April 25 QnA

Here we are again. Hi everybody.

It's been a long time, gents. Yeah, absolutely. And Bren has lost his voice. Bren, you haven't really lost your voice.

No, but if I start talking with a very husky— Hello.

Let's talk like this, like pirates.

We will fight. I like your backdrop, Bren. For those listening on podcast, Bren has shifted locations. You look like you're sitting in a very sunny Sauna?

What are you? Sunny sauna?

Yeah, yeah, it's a nice backdrop actually, looks well.

This is one of those acoustic walls. Oh, get in. So that's there. I'm going to be slowly moving around to find my best spot in the room, I think.

Oh, very good, very good.

I'm going to start with this one because the sun is shining.

It looks good. It's good light actually, it looks nice on you. Yeah. Oh, nice little view, great big window.

That's just Oakley Moor, and I've obviously got that way is up to the west.

Nice. Can I quickly brag about my trip through England recently? I landed on Friday morning and I was escorted by the lovely, beautiful Fiona Murray, who showed me around a nuclear power plant. So I got to see a nuclear power plant, which is awesome. And then following that, on Saturday morning, I got to see some wolves. So if you see my Facebook page, you'll see a couple of pictures. I've got many, many pictures. I just didn't want to dump them all up there. But what an impressive creature. I kind of thought a gray wolf.

Is that the wolf or Fiona? Elaine doesn't listen to this, does she?

She's heard a lot worse. But I've seen wolves when they're wet, and it kind of looks a bit ridiculous. It's I was like, oh God, you're like, you know, where's, where's all the wolves gone? But no, gray wolves are as big as you think they're going to be. They are huge, big claws. When they scratch the ground, it's like, and they just pull all the muck away. Like, they're so impressive. And, uh, uh, so they come up and they're quite dog-like. They'll come up and they'll sniff your face, they'll give you a little bit of a lick, but they really don't care if you're there or not there.

But, uh, I never knew they drove Harley-Davidsons.

Oh, you got that sound? Yeah, I didn't commit their mess, that was just— but, uh, it was so impressive, bloody hell. And then we're just back from expo. Me and Bren were at the expo, and that was very good in Birmingham. That room was stuffed full of people. A little bit of nerves, I have to say. When I got up, nobody detected it, but, you know, a healthy amount of butterflies to stand in front of all those people. And I thought it went okay.

You did really well.

You did really well. Yeah. Do you know, sometimes, lads, when you get a topic and you just know it's a doozy and you just know this, the lads are going to like this, and then when you say some killer points, you check to see their reaction as you say it, desperate for that kind of reassurance that they like that. Oh, so sometimes you look and, yeah, no, you weren't snoring. Then again, you have a quick glance at Bren and Bren's going, oh, that's mildly interesting. And I'm like, yeah, you didn't know that one, did you? Oh, wow.

No, that was the bit where you were slating me at the beginning.

Oh, good.

That was great.

Well, I had a fascinating and really interesting talk with Dr. Ruth Roberts, who might be watching. Perhaps the marvelous and very wise and very knowledgeable Dr. Ruth Roberts. And she came to Bath before she went to the Expo. So we went to the Pump Rooms, which is a very posh kind of Edwardian place, literally this kind of place that I'd never normally go into. And we sat down and there was— this is 10 o'clock in the morning— there was a pianist, right, playing Chopin or goodness knows what. And we had our Eggs Benedict, which is very good, and a very nice pot of tea, a very nice pot of coffee, and it was ridiculously good. I might treat you, lads, if you come to a very posh breakfast.

Tea in the English countryside?

No, no, this is in the middle of London. We're not starting on that one already. Nick and his aristocracy.

Yeah, she said she had a lovely time, Nick.

So she did great. I was really pleased because I've never spoken to her properly, but we really, we had a couple of hours and didn't speak about medicine particularly the whole time. We spoke about everything else in the world. So it was absolutely great. I just want to say a big hello to Reata in South Africa, who is probably listening to this as we speak, and commiserations to her lovely husband Xander, who has to listen to it because Reata is listening to it. So guys, hope you're both very well. Missing you already. And to everybody, these were the guys who hosted us in South Africa, and their hospitality was just astronomical. They pushed out every boat and treated us like royalty. So a thousand million Thanks to you and everybody in South Africa who treated us so well.

It was wonderful.

So you've moved into your new house, Brian. Anyway, this is clearly the final move because that's been quite stressful. You said you were moving.

Oh yeah, we're just about there now. We've just got the final bits of decoration going in and wardrobes and things. And yeah, we'll be doing little bone broth cookery classes, I think, and some things we'll do.

Have you set up the kitchen so that you can film in the kitchen? Oh, that's very clever.

And have you fully internet across the whole thing? So we'll just be plugging the cameras in to—

Oh, words to the wise, I did an entire— I recorded probably 4 hours of stuff. I'm redoing my raw feeding, the basics. We did it in the kitchen, and when we came to listen to the audio for the whole thing. It was terrible because there's so much bounce around the kitchen. So just a word to the wise, if you can dampen—

I've not sorted that, Nick.

These microphones, guys, I highly recommend them.

And have a microphone right next to your mouth. Even have a Madonna thing.

I'm going to plug Rode.

Yes, we've got all those.

The sound is phenomenal.

In every situation?

Well, from the few bits I've done, there's been no complication. So simple to use. You plug the receiver into your phone and you've got two mics. I was outside in the wind talking like 20 meters away from my phone that was clipped to a fence.

Absolutely perfect.

So I'm encouraged because sound is always—

He's this big on the picture, but you can hear everything he says.

The only sad thing about that is they're quite big.

And if you get the—

they'll go like that.

Yeah, that's the price you pay for— if you get the tiny little mics, they don't block out the sound and they don't pick it up as well. So it's like a trade-off. It's like talking to somebody on an earpiece in your ear. It's just not— the sound isn't— so it's tricky filming, but you'll get there. I've just got a graveyard of microphones here beside me. I could never get it right because you need somebody like Pete, our Pete. Just fly Pete over for an afternoon, bring him out for a meal and ask him to help you out, and he'll set up your sound straight away. It's easy for people like that.

Okay. And he recommended The Road.

Okay, guys, we're getting nerdy.

Oh, we are?

Yeah, yeah.

There's some people out there that are saying, will you ask a question?

Just before we get into that, I'm just going to say to people, some people really like the little bit of banter and a little bit of chitchat at the beginning, and some people like us to just jump in, just like Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson, they just go straight into the subject. Could everybody say whether they prefer a bit of chat or not a bit of chat, if you don't mind, just so that we know, obviously.

Yes for chat, no for no chat.

Okay, or no chat, or chat, or no chat, whatever you like.

Okay, just make it obvious. Yeah, and so if you say 50, we will continue with the chat because we quite like it.

And if it's 51 chat, if it's 51 no chat, we're dumping it.

Martina's already voted yes. Chatty chat.

She likes a bit of chat.

Chatty chat. Let the people decide. Listen, thanks everybody on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. That's patreon.com/rawpetmedics. And that's where a lot of the questions are coming in. We have a sea of questions in front of us here. And so we'll get to as many as we can tonight. The lads are going to answer as many as they can. And we also take a few on the Facebook page and whatnot. So thank you to everyone that can afford a price of a cup of tea. On that each month. Keeps us going, keeps us doing this, and we, and we deeply appreciate it. But don't worry if you can't, we're going to be here anyway. So, guys, what's the first question?

I love this. Can I just interrupt one moment? I love all the big people going on about chat. They want more chat. They love—

they want more chat. They don't want us to talk about raw food. They want us to talk about our lives and decorations.

The sensible ones saying Okay, you're allowed to chat for 4 minutes.

Interesting.

Okay, we're already 5 minutes over.

Yeah, we're 10 minutes over, dude. Um, what was he going to say? I was going to say, uh, thank you very much for everybody who joins us on, um, YouTube. That's really, really good. Please click and, and subscribe and, and what have you. That helps the algorithm. Really appreciate that. And also, we are on YouTube. You can tell I haven't done this for a long time because I've got podcasty things. The podcasty things. Yeah, whatever your podcast preference is, we are there.

We can be in your ears. Yes.

Did you say— I'm sorry. No, you said—

here we go again. This is dragging us up into a little chat.

Let me start us off tonight because it's selfish. I have a question about my shaky leg dog. So Dudley is what, about 11 now, I would say. And he had a pretty major back operation when he was 1, where he had the discs fused, you know, that operation from a couple of ruptures. And it was pretty major, your man said. And he said he'd be lucky to come out of this unscathed. And he's been pretty good. He's had a little bit of a wonk in his back and just a little bit of a wonk to his walk and everything's been fine. He has lost a bit of the power to his back legs ever since the operation, never had it. So he couldn't, he couldn't do much of a jump or that kind of thing. But he's been great. But now he's 11 and I have supplements-wise, it's all done. You know, I'm doing as much as I can with food and supplements. And now I'm finding I'm shortening the walk a little bit. He's got a bit of a pant. He's never panted on a walk in his life. I can bring this dog out for 3 hours and he wouldn't pant. Now he's just got a bit of a pant on and he's doing stretch in the morning and I suspect, and I see his back legs are shaking. So one leg used to shake a little bit now and again, which I call it looks like a trapped nerve nearly. Now both legs are kind of shaky and magnesium has been explored. The supplement and the things I've done from a meat, like, you know, you can just assume that I've got those, those bits going in there of things that might help and lube things.

Can you just give us a rundown just for people who've got dogs with shaky legs or they're just investigating? Just give us a rundown of what he gets on the daily basis.

Omega-3 is number one. So I have him on a really high quality diet. So I know his omega-3 is going to be okay. He doesn't get any plant ingredients much. He doesn't get any plant oils. And I supplement him with a bit of fish oil now and again just because it's around and he gets a bit. But my new thing is I've moved to feeding him more mussels. Blue mussels that we get here in Ireland and the UK because I found out that it contains, they contain ETA, the magic omega-3 that we thought only green-lipped mussels have in New Zealand. And we're paying New Zealand oodles and oodles of cash to get this green-lipped mussel powder, which we hope has the fat content in it. And I can just buy 350 grams of mussels lightly cooked in Tesco's for £3, you know, so it doesn't compare. It's just great food. So I've ramped up that and then he's got a hyaluronic acid kind of supplement, like a chondroitin hyaluronic acid drops that I have from, and GLA glucosamine, which I really fell for the advertising for it, and I just hope that was it. I mean, that supplement sounded fab. So I just thought, okay, I'll give him that as well. And I'm just at the point of, look, I could give these dogs, like, I don't know if he's in pain. I haven't done a pain trial with him. He doesn't look like he's in pain. He's a happy boy. So I haven't gone down the route of anti-inflammatories, Boswellia, pain relief, PEA. So I haven't done the pain bit. I was exploring the shaky bit and the first thing I thought about, maybe it's a magnesium thing. And so I have magnesium water from the health shop. You can buy, you can just do salt if you wish, but there's not a lot of magnesium in it. There's a lot of sodium, but there's only— and he never got it, had any interest in electrolyte water and he has no interest in the magnesium water. And so I'm running out now and now I see both his legs are shaking. He's happy out. He just wants to go for his walks. He's not a bother on him. But I feel like I need to do something. What's the next thing? Acupuncture, by the way, I'm booked in for next week. So where, what else comes up for you guys?

Where do you want to go with that?

We know he's had a back injury and that was at what level was it? T13, T12?

I don't know. I don't remember which ones. I'll find out and I'll pull it up if necessary.

So approximately how, where was it at the front, middle, at the back?

Just where the last rib ends and the first bit, the first bit of the spine starts.

T13.

So yeah, T13.

Yeah, that's supposed to be a common, common space.

Very common.

Yeah.

Okay. So a couple of things there. Obviously has had a back injury, has had operation for that back injury, if I remember rightly. There may be some aging issues around that injury site. Any chiropractor has to be careful, you know, for adjustments, you know, in those circumstances. Therefore, I wouldn't be going straight there. But certainly acupuncture is a great call. I would certainly look at what's going on with that. Great that you've done the omega-3s and all of those other supplements. But yeah, I'd be really looking— Hypericum is really great in these circumstances. I am now using LMs because they're really nice and gentle and you can give them constantly as support.

LMs?

Yeah.

So that's a homeopathic LM potency of Hypericum.

So really useful to just start off with and use alongside the acupuncture. It's not going to interfere. It's going to help.

Okay.

Yeah. From that side of things that you're not going to have side effects with all of your other drugs that you may use, CBD, etc. CBD, guys, we did say at one point we were going to talk about CBD to some people.

Oh God, yeah, we have to do it. Oh yeah, I met a great CBD company there at the expo. Yeah.

So, so I would definitely be thinking, you know, we've got to explore, is there an aging thing going on? And that's also then into— I know you can be a little bit senile occasionally. With how he is.

No, no, that's his owner.

Yeah, I was just about to say he likes to copy his dad because he's just like his owner. Yeah. So we've got to just explore those elements. So, and chelation, you know, when you give it, delivering minerals, I know a lot of people go for electrolyte waters and just, you know, sticking, you know, these minerals in water. But, you know, remember, if the body's seeking minerals, it switches up chelation, you know, grabbing certain amino acids which will get to certain organs. And so there's a great one by Biodynamics, I think it is, for, for 7 chelations of magnesium so that it can go from whether it's in the brain, heart, gut, liver, you know, it just goes into the different amino acids that they chelated it to.

So that's nuts. So you can, you can chelate it. So you can buy a magnesium that you think will target a specific area of the body. Yeah.

Oh, but in this case they just say, look, for many people, just take the 7 chelations so that you distribute the magnesium appropriately.

Very fancy. I've never heard of that. I thought the body would just sort it out.

My sister won't mind me saying this, but She has taken for 6 months a magnesium supplement just off the internet, the wild west of Amazon. And we were having a chat about sleep just because of the Health Sensei stuff and things like that. And I said, well, let's start by rather than rocking the boat and changing loads of stuff, let's start with your magnesium supplement. We changed her to this one. She's already 70% better with her sleep.

What would be really interesting would be with that to do some trials whereby they say it's targeted and maybe theoretically it is targeted to your kidneys or your brain, say. But what would be really interesting would be to take the brain-orientated one and see if it noticeably improved sleep, for example, relative to the renal one. And then you can measure, I don't know, magnesium content in urine or something like that. Possibly that would be something that I would like to see. And with great respect to that company, I bet they haven't done that.

I think they have.

They have.

Okay.

Great guy to get on. He is a great guy.

Get him on. Get him on.

You know, he's, he's done a lot in the longevity Sphere talks about— he's got loads of videos on magnesium. Why they do it.

Can you get him on, Ben?

Yeah.

Should we hook him in?

Yeah, yeah, do.

Maybe I've been leaning too much on the ZooPharmacose stuff. I mean, I poorly understand it. I've only done little bits of it and read a book and that's about it. And there probably is an argument for, you know, no, take that magnesium, dog, you know, and let's see if this works for you, you know. So, okay, that's cool. Anything else, Nick? What have you got? What comes to mind?

My thought would be to talk to a good experienced osteopath or chiropractor. Now, Bren is absolutely right that if somebody goes charging in there and they don't know the history of Dudley, which you wouldn't allow them to do, I'm absolutely sure. Yeah, you'd be saying, you know, and the x-rays and everything. I would go to them fairly early on in the day and I would use that in conjunction with the knowledge of the acupuncturist and of the chiropractor or osteopath. I would absolutely do that. Now, I had an interesting conversation this morning with somebody who said, oh, I thought chiropractic was nonsense, but I'm currently seeing an osteopath who is amazing. And I said, actually, my experience is that if you get a good, experienced kind of somebody who works with energetics as well as just the physical stuff. You can't tell, in my experience over many, many years, you can't tell the difference between a very good chiropractor and a very good osteopath, okay? Because they're all working at a physical, but they're also working at kind of an energetic level as well. And I think they're worth their weight in gold. There are very few cases where I find they don't benefit. There's an amazing guy that I use. He's not paying me for this, but I'll say here anyway, and he is called Tony Nevin, N-E-V-I-N, and his, his website is Zooost, Z-O-O-O-S-T. But he's in Cheltenham, so that he's too far away for you. Yeah, he'd be a really interesting guy. Have we had him on? I think I had him on, George, with Raw Raw back in the day. We should get him on. Fascinating. He's the kind of guy who Uh, or he spends all year doing humans and dogs and cats and what have you, and every now and again he'll go down to Whipsnade and do the gorillas down there.

Cool.

Or during the summer he'll go to Africa and treat, uh, rhinos and elephants and giraffes.

Can you imagine a giraffe with a bad neck? Yeah. Isn't it funny that a giraffe has the same amount of bones in his neck as a mouse? Yeah. Isn't that strange?

Oh my God.

If anybody is listening—

Absolutely what I'd expect anyway.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, well, strange for me. It's not what I expected. Much big difference in size. I mean, I don't need to state that.

It's called evolution, love.

Yes. Yeah.

We'll draw a diagram.

I met somebody that— I'm not going to get in this rabbit hole. No, forget it. I'm just going to steer away. Oh, go on. No, I can't.

Go on.

What else is I going to say? Go on. Because anybody listening on Facebook or YouTube, please, and you are in Ireland and you use somebody that Nick was just referring to that is absolutely amazing, I'm more than happy to take a drive out with Duds in the car and chat to them. So if you know of anybody, guys, please post up anywhere in Ireland, Northern Ireland, more than happy, don't care, anywhere in the island, ideally not 4 hours away from Dublin. That'd be great. Anywhere within 2 or 3 hours would be great. But please post up if you've used them and they're great. Stick up their name, stick up the link. I don't mind. And it'd be good for me, but I am aware of 2 or 3 in the club. Magnesium breakthrough.

Bio-Optimizers.

Wow.

Okay.

Can you get him on though, Brent? That would be really good.

Yeah, let's ask him some questions.

Fiona just asked for the— it wasn't Biodynamics, it was Bio-Optimizers.

So Brent's just shown a picture of Bio-Optimizers. What's it called? Magnesium?

It's their magnesium. If you just look for the 7-chelations. Yeah, it's the easiest way to remember.

Phendermine works for a mineral company.

Just put it up just once again because people always miss it the first time.

Oh, come on. All right, all right, come on. I'll get it back. I've just cancelled it.

It doesn't matter. All right, I can change the subject.

Okay, so during your little spiel there, Conor, you mentioned about green-lipped mussel. There's one of the questions that has been asked this week about green-lipped mussels. Yes, Jane Eastwith has said, is the powdered form of green-lipped mussel better than buying the fresh frozen mussels? I've heard that the concentration of the active substance that helps the joints is higher in the powder and you'd have to use a load of frozen mussels to get the same dose, which could be expensive. I just— can you just reiterate where you are with that?

So with the green-lipped mussel, it's really important that it says extract on it. Brent's just held up a picture there for our podcast.

Magnesium Breakthrough. It's a white pot with a green leaf and a green bit of splurge.

Yeah.

Thanks, Brent.

So with the green-lipped mussel extract, the New Zealand kind of marketing department have done it again, I believe. But, you know, first of all, they said their Manuka honey was better than everybody else's honey, and then they said their lamb was better than our lamb. And now they're saying that their mussels are better than our mussels. And I think whoever is doing the advertising for New Zealand is crushing it. But I was talking to two Swedish vets who are starting off a new enterprise up in Sweden, and they just said casually, what did I know about mussels? And I said, very little. I'm aware of the green-lipped mussel business and I feed frozen mussels here. And they said, are you aware of any nutritional differences between the two? And I said, well, I believe the green-lipped mussels have ETA, this omega-3 you're chasing. And they said, well, are you aware blue mussels do too? And I found one single paper that verified it. Here's the point. At the moment, you can only get green-lipped mussel powder. Nobody's thought to do it with the blue mussels here that we have in Europe. So at the moment, you buy green-lipped mussel powder, and it's essential it says extract at the end of it, okay? Green-lipped mussel extract. It's very unlikely they'll forget to write that on the label because green-lipped mussel powder, to me, the danger is it's after they've squished the mussels, like they've squished the grape to get the wine out, and then you're sold the leftover meat. Which is green-lipped mussel without the fat, sans fat. And so that powder will be fat-free. So you'll have maybe 1% fat on the back of it as opposed to 6 to 16 grams of fat per 100 grams. So you're looking for a fat content of at least 6 grams. Sometimes they're disappointingly low and other times it's up to 12, 14, 16 grams, which would really wag your tail. Fish bait, for example, the green-lipped mussel extract is always 16 grams. It's always sticky. And it's like, yeah, that's what I want. So that's the thing with the green-lipped mussel powder. So there was a lot of of terrible quality green-lipped mussel powders up online. And another trick they're doing is that they'll say 500 milligrams of green-lipped mussel powder or a large capsule for a gram, but the extra in there is not more green-lipped mussel, it's just cellulose and packing powder and all this other stuff that's on the label, and you're not getting more green-lipped mussel at all. So all you care about is the fat content, um, and so it's a little bit of a dangerous industry. As regards price, I don't know because green-lipped mussels whole, not many places you can buy them. You can buy them dehydrated. I would say it would be much of a muchness. At least you get lots of free meat with the green-lipped mussels, so you're not wasting money. But, you know, green-lipped mussel extract would probably be the best way you can do it. They do it in little capsules for humans and it's in an oil, but that means it comes with a carrier oil because it's only a tiny amount you get. So I'm no expert on the prices. I just know green-lipped mussel extract is expensive, but it studies show it works, but those studies haven't been comparing to regular blue mussels.

European mussels. Into that realm of we now know the Wild West of supplement industry out there. It's about time we started doing a thing where we check a supplement out and put a mark on it as to whether we think it's actually got what it says on the tin.

RPM approved.

Fact.

Brilliant. I would be happy with that as a career. That's the sort of stuff that wags my tail. I love learning about the supplement. I love learning about like this magnesium bit. And it's like you can target where magnesium goes in the body. That's going to— I'm going to obsess about that for a couple of weeks. I'm furious I didn't know about it. But like, isn't it so interesting that there is really good versions of supplements that can really help my dog? And then there's supplements that you'll try and then say that magnesium didn't work and you'll throw the idea out when actually it would have worked. Worked had you used the right supplement. So there is huge— the supplement industry is, and particularly when they test the supplements, test the probiotics for pets, test the CBD content, it is so erratic that it's, yeah, it is a little bit worrying and there's nobody out there checking. But there are some good companies, many of them at the expo doing their thing and telling you why and, you know, making an effort to give you nutritional analysis. That is expensive stuff to do. So yeah, there's good ones and there's bad ones for sure.

Well, if you're a supplement company out there, start sending them to Conor. No, yeah, yeah, right.

I think it's, I think it's something that we should, we should, we should chase. So if there are any supplement companies out there and they want to have a chat with us, then we, we would be interested. I would be interested. Yeah, you're right.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, and we will, we'll say we Yeah, yeah, yeah. All three of us have had a look at this product and we all rate it. You know, we can do a 0 to 10 rating or something like that, or a yes or no would be easier. I think we should, we should look at that. So guys, come, come to us, please.

Yeah. So another question, guys. Let's go to one of the Patreon questions. We're half an hour in and we haven't— that was my own question.

Yeah, as always.

Yeah, Karen's got an absolute bucketload of them here. Like, from the top.

Yep. Yep.

How do you help a dog cope? This is Sarah Plum. How do you help a dog cope with stress colitis when everything around them seems to cause them stress? Oh, lovely. That's a good one.

Well, that's to me, that's an imbalance of your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. So you need to start looking at all of the things things that reduce sympathetic, so fight and flight and stuff like that. And you need to start introducing things which are all about rest and digest. And my first point of call is sort out the owner. You need—

straight to the jugular—

de-stress. You need to look at yourself as to how you can increase your parasympathetic empathetic tone, and therefore the dog will follow you. Okay, so that is my main caveat to any treatment options. You know, you need to look at how you are acting and what improves you. So that could be breathwork, it could be meditation, it could be, you know, just walking slowly to do things, you know, just sort of like that. Constant movement, motion, that grounding, you know, being outside barefoot, doing stuff like that. So all of those bits that you can do for your stress, start doing bits of with your dog next to you. Let your dog see what you're doing. You'll be amazed how many copy you.

That's a good point, Brady.

Just to reemphasize that the, because I found this very confusing initially when I was at college being taught physiology in second year, the sympathetic sounds like it's kind of all cozy and lovely, but actually the sympathetic nervous system is fight and flight.

So it's like this.

That's the sympathetic. Maybe it's sympathetic because it allows you to live in those kind of situations. And the parasympathetic, which is a crazy name, is basically just the opposite of that, which, as Brent says, is about rest and relax. Terrible names, you know, and digest and reproduction. It's the kind of things that you don't need when you're running away from a saber-toothed tiger.

I was avoiding the reproduction bit.

Well, it's physiology. You're allowed to talk about reproduction when you're talking about physiology.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was sitting down with a girl from Hungary there, Mira. Hello if you're listening. And she's just started off joining the K9 Nutrition group, and I she's going to be a pal of ours. And I was telling her my story about Dudley and where I'm the high energy in the house. And so Dudley is— and the things that kind of irritated me about Dudley are actually the things I probably— I'm irritated about myself about, you know. So this was pointed out to me by Eile Fisher one day. It was so painfully obvious. I am that energy in the room, not the dog. And the dog is the mirror. And I'm telling her the story, what to say. Bloody hell, I was a bit hard on Dudley mentally, kind of thinking he was scatty. It's like, well, I'm scatty. The dog relaxes when I leave, Elaine says. He said he was depressed. I said, no, that's what a normal dog looks like anyway. And she goes, I can't believe you're telling me this story. And she opens up her phone. Okay, we're just sitting in the airport waiting for a plane. She opens her phone and she holds up her phone and she shows me a book she's reading and it's called Your Dog Is Your Mirror by Kevin Beahan. And none of us have heard of it, I don't think. Well, I certainly haven't heard of it. And it's exactly what Bren said. This book, Your Dog Is Your Mirror, whatever's going on, he's showing you that's what's going on, buddy. And that gets much deeper. It goes past behavior, it goes into sickness, but you can imagine gut flora, IBS, IBD, That's the polyvagal theory, touches on that.

That's where I got all of that from. That's where I started looking into it was because across all mammals, we recognize, you know, all of those levels of emotion within all our other fellow mammalian species. You show pictures to kids of other species and that's what they're feeling.

Yeah.

You can pretty much get that. And you can do the same with chimpanzees who can sign, will recognize it, you know, all the way through to gorillas, to the primates. But, you know, dogs will recognize it. You know, that's all of those sort of things that you will see across all mammalian species. Okay.

Yeah.

It's backwards.

It's a front.

I am back to front. That is my life. My life is back.

Just while you're looking for that— oh, here we go. Your Dog is Your Mirror. That's very interesting.

Yeah, that's going to be interesting.

Yeah, yeah. Just a thought about Dudley and his shaky legs. Have a look, there is a wonderful woman called Sarah Fisher, and she's written books about Tellington Touch or T. Okay, so Tellington Touch is one reference, and then there's another thing called T and then another T-E-A-M. Yeah. And this is a bit like, I don't know, it's kind of re-education of the nervous system. You'd have to look at the detail. It's pretty simple. You'd love it. You'd absolutely love it. And she is not far from Bristol Airport. So if you think of it, that's only what, 2 hours from you? Yeah. And she does courses. So I would advertise her.

She's a guide dog. They made us do a Talent and Touch. So I was tidying under— I don't know what the Tenebis. That's new to me, but it's the same.

I think it's just another brand.

Yeah. And just quickly before we leave the colitis bit behind, asides that, asides, let's put, let's asides that bit that we talked about.

Sympathetic, parasympathetic. Yeah, yeah. I would say CBD. CBD.

But unresolved colitis, where are you going to? Maybe, you know, have we explored everything here? This could be a conventional diet that hasn't explored every option for resolving colitis and now it's recurring. So what comes to mind disease-wise for recurring colitis?

Well, is the diet not right? Is she giving some proteins which are not really quite right, which means that the gut is more easily tipped down into pathology? In the question, she actually does say stress kicks it off. Stress colitis when everything seems to cause him stress. Well, I would just be saying if he has a relatively calm— do you see an improvement in the gut and is it an absolute correspondence? And if it is, then I'd be looking at if he's a COVID baby, yeah, born between, you know, 2020, '21, '22, '23 maybe, then there could be kind of, you know, everybody went stir crazy together. And so that would be something I would definitely be very strongly looking at homeopathics. You know, if he's been stressy ever since he got attacked in the park, then there's an Aconite for ailments from sudden shock, panic. That's really, really useful.

I'm really surprised that neither of you've talked about this, but really, if they've got stress colitis and everything stresses him out, you might be wanting to think about an FMT. Because you can change the microbiome quickly. And the microbiome is one of the biggest things which will influence what's going on in the nerve system. So you can, you know, the neurotransmitters that will change, you know, and I have seen that. I've got a wonderful Westie case that I can remember that was almost neurotic, almost autistic in how neurotic it was. And we did an FMT on that, and within a week it was a different dog.

The behavioral changes are real. Just look up the anecdotal stories and some of the studies, and not a whole lot on the study side of things. The studies are really convincing, unbelievable with behavior. People pick it up, and it's going to be the same in dogs. So yeah, that's a, that's a good idea too for a quick bandage.

Can you just go through the practicalities of that, Brent, uh, just in the last 7 minutes?

Just, you know, somebody asked me for your practice, but yeah. We do. And literally, I mean, we could do a whole episode on this, but let's talk practicalities. Lots of people talk about crapshoots. Robin Chutkan did this as a gastroenterologist on the human side in the States, top-notch Chicago hospital, I think she was. And she did loads of this in the early 2000s. And they were taking crapules for months, if not years, to try and get the change to hold, because as soon as they'd stop them, they would flip back, they would revert. And so she then in her book talks about, because I think her daughter started to exhibit some post-vaccine issues and a load of stuff. And then she goes through this whole process. The reason they wrote the book together was around the fact that they experienced colonics to change the microbiome. So literally to look at colonics and there are ways to reduce the bacterial overgrowth. So we've talked about Transl in the past. There are the RVC currently are talking about giving 2 weeks of antibiotics. I couldn't believe the— it was a ridiculous lecture because on the very first section, he was talking about anywhere for 3 days of metronidazole will cause dysbiosis in dogs. 1 day of metronidazole will cause dysbiosis in cats. Okay. And he, you know, absolutely lambasting the use of antibiotics for these. He talked about how brilliant just fecal microbial transplants were for treating parvovirus. So literally just a single enema to treat parvovirus was resolving the cases far quicker than anything else that they were looking at.

Yeah, fab.

But what they were doing, they were giving like 2 weeks of antibiotics for these longer-term cases and then doing a fecal microbial transplant. And they were giving full anesthesia and then using an endoscope to implant.

No, no, no, no, surely not.

And you don't need to do that. I have worked out and it's really easy. You can make the poo soups. They use glycerin so you can freeze it and you know, the freezing doesn't affect what's going on in that microbiome stuff. But I used aloe vera and got the same results.

So, you know, same results with freezing or same results with the fridge?

Both. But also being able to freeze it and still getting the same results so that you're not having to create a new one each time. But you create this poo soup. I use a spigoted end, so rather than a lure end, so it's big enough that you don't have to really fine, you know, grind everything and filter it, because they filter, they put a filter paper in and literally put it through a sieve and filter it out so it's a liquid that they can pump in. You don't need to do any of that. You can literally grate it into a soup, a thick soup.

Grate it into a soup. What's a tough old process? You'd have to be a nurse to do that bit.

Yeah.

If they don't get the lid on right, it goes everywhere. But literally, you can draw that up and literally 10ml per kilo is enough to deliver. And you can use a lamb feeding tube. We'll generally deliver it at least 18 inches up into the colon.

Which is just a tube with a rounded soft end and a hole just behind the lead end.

No fatter than a pen. Okay. So if you think a thermometer going up into the rectum, it's no fatter than that to go in. And you can post that in with lubrication all the way up and then implant that at 10 mL per kilo. And that generally delivers a rich poo soup. And because they're still conscious, you can sit them back into a kennel. They don't leak. Whereas if they're coming around from an anesthetic, what was the commonest thing that happened at the RVC? They squirt out all of the poo soup. Keep on recovery.

So how long, how long would they hold this in? Surely it feels uncomfortable.

How long would they? So they generally hold it in, and remember, a lot of the fluid— the big thing about the large intestine is fluid balance, so it will absorb the fluid. So effectively, they will just sit there, reabsorb the excess fluid, and then it just sits and mixes in. And you can give them 2 to 3 hours before you take them out to the loo. And they're good to go.

Wow.

Be nice and settled. You can repeat it 7 days later according to the RVC data. If you feel that it's not held enough, their records show repeating it 7 days later. And actually, Robin Tuckham does talk about a repeat a month later in humans.

Margot Robbins says the same thing. You might have to do it a few times.

So those are options. To do, but you don't have to even sedate them in many cases unless they're absolutely ferocious. Most of them will really tolerate a tube like that. So it's doable. And somebody at the conference this weekend asked who does them. You know, Conor neglected to say that I do. I was really disappointed.

Oh dear.

I mean, it's a bad man. Oh, sorry.

Yeah.

From a point of view of, yeah, it's— I don't know why more people aren't doing them, seeing results.

Yeah, there's one study out there comparing crap seals to, um, you know, um, kind of, uh, poo soup kind of versions of the bum. And, uh, colonics— it's not— is it? You can't call it a colonic, can you? What would you call that?

What's the— colonic is actually putting stuff into the colon.

Yeah, enemas, per rectum, use of, uh, of a material usually to cause you know, evacuation of the bowel, something like that. But, but, you know, truly, if you're doing a colonic, you're putting it up as far as you can into the colon.

Yeah.

Okay. So they found no difference in humans when they do it. So the crap seals offer a kind of— if you don't have a vet near you, you're not near a brand, and there's not many vets doing this the same way as people want to find someone to do a, you know, simple kind of gunnadal sparing techniques when they're neutering their pets. These vets aren't near them, so you can buy the crab seals in. There's two companies in the US that do it: Animal Biome and Legacy Biome. Animal Biome struggled to get in since Brexit, and so you've got Legacy Biome as an option. But rumor has it that there's a UK option popping up soon, and so they're working on it and they'll do their best. And I can't imagine— I would question the RCVS will make it too easy for them.

It's interesting you say they found no difference, but how soon after and how many times after using the crapshaws?

Yeah, yeah, good. I'll look into that.

I see so many cases that have tried the crapshaw option and literally within a month of stopping taking the crapshaws, they change, they're brilliant.

Yeah.

And within a month of stopping the crapshaws, okay, change back.

I've got a good few people, so that's a good question. I'm going to find out because they've really worked for the troublesome cases where, you know, they're tricky and, and you don't know what else to do. And you get to this, okay, break glass, take this FMT, and it's worked so well in so many people, but I don't know for how long. So I'm going to email those people that took FMT. That'll be easy for me to find my emails and I'm going to ask them. So it'll be interesting about rebound after that.

The thing about comparing the crap seals with the, with the, with the enema root, it is logical that the— when you go up the backside and you're delivering it into the colon at a high concentration.

Yeah, makes most sense.

It's going to be orders of magnitude higher than these capsules going into the stomach, getting blasted by stomach acid and then being, you know, partially digested as they go down through the small intestine, which is no place for poo really, any more than the stomach is. And then there's going to be a dilution effect and there's going to be, you know, antibodies are going to be hitting them. And so it might be that you need to give the capsules on a regular basis because that's a tiny trickle actually hitting the colon, which is not substantial enough to recolonize the colon. That would be my interpretation.

The capsules are in time release capsules, so they don't open until they get to the intestines. And you give the capsules for 30 days. You only give one enema. So it's, it's, it's— you have an advantage. Yeah, so who knows. Uh, I'd much rather go for a colonic and not have to think about it.

There is— if you break those capsules in, you know, the States, they were finding if you break them, and many owners were breaking them, sprinkling them, the dogs were biting through them, um, then immediately they were saying they just really aren't that effective.

Oh no, they'll get annihilated. That's what the stomach acids do, especially the dog stomach acids, raw-fed dogs. They'll pulverize them. That's why if you're giving standard over-the-counter probiotics, lactobacillus and bifido, which is really the lion's share of the over-the-counter probiotics, you know why? Because they breathe oxygen and they're not anaerobic. And so they don't— they're the ones we can make, and bacillus. So we can make those. So we study those because we can make them in a lab. But 90% of your biome is anaerobic bacteria. So we're just supplementing the 10% and using the studies from that going, look, they've improved a bit. We don't know what we're doing. But yeah, so when you're giving those bacteria like lactobacillus and bifido, studies show if you put them in liquid beforehand, little spoon of yogurt, say, you know, full fat probiotic plain yogurt and a bit of water and you make up a little yogurty drink and you make up your own gut drink and you put your probiotic in 15 minutes for the probiotic to wake up because they're dehydrated. So they're just ready to go. They're freeze dried and they wake up after 15 minutes and then after another few minutes they get eating. Nom nom nom nom nom. And when they eat, they poo out their wonderful postbiotics and into the liquid. So your animal— so you drink that away from dinnertime to keep it away from stomach acids and foosh into the stomach, which doesn't hold onto liquids, and that goes straight into the intestines. So you get this much bigger release of life to get straight to the war zone. So if you have a small intestinal bacteria, like right up the top of the intestines, it's a wonderful way of taking probiotics. That's why kefir and things like that probably really work because they're liquids and they get straight in there.

And you want low fat, low protein, protein. So that liquid should also be low fat, low protein.

Yeah, actually, yes, yes, to the low fat bit. That's a good idea. I don't know if you just dilute it with water, you're going to turn a high fat yogurt into low fat. Yeah, what's wrong with protein?

Anything that stimulates the release of stomach acid. So anything that is going to signal the stomach to release acid, you want to remove from that.

Oh, that's clever. Yeah, I like that. That's cool.

Yeah, but again, I'd say if you put 10% yogurt and 90% water.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, no, but that's—

you've then got low fat and low protein.

Yeah, I'm agreeing with you there. Yeah, I'm saying for those people that go, okay, you know, oh, I'll just get like a, you know, with some meat—

don't give it with meat.

Creamy.

Yeah, you know, broth, liquid, broth, liquid would be great.

High fat or whatever. Anyway, the point being, those are the things to avoid.

Yeah, good. I think we got through 2 questions tonight.

2 more questions. 3.

Let's do one more over on Patreon. There's so many here.

Could we also just say a big shout out? We have been asked. You know, we're going out to Orlando in a couple of weeks. We're looking forward to seeing all of you guys that are attending. I believe it's going to be a rather large occasion. I hope my voice is a little bit more projectile by then, but I'm sure it will be.

I can go on for an extra hour if you want.

That's good. I'll need to catch up with my sleep.

Yes, indeed.

Unfortunately, I can't rely on you delivering a good talk.

They're listening, Bram. We save this stuff for private. Let's jump on the Patreon, guys. We're 10 to 8 here. And yeah, yeah, let's do that.

Okay, we'll do 10 minutes overall.

And we'll see you all next week.

Yeah, fabulous. What are we doing? Let's do CBD next week.

We have to do CBD.

Let's do CBD next week. We're done. We're done.

Perfectly. Properly.

Okay.

All right.

Brilliant.

Thanks, guys.

See you. See you.