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Ever heard of immunoglobulins? While colostrum is experiencing a renaissance, you should seriously weigh the immunoglobulin supplement versus colostrum benefits.
Partly because colostrum is a LOWER potency option, that sometimes isn’t even standardized (depending on the brand) to guarantee how helpful it will be.
That said, immunoglobulins (aka. IgGs) can be incredibly helpful for things like leaky gut (gut permeability), histamine intolerance, recovering from a stomach bug or food poisoning, and supporting your immune system during cold + flu season.
Plus, I’m going to share why I prefer immunoglobulin supplements over colostrum, what the difference is between the two, and how to use them.
Also, I want to how you how to avoid the fake, over-hyped colostrum + immunoglobulin supplements found online (even on Amazon)!
Let’s dive in!
Or, listen on your favorite app: iTunes (Apple Podcasts) | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | Subscribe on Android
In This Episode:
- How I learned about the amazing benefits of immunoglobulin supplement
- Why you should use immunoglobulins
- Difference between immunoglobulins and colostrum benefits
- How do immunoglobulins work?
- Benefits of immunoglobulins
- How to take an immunoglobulin supplement
- Best immunoglobulin supplement + where to get it
Quotes
“[Immunoglobulins] were traditionally used and still are actually for more diarrhea-dominant problems. So if you've got a lot of loose soft stools, diarrhea, or even something like inflammatory bowel disease.”
“IgGs can be found in the serum of your blood, and they also can be found in the serum of the blood of cows. And so historically, when people supplement with colostrum, that's derived from dairy, and it contains IgGs. So they are similar in that colostrum has IgGs and it's one of the major components that makes it so helpful, but it's not as potent.”
Links
GET REAL, VERIFIED IMMUNOGLOBULINS HERE
Healthy Skin Show ep. 188: Histamine Intolerance + Skin Rashes (PART 1)
Healthy Skin Show ep. 192: Histamine Intolerance + Skin Rashes, PART 2
364: Immunoglobulin vs Colostrum Benefits (For Leaky Gut, Histamine Intolerance, Itchy Skin + More) {FULL TRANSCRIPT}
Welcome back to episode 364 of the Healthy Skin Show! In today’s episode, I’ve diving into the fascinating world of immunoglobulin supplements. They are an extremely helpful tool in my clinical practice with chronic skin rash clients for a variety of reasons!
Since they’re so similar to colostrum, I want to share the immunoglobulin supplement versus colostrum benefits, issues around allergies to these supplements, how to use them and more!
When I first learned about this type of supplement called immunoglobulins, I was incredibly excited to test it out on clients. And many of my clients, because they've tried so many things, are oftentimes open to testing things out for me. They are usually excited that somebody has some new creative ideas that are based on research and maybe the advice of other clinicians also tending to see some sort of helpful benefit. They really wanna give things a go.
And so I wanna share with you first and foremost, the client that really opened my eyes to the potential of an immunoglobulin supplement. Because it always starts with one person and then you start to see this in other people, you begin to see a pattern and you go, wow, this actually can be helpful. So I had this client, she had been struggling for a really long time with very itchy hives and eczema.
She actually started having tons of gut problems came to me with like terrible leaky gut Really unhappy with her GI tract. She would struggle with gas and bloating loads of diarrhea and soft stools. Sometimes she'd get constipated but most of the time it was just soft diarrhea and she couldn't put anything together aside of like what was causing the problem. Except for at one point, she started to see this surge of hives and eczema that really kind of took over, and now she's dealing with two separate problems.
And she described herself as being really histamine intolerant and had as a result taken out a lot of foods. Which stinks because the more food she took out, the more she started to struggle with the foods that were in her diet and she began to cut out more and more high histamine foods than it was other potential trigger foods. And before you know it, she just ended up with a ton of food restrictions. At that point, she couldn't figure out whether it was the food causing the issue or something else because there really was no rhyme or reason to both of these like leaky gut problems as well as the histamine intolerance issues and her skin problems.
And so she also noted to me that she got sick all the time. I don't know if that's ever happened to you, but if you tend to be the person who gets sick whenever anything comes in your house even if you've got kids – and we all know kids tend to pick up everything especially if they're at school – but if you also tend to get things whether it's from your kids or just you're just like that unlucky person who seems to be really prone to colds and flus. And also stomach bugs, so like food poisoning or like those 24- or 48-hour stomach bugs, if you seem to be prone to that or you get them periodically once or twice a year, I would highly recommend that this be something you consider, right? Because she was struggling with that too.
And what you may or may not know right now, but we knew from this client because we did stool testing in her was that something on the stool test in her gut function section called secretory IgA was very low. It was almost nonexistent. And I'm going to talk about what that is more in a moment, but that was a real sign of what it helped to explain why she was getting sick frequently and really struggling with a lot of GI issues from the other things that were found on her stool test.
So I asked her if she would be open to trying this thing called immunoglobulins. And she's like, what the heck is immunoglobulins? I've never heard of that. And I was like, well, it's kind of like colostrum, but better. It's more potent. And she's like, “OK, tell me more.”
One of the things that I learned in doing research on what immunoglobulins were is that they were traditionally used and still are actually for more diarrhea dominant problems. So if you've got a lot of loose soft stools, diarrhea, or even something like inflammatory bowel disease where you tend towards being or having these bouts or flare-ups of really, really soft, loose, even watery stools.
They are used at higher doses to help treat these conditions through conventional medicine. That is how they are used. so with the kind of like, with time, I guess we should say, and with time, what happened was there was colostrum and then there became immunoglobulins that landed on the market and became readily available to people. Because in the conventional medical setting, these were only available through prescription. So unless you were prescribed these immunoglobulins, there was really no other way to get them except now there is.
What Is Colostrum vs Immunoglobulin Supplement?
So what is the difference between immunoglobulins and colostrum? Well, they're similar, but they are different.
The first thing that you should know is that immunoglobulins, also known as IgGs, wades are to say, right? IgGs.
IgGs can be found in the serum of your blood, and they also can be found in the serum of the blood of cows. And so historically, when people supplement with colostrum, that's derived from dairy, and it contains IgGs. So they are similar in that colostrum has IgGs and it's one of the major components that makes it so helpful, but it's not as potent. There are other factors included in colostrum and obviously there are some issues because it is derived from dairy. So some people may not tolerate it. Whereas immunoglobulin supplement or IgG supplements are this concentrated form of the immunoglobulins themselves that can go to work and do the things that you need them to do at just a more potent level.
So one of the main differences is that colostrum typically should be standardized to 40% immunoglobulins. So when you look at the amount of protein found in a colostrum supplement, about 40% should come from immunoglobulins. It should also be noted on the supplements ingredient facts panel for what it is standardized to. If it's not standardized to any, then you have no idea how many immunoglobulins or what percentage of immunoglobulins are actually in that product. So we don't know how concentrated it is. Whereas with immunoglobulin products, we actually do know how concentrated they are because it is very, very specific.
So immunoglobulins are derived from serum. That is correct. They are derived from cow serum. So it kind of circumvents the dairy problem. So if you're sensitive or allergic to dairy, you might tolerate the serum options. Most people who are intolerant to dairy or lactose intolerant tolerate the IgGs just fine. If you have a dairy allergy, it's hit or miss because really this now, the immunoglobulins have a bovine or beef allergy warning on them because if you have something like alpha-gal syndrome, or you just have a beef allergy, you should not use an immunoglobulin supplement. You shouldn't use colostrum either. So there's that, that kind of wipes out both. But if you have just a problem with dairy, you may actually be able to tolerate the serum-derived immunoglobulin option instead because there's no dairy in it.
And as I said, the one cool thing about this type of product is that immunoglobulins are in and of themselves more concentrated. So if you're looking to harness the potential colustrum benefits, you're just going to get a much larger potent dose of it in immunoglobulins versus colostrum.
How Do Immunoglobulins Work?
So how do immunoglobulins work?
Well, I want to give you some really good analogies here so you understand what they do.
Our entire GI tract, including in the nose and in the mouth and then all the way down to the end of the tube, is coated in mucus. And that mucus is really important to help separate the cells of the GI tract from what's happening inside those passages, because the inside of the passages are actually the outside of your body.
And so in the mucosal membrane, as it's called, hang out these immunoglobulins.
They're not cells. They're not bacteria or some sort of living organism.
They're immune factors produced by your body to help protect you. And what they do is they kind of act, especially in the gut, as crowd control for some unfriendly gut bugs. And that can look like fungal organisms like candida, certain gut bacteria. And so they are really helpful in that regard.
If you want to think of them almost like police officers. arrest those unfriendly organisms and help get them out of the body so they can stop being inflammatory and causing problems. So they act essentially, as I said, like crowd control. They aren't perfect and aren't going to, if you, for example, have a really, really imbalanced gut…If you've got a lot of gut dysbiosis… They're not going to fix that.
They are a helpful tool if that's basically what you can do in this moment. Or if you're working on gut protocols, they can be beneficial because they'll help also with say like herbs, antibiotics, antifungal meds, all sorts of things, but they can also have this like kind of low-level binding capacity. So they don't act quite like other binders and we'll talk about that in a moment, but they can actually adhere to certain types of organisms, as I said, and toxins and shuttle them out of the body.
The thing is that they're “one and done”. So when you take them, they float down through the whole GI tract and you poop them out. They don't hang around. They don't build up in the system. They are incredibly robust and helpful, but you cannot take them or take one bottle and go, “I'm fine now because I took the supplement.” Unfortunately, it does require other work. But again, having tools that help support the process while you're on it can be really helpful.
Plus, when you get sick, for example, like with a stomach bug or food poisoning, a lot of times the GI tract is super unhappy, right? I got food poisoning two times, I think it was about two years ago, and it took me almost a week to reintroduce all this regular solid foods that I normally eat. And so it was really hard for me to consume solid foods, foods that had a lot of flavor. I just really felt horrible.
And I've also had some flare-ups of my GI tract where periods of time I just cannot eat food because it would cause so much distress. And so that's where an immunoglobulin supplement can be really, really helpful because they are soothing, they are helpful, they are supportive, they are calming. And so this is another opportune time to help have them on hand. And if you know, if you're that type of person that tends to get sick with a lot of flus and colds just everything going around.
That's where they can also be helpful because again, immunoglobulins live in the mucosal membrane, right? From the nose and the mouth all the way down and they help to arrest things so that they don't just hang out and cause problems. They help to improve your chances of having a lower response to that particular organism or to potentially lessen something that could upset your GI tract or help in the process of kind of boosting the immune system back up after having one of these episodes. So they can be really, really helpful. Again, they're not magical, but they are really helpful.
Benefits of Immunoglobulins
So what are some benefits of immunoglobulins?
The first thing I can tell you is they're non-addictive. So a lot of people get concerned that when they take certain supplements, their body is going to become addicted. And you might think, “well, Jen, you just said that these do not… Like if I take a bottle, they don't build up in the system, right? So that means I just constantly have to take them?”
It's not that your body becomes lazy such that you have to continue taking them. We're taking them as a bridge – a bridge to a place where hopefully the immune response overall, your body has so much to deal with with this tremendous immune response that it's dealing with because of what's going on in the gut that's making your gut super leaky, super unhappy, that's thus causing inflammation systemically that shows up in different areas like on your skin, in your brain, in your joints, et cetera.
And we're helping the body start to do its own thing by making those again. So it's not causing your body to be lazy such that it will not produce them down the road on its own. But we do have to do the work to help the body get back to that point. And one thing that is really important to know is for your body to actually make immunoglobulins, it has to have an ample supply of amino acids because that's what they are. They are essentially amino acids strung together, that's what it is.
So if you eat a low protein diet, if you're not absorbing protein, if you have H. pylori or low stomach acid or any of these things that can hijack your body's ability to absorb amino acids, so to break down the proteins and thus absorb the amino acids, which are the smaller components, that can impair your body or limit your body's ability to actually make these on its own.
Now, the other thing that's really cool about immunoglobulins is that they can help to firm up stools (aka. your poop). So if you struggle with looser, softer, more liquidy stools, these can be really, really helpful. They also can, as I have shared, give a helping hand to your immune system to help it just like do its thing a little bit better. They can be great for post-food poisoning or stomach flu care. I certainly incorporate them in and have them on hand for those specific reasons.
And if I feel like I'm gonna be around a lot of people, I will start usually taking them just to give myself a little added support, right?
Now, the other instance when they can be really helpful is if you've had clinical stool testing that has showed that secretory IgA marker is either suboptimal or low. Ideally on many of the stool tests, I like to see that marker be around 1200. So you really have to look at the scale based on which stool tests you choose and determine what is optimal versus suboptimal. And obviously if it's low, it's very easy to see that it's low.
So that's a sign when you have this suboptimal or low secretory IgA show up on a stool test, that's telling you right there, your body is struggling to make its own immunoglobulins and we could really benefit from some additional supplemental immunoglobulins. Also, if you are vegan or plant-based, there are no alternatives that are not derived from mammals, unfortunately. So there's not going to be a plant-based alternative. There's not going to be a vegan alternative. It just does not exist. That's just what there are. So just be aware of that.
They can be taken while pregnant or breastfeeding. So they are safe for that time because they're really more supportive. They can also be taken by kids, but the dosing may be lower than adult recommendations that are found on, for example, a supplement bottle. So you may want to talk with your doctor or practitioner about what would be an appropriate dosing for your child based on their age and weight and what their condition is.
I mentioned before how they have this kind low acting binding capacity. They are not binders like, for example, activated charcoal is. So you can take immunoglobulins with food, supplements, and medications. They will not bind to those. Ideally, any meds that tell you you should separate them from supplements and food, always continue to do that regardless. Always continue to do that regardless.
So any medication that tells you to take it away from other supplements and food, you should do that regardless. I wouldn't mix them with immunoglobulins just because. However, they are not going to bind to food, to supplements and medications like some of these stronger binders do where they just basically suck everything up and pull it out of the GI tract. That's not what these do. So they have more of a binding action to substances within the gut that are considered inflammatory and or toxic like endotoxins and they can bind to certain organisms, but they're not looking to bind to food. So I think that's an important point to keep in mind that gives you some flexibility about when to take them.
How To Take Immunoglobulins
So in terms of tips, right, because I think tips are always helpful. Like how do you incorporate these in? Who should use them?
As a histamine intolerance supplement, so if you also struggle with things like hives, urticaria, dermatographia, and angioedema, you might need an actual higher dose than what's listed on the bottle, so you're aware. The dose on the bottle may not be sufficient enough because the amount that's on the bottle is basically a lower level that is set so that it's not considered a pharmaceutical medication. So be aware of that. You might want to work with your practitioner to determine what the actual appropriate dosage and use of those are.
They are more effective when you take them between meals or at bedtime, but they can still be taken with food too. And I know this because I can't swallow pills. So I have to take them with something else. Now you could certainly open the capsules and put the powder in some water, swirl it and like, you know, down the hatch. But oftentimes, I will add it to something with like a protein powder or something else that is soothing maybe with some herbs and take it in that regard.
You can take it with food because, like I said, it's not going to bind to food. It's not going to bind to supplements. Do what you can with it and it can be taken in capsule form or those capsules can be open and the powder be added to things like protein shakes, smoothies, yogurt, and applesauce. I just wouldn't add it to anything hot. I would say like cool or cold is fine, but probably not hot.
And you can also split up the dose. So you could even say, “all right, I'm gonna take it twice a day, maybe mid-morning and mid-afternoon or mid-morning and before bed.” I will share with you that if you find that your kind of like itchy, hive-y, histamine-y flare-ups are happening overnight and starting at bedtime, you might want to take that full dose and test it out and see how you do taking it before bed with anything else that you're taking as long as it's not something that's gonna like bind it up. One of those types of binders like activated charcoal or you're taking medication that can't be taken with other things.
The other thing I do have to tell you is that in some individuals, you can start to become constipated. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but you should be aware of that upfront. The reason is that immunoglobulins help to support gut function so that your gut is happier and can start to pull more water out of the GI tract. This unfortunately can cause stools to get harder and even result in constipation. So if that's the case, the fix is that you want to increase your daily intake of water by 12 to 16 ounces. So every day you should really shoot for 60 to 80 ounces. If you're already below that, you know now you've got to increase that, get it to the 60 to 80 ounces.
And then if from there, you start to notice that the stools are firming up a little bit too much where you're no longer having those healthy, comfortable stools one to three times a day, but instead it's starting to veer towards pellets or you're starting to have to strain, you're feeling more constipated or you're going less than once a day.
That's where we want to increase our water intake. And we might have to add on some other tools, but it just depends. It's so tricky with the gut, because sometimes we need a combo of things to help us go to the bathroom. But having a healthy, normal poop every single day is really, really important.
Where To Get Real Immunoglobulin Supplements
So with that being said, you're probably wondering what happened to that client that I mentioned back in the beginning of this episode.
I wanted to share with you a couple of wins that she experienced by adding in immunoglobulins. And she did, just for the record, she did have to take them at a bit higher of a dose because the normal dose on the bottle just wasn't sufficient for her. So again, you've got to really play with that. But again, if you're going above that, please follow the directions of your practitioner. It's really important. But for her, her stool's firmed up really nicely. So she stopped having all these liquidy, soft stool.
Her GI issues calmed down to a place that was more manageable and felt less stressful and traumatic. She was also able to reintroduce a lot of foods, which was a huge win for her. She did not see that coming and was really excited that she became noticeably less reactive, especially to those more moderate to high histamine foods. So she was super happy that just that alone helped her body. And her GI check have more flexibility.
As a result, she had fewer outbreaks of hives and dermatographia, which in turn reduced her need to have to take so many doses of antihistamines every single day. So she was happy with that. I'm not saying we stopped there, but it was a really great first step to help her just regain some sense of normalcy and not feel so reactive to her environment and also helped her immune system do what it was supposed to do a little bit better.
With time, she wasn't getting sick with everything like she was when the colds and flus were flying around the office. So she was really, really happy about that.
So if you are interested in trying immunoglobulins, I just want to encourage you to seek out a source that is trusted. And the reason is that you have to look for things that are the real deal, not products that they have claims on them that you know, it contains this much.
Please find trusted sources because there are so many products on the internet and on very well-known sites that people like myself purchase things on every single day that unfortunately have counterfeit products. What is on that supplements label with the ingredients is not actually accurate.
So please find a trusted source and know that if you decide that you'd like to try some of these, get them at www.quellshop.com.
I know that this will give you some starting point to begin looking at these types of supplements and to consider how they could be helpful for you. If you've been looking for a product like this, know that we've got something for you. If you head to www.quellshop.com, we actually have it under the digestive aid section. Know that what we purchase and what we have available in the store are not fake products. They are real and authentic and very, very helpful.
Also, the other thing I should share is that if you are outside of the US, some countries have actually banned immunoglobulin products. So if you look around, that might be the reason why they're really hard to find, if not being available at all. The EU, for example, has actually banned them and that may make it difficult for you to add this into your routine.
In that instance, I would say see if colostrum is available. But to get the same kind of effect, you might have to take higher doses of colostrum to get colostrum benefits. Again, this is a really individualized process. I can't give you exact amounts because obviously it's going to depend on your situation, how reactive to histamine you are, what's going on in your gut. But I do think that they could be a very, very helpful tool as a histamine intolerance supplement.
And if you're here in the US, obviously we have some trusted products, the real deal for you at www.QuellShop.com.
