On top of all that there are external elements contributing to your health: your emotions, sleep patterns and stress levels – all playing as much of an integral part of your health as the function of your liver, colon and lungs. Things affecting your spirit, or “chi,” your energy levels and your health have to be addressed along with the disease in your body.

If you correct the problems, the symptoms, such as being overweight, will disappear.

Why are enzymes important

Enzymes are responsible for every single chemical reaction in every single cell of your body. All of the minerals, herbs, vitamins and hormones in your body cannot do their job without enzymes. Enzymes are, biologically speaking, the source of life.

A diet without live enzymes is removed from the source of life, and things removed from their source of life slowly begin to die. For us, that leads to disease, excessive weight gain, depression – and many other health conditions that plague us today.

Where do you get enzymes

The enzymes found naturally in whole, live, raw foods not only help with proper digestion, they provide our bodies with the tools they need to do all those jobs that are so important to good health. Enzymes also help with obesity at the “whole being” level.

Foods that are treated with preservatives, over-cooked and processed are virtually devoid of the enzymes we need. The action of enzymes in the body burns fat and provides a magic bullet for easy weight loss.

For example, lipase, a fat-splitting enzyme, is found abundantly in raw, live foods. However, few of us eat enough raw foods to get enough lipase to burn even a normal amount of fat, not to mention any excess.

Lipase helps your body in digestion, fat distribution, and fat burning for energy. Lipase breaks down and dissolves fat throughout the body. Without lipase, fat stagnates and accumulates. You can see it on your hips, thighs, buttocks and stomach.

What happens when you don’t get the nutrients and enzymes you need

Eating only cooked and processed foods deprives you of needed nutrients and enzymes. In turn, your body receives a signal that it needs to store fat to prevent starvation; thus your body holds on to more and more fat.

Not what the doctor ordered. It will also send a signal that you are hungry, resulting in a vicious cycle of eating continuously while still feeling hungry. These physical and mental effects of poor nutrition and weight gain can lead to eating disorders, depression and anxiety.

Cooked and processed foods are “dead foods” that have NO enzymes.

Your body must scavenge enzymes for digestion from other metabolic processes in your body, wasting energy and resources. Plus, our modern lifestyle kills enzymes in more ways than just cooking food. Stress can damage enzymes.

Food additives can kill them. Frequent air travel, workouts, coffee breaks, air pollution, food irradiation and poor sleep all kill enzymes. No wonder we are enzyme deficient! So eating raw, live, enzyme-rich foods is more than just a weight loss or digestion issue – it affects your whole life, your whole being.

When people turn to sugar, they may well be anticipating that additional burst of energy and the ability to “get it together” and face the tasks ahead. What they do not understand is that the ingestion of sugar triggers a complex level of activity within us. The bloodstream becomes flooded with glucose from the sugars, which our body then realizes it must regulate. Insulin is released from your pancreas which in turn aims to convert this extra energy into fat reserves. This is in no doubt a fall back to the days when our bodies could not necessarily rely on regular forms of energy and fats would be reserved for those lean times.

You do not have to be a medical doctor to know that an illness such as diabetes must be avoided at all costs. Experts tell us that hypoglycemia is a precursor to diabetes and is caused in part due to constant flows of sugar intake and insulin release, causing your body to become resistant to insulin, which is essential for such balancing.

As part of a holistic health solution it is important for every one of us to regulate the amount of simple sugars that we absorb. We might think that we are eating a balanced diet, but we should be reading those labels to make sure that sugars are not masquerading within what might otherwise be seen as a “healthy” approach. It is recommended that you only absorb a maximum of 40g of simple sugar per day. This can be found within one can of soda!

Few seem to follow a holistic nutrition approach to their diets, constrained as we are by our hectic lifestyles, schedules and what appears to be an inability to prepare wholesome meals creatively. We are constantly opting for the easy solution and loading our bodies up with excess fats, too many calories and those ever so sweet sugars. We know that the sugar rush will be followed by a sugar crash, but we do it anyway.

Many of us are proud of the fact that we do not resort to alcohol, drug abuse or cigarettes to get us through life and consider that our diets are sensible and realistic. However, while we may not have any of the more traditional addictions or vices, we may well have a sugar addiction without really realizing it.