Dr. Conor Brady, Nick, and Brendan discuss a rare case of canine appendicitis, then explore CBD for veterinary use. They cover extraction methods, dosing (1-5 mg/kg), and clinical evidence: a Waltham study showed 4 mg/kg daily reduced stress markers in dogs during car travel; seizure trials in children found 39-50% reduction in frequency. CBD works best sublingual or with food to improve bioavailability.
Chapters
Are we live?
Oh, we are live.
Excuse me, America. I know America does no cursing.
We guys, we are the All Vet Medics and we don't take ourselves too seriously, but we sometimes talk about serious stuff. And just then we were just talking about Brendan's voice. His voice has been assaulted by all the chemicals in his newly refurbished house. And so I'd like to do a little poll to say how many people there do you think he should keep his new husky Barry White voice and how many people wish him a recovery from these forever chemicals and the other joyful molecules buzzing around his face.
Forever chemicals are suiting you, Brad.
This way. We've got half the women running for the hills, the other half running for bread. No, the other half confused.
Do you want to tell everyone about your exciting appendicitis case, Bren?
Oh yeah, so I've rushed in, so we're literally hot off the press because I was not half an hour ago operating over the other side of Leeds on a dog. And we'd— so the dog had been in a couple of weeks ago, and I'm not going to reveal anything more than that, for some incidents of chewing up a rubber mat. And people were worried, had it swallowed anything or not? And after a load of checks and stuff, nothing was found. Dog recovered absolutely brilliant, no problems whatsoever. And then literally 2 weeks later, it's come in. Yeah, it's about 2 weeks. And it's just not been quite right over this bank holiday weekend, which we've had over in the UK. And so we had a feel and you could feel literally a golf ball-sized, you know, literally hard lump within the caudal abdomen. And so immediately your mind goes to, it swallowed a ball, it's got some foreign body in it, you know.
Avocado pips are crackers.
Yeah, you know, things like that.
Yeah.
So, uh, look, we went through the whole process. The owner is so diligent, you know, and she just knew that things weren't right. And so we just said we had to go in for an operation. And, you know, went in all expecting to find a ball, to take it out, and, you know, be done. And instead we had a really hard swollen cecum. Now the cecum, for most people out there, for a dog of 30 kilos is about the size of your thumb. Okay, so about an inch long and half an inch wide, that sort of level. Centimeters, that's about a centimeter wide and 2 centimeters long, just for those people.
How big is your thumb?
Why, what's yours?
It's yours.
No, no, it's just this bit. That's the caecum there, isn't it? It's just from there.
Oh, I see. Just, they just—
what were these big hands?
Anyway, so just the last little bit. It's a little normal knobble.
Yeah, yeah. So our shock and surprise when we saw this huge golf ball appendix, which literally you could see through the membranes, it had got almost like an L-shaped cutout where the inner layers had split and peeled back.
I was just about to explode.
And you could just see this fragile membrane over the top. And with this, like, you know, you're sort of like you're going into, because I had to then elevate it off the ileum to be able to actually get away that part of the appendix and remove that caecum. So clamp off Suture closed, take it away. Unfortunately, it's like one of those, you know, where you've got to handle the really fragile rubber balloon full of water. You're sort of like, only it's really taut. So you're just waiting for it to go pop. And yeah, well, we got it out, fortunately. Full of the thickest mucoid pus that you can imagine. I mean, it was just literally, they cut it open, it peeled back. And it was just, sorry guys, if you're eating tea.
If you're having your rhubarb and custard.
This is the sort of thing that vets get on with. And literally cut back and it was literally so it could take a swab because this is so rare, you want to know what's going on with this. And it literally was like a thick set jelly custard, crème caramel almost.
You're just ruining multiple desserts there. Just pick and stick with you. Why is it so rare in dogs and quite common in humans?
Well, I guess they generally, they've not got a lot of fibrous material going through. What causes appendicitis? Well, for us raw-fed dogs, we're not going to see as much inflammation in the gut anyway. So we probably don't, I mean, we don't see anywhere near the classic number of GDVs that a standard vet would see. You know what, we're unfortunate if we see a couple a year that if they're not you know, connected to something else as well, like a splenic growth or something like that. Whereas I've got colleagues who will see at least one a month, if not one every fortnight.
The stomach ulcer where it does a flip, very, very dangerous.
Anyway, look, this is a situation, mixed fed dog, you know, really diligent owner, out of the blue. I don't even know why appendicitis would cause, would be a problem in a dog. I can only hypothesize. And I think it is rare. It's the first one I've seen in 30 years. Okay, that's how rare it is.
Did you take pictures?
Yeah, yeah, we took pictures.
Good, good, good.
But I'm not sure where I'm going to post those just yet.
Yeah, not right now. I don't need to see the description.
I'll just give you a warning next time.
Yeah, okay, sorry guys. Anyway, talking of uncomfortable situations.
Yeah, we are Raw Pet Medics. You'll find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics and if you can, price of a cup of tea, we see you and we deeply appreciate you. And so the more the merrier, guys, let me tell you. So please come on in. And if you can, price of a cup of tea keeps us going and doing our things and preparing for this talk tonight. CBD, it's going to be, you know, there's a lot to do with CBD. So we appreciate you if you can. If you can't, don't worry, we'll be here anyway. So who wants to start us off, guys? Do we have— I had this little paragraph on how amazing CBD that somebody else had written. Listen to this for a few lines on how amazing this plant is. Pound for pound, hemp is the most useful, most sustainable, most planet-friendly herb on the planet. It's miraculous. Cannabidiol content aside— CBD, what we're talking about tonight— a single acre of hemp can create as much paper as 4 acres of trees, and it does it in 4 months, growing 4 meters in just 100 days. The seeds are used for medicine, the fiber for bedding, makes tougher paper than wood, stronger clothes than cotton. 50% of the world's pesticides and herbicides are used in the production of cotton. When an acre of hemp can produce as much fiber as 2 to 3 acres of cotton with zero need of pesticides and very little water. Hemp can be used to make strong, durable, environmentally friendly plastic products including plastic bags, durable nappies, lightweight but highly durable car panels, and even a type of concrete. Hemp is highly frost tolerant and can grow pretty much anywhere with no pesticides and very little maintenance. How the hell is this plant not the most famous plant on the planet? I mean, bloody hell, who wants to start—
because it will displace cotton and corn and all those other things. Yeah.
Yeah.
And forestry, you know, Mr. Cynical here as usual.
True.
But I think that's it. It's just too, you know, they used to make, whether they still do, I think they make them out of plastic these days. They used to make pound notes out of hemp.
No way.
Yeah. And so you used to be able to, so it was grown legally in the UK for the for the production of pounds and £5 and what have you.
Yeah, we— I heard that the founding fathers of the US grew hemp. And in fact, if you had land, it was a law that you had to grow hemp. And hemp was such a versatile, known to be awesome product. And it was only really in the 1800s when the cotton ginny thing took off and they started getting a lot of free labor and whatnot down there that they grew that. But you're spot on because what they wanted to do, incriminate CBD the cotton industry started really taking off. But then DuPont made the chemicals for the paper industry, all the crops, and plastics, which were taking off, and hemp could replace all them. William and his mate William Randolph Hearst was the newspaper magnate, MP, owned all the newspapers in the US and pretty much all the woodlands, and he owned all the woodmills. And those two guys team up and say, here, this is going to threaten our business, guys, we need to repress hemp. And so the US Treasury step in, good as they are, created the Bureau of Narcotics just after Prohibition. They wanted to— the guys needed something to do. The Untouchables, the cops that were used to do the whole thing, needed a job. So they hired this disgusting racist of a man, Harry Anslinger, who you can Google at a later point. But he was an awful, awful dude. And he started incriminating the hemp kind of family, the cannabis family, with all sorts of racist shit that he came out with, started pushing movies and all sorts of things. And that was what kept hemp down and kept the cotton industry and the chemical industry and the paper industry going. It wasn't because of any other reason, but some other people were making money and hemp was going to get in the way of that.
Wasn't he the guy who christened it marijuana?
That's right.
Because of— and I can't remember, maybe it was from Maria and John Juana. Yeah, it was basically, it was to make really common, familiar word so that everybody recognized it.
Yeah.
And they were able to then say, this is a really bad thing.
Yeah. He said, this is a quote from Anslinger, 1937, if you can believe it, 90 years ago. Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind. Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. Awesome. Uh, marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes. That's only 90 years ago. That, that's what, that was what worked, you know what I mean? And then Reefer Madness, that movie in the '50s came out. Have you ever seen that on YouTube? You need to see how these are all funded by the cotton industry and DuPont Chemicals, who still exist today and make billions and billions poisoning the earth and making shit. Uh, I just thought, my God, how interesting. What a, what an amazing plant that they got rid of. And that's even before we get into the medicinal side of things. But, uh, Yeah. Where are you with this, Brian? Did you say you were the first somebody, somebody to do something, something with CBD?
That was so vague. And I'm now really worried because you said, this is the— how is this not the most famous plant ever? And I was saying, you obviously mixed in different circles to when I was a child. Yeah.
Anyway, it's quite famous. Yeah.
But anyway, so from a point of view of When CBD first became a thing that we wanted to talk about in the veterinary industry, um, which was when? Oh no, well, I can't remember when it came in. So I think there was about 10 years ago, um, no, longer than that, longer than that, 15, 15 years ago.
Okay.
And then there was a little bit of pushback because the VMD didn't like the fact that it was ultimately as good as gabapentin for pain relief, etc. And all of a sudden they brought in that actually there was too much unregulated use of CBD oil out there, and it obviously had a medical effect, that they started demanding that you train as a practice to understand what level of medicine CBD were and, you know, the interferences with other drugs. Because there was no datasheet, they wanted to know that you'd done all the research and you could advise people appropriately on the interactions. So it was a control basically that's been put in. So we had to register as having done all of the training and had people within the practice so you could put a little plaque up saying that we were an official CBD authenticated practice.
Just a big hash leaf on the front.
Yeah, that's right. It literally, the certificate had a little hash leaf on it.
Cool.
And you were the first ones, Brent?
No, no, I wouldn't say we were the very first. We were among the first. Yeah, that bothered to do it because so many vets out there just went, that's too much hassle and I'm not interested.
Which is exactly why they put it in in the first place.
Why they put it in there.
Guys, what's the difference between a Conspiracy theory and the truth.
A month.
About 6 months.
Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Okay, so on a slightly brighter note, getting away from this conspiratorial stuff, which I love, but we will move on.
What other—
Somebody's already calling you out, saying, oh, here we are, conspiracy theorist. You're more than a little bit. Me? No, you.
I'm wearing that as a badge now. I'm gonna wear that on the I'm with you all the way.
Absolutely. Okay, right boys, so what other plants, uh, can you derive CBD from?
Oh, I meant to search this before I came on.
That's very, very interesting. I've got a little list here that I found. Anybody? Just even one? Okay, I will get— and right, so the guys who are following us, anybody? So the first one is Coneflower. Now, in the dim distant past, I think that might be Echinacea. Is that correct? Coneflower, Echinacea?
Let me have a look here.
Coneflower?
I can't remember, but on my list it's Coneflower.
It is. Correct.
It is. Right. So we've got Echinacea. Great. And then we've got Electric Daisy.
Oh, cool.
That sounds like it's been smoking a little bit too much of its own electric daisy, mate. Isn't that good?
That's what you do when you stick echinacea in a vape.
Yeah.
And then cocoa.
Yeah.
So when Granny was heading for the kitchen of an evening to get some cocoa, you now know what the ulterior motive may have been. Then we've got black pepper, flaxseed, carver, otherwise known as carver carver, And I'd be very happy to give you 5 minutes on how they make kava-kava in the Philippines.
Give us 20 seconds.
Was that, was that cocoa as in cocoa beans or was that cocoa as in cocoa leaf?
Cocoa as in the stuff that you mix with, with milk to make a chocolatey— I think it's cocoa as in cocoa solids, as in chocolate.
Yeah. Did you want to give us 10 seconds on that? Okay.
Very okay. So kava-kava. Is basically what they do is they'll, I think the women of the village will sit around chewing the kava leaves and then spitting into a bowl until they've got a bowl full of saliva, which they will, I kid you not, which they will then allow that to ferment. And after a certain period, it's—
They mix it with an appendix.
And that is what makes it psychoactive. Yeah, it's a potent psychoactive.
It's a witch spit.
And this is what the Queen, when she visited wherever, Polynesia, you know, somewhere beautiful and in the Pacific Ocean, she was offered to take some of this stuff and she took some.
Oh yes, cool. I could totally see her doing that. Legend.
And there you go. And liverwort is the final one.
That's interesting. I'm good. I'm not one to check your facts there, Nick, but ChatGPT doesn't agree. It says that flax plants have cannabinoid-like compounds and it stimulates the endocannabinoid pathway. So there's an important point. Your body produces cannabinoids. So endocannabinoids means it comes from the body. So we can get CBD from eating plants. So they're phytocannabinoids that come from plants and then endocannabinoids. So that's interesting. Those, those plants definitely stimulate endocannabinoid production.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that is very interesting. So it's going to have virtually the same effect. I'm not quite sure if they have the same effect, those compounds. What's the name of the endocannabinoids? It's really famous. I'll think of it later. But that's very interesting. Like that, I thought lettuce did. That sounds a bit ridiculous now in hindsight.
Lettuce, like, is a, is a, is a kind of sedative, a calm, a calmer.
Oh yeah, all the lactuca is a seaweed actually.
Is it not down to what those other plants have as well? Because there's cannabinoids, okay, and the CBDs, but then you've gone to THC, which is the other part, and that's a really important part that because in the UK you've got to be limited to 0.2, 0.0 something.
Yeah, 0.02 THC. Tetrahydrocannabinol, isn't that right? That's the psychoactive bit of the plant.
That's the bit everybody gets psyched about.
Not all plants have that.
Of one type of cannabis plant. Yeah, there's essentially 3 types of cannabis plant. You want to grow them for fiber, you want to grow them for seeds, or do you want to grow them to smoke because they're higher in THC? But they're all Cannabis sativa. They're all the same plant. There's no subspecies names for hemp. It's all cannabis sativa, it's just different strains grown for different things. Yeah, because they can grow so much seeds, but then they won't be so good for smoking and that kind of thing. So it depends on what you're after. But the THC bit, the psychoactive bit, uh, has its own benefits, but they cut it out because of all this nonsense.
Because of the nonsense from the 1930s. Yeah, yeah, it all comes from—
and then you're worried about how you might wake up, wake up next to Conor.
Yeah, well, that is profoundly useful. People with cancer and stuff, you know what I mean? Stimulates appetite, all sorts of stuff. Very much Yeah.
Okay, so I've got an amazing diagram here which I've uploaded to, uh, Patreon, so you guys jump in there. And it's— I'm just going to go through. I mean, it's absolutely amazing. I mean, within the, the, the cannabinoids, you've got the CBD, you've then got CBDV, you've then got CBDA, CBDC, CBG, um, but then you've got different types of THC, THCAs and the THCVs. And if we just look within this diagram on the Patreon thing, just looking at CBDs, CBD is known to be anxiolytic, antipsychotic, antiepileptic, neuroprotective, vasorelaxant, antispasmodic, anti-ischemic, antiproliferative, anti-cancer, antiemetic, antibacterial, antidiabetic, antipsoriatic, skin, intestinal antiprokinetic, analgesic, bone stimulant, anti-inflammatory, and immunosuppressive.
Imagine a drug, imagine a drug with that list of benefits and not actual— that'd be the side effects on a product. Like, can you imagine them bringing out a drug that did all that? Blockbuster.
Absolutely. It does worry me though when we come across a drug with so many attributes because, and let's face it, if it does that many attributes with that much benefit, we have to say it should be wielded like a medicine.
It's a nutrient.
I mean, it's more like a nutrient.
Yeah.
I mean, many herbs have many, many effects, like 400, 600 effects.
Yeah.
But it does worry me when they come up with so many because we need to know what level has it got those effects? You know, at what point do you have to give that drug? Because I've used it in many cases and I've seen some amazing effects, but I wouldn't say it has totally obliterated arthritis. I wouldn't say it's totally obliterated.
No, it's not going to work like, yeah, it's not going to work like those drugs that we expect immediate results. This is a nutraceutical. It's like giving magnesium to turn off itch. It's like, well, it'll help, but it's not going to turn it off. And You know, it's like giving glucosamine chondroitin for joints. It's not going to completely fix your dilapidated joints, but it'll certainly take the edge off and can help if it's a structural issue. But yeah, I think the immediate need to take CBD and expect it like this is taking a nutrient. This should be in the bloody AFGO table or something. You have a whole endocannabinoid system crying out for these compounds. We don't get them from our food anymore. Look at— listen to these studies on epilepsy, guys. Of course, got 3, 2 lines in each one. Study of 23 patients, not very little. but they had to give it for 3 months at a very small dose, up to 25 milligrams per kilo. They reduced seizure frequency in these 23 patients by 39%. So they followed this study up, 261 children. It always seems more terribly sad when it's children, average age 11, suffering from severe epilepsy which was not responding to standard medication, drug-resistant epilepsy. So trauma for these 261 kids, 3 months of treatment with CBD with their meds. Because there's no known drug side effects. In fact, there's very little side effects of CBD at all. So for them to put it behind the counter for safety reasons is utter bullshit. It's because it's effective. So 3 months of treatment CBD with their meds resulted in a reduction of seizure frequency in these 261 children of 45%, creeping up. They followed this up with one more study, clinical study lasting 3 months of 137 children with some young adults, various forms of epilepsy treated with CBD, and now they're up at nearly 50% seizure frequency. So to your point, Brian, like, you know, there's lots of causes of seizures. CBD can help with 50% of them. There was an Irish mother that had to walk up and down Ireland. Her kid— what was her name? Elaine somebody— and her kid was having 300 backbreaking seizures a month, and the government wouldn't let her take CBD, a nutraceutical, something that grows out of the ground. She wasn't allowed to have it for her son. She'd keep going over to the Netherlands to get what she needed, and eventually Ireland will let it, and you can buy it in pharmacies now, not in Tesco's, you know. Parkinson's, as Nick said there, you know, these 2 or 3 studies on Parkinson's, schizophrenia, unbelievable results in schizophrenia, fewer kind of symptoms of spasms and muscle contractions, motor restlessness, rigidity, slowness of movement, tremors, irregular jerky movements, less weight gain, Alzheimer's, cancer, 3 huge studies on cancer there just in the last 10 years, massive safety studies.
But the problem is the— I know there's always going to be a cost issue, but it brings about the issue that you suddenly get variances. Why do you get variances?
And that often is—
so, so you'll get all of these great results in papers, but when you come to find the CBDs that are on the market, you will have some which are really brilliant and bioactive and they are quite potent and you need to be titrating in your animal because every animal individually responds to them. Some become sedated, some don't on the same product, and you titrate it in. But there are loads of products out there that when you look into them, they're almost cut with other oils. Yeah, that's a fact. You know, they don't have all of the active ingredients in the way they're extracted isn't the same. The way they're grown isn't the same. Yeah. And so what we've done by these authorities stepping aside and just saying, look, we don't believe it should be used as a medicine, is that we are ending up in a situation where it's the Wild West again. You can have some great products out there, some absolutely brilliant, and please share with us if you've had a great product that you know is really good for your pets. But we need to look into that because I've also seen people rave about product which isn't that costly and say how brilliant it was, but then the next batch has a totally different effect.
Yeah, I think variability with the, how consistent they are is really important. We use a product that comes in from America called Elevance, and the beauty of it is it's exactly the same. Every single time. Once you get good response, you know, in January, you're going to get good response in, in June, July at the same rate. What about how to take it? Because originally when CBD first came along, we were saying you should take it on an empty stomach. But actually there is— I've got a study here which is, which is pretty interesting saying that oral ingestion of CBD product, this is of human, obviously, but there is a corollary with dogs. And so oral ingestion has a bioavailability. What would you say? Just taking it edibly, what would you say?
So really important, don't take it and swallow it. You should allow it to absorb across the mucous membrane because the liver takes out about 90% of the actives before it gets into the circulation and then across the blood-brain barrier.
Okay, well, let me tell you about some of the, the figures I've just got here in front of me. So if you take it fasting, in your fasting, the bioavailability is about 6%, which I'm surprised it's so low if you're fasting. However, if you take it with food, it can go up to 50% plus, 57% if taken with food. Interesting. If you inhale it, and not many dogs are going to be doing that, you can get up to 45%. So actually taking CBD with food is even better than smoking, vaping. But on this paper here, Bren, and I'm not disputing what you're saying, but this is kind of the conversation we had a few years ago, I think, was if you take it sublingually under your tongue, you can, you will increase the fasting effect, but you'll only get up to about 12 to 35%. But so is that, no, because that could still be taken in that paper.
You'd need to see the method because if they take it and swallow it and it goes into a fasted stomach, the liver is going to be so much more, it's got nothing else to go through.
Ready to go. Yeah, it's going to be ready to go.
Whereas if it's dealing with food and other stuff already, the liver's not going to be as effective as taking out. So I'd question, you know, because you want the circulation from the mucous membranes through into the system without it passing through the portal system. That's the key.
Well, I'd have thought if you just get it into the, into the, um, blood circulation, then that's the key, isn't it? Get it into the general circulation beyond the liver.
The risk— yeah, you want to get it beyond the liver. If you get it into the gut and it's going through the portal vein system into the and filtered through the liver, a lot more is going to be taken out than if it's just in the circulation. Yes, some will get taken out because the liver will still come across that, but ultimately you're going to get more chance for it to hit the other tissues first.
True. However, trying to get a dog to do a sublingual dose, I think is pretty, pretty tough.
Up under the gum is fine.
Yeah, but keeping it there, making sure they don't spit it out or chew it or something. Whereas if you just put it in food, then you've got the potential for between 36 and 57%. So you're way out there.
It's about how much do you want to spend on that. If you want the most effective options out there and then to give it in a way that the majority is absorbed so that you can give a smaller dose, I've tended to use it smeared onto the gum. You can get the special sort of almost like a waxy material so that as you smear it, it sticks there. And you just tell them not to let their dogs drink or eat whilst, for 10 minutes, and that's usually enough for it to be absorbed.
I'd look to ChatGPT for the answer to that because that's two different ways of doing it. I would say it swings and roundabouts because they both sound like pretty good tips. I mean, it's definitely going to be good going through the gums. It sounds like it's pretty good going in the food. I would say it swings and roundabouts. Regarding the actual dose, lads, it's about, for listeners, about 1 milligram per kilo starting off. That's mild anxiety, like mild issues, mild inflammation, not looking for much of an effect. 1 milligram up to 2 milligrams if you're trying to increase your dose. But people give up to 5 milligrams per kilo. So dosing can go up and it'll be written on the back of the packet. But as Nick was saying, the the amount of CBD you get, your bang per buck is important here. It's like buying omega-3. I see when you're buying omega-3, you're actually buying fish oil capsules. You're not quite sure how much omega-3 you're getting in there because they're often cut with, as Brendan was saying, they're cut with different oils, cut with hemp oil, cut with fish oil, cut with salmon oil. So they're often cut with a carrier oil because you can't just have pure CBD. It would be too, too expensive to produce that amount of juice. So the bottle has a carrier oil. So you want to look at the front and see how much of my pain per gram of CBD. It'll usually say like 1,000 milligrams of CBD on the front of the bottle or 500 milligrams. So you can have bottles around the same size, but one will have 500 milligrams of CBD and one will have 1,000, just less filler oil. So if you want to really work it out, just like your how much omega-3s you're paying for when you buy Seven Seas versus Tesco fish oil, way more omega-3 in the Tesco fish oil capsules per euro you spend. So you just look at that on the front and you say, okay, how much bang for my buck. So that's the first question, how much CBD am I getting? And second question, as regards what Nick said, is am I getting the full thing, full spectrum? So you need to be careful of how they do it. So there's a lot of isolates that are being sold, a lot of white label products being made and whatnot. You want the whole shebang, okay? So there's two ways to get the good stuff out. One is CO2 extraction. So that's one way to get a number of the isolates out, but they do use heat to distill off the stuff at the end, 50 to 60 degrees, and you can lose a few terpenes in that. So there's a whole effect with CBD that you need the whole thing. You need all the CBDs that Nick was saying, then there's vitamins and minerals and terpenes, and they all work synergistically. So in my opinion, I prefer cold-pressed, the cold-pressed stuff where there's no temperature used and they squish it all out. It's always a real dark, rich oil. That's the one I'm going for. I'm only after learning that in the last couple of weeks. So an organic cold-pressed squished oil or CO2 extracted. They're the ones you're going after because what they're doing is they're isolating CBD or CBDA and they're adding it to shitty carrier oils and calling it a CBD product. But that's just taking the good stuff out of milk thistle, silymarin, and saying this is the same as the studies of milk thistle extract. It's not quite the same thing at all. It's just something they can market better, make easier, make quicker, but you're not getting that bang for your buck. So a few little tips there.
And I absolutely agree with Nick. You know, I don't doubt you know, for those people that can't get it into their dog other than in food, it will be effective. It's just a case of how much do you have to give in those circumstances? You can often reduce the dose that you've just talked about, Conor, for individuals, because it's also an individual thing. Yeah, some dogs are really sensitive to it and other dogs aren't. So you can't just say go in at 12 milligrams for a 10 kilo dog and see how you go. You've got to start small and work up. And then you've— if you've got batch variability because they can't guarantee the batch.
Yeah, they have to do that. They have to do that. They have to show you some certs that they test this product regularly, not a cert from last year. They want— I want to see that batch number is tested. That stuff is made in such high amounts per batch number. There's no excuse not to have it tested. That's a minimum. Tell me that that batch number has what that is in it, because then they titrate it up, they pad it out with the rest, so they can tell you that's how much is in it.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah.
So I haven't seen— there's quite a lot of people saying that they are— have used it. They've had some dogs which have overreacted to it, some dogs that haven't reacted at all. So there is still variable opinion out there as to, you know, how effective it is. But look, there are effective options out there, and look to, you know, go to somewhere for you that you respect. Like Nick's selling a product because he's done the due diligence and he's looking at that product. Dr. Judy's got a product, you know, available because she's done the due diligence on that product. That's the thing. If you go and you're happy to go to the guy down the street with with no reputation and trust them, that's your prerogative. You're allowed to do that, but you might be getting junk.
That's the point.
Yeah, you just want to go with something that's— you've got a little bit of thought behind. Does that— like, I think people need to set their expectations here. They're taking a nutraceutical, as ever, so it's not going to have this— I thought it was supposed to be good for anxiety. And so it's like, well, it's certainly no good for your anxiety if you're putting it in the dog. So, like, anxiety is a complicated thing, and putting in CBD is not fix that. Well, it'll help in the background while you address the cause. But so, but like there's great studies in dogs here. Mars actually did a study in dogs. Listen to this. Results from a study performed by the Waltham Petcare Science Institute, science published today, shows a single oral dose, one dose of 4 milligrams per kilo, decent dose of THC-free CBD oil for 6 months can significantly relieve multiple measures of dog stress caused by car travel or being left alone. That second one's interesting. Quotes the study here: Significant changes in several stress-related measures—serum cortisol, mean ear temperature, heart rate, heart rate variability, whining, stress, and anxious behaviors—were observed from baseline to test, with the car journey test paradigm eliciting a more pronounced stress response overall. They just got in, so they were measuring bloods and everything, and they saw a difference. But what was their method?
So how were they giving it and what dose were they giving it?
4 milligrams per kilo for 6 months.
Ah, so 4 times the 1 milligram that you—
Yeah, that's a hefty old dose.
That's a starting dose. Yeah, 1 milligram will be a starting dose, 2 milligrams if you want to do a little bit, and we said up to 5 milligrams if you want to really.
Yeah, okay, so you've got to start starting in, and then, so that was the dose they used, and then what was the method of giving it? Oh, I don't know.
I think you need to give it twice daily, actually. I would wouldn't be just giving it once a day because I think you'll get a tail off at the end of the day and then you'll start again.
Whereas if you do it twice a day, 12 hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The studies there on osteoarthritis, there's a cool— look, everyone's talking about a company that's an Irish company. I'm just going to give the Irish a shout out. I like David. He was just at— he was at the expo there. There's Hemp Heroes. He gave me that for Dudley's back. Uh, there was a great study, and that's hempheroes.com. Okay, he's savage. I like him. He's made in Ireland, does the whole process. He's got start to finish in his little place. He controls everything. So I don't know what that is, but, but yeah, so there was a great study of rats where they, they unfortunately for these little rats, they had leg breaks. I'm sure that was done on purpose and CBD was used to knit the femur together and it was quicker. It knitted quicker together when CBD was present. I mean, this thing is used for— there's a study in glaucoma in dogs and these guys, David from Hemp Heroes, did a study with UCD in Dublin on osteoarthritis.
Can you tell people what glaucoma is?
I don't know what glaucoma is. Clouding over of the eyeballs. I assume that's what Dudley has.
Oh, isn't it? It's high pressure in the eye. So effectively, you can wreck your vision through it destroying the neurons in the retina by the increased pressure, ocular pressure. So how did that come about? So, well, that's blockage of either the drainage angle within the eye High blood pressure can lead to it as well.
Yeah, high blood pressure.
Yeah, so a number of other things that can cause glaucoma, you know, inflammatory processes like uveitis in the beginning that then lead into, again, poor drainage of that fluid and an excess buildup. So yeah, all sorts of things, but interesting that they've used it for glaucoma. I've heard of that.
I mean, it just shows with any good medicine is get a diagnosis as why you've got any given condition, appendicitis or glaucoma or whatever it might be. But a little interesting fact, in Peter Tosh's song called Legalize It, he actually mentions glaucoma as one of the list. He has a long list. Yeah, it's all about marijuana and saying we should legalize it because it's good for this, it's good for arthritis. I can't remember the song. It's a Brilliant song. So if you get, if you get the opportunity, Peter Tosh, Legalize It.
Very nice. I'm asking ChatGPT here to find that glaucoma study in dogs. And the osteoarthritis, which is interesting, that's, that's coming out now this year. The Hemp Heroes just did that. And it's like, there's a number of studies of osteoarthritis with CBD, but like in many people it's not going to help because your arthritis is caused by your inflammation is coming from somewhere else. I just think it's amazing that it can help at all. I mean, it's and there's different parts of the plant that have those anti-inflammatory effects, which is why you want to take care of how that oil is produced. CBDA is the precursor to CBD and you need that in there as well. That's the anti-inflammatory bit of it. And so when you put— add any heat to the process, you lose your CBDA. And so these are tiny little things that we don't understand. We got to get one of these manufacturers on so they can just talk the nerdy stuff to us and, you know, tell us about how the stuff is made and that kind of thing. Because without those sorts without those kind of lab checks of every batch, you don't know where you are with things like this. Probiotics, you know, when they're set, when they're selling you something where they say the compound is in there, you're chasing the compound. So it's not just blueberries or, you know what I mean, it's a raw meaty bone. They're selling you CBD per gram. You want to make sure you're getting that. So I think that's certainly a start. Interesting.
You talk about heat there, Conor. I've got a reference here that says CBD doesn't exist in large quantities naturally in hemp hemp plants, it's mostly derived from cannabidiolic acid, CBDA, through a process called decarboxylation, where heat converts the CBDA into CBD. So that's where CBD— because, but what does heat mean? Does heat mean 1 degree above body temperature, or does it mean 3,000 degrees below, above body temperature, you know? But this formation is why raw hemp leaves, leaves or flowers don't directly provide CBD's effect. That's interesting.
Yeah, we need to get somebody on to flesh all this out for us because if I was selling CBD from cannabis plants with the THC titrated off it, you know, using lots of heat, which I would be— you would have to do, you'd have to do an awful lot of titration, which requires heating and steaming and all sorts of things. You would be putting out that information. And then if I was producing CBD from organic hemp, I'd be putting out contrary information. So there's two different ways of producing this.
Are you saying that Grandma was always right to reach for the cocoa in those muffins? Yeah, safe. And actually to make chocolate muffins with little pods from the end of the cannabis plant. There you go. Was not— the munchies were from the cocoa, not from the little pods because they didn't heat them.
I think you're being provocative, Dr.
Conor Brady. Or are you saying the oven cooking of the muffin was enough? Well, who knows?
I've got a nice reference here saying, unlike THC, which can cause anxiety, paranoia, and memory impairment, CBD has been shown to mitigate these effects by regulating THC's interactions with the CB1 receptors in the endocannabinoid system. Them. So there is a play between CBD and THC. However, in the UK, because the wisdom of our government, we're not allowed to use any THC— that's the stuff that makes you high— in the products that we use for our patients, or for us, come to that.
A lot of the plants that they're engineering— and they are really engineering some mutant plants— so they're producing stuff called skunk. People would have heard. Yeah, so they're cross-pollinating really potent plants but really potent plants. And so you're getting this mutant, like our wheat today, which is like 50% of the protein in it is gluten. That's not what wild grass looks like. It's got a tiny bit of gluten in it and it wouldn't bother you. But this, we want to be able to spread peanut butter on a piece of white bread. So you get this shit that we make today. And so the super skunk C dope that they have out today blows the absolute head off you. And so I can totally see how there'll be like, that's just mega amounts of THC and that's not the way the plant is supposed to be. CBD actually mitigates the effects of THC when you get them together. And so the whole plant's taken in normal fashion, but we just don't do anything normally. We just want to have, you know, just mutant plants. Super size me. Super size me. Yeah, we do.
And then we wonder why we get the downsides, you know. Well, it's ultra-processed food. It's really clean and it's only got a bit of high fructose corn syrup. And we wonder why everybody's getting ill. Guys, it is 1945. I think let's jump over to Patreon.
Was it in Lock Stock, the movie Lock Stock where your man said, he goes, is this weed any good? And he goes, yeah, it's can't think, let alone move shit. And he goes, he says, doesn't sound too good to me. Can't think, let alone move. Your man's like, that doesn't sound good.
And if we've left you not able to think or move, then come and join us over on Patreon. And we'll talk a little bit more. More about this deep dive into CBD. You thought this was a fairly relaxed conversation?
Wait till you get over to Patreon.
Right, I'll see you on the other side, fellas.
That was fun, guys. That was really good. Really good.
