ENZYMES AND FOOD INTOLERANCE
Enzymes make chemical reactions happen, as described on pl8. The two main types of enzymes that concern us here are digestive enzymes and detoxification enzymes.
Digestive enzymes are mostly found in the gut, where they break food down into smaller molecules (see p20). The purpose of digestion is to reduce food molecules to their basic building blocks, which can then be used by the body to construct its own molecules – rather like demolishing an old house and then using the bricks to build something else. There are also some digestive enzymes (mostly protein-splitting enzymes) within the gut wall and in the liver: these complete the digestion of food molecules after they have been absorbed.
Detoxification enzymes are charged with destroying or disarming all the toxins that get into our bodies. Some of these toxins are found in food, where they mostly serve defensive purposes (see pl5). Others are produced by the bacteria living in our gut – the gut flora. To add to this ‘natural’ load, there are a variety of synthetic substances that have to be detoxified, including alcohol and nicotine, medicinal drugs, food additives, and pesticide residues in food. Most of the body’s detoxification enzymes are found in the liver, but there are also some in other parts of the body, such as the surface of the blood platelets – the tiny ‘cells’ in the blood that help it to clot.
Detoxification enzymes respond to the body’s particular needs – if more toxin is taken in then more of the appropriate enzymes are produced to cope with the added load. An obvious example of this is alcohol – the more we drink, on a regular basis, the more it takes to feel inebriated. Give up alcohol for a few months and a half of shandy is enough to make you tipsy. In effect, the body has become much more sensitive to the effects of alcohol, because the liver has scaled down its production of the necessary detoxification enzymes.
Although this works for alcohol, it is by no means certain that it works for all toxins – with some toxins, the body may only have a limited capacity to cope with them, and increasing the load may not increase the detoxification enzymes. Even with alcohol there is a limit – the task of detoxification eventually becomes too much for the liver, which begins to fail. When this happens, the vital role that the liver normally plays becomes apparent – alcoholics suffer badly from the effects of natural toxins, especially those produced by gut bacteria, which they can no longer detoxify.
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