It goes without saying that proper digestion is pretty important. After all, we’ve all experienced the difficulties a bout of poor digestion can bring—fatigue, bloating, moodiness, and even depression. It can also be frustratingly challenging to fix. What’s a person to do when their body’s digestive process isn’t working as efficiently as it should?

Taking digestive enzymes may provide a much-needed fix. To learn more about how, we tapped Dr. Sepp B. Fegerl, the Deputy Medical Director at Buff Medical Resort, and Dr. Nathan Price, chief scientific officer at Thorne. Here, the health experts explain what to know about digestive enzymes.

What are digestive enzymes?

First, let’s talk about enzymes in general. Enzymes are protein molecules that enable the chemical processes essential for all forms of life. “They accelerate transformations that allow cells and living organisms to digest, defend themselves, repair themselves, and multiply,” Dr. Fegerl explains. “Without them, life would be impossible.”

The job of digestive enzymes is to break food down into smaller particles that our cells can absorb. “A digestive enzyme is a protein our bodies produce that aids in the digestion of food by breaking down carbohydrates, proteins, and fat molecules into smaller, absorbable units,” Dr. Price adds. They can be naturally found in saliva, digestive enzymes start breaking down food from the moment it passes our lips.

There are different types of enzymes specific to different nutrients, including:

• protease for proteins
• lipase for fats
• amylase for carbohydrates
• lactase for lactose
• sucrase for sucrose

How do digestive enzymes work?

Digestive enzymes act a bit like specialized scissors in the gastrointestinal tract, cutting nutrients into small particles for absorption. This allows the nutrients to be further metabolized in our bodies. Digestive enzymes are produced by the salivary glands, the stomach, the small intestine, the pancreas, and the liver. “These digestive glands work best in biologically friendly environmental conditions,” explains Fegerl.

Many digestive enzymes need an alkaline environment to be chemically active—especially those that digest proteins and fats. Thus, to digest properly, we need to consume a good amount of alkaline substances via foods such as vegetables, certain fruits, and healthy oils. (Foods like raw honey, mangoes, bananas, papaya, avocados, and fermented foods contain built-in digestive enzymes.)