Healing Joint Pain Naturally by Ellen Hodgson Brown

Author:Ellen Hodgson Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780767909341
Publisher: Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2001-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

~SEVENTEEN~

Enzymes, Digestive Aids, and Dietary Habits

No mineral, vitamin or hormone can do any work without enzymes. The body may have the raw building materials, but without the workers, it cannot begin.

—EDWARD HOWELL, M.D.1

Other supplements found to be highly effective for arthritis relief are digestive and pancreatic enzymes. Supplemental enzymes have been shown to reduce inflammation and joint pain not only in osteoarthritis but in the more intractable rheumatoid arthritis, and they do it without the daunting side effects of conventional drugs.

Research traces the underlying problem to the modern diet. Cooking, microwaving, and processing destroy enzymes found naturally in foods. As a result, food gets to the colon undigested, leaving toxic residues that must be detoxified by the liver. When the liver becomes overloaded, toxins enter the blood, where they can evoke an aggressive autoimmune response and the production of circulating immune complexes. (See chapter 5.) Deteriorating joints also produce corrosive proteins leading to the production of immune complexes, which lodge in the joints and cause irritation. The problem can affect all forms of arthritis but is magnified in people with RA, who tend to be deficient in digestive enzymes (secreted by the pancreas) and in hydrochloric acid (secreted in the stomach). When proteins are not broken down properly by the pancreatic enzymes specific for their digestion, large molecules are left that are treated by the body as foreign, evoking an autoimmune response.2

Supplemental enzymes derived from plants can aid digestion in the stomach, and supplemental enzymes derived from the pancreases of animals can aid digestion in the intestines. Pancreatic enzyme formulations help by splitting the corrosive protein products that lead to joint inflammation into smaller chains of amino acids, which can then be eliminated from the system. These pancreatic preparations have been shown to be at least as effective as NSAIDs and other anti-inflammatory drugs in treating a variety of conditions including arthritis, but their side effects are very low. The preparations that have been extensively studied have usually involved combinations of the enzymes bromelain and trypsin.3

Caution: Supplemental enzymes are not recommended for people with bleeding disorders, inflammation of the intestines, reflux, or ulcers.

PANCREATIC ENZYMES

Although a number of pancreatic enzyme formulations are on the market, the one that has been most thoroughly studied is a bestselling German product called Wobenzym developed in the 1960s. Wobenzym tablets are pancreatic enzymes that are enteric coated to prevent digestion in the stomach, ensuring that they are liberated in the small intestine, where they share the workload of the body’s own pancreatic enzymes. Wobenzym contains the enzymes trypsin, chymotrypsin, bromelain, papain, and pancreatin, with a small amount of the bioflavanoid rutin.

Among other studies, one published in the German medical journal Natur- und Ganzheitsmedizin in 1988 found that Wobenzym produced benefits for RA patients similar to those of gold therapy, without its toxic side effects.

Another study was reported in 1996 at the Second Russian Symposium on Oral Enzyme Therapy in St. Petersburg. The Russian researchers tested Wobenzym on seventy-eight patients with severe, crippling RA who were using other drugs for their disease.

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