Podcast 033: Enzymes and Youthful Health

Join Martin and Scott in an interview with Patrick Buehl, the founder of Generation Plus and a well known enzyme formulator.

Please Note:
Some of these products are no longer available. Take a look at our whole section of Digestive Enzymes and Systemic Enzymes.

Enzymes are the catalysts for our life. Enzymes control every single process that makes life possible. Every single biochemical reaction needs an enzyme as its catalyst or it simply will not work very well or not work at all.

Zymitol contains systematic enzymes designed to help eliminate fibrins, fibroids and scar tissues. Formulated with enzymes, it is designed to enable the body’s natural inflammatory response to function properly. Without it, the body is unable to fight disease or recover from injury. The symptoms that follow are well known among serious athletes: excessive swelling, fluid retention, arthritis and other joint pain diseases. Zymitol allows you to train harder and faster than you ever dreamed possible.

Podcast 033: Enzymes and Youthful Health

Scott Paton: Welcome back everybody. You are listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-Op podcast, restoring vitality to you and to the planet. I am your co-host Scott Paton along with Martin Pytela. Hey Martin, how are you doing today?

Martin Pytela: I am doing great Scott. Beautiful sunny day, birds all playing outside the window. I have just got the best of moods. What can I say?

Scott Paton: [laughs] Excellent. Well, I am really, really excited about today’s podcast because you have been telling me about our very, very special guest for months now and I am so happy that you have been able to get him to squeeze a few minutes out of his busy day to join us for this podcast and particularly since it is an area of health that is very, very dear to my heart because I think as someone who is starting to be in their 50s, I know that I am missing some things and getting older and I am hearing stuff about what we are going to be talking about that makes me very excited about restoring my vitality in my life. So, Martin, would you like to introduce our special guest today?

Martin Pytela: It will be my honor. Hi folks, this is Patrick Buehl, the CEO and President of Generation Plus, a company whose enzymes we are proud to represent. We have had the most success with the Zymitol, Digesticol, and Cholesticol. Well, there is a whole line of enzymes. Patrick is responsible for their design, their formulation, and also for the quality control. Patrick has been in the industry for 30 plus years. He knows lots and lots. In fact, he probably has forgotten more than I know already.

Patrick Buehl: Stop.

Scott Paton: [laughs] [claps] All right. Welcome to the call Patrick.

Patrick Buehl: Thank you. I am very, very much for the most excellent welcome.

Scott Paton: So, Patrick, I have a question and I think it is… I always like to kind of get right to the basics. So, I don’t know what an enzyme is or what it does or why it is important and I suspect I am not the only person listening to this episode who has those types of questions. So, can you tell us what is an enzyme and why is it important and you know and can we just get it by you know eating french fries and drinking soft drinks and all the rest of it?

Patrick Buehl: [laughs] Absolutely they are in bounty in especially soft drinks, no.

Scott Paton: [laughs]

Patrick Buehl: [laughs] Enzymes are pretty simple when we get down to it. They are proteins and these proteins have very specific amino acid profiles and sequences which make up each end of [Inaudible] enzyme. We could say that a group of enzymes that breaks down proteins in the body are proteolytic enzymes and there is a whole list of proteolytic enzymes, each one of them has a very specific amino acid profile in a sequence and that’s what makes them unique from each other where we may have one… all proteolytic enzymes share the very same baseline in breaking down proteins in the body; where they differentiate is one maybe a very specialist in one area. Serrapeptase is a very good proteolytic enzyme for instance that shares the baseline proteolytic activity, but it specializes in disorders of the lung and build ups of mucus and for some reason it is really excellent with fibrocystic breast disease and then you may take another enzyme, nattokinase, which is excellent for circulation and really takes care of blood clots and arteriosclerosis and any type of protein buildups in the body that way. That’s… what makes them different is the amino acid profile and sequence. Why are they important and where do they come from? Well, the body produces its own enzymes, but by the time we reach our late 30s, our body’s own supply of enzyme is so drastically reduced that we barely have enough to maintain proper digestion let alone any metabolic function that we would have to preserve life. So, by the time you reach your late 30s, that’s exactly the point, that you begin to see the signs of aging. We begin to see wrinkles in the skin, degenerative and chronic illnesses start to creep up. Any injuries that we may incur, really take much longer to heal. Scar tissue is not faint and translucent anymore. It becomes hard and knotty. This is all relative to our body’s decline of enzyme production. In a sense, what we end up with past the age of 30 is a continual enzyme deficit which leaves the door open to a host of ailments and processes. Enzymes control every single process that makes life possible. Every single biochemical reaction needs an enzyme as its catalyst or it simply will not work very well or not work at all. Enzymes are the catalysts for our life and that’s enzymes in a nutshell gentlemen.

Scott Paton: Ha. That’s a lot. So…

Martin Pytela: I would like to butt in here Scott…

Scott Paton: Sure go ahead.

Martin Pytela: With a little remark; you know, I have always felt that the enzymes are very much like the electric spark in every biological transaction and I have always felt that the metaphor of a car with the ignition off is… you know, if you don’t have spark plugs, you can have all the fuel you want, but you will not be firing.

Patrick Buehl: Very true.

Martin Pytela: That’s what the enzymes… that’s how I think of them and the other remark I wanted to make is this. Like the standard medicine measures the human body and says, you know, as you age, your enzymes will decline or your levels of enzymes will decline, but it is actually backwards. In natural healing, what we really know is this. When you have less enzymes onboard, you will be ageing and you can reverse the ageing by resupplying the enzymes.

Patrick Buehl: That’s a great point Martin. It’s really true too. More enzymes means stopping a host of things from happening that wouldn’t normally happen if you had the right amount of enzymes in your body such as ageing.

Scott Paton: And we don’t get it from the food that we eat normally, right?

Patrick Buehl: Well, that leads into a whole new area and I am going to tell you that we used to be able to get enough nutrients from the food we consumed. Now, gentleman, as you know due to global over farming of toxic environmentally toxified foods, we just don’t get the nutrients we need out of the food supply that we used to. Today, again, we use globally over farming and the environmental toxins are just unbelievable. They get onto the foods, not to mention all the toxins put on them, the insecticides, herbicides, these things all deplete the nutrients in the food. Now, once we do get through that process, we further process with whatever it is, preservatives, cooking – partial or whole cooking, by the time we get it home, it is already just about 100% void of any nutrients that we could have had. Now, when we get it home, we further process it with cooking and we are just about sure to end up with a food that has almost no nutrient value whatsoever. What enzymes do is in a supplemental form now, is allow us to be able to pull the little bit of the amount of nutrients left in the food out so that we can get some nutrient value and because the food we consume is void of just about any nutrient it is not going to move through the body as quickly either. So, it is important to have something that’s going to push that waste through the system. So, you can talk about systemic enzyme formulas which we would use to counteract any of these ageing or chronic diseases brought on by lack of enzymes past the age of 30 or we could talk about digestive enzymes which actually help the body to promote the utilization of everything we consume and then eliminate the toxins and waste. So, when we talk about enzymes in the supplemental form, we are really talking about two categories, systemic which is all over the body used through the circulation system to promote an effect to assist the body to reduce degenerative disease and b) the digestive enzymes which are used specifically to promote the utilization of what we consume and eliminate toxins and waste. Two categories really sums up supplemental enzymes.

Scott Paton: And I guess one of the points I just want to make about this too is that these are available in raw foods. So, when you have like a Big Mac, there is no enzyme in that is there?

Patrick Buehl: No, there is really not. You know, you are going to end up with some bacteria, but it won’t be beneficial. You will end up with pathogenic strains of bacteria in these types of food, more likely than anything is going to benefit the body and it is really absent of enzymes. Like you said Scott, raw food in the organic form is your very best bet to get some of these enzymes and other nutrients that we so desperately need and we need to purchase them and consume them in their raw form to really get the best benefit and even when we are doing that today, because of the situation with the environment and everything that flows through different organic crop lands, we still need to supplement with something to maintain our other life sustaining processes and that’s supplementing with some sort of enzyme; after the age of 30, enzymes are not… they are not something that we can say, oh, should I or should I not, it is a mandate past the age of 30 if you want to enjoy a higher quality of life.

Scott Paton: So, it is safe to assume that if I look at all the food I eat today, everything that I have boiled, fried, grilled, microwaved or eaten that came out of a box because it was something else before it went into the box, if you know what I mean, none of that really has any active enzymes in it.

Patrick Buehl: It’s very true. Enzymes or any of the other nutrients that you need to maintain life sustaining levels of nutrients is just gone; cooking destroys just about everything, enzymes are the most important thing they destroy because they are needed for every other biochemical reaction.

Scott Paton: So, it is actually quite amazing that we live as long as we do.

Patrick Buehl: Well, it is amazing. It is amazing that here in the States that we live as long as we do and although we are the unhealthiest nation in the world, believe it or not, we continue down this path, we have got the knowledge to change all that and we have got the knowledge to live much longer. We just need to get out of the herd mentality and listening to conventional medicine or allopathic practitioners because all they know how to do is treat a symptom, not very well I might add, with a drug and what we are interested in doing is correcting a condition with something natural with no side effects whatsoever. That will increase our lifespan.

Scott Paton: And increase the quality of our life.

Patrick Buehl: That’s so true. I mean it’s one thing to live a long time, but who wants to live a long time unhealthy and that’s what these products give to the people is a quality of life for a much longer of a period.

Martin Pytela: Yeah. I would like to share a little story about a friend of mine who is 55 years old now. I have known him since our early 20s, when we were studying at university. This fellow was a sprinter on a national team, 110 meter hurdles, you know running at the Olympic world cup levels and anyway, about two years ago, he came to me and he said, “Martin, I am in serious trouble. I have emphysema. I have been diagnosed with that. I mean I am huffing and puffing. All I can do is walk up two flight stairs and I can barely continue” and this is a guy who was an avid skier, who played soccer, he ran and jogged, all kinds of stuff. So, I said to him, “Listen, Zymitol from Generation Plus, that’s the ticket” and he started taking it, but he was only taking three a day and after three months, he was saying, “Well, I got nothing. I am still suffering.” I said, “Well, what you don’t understand is you need to actually get yourself the activation dose.” So, I explained to him how to do that. His dose was about nine a day and after six months of that, he went back to the doctor. He was already feeling good. He went back to the doctor and it is absolutely gone. There was no sign of the emphysema. It is like he never had it.

Patrick Buehl: Wow. Amazing.

Martin Pytela: Yeah, but even what’s really amazing is this last winter, he went on a skiing holiday, glacier skiing in the Alps, with some friends in Italy and you know this is at 3000 meters, about 9000 feet level and there they are skiing with guys who are 20 years younger than he and he is actually keeping up with them.

Patrick Buehl: And he attributes this to Zymitol.

Martin Pytela: Oh clearly, unmistakably. I mean it is the only thing he did.

Patrick Buehl: You know Martin, that’s why we do this. These types of things are what keeps us going. It is really the fuel for our desire to continue when we are able to see results like that, that’s… that really means something and that truly is the reason that we are in business today, that’s a great testimonial. The list is very long. If I might share, would you mind?

Scott Paton: No. Let’s hear it.

Patrick Buehl: We are… you know the list is very long, but one that really stands out in my mind is a gentleman with rheumatoid arthritis and for anybody that’s listening that has rheumatoid arthritis or knows anyone with it, it can be a very, very debilitating disease, it is an autoimmune disease. The body actually turns on itself. Well, this gentleman started taking Zymitol. First I should tell you, he has had RA for 10 years and it got to the point where his hands were just about locked up almost into a fist. So, so much pain and so much joint locking he could not open his hands any longer. He started taking the product, within a week he had a little bit of movement, in two weeks, he had full fluid movement and no pain. So, these again are the types of things that keep us going. They make the hair stand on our head. Now, obviously this isn’t a result that every one should expect, but it is a result that happened and it is true and it is just a reason that we are here. Improving the quality of life of others.

Martin Pytela: Yes. Actually, I would like to add a little bit more to his story of my skiing friend, who actually on the second day of his skiing trip, did a splay in the snow, pulled his groin muscles, just you know, his legs went apart. He thought he was done for the week. So, he was taking about 20 a day at that point, just to forestall any injury or forestall any permanent injury and sure enough, he said he was… yeah, he was sore, but he was skiing for the rest of the week and not a problem, and he told me that if that hadn’t been for Zymitol, he would be done right there on the spot, the holiday would have been over.

Patrick Buehl: Good for him and good for you for showing him the way and that’s another reason that we need to continue doing this. Enzymes are the cause of my every action.

Martin Pytela: Yeah. I am so impressed with this product and of course I am always reminded that the Zymitol really is the, how should I say it, its stepping stone was an older product called Vitalzyme that you also designed, right?

Patrick Buehl: Well, that’s very true; in 2001, I was hired by a company called World Nutrition as vice president of sales and marketing and some of my duties were of course the development of new products and the sale of them. I saw a need for a vegetarian alternative to a very popular animal derived enzyme formula back then. In fact, way before that, I had my opportunity with World Nutrition to develop that product which I named Vitalzyme. Vitalzyme is a product that I hand selected the ingredients to make up the proprietary blend. We named it, boxed up, labeled it. There was one problem with that product; however, the owner of that company was more interested in profit than better health. So, you know it is a shame. We had 60000 sq ft facility that when I came onboard was barely utilized, but it was more important for him to run that equipment fast for an hour than to take two hours and eliminate the need for any excipients. So, I left that company. I sold the first bottle of Vitalzyme which I believed at that time to be the very best systemic enzyme in the world. In February of ’01, by September of ’01, I had already created Generation Plus and Zymitol and sold the first bottle of that. The major difference is I don’t have to use any excipients in the product. You know we consume, as Americans, a 100 some pounds of these so called other ingredients each year, most of them gentlemen and as you know are known carcinogens. We are doing our part to ensure that we are not adding to that number. So, Zymitol provides you about 10 times the activity level and every single enzyme in the formula compared to Vitalzyme. In addition to that, we don’t use any other ingredients that at best have no proven health benefits and at worst lead to more degenerative disease with these cancer causing excipients.

Martin Pytela: And when you say excipients, Patrick you mean things like beach sand and titanium oxide and stuff like that?

Patrick Buehl: Absolutely, excipients would be anything Martin that’s labeled as other ingredients generally on a supplement fact panel. Generally, those other ingredients are simply ingredients that are used in the manufacturing process to make it easier on the equipment than the people that use it. What I have done is develop very density specific active ingredient profiles for the formulations which allow us to get through the equipment without the need of things like flow agents which would be an excipient or other ingredient or anything to make a capsule harder or whatever it may be, these other ingredients are found in the other ingredients section on a supplement fact panel, generally used again to aid the manufacturing process, not to improve quality of life. So, if I were to produce a product that’s to improve the quality of life, by God, that’s the only ingredients I am going to have in it.

Scott Paton: Good for you Patrick and I think we need to get into this in a little more detail, but we are running out of time for this particular episode. So, Martin, how do you feel if we made this part 1 and next week, we will have part 2 and continue our conversation with Patrick and learn more about these enzymes?

Martin Pytela: Absolutely. That’s what we need to do. So, anybody who is curious about Zymitol on life-enthusiast.com, click on brands, click on Generation Plus, look up Zymitol, it is spelt Z-y-m-i-t-o-l and for today, thank you very much Patrick. We will wrap it up and we will head for a second episode tomorrow, I mean in a week from now.

Patrick Buehl: Martin, thank you for having me on and best of health to everyone.

Scott Paton: Great. Everyone you have been listening to the Life Enthusiast Co-Op podcast, restoring vitality to you and to the planet. If you have any questions on any of the things we have been talking about, you can call Martin at 866-543-3388. That number again is 866-543-3388. You can also visit the website at www.life-enthusiast.com and there is tons and tons of information there. We will also have a link on our podcast site, which is lifeenthusiast.podomatic.com where you will be able to also access all this great information and so thank you very much for joining us and we will be back next week with some more great information about enzymes. Bye everybody.

Martin Pytela: Bye, bye.

Author: Martin Pytela