Digestive enzymes: a nutritional supplement that is often overlooked

Proper digestion of proteins and carbohydrates is often an underestimated factor when it comes to attaining sports performance, i.e. building muscle mass and increasing it in terms of quality and quantity. With the development of science, which also substantially affects the area of nutrition, great emphasis is placed, especially in professional sports circles, on ensuring that what is consumed is used to the maximum extent possible. What role is played by digestive enzymes?

Why are there so many people around us today who have digestive problems and their body is unable to make the most of nutrients? Think, for example, of people suffering from lactose intolerance (also known as “milk allergy” among laymen) or celiac disease (gluten-protein intolerance, which is found in cereals and cereal products). In addition to the fact that their variety of foods they can potentially consume is significantly shortened, they need to be careful that traces of substances that do not "do them good" are not where you would not normally expect them to. And what about going to a restaurant? Ok, you can live like that, but it requires awareness, orientation and caution. Even among athletes, you will find many who have a similar problem, and yet have been able to reach the highest targets, even on an international scale. Remember, for example, our successful swimmer Martina Moravcová. And that's just the renowned drop in the sea. 

Why do we mention these people? Simply because most of them learned about their diagnosis after peripeties, when for a long time it was not possible to find out the cause of their digestive problems. Genetic differences between humans make some of us simply digest better, others worse. Therefore, many feel so-called abdominal discomfort after consuming certain foods. Not to mention that if we look under the cover of the whole process of digestion, except for the cellular, i.e. molecular level, we will find that very often only a part of what we consume, our body will actually use. For example, meat proteins - the holy grail of bodybuilders - are partially destroyed during its heat treatment. However, it has been shown that the addition of papain, an enzyme available as a supplement that can be found naturally in pineapple, significantly reduces the amount of heat-destroying proteins, allowing the body to use them to its advantage - whether to build muscles, but also to ensure other physiological processes [1].

The basic digestive enzymes of the human body include [2, 3]:

• PROTEASES and PEPTIDASES, which break down proteins into individual amino acids

• LIPASES, which break down fats into individual fatty acids and triacylglycerols

• CARBOHYDRASES, which break down polysaccharides into disaccharides and simple sugars

• NUCLEASES, which break down nucleic acids into individual nucleotides

Athletes in particular care more than others that their bodies can not only process, decompose, absorb and exclude the food they consume, but also take a use of it as much as possible, as we have already stressed several times in this article. They place the greatest emphasis on getting as much energy as possible from the macronutrients received to achieve performance as well as build muscle mass. Digestive enzymes are also increasingly used among professionals as nutritional supplements. These are in particular:

• PAPAIN, which we wrote about above.

• BROMELAIN, which not only helps digest proteins, but also has an anti-inflammatory effect and accelerates overall regeneration in people with inflammatory joint disease - arthritis. Together with the papain, we can find it in a pineapple.

• AMYLASE, one of the most important carbohydrases, breaking down polysaccharides into smaller units (di- and monosaccharides). It initiates the digestion of carbohydrates already in the oral cavity, but can be found in the pancreas, too [4].

• GLYCINE BETAINE, which protects the body from the side effects of dehydration. We can find it, for example, in spinach or seafood.

• PEPSIN, the most important protease that initiates the breakdown of proteins in the stomach.

• LIPASE, found mainly in the pancreas, but in smaller amounts also in the mouth or stomach [5]. It is used in medicine in the treatment of food allergies, cystic fibrosis, and several autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis [6].

• TRYPSIN, another enzyme in the protease family that helps digest proteins, this time in the small intestine. It is formed by pancreatic cells in an inactive form as trypsinogen and is subsequently "activated" by a biochemical reaction to its final form.

How supplementation with some of the digestive enzymes can help is illustrated by several studies. We will address their importance in relation to protein utilization. 

Surely you know that the average person should consume about 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, in the case of bodybuilders or other athletes this number at least doubles. In any stress stimulus, which in a way includes exercising (it is a performance that protrudes beyond the average physiological processes in the human body), there is a reaction in which the body adapts the level of functioning of individual organs, i.e. organ systems to the conditions. For example, when running, the heart begins to beat faster to be able to distribute enough blood into the circulation. During exercise, among other things, the digestive processes are slowed down, because the blood is transported as a matter of priority where it is currently needed most - to vital organs, but also to muscles.

In this case, the digestive tract is at least temporarily impoverished, and therefore it is not able to use for some time everything that comes to it (i.e. what is consumed). The absorption of nutrients affects not only the time during which the diet stays in the small intestine (the longer, the better), but also the amount of digestive enzymes that the body is able to produce at a given time. And this is where enzyme supplementation through nutritional supplements is so crucial. Several studies have shown that while without supplementation only about 15 out of every 50 grams of protein is used, it can increase two to threefold in certain circumstances [7]. And that's worth considering, isn't it?

SOURCES

1. Borrell, B. (2009). Churn Baby, Churn. Using Virtual Stomachs to Regurgitate the Mysteries of Digestion. Scientific America [online] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=virtual-stomachs-explain-digestion&page=3

2. Digestive enzymes. (2009). Wikipedia. [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestive_enzyme

3. Nadler, B. (1997). What You Should Know About Digestive Enzymes. Unlimited Visions. [Online] http://www.beverlynadler.com/html/nutrition.html

4. Betain. (2009). Wikipedia. [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betaine

5. Medline Plus. (2009). Lipase test. [Online] http://www.nlm.nih.gov/MEDLINEPLUS/ency/article/003465.htm

6. University of Maryland medical Center. (2007). [Online] http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/lipase-000311.htm

7. Oben, J, Kothari, SC, Anderson, ML: An open label study to determine the effects of an oral proteolytic system on whey protein concentration metabolism in healthy males. JISSN 2008 10.1186/1550-2783-5-10