Thread: do digestive enzymes work

It is my understanding, and I am not a medical expert at any level, that digestive enzymes that you consume are only "used when the pancreas cannot make or does not release enough digestive enzymes into the gut to digest the food." In cases like "chronic pancreatitis, cystic fibrosis, cancer of the pancreas, after surgery on the pancreas or gut."

If you haven't dealt with any of the above then I would avoid them IMO.

Digestion and enzyme secretion is a synergistic process at every level, from mouth to stomach to small intestine. Often, if someone isn't producing enough stomach acid (and so many of us don't) your body won't release protein-digesting enzymes. In general, I'd work with a nutritional therapist who can treat digestive symptoms holistically with high-quality supplements. Most of the best non-pharmacological supplement companies don't work with nutrition stores like GNC or Vitamin Shoppe. I know that wasn't entirely your question, but just hammering your body with synthetic enzymes won't work for a variety of reasons, the complexity of digestion being one of them.