Negative reaction to enzymes, anyone pretty familiar with them?

Mike Brown

New member
Hey guys, first off sorry for having a ton of questions, I'm new to being treated for cf and this forum has been great.

I was wondering if anyone has ever has any adverse reactions to enzymes? I was prescribed zenpep and every time I take it I have an adverse reaction, the best way I can describe it which sounds odd is I basically have the symptoms that the enzymes are meant to help. I will have bad stomach pains as soon as I eat with them and then go to the bathroom where I have floating loose stool, but any other time my stool sinks normally. But what's worse is I get the worst intergestion ever with them like a tightness in my chest where I feel like I have to burmp, but cant, along with pain and tenderness in my upper right quadrant, like where my gallbladder or liver would be (possibly pancreas?) then I end up throwing up and getting very sick for the rest of the day. The symptoms will go away if I don't take them for the rest of the day, I will start feeling okay again the following day. My GI doctor told me to stop taking them, which I have and will follow up with my cf center and see what they can do, but I was wondering has anyone else had this experience?

I want to put some weight on and I know the enzymes are an important step, but they are making me feel terrible to the point I am eating worse and vomiting a lot more because of the symptoms they are causing. This has happened every time I've taken them which is about 7 times in total and I have taken them with my "safe meals" to make sure it isnt the food causing it.
 

jshet

New member
I think you should contact your cf center right away about this. I have not heard of this being an issue for anyone before, but i do know there are different kinds of enzymes. Maybe you need a different brand.
my son experienced the complete opposite when he started taking creon enzymes. It is probably one of the best things that has happened to him.
i do know you should not be feeling sick like this from taking them, and this warrents intervention from you cf doctor. Good luck.
 

Jet

Member
I would discuss it with your doctor. There are other enzymes. I've not taken zenpep before but I had to switch brands because of other issues. It could also be the dose you're taking.
 

Mike Brown

New member
Hey guys, I went back and told them and after looking at my bloodwork they said because of my lipase numbers the fact that I have no vitamin deficiencies, they believe that I'm not pancreatic insufficient yet, so they took me off of them. I have a ton of stomach problems stemming from what theyre calling gastroperesis, so it's hard to tell if if I need the enzymes or not to be honest cause eating and drinking in general has just been hard.
 

Aboveallislove

Super Moderator
How you gotten the genetics back yet because if you are pancreatic sufficient Kalydeco should work for you and help you stay healthy and maybe prevent you from going to PI. I'd see ASAP when they'll have the results.
 

Mike Brown

New member
How you gotten the genetics back yet because if you are pancreatic sufficient Kalydeco should work for you and help you stay healthy and maybe prevent you from going to PI. I'd see ASAP when they'll have the results.

Hey, what's up, I haven't gotten them back yet, just sent out the bloodwork for them this weel, but I am anxious to see what the results are. They told me they think I have a mutation that just effects the pancreas and is pretty rare, but won't know for sure until they get the results. My lung function tests came back normal for a 26 year old they said, so I'm happy about that, now if could just fix these horrible stomach problems I've been having for the past half a year, things would be a lot easier lol

I'll definitely bring that up in my next visit, thanks!
 

LittleLab4CF

Super Moderator
That pain in your upper right abdominal quadrant is typical of pancreatitis and/or a gallbladder attack. There's nothing inherently wrong with Zenpep or Creon and Pertze for that matter. They shouldn't even be affecting you for at least an hour or so after taking them because they normally release in the duodenum or small intestine about two hours after ingestion, give or take an hour.

Unless you were losing weight and having really rotten stools, I'm not sure why they are prescribing enzymes. Actually, I sort of do. Once I was diagnosed with CF, I was put on Creon 500's which was in essence a blind stab at diagnosis by medication, seeing if I noticed any improvement. This seems to be a fairly common practice and it bothers me because understanding what an improvement might look like was not explained. In fact it isn't simple to discern small improvements.

If you want to determine your ability to properly digest foods, your pancreatic function, gallbladder function or bile transit and such, you need a rare doctor. I suggest Dr. Steven D. Freedman at BIDC in Boston. Dr. Freedman likes to "let science prevail" and for good or bad, your pancreas can be evaluated and any digestive enzymes quickly titrated or adjusted. Don't live in misery, if you aren't much better soon, get thee to somebody like Dr. Freedman

Enzyme titration for me, the process of getting the right amount got worse, a lot worse before it got better. I had chronic hard constipation for decades. Two of those decades, I was traveling constantly and it was intense. An average trip was six weeks and I usually flew to 7 or 8 countries or a full circumnavigation of the world or half way around and back. Most people that live out of a suitcase and sits in meetings, the cabs, airports and airplanes have ridiculous thin bodies with large pot bellies and I was no different. For all of that misery with a Thai meal exploding between meals of gluten noodles and duck feet, life was good compared to when my pancreas started to screw up.

Even though my hard constipation was due to chronic dehydration and the endless sedentary hours, enzymes at first seemed to be ruining my digestion. All I could pass was a gassy peanut butter like poop. With incremental increases in my enzymes, the food was beginning to reduce in volume and become mor dense. From the way you describe things getting worse, I wonder if what you are actually experiencing is food that hasn't been treated with enzymes. The only way my doctor could explain why I seemed to have hard but digested feces was the possibility that very little digestion was happening before entering the large bowel. The massive amounts of probiotics in the large bowel reduced or digested my food.

The amounts of Creon that I am successful at digesting food is about mid way in the dosing instructions. Going from 5 Creon 12's to 5-8 Creon 36's seems like a leap. After switching GI doctors a few months ago I wanted to try titrating again but start near the highest dose rather than repeat lower dosing. Meeting half way was a good trick. Now I have formed stools again and being smarter about hydration, constipation, soft and hard are almost a thing of the past. Almost.

I discovered with formed, dense and heavy stools that my daily bowel movement now took two days. In order to make sure it doesn't go past two days I am drinking even more water/electrolytes, a gallon in total per day. My gut is still incredibly tender and though my gassy stools of old never weighed the gut down, I really feel food moving through my intestines now.

My thought is this, try larger steps in dosages of Zenpep and see if the issue isn't your needing much more enzymes to make things work right. You may be taking just enough to make a mess of your gut.

LL
 

Mike Brown

New member
That pain in your upper right abdominal quadrant is typical of pancreatitis and/or a gallbladder attack. There's nothing inherently wrong with Zenpep or Creon and Pertze for that matter. They shouldn't even be affecting you for at least an hour or so after taking them because they normally release in the duodenum or small intestine about two hours after ingestion, give or take an hour.


Unless you were losing weight and having really rotten stools, I'm not sure why they are prescribing enzymes. Actually, I sort of do. Once I was diagnosed with CF, I was put on Creon 500's which was in essence a blind stab at diagnosis by medication, seeing if I noticed any improvement. This seems to be a fairly common practice and it bothers me because understanding what an improvement might look like was not explained. In fact it isn't simple to discern small improvements.


If you want to determine your ability to properly digest foods, your pancreatic function, gallbladder function or bile transit and such, you need a rare doctor. I suggest Dr. Steven D. Freedman at BIDC in Boston. Dr. Freedman likes to "let science prevail" and for good or bad, your pancreas can be evaluated and any digestive enzymes quickly titrated or adjusted. Don't live in misery, if you aren't much better soon, get thee to somebody like Dr. Freedman


Enzyme titration for me, the process of getting the right amount got worse, a lot worse before it got better. I had chronic hard constipation for decades. Two of those decades, I was traveling constantly and it was intense. An average trip was six weeks and I usually flew to 7 or 8 countries or a full circumnavigation of the world or half way around and back. Most people that live out of a suitcase and sits in meetings, the cabs, airports and airplanes have ridiculous thin bodies with large pot bellies and I was no different. For all of that misery with a Thai meal exploding between meals of gluten noodles and duck feet, life was good compared to when my pancreas started to screw up.


Even though my hard constipation was due to chronic dehydration and the endless sedentary hours, enzymes at first seemed to be ruining my digestion. All I could pass was a gassy peanut butter like poop. With incremental increases in my enzymes, the food was beginning to reduce in volume and become mor dense. From the way you describe things getting worse, I wonder if what you are actually experiencing is food that hasn't been treated with enzymes. The only way my doctor could explain why I seemed to have hard but digested feces was the possibility that very little digestion was happening before entering the large bowel. The massive amounts of probiotics in the large bowel reduced or digested my food.


The amounts of Creon that I am successful at digesting food is about mid way in the dosing instructions. Going from 5 Creon 12's to 5-8 Creon 36's seems like a leap. After switching GI doctors a few months ago I wanted to try titrating again but start near the highest dose rather than repeat lower dosing. Meeting half way was a good trick. Now I have formed stools again and being smarter about hydration, constipation, soft and hard are almost a thing of the past. Almost.


I discovered with formed, dense and heavy stools that my daily bowel movement now took two days. In order to make sure it doesn't go past two days I am drinking even more water/electrolytes, a gallon in total per day. My gut is still incredibly tender and though my gassy stools of old never weighed the gut down, I really feel food moving through my intestines now.


My thought is this, try larger steps in dosages of Zenpep and see if the issue isn't your needing much more enzymes to make things work right. You may be taking just enough to make a mess of your gut.


LL




Hey LL, hopefully I can get some more answers soon, as they did a stool sample and some more bloodwork. She suggested that I might not need the enzymes yet, as I'm not totally pancreatic insufficient at the point and that most of my problems are stemming from the gatroperesis. But yea, that upper right quadrant pain, I seem to get that pretty often. They ran blood work and a ton of scans and everything looked okay with my pancreas, but when they did a hida scan, my galbladder did not show up for the first two hours, not till they added the cck. This worries me because they didn't do anything about it, they ssort of just said sometimes that happens, but that doesnt sound normal to me, especially with the pains I get there.


I'm going to try to see doctor Freedman over the summer, as I've heard his name suggested numerous times. I'm still waiting on my gene test and a lot of other results at the point, so there's still a long road ahead. It's been hard, but I have good days and bad days which is an improvement because for about a half a year it was pretty much all bad days and misery. Now I'm eating a drinking better with motility agent meds, still not back to normal, but a lot of improvement. Just wish the doctors will figure everything that needs to be figured out, so I can get the right treatment.


Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it!
 

Mike Brown

New member
Being pancreatic sufficient does not exclude you having Pancreatitis.

Bill

But wouldn't that have shown up from one of the tests? I got bloodwork (lipase:35) xrays, catscans with barium, ultrasounds, hida scans, and none of them pointed to pancreatitis.
 

Printer

Active member
I suffered from Pancreatitis for many years while there was a, ongoing, measurable decline in my PI, I still had attacks.

Bill
 

LittleLab4CF

Super Moderator
Mike Brown,

I read over your post again because I knew something sounded familiar concerning your list of symptoms, that I meant to address. I would add the tight chest and constantly feeling full or what could be gastritis as well as strong indicators of a gallbladder attack.

Along with CF comes Small Duct Disease for nearly all of us. Ducts make up a lot of the body's fluid transport but I am thinking of your liver/gallbladder and pancreas. It also means extra thick and sticky mucus which is produced all throughout the GI tract. When my late diagnosis was made, it first was with the good Dr. Freedman. After years of some high powered doctors, Univiersity of Colorado, Mayo Clinic and such telling me my pancreas was fine, a simple and older than me pancreatic function test confirmed my pancreatitis. In defense of the doctors, they consistently relied on the Gold Standard, an abdominal CT.

I apparently still produce enzymes but only enough to keep me in intractable pain. I get my digestion from a combination of enzymes. If you are transitioning into pancreatic insufficiency, you may be having pancreatitis. Pancreatic pain and most of gallbladder pain is referred to some other part of the body. Upper right quadrant abdominal pain can be either gallbladder or pancreatic but gallbladder pain is like an epic case of heartburn, heart attacks and gallbladder attacks are similar enough that I went to the ER with a very real concern that I was having a heart attack. That was the first time I was aware my gallbladder was packed with stones. The surgeon told me from the layers of scars from previous attacks I had possibly dozens of attacks over several years. I had the same PCP for maybe sixteen years and was as flabbergasted as me. It amazes me that we didn't look at the pancreas before then.

The pancreas and liver/gallbladder refers pain to the back, most often between the shoulder blades. Boys and girls develop differently in the womb such that referred pain presents in slightly different places. The heart develops from a bud of cells along the future spine in girls and boy's hearts are pulled out of the left shoulder/arm bud, for practical purposes. Heart attacks are often indicated by referred pain in the left arm and shoulder, in men. Before women smoked and took the Pill, they categorically didn't have heart attacks. A lot of women were misdiagnosed at a time when seconds mattered, because all doctors were men and the back pain was not recognized as angina. In fact they made absurd errors like osteoporosis and gallbladder attacks when heart muscle was dying.

The referred pain of the liver, pancreas and gallbladder maybe upper right abdominal quadrant and right between the shoulder blades or scapulas. Lung pain is also referred to the mid thoracic spinal region but many people have pain referring to the entire region around and under the scapulas.

With a diagnosis of gastroperesis, there should be reason behind it. Usually it is a malfunction of the sympathetic nervous system or the Vagus nerve in other words. The whole issue of the gut and the Vagus nerve has had some wild medicine thrown at it. In my father's day it was tranquilizers like vallium and quasi narcotics like paragoric mixed with bismuth. The next generation got their Vagus nerve cut, something that more than one doctor wanted me to try. The denervation or severing major nerve branches is something you will always find a surgeon willing to do for chronic kidney pain or IBS, Crone's disease. I have had an equal number of doctors warn me to never allow denervation to be done, for any reason. The reality is very few denervations are ultimately for the better. You never feel the pain but that also means you may die of sepsis due to an infection you will never feel developing.

Ugh, that sour stomach from food that isn't going anywhere. It is horrible but I still wonder why you have it. If enzymes are making life far more painful and exasserbating your gastoP, you'd want to know the condition of you upper GI tract, especially your stomach and duodenum. Food stays in the stomach long enough to be reduced by stomach acid, the little bit of enzymes like amylase in your saliva and the stomach has mechanically re-chewed food mushing it to a pablum consistency. Next the food, now called chyme, is released by the pyloric valve into the duodenum or the second stomach, as it functions.

The duodenum is florid with villi or tiny finger shaped structures that massively increase the surface area of the insides of the intestines. As soon as chyme or undigested food makes contact with the villi, special cells release secretin into the bloodstream and stimulating the pancreas. Cells nearest the pyloric valve have the Lion's share of cells that inhibits the action of secretin since our vertical digestive system stops enzymes when they're detected up high in the gut.

Something is going wrong with the transit from the stomach down into the duodenum and beyond. I would suggest you have a test for bacterial overgrowth done. If the stomach acid is too weak, bacteria will overgrow the stomach and that usually means sores or even ulcers because H.pylori is the real cause of ulcers. Also if your stomach acid is weak it won't reduce food to chyme and the pyloric valve will happily stay closed until you puke. The bacterial overgrowth test is easy, you are given a small drink of water with an artificial sweetener like mannitol. We can't digest mannitol but bacteria and yeasts ferment it giving off extra hydrogen. They collect a breath sample every 30 minutes for a couple hours. A harmless easy test that will determine if your stomach acid is up to par. Maybe you are way past me on this, but it is vital you know the quality of the stomach acid in your gut, or if you have bacterial overgrowth. It is difficult to feel the difference between hypo and hyper-acidity. If your acid is too weak to reduce your food or so strong your stomach lining is raw and contracted, food won't easily move.

In order for your stomach to be in such terrible pain after eating and taking Creon, Pertze or Zenpep, I would guess you either have ulcers or a pre-ulcerative condition which is just saying you have something like a road rash on the inner walls of the stomach. Either stomach acid or enough enzymes are immediately released to attack and try digesting any and all open sores, even at the capillary scale. This is painful, if you are experiencing a bit of autodigestion of the stomach or a lot, it would be like drinking molten lead. If you mentioned the enzyme, I missed it but, over the counter enzymes, like supplements from a vitamin store or the prescription enzyme Viokase are immediately released in the stomach. I take Viokase and Zenpep or Viokase and Creon, I am still dialing in on the choices.

Gastroperesis could be caused by a very typical CF problem, DIOS or a form of soft constipation that can become a lethal blockage. Many CFer's guts get clogged and literally backed up to the stomach. Many of us have vomited something a little too far into the GI tract, the further into the digestive process, the less it resembles food. If you are chronically blocked up it could be in either the small or large bowel. Distal Intestinal Obstructive Syndrome implies an obstruction at or near the junction of the small and large bowel. This is a very bad place because it is distal or the furthest point from its beginning of both intestines. I have gone through periods when a meal or two didn't move down and ended up hurling it right back up. This was all the result of soft blockages.

So your gastric emptying must be really taken to task. Your doctor had better be able to tell you with absolute certainty what is causing your gastoP. Typically in CF we have an abundance of stomach acid, way too much in fact. I make way too much and take a maximum dose of Dexilant plus several Zantac just to keep from developing gastritis, the pre-ulcerative condition that may turn to ulcers. It is possibly more important to fully understand why you have gastroP.

It should be relatively straight forward unless you have that quirk of the Vagus nerve. The only cure for that I am aware of is to become a person with the calm of glacial lake. Actually it usually takes living by a fairly rigid routine. Become a Thai Qi Master or a Woo Li Monk, it's tough when your emotions are directly wired through the Vagus nerve but there are ways of treating it in most cases. If that's the cause.

If you haven't had a food transit study, or if your insurance will allow your doctor to have a PillCam where they take a video of your entire small bowel, have both done. Maybe, like me and many others who deal with a dysfunctional gut, you've had a few abdominal CT scans. I realized when reviewing all my abdominal or chest CT's that there isn't a single CT, save those I took a bowel prep for, I was constipated. I didn't feel constipated, it felt normal to have my bowels full. Actually it was miserable. Mutations that affect the pancreas and not the lungs are out there and seeing CF specialists/pulmonologist could result in a misdiagnosis because so much focus has been on the lungs. Besides, what can you do for a pancreas?

Silly time to ask but have you been told why you have gastroperisis? Do you know your mutation(s) and any polymorphisms?

Good Luck,

LL
 

Mike Brown

New member
Hey LL, first off thank you for the long reply, I really appreciate the info you provide me with when you post!

A few things to respond too:

The pain usually its sort of dull on the mid upper right quadrant. I get that with sometimes with tenderness and a gassy feeling like I constatnly have to burp to relieve the pressure. I've had people tell me it sounds like gallbladder, but they said my galbladder is functioning fine, yet when I got my hida scan my gallbladder did not show up on it for 2 hours until they added the cck manually. I'm not a doctor so idk what this means, but it sounds like something could be blocking some part of my galbladder to me, but again they dont seem to think anything of it.

I had the test for hpyolori, came back negative. Biposy from my endoscopy was sent to mayoclinic in Michigan. As for the acid build up, I take protonix daily, and can notice a difference when I don't take it, so I'm sure I probably do have some issues with that.

The gastroperesis seems to be the worse of everything. Before I was diagnosed, I could not eat or drink seriously, could not keep anything down, no matter how hard I tried. I lost 40 lbs in about 6 months because of how bad it got. Now I am on motility meds to move my stomach and it's helped me be able to eat and gain a few pounds back (6 so far in a month) but it's not perfect.

I'm worried that the right quadrant pain is my gallbladder though because it seems to come in flares then go away and come back and when it does happen I also have times where I have to throw up bile, sometimes it's green bile. I tell my doctor and she tells me its probably the gastroperesis, but I know body well enough to know that these are two different pains and two different problems.

And is a food transit study the same as a stomach emptying test? Where they make you eat the eggs with radioactive traces then monitor the food every hour? I had that done and tat first, hey said my stomach was contracting pretty normally, but then the next day when they did the endoscopy they said they found food from the day before in my stomach and duodernum (spell check) and told me it's gasteoperesis afterall, so that was sort of confusing.
 

Redonfire

New member
Thank you for the very informative post. My son has cystic fibrosis, gastroparesis, (He also seems to have developed cyclical vomiting syndrome). He is allergic to beef and pork, so he is currently on Enzymedica digestive enzymes, for about 3 years now. We can't tell that these have helped with any of the issues he has been having though. Your posts caught my attention because of the gastro p. We will be getting a hold of his doctors and trying to get more information on the gastro p. Thanks again for the information.
 
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mom2two

New member
Mike,

I am PI, has been confirmed many times throughout my life. When I take enzymes, I get severe stomach cramps, loose nasty stools, horrible gas. With them, I have trouble maintaining weight. Without them, I am fine and maintain weight, and no GI issues as long as I stay away from fat. So the enzymes, at least in my small GI ecosystem, cause issues.
 
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