By: William Wong N.D., Ph.D.
Member World Sports Medicine Hall of Fame

The word systemic means body wide. Systemic enzymes are those that operate, not just for digestion, but throughout your body in every system and organ. But let's take first things first, what is an enzyme?

An enzyme is a biocatalyst - something that makes something else work or work faster. Chemical reactions are generally slow things, enzymes speed them up. Without enzymes, the chemical reactions that make up our life would be too slow for life as we know it. (As slow as sap running down a tree in winter). For life to manifest, as we know it, enzymes are essential to speed up the reactions. We have roughly 3000 enzymes in our bodies and over 7000 enzymic reactions. Most of these enzymes are derived or created from what we think of as the protein digesting enzymes. But while digestion is an important part of what enzymes do, it's almost the absolute last function. First and foremost, these body-wide protein-eating enzymes have the following actions:

Enzymes are the first line of defense against inflammation. (1,2,3). Inflammation is a reaction by the immune system to an irritation. Let's say you have an injured right knee. The immune system, sensing the irritation in the knee, creates a protein chain called a Circulating Immune Complex (CIC for short), tagged specifically for that right knee. (A scientist who found the tagging mechanism won the Nobel Prize in biology in 1999). This CIC floats down to the right knee and causes pain, redness and swelling - the classic earmarks for inflammation. This, at first, is a beneficial reaction; it warns us that a part of ourselves is hurt and needs attention. But, inflammation is self-perpetuating, it creates an irritation that in response, the body makes CIC's for!

Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Celebrex, Viox and the rest of the Non Steroidial Anti Inflammatory Drugs all work by keeping the body from making all the CIC's. This ignores the fact that some CIC's are vital to life, like those that maintain the lining of the intesting and those that keep the kidneys functioning! Not to mention the fact that they, along with acetaminophen, are highly toxic to the liver. Every year 20,000 Americans die from these over the counter drugs and another 100,000 will wind up in the hospital with liver damage, kidney damage or bleeding intestines from the side effects of these drugs. (4,5).

Systemic enzymes, on the other hand, are perfectly safe and free of dangerous side effects. They have no LD-50, or toxic dose. (6). Best of all, systemic enzymes can tell the difference between the good CIC's and the bad ones. This is due to the fact that hydrolytic enzymes are lock and key mechanisms and their "teeth" will only fit over the bad CIC's. So instead of preventing the creation of all CIC's, systemic enzymes just "eat" the bad ones and in so doing, lower inflammation everywhere. With that, pain is also lowered.

Anti Fibrosis

Enzymes eat scar tissue and fibrosis. (7). Fibrosis is scar tissue and most doctors learn in anatomy that it is fibrosis that eventually kills us all. Let me explain. As we age, which starts at 27, we have a diminishing of the body's output of enzymes. This is because we make a finite amount of enzymes in a lifetime and we use up a good deal of them by the time we reach our 40's (Cystic Fibrosis patients who have virtually no enzyme production to speak of, even as children usually don't make it past their 20's before they die of the restriction and shrinkage in the lungs from the formation of fibrosis or scar tissue).

So our body begins to dole out our enzymes with an eyedropper instead of with a tablespoon. Result: the repair mechanism of the body goes off balance and has nothing to reduce the over abundance of fibrin it deposits in nearly everything from simple cuts, to the inside of our internal organs and blood vessels. It is then when most women begin to develop things like fibrocystic breast disease, uterine fibroids, and endometriosis. We all grow arterial sclerotic (meaning scar tissue) plaque, and have fibrin begin to spider web its way inside of our internal organs, reducing their size and function over time. This is why as we age our wounds heal with thicker, less pliable, weaker and very visible scars.

If we replace the lost enzymes, we can control and reduce the amount of scar tissue and fibrosis our bodies have. As physicians in the US are now discovering, even old scar tissue can be "eaten away" from surgical wounds, pulmonary fibrosis, and kidney fibrosis even keloid years after their formation. Medical doctors in Europe and Asia have known this and used orally administered enzymes for such for over 40 years!

Blood Cleansing

The blood is not only the river of life; it is also the river through which the cells and organs dispose of their waste. Enzymes improve circulation by eating the excess fibrin that causes blood to sometimes get as thick as catsup or yogurt, creating the perfect environment for the formation of clots. All of this material is supposed to be cleaned off by the liver on "first pass" or the first time it goes through. Given the sluggish and near toxic or toxic states of everyone's liver these days, that seldom happens. So the waste remains in the blood, waiting for the liver to have enough free working space and enough enzymes to clean it. This can take days or in some people, weeks! (8).

When systemic enzymes are taken, they stand ready in the blood and take the strain off of the liver by:

• Cleaning excess fibrin from the blood and reducing the stickiness of blood cells. These two actions minimize the leading causes of stroke and heart attack: blood clots (8).
• Breaking dead material down small enough that it can immediately pass into the bowel. (8).
• Cleansing the FC receptors on the white blood cells, improving their function and availability to fight off infection. (9).

And here we come to the only warning we have to give concerning the use of Vitalzym or any other systemic enzyme - don't use the product if you ar a hemophiliac or are on prescription blood thinners like coumadin, heparin and plavix. The enzymes cause the drugs to work better, so there is the possibility of thinning the blood too much.

Immune System Modulating

Enzymes are adaptogenic, seeking to restore a steady state to the body. (9). When the immune system is running low, we become susceptible to infectious disease. When it's cranked up too high, then the system creates antibodies that attack it's own tissues, as are seen in the autoimmune diseases of MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Lupus. Here the Vitalzym will tone down immune function and eat away at the antibodies the immune system is making to attack its bodies own tissue.

When the immune system is run down too low, the enzymes increase immune response, producing more Natural Killer cells, and improving the efficiency of the white blood cells, all leading to improved immunity.

Viruses harm us by replicating in our bodies. To do this, a virus must bond itself to the DNA in our cells through the medium of its exterior protein cell wall. Anything that disrupts that cell wall inhibits the ability of viral replication by rendering individual viruses inert. (10, 11). Systemic enzymes can tell the difference between the proteins that are supposed to be in your body and those that are foreign or not supposed to be there (again the enzyme lock and key mechanism). Vitalzym has the strongest protein eating effect of any enzyme due to its Serrapeptase content and can be of help in combating viruses.

References

1) Carroll A., R.: Clinical examination of an enzymatic anti-inflammatory agent in emergency surgery. Arztl. Praxis 24 (1972), 2307.

2) Mazzone A, et al.: Evaluation of Serratia peptidase in acute or chronic inflammation of otorhinolaryngology pathology: a multicentre, double blind, randomized trial versus placebo. J Int Med Res. 1990; 18(5):379-88.

3) Kee W., H. Tan S, L., Lee V. Salmon Y. M.: The treatment of breast engorgement with Serrapeptase: a randomized double blind controlled trial. Singapore Med J. 1989:30(I):48-54.

4) Celebrex article. Wall Street Journal. 19 April 1999.

5) No author listed: Regular Use of Pain Relievers Can Have Dangerous Results. Kaleidoscope Interactive News, American Medical Association media briefing. July 24, 1997.

6) Enzymes - A Drug of the Future, Prof. Heinrich Wrba MD and Otto Pecher MD. Published 1993 Eco Med.

7) Kakinumu A. et al.: Regressing of fibrinolysis in scalded rats by administration of serrapeptase. Biochem. Pharmacol. 31:2861-2866, 1982.

8) Ernst E., Matrai A.: Oral Therapy with proteolytic enzymes for modifying blood rheology. Klin Wschr. 65 (1987), 994.

9) Kunze R., Ransberger K., et at: Humoral immunomodulatory capacity of proteases in immune complex decomposition and formation. First International symposium on combination therapies, Washington, DC, 1991.

10) Jager H.: Hydrolytic Enzymes in the therapy of HIV disease. Zeitschr. Allgemeinmed., 19 (1990), 160.

11) Bartsch W.: The treatment of herpes zoster using proteolytic enzymes. Der Informierte Arzt. 2 (1974), 424-429.

WARNING:If you are pregnant, lactating, a hemophiliac, taking anti-coagulants (such as Coumadin, Heparin and Plavix), blood thinners, or have a history of thinning blood in your family, do not take Vitalzym, VitalzymSEB, or NattoQ10 without direction and supervision from your medical provider. Discontinue use 2 weeks prior to surgery.