Why I Still Take Digestive Enzymes Years After Healing My Gut

When I published my article on how I cured my IBS after three decades of bloating, constipation and abdominal pain, I expected some pushback. 

What I didn’t expect was how many readers would write back with a version of the same story: “I cut the plants and ramped up the meat like you suggested, and now I feel worse. I’m bloated, I’m constipated, and I’ve got indigestion I never had before.”

I get the frustration: You take the initiative to remove the foods that were wrecking your gut, and your gut acts up anyway.

First, let’s address an important distinction that trips a lot of people up… 

The protocol I used to heal my gut was a version of a carnivore diet. For a stretch, I stripped my plate down to nothing but meat, seafood and salt, to give my gut a complete break from anything that could irritate it. 

That’s an elimination tool, not a diet you stay on forever. Once my symptoms were gone, I slowly reintroduced the least-toxic foods and settled into the animal-based diet I follow to this day, which includes raw dairy, eggs, seasonal fruit and a handful of low-toxin plants. 

In other words, carnivore is how I healed, but animal-based is where I landed. 

So when I talk below about the rough patch people run into, I’m talking about that initial carnivore reset, when your plate suddenly becomes nothing but protein and fat.

The truth is that any big dietary change can cause temporary turbulence while your body adjusts. However, when people tell me they can’t seem to digest the sudden influx of protein and fat, the culprit is almost always the same: their body isn’t yet producing enough stomach acid, bile and digestive enzymes to handle a meal that looks nothing like what they used to eat.

The good news is that this is one of the easiest problems to fix on the entire gut-healing journey. 

Let me explain what’s going on and what I do about it, including the one supplement I’ve kept in my pantry (and my travel bag) long after my own IBS symptoms disappeared.

Meat And Fat Are Not The Problem

If you spent years eating a standard diet built around grains, processed carbs and seed oils, your digestive system optimized itself for exactly that. Your body is efficient, so it produces the acid, bile and enzymes it needs for the food you typically eat and not a lot more.

Then you read an article like mine, you stop eating plant foods, and overnight your plate goes from carb-heavy to protein-and-fat-heavy. That’s a huge shift in workload for your body, and your digestive system can’t just flip a switch to keep up – it has to adapt gradually over a period of weeks.

I mentioned this in my IBS article (linked above), but it’s worth repeating here because so many people miss it: if you aren’t used to eating a lot of protein and fat, your stomach probably isn’t yet producing enough acid and enzymes to break it all down, and your gallbladder isn’t releasing enough bile to emulsify the fat. 

The result is that the food you eat sits in your stomach longer than it should. And that backed-up, half-digested meal is where the bloating, indigestion and heavy, sluggish feeling come from.

Over time, your pancreas will adjust by increasing its enzyme production, and your body will learn to release more bile and acid in response to the meals you’re now eating. But “eventually” isn’t much comfort when you feel miserable after dinner. So that’s the gap I want to help you close with this article.

The Role of Acid, Bile and Enzymes

It helps to understand that digesting a big meat-and-fat meal relies on three separate systems working together, and enzymes are only one of them.

Stomach acid kicks off protein digestion and sends a signal to the rest of your digestive tract to get ready. Low stomach acid is more common than most people think, and ironically, it can show up as the opposite of what you’d expect – like reflux and heartburn – because food lingers in your stomach instead of moving along.

Bile, produced by your liver and stored in your gallbladder, emulsifies fat so your body can absorb it. If you’ve ramped up fat intake faster than your bile production can match, that’s often where the trouble shows up.

Digestive enzymes do the molecular work of breaking food down into pieces small enough to absorb. Protease handles protein, lipase handles fat, and amylase handles carbohydrates and sugars.

When any one of these falls short, you feel it. And when you’re asking your body to digest two or three times the protein and fat it’s used to, it’s common for all three to come up short at once for a while.

Three Easy Wins to Bolster Digestion

Before you reach for a supplement, there are a few no-cost habits that make a real difference.

Cook from scratch. This sounds almost too simple, but the smell of real food cooking triggers what’s called the cephalic phase of digestion. Your body starts producing saliva, stomach acid and enzymes before the first bite even hits your mouth. When you microwave something or eat on autopilot, you skip that head start. Standing over a pan of sizzling steak and tallow isn’t just more enjoyable, it’s priming your gut to do its job.

Eat slowly and chew well. Digestion starts in your mouth. Chewing breaks food into smaller pieces and mixes it with salivary enzymes, and slowing down gives your stomach time to produce enough acid before the next forkful arrives. I know how easy it is to inhale a meal when you’re hungry (especially when you only eat two meals a day, like me), but slowing down is one of the highest-return changes you can make.

Drink diluted apple cider vinegar before meals. A tablespoon in a small glass of water, 10 or 15 minutes before eating, can help get your digestive juices flowing if your stomach acid is on the low side. It’s a tactic I’ve recommended to readers for years, and plenty of them report it takes the edge off that post-meal heaviness.

For some people, that’s enough. But if you’re early in your transition, or you’re sitting down to a meal that’s larger or later than ideal, that’s where I bring in enzymes.

Where Digestive Enzymes Come In

A digestive enzyme supplement delivers the same enzymes your pancreas makes. By leveraging these supplements properly, you can give your digestive system reinforcement right when it needs a boost. 

Instead of waiting weeks or months for your own enzyme production to catch up, you give your gut the tools to break down that big meal today.

I’m a big fan of enzymes for this purpose, and the macronutrients they target map perfectly onto a meat-heavy plate:

• Protease breaks down protein, which is the heavy lifting on this diet.
• Lipase breaks down fat, the other half of the equation when you’re eating ruminant meat and animal fats.
• Amylase breaks down carbs and sugars. (This matters less for me since I eat very few of them, but it’s still useful for anyone eating fruit, honey or the occasional starch.)

There’s a bonus benefit that ties directly into something I’ve written about before. Plants defend themselves with antinutrients like phytates, which bind up minerals such as iron and magnesium and make them harder to absorb. 

Some enzyme blends include phytase, which helps break those phytates down so you get more of the minerals your food contains. If you’re reintroducing some plants into your diet as your gut heals, that’s a nice extra.

What I Use: MassZymes

The enzyme supplement I keep coming back to is MassZymes from BiOptimizers. It’s the same company that makes the magnesium I take every day (read why here), and it’s a full-spectrum, plant-based formula that covers protein, fat, carbs and fiber.

What sold me on it is the protease content. BiOptimizers built MassZymes specifically around protein-digesting enzymes, and it carries an unusually high protease concentration compared to most enzyme products I’ve looked at. 

On a diet where protein is the centerpiece of every meal, that’s exactly what I want doing the work. 

The enzymes are also formulated to stay active across the full range of pH in your digestive tract, from the acidic environment of your stomach to the alkaline environment of your small intestine, so they keep working as your meal moves through the system.

Here’s how this plays out in my own life, years after my IBS went away.

I eat two meals a day, and they’re big. We’re talking roughly 2,000 calories each. We try to eat dinner early, but life doesn’t always cooperate, and some nights I end up eating a huge meal closer to bedtime than I’d like. 

When that happens without supplemental enzymes, I feel it. That heavy meal sits with me, it drags down my sleep quality, and once in a while I’ll even get heartburn – which is something I almost never deal with otherwise.

When I take MassZymes before that same late meal, those problems don’t occur. 

I take three capsules about half an hour before I sit down, especially when I know we’re eating late. Sometimes I forget until after I’ve already eaten, and in that case, I just take them after the meal. (Not ideal, but better than nothing, and it still helps.)

That’s why MassZymes lives in my pantry and comes with me in my travel bag. I’ve been symptom-free for years, but I’m realistic about the fact that I don’t always get to make perfect food choices. 

Sometimes I’m traveling and the options in front of me are nothing close to what I’d eat at home. Other times the choice is deliberate, because food isn’t only fuel; it carries cultural and emotional meaning too. 

For example, our monthly pizza night is a long-standing tradition in the Kummer house and something we all enjoy. We make the best pizza we can, usually from scratch with a sourdough crust, but it’s still a meal my gut isn’t built for. 

In all of these cases, supplemental digestive enzymes are often the difference between feeling crappy afterward and feeling fine.

A Word on Bile and Stomach Acid

Enzymes handle their part of the job, but bile and stomach acid matter too, especially for digesting fat and protein.

If you’ve increased your fat intake dramatically and still feel like heavy meals sit with you, or if you suspect low stomach acid is behind your reflux, betaine HCL is worth looking into.

It supplements the stomach acid that kicks off protein digestion and signals the rest of your gut to get moving. 

Some people pair it with ox bile to support fat digestion while their own bile production catches up. Personally, I’d start with enzymes and the free habits above, then add betaine HCL if you’re still struggling with protein-heavy meals.

As always, introduce one change at a time so you can tell what’s doing the work.

What About the Fillers?

Whenever I recommend a supplement, someone checks the label and asks about the inactive ingredients. With MassZymes, the question I get is about the rice bran it contains.

That’s a fair question, and I’ll give you my honest take.

BiOptimizers includes a stabilized rice bran in the formula because enzymes are activated by moisture, and the rice bran keeps them stable and extends shelf life so the product still works when you take it. Rice bran isn’t my favorite ingredient to see in a supplement, and on an animal-based diet, I’d rather it weren’t there at all.

But I try to keep things in perspective. We’re talking about a trace amount inside a few capsules, not a bowl of rice. 

The dose makes the poison, and at the amount you consume here, I consider it benign. I’m not going to pretend a tiny rice-bran carrier undoes the benefit of properly digesting a 2,000-calorie meal. 

If you’re extremely sensitive to grains in any form, it’s something to be aware of. For the vast majority of people, including me, it’s a non-issue.

Who Should Be Careful

Digestive enzymes are very safe for most people, but a few caveats are worth stating plainly. 

If you have an active ulcer or gastritis, enzymes (and especially betaine HCL) may not be a good idea. Enzymes can also interact with blood-thinning medications, and they aren’t recommended during pregnancy or breastfeeding. 

If any of that applies to you, talk to a healthcare professional before starting. None of this is medical advice, just me telling you what I’d want to know.

The Bottom Line

If you’ve gone carnivore to reset your gut and it’s protesting, don’t assume meat is wrong for you and bail. 

More often than not, your digestion simply hasn’t caught up to the new workload yet, and that’s a temporary, solvable problem that eases as your body adapts and you reintroduce foods on your way to a sustainable animal-based diet.

Cook from scratch. Slow down and chew. Try diluted apple cider vinegar before meals. And if you want to give your gut real reinforcements while it adapts, digestive enzymes are the most useful tool I’ve found. 

They were part of my own gut-healing toolkit, and they’ve earned a permanent spot in my pantry and travel bag for those meals when I either can’t, or choose not to, eat the way I normally do.

If you want to try the ones I use, you can find MassZymes here and enter code MK10 at checkout for 10% off.

Note: I’ve partnered with BiOptimizers to offer this discount to my readers, but I use MassZymes myself and never recommend products I wouldn’t take.

Have you struggled with digestion after going carnivore to heal your gut, and did enzymes help you turn the corner? Let me know in the comments below.