(Updated May 17, 2019)

If you’re planning a long road trip, you know that you need not only to keep an eye on your car’s fuel level but also to monitor your car’s overall condition so that it’s more than simply “good enough” to get you where you’re going, but also capable of getting you around once you get there. Yet how many of us who expect to reach our golden years happy and healthy put as much care into keeping our bodies in as good shape as we do our automobiles?

It’s commonly known that many of the leading causes of death in the United States are preventable: smoking, obesity, alcohol consumption, toxin exposure, and diabetes are just a few of the causes of death that account for an astonishing percentage of the total causes of all deaths in the U.S. Despite the many ads for “active lifestyle” retirement communities, we Americans are more likely to live out our golden years attached to a dialysis machine or being treated for chemo than scheduling a daily tee time or frolicking on the beach with our grandchildren. While it’s true that interest in preventive medicine is growing, by and large, most Americans really don’t think about their health until they’ve lost it.

The effects of the modern diet

One aspect of our modern lifestyle that contributes significantly to our nation’s health crisis is the modern diet, comprised mainly of cooked and heat-processed foods, including many health supplements. Cooking and heat-processing our food renders it largely devoid of nutrition, including the critical component that actually “does the work” of digesting food: enzymes.

Enzymes are destroyed in prolonged heat over 118°F. Thus, the heat-processed and cooked foods we eat place more stress on our bodies, as they are forced to produce the digestive enzymes they were “counting on” but now find lacking in the food they’re being asked to digest.

Now this wouldn’t be so much of a problem if our bodies had the capacity to endlessly produce digestive enzymes. And, in fact, it was initially believed that our bodies could do just that: that we could recklessly spend our enzymes with no ill consequences. However, it was eventually discovered that each of us is actually given a limited supply of enzyme-producing capacity at birth. That is, if we’re careless about the condition in which we arrive at the cusp of our golden years, we may find ourselves more often in the shop than cruising down the highway.

The Food Enzyme Concept

In the early part of the 20th century, remarkable scientific discoveries were made concerning vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. Shortly thereafter, enzymes were discovered as well as what American Dr. Edward Howell named the Food Enzyme Concept, which holds that:

1. Organisms endow enzymes with a vital activity factor that is exhaustible
2. The capacity of a living organism to make enzymes — the enzyme potential — is limited and exhaustible

Noted Howell, “There are three classes of enzymes: metabolic enzymes, which run our bodies; digestive enzymes, which digest our food; and food enzymes from raw foods, which start digestion. […] Nature’s plan calls for food enzymes to help with digestion instead of forcing the body’s digestive enzymes to carry the whole load.”

By digesting raw foods with intact food enzymes, we lower the drain on our own limited resource of digestive enzymes. Conversely, by eating enzyme-deficient foods, we force our body to produce more digestive enzymes. If we do this over the course of our lives, repeatedly forcing our body to produce an excess of digestive enzymes, we will deplete our individual enzyme potential to the point of being unable to produce a sufficient amount of metabolic enzymes necessary to repair our organs and fight disease. We can see here the connection between our modern diet and the degenerative diseases to which our society has become so accustomed, diseases absent in wild animals and cultures that eat mostly raw foods.

No more backyard barbecues?

Am I suggesting that you pack up the grill? Not at all. I love a thick, juicy sirloin as much as anyone. Indeed, even Dr. Howell, a lifelong proponent of a raw diet, realized that the modern diet wasn’t going away and recommended enzyme supplements for use with all cooked foods and in larger doses (under supervision) by means of enzyme therapy. This is not, by the way, to suggest that one can avoid the costs of a lifetime of eating poorly by simply taking enzyme supplements! Nevertheless, regularly taking enzymes will go a long way toward preparing for a long — and healthy — life.

If you’ve already added BioSuperfood bio-algae concentrates to your diet, you will be happy to know that they contain more than 4,000 naturally occurring and live enzymes! In fact, no other food or combination of foods has been shown to contain as many enzymes as BioSuperfood. And not just enzymes! Proteins, amino acids, vitamins, minerals and trace elements (micronutrients), chlorophylls, mixed carotenoids and antioxidants, essential and non-essential fatty acids, polysaccharides, rare phytonutrients, and many, many others. In fact, no other supplement or superfood known today provides as complete and potent a source of nutrients as BioSuperfood.

BioSuperfood. One Supplement. Total Empowerment.

~ Owen Sweeney

Sources: Enzyme Nutrition: The Food Enzyme Concept by Dr. Edward Howell and The Magic is BAC by Roland Thomas, NMD.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Peak Health Supplements, BioAge, or BioNutrition. Statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). None of the products offered on this website are intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.