#683: Cleanup Crew for Your Body: Scar Tissue, Cysts & Our Systemic Enzyme Stories

What is an enzyme? An enzyme is a protein that makes a chemical reaction happen.

Your body runs on thousands of them.

We would die without them.

Most people know enzymes or think enzymes, and they think digestive enzymes.

And especially if you listen to me, 'cause I talk about digestive enzymes as part of my vital five.

But systemic enzymes have a different job description than digestive enzymes, al- although they are very closely related.

Most systemic enzymes are what are called proteolytic, which means protein-breaking.

But instead of taking them with food, you take them on an empty stomach.

With no food to work on, they can't break down that piece of chicken you just ate.

What they do is that portion, or that enzyme actually gets absorbed and goes to work in your blood and in your tissues.

Some of the very same enzymes, though, like bromelain in pineapple and papain from papaya, can be digestive enzymes if used with a meal, but they're systemic enzymes if they use different timing, meaning not with a meal.

Your body already makes its own versions of these enzymes.

Your pancreas makes something called trypsin and chymotrypsin.

Your blood makes plasmin, which breaks down fibrin, and that word, fibrin, is the key to this entire episode.

Fibrin is a sticky protein mesh.

When you get injured, your body lays it down to stop bleeding and wall off the area so repair can start.

That's a good thing.

The problem is when the cleanup crew doesn't show up afterward, fibrin can linger.

It becomes the scaffolding that scar tissue gets built on.

It keeps inflammation simmering, and it makes your blood thicker than it probably should be.

As we age, our own enzyme production drops, so that cleanup crew gets smaller and less effective.

And this isn't fringe science.

In Germany and much of Europe, oral enzyme blends for systemic enzyme purposes are prescribed as drugs and have been for decades.

The most researched blend grew out of the work of a physician named Max Wolf and a biochemist named Helen or Helene, uh, Benitez.

Most of the human research I'm about to share with you use that blend.