Immune Resilience in the Time of COVID-19
FEATURE
Immune Response, Inflammation, and Potential Therapeutic Use of Bovine Colostrum
Douglas A. Wyatt
In the pre-COVID-19 era, most people living in developed countries were likely to die of an autoimmune or chronic health condition, such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes, caused by a lifetime of low-grade, systemic inflammation. While this is still true, inflammation has reared its ugly head in a new immune-related illness in patients infected with the newly emerged coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). While scientists and physicians continue to collect, study, and debate the data, the consensus appears to be that the immune system’s response of initiating and vigorously promoting inflammation is causing severe illness and death, as well as long-term health consequences for patients who recover from the virus. Patients with underlying conditions and advanced age appear to suffer the ultimate consequence.
Systemic low-grade inflammation slowly destroys otherwise healthy cells, healthy tissue, and healthy organs-an insidious and slow path to death. Acute inflammation, the "cytokine storm," can be a more efficient and quicker path to death.
Whether death is the result of chronic inflammation or acute inflammation, the outcome is not welcomed, so we must look for solutions based upon our knowledge of the immune system. In the absence of a safe, viable, and 100% effective vaccine, we turn our attention to the one substance that has sustained life since the beginning of time—bovine colostrum.
The key to a strong and healthy immune system is balance and resilience, which means having an immune system that regulates itself depending on need. A lowfunctioning immune system can’t adequately protect you, and a chronically hyped-up immune system will protect you too much, to the point of causing serious harm or even death via the cytokine storm, as in the case of COVID-19. This is why our focus must be on achieving immune resilience and homeostasis with immune supplementation.
Resilience is the process that allows individuals to adapt to adverse conditions and recover from them.
Dairy cows have the special ability to produce voluminous quantities of immunoglobulin-rich colostrum, which humans have utilized for thousands of years. Before the advent of modern antibiotics and antiviral medications, bovine colostrum provided us with a plethora of immune bioactives, which kept us relatively healthy. Colostrum’s bioactives work synergistically to keep the immune system running like a finely tuned machine. Some of the more notable immune-balancing bioactives include immunoglobulin G (IgG), lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, lysozyme, and proline-rich polypeptides (PRPs).12 These bioactives can destroy some microbes on contact or induce the immune system to do the job by enhancing natural killer cell activity,3 which helps reduce inflammation in the gut and elsewhere.
Currently, bovine colostrum is not believed to contain SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, but that may change as the infection becomes more widespread. Since dairy cows develop antibodies from pathogens they encounter (i.e., from infected farmers), this is a theoretical possibility in time, as in the intentional injection of the virus, a process called hyperimmunization. In the meantime, colostrum’s PRPs offer the best strategy to enhance one’s immune system and promote resilience. These tiny signaling molecules offer a quick response when a pathogenic invader is detected and “turn up” the immune system. Unlike a vaccine, which may take one to two weeks to generate antibodies, PRPs can stimulate this process within a couple of days. PRPs also help stimulate natural killer (NK) cells to defeat microbial invaders.4-5
Seriously ill COVID-19 patients experience massive inflammation (i.e., the cytokine storm), and so colostrum may offer a viable therapeutic option. In addition to upregulating the inflammatory response, PRPs can “tone down” the inflammatory response once the infection is under control or eliminated. PRPs work in concert with growth hormones to help the immune system reorient itself and begin the process of rebuilding the body’s tissues, which may have suffered from excessive inflammation (i.e., lung and other organ damage, skeletal muscle atrophy). Colostrum supplementation could help mitigate some of the negative aftereffects in recovering COVID-IO patients.
It must be said that any type of mammalian colostrum does not prevent or cure COVID-19, but its bioactives help the human immune system perform its optimal function of keeping foreign invaders from manifesting infections and massive inflammation. If we did not have a functioning immune system, the mildest bacteria or virus would literally kill us. So, in the era of COVID-19, we must take steps to increase our resiliency and minimize the effects of today’s environment and the modern lifestyle—poor nutrition, inactivity, poor sleep, excessive stress, pesticide/herbicide exposure, contaminated water, polluted air, and the overuse of antibiotics and other gut-damaging medications. Supplementing with liposomal colostrum helps reduce the associated low-grade inflammation—the pervasive underlying condition that many people already have— and fortifies the immune system so that it remains in an optimal and vigilant state.
Colostrum has satisfied humans’ nutritional and immune needs since ruminant animals were first domesticated. We know from our own experience that human infants thrive on their mothers’ colostrum and breast milk and experience fewer infections. Liposomal bovine colostrum is an all-natural, biocompatible, and plentiful source of immune-balancing bioactives and growth factors ideal for use by people of any age. So, in the vein of “do no harm,” it may be said that bovine colostrum has a potential therapeutic role to play in the current pandemic, in addition to offering many nutritional and gastrointestinal benefits.
As a colostrum advocate for more than two decades, I advise all practitioners to recommend bovine colostrum as the foundational supplement for their patients, regardless of health or injury status. Additional supplements with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory action should be added to a daily colostrum regimen to enhance immune resilience. Refer to the “Four Pillars of Immune Resilience and Homeostasis” in this publication for additional information.
References
1. Stelwagen K, Carpenter E, Haigh B, Hodgkins on A, Wheeler TT. Immune components of bovine colostrum and milk Journal of Animal Science. 2009 Apr;87(13 Suppl):3-9.
2. Ulfinan LH, Leusen JHW, Savelkoid HFJ, Warner JO, van Neerven RJJ. Effects of Bovine Immunoglobulins on Immune Function, Allergy, and Infection. Frontiers in Nutrition. 2018 Jun 22; 5:52.
3. Wong EB, Mallet JF, Duarte J, Matar C, Ritz B W. Bovine colostrum enhances natural killer cell activity and immune response in a mouse model of influenza infection and mediates intestinal immunity through toll-like receptors 2 and 4. Nutrition Research. 2014 Apr;34(4):318-25.
4. See DM, Khemka P, Sahl L, Bui T, Tilles JG. The role of natural killer cells in viral infections. Scandinavian Journal of Immunology. 1997;46(3):217-224.
5. Hariri, R. J. (2020, March 13). Opinion \ Include Natural Killer ’ Cells in the Covid-19 Arsenal. Retrieved from https://www. wsj. com articles/include-natural-killer-cells-in-the-covid-19-arsenal-11584132388.
Douglas Wyatt is the founder of Sovereign Laboratories, the colostrum company providing the most efficacious bovine colostrum for optimal gut and immune health. As Director of Research for the Sovereign Health Initiative, he is the leading expert in colostrum and is credited with reintroducing bovine colostrum for human use.
