Digestive enzymes help break down the food you eat, extracting the necessary nutrients and delivering those nutrients to cells. A lack of digestive enzymes can cause incomplete digestion of foods, leading to constipation, gas, bloating and a buildup of toxins in the colon. As you age, digestive enzymes naturally decrease, but changes to your diet and use of an enzyme supplement can help restore healthy levels. Here are some tips for changes you can make to your diet to increase enzyme production:
Eat more raw foods. According to Jordan Rubin and Joseph Brasco in "Restoring Your Digestive Health," cooking, processing and pasteurizing foods kills vital enzymes. Also, to process cooked food, the body must use more digestive enzymes, which further decreases enzyme levels.
Eat more foods known for having high levels of enzymes like sprouted seeds, grains, legumes, pineapples, bananas and papayas.
Add fermented foods to your diet, such as sauerkraut, miso, soy sauce and fermented fruit chutneys. Eaten as a condiment alongside a meal, these foods encourage the production of digestive enzymes and help break down the other foods in your meal.
Consume only ripe fruits and vegetables, which have a higher enzyme content than young fruit.
Consume leaves called bitters, such as dandelion, wormwood, borage, or artichoke, which encourage the body to produce more enzymes.
Drink liquids only between meals because they can dilute digestive enzymes.
Consume beverages at room temperature or warmer. Cold beverages causes the body to expend enzymes to raise the temperature of the beverage before absorbing it.