What Kinds of Digestive Enzymes Should I Take?

Understanding your body will be one of the more important things you do once you become an adult. Along with that comes with knowing what foods you can eat and what foods you can’t. Through the help of digestive enzymes you realize that not all foods are out of bounds and what enzymes you need for maintaining the best possible health.

The role of digestive enzymes is primarily to act as catalysts in speeding up specific, life-preserving chemical reactions in the body. In healthy digestion, it is only after this period of “predigestion” that hydrochloric acid is introduced to the process (along with the enzyme pepsin, which is secreted in the stomach).

This acid/pepsin mix inactivates (but does not destroy) most of the enzymes used in predigestion and then begins its own function of breaking down any undigested protein content left in the meal, turning it into an amino-acid-rich concentrate. Note: stomach acid and pepsin only work on the digestion of proteins. They are not involved in the breakdown of fats and carbohydrates.

There are a variety of digestive enzymes on the market, including single enzyme and multiple enzymes. Without testing, I typically recommend a mixed enzyme to cover your bases. Most people are going to benefit from a multi-enzyme product, so you’ll want to see a number of enzymes listed, including proteases (which break down proteins), lipases (which break down fats), and carbohydrase’s (such as amylase, which break down carbohydrates). Look at the labels of the products linked above for specifics—there are a ton of enzymes, but your product should include at least some from these labels.

Quality and price go a long way. Buying cheap supplements is almost always a waste of money—you’re almost never going to get the benefit you’re looking for. When buying enzymes, don’t look for the cheapest brand on the shelf, and steer clear of conventional grocery stores and drug stores, as they carry poor quality product.

As with all supplements, you want to see all the ingredients listed. And you especially want to see what ingredients are not in the product like gluten, dairy, etc. If it doesn’t say “contains no: sugar, salt, wheat, gluten, soy, milk, egg, shellfish or preservatives,” you need to assume that it does.

There are three major sourcing for digestive enzymes. Fruit sourced (isolated from papaya or pineapple) work well for some people, but tend to be the weakest digestive enzyme supplement, and aren’t sufficient for people who need more support.

Animal sourced (typically listed as pancreatin) are not for vegetarians or vegans, and can have issues with stability. They work really well for some people, but typically are not the forms I’m using. “Plant” sourced (from fungus) are the most stable of all the enzymes, survive digestion well, and have a broad spectrum of action. These are the ones I most commonly use.

Trying to find the right type of digestive enzyme will always depend on just what type of enzyme you need for better digestion. This is something you can get from your physician. Once you know what enzymes you’re low in, it’ll be easy to start looking into the specifics.