Transfer Factors:
For the Health of Your Pet

What exactly are transfer factors, and are they important to the health of your canine companion?

I recently heard about them when I was writing an article for Natural Dog magazine on the dangers of dog vaccinations.

While I was researching this article, I spoke with several people – including Lisa LaVallee, the woman in my article whose poor dog had become critically ill from vaccines. They all told me about transfer factors' potential to restore the immune system -- both in animals and in people. Read Lisa's vaccination story.

After hearing such amazing testimonials, I just had to find out more.

I learned that our health is directly influenced by our immune system. A balanced and healthy immune system is central to the body's ability to defend against infections.

Today, however, many factors contribute to the weakening of the body's immune defenses (this is true in both animals and humans, as we both live in the same world and are exposed to the same immune-weakening conditions).

This can lead to a variety of immune system disorders.

What Is An Immune Disorder?

An immune system disorder is basically the inability of your immune system to protect you from things that under healthy/normal conditions would be considered routine and surmountable. "Every severe and chronic disease has an immune disorder or dysfunction as its base."

Some Things Your Immune System Is Supposed To Do

The immune system (both in animals and in humans) is the most dynamic body component in determining our state of health or disease. Our immune system constantly interacts with our internal environment, protects us from our external environment and provides the inherent knowledge to sense the difference between friend and foe.

The immune system is constantly neutralizing the boundless toxins in our environment and fighting alien bacteria, fungi, protozoans, and parasites. In addition, cancer cells are always appearing, and the immune system must be able to recognize and destroy them. A normal cell, in addition to destroying invaders, must remember who the invaders are, so that at a later date it can kill similar germs.

An inability to perform these functions will result in an immune disorder and subsequent illness.

Recent research has uncovered a natural agent that can increase the ability of both animals and humans to fight disease and improve the quality of their lives.

What are Transfer Factors?

Transfer factors are an exciting health discovery. They are small immune messenger molecules that are produced by higher organisms. Their role is to transfer immune recognition signals between immune cells and thereby assist in educating naive immune cells about a present or potential danger.

In the harsh and hostile environment in which a baby suddenly finds itself, invading microorganisms could rapidly overcome and destroy the new life.

Nature has provided a procedure to rapidly educate the infant's naive immune system. Prior to delivering a baby, the expectant mother prepares a natural immunizing cocktail that she includes in the first milk (colostrum) she provides to her new baby.

Transfer factors are a key part of this process.

Dr. C. H. Kirkpatrick determined that transfer factors were small peptides of about eight amino acid residues. Eighteen different amino acids have been represented which may combine to create billions of different transfer factors. These very small molecules contain the essence of the immunological message.

Transfer factors do not elicit an allergic response and are not species-specific. What this means is that transfer factors produced by a cow are just as effective in humans as they would be in another cow.

They have been successfully used to treat the following diseases:

• Viral
• Fungal
• Neurological
• Parasitic
• Malignant diseases
• Autoimmune

According to Dr. Will Falconer, DVM - "Most of the chronic diseases we commonly see in animals (and humans) have an immune basis, e.g. diabetes, allergies, asthma, thyroid disease, inflammatory bowel diseases, repeated ear infections, cancer, etc. While they can be cured through the careful use of homeopathy, the road to cure can be a long one -- often years if the animal has had years of disease. Transfer factors can significantly shorten the course, by giving a much needed balancing effect to the immune system. If the immune system is overactive as in allergies, ear infections, asthma, diabetes, or hypothyroidism, Transfer Factor can balance this overactivity so the system is not attacking its own organs, overreacting to things that shouldn’t be perceived as a threat. If, conversely, the immune system is under-active as in mange, parasites, viral infections, or cancer, Transfer Factor Plus can clearly stimulate it to better meet the challenges it needs to be alert to."

What The Immune System Deals With Every Day

The immune systems of both animals and humans must deal with a tremendous number of predators every day, all potentially able to wreak havoc on our bodies and cause disease. These predators include:

Viruses:
There are 4,000 named viruses. Viruses don't respond to antibiotics. Most medical professionals will tell you that they also don't respond very well to anti-viral drugs. Viruses are associated with a multitude of immune disorders.

Bacteria and Antibiotics:
There are billions of bacteria. Bacterial infections are at the root of many problems and can be the cause of many immune disorders. Antibiotics only reduce the level of infection. The body's immune system is still required to finish the battle. Since bacteria are living things, many have mutated, or "learned" to overcome the antibiotics. Today there are bacteria that can even live in bleach.

Antibiotics disturb the normal internal flora and may actually promote recurrent infections by promoting the development of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. This forces doctors to resort to more powerful and potentially more dangerous antibiotics that pose a greater risk of adverse reactions and side effects.

Cancer:
There are 200 different cancers. Cancerous cells are something the immune system fights every day because they appear every day. A routine function of the immune system is clearing cancer cells from the body.

Autoimmune Diseases:
There are 56 autoimmune diseases. Not all immune disorders are the result of immune deficiencies. Some are the result of an immune system gone awry - attacking the body in addition to whatever invader might have triggered the action. Sometimes this is called an overactive or self-attacking immune system. Autoimmune diseases can result from several different defects, or combinations of defects, in the immune system. There are intimate links between infectious agents (viruses, bacteria, etc.) and autoimmunity.

Fungi:
There are more than 100,000 species of fungi. Many are good and useful, while some cause problems and about 400 cause disease and can be at the root of some immune disorders. Recurrent fungi infections are a common sign of depressed immune function.

As you can see, there are a vast amount of enemies (stressors) of the immune system that can cause immune disorders and result in a wide variety of diseases.

Traditionally, medical doctors and veterinarians approach the treatment of illnesses by giving drugs that can actually suppress the immune system.

Transfer factors, enable the body to heal from within by boosting the immune system.

Even if you are giving your pet the best supplements, if his immune system is weakened and not functioning properly, then the supplements may not be working to their optimum ability, if at all.

You Might Also Like:
Benefits of Transfer Factors in Veterinary Medicine
More Information

Return from Transfer Factors to Happy Dog Spot Home