What are Digestive Enzymes

As we know, digestion is a vital bodily process wherein the food consumed is broken down into a simple form that can be absorbed by the body. Mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, rectum, and anus are the body organs that form our digestive system. The process starts in the mouth with chewing of food, continues in the stomach and small intestine where the food is chemically broken down by the digestive juices and enzymes and finally gets completed in the large intestine. Hence, the gastrointestinal or digestive tract comprises these digestive organs that take in food, digest it to extract essential nutrients and energy and finally expel the remaining waste. This was just a brief insight about the digestive system function.

What are Digestive Enzymes

Digestive enzymes are enzymes found in the digestive tract that aid in the process of digestion by breaking down the food we eat into nutrients that our body needs in order to function properly. Our body normally produces 22 different digestive enzymes, each one is used for breaking down specific type of food. These enzymes are secreted by different glands in the body, including the salivary glands, the stomach and pancreas glands and the glands in the small intestines. These enzymes also have specific sites of action, including the oral cavity, the stomach, the duodenum and the jejunum.

In the oral cavity, digestive enzyme ptyalin, a type of α-amylase, is released by the salivary glands which digests or break down starch containing long chain of glucose molecules into small segments of multiple sugar and individual soluble sugars. After the oral cavity, it is the stomach that releases digestive enzymes which are called gastric enzymes. Pepsin is a peptidase (gastric enzyme) that breaks or digests proteins into small peptide fragments called peptides.

Following stomach is the pancreas, the main digestive organ in the body that secretes digestive enzymes like trypsin and chymotrypsin, which are peptidases to break proteins into amino acids. Likewise carboxypeptidase, which is also a peptidase or protease, removes the terminal acid group from a protein. Many elastases secreted by pancreas degrade protein elastin and other proteins. Similarly different nucleases break down nucleic acids like DNAase and RNAase into individual components. Digestive enzymes called lipases produced by the pancreas break down the dietary fats into fatty acids and glycerol.

Finally, the small intestine secretes four different types of digestive enzymes to degrade disaccharides into monosaccharides. Sucrase is secreted to degrade sucrose into glucose and fructose, maltase to break down maltose into glucose, isomaltase for breaking maltose and isomaltose, and lastly lactase for degrading lactose into glucose and galactose.

Natural Digestive Enzymes and Supplements

It is very clear that all these digestive enzymes are essential for proper digestion and overall well-being. But research shows that due to poor eating habits, i.e., consumption of junk or processed food, there is a lack of digestive enzymes in the body as the pancreas has to produce twice these enzymes in order to digest these complex foods. This puts too much stress on it and eventually affects the immune system. Hence, to lessen the stress on pancreas and to refill the digestive enzyme deficiency, digestive enzyme supplements is a good option. But this leaves us with a few doubts in our mind, like what are benefits, when to take them, or which are the best digestive enzymes that one can consider taking. There are many natural digestive enzymes that one can opt for instead of going for digestive supplements.

Well, majority of the digestive enzyme supplements which are readily available in the market today are made of animal and plant enzymes and comprises digestive enzymes like protease, amylase, lipase and so on. Hence, taking this supplement with your meal for a considerable period of time can help replenishing the depleted digestive enzymes in the body. However, research shows that some consumers have noticed side effects like diarrhea, abdominal pain, constipation, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, headaches, etc. This is because some digestive enzymes supplements can destruct the natural existence of lipases, which gets into the way of the digestion of fats. Hence, before you opt for any such supplement, do consult your health care provider to avoid unwanted complications.

To conclude, we can say that digestive enzymes are essential for proper digestion of food and their deficiency can lead to many minor stomach and digestive problems like irritable bowel syndrome, indigestion, bloating and heartburn. Thus, digestive enzymes form an integral part of our digestive health.