Proteolytic Enzymes: Battling Acute Pain

America’s growing love of physical fitness activities has resulted in a growing number of athletic injuries. These injuries are often extremely painful and involve long lay-ups along with expensive medical bills.

The problem facing sports enthusiasts and average individuals alike today is how to reduce treatments and long recovery periods for acute pain due to injuries.

Nutritional Therapy—A Possible Solution

Most major injuries are accompanied by a state of shock that occurs as the body reacts to sudden trauma. According to Volume I of The Handbook of Shock and Trauma, Dr. Robert E. Kittner states, "There is agreement that nutritional status and nutritional support are determining factors in the survival of shocked organisms." This indicates that nutrition is the beginning of successful recovery. There is also specific nutritional elements that speed and enhance the healing process once it has begun.

Proteolytic Enzymes

Proteolytic enzymes, such as stem bromelain and papain, are enzymes that dissolve old proteins in order to stimulate new protein manufacture and the repair process. In Enzyme Therapy by Dr. Max Wolf and Karl Ransberger, Ph. D., proteolytic enzymes have many uses. "One particularly successful sphere of application of enzyme therapy is in sports lesions, respectively accidental traumas. The consequences of luxations, contusions, compressions, or lacerations can be cut short or prevented, hematomas and pain removed. Fractures heal much faster and with less complications."

Another factor accompanying injury is inflammation, which can slow the healing process. According to Alfred Leung’s Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics, proteolytic enzymes are also useful for their anti-inflammatory and anti-edemic properties. In addition, Leung states that proteolytic enzymes aid in digestion, allowing the healing body to absorb needed nutrients more quickly.

Vitamins and Minerals-
Another Key to Rapid Healing

While vitamins have always been recognized as necessary, their healing properties are not as well known. One vitamin that aids the healing process is vitamin A.

Wolf’s Enzyme Therapy cites vitamins A’s unique ability to liberate enzymes, thus allowing proteolytic enzymes to work faster and speed the healing process. Dr. Mark Altschule’s book, Nutritional Factors in General Medicine states, "Vitamin A alone stimulates the growth and multiplication of fibroblasts and increases the formation of hydroxyproline, all resulting in the accelerated laying down of collagen fibers."

In addition to vitamin A, vitamin C and zinc have also been found to aid in the healing process. Pearson and Shaw’s book Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach lists both vitamin C and zinc as wound-healing promoters and vitamin C is also said to be useful in the treatment of shock.

Some additional benefits of vitamin C were cited in R.B. Alfin-Slater’s section of Myron Winnick’s Nutritional Disorders of American Women. "Vitamin C has many uses in the body…it participates in collagen formation, tissue regeneration and bone disposition."

The most common athletic injuries are often the kind that respond to treatment with proteolytic enzymes the best. Knee, wrist and ankle injuries that can occur during many popular sports such as tennis, aerobics, racquetball, and skiing usually become very swollen, and this swelling can impede the haling process, making the injury more painful and more expensive.

Evidence suggests that treatment with proteolytic enzymes, combined with vitamin A and vitamin C may reduce inflammation in these areas and speed the healing process, thus making such injuries less traumatic for the patient.

The problems of athletic injuries and their treatment cannot be ignored for much longer without affecting the recreational fitness industry in the United States. People who are injured will often give up exercise all together rather experience the physical and emotional pain of injury again and this poses a threat to the multi-million-dollar physical fitness business.

In summary, America’s passion for physical fitness has resulted in an upswing in athletic injuries. If nutritional therapy and supplementation can help lower health care costs and shorten recovery time, it stands to reason that it may also enhance the practice of today’s chiropractors, and their contribution to society.