Is colostrum (beestings) a worthwhile supplement?

Colostrum (beestings) is the first milk a cow produces after giving birth. It is packed with antibodies, growth factors and other protective substances. That sounds promising, but the question is whether those substances actually do anything in your body after being taken by mouth.

The most concrete benefit shown by research relates to respiratory tract infections in athletes. A number of studies find that athletes who use colostrum get colds or upper respiratory complaints less often. The high concentration of antibodies in colostrum is offered as a possible explanation. The evidence is still thin, however, and the studies vary widely in design.

For the gut, the picture is mixed. Colostrum may reduce the permeability of the intestinal wall (also known as 'leaky gut'), and in children with diarrhoea there are indications of a shorter duration of symptoms. However, a proper meta-analysis was not possible due to large differences between studies, the quality of the research is often low, and the results are not consistently replicated. In inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, colostrum has been studied in laboratory and animal research, but clinical evidence in humans is still lacking, and possible contraindications have also been described.

For the classic longevity themes such as muscle strength, bone density and blood sugar in people aged 35 and over, the evidence is even insufficient: a systematic review found barely any relevant research specifically on colostrum, and the results that do exist contradict one another.

Safety: using colostrum as a supplement alongside your normal diet is presumably safe. Feeding infants exclusively on bovine colostrum instead of breast milk is not recommended, however, because its nutritional composition is not suitable for babies.