Colostrum from cows

[Center for Bhakti Studies]

Colostrum from cows
There are dozens of studies which show that human colostrum transferred improved immunity not only to babies, but also to adults.

Then, more research was needed to show that cow colostrum 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.

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.

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 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.