If you Google, “How To Find The Fountain of Youth”, you would probably see pages after pages of some mythical place where many people have died on their quest to locate it.  But what if I was to say an actual Fountain of Youth can be found in your body and more specifically, in certain foods?  Would you be shocked or surprised; this has to be a joke, right?  Where can you get this magical elixir to help reverse the aging process we all experience? You can find them via nutrition, and these miraculous catalysts to better and more healthful aging are called enzymes.

If you want to live a longer life, then it’s important for you to learn more about enzymes and the benefits of taking enzymes. These are the secret “potions”. Do you know what enzymes are, what the functions of an enzyme are, or what is the definition of an enzyme?

​An easy way I like to share about what exactly are enzymes is to compare them to a pair of scissors. Scissors cut bigger chunks into smaller pieces. Enzymes work the same way. They are catalysts that can help to break down foods you eat into tinier components so that your body can more readily utilize the vitamins and minerals found within the foods. But they actually serve a much bigger function in our bodies and can be better explained as the spark plugs within the body. Enzymes help create that “spark” for the body to begin any bodily functions, whether that is to breathe, circulate blood, or ensure proper brain function.

When you consume foods and your body begins to break them down via digestion, it is during that process that the available nutrients are unlocked and made usable by the body. This is what enzymes do; they unlock the nutrition from foods and there are 3 types of enzymes available to the body.

There are metabolic enzymes that help the body complete bodily functions. There are digestive enzymes that help break down fats, carbohydrates, and proteins and there are food enzymes found in various raw foods that help break down the nutrients from the foods themselves. Without metabolic enzymes, you wouldn’t be able to do most bodily functions. Without digestive enzymes, the body would be severely backed up and become toxic, and without food enzymes, those foods are simply dead (i.e. processed) foods with very little naturally nutritious benefits.

With all the discussion about enzymes, it’s important to note that we don’t have an infinite amount of enzymes available to us in our body. This amount of enzymes available to us is directly related to how well our diet is, with the bigger question being, “how much processed or fast food do you consume”. Food enzymes can be found in raw foods, fruits, and vegetables, and from a enzyme-rich standpoint, it is very difficult to beat consuming raw foods. With the enzymes naturally found in them, it’s like nature is providing you with a battery operated toy for Christmas, and is also supplying you with the batteries and battery charger as well.  Consuming raw foods allows you to obtain the foods enzymes naturally, in order to obtain the nutrients from them. This is often the reason that many people prefer a raw food diet. It’s nature providing it’s own menu.

​But let’s say, you have digestive issues and your body has a difficult time breaking down those foods, what do you do? That’s where digestive enzymes come into effect. You can actually take digestive enzyme supplements to assist your body in the breakdown of those foods it has difficulty consuming, like those proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. The other side of the coin is that you can also conclude you won’t find many enzymes in processed foods like boxed pasta, rice-a-roni, or packaged meats you find on supermarket shelves. So how does your body break down these processed foods if there are no natural food enzymes found in it and you don’t consume additional digestive supplements? It uses the body’s metabolic enzymes to create that spark.

What most people don’t realize is that the body doesn’t have an unlimited supply of these metabolic enzymes; there is a finite amount of them available to create that spark and reaction. The way you should begin thinking about these enzymes is just as you would think about opening a bank account except with a few stipulations.  It can be opened with a very large lump sum and the account holder cannot deposit additional funds anytime in the future.

Let’s say you are born and this make believe “enzyme account” is opened up with 10,000 metabolic enzyme credits in it. Every time your body requires you to use an enzyme, you withdrawal 1 credit. Eat a Big Mac? Subtract 1 credit. Blood sugar low? Subtract 1 credit. What is important to note is that metabolic enzymes can be used for anything, and not just for digestion. So if you have blood pressure, heart issues, gall stones, or the like, metabolic enzymes are used quite frequently when the body is not performing optimally. It may not seem like such a big deal in the beginning, but as you age and begin to use more and more credits based on a typical SAD (Standard-American-Diet), you can see the use of enzymes can begin to compound.

This is no more evident when you use the example of how an elderly person’s health can deteriorate quite rapidly after a traumatic event occurs. My grandfather walked everywhere in his small town and was “healthy” up until he turned 92 (the fact he smoke and drank a small glass of whiskey every night confounded me). But on his way to church, he was clipped by a moving car, broke his hip, and was confined to his bed for several weeks to heal. It was in that month that he had more health complications that he actually experienced in the previous 20 years combined. My point is that although he may have been anomaly, his metabolic bank account was emptied and his body started to function improperly in order to compensate. His life of whiskey, smoking, and eating store-bought chocolate cookies and coffee for breakfast every day caught up with him, and in his old age, his body required a lot of energy to repair his body, energy which he didn’t have. His enzyme bank account inevitably reached zero.

So what is the fountain of youth? What is the key to beating the age old question, “How do we stop father time?” Ultimately, the deterioration of your mental and physical health can be slowed by ensuring your body has enough enzymes (food, digestive, and metabolic) throughout your life. If you focus your life making sure you have enough enzymes to help break down the foods you eat in order to get the most nutrients from those foods so you can breathe, live, circulate blood, and live a happy and productive life, you’ll notice that you might be able to slow the aging process.

So what should you do in order to ensure your metabolic bank account never reaches zero? Here are a list of steps you can do and begin to incorporate into your daily lifestyle in order to maintain a strong and healthy body.

1. Eat as much raw foods as you are comfortable eating. If you enjoy eating vegetables and fruits, the best option is always to head to and shop in the produce section.
2. Choose organic foods and eat as much of the foods as you are comfortable eating, including the skin and seeds. Let’s use pineapples as an example. Bromelain is a powerful digestive enzyme but is found mainly in the pineapple stem which is the part most people throw out. So next time you are chopping up a piece of fruit or vegetable, ask yourself whether you can use the rind, the core, or the skin before throwing it away.  Is it edible?
3. Reduce the amount of “dead” or processed foods you consume. In order to bring those foods to life within your body, you need metabolic enzymes. So it’s best to eat signicantly less boxed foods than you probably are already eating.
4. Find a high quality (i.e. generally not the least expensive) enzyme supplement. If you already have digestion issues, look to papain, bromelain, or pepsin to improve it. If you don’t have many digestive issues, supplement with a metabolic enzyme supplement instead.
5. If you are ever feeling under the weather or a bit “off”, it’s even more crucial that you don’t overload your body with processed foods. Look to raw and natural foods that are easily digestible, especially when you are ill and already compromised. If your body is sick and working hard to repair itself, the worst thing you can do is make it harder for it to work by consuming processed foods.

The key to staying young and healthy is the focus of many people. Enzymes are beneficial for your overall health and should be a part of your daily health regimen. And although no one will live forever, taking enzymes and ensuring your body has enough will slow down that process significantly.

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Although this article presented a high-level overview of enzymes, if you are interested in learning more about how enzymes can benefit you and your digestion, be sure to download this free guide.