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February 18, 2011
Alternative immune booster
Speakers discuss the benefits of camel milk as a medicine.
BASYA LAYE
It can take $1.3 billion dollars and 13 to 15 years to bring a pharmaceutical drug to market in Canada. And, according to Dr. Brian Bressler, clinical assistant professor of medicine in the gastroenterology division at the University of British Columbia, only one out of every 10,000 molecules tested will make it to Canadians’ medicine cabinets. Of the remedies that do not make it to the clinical trial stage, many are still being investigated using case study and observational analysis, and this is the current situation with camel milk, which has been garnering much attention lately for its potential uses in treating gastroenterological, allergic and immunodeficiency disorders.
Bressler was speaking at a health-care symposium presented at Congregation Schara Tzedeck. He was joined by Vancouver immunologist and allergist Dr. Michael Mandl and keynote speaker Dr. Reuven Yagil, professor emeritus at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University. Yagil was in Vancouver to discuss the possible benefits of using camel milk as an alternative treatment for autism, Crohn’s, diabetes and autoimmune disorders.
The Feb. 9 symposium was organized through the initiative and support of Vancouverites Dina and Shalom Amouyal, who met Yagil in 2006 when their 19-year-old son was facing a life-threatening illness. Their son became gravely ill after becoming sick with a parasite, losing more than 40 pounds and suffering from an immune system collapse. After trying several different treatments, including both alternative and traditional approaches, “we had exhausted all avenues,” wrote Dina Amouyal in an online account of her son’s illness and recovery. “We were watching our son disappear in front of our eyes, and we were helpless!”
Shalom Amouyal met with Yagil while in Israel, after reading about his work with camel milk for food allergies. At wits’ end, the Amouyals decided to try the prescribed dose of camel’s milk to treat their son’s ailments, which Yagil promised would start to show results in a matter of two days. The Amouyals reached out to Canadian politicians, regulatory agencies and border officials to get the milk into Canada, a process that was far from simple.
The improvements were immediately apparent. “After the second day of drinking the unpasteurized camel milk, on the morning of the third day, I heard the most unbelievable sound.... Our son had ascended the stairs from his bedroom to the kitchen with a pace,” Dina recounted. “For the past month, it was painful to hear him drag himself listlessly up those stairs – the trip taking almost 10 minutes.” Thus began their son’s road to recovery.
The structure of the immune system is complicated and a delicate balance is required to have complete wellness. At work in autoimmune disorders is an overreaction that turns on an immune response at inappropriate times, attacking healthy cells and systems, wreaking havoc on a person’s health and well-being.
Several studies have shown that camel milk has strong anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties, said Yagil. The milk has been shown to have some effectiveness treating allergies, which can be innate, if you’re born with them, or acquired (developed over time). It appears that camel milk interrupts the body’s overactive immune response to inappropriate triggers.
Speaking about allergies and the immune system, Mandl confirmed the milk’s curative effect, explaining that drinking the milk interrupts the body’s allergic response, turning on TH1 toll receptor cytokines (hormonal messengers affecting inflammation) and inhibiting TH2 and immunoglobulin E (IgE), the antibodies that play an important part in promoting an allergic response.
The milk produced by members of the camelid family, a species that consists of Bactrian and Dromedary camels, and a South American group that includes alpacas and llamas, is unique from that of other mammals in its ability to rehabilitate the immune system, explained Yagil. The milk contains omega fatty acids, is low in fat (two percent), is easy to digest (containing no lactose and asserting no stress on the liver), has high levels of vitamin C, calcium and iron, and its proteins lack allergens, including casein and lactoglobulin. Its proteins also prove to be protective, Yagil added, providing insulin, immunoglobulins and tissue repair. Antibodies passed through camel milk penetrate areas of dense human tissue that are difficult to reach via other means and molecules.
Another feature that sets camel’s milk apart from cow’s milk – and which is particularly important in the understanding and treatment of gastrointestinal diseases – is that camel milk does not contain casomorphins, a protein found in cow’s milk that has an opioid effect and has been implicated in autoimmune distress expressed in the gut, Yagil said. According to Yagil, the presence of casomorphins in the intestines may also have an impact on the expression of autism, a neurodevelopment disorder that can have deleterious effects on the digestive tract. Yagil’s observational research has shown that the lack of these proteins in camel’s milk may provide a crucial treatment path for that condition.
Another molecule found in cow’s milk is MAP (often shortened to paratuberculosis), a bacterium that is not killed in the pasteurization process and that enters the human intestinal system, or the fetal digestive system through its mother. Though inconclusive, Yagil and other researchers posit that the presence of paratuberculosis is implicated in the development of ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s, an inflammatory bowel disease affecting 400,000 to 600,000 people in North America. While the camel digestive tract often contains this bacterium, Yagil explained, it does not result in a microbial infection, as camel milk contains strong antibacterial properties not contained in cow’s milk.
Camel milk has potentially far-reaching applications for human wellness and can be used as a treatment for liver maladies, including Hepatitis B, cancers of the stomach, gestational diabetes and for chemo-radiation sickness, claimed Yagil, and there are researchers looking into the milk’s effect on HIV/AIDS and coronary heart disease.
Yagil also offered anecdotal evidence of camel milk’s effectiveness from the Bedouin’s traditional use of the milk. “The Bedouin of the world, they claim that when a child was weaned on camel milk, they remained healthy for the rest of their life. Even today, the rich Bedouin still send their kids, once a year for a few weeks, to the Bedouin out in the tents to drink camel milk and, as they say, to build up the immune system. They don’t know much about the immune system and they don’t know about clinical trials, but they know that if you drink camel milk, your kid remains healthy,” he told the capacity crowd in the synagogue’s Wosk Auditorium. Other North African, South Asian and Middle Eastern people have been drinking camel milk for centuries for its health and curative properties, he said.
In its review of the milk’s nutritional advantages, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that camel milk “is a natural and essential food item in areas where there is a scarcity of water and forage.... In Russia, Kazakhstan and India, doctors often prescribe it to convalescing patients while, in Africa, it may be recommended for people living with AIDS.... Research is also ongoing into the role claimed for camel milk in reducing diabetes and coronary heart disease.... Tapping the market for camel milk, however, involves resolving a series of humps in production, collection, processing and marketing.”
These practical issues are what stand in the way of the average Canadian using camel milk as a nutritional supplement or medicine. In Canada, the question of using camel’s milk in any form falls under the purview of Health Canada, which has yet to approve the milk for sale. Efforts are underway to work with Canadian officials to approve the milk’s importation, however. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration passed a 2009 proposal to allow camel milk to be included under the laws governing the sale of dairy and, according to camelmilkusa.com, “the tariff for milk imported into Canada is so high that it makes the camel milk prohibitive to import. Dr. [Millie] Hinkle is lobbying with Canadian officials to reduce the high tariff on the milk and to allow for a special concession for the camel milk.”
According to a recent report, moves by the European Union to approve importation of the milk was an important first step in getting broader approval in the Western world. This same report stated that the FAO estimates the potential world market for camel’s milk to be at least $8 billion Cdn. “With hundreds of millions of potential customers in Arab countries, Africa, Europe and North and South America.... There is a big market to the U.S. and Canada,” said Dr. Ulrich Wernery, a scientist with the Dubai-based Central Veterinary Research Laboratory, in the report. Other issues to be considered by Health Canada in its decision of whether to approve the milk include the potential for foot and mouth disease and concerns about pasteurization, which some claim may reduce the effectiveness of camel milk.
According to Dina Amouyal, getting the camel milk to Vancouver for the course of their son’s treatment was difficult. “I contacted the government and inquired for a permit to ship some medicinal camel milk to our son. I was blocked at every turn,” she wrote. The Amouyals went through a lengthy process to secure the required government permits to import the milk. To add to the complexity, airlines and shipping companies have their own regulations around liability for medicines as well as for dairy products, and it took time to get a shipper to agree to deliver the milk.
At the close of the symposium, Schara Tzedeck’s Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt was asked to tackle the halachic implications of using camel’s milk as a therapy. According to Jewish law, he explained, the barrier to using the milk is that it is not considered kosher because it is a product of a non-kosher animal. While normative commentators have ruled out the use of the milk, however, there may be some latitude around the notion of pikuach nefesh (saving a life) that might allow for its application in certain circumstances or, possibly, with the approval of a patient’s personal rabbi. Rosenblatt stressed that halachah might allow for an exception if scientifically rigorous clinical trials showed the milk’s curative effects to be statistically significant.
All such concerns aside, the Amouyals’ tireless efforts to treat their ailing son with camel milk came to a successful conclusion. “Under the supervision of the attending doctors and specialists, we began our journey to health with treatment of unpasteurized camel milk. Our son drank three-quarters of a cup of camel milk in the morning and three-quarters of a cup at night, and we witnessed one staggering response after another. We were in awe. The effect on [his] IgE level was dramatic and immediate. IgE levels dropped and continued to drop with every blood test,” Dina Amouyal wrote online. Despite the difficult road, she is resolute in her desire to see the potential healing power of camel milk shared with as many people as possible.
While none of the panelists at the symposium tackled such issues as the potential adverse reactions from using camel milk or its possible side effects, Yagil said that his investigations are ongoing. At his Israeli camel farm and treatment centre, he is currently studying camel milk as a nutritional tool in the fight against malnutrition and starvation.
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