There isn’t much a pregnant woman can do to prevent her baby from developing type 1 diabetes, a genetic and environmental disease that can begin during gestation or shortly following birth.

A food as old as mammals themselves is worth considering supplementing during pregnancy and following birth for newborns at risk of inherited and genetic forms of the disease.

Bovine colostrum (BC) is the first food all mammal newborns receive upon birth and is safe to use for healthy women during pregnancy.

An autoimmune disease, this form of diabetes occurs when the body’s immune cells perceive its own insulin-producing organs as an enemy and attack them. Without insulin, the muscle cells can’t take up sugar from the blood. This leads to sugar coating and premature aging of almost all of the body’s organs.

BC supplies proline-rich polypeptides with their own innate intelligence that can down- or up-regulate the immune system. Insulin-like growth factor-I, also found in first-milking colostrum, stimulates the repair of the gut and prevents leakage of dietary proteins that can trigger autoimmune diseases.

BC can be used safely during pregnancy as it is simply a food and women who may have a genetic or familial history of type 1 diabetes should talk with their doctors about its use. Since the mother herself may have diabetes in such instances, it is worth noting the condition requires careful dietary and exercise programs. BC makes a difference in insulin sensitivity. Given time, colostrum has shown in some cases to completely eliminate the need for insulin in cases of type 2 diabetes. But now science says its use may end type 1 diabetes before the child ever is afflicted.

 

BC was tested in a rodent study of both spontaneous and chemically induced models of the disease. Disease progression was evaluated by weekly measurement of blood glucose and by analyses of the pancreas. Among the rodent receiving BC, oral administration “prevented diabetes development in all… models” and “revealed a strong modulation of the immune response.” An analysis of the types of cytokines, which trigger or calm down immune cell responses, they produced revealed BC “disrupted harmful” t-helper cells responses (specifically Th17). The expression of the cytokine IFN-γ was also down-regulated with BC administration, while interleukin-4, a calming cytokine, “was up-regulated in comparison to [the] diabetic group.”

There was even more good news. There was “overall less infiltration of immune cells to the pancreas.” BC “acted on immune cells and halted (auto) aggression towards pancreatic beta cells.” Moreover, BC induced beta cell proliferation. “Hence, this derivative could be tested in diabetes and other similar diseases with aberrant immune response.”

First-milking colostrum, obtained humanely within the first 6 hours of the calves’ birth, is richest in the growth and reparative factors that seem to have profound effects on the developing fetus’s long-term health.