193: Why You Should Consider Using Immunoglobulins For Skin Problems w/ Kiran Krishnan

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Have you ever heard of immunoglobulins? My guest today will explain all about them, as well as why they may be helpful for skin conditions.

Or, listen on your favorite app: iTunes (Apple Podcasts) | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | Subscribe on Android

My guest today is Kiran Krishnan, a Research Microbiologist who has been involved in the dietary supplement and nutrition market for the past 18 years.

He comes from a University research background, having spent several years with hands-on R&D in the fields of molecular medicine and microbiology at the University of Iowa. Kiran established a Clinical Research Organization where he designed and conducted dozens of human clinical trials in human nutrition.

He is also a co-founder and partner in Nu Science Trading, LLC.: a nutritional technology development and research company.

In addition, Kiran is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Microbiome Labs that makes products like MegasporeBiotic + MegaIgG2000.

Kiran is currently involved in 16 novel human clinical trials on probiotics and the human microbiome.

Join us as we talk how immunoglobulins might be helpful for skin conditions.

Have you tried immunoglobulins for your skin issue? Tell me about it in the comments!

In this episode:

• What are immunoglobulins?
• Different types of antibodies
• Connection between diarrheal issues and immunoglobulins
• Can IgG help with fungal overgrowth?

Quotes

“Immunoglobulin is a big, fancy, nerdy term for antibodies. .” [0:44]

“If you have leakiness in the gut, you have things like endotoxins that leak through the lining of the gut, enter into the enteric nervous system, it can move up the vagus nerve and lodge itself in the dorsal vagal complex thereby shutting off the communication between the gut and the brain.” [14:26]

Links

Click HERE to try MegaIg2000 + Megasporebiotic

Healthy Skin Show ep. 10 How Your Skin Health Is Tied To Your Whole-Body Health w/ Kiran Krishnan

Healthy Skin Show ep. 11 The Role Of Probiotics When It Comes To Skin Health w/ Kiran Krishnan

Healthy Skin Show ep. 181: Fascinating Research On Staph Infections + Probiotics (PART 1) w/ Kiran Krishnan

Healthy Skin Show ep. 182: Fascinating research on Staph Infections + Probiotics (PART 2) w/ Kiran Krishnan

Follow Kiran Krishnan on Instagram

193: Why You Should Consider Using Immunoglobulins For Skin Problems w/ Kiran Krishnan FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jen: Hi, Kiran. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Kiran: Hi, Jen. Thank you for having me. It's so great to be back.

Jen: I know. Well, I kind of pestered you about this because I thought that you'd be the perfect obviously to talk about immunoglobulins. I've gotten a ton of questions about this, and I've been using them in my practice with my clients. People are like, “Wait, I don't understand. How could immunoglobulins help with skin issues?” So we're going to talk about some interesting things today. First of all, what are immunoglobulins?

Kiran: Yeah.

Jen: So for somebody who doesn't know, what is an immunoglobulin, and what does it do?

Kiran: Immunoglobulin is a big, fancy, nerdy term for antibodies. Everybody's now familiar with antibodies because through this whole pandemic, we've been talking about antibodies. Antibodies being the protection that we develop immunologically against the pathogen. The whole nature of antibodies is they are specific; most antibodies are.

Kiran: We'll talk about the different classes of antibodies, but they tend to be specific to a specific target and their whole job is to bind to that target, whether it be a virus, a bacteria, a toxin, an environmental particle. Whatever it may be, they bind to it, they coat it, they neutralize it, and then it gets removed from the body.

Kiran: Inside the body, in circulation, when an antibody binds to something like say this is a virus and you get an antibody, it comes in and binds to it. It signals that whole complex should now be consumed by macrophages and dendritic cells in the immune system that can come along, eat that whole thing and destroy it and get rid of it. So antibodies are these proteins, immunoglobulins which are antibodies are proteins that find, seek out, and neutralize things that could cause inflammation, infection, and so on in the body.

Kiran: Then there's different classes. So let's talk quickly about the different classes then while we're at it. So we've got our IgA, which some people may be familiar with. It's typically referred to as secretory IgA. The reason it's referred to as secretory IgA is because it's found mostly in your secretory fluids. So in your saliva, in your tears. You find some coming out in your sweat, in the mucosal lining of the gut, the mucosal lining throughout the body, so in your nasal passages, your lungs, and all that. It's like your first-line defense immunoglobulins or antibodies.

Kiran: Now, the interesting thing about IgA, which you produce a lot of it if you're healthy throughout the day, is that IgA is specifically designed to be not specific. It's a random grab at as many things as it can neutralize. So you don't want IgA to be highly specific. You want it to be a little bit more general so that it can bind lots of different things that enter into the system like potential environmental allergens, viruses, bacteria, and so on.

Kiran: You also find that IgA coats your gut commensal bacteria to a certain degree so that the gut commensal bacteria, if they make their way deeper into the gut lining, doesn't elicit an inflammatory reaction. When your immune system sees something that's covered with IgA it goes, “Oh, okay. That thing's not going to cause the body harm. We don't need to respond to it. It's basically neutralized or covered or under control.”

Kiran: But keep in my mind, IgA is non-specific. You need to continuously be producing IgA, and the types of IgA you produce are based on your exposure level to things in life. So if you're out and you get exposed to lots of different bacteria, viruses, environmental particles, and all that, you produce a really diverse set of IgA. If you're not exposed to a lot of stuff, you live like a hermit inside your house, you sterilize everything, you don't see a lot of people, then you produce really low diversity of IgA, and it's a low level of things that the IgA can bind.

Kiran: Then you've got IgE, which most people are familiar with, also is the bad one. But IgE elicits an inflammatory allergic type of response when it binds to things. Here's the crux of it, IgE is kind of a default protection if you don't have enough IgA. So what happens, IgE is typically found on the lining of the gut, and in the lining of the gut, IgE not only plays a role to bind things, but it also plays a role with mineral balance and hydration and all kinds of things outside of the whole binding capacity.

Kiran: But what your body does, is if you don't have enough IgA production to protect as a first line of defense, it starts to send IgE out into the secretory secretions and into the periphery of the body because now it needs some sort of antibody out there. But the problem is, when IgE binds stuff, it triggers this whole eosinophil allergy type of reaction. So one of the key things in reducing IgE is to increase IgA because they counteract one another.

Kiran: Then you have IgM. IgM is this big, awesome, neutralizing antibody. It's the biggest of them all, and when it sees a virus or a bacteria, it just globs it up, eats it up, neutralizes it, and gets it out of the system; allows your immune system to learn what that bad thing is, but it's a neutralizing, powerful antibody. But it's expressed relatively quickly when you run into something like a new pathogen, but it goes away after a period of time. Typically, after three, four weeks and then the function of neutralizing is taken over by IgG.

Kiran: So that's the last antibody we'll talk about. IgG is the long-term, highly specific antibody. IgM is somewhat specific, and it's big, and it's awesome. It neutralizes everything. It gets things under control. Then the highly specific IgG comes along, learns what that compound is, whether it's a virus, bacteria, or toxin. Then it produces an antibody specific to that that you then can hold in your system for the rest of your life or for at least several years.

Kiran: So then the next time you encounter that thing, your B cells that make the IgG will kick it off right off the bat. The IgG will go out, find it, neutralize it, and you never even knew you had an infection or got exposed to anything. Does that make sense, hopefully?

Jen: It does. It's interesting because my first exposure to this was really around diarrhea cases. People who had severe IBS-D, so irritable bowel syndrome. I've also got inflammatory bowel disease as well.

Kiran: Right.

Jen: I've even seen some information on that as well, but they suffered from they're going to the bathroom 20, 25, 30 times a day. Nothing is-

Kiran: Yeah.

Jen: … solid. So that was my first exposure to immunoglobulins. So for somebody listening to this who maybe is going, “Wait, there's a connection between diarrheal issues and immunoglobulins?” Could you talk a little bit about why they might help somebody who has severe gut issues like this where they're more on the diarrhea side?

Kiran: Yeah. The supplemental immunoglobulins we're talking about are all in that IgG class. There are some IgM in there, but for the most part, it's IgG. Now, keep in mind naturally, we have lots of IgG floating around, but it's in our circulation. We actually don't have much of any in our gut lining. In our gut lining, it's predominantly IgA.

Kiran: So when we're able to supplement with IgG, what we're doing is we're providing another unique layer of protection in our gut lining that doesn't exist in our own physiology because all our IgG that is the most potent protector against things like toxins, viruses, and bacteria is in our circulation. It's not in the mucosal lining. So taking supplemental IgG gives you this unique protection in the mucosal lining.

Kiran: So why does it help with things like diarrhea associated with IBS or IBD and so on? Well, most of these gut conditions, especially irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease are driven by pathogens. So it's a presence of pathogens. It's a presence of a dysbiotic flora, and especially when it comes to loose bowels, the pathogens are driving it through toxin production.

Kiran: So clostridium difficile is a great example. If you have chronic clostridium difficile, they're producing their toxins and what the toxins do is cause looseness in the bowel. The reason why their toxins do that, understanding this from the bacteria's perspective, is when a pathogenic organism is in the gut, it's trying to compete with all the commensal bacteria. There's limited real estate in there, so they're all competing for space with one other.

Kiran: One of the ways that these bacteria compete for space is they cause massive diarrhea, which sloughs off a lot of the top layer of the mucus, which is where a lot of their competition is living. So they're trying to clear real estate so that they can take over. That's why their toxins are designed to give you loose bowels. If you have chronic loose bowels, it's because you're chronically exposed to those toxins.

Kiran: Now, you take an immunoglobulin which is a big group of antibodies and some of those antibodies are going to be specific for that bacteria's toxin. Some of it's even going to be specific for the bacteria. So now what you're doing is neutralizing the toxin and the bacteria in the gut so its effects are no longer creating the issues that you're seeing, and because you're no longer having that continuous loose bowels, your own commensal bacteria have a chance to start to regrow because they're not getting washed out all the time.

Kiran: So just neutralizing, slowing down the exposure to the pathogens and their toxins will go a long way towards helping your gut start to heal again because it's the pathogen that's not letting the healing process occur. That's the same thing that happens in inflammatory bowel disease. IBD is associated with severe dysbiosis and toxin production and recruitment of inflammatory immune cells into that region where you end up getting attacks of your own gut lining. All of that is toxin-mediated.

Kiran: So if the IgG can go in there and start neutralizing that toxin, it allows the gut to heal. So it's pretty clear, and that's a key connection to the skin as well.

Jen: Yeah. I want to just say too that the immunoglobulins have been used in conventional gastroenterology. I know there were products, it was like a medication version of it for a really long time, and now we're starting to see it show up in supplemental forms which is… A lot of people have asked me on my shop, they've seen the Mega IgG2000, and they're like, “Wait, was it that, and how can that be helpful?” This is one really great way-

Kiran: Yeah.

Jen: … that it can be helpful. It's interesting that too, I have some clients who have on stool testing an elevation or a high level of secretory IgA. Would this be contraindicated in that instance where you do have an elevated secretory IgA, or would it be helpful?

Kiran: Yeah.

Jen: Just your thoughts. I obviously realize case to case is different.

Kiran: Sure. Yeah. Now, in general, elevated secretory IgA should not present as a contraindication for using IgG. So this IgG, when you take it supplementally, stays in the gut lining. It's binding and neutralizing things that could cause toxicity and inflammation in the gut lining, and then once it binds its target, then the whole thing moves out through defecation. So it doesn't stay in there. It doesn't cause any changes to what your immune system is excreting. It's not like because you took supplemental IgG, somehow you produce more IgA. It's not quite connected in that way, so I would say there's no contraindication.

Kiran: Elevated IgA can be indicative of problem, but it also could be just their natural response to things, their body's natural response to eating food, and so on. Any time you put foreign particles in there, your immune system in the gut goes, “Okay, we've got to prepare to defend against all this stuff,” and it kicks up all the IgA production. So it can vary from person to person, but there's no need to think that any changes in your IgA could be contraindicative or an issue with IgG use.

Jen: So for those who are more on the constipated side, what if you're not going to the bathroom every day? Maybe every three days, every four days. You're really constipated. Would this potentially be helpful in those types of cases, or is it better for those who have normal bowel movements or are on the looser side?

Kiran: It can help. In part, it depends on why they're constipated. To me, the vast majority of chronic constipation cases are due to leakiness in the gut. That's a disruption in the enteric nervous system. So that's a nerve system that covers your entire digestive tract and that's a nervous system that's connected to your brain.

Kiran: So the linchpin for where the brain and the gut communicate is this area called a dorsal vagal complex. That's where these signals from the brain for the bowels to move both the migrating mortar complex, which is an electrical sweeping of the bowel, and also the peristaltic activity, which is the actual contraction of the smooth muscles of the bowels to move things along. All of those signals come from the brain.

Kiran: If you have leakiness in the gut, you have things like endotoxins that leak through the lining of the gut, enter into the enteric nervous system, it can move up the vagus nerve and lodge itself in the dorsal vagal complex thereby shutting off the communication between the gut and the brain. So a lot of the chronic constipation in the stasis in the bowel is driven by leakiness in the gut which again, comes from dysbiosis, too much production of LPS, and so on; inflammation in the lining of the gut. These are the key things that this helps with.

Kiran: So I would say a significant number of people that suffer from chronic constipation will probably see some benefit from this, and then on top of that, they probably need to go a little bit further in working on sealing up the gut, trying to kick on the migrating mortar complex and the peristaltic activity with prokinetics and so on to try to help the bowels move.

Jen: For somebody who's really struggling with a fungal overgrowth… I find a lot of times too constipation, not always, but sometimes constipation can be driven by fungal imbalances. Even SIFO, small intestine fungal overgrowth. Do you find that these are also helpful when you're dealing with fungal overgrowth?

Kiran: Yeah. In large part because the IgG binds fungal toxins from mold and fungus. So this particular IgG binds, I think, 12 different mycotoxins, including the biggest offenders like aflatoxin and so on. But also just being able to bind and neutralize the actual organisms themselves, not only does it neutralize the organisms, but it ruins their ability to metabolize and be competitive in that environment.

Kiran: So it gives then your commensal microbes, who are supposed to control the overgrowth of fungus, it gives them a leg up in that competitive spirit. Because again, any time there's a fungal overgrowth, it's an opportunistic situation where because of some suppression of either your immune system, some suppression of your microbiota, you've now got this opportunistic growth of fungus. So being able to put a little bit of dampening on the ability of fungus to grow will bring back some advantage to your commensal organisms to compete.

Jen: When you're specifically talking about fungal, like you said, “This IgG,” you're referring to the IgGs, or I guess the immunoglobulins that are in the MegaSpore or… Excuse me, we've talked about MegaSpore a lot, but the Mega IgG2000. Is that correct? So you've handpicked-

Kiran: That's correct.

Jen: … essentially, is that what you're saying? You've handpicked certain classes or types of immunoglobulins to be in this for certain… I'm just trying… It's interesting.

Kiran: Yeah. It's really hard to handpick the specific immunoglobulins, but what you can do, which is why this product is so effective and why it was and still is actually marketed as a drug through gastroenterology, but we have it as a supplement as well. The reason why it is so uniquely potent number one is because of high concentration of IgG immunoglobulins in it. It's about 55% of the mass is IgG; Immunoglobulin G.

Kiran: The other thing is how it's obtained. These immunoglobulins come from bovine source, so they come from cows. What's good about that is you've got cows that are out there in pastures in the environment. So what's happening is the cows are getting exposed to all kinds of stuff like viruses, bacteria, mold, environmental particulars, and so. So the cows' immune system are producing antibodies against all of this stuff.

Kiran: Then what we get to do is take the cows' antibodies, concentrate it to a high level, and now we've got this very diverse set of immunoglobulins because they come from an animal that's outside, that's ruminating outside, that gets huge exposure to things outside. So it's a very diverse classification of IgG. It's a very high concentration of IgG, and it's very well-purified and preserved so that you get all the functionality out of IgG as well.

Kiran: IgG, which is the immunoglobulin we're talking about, which is an antibody, is a protein compound. So one of the things you have to be sensitive about with protein compounds is how you treat and process it. Proteins are sensitive to things like heat and certain types of stress like pressure, pH, and so on, where the structure of the immunoglobulin can fall apart because the structure is determined by protein amino acid-binding.

Kiran: So one of the things that the company that we work with that makes this has really perfected is a very gentle purification process to preserve the structure and thereby function of the immunoglobulins. As far as I know, it's the only product of its kind on the marketplace. This high concentration immunoglobulin, broad-spectrum immunoglobulin product is the only kind in the marketplace.

Jen: If you supplement with an immunoglobulin, does it just stay in, I guess, the gut because you start in the mouth? Ultimately, if you're taking it via a pill, I'm not sure when those immunoglobulins would be released. I would assume at some point in the stomach or small intestine.

Kiran: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Jen: But does it stay in the GI tract, or do they migrate into the body?

Kiran: Yeah. So they don't migrate into the body. There's actually a number of studies on that to see if they do, but they don't. They stay within the GI tract. There's a lot of things for it to bind in the GI tract and basically get used up, so these are one use antibody. This is an antibody, and it finds a target, and it grabs on to it, then that antibody's work is done. It's grabbed its target, it's neutralized it, and now it's going to move out through defecation like anything else that your body doesn't need.

Kiran: Now, you can, and you bring up a good point, it does release at the terminal end of the stomach, so you get some exposure in the stomach but mostly in the small and large intestine. But if you have oral issues, like thrush, you've had thrush or you have other issues within your oral cavity, you could open up the powder and then mix it into a little bit of liquid and then put it in your mouth and hold it for a little while to give you a little bit of immunoglobulin protection in the mouth itself. Our mouth is an amazing source of pathogens and probably one of the most potent source of pathogens that create problems throughout the rest of the body, so that's another way of taking it.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2 OF THIS AMAZING CONVERSATION ON HISTAMINES + THE MOST COMMON QUESTIONS WE GET ABOUT IMMUNOGLOBULINS!