Morning everyone! 

Welcome to another edition of the Doctor’s Note where we talk about what’s on our minds when it comes to your health. This week I want to talk about  IgY (Immunoglobulin Y) antibodies, a great tool for gut health and inflammatory conditions.

When I see someone with an autoimmune disease or sick, I first ask them how their gut functions. Usually, the answer is “not too good”. 

It’s so important to take care of your gut. I say that a lot, but what does it mean? It means that you are paying attention to: 

  1. what you’re eating and how your body digests it, 
  2. how the food, nutrients and vitamins are being absorbed, and
  3. the balance of good bacteria versus bad.

Gut health is also important because of your immune system, which is particularly relevant today when we’re often talking about viruses. Remember that 80% of your immune system is found in the gut. I can’t repeat this enough.

 

IgY for Long Covid 

 

I’ve been working with a supplement called IgY for several months in relation to Covid. It’s amazing some of the things it’s done to help Covid patients, especially those with Long Covid. 

It’s interesting because I was sent some samples of IgY that I used on patients with Long Covid symptoms (i.e., you’ve had Covid symptoms for over one month). If you read a lot about Long Covid, it’s usually related to your gut health or your microbiome balance. So I was already big on prebiotics and probiotics for Long Covid. IgY is an addition to these things.  

The first patient I tried it on had lost their taste and smell and within two hours of taking IgY both taste and smell had returned. The next patient I used IgY on, their taste and smell was back within a couple of days. Another thing I noticed is that it calmed the gut inflammation down (indigestion). 

I’ve seen some dramatic results with IgY! I’m not going to say this is going to work for everybody like that, but it’s something to look into. 

 

How IgY Antibodies Work 

 

Antibodies are produced in your gut in response to an antigen. An antigen is something like a Covid virus. It’s a molecule or substance that provokes a response by your body that tries to get rid of it. We call this a pathogen. For example, the bacteria called staphylococcus (staph) is a pathogenic antigen. The bacteria called salmonella is a pathogenic gut antigen. 

Antibodies that are created in your body are usually termed IgG antibodies. There’s IgG, IgM, and IgA antibodies and they all work in different functions. Your body produces them. They are essential. But we are going to talk about a different kind of antibody in this Note, one that is made by chickens and delivered via powderized eggs. 

It’s kind of exciting!

Think about it. If you could get 26 common antigens that are detrimental to human health (especially gut health) and develop a vaccine for that. And I’m not talking about a shot. 

To do this they come up with an antigen producing antibody from the human and concentrate it in a vaccine. It’s not against one pathogen, it’s formulated against 26 different pathogens.  

You inject the vaccine that has 26 different pathogens (killed pathogens) into a hen that will lay eggs that contain those antibodies against these antigens. These antigens provoke an antibody response against the 26 different pathogens, or antigens, and it goes into that egg. 

Note: A lot of things we do in regards to vaccines are carried by eggs. This is not the new mRNA mechanism. This is the old fashioned way. 

When the hen lays eggs there’s a special way they can extract the good stuff from the egg yoke. They make it into a powder (powderize, sterilize, and pasteurize) and put it in capsule form and chewables. 

When you take this powderized egg protein (hyper immune egg), it does a lot of things to help stimulate your own immune response to all of these different pathogens.

 

  • It improves your gut lining (mucosal lining). Remember, you don’t want to let the bad stuff in and you don’t want to let the good stuff out. Take a lawn for example. You need to remove the weeds so the good grass can grow. Good bacteria in. Bad bacteria out. IgY from egg protein binds to these bad bacteria and won’t let them attach to the mucosal interface, which is where all the action happens. 
  • It also decreases a lot of gut inflammation and helps the body eliminate the pathogens that can get in through the GI tract. 
  • Studies also show how it reduces gut markers like Zonulin, and increases the good ones like DAO. DAO is kind of a counter balance to histamine, which is something that’s produced that causes inflammation. It’s good in low numbers, but when it overacts you get an inflammatory storm that causes more damage than the actual pathogen does (i.e look at what Covid does with the lungs). 

 

Other Uses For IgY

 

IgY is a safe protein egg powder that’s immunized and can deliver these antibodies to your gut which can have so many beneficial effects to your overall well being. 

Other uses (besides calming the gut down and possibly helping shorten Long Covid):

  • Used in infants for diarrhea
  • Studies show it can help improve healing in muscles
  • Improves arthritis
  • Improves muscle wasting in HIV patients 
  • Muscle recovery in athletes 

It decreases the most common inflammatory marker in the blood, which is CRP (C-Reactive Protein). We measure it everyday with the Cleveland Heart Panel. It’s a good measure of inflammation in your body as well as in your heart.  

There are lots of different uses for this IgY protein. It’s a great new tool not only for the gut but perhaps also for recovering from Covid. IgY works great in conjunction with DigestShield to cover all the bases. 

I’m excited to add this to our armamentarium. Do your own research and check this out!