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Enzymes for Amateurs

You may have seen commercials that advertise enzymes in laundry detergent, but enzymes are at work in every living thing, including humans.

In the simplest of terms, enzymes break things down. So let’s talk human beings…

The human body engages in an infinite number of chemical reactions that are essential for survival. None of these reactions could take place without enzymes; in fact, there are more than 75,000 different types of enzymes at work in your body.

As catalysts, enzymes either initiate some type of reaction in the body or they work to make it faster.

As proteins, enzymes convert the foods we eat into simpler compounds that your body can use for energy and to generate new cells. Most enzymes can be found in the digestive track – enzymes such as amylases that break down starches into simple sugars.

The lack of certain enzymes is responsible for a number of diseases; phenylketonuria or PKU can cause severe mental retardation or even death in infants and Tay-Sachs disease can cause mental retardation, paralysis and death in young children if it is not properly treated.

Think about this…without enzymes, a single meal that you eat could take as long as 80 years to digest! So, while you may not have known anything about them, at least now you have an idea about how vital they are to all living organisms.