Enzymes are the energy givers « Mark Spilmon’s Weblog

Enzymes are the energy givers

A few days ago, I blogged hundreds of words on Healthy Energy. It is known that what we eat has a directed effect on our metabolic and energy level. Even before a bite of food is eaten, our salivary glands (exocrine glands) can kick into high production, and we begin salivating our food softening enzyme, amylase.

Amylase hydrolyzes starch, glycogen, and dextrin to form in all three instances glucose, maltose, and the limit-dextrins. Amylase is not in the saliva of some animals such as horses, dogs, and cats. Amylase is also known as Ptyalin.

Amylase enzymes are used extensively in bread making to break down complex sugars such as starch (found in flour) into simple sugars. Yeast then feeds on these simple sugars and converts it into the waste products of alcohol and CO2. This imparts flavour and causes the bread to rise. While Amylase enzymes are found naturally in yeast cells, it takes time for the yeast to produce enough of these enzymes to break down significant quantities of starch in the bread. This is the reason for long fermented doughs such as sour dough. Modern bread making techniques have included amylase enzymes into bread improver thereby making the bread making process faster and more practical for commercial use.

Two similar types of amylase are made in your body–one is secreted in saliva, where it starts to break down starch grains as you chew, and the other is secreted by the pancreas, where it finishes its job. Then, these little pieces are broken into individual glucose units by a collection of enzymes that are tethered to the walls of the intestine. It takes starch chains and breaks them into smaller pieces with two or three glucose units. Then, these little pieces are broken into individual glucose units by a collection of enzymes that are tethered to the walls of the intestine.

Your blood’s glucose is a major source of energy in your body. One of the major jobs of digestion is to break these chains into their individual glucose units, which are then delivered by the blood to hungry cells throughout your body. Blood glucose levels are maintained in the blood by the hormone activity of insulin and glucagon. Long term insufficient hormone activity to control blood glucose levels will result in diabetes.

So the amylase enzymes in our saliva are biological catalysts, or chemicals that speed up the rate of reaction between substances without themselves being consumed in the reaction.

Enzymes have extremely interesting properties that make them little chemical-reaction machines. The purpose of an enzyme in a cell is to allow the cell to carry out chemical reactions very quickly. These reactions allow the cell to build things or take things apart as needed. This is how a cell grows and reproduces. At the most basic level, a cell is really a little bag full of chemical reactions that are made possible by enzymes!

So how does the body come up with the saliva enzyme?

A type of protein, enzymes sometimes work in tandem with non-proteins called coenzymes. Among the processes in which enzymes play a vital role is fermentation, which takes place in the production of alcohol or the baking of bread and also plays a part in numerous other natural phenomena, such as the purification of wastewater. The body uses long chains of protiens called amino acids to create the enzymes in our bodies. Amino acids are organic compounds made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and (in some cases) sulfur bonded in characteristic formations and are link together by peptide bonds to form proteins or that function as chemical messengers and as intermediates in metabolism. The amino acid sequence in a particular protein is determined by its gene.

Of the 20 amino acids required by humans for making protein, only 12 can be produced within the body, whereas the other eightisoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valinemust be obtained from the diet. (In addition, adults are capable of synthesizing arginine and histidine, but these amino acids are believed to be essential to growing children, meaning that children cannot produce them on their own.)

A complete protein is one that contains all of the essential amino acids in quantities sufficient for growth and repair of body tissue. Most proteins from animal sources, gelatin being the only exception, contain all the essential amino acids and are therefore considered complete proteins. On the other hand, many plant proteins do not contain all of the essential amino acids. For example, lysine is absent from corn, rice, and wheat, whereas corn also lacks tryptophan and rice lacks threonine. Soybeans are lacking in methionine. Vegans, or vegetarians who consume no animal proteins in their diets (i.e., no eggs, dairy products, or the like) are at risk of malnutrition, because they may fail to assimilate one or more essential amino acid.

All enzymes belong to the protein family, but many of them are unable to participate in a catalytic reaction until they link with a non protein component called a coenzyme. This can be a medium-size molecule called a prosthetic group, or it can be a metal ion (an atom with a net electric charge), in which case it is known as a cofactor. Quite often, though, coenzymes are composed wholly or partly of vitamins. Although some enzymes are attached very tightly to their coenzymes, others can be parted easily; in either case, the parting almost always deactivates both partners.

Enzymes in the human body fulfill one of three basic functions. The largest of all enzyme types, sometimes called metabolic enzymes, assist in a wide range of basic bodily processes, from breathing to thinking. Some such enzymes are devoted to maintaining the immune system, which protects us against disease, and others are involved in controlling the effects of toxins, such as tobacco smoke, converting them to forms that the body can expel more easily.

A second category of enzyme is in the diet and consists of enzymes in raw foods that aid in the process of digesting those foods. They include proteases, which implement the digestion of protein; lipases, which help in digesting lipids or fats; and amylases, which make it possible to digest carbohydrates. Such enzymes set in motion the digestive process even when food is still in the mouth. As these enzymes move with the food into the upper portion of the stomach, they continue to assist with digestion.

The third group of enzymes also is involved in digestion, but these enzymes are already in the body. The digestive glands secrete juices containing enzymes that break down nutrients chemically into smaller molecules that are more easily absorbed by the body. Amylase in the saliva begins the process of breaking down complex carbohydrates into simple sugars. While food is still in the mouth, the stomach begins producing pepsin, which, like protease, helps digest protein.

Later, when food enters the small intestine, the pancreas secretes pancreatic juicewhich contains three enzymes that break down carbohydrates, fats, and proteinsinto the duodenum, which is part of the small intestine. Enzymes from food wind up among the nutrients circulated to the body through plasma, a watery liquid in which red blood cells are suspended. These enzymes in the blood assist the body in everything from growth to protection against infection.

One digestive enzyme that should be in the body, but is not always present, is lactase. As we noted earlier, lactase works on lactose, the principal carbohydrate in milk, to implement its digestion. If a person lacks this enzyme, consuming dairy products may cause diarrhea, bloating, and cramping. Such a person is said to be “lactose intolerant,” and if he or she is to consume dairy products at all, they must be in forms that contain lactase. For this reason, Lactaid milk is sold in the specialty dairy section of major supermarkets, while many health-food stores sell lactaid tablets.

Amylase is produced by the exocrine pancreas and the salivary glands (in particular the Parotid gland locate near the ear and Submandibular gland localed by the jaw bone).

Besides the catalyzing enzymes, your body has a thyroid gland that produces a hormone called thyroxine. The thyroid controls how quickly the body burns energy, makes proteins, and how sensitive the body should be to other hormones. The thyronines act on the body to increase the basal metabolic rate, affect protein synthesis and increase the body’s sensitivity to catecholamines (such as adrenaline) by permissiveness. The thyroid hormones are essential to proper development and differentiation of all cells of the human body. These hormones also regulate protein, fat, and carbohydrate metabolism, affecting how human cells use energetic compounds. They also stimulate vitamins metabolism. Numerous physiological and pathological stimuli influence thyroid hormone synthesis.

Thyroid hormone leads to heat generation in human. However, the thyronamines function via some unknown mechanism to inhibit neuronal activity; this plays an important role in the hibernation cycles of mammals and the moulting behaviour of birds. One effect of administering the thyronamines is a severe drop in body temperature.

My educated guess is that if your body has low thyroxine production, it probably means low enzyme production, and that you may encounter a problem with the pancreas as well which may lead to diabetes type 2 symptoms. The ability of Hypothyroidism to mimic a number of medical conditions originates in the vast functions of the thyroid hormones, which are reduced or absent in this case. The functions of thyroid hormones include modulation of carbohydrate, protein and fat metabolism, vitamin utilization, mitochondrial function, digestive process, muscle and nerve activity, blood flow, oxygen utilization, hormone secretion and sexual and reproductive health to mention a few. Thus, when the thyroid hormone content gets out of balance, systems covering the whole body are affected. This is why hypothyroidism can look like other diseases. Conversely, sometimes other conditions can be mistaken for hypothyroidism.

It is possible to obtain an over the counter enzyme supplimental which has pancreatin, (a mixture of several digestive enzymes produced by the exocrine cells of the pancreas,) and this may be helpful in weight maintenance as well as having more energy. You should problably research this area for yourself throughly, as it is possible to have a problem where the digestive enzymes start digesting the pancreas itself (Pancreatitis).

I hope that you now have some idea why you see an enzyme blend was listed on an energy drink label.

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Helpful Links:

http://www.answers.com/salivary+gland

http://www.answers.com/amylase

http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/static.do?p=education_discussion/molecule_of_the_month/pdb74_1.html

http://www.answers.com/enzyme?cat=health

http://www.answers.com/Amino+acids+?cat=health

http://science.howstuffworks.com/cell2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid_hormone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothyroidism