroughly chewing the yucca bark and spitting it into large jars where its digestion by amylase enzymes of the saliva continued for hours. They treasured this drink for its nutritional value. We do not need to adopt their specific methods, but we must recognize the relevance of their insights into the matters of food digestion to our health today. Their food "packaging" appears repugnant to our delicate taste and sensibility today. Little do we realize that they, in their barbaric primitiveness, were much truer to their food than we who hide toxic foods in elegant packaging.

    Soybean is the current favorite for preparing predigested foods among people interested in their food and health. It is unfortunate that our food industry does not see the intuitive wisdom of the ancient and build upon it for healthier foods with abundant life span enzymes. The ancient perfected the art of preparing healthful predigested foods and drinks. We can both adopt and adapt their methods. Enzyme foods and beverages, as Edward Howell and others have suggested, can be prepared in many aesthetically pleasing ways.

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