Dr. Doni Wilson explains why proper digestion is so crucial to good health, and how digestive enzymes can help heal far more than digestive issues alone.
GUT HEALTH.
Making sure you have good gut health is important, even if you don’t have digestive symptoms. When gut health becomes impaired, it usually means your body isn’t digesting food properly or fully. Improper digestion can create a chain-reaction of imbalances in the body, which can create or exacerbate many seemingly unrelated health issues. That is why, when I see signs of impaired digestion in a patient, I often recommend they use digestive enzymes to give their body the support it needs to come back into balance.
In this article, I will briefly explain how the digestive system works, and discuss eight common health issues – most of them NOT apparently originating in the gut – and how using digestive enzymes can often be the first step to getting well again.
QUICK LESSON: How Food Gets Digested
Think of the intestines as a tube running through our body. In order for nutrients to get into our bodies, food must be digested fully, all the way down to amino acids (from protein), lipids (from fat), glucose (from carbohydrates), and nutrients, which are tiny enough to go through the intestinal cells, traverse over to blood vessels, and be delivered to the liver and all other cells in your body.
Starting in our mouth, food is partially digested by enzymes. When this partially digested food reaches the stomach and small intestines, it is further digested in different ways:
- Proteins are digested by stomach acid (hydrochloric acid).
- Fats are digested by bile made by the liver and secreted from the gall bladder into the small intestine.
- Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are further digested by pancreatic enzymes (i.e. enzymes made in the pancreas) with names ending in “-ase” (e.g. amylase, protease and lipase).
- Cells lining the intestines also make enzymes, to complete one last step of digesting carbohydrates (from fruits, vegetables, and grains) inside our intestines so they can travel across the intestines cells to get inside our bodies.
When your digestion is impaired, you may need support in some of the areas listed above. But not all of these substances are recommended for everyone. Hydrochloric acid, for example, can cause heartburn, or burning in your throat, if you already have enough, and excess bile can cause digestive upset. Thus, it’s best not to take these unless your naturopathic doctor tells you that you really need them (usually based on a specialty stool panel).
Taking supplemental pancreatic enzymes* is different. They don’t cause burning or digestive upset. Your body does not become dependent on them, and they do not inhibit your body’s natural production of enzymes. They simply help ensure that all the food you eat gets digested (or as much as possible).
That said, the goal of taking digestive enzyme supplements is NOT to take them forever, but to use them as a means of supporting your body so you can recover from your health condition.
What Health Issues Can Improve by Taking Digestive Enzymes?
While just about every health condition under the sun can be affected by (and affect) digestion, I have found eight specific heath areas that respond positively when the patient takes digestive enzymes. Note that only two of them are “obvious” digestive complaints:
- Stress (emotional, mental, or physical)
- Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), bloating, gas, constipation, and/or diarrhea
- Leaky gut, food sensitivities
- Chronic fatigue, pain, fibromyalgia, migraines
- Anxiety, low mood, sleep issues, memory changes, brain fog
- Autoimmunity
- MTHFR and methylation issues
- PMS, abnormal pap, and/or fertility issues
In the following sections, I will take you through each of these health issues and explain how and why digestive enzymes can often provide necessary support to help your body rebalance and recover.
Stress – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
Anyone who knows my work knows that I talk a LOT about stress. That’s because stress is all around us; it’s simply part of life. And although your body is designed to cope with stress, when stress becomes too much or too constant for your body to handle, it will impair your digestion. Seeing the stress as something urgent that needs to be addressed right away, your body will trigger hormones and “stress messengers” (like cortisol and adrenaline) to deal with it, putting your digestive needs on hold until the stress has been resolved. In fact, when you are stressed, your body tends to slow down and decrease its production of digestive enzymes.
If the stress signals continue day in and day out, digestion becomes increasingly impaired. Studies show that the production of digestive enzymes decreases, the intestinal cells become leaky and less able to absorb nutrients, and gut bacteria are thrown off balance. All these factors lead to nutrient deficiencies and leaky gut.
When your body doesn’t digest food as well as it should, it cannot extract and absorb the essential nutrients it needs. Over time, you are likely to become nutrient-deficient, which will cause you to experience even MORE stress-related symptoms, like fatigue, pain, mood changes, menstrual irregularities, and sleep issues.
It can be useful to take digestive enzymes* when you are going through any kind of prolonged stress – physical, mental, or emotional. Doing so can help make up for the reduced enzyme production, and provide your whole body with support as it works hard to cope with other issues.
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
When your food is not completely digested, instead of feeding YOU, it ends up feeding the bacteria in your gut, causing an imbalance in gut bacteria (also known as the “microbiome”). Overgrowing bacteria produce gas, leading to all the classic symptoms of IBS – bloating, gas, diarrhea, and cramping. Some types of overgrowing bacteria also cause leaky gut and produce toxins that spread throughout your body, leading to symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, and pain.
There are many steps to reversing IBS, but the FIRST step is ensuring your food is more fully digested. Taking pancreatic enzymes can help, and in doing so, it will help you absorb your nutrients instead of feeding them to hungry, overgrowing bacteria.
TIP: It is also important to eat smaller quantities of food. Even when taking digestive enzymes, if you eat a large quantity of food (sugar and carbohydrates, in particular), it is likely that some of that food won’t get digested and will continue to overfeed the bacteria (as well as yeast/fungal growth).
Leaky Gut – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
Leaky gut (also called “intestinal permeability”) is when the intestinal cells are not as healthy as they could be, and are unable to do their job to digest carbohydrates and transport nutrients into your body. Instead, undigested food leaks between the cells where your immune system is on guard and will try to protect you from the undigested food, causing inflammation that can spread throughout your body. And when you’re stressed, food isn’t digested well, and gut bacteria get out of balance, leaky gut can go from bad to worse.
To heal leaky gut, it’s crucial to take enzymes to give your body support to digest your food. This way, you prevent inflammatory responses to the food and are more likely to absorb the nutrients. Essentially, enzymes help break the vicious cycle and allow your body to heal your intestinal lining, at which point you won’t need to take extra enzymes anymore.
TIP: Read about Dr. Doni’s Leaky Gut & Digestive Solutions Package here.
Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Migraines – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
Inflammation from leaky gut and overgrowing bacteria doesn’t just stay in your gut. Once inflammation is triggered, it can send inflammatory signals throughout your body, leading to muscle and joint pain, as well as headaches, migraines, anxiety, and low mood.
Additionally, impaired digestion of food leads to nutrient deficiencies. Deficiencies in iron, B vitamins, and magnesium are especially known to be related to pain and fatigue disorders, including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, migraines, and mitochondrial dysfunction.
Yes, you can take supplements to support the nutrients that are depleted, but if your body is unable to absorb them well, you might get less benefit from them than you had hoped. Digestive enzymes, along with other supplements* (such as glutamine, and herbs such as deglycyrrhizinated licorice/DGL), can help heal leaky gut and reduce inflammation, so you’ll be better able to absorb nutrients and less likely to suffer chronic pain issues.
TIP: In addition to supplements, it is also important to avoid foods that are triggering an inflammatory response such as the production of histamine and IgA/IgG antibodies.
Anxiety, Low Mood, Poor Memory or Mental Focus – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
Neurotransmitters are our bodies’ messengers that send signals throughout the nervous system. Neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, GABA, and adrenaline play huge roles in our overall mood, energy, memory and mental focus. But something few people realize is that most of our supply of neurotransmitters comes not from the brain, but from the GUT. For example, a whopping 90% of our serotonin (a major determinant in mood) is made in the gut.
All neurotransmitters are made from amino acids, which, in turn, come from proteins. So, if you’re not digesting your proteins properly, there is no way your body will have enough amino acids to make the neurotransmitters you need to stay alert, happy, and relaxed.
Additionally, inflammation in the gut leads to inflammation in the nervous system, which leads to anxiety, depression, decreased memory, and sleep disorders.
To improve your mood and mind, we need to increase your neurotransmitter production, and decrease inflammation in your nervous system. Digestive enzymes can help you attain both.
TIP: Read about Dr. Doni’s Sleep Solutions Package here.
Autoimmunity, Autoimmune Disease – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
The key thing I want to point out here is that the “recipe” for triggering autoimmunity is stress and poor digestion, which then leads to leaky gut and imbalanced gut bacteria. Many practitioners believe autoimmunity is irreversible, but if you consider how it all points back to the gut, it stands to reason that if you address the gut issues, you have a chance of reversing and healing autoimmunity, as you will have removed the original trigger for autoimmunity.
Again, digestive enzymes can be extremely useful in addressing one of the root causes of autoimmunity – poor digestion.
TIP: Read about Dr. Doni’s Autoimmunity Solutions Package here.
MTHFR and Methylation Issues – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
Methylation is the process by which our body uses B vitamins to make energy, neurotransmitters, and healthy cells. It also plays a role in detoxification and cell protection. If inflammation and toxins from overgrowing bacteria are present in the gut, they become a block to healthy methylation.
Thus, while digestive distress would affect ANYONE’S methylation, someone with an MTHFR variation will be especially affected by it. Thus, it is crucial to optimize your digestion, heal leaky gut, and keep your gut bacteria in check when you have MTHFR, and digestive enzymes are an important part of that making that happen.
TIP: Read about MTHFR and Genetic Solutions Package here.
PMS, Abnormal Pap Smear, Fertility Issues – How Digestive Enzymes Can Help
While healthy methylation is essential for all human beings, it plays a special role in women’s health. For example:
- Because methylation is the process by which new cells are made, it is especially active during pregnancy, when the baby’s body is being formed. If the methylation process is impaired (as in the case of women with the MTHFR variant), there is an increased chance of miscarriage and/or difficulty conceiving in the first place.
- If our body cannot replace old cells with new ones, there is a risk of developing abnormal cells or even cancer. One example of this is cervical dysplasia, which is the presence of abnormal cells on the cervix. Discovered via a pap smear, cervical dysplasia is associated with the virus HPV (however, not everyone with HPV has cervical dysplasia). I find that exposure to stress, leaky gut, and B vitamin deficiencies increase the likelihood of dysplasia, and I believe that is because those same factors inhibit methylation and the production of healthy cells on the cervix.
- B vitamins and healthy methylation are also essential for the detoxification of estrogens in the liver. If we are not digesting food well and not absorbing nutrients, detoxification will become less effective, which can lead to signs of estrogen dominance, such as PMS, breast tenderness, and fibroids.
Just as in addressing MTHFR, whenever a woman comes to me seeking support for fertility, hormone issues, or abnormal cells on the cervix, I typically recommend digestive support in the form of digestive enzymes.
TIP: Read about Dr. Doni’s Cervical Dysplasia Solutions Package here.
TIP: Read about Women’s Health Solutions Package here.
Recommended Product: Dr. Doni’s Enzyme Support
Because I recommend digestive enzymes so frequently, I decided to create my own brand. This way, I can ensure it contains the exact ingredients that address all these conditions, without taking anything you don’t really need.
Over time, you’ll be able to heal leaky gut, decrease inflammation, reduce pain, improve methylation, and minimize toxins. Your neurotransmitter levels will improve, and your body will be more able to produce healthy new cells throughout your body.
This product does NOT contain hydrochloric acid or bile, as many other digestive enzyme complexes do.
Putting Gut Health at the Top of Your To-Do List
I hope this article has shown you why I believe gut health is key to so many seemingly unrelated health issues. I have repeatedly seen patients get better from conditions their doctors told them would never improve – simply by supporting their digestive system.
And while I am a huge believer in the effectiveness of digestive enzymes in that healing process, I also want to suggest that they will work even more effectively if you make sure to address your STRESS exposure. I believe when we make it our ultimate goal to “find calm in the chaos,” it will enable us to sit down to eat, chew our food with care, and digest it better.
To that end, I recommend picking up a copy of my book, The Stress Remedy, which will help you see stress through different eyes, and learn ways to minimize stress in your body and your environment.
Until next time, I wish you well.
–Dr. Doni
5th April 2018
*Please keep in mind that any and all supplements—nutrients, herbs, enzymes, or other—should be used with caution. My recommendation is that you seek the care of a naturopathic doctor (with a doctorate degree from a federally-accredited program) and that you have a primary care physician or practitioner whom you can contact to help you with individual dosing and protocols. If you ever experience negative symptoms after taking a product, stop taking it immediately and contact your doctor right away.