The power of enzymes to reduce pain, swelling and inflammation is so well established by so many studies, it's a wonder that enzyme therapy hasn't taken America by storm.
Alternative doctors everywhere are discovering the wonder of these incredible nutrients,especially in Germany where doctors successfully treat osteoarthritis with enzymes. They also consider enzymes to be as effective as prescription medicines.
Here's an example. A German study involving 1004 rheumatic patients and 141 doctors reported 76% to 96% improved or considerably improved after receiving enzyme therapy.
Do enzymes help relieve osteoarthritis; the more common type? You bet. Dr. Cichoke reports a test of 80 patients who suffered from osteoarthritis of the knee. Half received an enzyme formula and half were treated with a leading prescription pain reliever called diclofenac. The enzymes proved just as effective as the drug in relieving pain by day or by night, at rest or in motion.
The Germans have also studied healthy athletes to see if enzyme therapy relieves pain and swelling and speeds up healing. The results were startling.
In a study of a hundred athletes, half took placebo and the other half an enzyme formula. More than three out of four of those on the enzymes rated the results as "good." Only 14% of those on the placebo were willing to say the same thing.
Neither group knew which pills they'd received. The Germans have really taken the results to heart. According to Karen DeFelice, German and Austrian teams training for the Olympics consume "millions of enzyme capsules." Dr. Cichoke says it's common for German prize fighters to take enzymes to prevent injuries and speed up recovery.
Drugs merely mask the pain, but enzymes get at the root cause and actually heal the underlying problem.
The non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDS that most of us take for pain are not healing drugs. In fact, they can be very damaging, even fatal, if taken over the long-term, the way many arthritis patients do.
NSAIDs block our response to pain so we don't feel it, but do little or nothing to heal the pain or injury.
Athletes have good reason to know this. Sure, they want to stop the pain, as most of us do but their most important goal is getting back on the field. When it comes to speeding up recovery, more and more athletes are finding that enzymes are clear winners over pain drugs.
In one of the rare American studies of enzyme therapy, Dr. Cichoke himself analyzed 64 football players. Half the athletes were given enzymes and half were given a placebo. Neither the players nor the doctors knew which pills were which. The idea was to take enzymes regularly as a food supplement rather than wait to begin enzyme therapy AFTER an injury had occurred. Using enzymes in this way for prevention, Dr. Cichoke and his colleague Leo Marty found that athletes who took enzymes recovered from injuries up to twice as fast as those on the sugar pill.
Dr. J.M. Zuschlag tried enzyme therapy on 20 karate fighters. As you can imagine, karate folks get pretty banged up. Half took a placebo and half took enzymes, without knowing which pill they were taking. The edge they got from enzyme supplements was astounding. Bruises healed in 6.62 days on average in the enzyme group compared to 15.59 days in the placebo group.
During the course of the study, the athletes who took the placebo missed 10 days of training on average while those who took enzymes missed only four days. Athletes on enzymes got over pain and swelling in about four days but those on the placebo needed about ten days to recover.
To an athlete, especially a pro or college athlete, those are eye-popping results. What's more, the Germans have confirmed this again and again. The players who supplement with enzyme preparations lose less playing time, recover from injuries faster, and experience no side effects. The side effects from prescription drugs on the other hand are often serious and the athletes lose more playing time.
Writing in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science, E.A. Fulgrave states that for many major sports injuries, enzymes can reduce time lost from two months down to two weeks!
What works for these athletes can work for you.
Enzymes can even help you recover faster after surgery. The evidence is found in, yes, another German study, this one on patients undergoing knee operations. It took fewer days for the folks supplementing with enzymes to be able to bend their knees, compared to the patients who got placebos. The enzyme group could also stand and walk earlier, and suffered less pain and swelling.
This isn't a case of some people telling a researcher how they feel. It's a study of hard, objective fact: the number of days it took to bend, stand up and move.
Besides these studies, Dr. Cichoke reports many individual stories of quick healing and recovery. In one case, a college soccer coach injured a vertebra while playing goalie. The pain, muscle spasms and immobility were so bad that his wife rushed him to an emergency room. The doctors there gave him pain drugs and muscle relaxants, and told him to stay in bed for two weeks. Three days later, he was no better. In fact, he had to crawl from his bed to the bathroom. He saw another doctor who urged him to try something else: enzyme therapy, which he started a week after his injury.
The results were like a miracle
Within 24 hours, says the soccer coach, "I had literally lost almost all of the pain. I could stand erect, next to my bed, without having to bend over. The reduction of pain was remarkable."
The case of a high school long distance runner is just as dramatic. The boy developed knee problems, with pain so severe he was thinking of giving up his sport. Instead, he tried enzymes. In a week he was almost free of pain, even though he didn't take a break in his workout schedule. Within two weeks, he was totally pain-free and running seven miles a day.
Not all of us will experience such quick, dramatic results as these two injured athletes, but big studies of hundreds of people in pain, do confirm that enzymes work.
Considering the wealth of studies on not only arthritis patients, but also injured athletes, cancer patients and all kinds of people with pain, there's no doubt in my mind that enzymes are the missing nutrient that can mean a new life for many people. What do you think?
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