Adapted from episode 119 of The Perfect Stool podcast with Brian Kaufman, RN of Proliant Health & Biologicals and Lindsey Parsons, EdD, and edited for readability.
Lindsey:
I wanted to start by obviously not burying the lead that I have just introduced a new supplement to complement my existing one, Tributyrin-Max, called Serum Bovine Immunoglobulin (SBI) Powder. And I invited Brian on this podcast because he is the SBI expert. So who better to explain what this product does and who it might be good for? So why don’t we start with the types of conditions that SBIs have been studied in, just so people know whether they should be interested in listening further, and then we can dig into the details later?
Brian Kaufman:
Well, good stuff, Lindsey and thanks for having me on. First off, don’t even sweat about jumbling over serum-derived bovine immunoglobulin protein isolate. I mean, it’s a mouthful. So you’ll hear me I’d say hey, we’re the SBI guys, it’s SBI for short, bovine IGs, or serum IGs, whatever you want to call it. But it’s an absolutely amazing natural product that harnesses Immunoglobulin G, the most abundant most polyclonal, which means it bites and binds on to the most bacteria antigens possible. We’ve harnessed that and delivered it to patients to help reduce intestinal inflammation that can be brought on by various antigens or bacteria, fungi, things like that. But it’s fun, what it’s being studied in – I mean, that is such a broad question. If I sent you my Dropbox right now, you would literally . . . first you’d get super giddy, right? Because you’re like, Oh my God, there’s so much here. And then you’d get a little bit anxious because you’re like, where do I start? Because everything from broad-spectrum, diarrhea and IBS part D to Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis to cancer patients that are dealing with intestinal inflammation and digestive problems, either resulting from cancer itself, or from the chemotherapy treatment that we give them, malnutrition. We did an amazing study in Guatemala in the early 2000s, where we were really just trying to tackle malnourishment. Not only did we help their digestive problems, but we saw major increases in lean body mass and overall sense of wellbeing and the ability to thrive. Pediatric IBS, not any direct clinical data, but a very growing amount of data in the dermatology area. We all know that many dermatitis’s, plaque psoriasis, things like that, it starts with an inflammatory response, most of the time originating in the gut. And if we can just mitigate that inflammation, if we can just get in between that, we can probably mitigate a lot of the downstream effects that we feel, which is that diarrhea, bloating, flatulence, just not holding on to your protein and water. And then, of course, the mental aspect that comes from dealing with that type of a lifestyle.
Lindsey:
So it’s a pretty wide gamut of things that it’s useful for.
Brian Kaufman:
Hippocrates said disease begins in the gut. Now, I 100% have believed that but I like to flip it on its head, I believe that life begins in the gut. Gut health is mental health. Gut health is vascular health. Gut health is your entire integrity. A lot of people forget that your skin is the largest body organ you have. And one of the first signs of digestive problems is skin issues.
Lindsey:
I definitely see that in clients and I do find that it’s often the trailing indicator of success in healing the gut, like everything else starts to get better and then finally, the skin does. What got you interested in serum bovine immunoglobulins?
Brian Kaufman:
I started off as like an overall health nut, so to say and then kind of morphed into a total human optimization microbiome nerd. I grew up playing football in South Georgia and wrestling and stuff like that. And I wasn’t always the biggest, strongest, the fastest. But I have leadership skills. And I love to read and didn’t grow up with cable or a video game system. So I read. I read “Eat to Win” when I was in fifth grade, and started making my own versions of Gatorade, and cutting grass so I could buy vitamin D and creatine monohydrate and things like that when I was in middle school. I would do anything nationally to totally optimize my body. And then from there when I was in the army, I started and understood all of my soldiers, whenever we would have issues, whether it was an anxiety thing, or just being tired out in the field or whatever it was, a lot of manifested as digestive health problems. And then moving on from there into being a nurse. That is the common denominator for everything. And so when I’ve met practitioners that are really, really focused on nutrition and balancing the microbiome, in accordance with the other care plans, I saw people get better way faster. And so I said, you know, this is the key, Let food be thy medicine, right? It’s all of these universal old-school truths are still truth today. So that’s kind of how I got here. I am just infatuated with the human body and total human optimization and just living your best life.
Lindsey:
So how long has ImmunoLin been around as a product (ImmunoLin being the ingredient in Serum Bovine Immunoglobulins, the patented ingredient)?
Brian Kaufman:
So the ingredient has actually been around for a long time. It started off with another part of the business that I’m involved in where we fractionate plasma protein and use it for diagnostic kits, like various ELISA tests, pregnancy tests, COVID-19 tests, things like that. It’s used as a blocker. And so it’s kind of a commodity for those types of devices. But a byproduct of that is a concentrated IgG. And some really, really smart agricultural scientists here in Iowa, decided, hey, if we can lyophilize that, turn it into a powder, we can introduce it into animal feed to reduce mortality. At the time in the 80s the mortality for piglets was about 50%. So if the sow had a litter, they were going to lose 50% of that litter automatically. And if you’re trying to obviously meet the high demands of the American food population, you want to reduce mortality. And so they started introducing this super IgG rich powder into the food of these animals and reduced mortality by 90%. 90%!
So a very small group of scientists and people within the LGI family started taking this product just themselves. And eventually 10 years later, some more scientists got involved and said we can make this into a product. And they actually turned into a prescription medical food product indicated for IBS-D and Crohn’s, ulcerative colitis, called Enterogam and it’s available through gastroenterologists. And that was my first introduction to the product. I was working at the Medical College of Georgia. Interesting position where I was running the GI motility center a little bit and also selling broad spectrum antibiotics. And I saw this experimental immunoglobulin being introduced to a patient population and I was like, man, what sleazy drug rep talked to you into this? What is this? I got a quick rundown from the attendings and it just sounded so interesting.
And such a natural way to fight the inflammatory response, which is just to supplement the body with an IgG source that has the acquired immunity to bind and remove many of the antigens that set off the inflammatory response. And I use this analogy a ton. I get some funny looks all the time, I’d go: “If you had a rock in your shoe, how much Percocet would you take to make the pain go away?” And I have all these third or fourth year med students with their short coats looking at me like I just said something crazy, right? Of course you wouldn’t take Percocet, you’d take your shoe off and remove the rock right? Well, modern medicine has taught us to treat the symptoms, when we can just go to the underlying cause and remove that rock, which is that antigen, that bacteria, that fungi, that mold that sets off that inflammatory response and breaks down that gut barrier lining, and which is the true culprit to a lot of our digestive problems, which lead into other things like autoimmunity and Crohn’s disease, and malnutrition and things like that.
Lindsey:
So maybe we should just back up a little bit and talk about what an antibody is, what IgG is, what the other antibody types are.
Brian Kaufman:
There are lots of different antibody types. IgA is one of the most important ones secreted in your salivary glands, and begins your intrinsic immune response to things. The one that we concentrate on is actually IgG. And the reason why we concentrated on IgG is because it’s the most abundant one, easiest one to fractionate, easiest one to concentrate. And also from a broad spectrum person perspective, it’s also the most polyclonal, which means it’s tagged and taught, through acquired immunity, to bind on to the most bacteria, right? So you kind of get the most bang for your buck, so of say, in the IgG antibody game. And antibodies reach out and they seek out and bind on various antigens and remove them from the GI tract before they can set up an inflammatory response. Now, unfortunately, the more insults you have, the more IgG you’ve got to have. And if you’ve got an issue on one side of your body and you’re introduced to something else, or you’re immunosuppressed, you’re essentially the palace guards, right? That’s your antibodies that fight bacteria and stuff. These guys are down but you can supplement them and see major benefit. That’s what you have here with SBIs.
Lindsey:
So what specific types of pathogens is SBI powder active against?
Brian Kaufman:
That we know of right now there’s about 25/30+ pathogens. We’re always testing and that’s why we try to keep our thumb on the pulse of our practitioners and say, hey, tons of great diagnostic tests out there right, now if you come across something that you’re not sure about, let us know. We’ll try to test it here in our labs. But the most common one is going to be LPS, lipopolysaccharide, it actually makes up about 60% of the inflammatory antigens in your microbiome. So when you start supplementing with a serum, bovine IgG product, you’re already going to be harnessing and removing 60% of the bad guys. But again, that’s just the beginning.
Lindsey:
And wait, before you go on that LPS is part of the cell wall of the gram negative bacteria and also produced by them, right?
Brian Kaufman:
Absolutely. So the way that that antibody essentially clings on, it’s not just clinging on to, it obviously holds bacteria, but also pieces of bacteria, and also the very flagella, the thing that actually moves them through the microbiome. I always use this example when I’m counseling young patients. I’m like, hey, have you ever watched those crime movies where you see the bad guy running away and the police officer keeps trying to shoot the bad guy and you always say, oh, shoot the tire? Well, you get to shoot the tire with an SBI product. It’s going to bind that flagellum, the very thing that moves it through.
So various gram negative rods, but one that kind of was my aha moment was C diff particles A and B. If you’re not familiar, C. diff is a just a debilitating, people don’t like to say the word superbug, but overexposure to broad spectrum antibiotics has definitely allowed this bacteria to flourish and wreak havoc on hospitals. But it’s a really, really nasty bug. You see it most often in immunosuppressed populations, especially in the hospital, especially post infectious, so after the use of antibiotics. It’s so debilitating, it’s so expensive to treat. The biggest thing is that mental factor, people can’t come in and visit. They’re on contact precautions; you’ve got to put a NASA suit on to walk in the room to treat them. On average, it can cost about $10,000-12,000 a day to manage. I see the patients inpatient in the hospital. So anything that we can do to give some quality of life back, reduce hospital stay days, and get those patients out of the hospital, it was music to my ears.
So that was probably my biggest aha moment with what this product binds on to, but also various things like E coli, flagella, salmonella, all types of gram negative rods, all types of things that just cause that inflammatory response, which really put patients in this hamster wheel of low grade inflammation. And you put someone . . . I’m sure you’ve dealt with this, where someone says, oh, you know what, I’m here for you to manage this. But no, my gut health is pretty good. And of course, you make it a part of your care plan. They go mad, they never felt better. And what you actually did was healed that leaky gut.
Lindsey:
And what about Candida?
Brian Kaufman:
Oh, absolutely. So this is actually some new data, specifically to fungal components and mold and mycotoxins that we’ve done over the last 18 months. We knew that Candida is a big, big problem. And it’s growing, no pun intended there. But we’ve found that SBI specifically targets binds and removes Candida from the microbiome to allow that gut lining to heal and those tight junction proteins to express and come back together so that you can absorb all your water, your protein and your nutrients and reduce that bloating.
Lindsey:
And what about parasites?
Brian Kaufman:
So parasites are something that is growing right now. Obviously, harvesting parasites, bringing them into your specific lab with animal products, we’re a little hesitant on that, but we are looking at some specific protozoa and other parasites. Especially as we’ve seen anecdotal evidence from physicians internationally, but also most recently at the border, where we have lots of people coming over the Rio Grande, obviously they want to give care, digestive problems being the number one symptom, and utilizing Enterogam there, or one of our SBI products.
Lindsey:
And if someone has an overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria like streptococcus, staphylococcus, do you think IgG would be useful against those overgrowths?
Brian Kaufman:
Absolutely, those are two other ones. Like I said, there’s over 26 various pathogens that they bind on to, and you’ll be able to get a breakdown of every single one of those. I’ll also make sure I furnish one of those cards to you, Lindsey, so that you can put that up on your website, so you know exactly every single one of the pathogens, especially as I know you’re a big fan of all the microbiome testing right now. That’s actually one of the things that I wanted to ask you about while I was on here. There’s been so many breakthroughs in microbiome testing lately. In accordance with your SBI product, what’s your care plan? Are there certain diagnostic tests that you’re doing first? Or last? Like when do you start SBI therapy for your patients?
Lindsey:
I start most people out by doing testing on their microbiome, usually using either the GI Map or I’ve started using a new test called the US Biotek GI-Advanced Profile, and I will see on that whether they have elevated levels or on fire Secretory IgA or deficient Secretory IgA. In both cases, I will educate them about SBIs and suggest that maybe that’s something they want to try. The retesting is more spotty and these tests are expensive. And paying for services like mine that’s not covered by insurance is expensive. So I don’t always get to retest people, but some people of course you do get to retest and honestly SBIs have come more into my practice I would say over the last four or five months, whereas maybe before I was thinking more about herbal anti-microbials. And especially, I’m thinking about them when I see someone who has low commensal bacteria, low levels firmicutes and bacteroidetes, low levels of all the commensals. And I think, the last thing I want to do – and sometimes nonexistent levels of things like Akkermansia muciniphila and Fecalibacterium prausnitzii – the last thing I want to do is give that person any more antimicrobials, you know, unless they have something that really looks like, gosh, that needs killing. So I think about SBIs as like, this is a way to preserve the microbiome, because correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s not going to attack beneficial bacteria.
Brian Kaufman:
Absolutely. Specifically quoted with an acquired immunity from a bovine source to only bind and remove the specific bacteria and fungi and mold that it’s synced up to grab and bind on to. You’re not going to have to worry about any commensal bacteria or probiotics or anything like that. And that’s what one of the great parts about it is, that it’s all reward and no risk unless you have a beef allergy, which is less than a 10th of 1% of the American population. They’re out there, but as a practitioner, I never ran into any of them. That’s also one of the great parts about utilizing this is there’s no drug or food interactions. You don’t have to worry about any kind of polypharmacy or worry about it interacting with the other standard of care that you’ve already deployed. It’s the easy button, right? It’s got one job, go in there, grab the bad guys, get them out. And like you said, clean up the microbiome, allow that gut to heal. What people don’t realize is that it’s like having a cut on your arm, right? It’s never going to heal if it’s consistently being inflamed. And you’ve got to utilize changes in your diet and your stress, but also adding in something like a serum bovine immunoglobulin to grab onto that bacteria allow that gut to heal.
Lindsey:
Yeah. And I think that really points to the question of leaky gut, where it’s been, you know, you look at social media, they make it out as if leaky gut is a thing in and of itself that has no causative factors. It’s just, you’ve got leaky gut, or you don’t have leaky gut. And it’s like, of course, there’s something causing the leaky gut, you have some kind of a gut infection. And so that’s, I assume, the mechanism of action that this addresses leaky gut, by killing whatever that problem is in the gut that you may or may not know the cause of.
Brian Kaufman:
Absolutely, and again, it binds on to tons of different antigens, bacteria, fungi, mycotoxins, we know that mold is a big problem right now. So that’s what we’re doing with some extended research there so that you can’t live your best life. If you’re running on that hamster wheel of low grade inflammation, reduce your antigen uptake, allow the gut barrier heal, allow your body to absorb all the water, protein and nutrients and like I said, life begins in the gut, like Hippocrates says. You’ll see the benefit cognitively, in your physical performance. I mentor bodybuilders and athletes of all kinds. And step one is let’s figure it out. Because it doesn’t matter how much water and protein that you take in, it matters how much you can absorb. And a leaky, inflamed gut will not absorb that water, protein. It will just be shot in and out the other end. And we don’t want that right?
Lindsey:
Yeah. So it makes a lot of sense for someone who’s had some weight loss, along with gut health issues.
Brian Kaufman:
Oh, absolutely. Working with my immunosuppressed population, my elderly population, especially my elderly female population, where there’s a lot of issues with malnourishment, and especially calcium wasting and bone density problems and things like that. The first thing that I want to do is sort out their gut, get them to start absorbing more protein and water and start adding in more nutrient-dense foods. Even adding in creatine monohydrate. Tons of new data out there on the mental health benefits of creatine monohydrate, along with bone density, and water absorption and muscle mass and all that stuff.
Lindsey:
It’s been on my list of supplements to start taking for so long, and I just haven’t gotten around to it because, well for one thing, I have to figure out how to get another powder into myself and I don’t eat smoothies, or have any sort of obvious thing to add it to. But beyond that, I just keep thinking, well when I get off of one of these 10,000 other things I’m taking, I’ll try that one.
Brian Kaufman:
No ma’am. General creatine monohydrate, there’s about four different esters and fun marketing scientific names out there. Just get creatine monohydrate, five grams a day, you can do less, but if you want to hit five grams a day, it’s a great target for the most clinical efficacy and it’s flavorless. Add them into your SBI is what we usually do with my dad and my dad takes SBI and creatine monohydrate every morning, and he mixes it in with unflavored Greek yogurt.
Lindsey:
Oh yeah, if I ate yogurt, that’d be easy. Tell me what the dosing and duration is recommended for SBIs.
Brian Kaufman:
So the great thing about SBI is there’s no non-benefit to having even a little bit. Whether it’s five milligrams or five grams, there’s a benefit that will be sought. Now, the dosing depends a lot of times on the bacterial load. So essentially, how inflamed you believe or gut is or how much contact you’re coming in with various inflammatory antigens, and also your health history. If you regularly never have any GI issues, maybe you travel down south like I do, and have some have some of Nana’s country fried steak and you don’t sleep really well and things like that. You can take this acutely at around two grams a day for 10 days, and you’ll be perfectly fine.
But if this is a lifestyle for you, you’ve had diarrhea every day, five to six times a day, if that’s your norm, or if you’re binge purger, where do you go a day or two constipation, a day or two, diarrhea, that’s 100% a gut barrier dysfunction problem brought on by bacterial antigens that cause inflammation. And what we first need to do is we need to do a total gut reset. In that case, I recommend five grams a day for the first two weeks, and then we jump down to two grams a day after that, take that out to six to eight weeks. The reason why we want to take it out so long is depending on how your gut is, it may take longer to restore that gut barrier lining.
And we need to use higher doses of SBI to shield it from the bacteria so we can allow it to heal. Initial onset of action is usually around the three-week mark. And the reason why that is it takes at least 21 to 26 days for there to be turnover of new tissue in the gut lining, right? So I always say commit eight weeks to this or don’t do it. If you think you’re going to take a pill, it’d be fine the next day. Rome was not built in a day. And neither was your microbiome. Onset of action is usually around three to four weeks, keep that out to eight weeks and then reassess. Now what will happen is most people will go, “wow, this changed my life, I can’t believe that I lived that way before.” And they’ll be just fine. They’ll come off the product after about eight/ten weeks, they’ll be completely fine.
Now there will be a population that after a week, their symptoms come back. And what’s happening there is essentially your body doesn’t make antibodies to fight whatever bacteria or antigen that you’re coming in contact with. In which case you will see people take this product as part of a lifestyle. I managed a Crohn’s patient in the hospital on this product back in 2014. Before I came on with the company, I actually had this patient on 15 to 20 grams a day of this product for the first two or three weeks. She is great lady, she was admitted to the ER probably twice a year with flares; she was one of my frequent fliers. She is still on the product 10 years later. Now, obviously, she’s not taken 15-20 grams a day anymore. In fact, we only did that for about two weeks to get that total gut reset going. And then we were able to slowly wean her down. But she was one of those patients that it’s a lifestyle for her; she takes two grams every other day now.
Lindsey:
And when you say two grams, you’re saying two grams resulting of the IgG or two grams of . . .
Brian Kaufman:
. . . of the total weight product. Yeah, the total weight product, the composition of which is about 92% protein, so it is an isolate. So you will be adding a little bit of protein on there. It’s also got all of the, it’s a complete protein, so all of the BCAAs as well as the EAs, so you will see a protein benefit as well. And it also shows the cleanness of the protein being that it’s an isolate.
Lindsey:
Okay, so people might not know these abbreviations, branched chain amino acids and essential amino acids I assume were the BCAAs and the EAs?
Brian Kaufman:
Yes, that’s correct. Yeah, branched chain amino acids and essential amino acids. It changes the way that the protein is absorbed and taken into the body. It’s a complete protein. So that’s what you want. The overall concentration of IgG is over 50%. And then you have 1%, IgA, and then 5% IgM. And you have another really interesting protein in there, known as bovine serum albumin. Now, a lot of the health practitioners that are listening will understand how crucial and abundant albumin protein is in the body and how much we need it. It’s used to pull fluid and water into specific spaces in the body, and things like that. But what it also does in this instance, it also has an affinity to bind on to heavy metals, which as we know are a real issue in our diets right now and overall daily living, so not only are we learning now the benefits of the IgG in ImmunoLin as far as the binding and removing of inflammatory bacteria, but also the bovine serum albumin has the ability to remove heavy metals, so you see a benefit there.
Lindsey:
Is there any other product on the market like ImmunoLin, or is this the only one?
Brian Kaufman:
There are others. For instance, you’re probably familiar with colostrum.
Lindsey:
Oh well, sure, sure. But that’s not straight IgG.
Brian Kaufman:
No, it’s not straight IgG, it’s much different. It’s about 20% IgG. So less than half of the IgG concentration. It’s also coming from the first milking of the cow. And the other problem. So first let’s say the benefits because there’s some really good benefits, of course, because it can be a really good, valuable tool in your gut health toolbox. It’s very high in IgA, so there are absolutely benefits there. Unfortunately, many of your patient population that has issues with dairy and lactose won’t be able to take that product. Also, there are some issues with the quality and consistency of that product. Colostrum is one of those products that is consistently dinged in the market, as what’s on the label isn’t necessarily in the bottle. Yes, but it can be beneficial, if you find a really high quality source. It’s not going to be as beneficial as taking a serum-based IgG like ImmunoLin, like what you have in your product base, being that it’s half the IgG concentration, half the protein and of course, all the dairy and the lactose. Now there is one other option. And I would say that ImmunoLin is number one, that’s going to be your best source, your highest quality, then you’re going to have colostrum right there in the middle. And then kind of at the bottom, you’re going to have a product called IgY, which is a hyperimmunized egg immunoglobulin. Again, it’s an immunoglobulin source, it can have some benefit, but it’s going to be again less than half the protein concentration, less than half the IgG concentration. And it also that you actually get like 40% of your daily value of cholesterol in one serving. So that can be worrisome for some practitioners recommending as part of your protocol.
Lindsey:
Yeah, I seriously considered whether I should formulate a product with IgY and I decided against it simply because there was so much research already on IgG and SBIs and I just thought I’d much rather go with a product that people knew about, understood, there was already the research there, than something that’s a little bit still unknown and unproven.
Brian Kaufman:
So what’s interesting is actually, ImmunoLin is the newest of those three products. Yeah, I mean ImmunoLin has over 45 human clinical trials, previously only available by prescription. And we did something different, because this has only been available in dietary supplements since 2018, is that while many companies will lead with the marketing, and have one or two clinical trials to back them, we lead with the science first. We’re a biotech company, our brand partners are Merck and Janssen and stuff like that. And we have to lead with the science first before marketing. And so that’s the approach we took. And I think that’s a big part of why we’ve seen such success with this product, on top of the fact that it absolutely works. Go to the underlying cause, reduce intestinal inflammation and watch people get better in front of you.
Lindsey:
Yeah. I meant to ask when we were back talking about the dosing and the duration, so I did see the study, I think there was a study specifically on IBS-D, where the dosing was five and 10 grams, and they compared it and the conclusions were that at the 10 gram dose, the bloating was reduced after six weeks, but not at the five gram dose, which is why I’ve been recommending 10 grams a day for people who have extreme bloating, which describes most of the people I’m dealing with.
Brian Kaufman:
Right. And so here’s some history for you. So when we did that, one of our first IBS-D trials that we did, we concentrated on not just an acute reduction in symptoms like bloating, flatulence, diarrhea, abdominal pain, stuff like that, but the total number of days that were reduced. And we saw reduction by 40 to 60%. I mean, that’s, gosh, if you could get six months of your life back, would you do it? I mean, of course you would, right? And so when we did that study, SIBO was still kind of, well IBS-D being an umbrella of diagnoses, right? The idea of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth was something that was still being kicked around. It wasn’t legitimized yet, and what I believe from my experience, I believe that that group of bloaters actually had SIBO and that by introducing a slightly higher amount of IgG, we were able to harness up all the yeast-loving bacteria that was migrating up large intestine into the small intestine to feast on sugar, and that’s where SIBO comes from, and that by using a slightly higher dose, we can actually corral that group in. Of course, I didn’t come to this conclusion until years later when we did the SIBO trial, and I saw some really, really good success there. And I was like, wow, I bet the arm of people in the original IBS-D study that we had, they actually had SIBO.
Lindsey:
So tell me about the SIBO study.
Brian Kaufman:
Okay. So an awesome gastroenterologist and Professor out of St. Louis University, big on Rifaximin (xifaxan), which is a broad-spectrum antibiotic that was launched specifically for SIBO. The problem is, is that it’s hard to get it covered by insurance, but more importantly, the number one side effects of the medication was diarrhea. You’re trying to fix diarrhea, but you’re giving diarrhea. And also, it’s an antibiotic, right? Antibiotics are amazing. They’ve allowed medicine to transmit leaps and bounds over the last century or two. But while you’re killing the bad guys, you’re also killing the good guys. And when you kill your commensal bacteria, you’re just opening up the gates for bacteria to just ravage you.
Essentially, this doctor who was not a believer in serum bovine immunoglobulin, he had he had an issue and 50% of the patients that he was given this product [Rifaximin] to, it wasn’t working. And then another large population, he couldn’t even get it. So I asked Dr. Weinstock, give me a chance, give me your three toughest patients, your train wrecks, the ones that you look on the schedule, and you’re like, “God, there’s nothing I can do for this person. I’m at my wit’s end,” give me that one. If I fix them, you got to try this more. And guess what? We fixed them. And then you know, he gave me three more, and we fixed them. And then he gave me three more, and we fixed them. And finally we did a study. And so we set it up that way. So the way we started it first is everyone got lactulose breath testing, diagnostic criteria for SIBO. If they were positive, they got standard of care, which is Rifaximin 550 three times a day. When they failed, they went straight to Enterogam, or serum bovine immunoglobulin at 10 grams a day for two weeks, then dropped down to five. If they were negative on lactulose breath tests, they got standard of care when they failed, and 50% of them did, and they went straight into the arm with the 10 grams of SBI for two weeks, then dropped down to five.
Lindsey:
For what length of time, six weeks total?
Brian Kaufman:
Total six weeks of therapy. We saw a 60 to 80% reduction in the bloating and abdominal pain and all the classical symptoms of SIBO.
Lindsey:
And were these only hydrogen positive? Or was this also methane?
Brian Kaufman:
These were both hydrogen and methane positive SIBO testing. And it was a game changer for him. And he was one of those. Obviously, he’s got to be a prudent professor and gastroenterologist. And but when he saw the results, he was like, I’ll never start anyone on a broad-spectrum antibiotic before I can use something that has no side effect profile and hurts no one. Wow. At the end of the day, if the antibody is not activated on bacteria, it’s just broken down into amino acids and absorbed as protein.
Lindsey:
Yeah, so it’s no harm.
Brian Kaufman:
No, you can’t you can’t take too much of it. I know. I tried. I took 100 grams of it one time. I won’t lie. I had some interesting flatulence. But other than that, no issues.
Lindsey:
Okay. And what about trials in Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis?
Brian Kaufman:
Yes, absolutely. Once we started cracking the IBS, we started having those same practitioners go, “Well, hey, if this works in the GI tract only, could it help with my Crohn’s and my also colitis patients? Half the gastroenterologist were like, “No, that doesn’t make sense. It’s not going to block the TNF alpha inflammatory response systemically.” And I was like woah, what if we use biologics to reduce the inflammatory response in a systemic space, and then we use the bovine IgG to reduce the inflammatory response inside the microbiome allowing that layer to heal? What we saw was a drastic reduction in recovery time, a reduction in the concentration of the biologic drugs that we had to give, a reduction in hospital stay days and more people staying in remission longer. So what that means is you throw a flare, and they start you on a biologic drug, you throw them on the serum, bovine immunoglobulin at the same time, you’re going to reduce your time to recovery by four to six weeks.
Lindsey:
And are you doing the same sort of dosing, that 10 grams a day for two weeks, then five, or do you just continue on at that five gram dose if the person is still showing symptoms?
Brian Kaufman:
We want to constantly wean people down because we also want to see where people’s antigen load is and where their healing process is. The beauty of it is, if you wean someone down to a gram a day, and they start to go, “Well, you know, I had diarrhea once over the last 72 hours or twice in the last 72 hours,” maybe we go back up to two grams, and you see what’s best for that patient. We also did a socioeconomic study. We also wanted to see because you know that obviously, hospital stay days are expensive, right? Hospitals are the last place you want to be if you’re really, really sick or really, really hurt, but it’s also the last place you want to be recovering from being sick or really, really hurt. And because we cordoned all the sick people into one place, right, so when you can reduce hospital stay days, you’re helping everyone. We actually saw a socioeconomic study that we did, we saw a reduction in hospital stay days that accumulated to a cost savings between 3000 and 9000 per patient. So saving money, reducing your time in the hospital, just by adding this on.
Lindsey:
To be clear, what is in my SBI product and what is in Enterogam is identical.
Brian Kaufman:
Absolutely, serum bovine immunoglobulin. Yep, absolutely.
Lindsey:
Enterogam being the prescription medical food that people are getting in hospitals.
Brian Kaufman:
So actually, you know, I’ll explain the difference: there is no difference. It’s a dosing difference. So think of it like Motrin, 800, right. 800 milligram ibuprofen by prescription behind the counter, or you can walk down the aisle and go pick up the 200 milligram capsules, same thing. You could go to your gastroenterologist and get a prescription or an order for Enterogam. Or you could just follow the link from your website and buy your product.
Lindsey:
If your gastroenterologist hasn’t heard of Enterogam and doesn’t ever use it, then good luck getting it from him, right?
Brian Kaufman:
Right.
Lindsey:
Yeah. So obviously, there’s a lot of other gut health products on the market, like probiotics and prebiotics and herbal anti-microbials. So how does ImmunoLin relate to those other products?
Brian Kaufman:
Oh, they’re all best friends. They’re all best friends. But here’s the thing. The best thing about friends in the story is the story has got to happen the right way. And if you’re familiar with the five R’s of gut health, the first R is Remove. And that’s why SBI should be initiated. First, we want to remove the bad guys, increase the microbial diversity so that the gut can heal and your commensal bacteria can actually function correctly. Where a lot of people go wrong on their gut health journeys and go “Oh, Good Morning America said I need to take probiotics.” So they go out and they buy a probiotic with 30 billion CFUs right? And they go, “Ah I took for a month, and that didn’t really help me.” Well, that’s because you just added more good guys to the fight; you didn’t remove any of the bad guys.
That’s why immunoglobulins are different. That’s why we’re the only manufacturer of this product in the world. And in a very, very short time it has become the most sought after gut health tool that you can bring into your practice, because it’s the only thing that’s going to go to the underlying cause and remove that bad bacteria. Now, once we remove the bad guys, let’s seed the garden. Now let’s add in your probiotics, right? Now let’s add in your NAC and things like that. Some other things that I’m also a fan of are glutamine. I’m a big fan of glutamine* as far as nursing the microbiome later. I like Epicor*, which is a postbiotic. The FDA and the International Probiotic Association still hasn’t quite figured out what the mechanism of action is for postbiotics or really where they fit in. But we know that there’s a benefit to the microbial diversity and I’ve had a lot of success using Epicor. Also Sunfiber*. As far as probiotics go, this is also an area where we’re still trying to get it right. Everyone’s gut health journey is different. I love spore-based probiotics*, but also know that they don’t work for everyone. I’m also a big fan of n-acetyl glucosamine (NAG)* and n-acetyl glucosamine interacts with the goblet cells and the epithelial lining of the gut and helps produce a little layer of mucus, right. So almost kind of like you get a cut on your arm, you maybe put a Band-Aid on it if you know if you’re going to be out in the elements or something like that. That mucosal layer that’s produced by the goblet cells that were fed by NAG can help with that a little bit, can get you into healing a little bit faster. Big fan of type II collagen*, its benefits transcend more to the skin than the joints and things like that. But they first have to be absorbed by the gut lining. And I’ve had a lot of success with those as well.
Lindsey:
When you take herbal anti microbials or antibiotics, you can have die off or Herxheimer reactions. Does this happen with SBI powder?
Brian Kaufman:
No, it doesn’t, it actually kind of helps with die off. We’ve figured this out by a lot of patients that said, I’m taking probiotics and it’s not helping but I’m going to keep taking them. And I’ll say, don’t stop taking them. Let’s add SBI there and the abdominal pain and some of the bloating they were experiencing was because of die off because there was no microbial diversity. You were just adding more good guys. We added in the SBI, controlled that microbial diversity, we saw some major benefits there.
Lindsey:
So when I started researching what to put on my website about this product, I discovered that these benefits that I wasn’t familiar with, about leaky gut and then the uptake of nutrients and the preservation of lean body mass. So you mentioned that study in in Guatemala, was that the primary one that showed you that or was there another one?
Brian Kaufman:
So that was what started it. We also have done various studies in geriatrics and immunosuppressed populations to include HIV. And what we found is when we were able to heal their gut and increase their protein utilization and uptake, they flourish. They put on lean body mass faster, in fact, no different than what I was telling you about the SIBO trial. I told Dr. Weinstock at St. Louis University I said, “Give me your train wreck man, give me the toughest one”, right and who’s more immunosuppressed than an HIV patient. And we were able to not only reduce their digestive problems and allow them to thrive and enjoy some quality of life, but they started to put on body weight. And then they also started to increase DD4 lymphocyte count and T cell count and things like that, that really, really showed that the body was responding to the standard of care that was being given to them. But a big kickstarter for that was shoring up the gut, reducing that intestinal inflammation, allowing you to absorb the water and the protein and the nutrients that you bring in. And in today’s society where our food is not as nutrient dense as it once was, we need all the other vitamins and protein we can get.
Lindsey:
Yeah. So is it best to take this with food on an empty stomach or does it depend on the situation?
Brian Kaufman:
There’s never a bad time to take it. I usually I’m all about compliance, right? Whatever’s going to ensure that you stay on therapy. And so what I tell people is take it with breakfast and take it with dinner. You’re not going to forget to eat breakfast, you’re not going to forget to eat dinner. If you know that, hey, I take my IgG at these times, you won’t forget. But there’s not a bad time. Anecdotally, I’ve have heard people, practitioners and patients telling them they like to take it at night before bed. Because they feel that because it dwells in the GI tract longer overnight, and it’s going to find more efficiently. I don’t have any clinical proof of that or anything like that. But I say whatever works for you.
Lindsey:
Yeah, no, I think I put on my label to take it with food if you’re if you’re concerned about the incoming pathogens, take it on an empty stomach, if you’re just wanting to treat what’s already in there.
Brian Kaufman:
Oh, good. I was going to ask you that. What do you tell patients to mix it in?
Lindsey:
So I haven’t told anybody how to take it. I was taking it for a while and then I wanted to pay off my investment in the product before I start taking anything. So I have stopped taking it. But I was. I found that it was very easy. If I throw it on a salad and pour it on the dressing and mixed right in and you didn’t notice it at all. That was easy. Sometimes I was sprinkling it on my eggs in the morning but that became a little overwhelming, like it sort of took over, that entire scoop took over that egg.
Brian Kaufman:
It’s flavorless. So it means you can mix it in, right, you can easily mix it in four ounces of water, 20-second, stir and take it down. And I will tell you for anyone that’s listening right now that tries this product, when you first mix it up, you’re going to go ooh, it’s not really going into solution immediately. That is by design. This is a hearty, dense, rich immunoglobulin protein, we want it to survive all the way through the GI tract, so that it can also bind and neutralize antigens, not just in the gut, but also in the large intestine all the way down through to the colon. So I will say give it 20 seconds, stir, and then just take it down. You can mix it in any of your flavored beverages that you like of your choice. If you have soft food issues, you can mix it in yogurt and pudding. That’s how I get my dad to take it; he mixes it is pudding.
Lindsey:
Applesauce, probably.
Brian Kaufman:
Applesauce is great as well. The only thing we tell you not to mix it in is carbonated beverages and alcohol. That’s, that’s about it.
Lindsey:
Or hot things.
Brian Kaufman:
Well, as long as it’s not over 150 degrees, you’re fine. We have lots of people that mix it in like a non-dairy almond creamer. And then once their coffee cools down, they pour it in there. As long as it’s not over 150 degrees, you won’t denature the proteins.
Lindsey:
When I first started to formulate this, I was thinking that this came from colostrum. And it was just sort of some subset of colostrum. But now I understand serum-derived means it’s coming from plasma.
Brian Kaufman:
Absolutely. It’s coming directly from plasma. And that’s one of the reasons why we have the ability to do something that no one else can, is in a pharmaceutical-grade GMP facility, extract plasma from the animal, fractionate it down in a closed loop system. So that it is clean and healthy and free of anything that you don’t want, while also having a super highly-concentrated, dense immunoglobulin, right?
Lindsey:
So that’s why you can say this is dairy-free, because there is no dairy product in it.
Brian Kaufman:
That is correct. Right.
Lindsey:
Okay. The other study you mentioned was about Crohn’s exclusively. Was there another one on ulcerative colitis?
Brian Kaufman:
Absolutely. Check out our web site. Like I said, there are over 45 human clinical trials, close to if not now over 100 manuscripts, either in human clinical research, animal research or bench top research that shows the safety and efficacy of serum bovine immunoglobulin.
Lindsey:
Okay, awesome. Anything else you want to mention before we go?
Brian Kaufman:
Before we go, oh man, this is like my last send off right here? This is, all right, here we go. Number one. If you don’t cook it, it’s not good for you. Unfortunately. I have a cheat day. I love cheesecake and fried foods being born and raised in the south. But I know that if it’s processed, if I didn’t cook it, it’s not good for me. Concentrate on protein, chew your food and listen to your gut. And not just from an intuition perspective, but what you put into it. Utilize immunoglobulins to reduce bacteria, then feed that gut guard with probiotics and nutrient-dense foods. Get lots of sunlight and just enjoy life.
If you are struggling with bloating, gas, burping, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, soft stool, acid reflux, IBS, IBD, SIBO, candida overgrowth, fatigue or migraines and want to get to the bottom of it, that’s what I help my clients with. You’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session with me. We’ll talk about what you’ve been going through and I’ll tell you about my 3- and 5- appointment health coaching programs in which I recommend lab tests, educate you on what the results mean and the protocols used by doctors to fix the problems revealed. Or if you’re ready to jump in right away or can just afford one appointment at a time, you can set up an 1-hour consultation with me.
Learn more about The Perfect Stool brand Serum Bovine Immunoglobulin Powder.
*Product and dispensary links are affiliate links for which I’ll receive a commission. Thanks for your support of the podcast by using these links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.