REPRINT FROM TOTALHEALTH MAGAZINE

TOTAL HEALTH  Volume 27, No. 6, Page 42

Lyle Hurd, editor

 

       Transfer Factor          Immunological Health

Pestilence – Disease – Infirmity - Death

 

These are just a few of the terms specialists from around the world are using to describe the potential

for a pandemic, a worldwide outbreak of H5Ni, the Avian Flu. If not this strain, some other, they say. It's not a matter of if—but when. Although speculation varies, there's one thing everyone agrees with: The indispensable importance of an optimally functioning immune system.

 

Immunity, Health, Longevity, and Life.

These are the things we all value, and they are just a few of the terms we associate with an immune system that works, an immune response that's never late and doesn't misfire, a state of immune-readiness constantly prepared to wage a balanced and accurate defense against bodily intruders like germs that make us sick, bacteria that give us infection, and viruses that kill.

 

It's a hostile world. No matter who we are, where we live, or what we do, the immune system is our first and last line of defense. No matter the money governments around the world spend on pandemic response strategies. No matter the alleged availability or potency of antibiotics. No matter the research dollars pouring into vaccine development. At the end of the day, one question rises above the rest: How strong is your immune system?

Immune System Basics

Your immune system has three primary functions: first to recognize bodily intruders, second to wage an effective attack, and third to remember invaders when they return.

Although this may not be "news," what hasn't been widely reported is that a molecule called transfer factor (TF) is responsible for storing the information our immune system uses to perform these functions.

Transfer Factor = Immune System "Intelligence"

Transfer factor isn't a vitamin, mineral, or herb, but a molecule that forms the core of your immune system's intelligence network by storing information about previous immune system encounters with bacteria, viruses and the like.

 

However, studies indicate that transfer factor does much more than simply "remember" our immune system experiences. It also provides strategic information about how to best handle the pathogens we encounter by stimulating NK (natural killer) cell activity.

 

Similar to the genetic code stored in the DNA molecule, the transfer factor molecule provides your immune system with the information it needs to:

1. Identify a problem,

2. Balance your body's response, and

3. Accelerate positive immune functioning.

 

Transfer Factor Its History, and Why You Haven't Heard About It

While studying Tuberculosis in 1949, Dr. H. Sherwood Lawrence (prior Head of Infectious Diseases and Immunology of New York University, 1959—2000) discovered that he could "transfer" a positive immune response from a recovered donor to a naive recipient, someone who had never encountered tuberculosis.

 

At the time, Lawrence used white blood cells as the source of transfer factor from human donors to lucky patients via intravenous administration. Although transfer factor was hailed as a major discovery by researchers and scientists around the world, penicillin took center stage as Western medicine's panacea, a "cure-all" to sickness and infection.

 

No one can argue the role antibiotics have played in battling disease. At the same time, more professionals than ever are concerned about their effectivenes as germs get smarter. Antibiotics replace the immune system, rather than strengthen it. For this reason, people are looking for alternative ways to support and promote their immune response.

 

Since Lawrence's ground-breaking life work, thousands of scientific studies have explored the effectiveness of the immune system molecule, transfer factor. And over the last twenty years, three major immunological discoveries have revolutionized transfer factor science:

• Sources

In the early days of transfer factor therapy, donors were human, and transfer factor was received via injection. It wasn't until the 1980s that medical science discovered the efficacy and compatibility ofanimal-sourced transfer factor. Today, we know that unlike antibodies, transfer factor is cross-species compatible. This means that its benefit is universal. As a result, we can profit from the transfer factor of animals with heroic (resilient) immune systems.

• Oral Consumption: Delivery

Transfer factor science has come a long way since its intravenous beginning. In the 1980s, it was discovered that transfer factor is orally transmissible, which makes sense because it's passed from mother to child through colostrum, a mother's first milk. A wide range of studies conducted over the past two decades now underscore the efficacy of orally consumed transfer factor.

 

 

• Technology

Scientists have only recently developed the techniques needed to extract and concentrate transfer factor molecules for optimal  potency. For example, although traces of transfer factor exist in colostrum, they must be isolated and purified for ideal results.

Heroic Immune Systems = Potent Transfer Factor

The most potent transfer factor molecules come from "heroic" immune systems that have had previous encounters with a wide range of viral and bacterial strains. Today's scientific community is particularly interested in two sources of transfer factor: one derived from cows, the other from chickens. Cow colostrum contains potent transfer factor designed to prepare the newborn calf for the barnyard's toxic environment.

Similarly, eggs offer another source for harvesting potent transfer factor strains.

Our Daily Need for Transfer factor

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world take transfer factor on a daily basis for increased immune system support. In fact, one report indicates that in China, "more than six million people have used transfer factor as a prophylaxis for hepatitis."

 

Throughout the world, people are discovering that transfer factor offers general immune maintenance for our on-the-go lifestyles. This may be why the popular book, The Cerm Survival Guide, by Dr. Kenneth A. Bock, M.D., et al., lists six Transfer Factor capsules per day as "essential" when traveling.

Reported Benefits of Transfer Factor

Transfer factor is referred to as an "immunocorrector" and reportedly supports immune function in different ways, including the suppression of an over-active immune system for autoimmune disorders as well as the stimulation of normal immune functioning.

 

In May of 2000, Alternative Medicine magazine published an article titled "Educating the Immune" in which DJ. Fletcher writes that "the immune system is one of the miracles of nature, and Transfer Factor (TF), a type of immune therapy, is part of that miracle." Transfer factor, Fletcher states, may contribute to positive immune function for people with "Candida albicans, Epstein-Barr, HIV, and other health conditions, including Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Hepatitis."

 

As a "smart molecule" and immune system balancer, transfer factor has proven valuable in helping the immune system suppress unhealthy and potentially destructive levels of inflammation. In fact, transfer factor actually educates your immune
system to what it must know for optimal performance when ever inflammation occurs.

Transfer Factor Science: Breakthrough and Discovery

Countless research articles explore the role transfer factor molecules play in proper immune system functioning, and there have been (and continue to be) substantial efforts to capitalize on this research by securing intellectual rights for transfer factor processes. For example, 4Life Research, LLC, of Sandy, Utah, has conducted numerous scientific studies and has multiple patents.

 

• In one independent NK Cell Study, 4Life's combination of bovine and avian sourced transfer factor dramatically increased natural killer cell activity four hundred thirty-seven percent above baseline.

 

• In October of 2002, 4Life patented methods for "obtaining transfer factor from avian sources" as well as new ways of generating and preparing the non-mammalian transfer factor."

 

• In March of 2005, 4Life patented a process of combining transfer factor "from at least two different types of source animals."

 

4Life Research's CEO, David Lisonbee, has been at the forefront of immune research for more than 12 years. For his contribution to the search for "new natural immunocorrectors, new sources of extraction, and progressive developmental technologies," Lisonbee will be inducted into the Russian Academy of Medical & Technical Sciences and receive the 2006 I.N. Blokhina Award for Bio-Technological Advancement during the last week of February.

 

As noted above, transfer factor is the subject of many publications. In addition to the ones cited earlier, a book, Transfer Factors: Maximize Your Immune IQ, authored by David Lisonbee and Dr. William Hennen, is scheduled for release this March. The book will address the importance of transfer factor and proper immune system functioning in today's world.

Transfer Factor Today

In 2005, the Bush Administration dedicated 7.1 billion dollars to the development of an emergency pandemic response strategy.

 

No matter how much money is invested in protecting us from an outbreak of avian flu or some other epidemic, the immune system is our first and last line of defense.

 

Its worth is invaluable, because without an immune system, we face pestilence, disease, infirmity and death.

 

Fortunately, scientific research continues to reveal a very promising link between the transfer factor molecule and optimal immune response. 

•For references: Send a SASE to totalhealth magazine.

 

The Wall Street Journal

Is avian-flu death rate tied to immune response?

What makes bird flu so deadly to people in its path? One key may lie in the human immune system itself, which may turn from friend to foe when under attack by the H5N1 virus.

Strong immune systems usually defend us against invasion by germs and tumor cells. But in conditions ranging from asthma and allergies to bacterial sepsis, it isn't a weak immune defense but an overzealous one that wreaks havoc. In those cases, immune cells spark inflammation that turns on the body like friendly fire.

Bird-flu virus, too, seems to invite immune-system overkill. University of Hong Kong flu researcher J.S.M. Peiris and his co-workers have done studies that show that the unusual virulence of the H5N1 virus stems partly from its power to make the immune system unleash a torrent of inflammatory cells and chemicals -- an event called a "cytokine storm." It's a case of good cells gone wild. A cyto-kine storm triggers an overreaction by the immune system's first responders, which normally help by rushing to kill germs and infected cells until the body can mount an effective antibody response.

In a storm, these cells and chemicals over-proliferate and run amok, killing not just virus-infected cells but healthy bystander cells as well. Then the lining of blood vessels weakens, letting fluid leak out. Blood pressure drops, and organs start to fail. Lungs fill with fluid and hemorrhage. Patients require intense supportive care with mechanical ventilation and drugs to maintain their blood pressure. And even with such intervention, some die of acute respiratory distress, shock and organ failure.

So far, the World Health Organization counts 138 bird-flu cases and 71 deaths, mostly in people with contact with sick birds. But if the virus changes to allow wider person-to-person spread, a pandemic could erupt, causing widespread shortages of medical supplies and hospital beds.

Illness seen in early bird-flu patients in 1997 "made us think the immune response might be hyperactivated," Dr. Peiris says. Among the evidence: immune cells called macrophages that normally devour germs and infected cells were instead "gobbling up everything in sight," he says, and killing healthy red cells.

In 2003, Dr. Peiris recalls, he studied two bird-flu patients in Hong Kong with high levels of inflammatory cytokines in their blood. Autopsies after they died also indicated that macrophages were destroying healthy red cells.

Pressing ahead with lab studies, Dr. Peiris and his colleagues re-created the cytokine storm in test tubes. First, they found that macrophages infected with the H5N1 virus spew out excessive amounts of an inflammatory chemical called tumor necrosis factor. Last month, they reported that human lung cells infected with H5N1 churn out more inflammatory substances -- such as interferons and interleukins -- than lung cells infected with a regular flu virus.

"What we have is clear evidence in test-tube models using human cells that H5N1 reacts very differently" than regular flu, Dr. Peiris says. "That fits with the clinical picture we see in H5N1 disease." But, he adds, "we have a long way to go."

Some public-health experts fear the picture of a virus driving immunologic overreaction resembles the 1918 pandemic. Then, so-called Spanish flu caused hemorrhagic pneumonia and affected young adults with robust immune systems. Avian flu also causes hemorrhagic pneumonia, and it targets younger people, in contrast to regular seasonal flu, which mostly kills the elderly.

Drugs to damp down the immune system might help. Obvious candidates include steroids, sepsis drugs, ACE inhibitors and statins. But so far, there's no clinical trial data. Steroids have been given to some patients with bird flu, but so far they have shown no clear benefit.

Drugs that alter immune defenses also carry risks of their own. "Steroids can suppress an immune response, but they may make the patient more susceptible to infection," says Tim Uyeki, a medical epidemiologist with the influenza branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Taming the immune response without destroying defenses is "a great idea, but we don't know how to do that yet," says flu expert Robert Belshe of St. Louis University.

So far, the recommended treatment for H5N1 flu is antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu (oseltamivir), given within 48 hours of first symptoms. Quelling virus reproduction early could calm a cytokine storm. But timely treatment is a problem. "Patients aren't presenting early in the illness," says the CDC's Dr. Uyeki. "If this cytokine storm has already been triggered, antiviral drugs aren't going to turn it off."

More helpful data could be available soon. Just back from bird-flu meetings in Asia, flu researcher Frederick Hayden, a professor of medicine at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, says the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and researchers in Southeast Asia hope to create a clinical-trial network in the region. The group hopes to test old and new antiviral regimens -- eventually in combination with drugs to modulate the immune system.

But until research yields answers, the way to weather the cytokine storm of bird flu is faster diagnosis, timely Tamiflu and intensive care.

When it comes to protecting yourself from the daily threat of viral and bacterial invaders, a strong, rapid and accurate immune system response is critical

SUPER IMMUNE PROTECTION FOR ADULTS, CHILDREN,
PREGNANT MOTHERS AND NEWBORNS

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The discovery of Transfer Factor is the most exciting thing to happen in immunology in decades." William Hennen, Ph.D., Biochemist

Transfer Factor has the ability to educate our T-cell lymphocyte system quickly and efficiently so we don't have serious disease. Richard Bennett, Ph.D., Microbiology, Infectious disease

"I've had some amazing responses with Transfer Factor from some of our patients who have been ill for a long time." Duane Townsend, M.D., Gynecologist Oncologist

Transfer Factors, the Ultimate Immune System Modulator

Find out how you can modulate your immune system to defend against: Colds, Flu, Allergies, Asthma, Chronic Fatigue, Sinusitis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Type 1 Diabetes, Fibromyalgia, Crohn's Disease, Lupus, Psoriasis , Eczema. In many cases, these are Auto Immune Disorders. Therapy for these types of disorders should include an immune system "modulator", such as the Transfer Factor.

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Transfer factor is an immune response activator or inducer - that speeds up your immune system ability to identify and respond to Viral - Bacterial - Parasitic - Fungal invaders.

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It is paradoxical that the same product can both stimulate and suppress immune function but transfer factor function depends on the specific antigens and the status of the immune response. Transfer factor can stimulate the release of T suppressor cells when "down" regulation is necessary due to over activity. Autoimmune diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and allergic reactions are situations where the body's own immune response has over-responded to antigenic stimulation. Transfer factor works in these situations because it can slow down this overactive response.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE FLU