Bovine Colostrum: A Nutritional Approach to Inflammation and Chronic Health Conditions
INFLAMMATION
Douglas Wyatt
JD
Most healthcare practitioners recognize that everyone is likely to die of an autoimmune or chronic health condition. These conditions often begin in childhood and progress over one’s lifetime. As the decades pass, many people find themselves with multiple conditions, debilitation,
and increasing levels of chronic pain caused by pervasive inflammation. To help alleviate the pain, they take over-the-counter pain relievers, or then doctors prescribe stronger and potentially addictive pain medications.
These pharmaceuticals, in turn, harm the body and cause more pain, and in some instances cause addiction, overdose, and/or death. Using medication as symptom management for today’s chronic illnesses is far too common a practice in mainstream medicine. Furthermore, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t stop the vicious cycle of systemic, low-grade inflammation. Since inflammation is the root cause of nearly every autoimmune and chronic health condition, it makes perfect sense to find a nutritional alternative to treat inflammation. That nutritional alternative is bovine colostrum.
First, let’s take a step back and review the cause of inflammation so we can better understand why bovine colostrum is such an important healing modality for practitioners of every stripe. When the tight junctions of the gastrointestinal (GI) lining loosen, the gut becomes permeable and allows undigested food particles, pathogenic microbes, chemicals, and toxins to freely enter the bloodstream. A healthy immune system immediately recognizes these foreign substances and initiates inflammatory processes to efficiently surround, isolate, and destroy them. What happens if the tight junctions do not recover their “tightness,” and inflammation becomes chronic, eventually affecting more than just the intended target?
When systemic low-grade inflammation begins destroying healthy cells, tissue, and organs, patients present with GI and bowel diseases, endocrine diseases, vascular and circulation problems, degenerative joint conditions, skin conditions, neurological diseases, cognitive disorders, and mental health conditions. In other words, the immune system, which is designed to protect us, is actually the very entity that is killing us
slowly, with significant pain, and from within our own bodies. Your patients may initially come to you for an acute injury, but after taking a detailed medical history, how many do you find with one or more chronic health conditions?
Statistics show that one in two Americans has prediabetes and one in eight has type 2 diabetes; one in five adults has arthritis; one in 12 adults has asthma; one in 68 children has autism; one in 300 children has type 1 diabetes; and one in eight adults over 40 is showing signs of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Diseases that were once considered rare are now becoming increasingly prevalent, and many people have more than one. As of 2012, half of all American adults (117 million) had one or more of 10 different chronic health conditions, and one of every four adults had two or more chronic health conditions.1
These startling statistics demand action, and that is where I believe chiropractors have a significant role to play. Bovine colostrum is a multifunctional supplement, which when incorporated into a gut-optimizing lifestyle, can offer your patients tremendous benefits for health and overall well-being. By focusing on healing the gut and reducing permeability, inflammation will subside and the body will begin to repair itself. In other words, eliminating the most common source of toxins in the body will help to restore muscle tone, a leading cause of subluxations. Colostrum’s growth hormones heal the microscopic holes in the small intestine and prevent them from reopening. A variety of antipathogenic components destroy
gut-based pathogens, thereby preventing them from causing or exacerbating leaky gut syndrome. Other immune factors modulate the immune system to keep it in a homeostatic state.
When in a balanced state, the immune system is able to perform its normal function of keeping the body healthy and functioning optimally. That means increasing inflammation when needed to fight an acute infection and quelling inflammation afterward. Colostrum contains numerous immunemodulating components, which serve this proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory purpose, depending on the specific need at any given time. Colostrum’s immunoglobulins, antibodies, lactoferrin, proline-rich polypeptides, lactoperoxidase, cytokines, interleukins, and other immune factors are essential to promoting an optimized immune system. Bovine colostrum is a natural, highly concentrated, plentiful source of these components and should be recommended by all practitioners. Period.
Of all the immune-modulating components, proline-rich polypeptides (PRPs) are the most powerful. PRPs are a collective compound—also known as colostrinin—that regulates and balances immune response. PRPs are short chains of amino acids with a high proportion of proline and function as signaling molecules. Their action is dual-purpose—to turn up the immune system when it is necessary to fight infection and to turn down an overactive immune system, as in the case of an autoimmune conditions or allergies. Essentially, PRPs
in bovine colostrum serve in the same capacity as hormones of the thymus gland.2 PRPs relieve inflammation and pain by halting the prowess of an overly aggressive immune response, such as overproduction of T-cells and lymphocytes.3 PRPs stop the overactive immune response that characterizes autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, which can be overly painful and debilitating for patients.4 Additionally, PRPs exert a regulatory effect on humoral and cellular immune responses; activity in Thl and Th2 cytokine induction; and inhibition of the overproduction of reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide.5 This is likely to have therapeutic benefits for Alzheimer’s disease and patients with neurocognitive decline. The PRPs work in concert with growth hormones to help the immune system reorient, correct its response mechanism against autoimmune disease processes, and begin the process of rebuilding the body’s tissues.
As a chiropractor, you see patients with a host of chronic health conditions. Recommending bovine colostrum supplements is an opportunity to educate your patients about true healing. Healing the gut comes first, then optimization of the immune system, followed by healing the body. As the quantity of toxins dumped into the bloodstream declines, the healing process begins. A patient’s nutritional uptake improves; the cells have better access to the fuel they need for repair and replication; organ function improves; pain decreases; and energy levels rise. Colostrum is a lifetime commitment because once supplementation ceases, the holes in the gut lin-
ing reopen, and the inflammation begins ramping up all over again. Patient education entails stressing the importance of breastfeeding newborns within an hour of birth; breastfeeding for the first two years of life; and supplementing with a liposomal bovine colostrum supplement every day beyond infancy. Equally important is avoiding the lifestyle antagonists that contribute to leaky gut syndrome (oral antibiotics, antibiotics in food, over-the-counter and prescription pain medications, glyphosate, pesticide-contaminated foods, GMOs, simple carbohydrates, processed foods, alcohol, acidic beverages, and environmental toxins).
Depending on which specific health complaint patients take colostrum to treat, many people begin to notice a difference in about a week, and most after a month. So, as a practitioner, how does one prove colostrum’s efficacy and ensure patient compliance with daily supplementation? I recommend five basic blood tests that measure metabolic and inflammatory markers—fasting glucose, A 1C, insulin levels, C-reactive protein, and interleukin-6—as indicators of healing progress. A baseline test should be performed, followed by a 60-day colostrum regimen, and then a post-supplementation test. In every instance, practitioners who follow this protocol and patients who stick to it observe a decrease in all five markers. Proof of efficacy is extremely important when recommending any nutritional supplement, and liposomal bovine colostrum is one of very few with truly verifiable efficacy. I encourage all practitioners to work toward the goal of solving the chronic disease epidemic by taking colostrum themselves and recommending it to every patient who walks through their door.
References:
1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chronic Diseases: The Leading Causes of Death and Disability in the United States, https: //www. cdc.gov/chronicdisease/overview/ index.htm
2. Staroscik, K, Janusz, M, Zimecki, M, Wieczorek, Z, Lisowski, J. Immunologically active nonapeptide fragment of a proline-rich polypeptide from ovine colostrum: amino acid sequence and immunoregulatory properties. Molecular Immunology 1983 20(12): 1277-1282.
3. Rona, Z. Bovine colostrum emerges as immunity modulator. The American Journal of Natural Medicine. 1998 March.
4. Feldmann, M, Maini, RN. The role of cytokines in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatology (Oxford). 1999 Nov;38 Suppl 2:3-7.
5. Janusz, M, Zablocka, A. Colostrinin: a proline-rich polypeptide complex of potential therapeutic interest. Cell Mol Biol (Noisy-le-grand). 2013 Nov 3;59(1):4-11.
Douglas Wyatt is the founder of Sovereign Laboratories, the colostrum company providing the most efficacious bovine colostrum; proven to heal and protect leaky gut syndrome. As Director of the Center for Nutritional Research, he is the leading expert in
colostrum and is credited with reintroducing bovine colostr um for human use. For more information, email info(cfmysovlabs.com or call 1-928-202-4031. Or to become a Sovereign Labs provider go to: www.joinsoverignlabs. com
