The Natural Environment of the Gut
By: Dr. William Wong, ND, PhD.

That enzymes and good bacteria (pro biotics) each have beneficial health promoting effects on the body is beyond question.  Little over a decade ago physicians would laugh in the face of any mother who told her child's doc that she used the pro biotics to cut the antibiotic caused diarrhea in her baby.  Today there are actual pharmaceutical companies marketing pro biotic products to go along with antibiotic therapy in children to correct the dysbiosis caused by the drugs.   The good bacteria do various super important jobs from simple digestion and the enhancement of food absorption, to turning the colon into the largest organ of immunity in the body, as the intestinal wall once well colonized with good bacteria will turn out immunoglobins by the tens of millions and help the body fight and avoid disease.

Enzymes have a 40+ year history of use not only for digestion but also to fight inflammation and fibrosis of all sorts.   At present there are over 200 peer reviewed medical and university studies on the therapeutic effects and uses of systemic enzymes, backed by decades of practical medical application mostly in Central and Eastern Europe and Japan.

These days some biochemists who think that what happens in test tubes is exactly what happens inside of man, are saying that enzymes and good bacteria  are mutually exclusive of each other and antagonistic to each other.  They site that in the test tube when you put enzymes over good bacteria most of the pro biotics die off.   These egg heads are saying we have to choose between one and the other since according to their work we can't have both!

It's a good thing Nature pays no heed to fools!  There is a rule in both statistics and scientific experimentation that if results don't match observed reality then the experiment or statistic is wrong regardless of how well conceived and carried out the work was.   Since mammals have been alive and, for the nearly 4 million years mankind has walked the earth, good bacteria and enzymes have been both active and working together within the same system to create health.  In  digestion it is the job of the enzymes (mostly in the mouth and small intestine) to begin the breakdown of food.  Somewhat in the small intestine and then strongly in the large one, the good bacteria comes into play to complete the job of food breakdown and enhance the absorption of our foods.   Each of the products has it's “sphere of influence”, with the pancreatic juices releasing enzymes in the duodenum (first segment of the small intestine) and the strongest concentration of enzymes being there.  But the enzymes remain with the food, continuing the breaking down process, as it crosses into the later part of the small intestine and then into the larger colon.  In a healthy human or animal it's these areas that should be colonized with the good bacteria.   Both enzymes and the good bacteria keep a check on the bad yeast and bacteria that can grow in the gut and create conditions such as Candida infections. 

So go ahead, take your systemic and digestive enzymes, take good bacteria; as it has for the last few million years it will all work together! Yes good bacteria is fragile: it does not like our stomach acid, our body heat or some of the medications folks might be on. But we can further enhance the survival of good bacteria by using a strain called Lactobacillus Sporogenes (found in products such as Armoured Acidophilus). Let me explain. When we take in regular probiotic products the strength of that dose needs to be in the 15 to 30 billions of live cells per gram of product. Because by the time that dose of acidophilus meets with the stomach acid, most of it gets destroyed, leaving only a few hundred thousand or only a few tens of thousands of live cells to colonize the intestines! While we know this system of mega dosing will work, it is a poor way of insuring survival in acidophilus. In the lactobacillus sporogenes, we have a strain of good bacteria encased in a spore, that acts like an enteric coating, protecting the bacteria against extreme acids, heat and even antibiotics!

By using an acid, heat and antibiotic resistant acidophilus you can insure the immune boost a good bacteria colonized intestine will produce. Plus, you can keep away yeast infections or fight them off if you have them. If you take it along with antibiotics, it will help prevent the runs as well as the candida infections antibiotics use can cause. Most of all, you can insure that you prove the lab egg heads wrong: acidophilus and enzymes can and do live side by side as integral parts of a synergistic whole for the health and benefit of our physiology.