When a baby mammal is born, it is thrust from the safe, sterile conditions in its mother's womb to a world full of things trying to kill it.
Mothers have a powerful way to further protect their young by giving them a boost right at birth.
We call it colostrum, the first milk.
Colostrum is different than the milk that comes later; it is only produced for the first couple days after birth. It is buttery yellow and thicker than regular milk. In addition to heavily concentrated nutrients that a brand new digestive system can absorb, colostrum provides:
immune-
growth-
and tissue repair factors
plus microbes and compounds that heal a damaged gut / start a new gut working
Lucky for us, human adults benefit from taking colostrum, too!
Because I have dairy cows, I already knew that colostrum is an amazing supplement. Until I researched for this blog, though, I did not realize how well studied colostrum is. Science has proven what dairymen have known all along.
Cows make more colostrum than their calf needs. A special trick of many dairy cows owners is to save extra colostrum in the freezer, and if someone in their family starts to get sick, give them colostrum. It is an amazing health boost.
Effects on the Gut
I wish I had known about colostrum back when I had leaky gut. It would still have been necessary for me to stop eating the things that were causing my gut to be unhealthy in the first place (for effects to be lasting), but colostrum would have really sped up the healing process.
Colostrum has all of the microbes needed to seed a healthy gut biome. If you have taken antibiotics which eliminated the beneficial bacteria that you desperately need to be healthy, or if you eat food laced with preservatives, this is a powerful way to restore beneficials, and by extension, restore your health. It provides an ideal prebiotic for those microbes to multiply in once they reach your gut.
While encouraging the growth of beneficial microbes, it also inhibits the growth of pathogens. Colostrum has been shown to fight E. coli, Salmonella, Staphylcoccus, and Helicobacter pylori.
Bioactive compounds such as lactoferrin soothe irritated intestinal lining and strengthen gut barrier function so that undigested food particles don't leak into the bloodstream.
Colostrum protects against both diarrhea and constipation.
Conditions like colitis, IBS, and leaky gut all benefit from colostrum.
Effects on the Immune System
At birth, a newborn has no functional immune system. The reason that a newborn desperately needs colostrum within hours of birth is not as much for the calories as for the jumpstart to its immune system. Colostrum is packed with immunoglobulins, hyaluronic acid, lactoferrin, and growth factors.
Colostrum contains every antibody from the mother's immune system. Even though the colostrum available to adult humans comes from cows, cows are exposed to many of the same diseases that we are, and those antibodies are effective for us.
Studies have shown that colostrum helps fight respiratory infections. Additionally, colostrum can significantly improve nasal and lung congestion for children with respiratory allergies. They have even researched the use of colostrum in treating covid-19 and SARS with promising results.
Sometimes immune systems respond too little or too much. Colostrum regulates immune modulation, helping your immune system to respond the appropriate amount. This is good for people with depressed immune systems, and also for people with autoimmune diseases.
Children with Failure to Thrive have been successfully treated with bovine colostrum.
Tissue Repair, Regeneration, and Athletic Support
Until researching the benefits of colostrum, I did not realize that my leaky gut was not purely caused by the bad food I used to eat--although that certainly played a role. There was something else going on, too...
I had a goal, once upon a time, of running a marathon. Several factors prevented me from ever running more than a half marathon, but one of my problems was declining health caused by leaky gut.
Guess what: intense physical training is known to cause exercise induced intestinal permeability--in other words, leaky gut. Why didn't anybody tell me?! I never associated gut health with intense training. Colostrum would have helped that.
In addition to healing gut problems, colostrum provides growth factors which aid in soft tissue and cartilage repair. It helps healing by accelerating cell proliferation and differentiation. That also would have helped me run my marathon.
Studies have shown that colostrum, taken both internally and applied externally, help speed wound closure.
Your skin even benefits from colostrum. It stimulates the body to produce collagen for elastic skin and to reduce fine lines.
Colostrum contains telomerase enzyme, which protects telomeres. These are the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes and it is their degradation that leads to aging.
Ways to Consume Colostrum
Colostrum is only produced for a limited time after birth, so it is hard to come by.
If you know someone with dairy cows or goats, ask them if they have any extra for sale when their animals freshen. It is the most potent when fresh, but you can freeze it in ice cube trays to help it last longer.
You can also buy colostrum in powder form. It may not be quite as active as fresh raw colostrum, but I assume that the majority of the testing which scientists have done has been with easily available powdered colostrum, so it must still have many of its life enhancing properties. When buying powdered colostrum, check to see that it has been tested for active antibodies.
Colostrum flavor can vary somewhat, but it generally tastes like concentrated milk. Depending on conditions, it may taste like buttermilk, be slightly salty, bitter, or sweet.
Some people like to drink it plain. Others prefer to blend it in smoothies.
Consuming as little as an ounce a day at the onset of a cold makes a huge difference. Some people drink it by the glass.
The point is, just get some colostrum and get it into you! Your body will thank you.
As good as colostrum is, you need a healthy life style to allow your body to hold onto the benefits that colostrum provides. Eat whole foods rather than processed foods and make gut health a top priority. Consider fasting to turn on your body's ability to self heal.
What conditions do you have which could be helped by colostrum?
Comments