Getting Off Enzymes

I and my son with CF have both been off of enzymes for over two years and I have heard of at least one other person with CF getting off digestive enzymes (and they apparently have no idea what caused them to stop needing them, they just didn't anymore). Plus I have heard that about 15 percent of people with CF are pancreatic sufficient. So I think that it's not a given that people with CF must have enzymes. I don't have a specific "formula" to follow. I have some idea of what worked for my son and I plus I have heard some stories from other folks. So I will share my best understanding, but I don't have all the loose ends tied up.

My sons and I began using Celtic Sea Salt about 3 years or so ago (summer 2005). It did good things for us. Then in May 2006, I had a conversation with my oldest son (who has CF) about yeast in the diet and how it effects the gut. During that conversation, he made the observation that he no longer really needed enzymes except on days when he didn't feel well and on days when we had pizza for dinner. So he decided right then and there that he would never have yeast-pizza again. We bagged up all our pizza making supplies and gave them away. After that, he no longer needed enzymes.

About two months later (July 2006), I finally tripped across coconut oil. It had been suggested to me as something "good for the gut" at the same time that sea salt had been suggested to me but I had never found it in a store and had never gotten my act together to order it online. Probably a few days after I started taking coconut oil, I stopped needing digestive enzymes.

Both of us were also taking glyconutrients at that time. My son no longer needs glyconutrients and I don't need as much of them as I once did. Shortly after I first began taking coconut oil, I found that if I increased the dose of glyconutrients, or coconut oil or sea salt, it only caused a very minimal increase in the impact it had on me. If I increased the dose of two of them, it also didn't make all that much difference. But if I increased the dose of all three of them and took them close together (like within the same hour), it had a really, really big impact on me. Doing so was typically followed by very watery diarrhea that smelled kind of like skunk. A phd chemist told me that skunk-like, sour smell is glutathione.

Glutathione is an important anti-oxidant and pwcf tend to have too much inside their cells and too little on the outside. My impression is that the skunk-like smell of some of my bowel-movements represents a signifant change in how my body works because it appears to me that my body is releasing the excess glutathione from inside the cells. My guess is that there are two mechanisms at work: a) glutathione is crossing the cell membrane better and the imbalance is being corrected because the traffic across the cell membrane is improved and b) glutathione is being dumped because my body isn't frying itself to the same degree it once did, so it doesn't need to hoard glutathione as a buffer against the high acidity and other problems with the cell chemistry.

In the last six months or so, I have found that eating carbs with sea salt and a healthy fat (like organic butter or coconut oil) has a similar effect on me as taking glyconutrients, sea salt and coconut oil. For about two months in the spring, I routinely made either mashed potatoes or potato soup for lunch -- almost every single day. Potatoes are acidifying, so I had to work at countering that because it was causing me heartburn. But potato starch seems to do something really good for me. I found that if I thickened potato soup with corn starch, it wasn't nearly as acidifying and the combination of potato starch and corn starch did really good things for my gut. (I probably use 1/4 cup or more of corn starch to thicken my soup and I make it almost as thick as pudding.)

When I began making mashed potatoes for lunch this past spring, it was the first time I had ever made them with sea salt and organic butter. It wasn't long before we began leaving out the milk. Initially, after having that for lunch, I often took a nap and it was clear to me that it was because it was helping me heal. For the first week or two, with almost every bite, my son and I would make appreciative noises like this was the best meal we had ever had in our lives. I have recently begun buying organic noodles and cooking them in sea salt. I then either drizzle olive oil on them and put some spices and parmesan chees on it, or I fry them in organic butter.

My sons are both ASD (autism spectrum disorder) and I belong to an autism list where people are pursuing biomedical intervention for their ASD kids. Most kids who are ASD have serious gut issues and many of them benefit from taking digestive enzymes. On the list I am on, as kids get healthier and get their underlying medical issues resolved, many of them stop needing enzymes. I learned most of what I know about healing the gut from that list. So it seems to me that the need for enzymes is not "because I have CF" and therefore "untreatable"/can't be changed. It seems to me if you heal the gut, you can get off enzymes. It takes time and doesn't happen overnight. Even if you can't get off enzymes completely, you may be able to at least improve gut function and need fewer enzymes. I have heard from at least a couple of people who either began taking sea salt or who were using hypertonic saline a lot that they needed fewer enzymes and even less insulin.