What is Transfer Factor?

When a bacterium, virus, or fungus enters your body, dozens of immune system cells, molecules and body chemicals move into action and work to together to defeat the invader or kill a mutated cell that has become cancer. Once the battle with the pathogens is being won, this army of immune system components knows to quiet down and decrease activity. If they didn’t, you could develop an autoimmune condition such as lupus, MS, type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, or one of more than 100 other autoimmune conditions.

Your immune system has smart cells or smart molecules that regulate all of this activity. One class of these smart peptides is called transfer factor. You have millions of transfer factors in your body right now. Without these regulators, your immune system would be chaotic and less effective. Transfer factors move throughout the body in a soup or team of communication molecules. Transfer factors belong to a class of immune system molecules called cytokines. Cytokines are communication molecules. A great deal of communication takes place within your immune system at all times.

Memory Molecules

Transfer factors also store information about the activities of your immune system. For example, if you had chicken pox as a child you are unlikely to develop this condition again. Why? Chicken pox germs enter your body off and on throughout your life. The reason you do not develop chicken pox again is that your immune system remembers the characteristics of the germ and how it was defeated. This information is stored in a number of immune system components, such as antibodies and transfer factors. Transfer factors are more sophisticated and have a broader range of influence than do antibodies. When your body is attacked or cells mutate, transfer factors regulate a host of immune system components to move into the battle. Once the battle is over, there is a feedback function within the transfer factor soup that alerts the transfer factors that they need to down-regulate the activity.

Recognition and Modulation

Another benefit of the recognition properties of transfer factors is in the case of allergies. An agent that causes allergies should pass through your body without triggering an immune system response. When the recognition function of the immune system does not recognize the dust or pollen as an innocent factor, it attacks it and secretes histamine and other inflammatory agents. Transfer factors assist the immune system in recognizing threats and then can up-regulate its activities or down-regulate its activities. They modulate the immune system. Transfer factors influence the activities of a great number of immune system components, such as natural killer cells, killer T cells, macrophages, monocytes, interferon, a number of interluekins, etc. Some of these cytokines involved in inflammation are regulated by transfer factors. When your transfer factors do not recognize a problem, you get ill with such things as a cold, flu, infection, hepatitis, herpes, allergies, MS, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and many other illnesses. Due to stress, pollution, pesticides, poor diet, genetic factors, mutating germs, etc., your natural body transfer factors do not do the job that they were created to do. What is the difference between a person who develops cancer and one who doesn’t? What is the difference when one person in a family develops the flu but another doesn’t? Why do some people develop heart disease but others living almost exactly the same don’t? The difference is in the immune system.

Scientists in Japan recently conducted a major study of individuals who had low natural killer cell activity. Those who were low in natural killer cell activity developed cancer at a greater rate than individuals with a higher level of natural killer cell activity. The immune system makes all the difference!

Your Immune System - A Priority System

The immune system even affects your energy levels. The immune system is the #1 priority system in your body. Why? Because it fights for your life every day. A simple cold germ could multiply until it killed you if your immune system didn’t stop it. Germs enter your body several times per day. Any one of them could kill you. Your body is constantly under attack from free radicals that mutate cells. Macrophages seek out these mutating cells and kill them. Once the macrophage kills the cell, it secretes a chemical that creates a fibroblast, which is very important to the birth of a new cell.

Since the immune system is the priority system, it gets your body resources first when you are under attack. Think about how you feel when you are ill. The majority of how you feel isn’t from the germ in your body; it is from the reaction of your immune system. Your immune system uses vitamins, minerals, cellular energy, oxygen, hormones, and many of the other body resources. When your body is under attack, the immune system drains the rest of your body of these resources causing you to feel tired and weak.

Even a healthy person needs outside assistance to help his immune system, which is constantly working hard to keep the individual healthy. Consider this. The immune system should function at 60-70% of its capacity so that when a germ enters the body or cells mutate, it can increase its activity quickly to defeat the threat. When the immune system is working at 90-100% of its capacity because of stress, pollution, or some other reason, other systems will suffer and you may develop a health condition or experience premature aging. Transfer factors are very central to all of this activity. Transfer factors are even involved in the level of antioxidants in your body and within your cells such as glutathione, catalase, and ascorbic acid. Your own natural transfer factors are involved in your body’s level of glutathione-S-transferase, the primary detoxification agent in your cells.

Transfer Factors versus Regular Nutrients

Transfer factors work completely differently in your body than nutrients. Each nutrient has a narrow range of function in the immune system. Nutrients can nourish immune system components, act as a catalyst, and turn on certain receptors in immune system cells. Transfer factors regulate all of these immune system components. The influence of transfer factors on a particular immune system component is many times greater than any nutrient. Transfer factors, as smart cells, have feedback functions that nutrients do not have. Transfer factors actually enhance the efficiency of nutrients.

You Have Transfer Factors in Your Body Now, Why Consume More?

Our transfer factors have been conditioned over hundreds and even thousands of years to deal with the environment. Modern society developed over the past hundred years. Before this, your immune system didn’t have to deal with the magnitude of pollution and stress. There were no pesticides or growth hormones in and on our food. We didn’t have fast foods with tons of sugar and trans-fats. Society wasn’t as stressful when our immune systems were developed. Hunting animals for food, as our forefathers did, was far different than today’s world of financial problems, relationship challenges, and attacks against our self-esteem. In response to stress, our bodies pump cortisol into our systems, which suppresses our immune systems.Modern travel has also created a problem for our immune systems. The immune systems of local natives had only the local germ species to deal with. Their immune systems were conditioned to handle those local types of germs. Now we travel around the world within hours, transporting foreign germs into local populations. The immune system is overwhelmed with invaders that it is not familiar with. Our immune systems require assistance to deal with all of these new threats.