Enzymes are essential for proper digestion and predigesting of food. They help extract vitamins and minerals from food. The four primary food types that enzymes need to digest are proteins, fats, carbohydrates and fiber. There are literally thousands of other food substrates that also need to be digested. Each has an enzyme responsible for breaking it down into a usable form. It takes a variety of enzymes to cope with the digestive health problems our pets face. It all began over 40 million years ago when the direct ancestor of the dogs we know today became part of the predator/prey relationship. This natural, perfectly balanced scenario has been perfected since the beginning. We are, of course talking about the wolf. Our dogs may look very different on the exterior, but internally they are essentially the same. Through human manipulation by selective breeding we have managed to change body styles, coats, sizes, etc. The one thing we cannot change is the internal workings of the dog. Actually by selective breeding and the elimination of natural selection breeders have in many ways hindered the dog’s ability to cope with life. Certainly many could never survive in the wild. Add in processed dry dog food, preservatives, colorants, antibiotics, steroids, and it’s no wonder dogs have so many health problems. In fact dogs have evolved eating raw, enzyme laden food. Somehow we thought we could change things that evolution has taken millions of years to perfect. Someone invented dog food in a bag. Since then we insist on feeding them cooked, enzyme deficient, dead food. If you think about it there is nothing a dog would or could cook! The same is true with cats. Just like us dogs have enzyme producing organs such as the pancreas and liver. They also have the ability to secrete enzymes all along the digestive tract. The problem is that dogs do not secrete or manufacture enough digestive enzymes to deal with a diet that does not have enzymes in it. If food is not broken down into its proper form several problems occur. A large undigested portion of it gets dumped out on your lawn.

An Overview Of Food Enzymes, Drs.Francis Pottinger, Jr., Weston Price, and Edward Howell
	There is convincing evidence derived from the works of Drs. Pottinger, Price, and Howell, that the destruction of enzymes in the cooking and processing of food is, perhaps, the most significant factor in chronic and degenerative diseases in both humans and animals. It begins with a phenomenon known as digestive leukocytosis.

"Leukocytosis" is a pathological condition defined in Dorlands Illustrated Medical Dictionary as "a transient increase in the number of leukocytes in the blood, resulting from various causes, such as hemorrhage, fever, infection, inflamation, etc."

Leukocytosis was first discovered in 1846. At first, it was considered normal because everyone who was tested had it. Paul Kautchakoff, M.D. later found that leukocytosis was not normal. In fact, the major cause of leukocytosis was discovered to be the eating of cooked food. An entire category of leukocytosis was classified as "digestive leukocytosis, " that is, the elevation of the white blood cell level in response to the lack of enzymes in the cooked food in the intestine. It is pathological because the pancreas was never intended to provide 100% of the digestive enzymes needed.

Dr. Kautchakoff divided his findings into four classifications according to the severity of the pathological reaction in the blood: 1) Raw food produced no increase in the white blood cell count. 2) Commonly cooked food caused leukocytosis. 3) Pressure cooked food caused even greater leukocytosis. 4) Man-made processed and refined foods, such as carbonated beverages, alcohol, vinegar, white sugar, flour, and other foods, caused severe leukocytosis. Cooked, smoked and salted animal flesh brought on violent leukocytosis consistent with ingesting poison.

This phenomenon occurs after eating cooked food since prolonged heat above 118 degrees Farenheit destroys enzymes in food. Three minutes in boiling water destroys the enzymes; pasteurization destroys 80% to 95%; and baking, frying, broiling, stewing and canning destroys 100%. Nature designed food with sufficient enzymes within it to digest food when it is ingested. When enzymes are destroyed by cooking or other processing, ingesting that food trigger's the body's immune system, and it responds with leukocytosis.

Many health professionals are coming to the conclusion that this syndrome is an abusive scenario that puts significant stress on the pancreas, accounting for the enlarged pancreases of people in industrialized societies, and contributing to blood sugar problems such as diabetes and hypoglycemia, as well as the proliferation of chronic degenerative diseases.

What Is An Enzyme?
	The medical dictionary defines an enzyme as " a protein produced in a cell capable of greatly accelerating, by its catalytic action, the chemical reaction of a substance (the substrate) for which it is specific."

This is the standard definition taught in medical school. But more significantly, enzymes are the body's workers. Enzymes operate on a biological and chemical level, perhaps even the radiological level, and although vitamins, minerals, hormones, proteins and other substances are essential to life, it is enzymes that perform the work and utilize these substances in restoring, repairing and maintaining health and life. Enzymes are the closest thing to what can be described as a "life force." Without them, life would not exist. In fact, when enzyme levels fall below a given level in any living system, life ceases.

Attempts to produce synthetic enzymes have failed. Science has identified over 80,000 different enzyme systems, and it is suspected that there may be hundreds of thousands, even millions of different types of enzymes. Yet although science endeavors to know what certain types of enzymes are made of, no one has yet been able to directly measure or take a picture of one.

What Do Enzymes Do?

Enzymes build, orchestrate and unify the physical expression we call "life." They seem to know precisely what to do and when to do it. They "assemble" molecules during their formative growith and they take molecules apart when individual cells are fractured. Enzymes create and modulate every system in the body. Enzymes help assemble a human body from a one-cell organism into a 50 to 70 trillion-cell life form. Enzymes are involved in repairing the body when it is damaged; they transport, use, and transform oxygen molecules and every other nutrient the body needs; they bread down metabolic wast and the by-products of cells; they quench free radicals, and they split off unwanted molecules from nutrients, adding necessary ones. The physical existence of every human being and the existence of all other living organisms it totally dependent upon the ability of enzymes to do their job.