FEEL-20 Total Digest Supplement Fact Box

Background

From proper nutrition to being able to enjoy your favorite foods without concern of digestive trouble; Feel-20 Total Digest infuses your digestive system with enzymes and nutrients to restore it to proper health as well as replacing enzymes that are lost through processing and cooking food. In addition to upper digestive health, Feel-20 Total Digest promotes lower digestive health and regularity.

Feel-20 Total Digest was designed specifically to support digestion in people who eat the typical modern diet which is high in protein, fat, and carbohydrates. It contains a proprietary blend of proteolytic, lipolytic, and carbohydrolytic enzymes exclusively designed to aid the digestion of nutrient dense meals. Supplementation with these enzymes is critical in order to handle the increased digestive demands placed on the body when eating a diet of fat, protein, and carbohydrate. Supplemental enzymes also help assure that the maximum amount of available nutrition is obtained from the food eaten.

A Historical Perspective

While the recognized use of enzymes as dietary supplements and therapeutic agents has only developed within the last century, humans have been benefiting from the enzymes in food since the dawn of mankind. Consumption of raw foods and traditional food processing practices, including aging of food and fermenting food, take advantage of dietary sources of enzymes. However, many modern food-processing practices actually deplete our food’s supply of enzymes. Uniquely modern ailments that have developed since the onset of modern food processing techniques have lead to research into the benefits of dietary enzymes.

All raw food contains the enzymes needed to eventually “digest” itself through decay. The native enzymes found in raw foods actually act synergistically with human endogenous enzymes to help digest our foods, reducing the enzymatic burden of digestion on the body. Our early diets were rich in raw food sources allowing early man to benefit from this synergism. As civilization advanced, cooking and processing of foods became more prevalent. Though humans did not understand the basic mechanisms of enzymatic pre digestion in raw foods, they started taking advantage of this fact early on, by allowing foods to age. During the aging process of foods, native enzymes begin the digestive process, making foods more tender, flavorful, and nutritious. A natural adjunct to the aging process was fermentation of foods. The act of fermentation subjects the food to the enzymatic actions of microbes, essentially predigesting the food. For centuries, foods have been fermented with bacteria and fungi to produce nutritious and tasty foods, such as tofu, cheeses, tempe, yogurt, and alcoholic beverages

In the late Nineteenth Century, large scale canning and heat processing techniques rapidly replaced traditional food preparation/preservation techniques in the western world. The temperatures used in large scale food processing are specifically designed to destroy enzymatic activity and delay the pre digestion (decay) of foods. As a result, processed foods completely lack native enzyme activity, which is believed to place the burden of digestion completely on the human body. Research has been theorizing that the added digestive burden may lead to a variety of diseases and disorders, though this theory has yet to be proven conclusively. The NDDIC (National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse) estimates 60 to 70 million people in the U.S. are affected by over 140 different types of digestive diseases.1 For more information go to:
http://digestive.niddk.nih.gov/statistics/statistics.htm

In recent decades, the biological effects of modern food processing have been compounded by a modern lifestyle. Our modern fast paced high stress lifestyles tend to lead to improper digestion. Stress and anxiety trigger hormone releases that interfere with smooth muscle contraction and enzyme secretion, leading to indigestion. This is further compounded by the tendency to eat on the run and to overeat. Because hurried eating results in partially chewed foods being dumped into the digestive tract, the tendency to eat on the run results in food not being properly mixed with salivary enzymes and to be in such large pieces that digestive enzymes can not adequately act on the food. Overeating causes more nutrients to be consumed than what the average human digestive system can handle. These issues can combine to overwhelm the body’s ability to completely digest consumed meals, which can lead to digestive discomfort, constipation, and sub optimal nutrient uptake.

Age Related Digestive Insufficiency

A person’s ability to properly digest and absorb their food decreases with age. This reduction in digestive capacity is likely related to the fact that pancreatic digestive enzyme production decreases linearly after the second decade of age, at a rate of nearly 10% per decade. As a result, the ability to digest/absorb fats and proteins can become greatly impaired. This impairment can lead to a host of gastrointestinal symptoms and health consequences, including anorexia, abdominal discomfort, flatulence, constipation, reflux disorders, ulcers and diarrhea. Some studies tested the effectiveness of oral enzyme supplementation on the above stated symptoms. In these studies, the gastrointestinal symptoms of study participants improved significantly. While these conditions are in themselves a concern for seniors, malnutrition caused by such enzyme deficiencies can significantly reduce the quality and quantity of life in the aging population. Protein utilization of the elderly is of particular concern, because such deficiency can lead to reductions in immunity and muscle atrophy. Enzyme supplementation significantly improves protein utilization among the elderly.

Proteolytic Enzymes

Protease (from Aspergillus oryzae) is a mixture of acid, neutral and alkaline proteases that demonstrates both exo-peptidase and endo-peptidase activity with high substrate specificity. This mixture contains a protease that has a high exo-peptidase level which allows the user to obtain a high degree of protein hydrolysis without formation of bitter products. These proteases have an effective pH range from 2.75 to 7.5. For this reason, this mixture of proteases works synergistically with endogenous enzymes to provide protein digestion throughout the entire digestive tract.

Protease (from Aspergillus niger) is characterized by its ability to hydrolyze proteins under acid conditions. The broad specificity of acid-stable protease enables the enzyme to, easily and efficiently, hydrolyze most soluble proteins. This protease has an effective pH range of 2.75 to 4.7, it is uniquely suited to work synergistically with endogenous pepsin to provide protein digestion in the stomach.

The proteolytic enzymes used in FEEL-20 Total Digest help to digest protein to produce amino acids, which are important building blocks in the human body. The amino acids are used to build muscles, metabolic enzymes, neurotransmitters, and many other essential biochemicals. Proteolytic enzyme supplementation can be essential in digesting the extra protein consumed during the course of a typical modern diet. Proteolytic enzyme supplementation may also be an important factor in maintaining lean muscle tissue.

Carbohydrolytic Enzymes

Amylase will randomly hydrolyze the interior alpha-1,4-glucosidic bonds of starch to release simple sugars for digestion. This enzyme works synergistically with endogenous human amylase to digest starchy foods.

Glucoamylase will hydrolyze terminal 1,4-linked alpha-D-glucose residues successively from non-reducing ends of amylose chains to release free glucose. This enzyme also possesses the ability to hydrolyze alpha-1,6-glucosidic linkages in isomaltose and dextrins. This enzyme works synergistically with endogenous human amylase and supplemental amylase to potentiate the complete digestion of carbohydrate rich foods.

Invertase is characterized by its ability to catalyze the inversion of sucrose solution. This enzyme catalyzes the hydrolysis of sucrose into its component parts D-fructose and D-glucose. This action helps in the digestion of refined sugars that are common in modern diets.

This combination of carbohydrases is designed to assist with carbohydrate digestion. This combination allows a more complete digestion of the carbohydrates consumed, which enables a person to properly digest and receive the maximum amount of nutrients available from their carbohydrate intake.

Lipolytic Enzymes

Lipase catalyzes the hydrolysis of triglycerides of simple fatty acid esters, yielding mono- and diglycerides, glycerol and free fatty acids. This blend of lipases is able to catalyze the hydrolysis of fatty acids from all three positions of the triglyceride, making for a more complete digestion of the triglyceride. It has broad substrate specificity on the fats and oils of vegetable and animal origins. Lipase works synergistically with endogenous enzymes to help digest fatty foods.

Supplementing with lipase can help the body to properly digest the excessive fat being eaten in today’s typical high fat, high carbohydrate diet. Considerable digestive distress and even malabsorption of nutrients such as vitamins A and E can result from improper fat digestion.

Additional Proteolytic Enzyme

Bromelain contains several proteolytic enzymes, which differ in their specificity and optimum environments. Bromelain has an effective pH range of 4.0 to 9.0 and works synergistically with endogenous enzymes to provide protein digestion throughout the entire digestive tract.

Additional Carbohyrdolytic Enzymes

Lactase is characterized by its ability to hydrolyze lactose over a wide range of temperatures and pH. ANEW LABORATORIES’s lactase catalyzes the hydrolysis of the lactose beta-D-galactoside linkage liberating one mole of D-glucose and one mole of D-galactose. This enzyme works synergistically with endogenous human lactase to digest the sugars found in milk and dairy products.

a-galactosidase is characterized by its ability to hydrolyze the alpha-1-6 linkages in melibiose, raffinose, and stachyose. These are indigestible sugars containing alpha-galactosyl groups, and commonly occur in vegetables, especially in members of the legume and cruciferous families.

NSP Digesting Blend

ProCerelase® is a unique mixture of enzymes that hydrolyzes non-starch polysaccharides (NSPs). Cellulase, hemicellulase, beta-glucanase, and phytase are included in this novel enzyme system to digest celluloses, hemicelluloses, beta-glucans, and phytic acid. Celluloses, hemicelluloses, beta-glucans, and phytic acid can act as anti-nutritive factors due to their tendency to bind minerals and other nutrients, and thus prevent intestinal absorption of these nutrients. These NSPs are common in many vegetable foods including grains, beans, and herbs. Since humans do not produce the enzymes found in ProCerelase®, the addition of these enzymes to a diet high in fruits and vegetables provides a greater source of nutrition.

Cellulase hydrolyzes the beta-D-1,4-glucosidic bonds of cellulose (an indigestible structural carbohydrate of plant cell walls), its oligomers and derivatives. This enzyme is a complex composed of three distinct enzymes to convert cellulose to glucose. Since humans lack the endogenous enzymes required to digest cellulose, the supplementation of cellulase provides humans with an additional source of nutrition and reduces the bulking effect of fibrous foods.

Hemicellulase is a mixture of enzymes including polygalacturonate hydrolase, arabinosidase, mannosidase, mannanase, and xylanase. Mannose, arabinose, and xylans are indigestible components of plant fibers. Since humans lack the endogenous enzymes required to digest these components, the supplementation of hemicellulase provides humans with an additional source of nutrition and reduces the bulking effect of fibrous foods.

Beta-Glucanase acts on the interior 1,4-beta-glucosidic bonds of beta-glucans containing mixed 1,3- and 1,4-bonds. Beta-glucanase is used to break up larger oligosaccharides into smaller units.

Phytase catalyzes the hydrolysis of phytic acid into its component parts, releasing inositol and ortho-phosphate. Phytic acid is known as an antinutrient because it tends to bind important minerals. Since humans lack endogenous phytase, the supplementation of phytase releases important mineral nutrients that would otherwise be lost.

Please read these interesting articles to learn more about digestive issues:

We try and update these links regularly but if you have any trouble finding the information listed here please let us know.

Just in case your still think your digestive discomfort is no big deal read:
....60 million to 70 million Americans are afflicted with digestive diseases. The cumulative effect includes 50 million physician visits and 10 million hospitalizations annually, with a direct and indirect cost on the economy of more than $107 billion. From:The Science of Digestive Health (NPI 2008)

Digestive Issues in Women - www.womentowomen.com (635,000 visitors per month) Your digestive system is the root of your health, including your immune system. But there's an epidemic of digestive problems in women's health today, ...

Digestive System - www.kidshealth.org (2,535,000 visitors per month) ... unused. To help manage their digestive problems, people with cystic fibrosis
can take digestive enzymes and nutritional supplements. ...

Gas in the Digestive Tract - the National Institutes of Health (9,600,000 visitors per month) ... the offending foods one can handle. Nonprescription Medicines Digestive enzymes, available as over-the-counter supplements, help digest ... of gas are changing one’s diet, taking digestive enzymes to help digest carbohydrates, and reducing the amount ...

Controlling Intestinal Gas - (International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders)... g., Nullo, Derifil) can help minimize offending odor. Digestive enzymes, such as lactase supplements, actually help digest carbohydrates ... medicines, and reducing the amount of air swallowed. Digestive enzymes, such as lactase supplements, actually help digest carbohydrates ...