Digestive Enzyme Benefits

Your body produces digestive enzymes to break food down and absorb protein, vitamins, carbohydrates and minerals from what you eat. Enzyme activity begins in the mouth and continues through the stomach to the small intestine, each enzyme adding a unique benefit to the digestive process to keep you healthy.

Starch Assimilation

• Saliva has the enzyme salivary amylase. When you put food in your mouth, this enzyme breaks down starch molecules into smaller sugars that your body can assimilate and turn into energy. Later in the digestive process, this step is repeated when the pancreas also releases amylase into the small intestine and breaks down starch into smaller sugars again.

Protein Digestion and Mineral Absorption

• From the mouth, food travels down your esophagus to the stomach. There the enzyme pepsin with the aid of hydrochloric acid separates the protein and minerals from what you ate so your body can use them.

Fat Digestion

• The pancreas secretes lipases into the small intestine, which, along with the bile your liver produces, digest fats and help your body absorb fat-soluble vitamins.

Infection Prevention

• Also pancreatic enzymes, proteases play several roles during digestion. Besides breaking down protein into single amino acids, they keep the small intestine free of parasites and prevent tissue damage in the digestive tract.