What are colostrum’s effects on the whole body?
| By Douglas Wyatt
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Colostrum is the first food of life for newborn mammals. It provides antibodies, carbohydrates, and protein to help a baby grow and develop. Perhaps best of all, colostrum’s effects extend across the whole body.
Now, let’s take a look at 10 areas of the body where colostrum delivers immediate and long-lasting benefits.
- Colon: Friendly bacterial flora promote a healthy acidity level in the colon, help treat constipation, diarrhea, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and eliminate gastrointestinal (GI) infection and inflammation.
- Skin: The telomerase enzyme can replicate DNA by using RNA as a template. Colostrum also contains epithelial/epidermal growth factor for cell repair and regeneration, fibroblast growth factor that promotes wound healing, and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1) that helps accelerate burn recovery.
- Joints: Growth factors help regenerate bone and cartilage tissue, transfer factors help reduce joint damage, pain, and stiffness, and the LMW peptide has been shown to reduce and prevent joint inflammation.
- Brain: Proline-rich polypeptides (PRPs) help improve the mental functioning of Alzheimer’s patients with mild to moderate dementia, and IGF-1 helps synthesize serotonin, inhibit age-related depression, and balance blood glucose in the brain.
- Adrenals: Lactoferrin helps regulate iron and reduce fatigue, and PRPs help modulate the body’s immune response. Plus, colostrum helps treat leaky gut syndrome (LGS), a leading cause of chronic disease.
- Sinus and Mouth: Lactoferrin plays a key role in the body’s ability to combat infection. Meanwhile, colostrum helps treat colds, food sensitivities, and influenza, and it has been shown to be more than three times as effective as vaccines against flu5.
- Thyroid: Growth factors promote safe, effective management of immune disorders, and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), thyroxine, and calcitonin support thyroid management.
- Muscles: Growth hormone and IGF-1 help boost lean muscle mass. Additionally, colostrum helps prevent the digestion of muscle tissue.
- Bones: Transforming growth factor (TGF) helps build bone, microcrystalline hydroxyapatite and DHEA help increase bone density, and growth factors help stimulate bone repair and regeneration.
- Cells: IGF-1 is necessary to produce new cells, lactoferrin helps stimulate natural killer (NK) and immune cell activity, and immune and growth factors help prevent the spread of cancer cells.
The benefits of colostrum stretch beyond newborns too. In fact, there are many reasons why everyone should take colostrum, and these include:
- Colostrum helps balance and maintain the immune function. Immunoglobulins, lactoferrin, and PRPs help the immune system self-regulate and identify and mark pathogens for destruction.
- Colostrum helps limit the risk of illness. Immunoglobulins, cytokines, interferon, lactoferrin, and PRPs help restore immunity, prevent infection, and speed up healing and recovery from illness.
- Colostrum helps improve gut health. Growth factors and hormones help restore a leaky gut to normal permeability levels, and antibodies and immunoglobulins help control harmful bacteria and fungi.
Bovine colostrum products are available that have been shown to help people of all ages. By incorporating bovine colostrum into a regular diet, an individual can enjoy the benefits of colostrum every day.
About the author:
Douglas Wyatt has become one of the nation’s leading pioneering authorities on the use of colostrum for human and animal health, having been unofficially named “The Modern Father of Colostrum.” He educates healthcare and medical professionals, industry leaders, and consumers about the health benefits of colostrum and other nutraceutical products. Since 1992 in his role as co-founder of the Center for Nutritional Research (CNR), Mr. Wyatt’s mission has been to provide current, summarized critical findings of nutritional information with the emphasis on the nutraceutical and cosmeceutical fields. On behalf of CNR, he routinely speaks on related topics at national medical and nutritional conferences and on radio and television broadcasts, and is a published author. Mr. Wyatt has appeared on CBS, Discovery Health, and Fox News.
