Digestive enzymes are proteins that your body makes to break down food and aid digestion.

There are many different types of digestive enzymes. The main categories of digestive enzymes include:

• - Amylase (made in the mouth and pancreas, breaks down complex carbohydrates)
• - Lipase (made in the pancreas, breaks down fats)
• - Protease (made in the pancreas, breaks down proteins)
• - Lactase (made in the small intestine, breaks down lactose - found in dairy products)

Digestive Enzymes are produced naturally by the body, but a number of factors can inhibit their production which can affect your digestion and absorption of nutrients. For example, stress, eating too quickly, and alcohol consumption can all inhibit digestive enzyme secretion.

Pregnancy can increase the need for supplemental enzymes even more. In pregnancy, levels of progesterone are elevated. Progesterone serves a number of important purposes, but it also relaxes the smooth muscles that line the digestive tract. These muscles are important to keeping digestion moving, and when they are relaxed, your motility (the motion of the intestines that moves food and waste along) is also slowed.

Progesterone also relaxes the sphincter in the esophagus and the sphincter that controls the release of digestive juices. This can lead to uncomfortable heartburn. Digestive Enzymes can help your food to move from the stomach into the small intestine more quickly, alleviating heartburn.

In addition, food quality has changed. Years ago, food came “packaged” with its own enzymes needed for digestion, so it wasn’t as critical that the body produced its own enzymes. Unfortunately, modern day farming practices have led to soil depletion, which has greatly reduced the presence of enzymes in our food. Key elements needed for enzyme production in plants, like nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur have declined. Furthermore, there has been an increase in processed food consumption, and processed foods lack the enzymes needed for digestion.

Finally, the enzymes that do exist in food exist in raw food. Once food is heated or cooked, enzyme potency declines.

The supplement facts panel looks different for digestive enzymes than for other supplements. This is because the potency of digestive enzymes is not measured in weight like vitamins and minerals, and enzymes do not provide nutrients in the form of calories or vitamins. Instead, the potency of digestive enzymes are measured by activity units.

An enzyme’s activity unit varies by enzyme type and represents the ability of one unit of an enzyme to break down a substrate (e.g., a food or other substance that an enzyme acts on) in a defined amount of time at a specific temperature and pH level.

Therefore, you will see a number followed by the activity unit next to each enzyme. This represents the potency of each enzyme.

Our Digestive Enzymes were designed to help digest a large, well rounded meal containing protein, fat, and carbohydrates, and including some difficult-to-digest foods like gluten, dairy, and legumes. They are also supportive of smaller, simpler meals and snacks.