April '24 QnA

He's gone to feed more herring to the seal. And the reason, guys, guys, welcome to Raw Pet Medics and all that kind of stuff. But Brady just went to make a cup of tea for himself. And while he was out of the room, we heard him cough because he's had a bad cough and all sorts. And it sounded like a seal. So I said, oh, Brady's got a new seal.

I missed the start of that.

Excuse me.

And you missed the start of the show. It's a good job you didn't walk in, do your normal thing, and put your shirt on.

Yeah.

Oh, good evening everyone. It's great to see you all. And don't forget, if you want to join us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics supporters for— I would say the price of a pint would be much more preferable than a cup of tea, especially up in Yorkshire where a pint's more like a fiver and not £1.75. So I would just say we do appreciate all of those of you who support us and are giving generously so that we can actually get some broadcasts out to you all. And Thank you to Nick and Conor is back this week, actually alive. He's fighting-ish, fighting fit, but we will see what happens through the show.

Yeah, see if they can survive. Yeah, I'll be the last man standing, I'll bet you. And thank you to all our podcast people. You can find our podcast on all the major podcasts media, so you can take us on your walks when you walk the dog, and I'm sure that's a very exciting prospect for you.

Did anything exciting happen to you guys during the week that you wish to report?

No, not me, not really. Still just, you know, it was so tsunami-esque when I came back from holidays that I'm just about coming to the other side of that. Oh boy, yeah, oh boy. But there you go, it's a nice problem to have. There's lots of interest. It's not nice that there's so many sick dogs, but you know, it's great to be able to turn many of those guys around with food and simple modifications. How about you guys, anything exciting?

Well, I do. Yeah, hang on there one second. One second. I'll let you know.

Hang on.

Oh, I don't know whether I want to see this.

He's giving all his secrets away. Oh, oh no. He's going to have glasses. Is it your birthday?

It was my birthday yesterday.

Oh my goodness. Sorry, I didn't know.

This is my unhappy birthday face.

Again. I did this last year, guys.

Nobody said a word.

I was waiting.

I was waiting.

By the door. Nothing.

We're all so poorly and catching up that I don't think that's not good. Again, we remembered at the beginning of April, everybody thought it was the 1st of April, must be Conor's birthday. It would make sense.

Yeah, I missed it by 29 days. But yeah, the 29th of April, guys. That's the 29th of April. The world changed.

I hope all of you fans out there are going to remember and remind us.

Yeah, please remind us. Yeah, halfway through April, remind us that Brady's, Brady's birthday. And what did you get for your birthday? Oh no, no, I remember you got a lung infection and a kidney infection.

I did. For your birthday. Yeah, I got antibiotics. I got, I got this. I got this from the kids. Holly made this for me. Holly made a dog with some rainbow ears. So that's hanging off my light. And, uh, got a pair of shades, another pair of shades. I do like a pair of shades and I go through them a lot very quickly. I don't know why I lose them quickly. So, um, yeah, pair of shades and a few clothes and that kind of thing. And then I went, uh, probably back to bed. But, uh, yeah, so that was it. My Elaine makes— Elaine makes this chocolate cake, it's called the chocolate Guinness cake. And if nobody really knows what that is, they have to check it out. It's a Nigella Lawson recipe. And it's like the, the base is kind of a, kind of like a soggy, dark, blacky brown sponge, and on top is this white kind of cottage cheesy cream. Oh my God, it's the nicest thing in the world. You wouldn't like it, Nick, of course, but most normal people, it's just— it is just the best. I can't imagine— it's helped me recover from my, my illness. I was on antibiotics there for 5 days, um, just really— I kind of fought it a bit. I said, no, I'm not going to take these, and then the GP was like, you have a kidney infection, you have a lung infection, just take the bloody antibiotics, you'll be fine. Yeah, yeah.

So, um, probiotics—

talk my probiotics with it and not at the same time. So, uh, if you're taking your antibiotics and probiotics, it's best to separate them a little bit. So that's what I did. So I followed my own advice and I sprinkled them into a little bit of a yogurty drink, and I felt like I was creating my own little fermented drink. And then I knocked that back along with nettle tea. Rita Hogan was over here— good timing for Rita Hogan to be here— so she brought me down to Health Shop and she picked up a few bits and then I proceeded to give the cold to her and she's doing her tour of Europe, you know, kind of.

With your cold?

With my illness. So she did not see much of Denmark, let me tell you. So yeah, I'm probably giving away the trade secrets there. Anyway, I'm on the foot. And how about you, Bren? Are you back off the ropes?

On the mend, on the mend, definitely on the mend. So yeah, just left with a bit of a cough and Yeah, just totally, totally over that now. I did separate myself off as much as I could from the rest of the staff at the practice just to try and stem the flow of it flooding around the place. But there's so much going around, everybody's blaming everybody else.

Yeah, there's a lot of us.

I mean, I went in the next day and thoroughly put it at the door of one of the nurses. You were ill last week, must be you.

Yeah. Ah, look, what can you do? I mean, you're walking around for the first 3 or 4 days, you don't know you have it, and you've got a little bit of a cough. I'll have a bit of a cough. You're at your height of infection there, and, you know, by the time you realize and you're laying on your back, it's, it's done spreading, I'd say. At that stage, you're just suffering.

Okay, boys, are we going to do some Q&As here?

Let's do some Q&As.

I've got, I've got a list in front of me. I'm very happy to sing them out for you. First one is from Martina Cassidy. She's a Patreon. And we've got, uh, we've got 1, 2, 3, 4 Patreon members who have some very interesting questions. Martina says, I would like to know the importance of enzymes and what enzymes really are and where we find them. Now, oh, that's a potentially very, very, very, very, very— that's a week's worth of work there, but let's see what we can knock out in, in 10 minutes, boys. So Oh, they did the basic ones. Okay.

I'm not sure I can actually tell you exactly what an enzyme is.

Can I give you a definition of an enzyme?

Yeah.

So I would say an enzyme is a protein which basically speeds up the reaction that would otherwise could happen naturally just through two molecules interacting with each other. But an enzyme actively takes those two and pushes them together in a set way, which gives you a product which is useful to the body or bacterium or whatever is making that enzyme. They can be both found in the digestive system for the action of splitting up things as well. It's not just about putting them together, it's producing a product. So that product could be by splitting something down, or it could be by putting something together. It's also found inside the body. So sorting out other tissues, maybe helping create ATP, for an example, for energy in cells. That's put together by an enzyme. Okay, so it can have cofactors. So we can consider things like coenzyme Q10 or selenium or zinc, magnesium. These are molecules that will plug onto that protein and speed the process up. And that's roughly the definition without going into much more detail about what an enzyme time.

Nice. Just some philosophical thoughts there. I read somewhere, and this is really scraping and I didn't prep this and I should have done, that life would not be possible without enzymes. I think that's fairly obvious, or it would be so slow we'd still be back in bacterial soup, yeah, as we were for several billion years. But even bacteria have enzymes to make things happen at a decent rate. And as regards you two, it's Why does the body produce pyrexia, fever? And the answer is that for every degree that you raise your body temperature, and that is a very healthy thing to do in most circumstances as long as it doesn't go out of control, you increase the rate of enzymatic action by about 10 times. Can you remember that from A-level biology?

No, there isn't.

Yeah, it may not be 10 times, maybe 8 times, but it significantly enhances your metabolic approach to pathogens.

And do you know how many calories it takes to raise your body by that degree? Do you know?

That's fantastic. No, um, the definition of a calorie, steam engine thing. Calorie, wasn't it?

Yeah, 1 milliliter of water by 1 degree. Yeah, that is a calorie. So a kilocalorie is 1 liter by 1 degree.

That's the amount of energy required. Yeah, okay.

So, so how much energy for a body? Because I did a lot of sweating there.

I think you contain The thing is, if you just sit and do absolutely nothing all day, the activity of your brain and general metabolic health will drain. Just doing zero all day for 24 hours, you will still burn, what, 1,400 calories? Yeah, it's quite a lot.

Yeah. When you think of all the things that batteries can do. Okay, so your batteries can give you lights and charge your phone and everything. The one thing batteries don't give you is heat because it takes so much energy to produce a little bit of heat. So you don't get a battery-charged heater too easy. It's not something that's readily available. If you leave the battery on in your car in the olden days and pump hot air into your car, as we did when we were sitting there one time, your battery goes flat very, very quickly. So it takes a huge amount of energy to heat up. So it does make me think I lost 3 kilos there in that 6 days. I didn't eat for 6 days. I did a lot of sweating and I lost 3 kilos of weight. And I was like, wow. Yeah. So I can only imagine that's half a kilo a day. No, I wasn't eating. I imagine I'm terribly dehydrated, so I could probably put on 2 kilos of water in a heartbeat. But still, you know, I bet you a lot of that was lost to heat generation because I was just sweating all the time. Imagine how much energy it would take to raise my body temperature and keep it up there all the time. Yeah.

And then there's obviously some complexities of insulation and things like that.

Yeah.

If your body tries to insulate itself, you know, obviously by the erection of your hairs. Oh, you don't have any. Oh, double jab.

You've got extra insulation. And you've got no hair. So there we go.

That's great.

Thanks a million.

Love it.

The enzyme thing is interesting. Look, there's different types of enzymes, as the lads have said. And as aware of that as I was, I can't say I was totally familiar, but the digestive enzymes are the ones that people are most familiar with. They are released by your pancreas. And so you've got digestive enzymes for breaking down proteins and lipids and carbohydrates. So you've got your proteases and your your trypsin, trypsinogen, and lipase for your lipids, and your amylase here. So that's great, and you also produce a bit of amylase from your saliva. But there's other places that produce enzymes. You've got your liver produces some enzymes because it needs it for breaking down toxins, and there's a really critical enzyme for breaking down DNA. I never knew enzymes had any role in that. So not that I doubt the lads, but there's enzymes produced all around the body. In fact, there's enzymes involved in absolutely everything when you look at the the list here, but a really interesting enzyme was this DAO enzyme. Nick, do you want to have a quick chat about that? It's actually produced by the stomach lining. And it's interesting with this DAO enzyme that when you've got IBD and a very irritated, irritable bowel, your ability to produce DAO is inhibited. So they reckon this might be one of the reasons when you eat histamine-loaded foods, DAO is the enzyme that's needed to break down histamine loaded foods. And so if you are in IBD mode and you don't have this DAO enzyme, so you'll see in a lot of enzyme products for dogs with digestive issues or humans, DAO enzyme is added to that. So I thought that was kind of interesting because it's one of the enzymes you would never consider produced by your gut lining. And so it naturally brings me on to this question, Ben, is there a difference between human digestive enzymes and canine digestive enzymes that you buy over the counter to pop into your dog's food should they have a pancreas issue?

Honestly, the minimal differences, you've got to remember, these are mammalian enzymes. Okay? We share our genetic code, what do they say, 90% with a fly? And you've got to think how much more we share our genetic code with our mammalian friends. So I think you've got to understand that those enzymes are very similar and absolutely our dogs have those enzymes that you've just talked about. Have you been reading the references that I've sent you? You thought I was making up letters before with genetic codes.

Yeah, Dirty Genes is the name of the book though. I did remember that in my haze. I haven't got it yet.

So it's in there, but you've just cheated and gone to look for the research, haven't you?

That's what it is. Yeah, just give me the baby, not the birth.

So I think from, you know, yeah, those enzymes are going to be found. And this is why the whole thing about amylase, you know, is there the genetic code for amylase within dogs? Sure, but so are so many other genetic codes. Is it going to be active for dogs? Well, actually, how much do they actually produce out of that? How much is that gene switched off versus being switched on? I think Nikki Kammack came up with a good stat on that actually, although the genetic code's there, it's not actually producing very much. So that's one aspect. And the other thing is, if you don't chew your food to masticate it into a bolus and put the amylase in at that very beginning part and have pre-stomachs which aren't acidifying the food and deactivating the proteins and enzymes, if you don't have all of that, that amylase would be pointless anyway in the saliva. So we know that the majority of saliva is just about lubrication of food down the throat of dogs and cats. That's what it's there for. It's get it down as quickly as you can.

Yeah, guys, I think what we should do is Axelsson, you know, the Axelsson Nature, I think it was a letter or it wasn't an official paper, But I'd love to spend one episode doing— going through that in real detail. Do you fancy?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we should do that.

We should, because it's a mainstay of the big food corporations saying, look, there is— there are carbohydrate genes in domestic dogs that we don't find in wild dogs, therefore they're omnivores, therefore let's feed them loads of kibble, you know.

So are you going to have a debate on this with Mike Davis, wasn't that— was that thing— did that end up—

no, that ended up happening.

He pulled out, I think, the night before.

Oh my word, again?

Yeah, I spent a good bit of time getting ready for that and going through every single reference that I was given, uh, so, um, didn't say anything about it live. Too, too much of a class act. We can let you say it now. So, uh, yeah, so like at the end, so I'm thinking, so there's a part, there's a type of, um, a pancreatic issue we haven't really given much scope to, which is EPI, which we must come to. We said we were going to do a show on this, so exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. And this is a classic sign would be really, really sloppy poos where your dog's just not digesting his food properly. And at the quick test of this to see if your dog is EPI, you cannot remedy these dogs' poos. You just, no matter what you do, changing from diet from Billy to Jack, nothing helps. The very quick, simple test is changing nothing else in the couple of days beforehand, add some digestive enzymes to his food. And so if you will get an answer immediately, like within one poo, you will see, oh my God, that almost looks like a normal poo. And so if all you've changed was digestive enzymes, it suggests that was the issue, which leads you to this EPI kind of. So that is something we need to talk about. There's some cool— there's a lady doing a lot of work in the EPI. So if that was— that the lady's question answered, guys?

Oh yeah, very comprehensively.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally good.

It's such a big topic, Martina. It's a great question.

I asked, I asked Bren, Nick, is there any difference between canine and human digestive enzymes when it comes to adding something to the dog's food if they need it?

I don't think so. I use human vegetarian digestive enzymes simply because many of the dogs that I see have a lot of protein sensitivities, so I go for the vegetarian because a lot of the enzymes, the digestive enzymes, come from porcine sources, and if the dog does have EPI, i.e., a sluggish pancreas, but also has a bit of pork sensitivity, then you put the enzyme in, it does loads of great work. Yeah, 10 steps forward. But if they've got a pork sensitivity, then it's 10 steps back. And so you go, oh, maybe it's not EPI.

Yeah, cool.

I have a useful addition for that, but we should save it for EPI when we do.

Yeah, let's do EPI. There was another one that we were going to do later Tics.

Oh yeah, a lot of questions on tics.

Let's do a whole show on tics. Yeah, in May next month maybe.

Yeah, let's get on it. Yeah, this is, this is tic time. So yeah, let's do it. I think that's kind of an annual thing really to do that, just to beat off the tic questions. Yeah, lots of juicy stuff on that enormous subject. Okay, cool. That's tics, EPI. Somebody's making a note, I'm sure, somewhere. What's the next question, Nick?

I think we can probably do this quite briefly. But Liz Hannam says, thank you, Liz, for the question. What are your thoughts on ECO Neem Oil? I've had very good results treating itchy skin on my dog. And I've had a look at ECO Neem and essentially it's a, it's a neem oil preparation. Neem oil is as a direct indica, which is, it's a common shrub in India. And in India, they use it for absolutely everything. It's antiparasitic, it's antibacterial, it's antiviral. Men take it because it will reduce fertility as well, actually taking the leaves. Yeah. So it's got massive, massive use. Every village in India.

Doesn't fill me with confidence about health if it diminishes fertility.

It's like, yeah, maybe a pharmaceutical effect and not kind of just screwing your entire reproductive capability. So Not really sure there, but so—

not sure I want to rub it where they're saying to rub it.

No, no, you take it, you take it, you take the leaves by mouth, you put it in your curry, and, and you, you're less likely to have, um, uh, children. So, uh, definitely worth a Google. The thing that— so, uh, I, I used to use neem quite a lot. I use it much less so nowadays. And yes, using something topical on the skin that has, has an infection I think is potentially useful, but what I'd love to just look at very briefly is the causes of itch in the first place. Yeah, I mean, I can go on about this stuff all day long, but, um, so if somebody comes into you and says, uh, my dog is itchy and whenever I use this cream they improve, but I have to keep on using it, what are your thoughts, guys, when you get presented with that kind of presentation.

There's something else going on.

You've not—

yeah, you know, it's just the same with people that add steroid creams. Look, to alleviate a dog's, you know, issues for the purposes of welfare, I get that, you know, it's important to do if you're stopping it getting a secondary infection because it's totally macerating the skin by chewing it. I get that, but ultimately it's a relief, it's not a cure. Okay. And that's the thing to remember. I think if you can apply something and we get this sometimes with some of the Pythium creams and things like that, and it's actually bringing back balance to the microbiome on the skin and then you can stop using it and you don't have to use it again. I get that, that's different. But if you have to continue to use the Pythium, then that suggests there's a constant factor that's causing the imbalance and you therefore have to address that underlying imbalance.

I'd be so surprised if it was neem oil that was doing that because you would always associate neem. We used to use it with diatomaceous earth because I'm not really sold on DE on its own, particularly any sort of dampness and diatomaceous earth as a pest control agent, not great. It's— so we used to mix it with D— with their neem, and we called it D-neem, and it was quite effective, kept things away. And so I like that product sort of. I mean, it was pretty good. It's nowhere near as good as some of those, like, you know, rose geranium oil, which has, you know, but neem has a huge amount of science behind it for parasite control. So if your neem oil was keeping the itch down, that'd be interesting. I wonder what it's keeping at bay. But most of the other things people are coming in on, like antihistamines, and they're putting them in. So why is your dog producing so much histamine? Well, something's constantly going on. You've either got a little fire under the hood usually gut related, you know, or you've got some sort of little contact thing that's bothering the dog constantly. But I blame everything on the gut. Like Bren was saying, if you're constantly using a bandage, there's something going on under the hood. So the very top 2 things is, have you addressed diet? That's number 1. In other words, address the diet, which means fix the gut. And the second thing is, I'm going straight to yeast. I would just do a swab test, go to fecalab.co.uk, £30, swab the dog, tell me it's not yeast. Once you've explored diet and gut, which I believe is the majority, once you've got that tight and the dog is still crazy itchy, tell me that's not a yeast infection between his toes, on his belly. Swab, swab that elephant skin, let me know. And then you, if the test is positive, you know what to do. There's natural solutions for that, including my propythium product. And if it's not, you need a vet, you know.

I would say for the neem, you know, Demodex, you know, you talked about parasites, you know, Demodex, it might bring the Demodex under control for that period, and that's why it seems to work. And then Once you've taken the neem away, the Demodex go, yeah, there's still the imbalance. They start to overproduce, you start to get the inflammation, it goes back to square one.

So yeah, I think the important thing to, to emphasize is that infection on the skin is usually secondary to a primary disease. Okay, so the neem might be useful, but it is, it is dealing with the second team. You need to work on the first team because otherwise the first team keeps driving the second team. Well, and so as Ben says, yeah, you know, help to control that infection, but why is that infection there in the first place? You know, we're all covered in square meters of skin and it doesn't get infected generally, even though it's covered in bacteria and viruses and archaea and yeast and all these things. So what's the difference between the dog who hasn't got a skin infection and the dog who has got a skin infection? The answer is something is driving the imbalance, the infection, such that you need to use a neem or any other type of product. I think that's really, really important.

And so just to answer Liz, who's piped up and said that this has cleared his itch and it literally, you know, they haven't had to use it again, and that's great. That means that, you know, dealing with those secondary infections, whether that be mites, whether that be the bacteria has allowed with time the balance is returned. That's great. That's what we're talking about is with anything, any product, as Nick was saying, if you then have to go back to it repeatedly, then we still haven't got the underlying cause addressed. And that's something to keep going.

I have a product there for anal gland issues. It's called StoolRite. It's seaweed fiber and it's very effective at controlling anal gland issues. But I just want to grab each one of those customers that buys it and says, and tell them like, guys, if you're buying repeated products, you know, you've constantly got anal gland issues because you've got something going on there. It's not normal for your dog to have anal gland issues. That's not, it's just not natural. So something's up. And so you have a little, you know, some sort of a gut issue, maybe a bit of a dysbiosis, inflammation, you know. Is there any other solutions asides constantly using a product like Stool-Rite to keep the anal gland issues? So yeah, I think that's a good point to make. If you're constantly using a product but then there's definitely some clients out there, lads, that have been through the wringer with every single vet. They come to you, you exhaust yourself for a month with everything that you have, and the dogs are still itchy. There's just like, there is no solving. Usually a small, usually a pug, you know, these sort of Frenchies. And it's like, bloody hell, dog, you know, what is this? And so, you know, people, it is extremely stressful for some people to watch their dog suffering. It's like, what else have you got? It's like, I don't I don't really know where else to go, we've checked everything we can.

That's when you send them to Nick.

Yeah, well, Bren, but that's a small proportion. I'd say that's probably 1 in 100.

Oh, you can definitely— where you can't—

yeah, they're itchy despite everything, and that's when you have to really—

what would you say if that anal gland product is adding fiber and that's resolving the issue And actually, would you just say, well, that's adding fiber is legitimately a thing to do to resolve its anal gland issue?

It's crazy. It's anti-inflammatory. It's a seaweed as well. So you'd expect it to be a little bit anti-inflammatory. But I would say, listen, people are having success with psyllium husk fixing anal gland issues and it's just creating a bigger poo, helping with expression. But also psyllium husk is a prebiotic. And so when you're putting in these fibers, you are altering the gut flora in hopefully a positive way. And this is the powers of using prebiotics to fix the dysbiosis. And so nobody's ever looked at any of that kind of stuff. Why are prebiotics so effective at fixing the dysbiosis? Because this dog's gut flora is in bits. You give it a little bit of inulin or a little bit of these guys, and the difference in the dog is unbelievable. I mean, it's just the power of prebiotics, really, maybe even over probiotics for fixing the issue. But yeah, that's a murky world. Cool. We did that question. You said we were going to be brief, Nick. I think that was about 12 minutes. That's us being brief there.

Yeah, okay, uh, that's right. So this is a fascinating, uh, question from Susie Greaves, and this is definitely going to take us to quarter 2. And then maybe we'll do—

we've got a juicy one, I've got a juicy one.

Come on, I've got another Patreon one here as well if you, if you fancy.

But do 5 minutes on us, let's go.

So Susie Greaves, fascinating question: do any of you have any thoughts on whether dogs will regulate their seasons female dogs will regulate their seasons so as not to have one if they are not top bitch. In the wild, I'm guessing there is— this is why only the top wolf or meerkat have pups. Is there anything to suggest that domestic dogs do this too?

Awesome question.

Discuss. Great question.

I don't know the answer to this, guys. I've got no input to this, but I really want to know. I hate not knowing something. So what have you got, lads? I don't know.

I mean, okay, I'd go through instincts of— look, uh, definitely I see bitches cycle together, uh, for a start. I don't often see one being necessarily suppressed. And, you know, there is research. I think, Nick, you might have some, uh, a few little bits. Yeah, here, yeah, I certainly see it in teams that work together. Um, you know, I can definitely steadfastly say that my nurses report that they know when everybody else is cycling within the workplace. So I think from a point of view of do they still cycle? Yes. Do they all have puppies? Well, you do definitely see that there's not 15 puppies in a pack of, you know, 30 wolves. So I would just say, suggest that we do see nanny bitches occur where they will look after the pups as the rest of the pack go off to hunt.

Because they have a season and therefore they have a false pregnancy, therefore they have milk, and so they can look after the alpha bitch's pups. Yeah, so they say. How much of this is just kind of urban myth and how much of this is actual well-researched observational studies? I'm not sure.

I'm going to find the answer to that.

Brady, if you've got it, he's looked at wolves.

Nothing. I'm gonna find it though because it's so interesting. Okay, so what are you saying, guys? What are you agreeing? Are you saying that, um, that, uh, in the wild, uh, in a pack, that the alpha female would be, uh, the only one that comes into estrus, that the other guys don't come into estrus at No, I think they would.

Yeah, but the alpha is going to be more, more fertile for whatever reason. Maybe that was a, you know, a pineal, a some kind of, um, okay, uh, hormonal reasons. She's more, uh, she's more fertile, or maybe she just eats better because she's the alpha. Uh, but the, I think that the others do as well, and there's a degree of synchrony in humans. There's a thing called menstrual synchrony which is called the McClintock Effect. I guess the guy who, or woman who noticed it, probably a woman actually, who noticed it first, or the Wellesley Effect, because as Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers is a book by Robert Sapolsky, and he talks about the Wellesley Effect. And basically this was in the '70s, that Wellesley College in the States all these women came together and they all started cycling together at the same time. Not only that, they didn't just kind of all come together in some kind of democratic way. They cycled with the alpha female in their dorm. Now that is interesting. That is interesting. So I suspect when you've got enough female mammals together, there is a, there is a, a, uh, a synchronous, um, uh, menstrual, or the cycles will coordinate, but they will be deferred to the, to the dominant or the alpha. I'm not sure what you're allowed to say these days.

How did they determine the alpha female within the door?

Well, she'll just be, she'll be the head, the head girl, or she'll be the bossy captain. Of the basketball, the hockey team. Yeah, she's the one that, you know, you're just scared of her.

Yeah, yeah, all the blokes in the college are scared of her as well.

Maybe, or most attracted to her, possibly, you know, Mother Nature saying, you know, she's got great genes, let's get her reproducing, la la la la la.

I love good genes.

Interesting.

Yeah, um, yeah, I would, I would never underestimate the effect of pheromones. My favorite My favorite study, um, is, uh, in— when I was in college, was, um, the— a waiting room, a rectangular-shaped waiting room, and on one of the shorter sides was the desk where the female secretary sat. And then there was like a, uh, you know, chairs along the walls and chairs on the opposite wall, like opposite the, the desk where the lady sat. And when men came into the waiting room, they would all move straight to the end of the room and sit in the chair directly opposite the secretary so they could look at her, uh, and very few males, maybe about 10%, would sit on the opposite walls perpendicular to the secretary so there wouldn't be an eye contact. But the vast majority of males would sit in that chair almost directly opposite, if not one chair each side, really high percentage of males. And the females wouldn't. So the females would sit in the chairs opposite the wall so as not to be in the direct line of eye contact with the secretary because it was seen as confrontational. And then the dude that invented Spanish fly was running this experiment, and he gets— Spanish fly is like a pheromone that, you know, males probably exude from their armpits, or at least the bacteria do, whoever. But he creates this Spanish fly ointment and this pheromone, and he sprays it under the chair that's directly opposite the secretary, where women normally don't sit. And the difference in the seating arrangements— as soon as women would come in, they would gravitate towards the seat, even though it was directly opposite the female secretary, which normally puts them off because of the effect of Spanish fly. Now he's probably selling this ointment because it made everybody go out and buy it. But the effect of this, it just totally swung where women would sit, to the point that the researchers on a note— and I think it was, uh, anyway, one of the notes that they write— and they were saying that even coming home on the bus, like, the bus might be empty, but if a female got on the bus, they'd come and sit in the seat in front of them even though the bus was empty, you know. So pheromones, guys, I don't know why I've gone off on that one. Any excuse to talk about that study. But we have very little understanding of their role. Like, we don't understand because we don't sense it. We don't use our noses anymore, but it's still a really powerful effect. And so we can be corralled and herded based on smells. They used to pump them into supermarkets and all sorts of things.

I think pheromones might play a part with the whole tick issue. Maybe we can examine that, because if you send two dogs into or take two dogs for a walk in the woods, sometimes you can see one dog will come back and they're a tick magnet. They'll have 12 ticks on them. The other dog, maybe a twin, maybe from the same litter, you know, essentially the same, fed the same, same shampoo, la la la regime, is much less attractive to ticks. And you'll see this in humans overnight. So it's the middle of the summer, you're sitting out having drinks with some friends, some people really complain of the mosquitoes and some people say, no, they never touch me. And I find that's really common. And when I'm explaining that some dogs are tick magnets and some dogs are tick, whatever the opposite of a magnet is, repellers, I think that pheromones might have something to do with it. It might be microbiome, skin microbiome, and all those kind of things, but I think there is a difference.

Oh, here's what you are.

Might be heat, maybe CO2.

Maybe we should save this for the tick.

Yeah, let's do it.

Yeah, let's crack on with the next question. Let me ask you, we've got time for one more.

You're gonna like this. There's two lines of thought as to why ticks are more attracted to some people than others. And I know, I know, I have to say it, I have to say it.

I have to say it. That's the teaser for everybody out there.

You've got—

you had a question to ask.

I have a hot take.

Okay, we're gonna look forward to it. Okay, you had a question, Conor?

Uh, I don't know. I'm looking at a cool study here of the effect of neem on different insects, and, uh, bloody hell, really, really fine variations.

Save it for the tick one. Stop it.

Oh yeah, yeah, okay, okay, forget that. That was very good.

Uh, last question. Let's make it— let's make it a quickie. Uh, we've got 5 minutes, so this is short and cool.

Can I stir the pot with one, Nick, and then save your one for, uh, Patreon? Can I stir the pot? Yeah, good idea. Okay, here you go. I was approached by a company who, um, you want a bit of hand doing a few formulations for, for, for a range. And, um, I love all that. I like talking shop. And so we're talking away, uh, they're in a different country, and they said, now, is there any chance you'd help us with a vegetarian product? And I'm like, definitely not. I'm not your person for that. I'm not going to do it. And he goes, just humor me, say I was a vegetarian and not a vegan. So this is my question: say I'm a vegetarian, not a vegan, happy enough to eat some things, just not, uh, too much meat. What would my food look like? What is the most vegetarian food you could make me and still stand over that, or I'm gonna go feed vegan kibble? And I'm like, ooh, that is a tricky question. So it's very unfair to put you guys on the spot, but like we all are on the same page, lots of meat, organ, bone, little bit of plant, okay, that's fine. But how big can that plant ingredient get? So then I started thinking, well, how much eggs will you give to your dog? And he's like, oh yeah, I'll feed eggs. I said, okay, cool. What about little wild fish? And he goes, oh yeah. So I said, okay, you eat sardines, you eat eggs. Oh, we're getting somewhere. And so he asked me, what about goat's milk?

What about fermented?

Yeah, raw milk. Raw milk.

That's a good one. What about— so, so we started thinking about things that aren't meat, okay? And then we started thinking about, uh, you know, like, uh, whey powder and all that kind of stuff. Has nobody ever gone down that road of using—

that's goat's milk.

That's just dried. It's just dried cow milk. That surely is a not the end of the world protein source. Bodybuilders swear by it. It's better than bloody insect protein, surely. And I thought, I wonder how much veg, how much of that stuff you can put in and then say 33% plant matter. I'm thinking that's not a bad vegetarian diet.

I'd be going heavy on mushrooms with a vegetarian diet.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Because That's totally okay. Maybe algae, algal oil, you know, those kind of things.

Although you have the sardines.

But if you've got sardines, that's— yeah, but this is the thing. What does vegetarian mean?

I think they don't want land animals in there. They don't want land animals. Nothing with a pretty face.

That's a bit fishist, isn't it?

It is a fishist thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So fishist, not fascist.

Yes, indeed. Yeah, we hate all fish. So yeah, so I think that's a bit of a vague question, but it was like, okay, what can you do for the vegetarians? I said, no, you're not letting— I'm not going down this path. But if I had to—

mussels, mussels and shellfish. Yeah, a lot of good stuff there. And therefore shrimps and what have you, if your dog can tolerate them. Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff there. But that's not really a vegetarian diet. Vegetarian is, you know, the extreme vegetarian is Nothing is killed.

They need eggs. They need eggs.

Yeah, but then they're— depending on how you look, how much you look into it.

Is the egg fertile? That's the question. Oh yeah, they will eat non-fertilized eggs.

Yeah, but most chickens produce non-fertilized eggs unless you've got a cockerel around, which is a bad idea, I can tell you. I think most lovely creatures, terrible to have in your garden.

I can't imagine, Elaine would just divorce me. I, I don't know much about vegetarians, but I'm pretty sure they hate fish. So I think, yeah, fish would be a— fish, it will be a— will be an okay component. Fish, eggs. Uh, okay, well, listen, I know the person's listening tonight, so I said I'd ask.

So I said, yeah, fish, eggs, uh, raw milk if you can get it. And, and, you know, and if not, maybe milk powder.

Well, like, that is it. That is an animal protein. I know none of us want to talk about this sort of stuff, I know, but I just thought if vegans, you know, got a push, you know, I'm thinking, I wonder Nobody's brought that out yet. Anyway, we don't want to be the people talking about this sort of thing. So Nick, you want to give us a teaser? What's the question going to be over on Patreon?

Oh well, Sean McCormack, who I think is our friend in Taiwan.

Yeah.

Does he have an accent on the A?

Yeah.

Okay. Because it may or may not.

It's called a fada. It's an accent in French.

Oh, God bless him. Right. Okay. How can we tell our vets we don't feed ultra-processed food in such a way that they can understand and respect and doesn't turn them, the vets, against us? I think that's a genius question.

That's a juicy one.

And, and if we've got to know the answer, yeah, we're on a bit on the side, uh, over on patreon.com/rawpetfood. Vetmedics and you will find out how we approach that little problem.

Yeah, great question, Sean.

Nice, cool, sounds good. All right, chaps, are we going to do ticks next week? I mean, it's tick season, it's time to get moving.

Why not, why not? While we're thinking about it, a lot of questions on ticks tonight. Yeah, and you, you'll try and get Wylie's, Richard from Wylie's.

Oh yeah, yeah, right, cool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, I'll be pretty pleased and all that. Yeah, okay, great. Uh, thank you everybody for joining us. It's been absolutely fantastic. Please don't forget that you can support us with a small donation each month by just going to, uh, Patreon and typing in Raw Pet Medics. That's the easiest way of finding it, otherwise you've got to remember that long address. Okay, so just go to Raw Pet Medics. Any contribution is great. It helps us keep the lights on, pays Pete, pays um, our podcast, uh, uh, stuff. And also, uh, we are doing more and more on Instagram and things like that. And so, yeah, we've got, we've got Victoria who helps us with that, and we need to pay her. So it's getting the message out there. We really, really appreciate it. Really appreciate your support on that one. So thank you, everybody, and we'll see you over in Patreon.

Toodle-oo.

Indeed. Take care.

Good night.