?'s about enzymes with pancreatin

[sbgrace]

Ok, I guess I'm delving into this.

My kids take Houston digestive enzymes which are plant based. One has a slew of food allergies and environmental allergies and the other has failure to thrive, digestive issues, reflux right now. Both could use weight gain but especially failure to thrive kid obviously. He is not digesting well in the past six months probably due to a slew of GI infections and treatments .

I looked into Yasko's enzymes with pancreatin and got nervous!

1. First, the enzyme amounts are actually less than the amounts on Houston enzymes which confused me (does the pancreatin make up the difference?)

2. I wondered if they handle gluten/casein as well as those made for that purpose because I cannot give up yogurt with allergic boy who is finally on solid footing nutritionally with his allergies and is I'm certain eating only what agrees with him on a rotation diet.

3. And the big question: I had read the plant based enzymes were safe and didn't affect the bodies own pancreatic enzyme production. When you add in Pancreatin is your own enzyme production affected/does the body shut down production at all? I'm just nervous I'll make a bad situation worse and/or make us need them long term when I might not be able to afford them indefinitely.

[mamafish9]

Rachelle, we were on HNI enzymes, and it totally blew me away how much better the pancreatic enzymes worked for DS. He gained 4lbs in the month after we switched. I know the pancreatic enzymes aren't "supposed" to work, but they were amazingly effective for my son. He gained back some foods, digests far better, and weaned within a few weeks of the switch (from nursing 10-12x a day).

I have to assume my son wasn't doing a good job of producing his own pancreatic enzymes, but his enzyme need hasn't increased (and I haven't heard of this happening in the Yasko forums).

The enzyme amounts in the Yasko enzymes are basically meaningless - it's the pancreatin that matters. I assumed it would be no big deal and switched pretty quickly. Yeah, don't do that . Big time die off. For my son, the one capsule of the pancreatic enzymes is far more effective than a couple of Trienza capsules, if that helps at all.

Don't know on the yogurt - you could keep in some DPPIV enzyme along with the pancreatic enzymes if you are concerned (I understand why you would be!!). But we are on dairy and gluten (both foods my son has reacted to in the past), and I didn't notice any obvious worsening of his ability to tolerate those foods.

ETA: When I made the switch, I emptied HNI and Yasko capsules and mixed them up (first only a really small amount of the Yasko ones). So you could do the same (be warned, the Yasko ones taste yuck, do your guys swallow capsules?). That way, you have most of the HNI support still in place, and can see how they respond to the Yasko enzymes.