Increasing Anabolism With Enzymes
 Most
of us in Exercise Science and Sports Medicine during the 1970's and
80's had supposed that the monumental achievements of the totalitarian
Communist countries in Olympic sport had been solely the result of their
widespread use of drugs, anti inflammatory cortico steroids, growth enhancing
drugs such as Human Growth Hormone, Thyroid hormone, IGF 1 hormone and
muscle building anabolic steroids. (1) And indeed the uses of these drugs
and other medical techniques to improve performance, such as blood doping,
was standard practice in the Eastern Block sports institutes.
But some pieces of information were missing. It was no wonder that a
country as vast as the Soviet Union could field extensive sports teams
with star athletes in most every different sport. The old Soviet Union
had over 100 nationalities in their country and enough genetic diversity
that a gene type (body type) could be found to fit into most any sport.
But what was puzzling was the ability of small countries like East Germany
and Romania, with their limited genetic variations, to field powerhouse
teams that could steamroll the best of what the rest of the world had
to offer in certain events. How did they do it?
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism many
of the eastern European and Russian sports scientists, sports physicians,
exercise physiologists and coaches came out of the cold and went to the
greener pastures of the West, bringing with them their tried and true
training techniques and telling of the constant experimentation done with
drugs and nutritional supplements in the persistent effort to improve
performance and reactions to training.
During the first year of German reunification a business luncheon was
given by the government where West German nutritional and pharmaceutical
manufacturers were introduced to their counterparts and physicians from
the old East Germany. It was there that Dr. Karl Ransberger; owner of
an enzyme pharmaceutical company near Munich met a man who claimed to
be one of the leading doctors in the East German Sports program. On hearing
who Dr. Ransberger represented, the sports doctor commenced to tell the
West Germans a story. The tale ran something like this: Tired with the
performance deteriorating side effects of the cortico steroid drugs they
used to control training induced inflammation in their athletes East German
and Russian sports docs were looking for a way to naturally control inflammation
that was 1) non toxic, 2) had none of the side effects of the cortisone
or the kidney and liver killing effects of the aspirin and ibuprofen.
They heard of research that had been done fighting inflammation with
the use of proteolytic systemic (body wide) enzyme product Dr. Ransberger
was making and arranged to surreptitiously purchase lots of the product
for testing. To the delight of the Communist docs the enzymes worked to
not only lower inflammation with out side effect, they also increased
the rate of healing and recovery from the injury, the enzymes ate away
at restrictive scar tissue from previous injuries or from the accumulation
of micro trauma. But the effect that knocked their socks off was the effect
of increasing muscle density and strength in their athletes. They figured
out the effect was caused by something called protein sparing.
Protein sparing means that muscle mass loss is curtailed. Severe training,
as the eastern block athletes did 8 hours + per day in conditioning and
skills, 5 or more days per week created catabolism, a break down of muscle
and increased inflammation which elicits a response by the body in an
attempt to lower inflammation. In this response the adrenal glands release
the natural anti inflammation hormone cortisol. Cortisol like it's
drug cousin cortisone eats away at muscle mass. This protein sparing effect
was first noted by West German oncologists when enzymes were used to improve
the effects of chemotherapy. Patients taking chemo usually waste away.
Those chemo patients who were treated with the enzymes, (to reduce the
side effects of the chemo and strip away the fibrous outer layer of the
cancer allowing the chemo to enter the sick cells better), were found
to not lose as much weight and retained their strength better throughout
the course of the chemo therapy. (2,3,4)
In both the case of the cancer patient and the hard training athlete
the enzymes prevented the loss of much muscle tissue. An added plus was
found from the enzymes. The enzymes greatly improved digestion and absorption
of nutrients from food which also preserved muscle mass in the cancer
patient while in athletes it accelerated the rate of muscle growth.
The East German physician reminded Dr. Ransberger that in 1973 the International
Olympic committee banned completely the use of cortisone drugs in amateur
athletics. The Eastern Block, he said, didn't miss a beat; they had
already forsaken the damaging cortico steroids drugs for the enzymes.
Their athletes were not only healthier for it they were stronger. So much
so that the doctors were able to lower the amount of anabolic steroids
administered to the athletes. That and the development of testosterone
producing Androstene by the East Germans by 1975 allowed for an even further
lowered use of anabolic drugs but that's for another story.
What does this story mean for us? In the process of Catabolism (the
opposite of Anabolism) the body breaks down muscle. This break down happens
from micro trauma, which occurs from all the stress of all physical training.
Secondary to this, the inflammation created by training causes the body
to release cortisol in an attempt to reduce the inflammation. Cortisol,
it is widely recognized, eats away at muscle and creates body fat. We
can't do a thing about the micro trauma caused by exercise, that's
part of the stimulus / response mechanism from training. If you're
not creating some micro trauma during training you're not training
hard enough. The body adapts and gets stronger in response to the stimulus
of the training and the inability of the muscles at that point to cope
with the breakdown and micro trauma. The response is for the body to build
a larger denser muscle that can deal with the stress placed upon it. That's
when we increase the stress (resistance) and start the process anew in
a continuous cycle.
While we can't do a thing about the micro trauma, we can do something
to lower post training inflammation and our body's cortisol response
to that inflammation. By harnessing the well known and recognized anti
inflammatory effect (5,6,7), of the enzymes the cortisol response of the
body can be lowered or eliminated altogether and with it eliminating the
catabolic effect of cortisol.
A word is needed here about sport / exercise based inflammation. Most
of us think of inflammation in terms of joints and muscles. Until the
late 1990's. It was then that a large number of "30 and 40 something's",
who were hard charging business types and hard charging exercise fanatics,
dropped stone cold dead from dry strokes or heart attacks. They did not
have a lick of arterial plaque; they all had wonderful cholesterol readings,
all worked out and ran several times per week. By the medical standards
of the early 90's these men were as strong and fit as racehorses and
would live forever. But they didn't. Turns out that the stress of
business and the stress of exercise both create inflammation not so much
in the joints but in the blood vessels and heart. Inflammation that shut
down the blood vessels as surely or better than arterial plaque could.
Today's understanding of heart and vascular disease holds inflammation
to be the #1 cause of strokes and heart attacks as well as being the causative
precursor to such things as diabetes, Alzheimers and cancer!
Fighting inflammation with the usual array of Cox 1 (aspirin, ibuprofen,
naproxen etc and Cox 2 (Vioxx and Celebrex) creates life-threatening problems
of their own. According to the July 1999 issue of the New England Journal
of Medicine these drugs kill on average 20,000 Americans a year and if
listed as it own classification would be the 20th leading cause of death
in the country! (8). According to the April 19, 1999 Wall Street Journal,
these drugs not only kill the mentioned 20,000 but land another 100,000
in the hospital with the side effects of those drugs: liver damage, kidney
damage and intestinal hemorrhage. As the East Germans, Russian and lately
the NBA with Alonzo Mourning found, these drugs are definitely not the
way to go for long term anti inflammation.
So it turns out one of the drug secrets of the old Iron Curtain powerhouses
wasn't a drug at all! It was a mixture of natural protein cleaving
enzymes, the use of which actually allowed for lowered drug use in terms
of anti-inflammatory drugs and of anabolic steroids. Today most every
European Olympic team uses systemic proteolytic enzymes, as do most all
of the European sports teams. In the US several NBA, NFL, and individual
professional athletes have switched to systemic enzymes as their primary
anti inflammatory and the other benefits are a plus. Worth a try don't
you think?
Maintenance dose of high quality systemic enzymes: 1500 mg 3 times per
day in between meals.
Dose during heavy training: 2500 mg 3 times per day.
References
- Death In the Locker Room, Bob Goldman, Berkley Publishing Group.
- The effect of systemic enzyme therapy in the treatment of radiomucositis
in patients with laryngeal cancer. M. S. Pluzhnikov, M.A. Ryabova, S.A.
Karpiscenka. Folia Otorhinolaryngologiae et Pathologiae Respiratoriae
1999: Vol. 5, No.1-2/99, pp. 73-75.17 KR
- Impact of complementary oral enzyme application on the postoperative
treatment results of breast cancer patients - results of an epidemiological
multicentre retrolective cohort study. Josef Beuth et al.Institute for
Scientific Evaluation of Naturopathy, University of Cologne, Koln, Germany.
Ifag Basle, Switzerland Institute of Biometrics, Medical University
Hannover, Germany. Cancer Chemother Pharmacol 2001, Vol. 47, Suppl:
July 2001, S45 ? S54 513 KA (3-00-2)(2000-2)
- Influence of a complementary treatment with oral enzymes on patients
with colorectal cancers ? an epidemiological retrolective cohort study.
Tadeusz Popiela et at. First Department of General and Gastroenterological
Surgery, Cracow, Poland. Ifag Basle, R?mlingen (BL), Switzerland. Cancer
Chemother Pharmacol 2001, Vol. 47, Suppl: July 2001, S55 521 KA (3-00-3)-(20-00-2)
- Carroll A., R.: Clinical examination of an enzymatic anti-inflammatory
agent in emergency surgery. Arztl. Praxis 24 (1972), 2307.
- Mazzone A, et al.: Evaluation of Serratia peptidase in acute or chronic
inflammation of otorhinolaryngology pathology: a multicentre, double
blind, randomized trial versus placebo. J Int Med Res. 1990; 18(5):379-88.
- Kee W., H. Tan S, L., Lee V. Salmon Y. M.: The treatment of breast
engorgement with Serrapeptase: a randomized double blind controlled
trial. Singapore Med J. 1989:30(l):48-54.
- Wolfe, M. MD, Lichtenstein, D.,MD, and Singh Gurkipal MD: ?Gastrointestinal
Toxicity of Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs?. The New England Journal
of Medicine, June 17, 1999, Vol. 340, No 24,page 1888-1889.
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