Colostrum, transfer factor and your immune system
What is colostrum, what is transfer factor and how do they benefit your immune system?
As you move along in life, you bump into various bacteria, germs, viruses and fungus particles.
You catch a cold usually because some virus or germ has entered your system and your body was unable to get rid of the germ before it multiplied and gave you clogged sinuses, sniffles and a runny nose.
If your immune system is functionning well, that bacteria may get inside your body but your immune system attacks the bug before it can multiply.
Antibodies manufactured by your immune system
The first time one of those bugs enters your body, they can cause you to get sick. But your immune system is working hard to manufacturer 'anti-germs' (also called 'antibodies') which attack the bugs. It takes your immune system quite a while to do this. In some cases it may take up to 10 to 14 days to manufacture the new antibodies. Your temperature may already be high because of the infection.
When the bacteria invades your body, they begin to multiply at the site. Why not? There is plenty of food, warmth and it's dark. As the bacteria multiply, there would exist a very slight swelling in the infected area and the immune system starts its work - recognizing the bacteria as harmful. Immune cells cause small blood vessels near the 'clump' of multiplying bacteria to dilate and widen. The increased blood flow leads to warmth and redness.
As the antibodies start to destroy the bugs, your temperature will head lower. Do not stop there - this is the primary mistake of most antibiotic administration. People quit too soon - all the bugs are not yet killed. If the antibiotic is stopped at this point, the bugs which are not yet killed are now not likely to be killed by the same antibiotic and you need a new antibiotic. There is such a constant demand for new antibiotics that every drug company wants to get on this gravy train.
Stopping the antibiotic too soon will probably leave some of the bugs still alive, and they are now resistant to the antibiotic - so the same antibiotic won't work next time.
Once your immune system has created a very specific 'antibody' just for this one bug, you then have at least a few of those 'anti-germs' in your body for the rest of your life. Your body is capable of recognizing an incredible 100,000,000 different types of bugs. The electron microscope picture to the right is a macrophage. The macrophage is a 'general purpose' antibody - it eats any type of bug. There are also 'specific' antibodies, which attack only one kind of bug.
The next time that same bug (more technically called an 'antigen') enters your body, those anti-germs (antibodies) which were created the first time, are ready to attack instantly. You don't have to wait for the body to start manufacturing those antibodies. Some of those antibodies start attacking the invading bugs immediately while the body then starts making more. You might not need more if the first defense was enough to kill the invading bugs.
It's important to understand that your immune system does NOT recognize toxic metals in your body. Your immune system does not handle such problems - it only handles 'bugs', organic entities.
Your immune system does NOT handle toxic lead or mercury in your body. That is another job - for heavy metals detoxification, not for a stronger immune system. However, toxic metals such as toxic lead, can cause a tremendous increase in the number of free radicals in your body and they can, in turn, cause cancer, heart disease and other diseases. Once the toxic metal causes cancer, then the cancer is subject to control by the immune system.
Ideally, it's best not to let invading bugs enter your body. The next step, once you have allowed those bugs to enter, is to get rid of them. Your immune system is your first line of defense.
Your immune system goes after 'organic' things - mostly alive, like germs, but it also goes after protein substances which are not alive. While viruses are not alive, your immune system should be able to handle any of them. The same goes with parasites and fungus problems. You will find that the traditional medical paradigm almost completely ignores the immune system - the thinking is that the only solution for a sore throat is an antibiotic.
So, every time you get a new bug, your body has to go through this fairly slow process of making a new anti-germ for this particular bug. If it does take 10-14 days to make the new antibody, that is how long the bug has had to swarm through your body, leaving little quickly-growing families everywhere.
An army of antibodies
After several years, you can see that you would have a whole army of antibodies, each one different from the other, each one having been used at least once in your body to handle a particular invading bug.
One would think that the older you get, the better your immune system becomes. After all, your immune system is gradually accumulating all sorts of new antibodies so that by the time you are old, your immune system would be ready to attack almost any bug that ever existed.
However, the fact is that as people get older, their immune system is often also going downhill. As scientists studied this problem, they found that one particular part of the immune system seemed to suffer the most as we age.
It is the mechanism through which the body RECOGNIZES an invading bug and matches that bug with what antibodies are already present in the body ready to fight to defend the body. The watchdog is constantly looking for invading bugs. Sometimes that watchdog doesn't recognize a bug as being the same as a previously-encountered bug.
If bug 'X' first attacked Nancy when she was 8 years old, Nancy developed an antibody for bug 'X'. Then, when Nancy was 22 years old, and that same bug 'X' came along, her immune system recognized the bug instantly and sent in the 'X' troops to fight. This was a short fight - Nancy never even knew that she had some invading bug inside her body. It was eliminated quickly.
Now, Nancy is 65 years old, and bug 'X' enters her body again. This time, even though she has some antibodies specifically designed for bug 'X', the immune system doesn't recognize that this is bug 'X' and thinks that this is a new bug - Bug 'X2'.
Nancy's body starts making antibodies for Bug 'X2'. That would be fine, because the mechanism for making antibodies is still working properly and the body will actually make new antibodies for bug 'X', even though it had done already this years ago, and even though there might even exist a supply of them already available. But because the body was slow in RECOGNIZING that it was bug 'X', the bug got a head-start before her immune system could make enough new antibodies.
A declining immune system in old age
So, what you have is old age, and a declining immune system.
So elderly people need some help in recognizing those invading germs and there has previously been nothing which would do that. Older people are vulnerable to invading bugs not because they don't have the antibodies to fight off the infection, or flu, or cancer but because their body is too slow in recognizing which troops to send in to battle, so it makes new ones , slowly.
Because of antibiotics use, it turns out that anyone who has often been sick can have this immune system recognition problem. So, in addition to older people, people of any age can have their immune system lose the ability to recognize the invading germs - and waste time trying to create a new antibody when that same bug has been fought and defeated before. What is the standard medical solution to these infections? Antibiotics.
So, anyone can be vulnerable who has had lots of illnesses. They often get antibiotics to 'cure' the sickness.
What else can cause this immune system recognition problem? Taking too many antibiotics, or taking the wrong kind, or taking them too long or too short. Doctors know this to be true - that the bugs become resistant to antibiotics. The drug companies then develop NEW and better antibiotics. But, we now have 'super bugs' in our world which don't respond to ANY antibiotic - and these super bugs were actually created because of poor use of antibiotics.
Who else has this immune system recognition problem?
Let's switch gears for a moment, and consider one of the most vulnerable people you might know - a new-born baby.
When a baby is born, it has never before been attacked by any bugs - it doesn't have any army troops to help defend it against the invading enemy.
What can a vulnerable baby without any protection do to defend against the worst bugs?
The solution is simple. You have probably heard about how healthy 'mother's milk' is for her newborn baby? The mother, with all her protective antibodies, passes on HER immunity to her baby through breast feeding.
When a baby has not had mother's breast milk, it takes the baby about one month to develop its own immune system. During that month, if the baby gets sick, then some immunity might never develop because the immune system was so overwhelmed by some particular antigen (invading bug) - the immune system can even start thinking that the antigen is a normal thing to have floating around in the bloodstream.
All mothers should understand that they give immunity to their new-born baby by breast feeding.
For years this was understood to be true, but the mechanisms through which this happened were not understood.
Breast feeding and the baby's immune system
A mother breast-feeding her baby: that is the only way it was done thousands of years ago. For thousands of years, there was no such thing as a bottle-fed baby! (For the dangers of feeding a baby soy formula, click here) Then, the medical world changed. We went through a period when even physicians were telling new mothers: "Don't breast feed!" Now we know better. All the immunity within the mother is transferred to the baby through her breast-feeding milk.
When a baby was NOT breast-fed, researchers would find almost ZERO antibodies in the baby. Those antibodies were NOT there. That baby was at risk. When a baby was breast-fed, researchers found the antibodies inside the newborn baby's system, they couldn't deny them. They were there. A newborn baby has no antibodies - but within a few days on breast milk, the baby suddenly has a fully functioning immune system! A miracle.
So, there was much research (1) studying how this breast milk could carry the mother's immune system over to the baby. It was a puzzle for quite some time. The scientists determined that the baby could not get the antibodies themselves from the mother's milk. These antibodies are living cells - protein - and the body would simply use it as food.
Antibodies ingested through the mouth
There is an important technical point here.
When a human ingests living cells, or even dead animal cells, into the body through the mouth, the digestive system treats it all like food. It might be a very valuable living immune system cell, but as far as the baby is concerned, it's only more food to digest.
If you take these same living cells (even immune system cells) and INJECT them into a human body, the body treats them like invading bugs. There is a rejection mechanism which protects the human body from injected living
things. The body even rejects ANY protein substance injected into the bloodstream. If you ground up steak and made it very fine and injected it? - terribly harmful. Your immune system would attack the steak as an invading bug.
So, don't think that you can boost your immune system by absorbing the antibodies in the milk - it doesn't work that way.
Antibodies are living cells and the new baby could not possibly get them through the mother's milk which went into the baby's body through the mouth and stomach. That milk DOES have antibodies in it, but they are nothing more than food to the baby. No living cell can possibly pass through the digestive system and get into the body through the mouth and stomach.
So, the antibodies in a baby could not have gotten there through the mother's milk, even though the mother's milk does have those antibodies in it.
The many immune system cells in the mother did not, somehow, get transferred over to the baby. But the baby who got breast fed ended up with immediate immune system cells and the baby who did not get breast fed did not get those cells.
Numerous studies (2,3,4) were done of this problem and finally the researchers identified a 'transfer factor' which was transferred in the mother's milk. This 'transfer factor' was not a cell, it was not a germ, it was something which hadn't really ever been identified before. The researchers would use 'screens' to filter out anything as large as a living cell - and the 'factor' still got through. So, the scientists realized that whatever the 'factor' was, it was smaller than any cell - it probably was a molecule.
Then the researchers found ways to filter out the large molecules, but the 'factor' still got through these screening techniques. That meant it had to be something very small - a small molecule?
It was much too small to see with a microscope. They looked, but couldn't find it.
Finally, rather than give it some fancy new name, researchers just stuck with the word 'factor' to explain this 'thing'.
The transfer factor
They called it the 'transfer factor', this 'thing' in mother's milk which gets transferred from her to the new-born baby and creates INSIDE the baby an entire immune system, almost overnight. It was almost as if, as soon as this transfer factor got into the new baby's body it started manufacturing exactly the type of antibodies which were called for in the transfer factor. The baby's system did this even though there were no invading bugs. So, if one of those bugs entered the baby's body, the baby's immune system was ready even though the baby itself had never personally been attacked by that bug previously.
Now, have you heard of a 'wet nurse'? A wet nurse is a woman who is lactating. She has had a baby and has milk in her breasts. She can take any other baby, not her own, and feed that baby her breast milk. For many years, wealthy women who had just given birth would hire a 'wet nurse' to breast-feed their new-born baby.
This way the wealthy woman didn't have to stay home all day to nurse. When babies were breast-fed by a 'wet nurse', they did NOT get the immune system factors transferred from that wet nurse. Now, there's another puzzle!
Well, by now you might have guessed. 'Regular mother's breast milk' does NOT transfer the immune system to the baby. It is NOT the milk which transfers immunity, but only a special form of mother's milk, called the 'colostrum'.
It is NOT the milk which transfers immunity, but only a special form of mother's milk, called the 'colostrum'. Furthermore, it is NOT true that the antibodies in the mother's milk actually do any good at all for the baby's immune system.
It's a long and exciting story, but eventually the scientists discovered that ONLY the first few days of a mother's milk have the capability of transferring the immune system to the baby. That milk has its own special name: it's called 'colostrum'.
This 'transfer factor' was only found in the colostrum, not in the 'regular' mother's milk.
But, when researchers examined colostrum, they found, once again, that even though it contained lots of antibodies, it was not possible that the baby could absorb antibodies through its mouth and stomach. Yet, the antibodies were in the baby's body.
Researchers were back to trying to solve the puzzle of how the mother's colostrum could transfer this great immunity to her baby without actually transferring the antibodies themselves.
Since colostrum is only produced by the mother in the first few days of breast-feeding, it was obvious that the 'transfer factor' was in the colostrum and nowhere else.
Lots of research was done with human milk, and with human colostrum(1). But, you can guess that there was also research done to discover whether or not cow milk (colostrum from a cow) could convey the immune system improvements to a human.
It worked.
Colostrum from cows
There are dozens of studies (2,3) which show that human colostrum transferred improved immunity not only to babies, but also to adults. You can find hundreds of studies on colostrum on Medline.
Then, more research was needed to show that cow colostrum (then pig colostrum and colostrum from other mammals too) would also transfer improved immunity, not only to human babies but to humans of any age.
This was an exciting discovery. As you can imagine, the cow is subject to many of the same invading germs as a human, so when a human drinks colostrum from a cow, they can often get a nice boost to their immune system. Then the researchers made the very exciting discovery that when older people drink colostrum, they have a wonderful return of their immune 'recognition factor'.
A cow's milk, right after having given birth, is called colostrum. The colostrum passes on the cow's immune system to the baby cow. But the truly amazing fact was discovered that the cow's colostrum would ALSO pass on immunity to a new-born human. The immunity is not dependent on the species of animal.
Amazing.
Now, if you INJECT cow's colostrum into a human, the human will get sick or even die. You can not do that.
So, the scientists started removing things from the colostrum, just as they had removed things from the regular mother's milk, to see what was actually transferring the immunity.
First they removed the easy stuff - the sugar and the fat. The immunity was still transferred. When you have removed both the sugar and the fat from milk you have something called 'whey'. But there are still many large particles within whey, and they can be removed. You have for instance all the many different types of living cells in the colostrum. These include the immune system cells of the cow (or human). It is possible to remove all these living cells. When you do THAT, the immunity still gets transferred. Now, there are no more living cells in this colostrum but there are all sorts of large molecules and even they can be removed with various machines and techniques. With those removed, the immunity was still transferred. Incredible.
The transfer factor in colostrum
After they had filtered out all living cells, and they even filtered out the larger individual molecules, researchers found THE 'factor' which transfers immunity. It is a very small molecule. You could call it an 'information messenger'. It carries information with it, from the mother to the new-born baby (or from cow colostrum, properly processed into an adult human). These 'messengers' probably are equivalent to several hundreds pages of books.
Remember that older people may well have plenty of different types of antibodies cells, but their bodies are slow at recognizing what particular bug is currently invading their bodies.
It turns out that when an elderly person drinks colostrum, even though the cow has not been specifically treated, the person's immune system is greatly improved, and it is the recognition factor which is improved.
In the past, attempts were made to inject the colostrum into a human body, but this does not work. When it is injected, human bodies reject the living organisms in bovine colostrum.
So, those who wanted to capture the benefits of the transfer factor from colostrum determined to freeze dry the colostrum and put it into capsules. Most companies who do this remove the milk sugars and the milk fats first, leaving what is often called 'whey'. The whey contains the transfer factor from that colostrum, but even that material would cause a person to get deathly ill if it were injected because the whey still contains many living organisms from the cow, and the human body can not use living bovine organisms.
But if whey (or colostrum) is drunk, there is no rejection by the body. The larger cells (whether dead or living) are used by the body as food, but those tiny transfer factor molecules CAN pass through from the stomach into the body, carrying the immune system recognition molecules.
Some experiments were done with freezing colostrum. The freezing kills all the living organisms, but it does not damage the tiny molecule which is the transfer factor.
So, whether you drink fresh raw colostrum or take a dried form, the transfer factors are available. They are not harmed by simple processing. This is the form of most 'colostrum' being sold in the marketplace today. I spend a lot of time researching the lowest prices on the internet for supplements, and in my opinion, the best price for high quality colostrum can be found here. I also like Puritan Pride's special "Buy 2 Get 3 FREE" promotions on colostrum.
Remember that the entire philosophy of our currently drug-oriented medical paradigm is to give you some substance (drug) which is basically a poison, a toxin carefully designed to be toxic only to the bad bugs. But
wouldn't it be much better to let the IMMUNE SYSTEM do its job and help it along, not with drugs, but with well-researched nutrients which enhance the immune system, not attack the bad bugs.
In this way we can carefully say, but with complete accuracy, that colostrum and transfer factor do NOT prevent or cure any disease. Colostrum simply strengthens the immune system so that the immune system can prevent or cure disease.
If you hear someone claiming that colostrum can cure cancer, that is a false and dangerous statement. It is a statement made by an ignorant person.
If some substance is claimed to cure or prevent a disease, that is the definition of a 'drug' by the Food and Drug Administration, and all drugs must be approved the Food and Drug Administration. So, colostrum does NOT prevent or cure any disease, it strengthens the immune system.
References
(1) Pediatr Res, 1985 Jan, 19:1, 122-6
(2) Ogra, Pearay, et al., (1983), “Colostrum Derived Immunity and Maternal Neonatal Interaction,” Annals of NY Academy of Sciences, 409, pp. 82-92.
(3) Immunol Lett, 1985, 9:1, 23-7
References
(1) J Clin Microbiol, 1980 Sep, 12:3, 320-5
(2) Acta Paediatr Scand, 1983 Jan, 72:1, 13-7
(3) NY Academy of Sciences, 409, pp. 848-850.
(4) Moro, I., et al., (1,985), “Natural Killer Cells in Human Colostrum,” Cellular Immunology, 93(2), pp - 467- 474.
disclaimer: Throughout this website, statements are made pertaining to the properties and/or functions of food and/or nutritional products. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and these materials and products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
