Product Information on Purium's Enzyme Advantage

What it is: Enzyme Advantage is a patented, shelf-stable, aspergillus derived formula that helps your body break down and assimilate nutrients in the foods you eat. This also ensures that no food remains in your body undigested, causing gastrointestinal distress or discomfort.

Enzyme AdvantageTM can be taken with food to ensure total digestion or alone to help cleanse or detoxify your body.

Digestive enzymes are proteins specifically tailored to break down foods into nutrients that your body can then readily digest. The human body produces some 22 different digestive enzymes. Many more are found in the fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, and other foods.

Most people mix many foods in one meal (meat, potatoes, sugary beverages and dessert), but unfortunately, our bodies are not built by nature to handle this so, we only digest proteins or carbohydrates at one time, but not both. This leads to undigested foods that may putrefy and cause decomposing food waste to poison the blood stream. Many people experience allergies, gastro intestinal distress, constipation, ulcers and other unpleasant conditions caused primarily by poor digestion. When you eat a meal, digestive enzymes that are released from your salivary glands, stomach, and small intestine immediately get to work to speed up the digestive process. Each enzyme acts on a specific type of food. A variety of different proteases, for example, break down the components of protein. Analyses help digest carbohydrates; lipases break down fats; and cellulases, found in plants, digest fiber.

Although definitive studies are lacking, some practitioners prescribe high-dose enzyme therapy as adjunctive (supportive) treatment for cancers of the pancreas, lung, colon, and other organs. Enzymes are also given to soothe side effects from harsh chemotherapy and radiation regimens. Some physicians who use alternative therapies to treat cancer include high doses of enzymes because they believe the enzymes can have a direct effect on the cancer itself.

Nutritionally oriented doctors often turn to digestive enzyme products to promote good digestion and enhance nutrient absorption. They contend that many people are lacking enzymes because of inadequate diets, over-refined foods, environmental toxins, and poor health. Such symptoms as bloating, gas, heartburn, and indigestion are thought to be a common result. Taking this further, some practitioners also believe that even in the absence of symptoms many people can benefit from routinely taking extra enzymes to maintain peak digestion and enhance storage of vital nutrients.

Conventionally trained physicians, including gastroenterologists, sometimes recommend enzymes as well. In general though, conventional practitioners tend to believe that most people get all the enzymes they need barring those they deem to have “true enzyme deficiency” (which they detect with a stool analysis). Some doctors prescribe Pancreatin, a digestive enzyme that comes from the pancreas of pigs to treat chronic pancreatitis, though this is an uncommon condition. Far more commonly however, conventional doctors recommend over-the-counter enzyme products for those with lactose intolerance or chronic gas.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and were not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.