Does Colostrum Hold Keys for Healing Broken Immunity?

Numerous special compounds in bovine colostrum are capable of strengthening the immune system and helping the gut lining heal.

The popularity of bovine colostrum for improving gut and immune health is growing, as more research accumulates showing its far-reaching benefits. Shutterstock

Paola Brown had vibrant health growing up, but that changed as an adult. Chronic urinary tract infections (UTI) led to 15 or more rounds of antibiotics, each one leaving her more and more sick.

She had developed autoimmune issues, one of which was celiac disease, an immune reaction to eating gluten that had damaged the lining of her small intestine and led to uncomfortable symptoms and nutrient malabsorption. Various foods caused miserable disease flare-ups; she was worried her nursing children weren’t getting adequate nutrients.

Like many people in her position, Ms. Brown became an expert on her own health—particularly gut health. She wanted to heal the root cause so she could eat a less restrictive diet without gastrointestinal (GI) pain. She began researching food sources that can heal the mucosal lining of the intestinal wall and quickly filled a notebook full of information.

One entry was colostrum—the pre-milk food made by all lactating mammals that helps build a newborn’s immune system. Ms. Brown was intrigued by whether bovine colostrum, with its peptides, growth factors, and antibodies, could give her body what it needed to heal.

Gut barrier dysfunction, particularly the breakdown of the mucosal lining, is a common problem in gluten-related disorders and is suspected in many other diseases. However, the precise mechanism is still being investigated.

“When I took the colostrum, I was trying to target specific things. But that’s really not the way true health works,” Ms. Brown said. “True health is where you take something that your body needs, and then your body decides and addresses what needs to be addressed.

“I found that I craved this colostrum like nothing I’ve ever craved before. The craving was so profound, I decided I was going to follow my body.”

One thing she learned was that taking antibiotics for the occasional infection such as a UTI would only set back her health even more. Now a fierce advocate for homeopathy and a curriculum specialist, Ms. Brown learned alternative ways to address infections so she could experience the full benefit of her gut improvements.

She has taken colostrum daily for more than seven years and no longer has to avoid any specific foods.

‘Immune Boosting’ Products Flood Market

Two researchers who studied cow’s milk but eventually homed in on colostrum told The Epoch Times that interest has grown since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when more people became concerned about immune health.

“Everybody’s looking for an extra edge in staying healthy,” said Steven Frese, assistant professor in nutrition at the University of Nevada. “The pandemic was the beginning of the interest, which shot way up. Companies jumped in and started marketing it.”

In the United States, colostrum is often sold as a dietary supplement, said Mr. Frese, who earned his doctorate at the University of Nebraska and specializes in the human gut microbiome. That means commercially purchased colostrum can’t be sold with claims that it prevents, treats, or mitigates disease.

“A lot of the terms you get are ‘immune boosting’ or ‘supports a healthy gut.’ They sound like important things we need, but they’re also hard to define. It’s a way to signal there’s an immune effect without having to nail down a certain function,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean colostrum doesn’t boast some impressive qualities.

Promoting a Healthy GI Tract

Newer studies are pointing to how colostrum can play a role in building gut immunity, protecting the body from infection through the gut, and reducing gut symptoms.

A  list of colostrum benefits in a 2021 review in the journal of the Society of Nutrition and Food Science (NFS Journal) includes:

• Strengthening the intestinal mucosal barrier
• Eradicating infections caused by pathogenic bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Helicobacter pylori, and the superbug Clostridioides difficile (C. diff.)
• Reducing diarrhea and vomiting
• Decreasing deadly sepsis infections
• Improving nutrient absorption and gut function
• Reducing gut damage caused by chemotherapy and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
• Reducing inflammatory markers

While not quite as impressive as human milk for newborns, a 2016 study in Applied and Environmental Microbiology showed how bovine colostrum can help improve the intestinal microflora to increase Bifidobacterium species—the formative bacteria for immunity.

Additionally, colostrum contains cytokines that turn the immune system on and off, as well as growth factors that play a role in protecting the body against gastric mucosal damage and inflammation, according to Sercan Karav, associate professor at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey.

“Colostrum is very important, but also it is important for specific groups,” Mr. Karav told The Epoch Times. He said various components of the colostrum are helpful for the GI tract, while others are useful for boosting a compromised immune system. Athletes use it for the growth factors that are normally banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency—unless they are sourced in colostrum. Cosmetic companies are also interested in its anti-aging components.

Your reason for using colostrum is especially important when it comes to picking out the right product. Many manufacturers sterilize it in such a way that destroys immunoglobulins, which die when exposed to high heat but are important for colostrum’s immune repair functions, Mr. Karav said.

Immune-Boosting Components

Along with lactoferrin and antimicrobial factors, immunoglobulins in bovine colostrum are beneficial for building and repairing the human immune system, he said. Lactoferrin has been called the “miracle molecule” and is a glycoprotein that has antiviral and antibacterial properties, as well as being an antioxidant.

The vast antimicrobial properties of colostrum can help create a powerful immune defense by preventing harmful microorganisms from proliferating and causing a pathogenic infection.

“People know that if you feed your infants with colostrum, they will be stronger. This has been known for centuries,” Mr. Karav said. “It is the only superfood in nature that covers everything. It gives everything to the newborn, everything in terms of nutrition, in terms of the growth factors, and the immunological factors. There is no other food that has those characteristics.”

Perhaps the biggest boost to immune health comes from the immunoglobulins G (IgG), A (IgA), and M (IgM)—also called antibodies—found in high concentrations in bovine colostrum. They don’t pass the placental barrier in cows, so calves receive all their antibodies from colostrum.

These antibodies are building blocks to immunity, giving the host the ability to recognize the antigens of bacteria, viruses, and toxins in order to destroy them. “The immunoglobulins levels in bovine colostrum are about 100 times higher than those found in mature milk,” according to the NFS Journal.

Because bovine colostrum is vital to the immune system of calves—they’ll die without it—ethical considerations abound. Mr. Karav said modern milking technology makes it possible to increase production, and research has teased out the minimum amount necessary for calves.

He consults with farms that want to employ the technology so they can sell colostrum for human consumption in the safest way for their herd and consumers. Without some sort of sterilization, there’s a risk of introducing pathogens from the cows to humans. Techniques vary from low-heat pasteurization to freeze drying to using ultraviolet light, which is being explored more recently.

While colostrum is a single ingredient, its complexities change its properties so that it’s not uniform. Factors that might affect quality include collection, manufacturing, and the state of the donor cow. The market is saturated with a number of colostrum products that come in the form of capsules, powders, and liquids.

What’s in Your Colostrum?

Of utmost importance is the percentage of IgG in a product. That’s because at its first milking, a cow’s colostrum output contains up to 30 percent IgG. That number drops off at each milking until it gets down to 2 percent. At 2 percent, it’s no longer colostrum but milk. Colostrum collection is also limited to the first three days postpartum.

IgG is the best indicator of the quality of colostrum, Mr. Karav said. If a product claims to have 30 percent, it’s unlikely accurate, he said.

“If a company is forthright, you can ask what their IgG percentage is,” Ms. Brown said.

Other considerations when taking colostrum are that each batch naturally varies. Its composition depends on factors such as the breed of cow, how it was fed, its health status, the time of year it gave birth, the types of vaccines it had, and how many hours postpartum the colostrum was collected.

Ms. Brown said the colostrum she takes is sourced from various herds to make the product more diverse with a variety of antibodies.

“I think it really is important to talk about high-quality colostrum. A lot of products labeled colostrum are really powdered milk,” she said.

Colostrum comprises carbohydrates, proteins (from the immunoglobulins), lipids, minerals, vitamins (A, E, D, K, and B complex), amino acids, cytokines, growth factors, and enzymes.

“The most interesting and surprising thing to me is it has telomerase enzyme,” Mr. Karav said. “People love this enzyme because it’s associated with aging,” he said, noting its popularity in cosmetics.

Telomeres are found on the ends of DNA strands and help prevent chromosomes from degenerating during cell division. As cells divide, the telomere structure shortens—a natural part of the cellular aging process. Telomerase can restore missing parts of shortened telomere chains, according to Mr. Karav.

An in vitro study published in Journal of drugs in dermatology in 2021 found a 4 to 8 week treatment of liposomal bovine colostrum “appears to exert a protective effect on telomere length erosion.”

“These results suggest that topical treatment of the liposomal bovine colostrum formulation would enhance skin health as the skin ages,” wrote the researchers.

Abundant Research

PubMed, the National Library of Medicine’s medical research index, lists over 2,400 studies for “colostrum therapy,” and thousands more for colostrum itself. These range from studies looking at colostrum’s effect on flu prevention in high-risk cardiovascular patients to research reviews of the many different therapeutic effects of bovine colostrum as a nutraceutical.

Ms. Brown noted that colostrum isn’t a miracle cure, and changes in the body don’t always occur rapidly. She began with very small doses straight from a local farmer’s cow. Eventually, she found a powdered supplement. It was months before she noticed changes. With persistence and patience, Ms. Brown said she’s living a completely different life today.

“My husband and I went out of town for our 20th anniversary, and we went to some really fun German-inspired restaurants. I ate whatever I wanted indiscriminately, and I had no problems,” she said. “How do I explain this? Colostrum gave my body what it needed for my body to heal my gut.”

The potential of colostrum is incredible, but Mr. Frese emphasized that it’s a zero-sum game. Robotics allow for it to be collected, yet there will always be limitations.

“If you’re farming like folks did 100 years ago, the answer of how much can be taken is pretty much zero,” he said. “If the farming system is designed better, it will allow you to take some of that colostrum without hurting the cow in the short-term or the long-term. But there’s only so much colostrum that’s made.”

 This article has been edited since its original publication.