Immune Health

Virus Variants: What You Need To Know To Stay Safe

Variants. 

They’re all over the news, and the headlines are pretty alarming.

But the truth is that you’ve been dealing with virus variants your whole life. They're the reason you’ll get dozens of colds over your lifetime. And why the CDC pushes a new flu shot every year.

That’s just the way viruses work: they mutate and change to escape detection by your immune system. And each time they change, your body has to learn to cope with the new versions.

Thankfully, with a little insight into how to arm your body with extra support, your immune system will be able to manage whatever new virus variants come along.

Viruses Create Variants to Outsmart Your Immune System

If there’s one thing that’s constant about viruses, it’s that they constantly change to create new variants. Some of those variants will disappear without even a blip, while others survive for the long haul.

Sometimes a change makes the virus spread more easily, so more people can catch it. Some changes make a virus more infectious, and some can make it less infectious. There are other ways that viruses can change, but all the mutations have something in common: Their number one goal is to evade your immune system and make you sick.

But no matter what kind of variant a virus throws at you, a healthy immune system will eventually figure out how to eliminate them. At the first sign of any antigen (an invading microbe like a pathogen or virus,) a well-functioning body will immediately begin drafting a plan of attack... And all good battle plans typically start with antibodies – special Y-shaped proteins designed to recognize, tag, and show antigens the door.

Your antibodies (also known as immunoglobulins) collect information about the new variant threat so your body can figure out how to defeat it. And the more immunoglobulins your body has available, the quicker your body can come up with an effective response.

Unfortunately, some virus variants can make that process extremely difficult…

coronavirus variants

Drift and Shift: How Viruses Make Things Difficult

Viruses can mutate in two different ways: through drift or through shift.

The first way – called antigenic drift – brings about very small gradual changes in the virus by altering the proteins on its surface. At first, the mutated virus will still be close enough to the original virus that your immune system can recognize and easily fight it off.

Over time, though, all of those small changes add up, causing the virus variants to drift further away from the original. When a big enough antigenic drift occurs, your body may not be able to immediately recognize the new variant and neutralize it. This type of variant is the reason you can get sick from colds and flu every year, but you can also recover fairly quickly. 

The second way – called antigenic shift – creates a huge sudden change in an existing virus. These variants will be unrecognizable to your immune system. And while this type of mutation is much less common, it can make many more people sick.  

But whether your body has to deal with a drift or shift variant, healthy support from your immunoglobulin team can help meet and defeat it.

How Your Immune System Reacts to Variants

Whenever your immune system senses a threat, it sends out immunoglobulin troops as the first line of defense. Immunoglobulin G (known as “IgG”) is the most important and plentiful of those antibody soldiers. 

As you learned above, IgG antibodies all have a basic Y shape. That helps them latch onto antigens sort of like a lock and key. The right key would be a perfect match, but even imperfect matches can still bind to the antigen and capture it. Next, the antibody tries to neutralize and tag the antigen so that your immune system can start to deal with it. 

This system works even when IgG comes across an unknown variant and has an imperfect match. Your immune system still sees the “threat” tag, even if it’s not completely sure how to identify that threat. It then sends out special cells called macrophages that consume anything that’s been tagged by the antibodies, literally eating the cells of the attacking antigen.

While this is going on, other immune cells start to learn everything they can about this new variant. They try to create a perfect match antibody that can immediately neutralize the antigen next time it shows up. 

But none of this can happen without a healthy supply of IgG.

IgG: Your Body’s First Defense 

Your immune system relies heavily on IgG antibodies, which make up around 80% of the germ-fighting cells in  your body. They patrol constantly, trying to capture invading antigens before they can make you sick. And whether it’s a germ they’ve seen before or a new virus variant, your IgG team will fight its hardest.

IgG also plays a key role in strengthening one of your body’s most important defense mechanisms: your gut barrier. Your intestine is lined by a layer of cells – the gut barrier – that acts like a blockade between your gut and your bloodstream. Its main job is making sure nutrients, antioxidants, and other healthy compounds can enter your bloodstream… but viruses, bacteria, and toxins can’t.

Unfortunately, many antigens weaken the gut barrier and damage its protection. That can create things like a leaky gut which allows viruses and toxins – which are normally kept locked safe inside your gut – to escape and enter the bloodstream, causing severe health problems. Luckily, IgG helps support the body's protection and repair of the gut barrier, keeping this amazing defense system strong and effective.

With so many critical functions relying on IgG antibodies, you can see how maximizing your body’s primary protectors could benefit your health. Studies show adding serum-derived bovine immunoglobulin supplements to your daily regimen can help:

A fresh daily supply of IgG can help your immune system keep up with both familiar and emerging threats, so you can stay strong and healthy.

Support Your Immune Health with Ultimate IgG

Just Thrive Ultimate IgG delivers a fresh supply of IgG troops to drive a balanced healthy response and help your body from getting overwhelmed. It also helps regulate your immune system, so that it responds the right way at the right time, helping you to stay healthy no matter what’s going around.

Take action today to support your best and strongest immune response with Just Thrive Ultimate IgG. 

Just Thrive Ultimate IgG