Enzymes: The Heart Defender

Enzymes: The Heart Defender
Michael W. Loes M.D. M.D. (H)

So you just heard from your doctor that your cholesterol is out of this world, your blood pressure is celestial, and that the beating, that ticking you feel in the left part of your chest is a time bomb.

Is now the time to speak heart to heart - about enzymes? Better it be now than when it's too late. Even though heart disease is still considered the number one killer in the United States, it should not be considered inevitable. Heart disease should not be expected as in "you gotta die of something, someday". Even though a few of us may be predisposed to high cholesterol or elevated blood pressure, the emphasis should be on "predisposed" and what that means. It means "tendency toward", not a forgone conclusion. Heart disease is not genetic, except in rare cases and even then, the recently completed Danish studies on identical twins concluded that only 20% of genetic disease are expressed in the phenotype 1 This means that just because your father, or another close member of your family died abruptly from "the big one", doesn't mean the red fire engine is headed for you if you know how to stay out of the way.

Here is some important practical advice on preventing heart disease:
Don't smoke because smoking decreases oxygen, constricts blood vessels, dehydrates you, and acidifies the blood. It also wrecks your sleep and quadruples your daily output of adrenalin because once you are a smoker, every 2-3 hours your body goes into withdrawal and further stresses your adrenal glands.

Reduce your red meat because beef increases arachidonic acid which is a major precursor, or building block for inflammation

Lose weight because obesity upsets your metabolism in major ways, including your sugar, and lipids.

Learn to handle your stressor because out-of-control stress causes vasoconstriction through by its effects on the adrenals.

Take vitamin B2, niacin, in that this substance help blood vessels vasodilate
Take magnesium, preferably sustained release magnesium chloride because heart cells need it and magnesium helps blood vessels stay wide open and lessen your chance of an arrhythmia - life threatening heart skipping problems
Take anti-oxidants such as vitamin C, D.E., selenium and pycnogenol in that it is oxidized cholesterol that damages the blood vessels.

Take Systemic Oral Enzymes because heart disease, in large part is caused by chronic inflammation.

What does Dr. Garry Gordon, noted medical doctor have to say:

"With systemic oral enzymes, I can save the life of virtually every one of my heart patients, For thirty years, I have specialized in keeping people with the serious and often seemingly hopeless heart problems alive. In fact, I say if you die of a heart attack or stroke your doctor isn't doing his job because he didn't tell you about enzymes." 5

Inflammation and Heart Disease

A recent report in The New England Journal of Medicine journeys us into the controversy, and newly discovered relationship between heart attacks and the role of inflammation. 2 No longer is high cholesterol the sole sniper to our heart survival. It may be dangerous, but this risk factor is only one, and perhaps not the most important enemy working overtime to shatter our lives with the life ending heart attack.

It is inflammation from causes other than high lipids that is being shown to be a major factor. This knew field of knowledge is like "exploring the hidden side of the moon" 2. The controversy was swirled to a higher level with the cutting edge nutrition magazine Nutrition Action Health Letter highlighting this theory as an "about time" recognition from many clamoring voices. 3 The scientists at Harvard Medical School concur with their supporting data from the landmark Physicians' Health Study that chronic inflammation leads to heart disease and stroke. These doctors conclude that safe methods of curbing inflammation may be at the "heart" of a sensible cardiovascular health program.4

The Physicians' Health Study involved 22,000 male doctors. The investigation was abruptly halted in 1988 when the researchers discovered that aspirin, a classic anti-inflammatory drug, lowered heart disease risk among men. The findings were so significant that the researchers conducting the study believed it was no longer moral or ethical to deny the non-aspirin group this important protective agent.

What is of interest is that many interpretations of this study highlighted the effect of aspirin's effect to decrease platelet adhesion as the reason for the decreased in heart disease likely due to their bias that heart attacks were caused by clots - i.e. coronary thrombosis. Surely, they reasoned, it was this anti-clotting effect of aspirin that was the saver of hearts. While data demonstrated reduced inflammation by noted decreased in C-reactive protein, the relationship between heart disease and inflammation was largely ignored - until now.

In 1999, David Steinman and I authored the book The Aspirin Alternative on systemic oral - proteolytic - enzyme therapy.5 Particular care was taken in this text to avoid undermining the importance of aspirin therapy to prevent heart attacks in patients at high risk for heart disease. We were reverent to this mainstream doctrine, but at the same time, underscored the potential side effects of aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs), which account for nearly 16,000 deaths per year, mostly because of gastro-intestinal bleeding problems.6 Aspirin is an NSAID! When you are using aspirin to prevent heart disease, you are not protecting yourself from the serious known side of effects of NSAIDs.

Might it not be time to look at an aspirin alternative? Might not there be something that can help us here without subjecting us to the serious side effects of these agents? The answer is enzymes - a special class, called proteolytic, or protein cleaving enzymes. The enzymes of highest therapeutic action are bromelain, papain, trypsin, and chymotrypsin, In combination, we refer to this therapy as systemic oral enzyme therapy.

Doctors Do Not Routinely Test Inflammation Levels
Most doctors know little, if anything, about inflammation and heart disease. They do not normally consider inflammation a cause of heart disease and do not measure inflammation levels, which can be documented by the sedimentation rate, and C-Reactive Protein (CRP) level in the blood.

In the Physicians' Health Study 4, CRP was measured in 1,100 men without heart disease and compared to 543 men who suffered a heart attack. The doctors found that elevated levels of CRP predicted a threefold greater risk for heart disease and a twofold increased risk for stroke. Aspirin had the most benefit when the highest inflammation was present.

Can You 'Catch' Heart Disease?

This is where our story takes an unexpected twist. We know that C-reactive protein is extremely elevated during times of bacterial infection and elevated CRP levels are linked to heart attacks and stroke. Therefore, the daring questions to ask are - Could it be that heart disease is not simply a biochemical but also a bacterial malady? and Could oral systemic enzymes, which are so effective at reducing C-reactive protein and revving the immune system, help us?

There are two bacterial agents and one viral agent that have been shown to be related to heart disease. They each have long names but are common and if you are in the medical or dental field, you have likely heard about them: chlamydia pneumoniae, and porphyromonas gingivalis and cytomegalo virus.

For nearly two decades, Dr. Joseph Melnick of Houston's Baylor College of Medicine has made a hobby of removing lesions from diseased coronary arteries and testing them for cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common herpes virus," reports the August 11, 1997 Newsweek. It shows up with surprising frequency-and it's looking less harmless all the time. Scientists have long known that CMV can spell trouble for people receiving heart transplants; infected patients are roughly twice as likely as others to lose their new organs, or their lives, to arterial disease.7 In 1996, Dr. Stephen Epstein of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, found that CMV infection increased by four-fold the odds that someone having his arteries reamed out by angioplasty would see them close back up within six months. CMV and heart disease will prove to have an extremely strong link to heart disease, predicts Epstein.8

The airborne bacterium Chlamydia pneumoniae is known more commonly for causing respiratory illness than the damage it does to the arteries. Yet, surprisingly recent research has been published linking this bacterium to heart disease. Over the last year, animal and human studies have pinpointed Chlamydia pneumoniae as a possible factor in triggering the inflammatory responses in the tissue lining blood vessels, and consequently leading to plaque obstructions. British researchers have found that having high antibodies to chlamydia pneumoniae predispose people to a second heart attack. Dr. Sandeep Gupta, of St. George's Hospital, London reported that in his patients, when there was evidence of chlamydia, heart problems quadrupled over an eighteen month period. The British researcher has found that antibiotics seemed to reduce the incidence of recurrent heart attacks - a three day course of azithromycin, certainly deserving of further study.9
Floss Your Teeth or Die of Heart Disease!

Do you floss your teeth as often as you should? You might want to be sure you do-especially after learning about this third troublemaker, Porphyomonas gingivitis.

This bacterial agent is known largely responsible for its role in causing gum disease, but recent data involving its relationship to heart disease deserves attention. Dr. Raul Garcia of the Boston Veteran's Hospital, as part of the Normative Aging Study, reviewed the cumulative twenty-five year data on over one thousand men. The men with terrible gum disease had twice the incidence of heart attacks compared to healthy peers. Their stroke rate was three times as high. At the scene of the crime was crime was Porphyomonas gingivitis.11
Why might oral systemic enzymes be helpful here?

The science behind enzymes is substantial, especially in relationship to their role as biological response modifiers; enzymes enhance the healing response. In Europe, the posters in the pharmacies read "Fitness for the Immune System". But you ask, "What do enzymes do? Why do they work? In simple terms, they help cell signaling, assisting cells in knowing what to do and when.

The immune system is complicated, but we know a lot, especially in regards to how enzymes speed up healing and prevent edema and scarring processes.
Enzymes are involved in all of the following and more:

Induction of optimal amounts of tumor necrosis factor and interleukins. Systemic oral enzymes lead to a dose-dependent increased formation of tumor necrosis factor (TNF-a), interleukin 1-b and interleukin 6. These tough cops kill dangerous cells and cancer tissues circulating in the body, as well as mount attacks on bacteria and viruses. 12

Macrophage and killer activation. The activity of bacteria-consuming macrophages is increased up to 700 percent within 10 minutes following the start of systemic oral enzyme therapy. 8 The activity of natural killer cells went up 1,300 percent during the same time. 13, 17

Selective Destruction of Infectious Agents. When proteolytic enzymes are added to bacterial cell cultures, loss of bacterial nuclei occur, and loss of cell architecture takes place; the bacteria die and their debris is removed via enzymatic processes. 14, 15

The Master Cytokine - Transforming Growth Hormone, beta factor, is kept in check, being reduced in processes where fibrosis and scarring are likely to occur. 16,17,18

Are you interested in doing what you can to help reduce chronic inflammation as it relates to the heart disease? Of course you are. Defend Your Heart with Systemic Oral Enzymes!

1. NEJM 343(2) 78-85 2000
2. Maseri, A., Inflammation, atherosclerosis, and ischemic events - exploring the hidden side of the moon" The New England Journal of Medicine, 1997; 336(14) 1014-16
3. Inflammation and the Heart: Nutrition Action Health Letter, June 1997: 14
4. Ridker, P.M., et al. "Inflammation, aspirin, and the risk of cardiovascular disease in apparently healthy men." The New England Journal of Medicine, 1997; 336(14); 973-079, 1416-1418
5. Loes, MW., Steinman, D, The Aspirin Alternative, "Escape the Toxicity of NSAIDs, Freedom Press, June 1999, ISBN 1-893910-04-0
6. Lazarou, P. et al. "Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: meta-analysis of prospective studies." Journal of the American Medical Association, 1998; 279; 1200-1204
7. Ibid, 5, p151
8. Ibid, 5, p152
9. Ibid, 5, p153
10. Ibid, 5, p155
11. Ibid, 2, p1014
12. Wolf, M. & Ransberger, K. Enzymetherapie. Vienna: Maudrich Verlag, 1970
13. Leskovar, P. "AIDS: Neuartige therapiekonzepte, Dtsch. Zeitschr. Onkol, 1990;2
14. Rosanova, A., "Der gegenwartige stand der enzymtherapie bei malignen tumoren." Arzt. Praxis, 1974; 16, 1442
15. Wolf, M. & Ransberger, K. Enzymetherapie. Vienna: Maudrich Verlag, 1970
16. Blobe, GD, Schiemann, WP, Lodish, HS, "Role of Transforming Growth Hormone, NEJM, v342, No 18, April, 2000
17. Kunze, R., Unpublished in vivo studies, personal communication, Oct 14, 1997
18. Vinzenz, K., "odembehandlung bei zahnchirurgischen eingriffen mit hydrolytischen enzymen" Die Quintessenz, 1991; 7: 1053