CHOLINE RPM LIVE

phone's in. Sorry, Pete.

Yeah, it's okay, Pete. I wonder, does Pete actually chop off the first 5 minutes? Have you listened to a full one of our podcasts before, Brad, when you walk the dogs?

We'll have to ask the guys that are actually listening to our stuff.

Yeah, um, I gotta put my phone on airplane. This is how we prepare, guys. So I have a Zoom recorder mic off to the right-hand side. I also record on my phone in case the mic goes—

I do apologize, but this is all a little bit off the cuff, purely and simply. I blame Nick. I blame Nick as well. Nick has decided at the very last moment that he can't cope with jet lag and having returned, he's tired himself out with a whole morning's worth of work and so can't join us, unfortunately. So get better soon, Nick.

Yes, of course.

And please, if you do book him for an event, do make sure that he arrives at least 2 days before the event so that you've got him back on best form. A bit of recovery period.

Must have been a good holiday. You need a little break after your holiday. You know you've had a good holiday when you need a break when you come home. Good man, Nick. Oh, listen, if I had Nick's money, I'd be doing it the exact same way. I'd be putting my feet up and slowing down. As the years advance, Nick, you might as well slow down. Absolutely safe in the knowledge Nick is not listening to this broadcast.

He's snoozing fast asleep, and I'm sure he will never listen to it either.

Resting his little ginger head. We are Raw Pet Medics. We are two of us. I am here with one of the best vets in the UK, Brendan Clark, and in the world, and moi, Dr. Conor Brady from Dogs First. And we are two parts of Raw Pet Medics, and Nick Thompson is at home. And so yeah, you can find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics where people kindly leave us a little donation if they can afford it. and we deeply, deeply appreciate that. So we see you and we do appreciate it. And that's why we do that little bit on the side afterwards where we go off for 10, 15, 20 minutes and have a little chat, uh, to, uh, to wrap up the conversation there. So thanks for everyone that does that. It really, really helps us. I was gonna say prepare, but you have seen us not prepared. Um, but we do, we have some, we have some good topics for tonight. Uh, it's all about coding tonight. Brent, could I, before we start, could I just highlight a couple of little bits? That have come up, I think you'll get enjoyment out of some of them. First of all, I am painfully aware that I'm not eating any organ meat and that book Deep Nutrition scarred me and I'm like, okay, I really need to get organ meat. I'm cooking meat on the bone, I'm doing those bits and pieces, but I'm not eating organ meat. So I went for a very popular dried organ meat product coming from New Zealand. That's Ancestral Supplements. I've nothing to do with them. And they have all the organ meats, the 6 organ meats in it, and everything from pancreas to spleen, liver, heart, and kidney. So 5. So I'm taking— you're supposed to take 6 of those a day, but I'm miserable and scabby, so I'm only taking 2 a day. And I got another one as well, and I don't know, this is just a vanity project maybe, but Male Optimization, MOFO. So I got male up and said, right, I might as well pop in a few testicles as well and see what happens. So I'm also including prostate, which is interesting, bone marrow, which is interesting, and a great deal of testicle. So that's going in too for the last 3 days. I can't say I feel any different.

Is it beef testicle?

It's beef. It's all beef. All beef.

So when you start growing horns.

Yeah, I can't wait. That'd be great. Just a little ball patches there too. Those 2 big horns would be great. That's straight across. Kind of horn that you see in Texas in the front of the big Cadillacs. Oh, that'd be great, I'd love that. So that was the first bit of news. I had to tell you that I'm now eating organ meats because I'm not a massive fan of liver. I like the liver we had in Turkey when we were over in Turkey and we were at the table, Bren, and they gave us turkey off the— they gave us liver off the barbecue, uh, in Istanbul, and that was gorgeous, I have to say, with a bit of salt. And so that was my first announcement. My second announcement is kind of, um, It is funny, I was— I re-ran the study from 4 years ago where they found a lot of the fipronil and a couple of their chemicals from flea treatments in the rivers in England and Cheshire. And it was Cheshire, a few other places. They measured 20 rivers and 19 out of the 20 had toxic levels of flea treatment chemicals in a river. And it's like, this is crazy.

Leicester as well, wasn't it?

Oh, was it? Yeah.

Yeah.

So Yeah, like, so that's not a good thing. And like, so you can see these newspaper reports from San Francisco to the UK begging dogs not to swim in the water. But someone put up a really interesting post and she said Annaheim Borgman from Finland tested the hair on dogs before they went for swims in doggy pools and then tested the hairs of them after they went for swims in doggy pools. And I thought swimming pools, anywhere dogs swim with these flea treatments, And I thought this is a major, major problem that we need to get this stuff off dogs. So I'm sure we've done a number of natural flea kind of shows. I just wanted to highlight again, guys, there's so many ways.

Coming for the summer, coming for the summer. We must do another one of those. I think we have done it a little bit in the past, but I think we need to sort of like really reiterate because that was a really interesting study and what it was saying was actually it's not just the amount of fipronil and such products on the hair coat of the dogs you treat, but actually it was picking up on the dogs you don't treat.

Yeah.

So actually the transference, yeah, was huge. And what that actually pointed out is if you're applying it to your dog, if your child is playing with you, you're applying it to yourself, you're also applying it to your child, let alone yourself. Yeah. You know, especially if you like to sleep with your dog on the bed and things that, you know, you're getting even more exposure. You might get no bed bugs, but the flip side is you might get a shed load of chemicals.

So yeah, they say it's up, but it's only, it's only an insecticide, it doesn't bother humans. What do you say about that?

So it's supposed to only work on the neurotransmitters of fleas and insects. Okay, obviously we know it can massively affect bees, so initially they were very much Yeah, they'd come into practice and it'd be promo of this just affects fleas, and then obviously all of the other stuff came out to say how much it affects all insects, especially bees. Okay, I think it's ridiculous. It's something like you can kill a million bees.

Yeah, I saw one of those pipettes.

It's just like ridiculous. And that's one of those things that we then suddenly go, actually, hold on, this is a fairly impactful treatment for the environment, not just for your pets. Yeah, but it is also true, and I don't know whether this is down to blood-brain barrier issues for some dogs, but definitely we see side effects, neurological side effects in some dogs. People would consider it an adverse reaction. What galls me is that so many of my profession will just discount it as, well, it can't possibly be because of this product, and don't report it. Yeah, but what's great, guys, is all of you watching, any medication, even if you think that it might be related, I don't know, you don't need to know. Okay, but if you think it might be related, there is a great reporting system in your country. So for the UK, there's one, definitely for Canada, there was one, for America, there's one where you can report as the client the product. Okay, you don't need to go through a process of the vet must report it. You, the client, can get on there, use the product name, use the batch number that you've got, put your details in. It's all secure and everything else. Send that in. That is reported by the government okay, organization back to the companies, and they put pressure on— if there's enough of those reports, it has to go on the label as a risk, okay? And then if there's enough of those reports beyond that, it will go as a warning, and they may even stop the product. So it's really, really important that we get from believe it or not, a current reporting rate of around about 4%. Yeah, that's right.

Similar to humans.

Okay, we need to get that reporting rate up to at least 50% of the cases. Yeah, because can you imagine the impact that will have? Oh yeah, on the government agencies to stop these companies producing products that are toxic to our dogs.

It's the same, and it's the same in humans, isn't it? I mean, the figures that the US were putting out for the equivalent of their yellow card system, VAERS, the vaccine kind of side effects, they said between 1 to 3% of serious side effects are, or of medium, the very serious side effects are more likely to hit it at 10%, but the side effects that can hospitalise you or take you out of work for 2 days, they just, they go unreported because often the health practitioner is not linking it. Also, to link it means that you are admitting a little bit of liability that you put the product on, and there's a little bit of a headache there for for these human doctors. But while we're talking about water, and we will get to choline, guys.

Thanks, Karen, for posting the link there for the veterinary medicines. We do have it on our— I've got Facebook going at the same time.

Oh yeah, yeah, I got it.

Multi-screen.

I missed seeing them all talking.

It's great. But we have got a post on that. If you search down Raw Pet Medics and veterinary medicines director at bmd.gov.uk, you will find the post which allows you to link straight through to the link.

Cool. And while we're talking about water, one more thing, and I'm aware there could be a large number of people are tuning in to listen to Colleen tonight. I just want to hear about Colleen. So, but listen, while we're talking about water, I put up a post during the weekend. I thought nothing of it. I mean, it's always the way sometimes I put up, you know, spicy posts and I know it's going to stir the pot a bit. It's like, oh, they won't like this. And you pop it up anyway because, you know, and it's fun, it's pastime, it's a hobby, it's something to do. But this one was like, I didn't even think about it because it's something I say so often in, like, you know, you're helping these gut consult people and you're saying, look guys, you know, clean up the water you're giving them as well. Give them, you know, anything, water from the kettle or boiled and cooled. I said the problem we have is there's a bit of chlorine in tap water and we know dogs will avoid tap water, like tap water fresh from the tap. Most do, not all, but they've got super sensitive noses, thousands of times better than ours. They can smell the chlorine the same way we can smell it in the swimming pool, and it must be gross. It's why they like flower pots and toilet waters. Anyway, I just love the image I put up, which is a dog which he just looked like he was hurling. He had his two feet on the toilet bowl and he had his head right in the bowl. Yeah, and I just thought this is a funny image. I'll pop it up. Dogs can smell the difference between homeopathic water and plain water, so they know the homeopathic mixture, which is supposed to be purer than water. So they can detect tiny, tiny amounts. So you can be sure that they can detect the amount of chlorine at how many parts per million in water. So I popped it up, I didn't think any more about it. I just said, guys, the reason your dog probably prefers the toilet water is because there's less chlorine in toilet water. Because it goes through the pipes.

Forgetting all the bleach that people put in the toilet bowl.

Yeah, oh yeah, that's actually a good point.

And the blue, you know, the little two blue things hanging there.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, just drink from the other side of the toilet bowl, don't go near do stuff. But like, I should have put up a picture of a dog drinking from a flower pot. That would have been less, less insane.

Would have been much—

people said, people said water from a tank. And I went, so these comments just start streaming in. No, no, no, Conor, what are you talking about? So it quickly became apparent that only Irish people have tanks in the attic, that it seems every other country just gets water from the mains.

You weren't paying attention at school because this is what we were taught. When I was in my third year, we were talking about all about plumbing of the home, and you got to know that there were such things as header tanks, but they're to create the pressure in your hot water system, and that actually the majority of your cold water will run whether it is to your kitchen tap, which usually comes off first. So the stop tap that's under the sink goes straight to the sink tap first for the cold, so that your drinking water is coming straight from the mains. And then the rest goes to the cold water taps around the house.

This is not helping me at all, Ben. Stop you there.

So then you've got your bath, you've got your sink in the bathroom, and then you've got your tank at the back of the toilet.

Okay, listen, I stand corrected. I honestly thought that that was the first reason the chlorine gas came off. But then I countered and I said, listen, it doesn't matter where your water comes from. Okay? It all contains chlorine. 'No, not in Germany, not in the Netherlands.' And then I had to deal with— no offense, I'm not putting on a voice because the person that was posting— but I didn't realize that Germany's done great to get the chlorine out of the water. They've got it down to virtually zero. A couple of cities are using a little bit, but, uh, and then I realized in other cities and countries they've changed the chlorine from a gas to a chemical that doesn't leave the water. Anyway, my point was, if a body— if a bowl of water sits there, chlorine is a gas for the most part, except for this new chloramine or whatever they put in in the water. Chlorine is a gas. So if you leave the water sitting out, the gas comes off and in a few hours you've got much fresher water to drink rather than the chlorinated stuff that comes straight out of the tap. So if it sits in your toilet, the chlorine gas comes off. So still it will have less chlorine in it than the tap, the water straight from the tap. Anyway, that did not do. People were not happy about the fact they've had the chlorine. So what I really want to do now is I'm going to do this. I'm telling you, I'm going to get a video and I'm going to get 5 bowls of water and I'm going to test some dogs. I'm going to have toilet water. I'm going to have tap water, I'm gonna have whatever water, and I'm gonna run the dogs through it, and I'm gonna say, right, boys, gonna have water, but you know, the rainwater collected in the water, rainwater, all that. I'm gonna have 4 or 5 different types of water. Evian, uh, which is naive backwards, which I think is very clever. Uh, and, um, so you can, um, so yeah, that's my thing about water, and I'm gonna do that. And I'm— and if toilet water gets drunk by these dogs as much as tap water, I will do some sort of forfeit, and I'll say, no, no, I know this is But anyway, you also need to do these filters.

Janet Nixon's just put in, uh, she can't wait to get her home cold water filter system. So you need to look at some of these filters, which filters work. Yeah, which filter do you have?

I have an osmotic kind of system with the 3 tanks where it passes it through the— under the sink. So my fresh water—

okay, so the ceramic one first to take out the particulates and stuff, and then you've got a carbon filter, and then you've got the Electrode?

I don't know. Only one of them gets changed every year by a very nice guy. But it doesn't take the fluoride out of the water. Nothing takes the fluoride out of the water. So it's like, hmm, I was disappointed to hear that because they just put the system in for £150. It's like, it doesn't take the fluoride out.

And he goes, no, you only paid £150. Yeah, that's what it is.

But even a charcoal stick will do the job. Charcoal stick in a glass. That's what a Britva filter is. Charcoal sticks in a 500ml glass bottle. Keep it in a glass bottle in the fridge. It sucks up the impurities. And after a couple of days, your charcoal stick will be gooey. It'll have that film of snot on it that you can actually boil it off. And you'll look at the water when you boil it off and you'll say, bloody hell. So even charcoal sticks, you can buy them, they're refillable. Buy them on Amazon, drop them into a glass of water, and it's perfect. Bloody hell, we haven't even started talking about that.

Oh yeah, but guys, if you've got a great cold water system filter, please do pop it up in the comments. It'd be great to see what you're using, which company you're using, just so that Conor can work out what he needs to change to.

Yeah, I was trying to help.

Just to say, I will say that Fiona has stuck up for you and said no, in Ireland it is different. Although I did talk to Conor, and Conor did confess that he does have a stop tap underneath the sink. Yes, so it will be interesting if he just looks to see whether there is a tap off to—

we do have a tank before it goes up to the tank. Yeah, I always often think of like a pigeon floating around in that water, you know. So do you know, sometimes you, you know, you sometimes Yeah, just, yeah, just, or half a rat. It's like, oh no. Um, anyway guys, so listen, uh, anyway, it's a bit of fun. I was looking at those posts all night going, I can't believe so many people disagree with me. But then I learned so much about the water systems, I was like, oh, this is actually, I'm learning a lot here. So, uh, but yeah, anyway, look, choline, um, do you want to start us off? Because my, my notes are very short. That's a short amount of notes on choline for me.

Oh, that's quite a few. It's nothing.

Yeah, it's a good start.

This is something that interested me purely and simply. I don't, I didn't I did a little bit of a talk about omega-3s for puppies last year at RFVS, you know, and, you know, some of the important things about feeding and, you know, especially for the growth phase of our young pets. And choline sort of cropped up, and there was a few other things that I've come across with regards to methylation. I've talked about briefly at the beginning of some of the previous RPMs that that's somewhere that I've been going with looking at methylation of our system, our genes, for improved growth, reduced inflammation, all sorts of elements that are there. And choline is often a forgotten vital nutrient because it is not put on there as a nutrient that you would consider as a vitamin because it doesn't have vitamin before it. It's not vitamin CH or anything like that. It's— it doesn't come under the amino acids. So the essential amino acids, it doesn't come under the essential fatty acids. So it sort of just gets slotted in below the vitamins in Feriaf and Afco. And it is really, really important. And it was only because I was coming across— there is this thing that if you take folic acid, it is, you know, thought, well, if you get methylfolate in the pathways, it really improves neural tube formation in, in young animals. You're getting the nerves right, great for growth, and therefore it's really important. But actually choline has a vital role to play in this methylation process. And actually the methylation is the most important part of getting a good source of phospholipid, which involves the choline, into the new cell growths. And to have great cellular health. So phospholipids are effectively the fatty layer that coats every single cell in your body. Okay? And you need loads to keep that cellular growth going, that replacement. Remember, you replace your red cells every 128 days, so you're losing millions, I mean, literally millions of cells every day. And you need to replace those. Some of that gets recycled, absolutely. But a lot of it needs to be de novo generated. So from new generated from your diet. And so having a good source of choline is noted in the text and is something that actually, if you've got a breeding bitch, if you've got a breeding queen and you're trying to prime the best health don't just think about some of those great B vitamins, especially the methylated ones, and definitely not folic acid, which is everywhere, pervasive.

Do you hear that? Take folic acid. Oh, it's crazy.

Yeah, they stick it in all the cereals, they stick it in just about everywhere. One of the things to avoid and start to look at a methylated option So what does methylation mean, Brandon, in, in their language terms?

Two seconds.

Um, literally there is a, a carbon atom. If you stick on 3 hydrogen atoms to that, that is a methyl group, okay? And if you affix that to, um, your amino acid instead of a hydrogen ion, okay, then literally you are methylating that compound and it will only stick in certain areas. But actually it is often the, the claw, if you like, that the enzymes click onto in order to process it. Okay. And that's the benefit that you have in a methyl group.

And so are you saying that a methylated vitamin— so my methylated B complex that I take, are they better absorbed? Is this like they're better absorbed, grabbed hold of, better absorbed, better processed?

Because they're already in line of that metabolic pathway. Whereas, for instance, if you're looking at the cyanocobalamin, is a classic that we would talk about, that's a cyanide group has been adjoined to the cobalamin that is in vitamin B12 and actually takes effort of the liver to unplug that cyanide Okay. Affix a hydrogen atom to it, which makes hydrogen cyanide. Let's just park that for a moment because that might alarm some. Okay. And then to affix a methyl group in its place. Okay. So that takes, as you can see, extra processing and actually can gum up the process for actually utilizing vitamin B12 appropriately.

Yeah, buddy. And if you're trying to use B12 in a time of sickness, it's like, well, you're using the wrong one and you're causing issues. I know with folic acid, it wasn't that all— it wasn't that all people can't handle it, but it was a huge percentage of European women. It was like 45% of European women. Folic acid causes more problems than it'll help.

So there is a genetic reasoning for that. Okay, so it depends on— so great book. Nicola, I hope you're watching this and just a book recommendation coming your way. So Dirty Genes. Okay. Yeah. So that is Ben Lynch. Great book. It's certainly worth a read. Great on methylation. But it actually is— I'm going to talk more about this in the future because I can only gloss over it here in the briefest of terms. But it's all about— although you've got 20,000 genes that can rely on instillation. There are 7 particular ones which are really good, one of which I keep picking on you for, Conor, because it is tantamount to why you don't cope with fermented products very well. Okay, so the DAO gene, not the DOA gene, so not dead on arrival, but the, um, the diamine oxidase, which is eliminating histamine from foods produced by your gut lining, isn't it? So the gene that is responsible for that enzyme, if it's not methylated, will actually not produce the enzyme properly. So what you end up doing is you can actually scrub that gene. So you can be born dirty, believe it or not, or you can become dirty. I'm not sure which way you are. We might find out. Everybody's loving your laugh. It's the horns, they're coming out. So what you need to do is to look at how you can go through these scrubs of your genes so you can methylate them again and actually clean up those particular 7, the Magnificent 7. But there are— it's a great read. Have a little read if you haven't already. It's certainly worth it.

Yeah. Listen, I'm going to give people a tiny bit of background to Colleen, although I know absolutely nothing about it. I had a few little interesting snippets in my mind, but didn't get a lot of attention in my book. Often I go to my own book and Google or search my own book and kind of see— Did you use Dudley? Dudley?

Did Dudley come up with an answer?

No, he's barred from using the internet. So I know— but yeah, so once I search, it's everything I've said. Or this is the Brady tool, the Ask Brady, I call it now because it's a bit more gravitas. Although I'd say myself and Dudley have got equal gravitas in the community.

I like Dudley.

Yeah, well, I think we're quite similar. But it's this, it's, this is the AI tool that I've kind of trained up with my book and all courses and everything I've ever said anywhere, all the notes and articles I've written. And it knows all of it in an instant. So it's pretty cool. It's 95% there, there's a few little blips. But it doesn't know anything about coding because it's not in my book. So, but here's That's what I've learned thanks to Karen. Hey, Karen, send me something like Gullion. And, but look, they've been playing around with this since 1850. And as Bren said, it's neither a vitamin or a mineral. So it luckily found its way onto the table because there's an enormous amount of compounds out there that aren't vitamins or minerals and probably should be on the essential nutrient table. I often think of coenzyme Q10. I don't know why, but we know it's such an important antioxidant and it's like it's not in the essential nutrients for someone. I'm like, do you know how important coenzyme Q10 is to your body? Like, to be without it would be a terrible, terrible loss. So how much coenzyme Q10 do you want in your diet? Well, I want some, not zero. So I often find like these are like optional extras when you get sick. It's like, no, these are the things you're supposed to be eating all the time from your fresh, varied diet that don't get a mention. Anyway, choline snuck on there because it turns out it's a very essential nutrient and you definitely do need it. Best source, guess what the source is? It won't surprise you, meat. And fish and poultry and eggs. Yeah, anything with a face, bar the eggs. So it's like it has to came from something with a face. So choline is really, really important. Raw-fed dogs get oodles of it, absolutely oodles of it. It doesn't mean that they can't go deficient in it because the next thing is, how do raw-fed dogs— what diseases make you low in choline? So the very first thing they said was that a perpetually high-fat diet can really increase your choline need. And as a result, result in choline deficiency because you're using up all your choline with this, with this high-fat diet for biochemical reasons. I don't fully understand, but I'm sure Brent does. His tail's probably wagging. Oh yes, you brought up high-fat diets and choline. But, but there's a few other things. But the side effects of having a deficiency are kind of interesting. And the liver has been mentioned quite a lot, which is interesting. Like they said that there's a few behavioral issues, but one of the top deficiencies is an impact on the liver. And so I just went looking, I went looking to see if there was any kind of information out there on dogs. And there's some cool studies on dogs and choline, particularly rats. They did lots of cool studies with rats fed what they thought was complete lab chow. They now know that the lab chow they feed mice and rats up until recently was crap. And so their nutrient studies that they were studying on mice and rats up until very recently now that they're getting more real food in their diet were actually studies of deficiency because they were eating this lab chow, very akin to dry food, let's face it, same idea. And so when they add an antioxidant in, it's just because the other rats didn't have it in their diet. It wasn't, you know, so, but so there's been a couple of studies in rats that show, you know, it increases everything when they move from complete food and get extra choline. But there are some great studies in dogs with 16 adult dogs. This was how many years ago? This is quite recently. Effects on a food source of choline on diet digestibility, blood lipid profile, liver morphology, and cardiac function in dogs. And what they found was simply by increasing the choline in the diet, they had two types of choline that went in there. The first type was the crap choline that they use in dry food, which is choline chloride, much like your zinc oxide, magnesium oxide, copper sulfate, the worst of nutrients. Studies show, unbelievably, studies show that the choline they use in dry dog food, that egg choline in eggs is 4 to 12 times better absorbed than the choline used in choline chloride. So they compared in these 16 dogs choline chloride, crap choline, and then they used half the amount of that choline from food sources. And the dogs on half the amount of choline added to complete dry food did significantly better, and particularly in the liver readings. On day 45, the test dogs showed lower serum cholesterol, which is interesting, also lower ALP and ALT readings, which is what the vets use for checking out your liver, making sure all is well. And so the liver, the impact on the liver just from having half the amount of a natural source of choline added to complete dry food. So I always like adding that bit in. It's like these dogs were being fed complete dry food and they added a little bit more choline from the crappy choline that they use in dry food, or they just added in half that amount, a tiny fraction of real choline from food. And these dogs had really good, better liver reading. So I thought that was interesting. Can I just go with one more study here? So one more cool study on choline was in sled dogs. And I love a study of sled dogs because I consider those dogs under stress, you know, so these ridiculous food trials that the dry food companies do, 8 beagles locked in a cage for 6 months, you know, that's just nonsense, that's just not real life, but sled dogs, that's real work. So they ran a cool study with these dogs and they used in for their source of phosphatidylcholine, which is your phospholipid choline, for that for the source of that, they use krill, krill meal, so ground-up krill, the stuff that the whales eat with the hairy kind of necks and the baleen plates. And so this study was cool. They got 10 dogs in each group, okay? And they kept the diets absolutely identical. And I mean identical on vitamins, minerals, all the different types of fats, the omega-6s, omega-3s, the ratios, everything was identical except for this addition of choline from krill. So it was quite a clean study, but there benefits across the board to these sled dogs. These were sled dogs at rest, by the way, they weren't working, and this is in the summertime, and so they were just messing around with them. And then they found the first marker that was plummeted in the dogs getting the krill oil was homocysteine plummeted. And so that was— that's an inflammatory marker. So we hear homocysteine measured a few times. Here's another example of homocysteine falling in dogs. These are both dog groups were fed complete dry food, you know, But we just add a little tiny bit of something real and boom, there's a massive decrease in homocysteine, which is a benefit. And then they had, check out these two more benefits they had. They had another metabolic derivative of choline was significantly increased in the krill meal supplemented dogs, suggesting it would have a protective effect on glucose metabolism. But most noteworthy from a performance perspective for sporting dogs, is that the increase in betaine in the group, I don't know, which is thought to promote muscle function and plasma volume expansion. So like these are the kind of improvements that like training at altitude and pulling car tires in the beach, that's the stuff that these guys are trying to do to get these readings up. And just by adding that into these sled dogs, by pursuing this choline, maybe some real choline in the diet will actually improve these as we see with adding real zinc improves things in dogs and adding in good quality fat You know, it's not that it wasn't in the dry food. It is there. It's just that stuff they're using is crap. And when you put the good stuff in, things improve. So I thought that they were interesting little studies to show, you know, the real, the real stuff is better.

Yeah. And I think, you know, just to help you understand the breadth of inclusion of choline in our body's functions, you know, we mentioned phosphatidylcholine within the membranes of all cells. but you've also got to understand acetylcholine is one of the major neurotransmitters, and that is why it's so important in good muscular control, in neurological cases. So if you've got a system which is attacking your acetylcholine, that becomes a real issue. With your being able to control muscular function. So it has such a breadth of function that we can't just ignore it. And yes, there is endogenous sources of choline. There is an ability to generate it. So that means made from within, endogenous. But the exogenous as Conor's just said, I think is really important because just showing how much better you can perform as an athlete, how much better you heal following an operation, how much better your puppies and kittens will be as far as their neurological development if you are supplementing choline means that, yeah, we should be thinking about this as a vital nutrient and not accepting some of the second-rate low stuff that's put into processed foods as a replacement.

People want to know, people want to know, you know, what's, what's the diet for liver disease? And it's like, you know, it's not— well, listen, I'm no expert on liver disease, so it would take me a while to kind of to even think about the answer. But like, I would imagine a fresh, normal diet would be step one, and then we'll see if there's a few little tweaks we can put in there. But, you know, the number one thing would be to avoid the things that cause fatty liver disease and liver dysfunction. And so when we look at these complete dry foods that can be improved simply by adding in a tiny bit of natural choline into the diet and the liver readings plummet or improve, at least, you know, this can't be ignored. It's like if you've got liver disease, you have to avoid the things that aggravate the liver, you know, from dry food, even the liver benefits from having water in the diet, to everything easily digestible, good quality fats, getting off the chemicals, all the stuff that's going to impact your liver. And the answer is always, well, let's just start from a real food diet. Because if you looked at any one of these vitamins and minerals, you'd see all the organs would be impacted. I see that 60% of the choline chloride that you give to a dog is ingested and lost by the intestinal bacteria. It's converted to TMA, trimethylamine, and excreted in the urine. And I just thought like, you know, people, they use, because the conical flask version of choline is so poorly absorbed, they use lots of it. And so the AFCO readings that we see of what, you know, dogs should need of choline are probably this huge figure. Like, it's okay when you're making raw dog food because you're never going to be deficient in choline, but it's just another vitamin that when you look under the hood and you look for the supporting works, there's nothing of use at all. In fact, what FEDIAF recommends for choline in dogs is 50% higher than what AAFCO recommends. How could they be so far apart? It's not like any of them have any studies to go by. They keep on making assumptions based on this and that, they've got the same amount of choline recommended for puppies as they have for adults. And we know that can't be right. In fact, for every single vitamin in the AAFCO feed guidelines, for every single vitamin, the same amount is recommended for puppies and adults. That shows you how little science and thought is given behind these tables. It's like there's some, a couple, a handful of studies. But when you dig into what's behind choline, there's nothing there of any use. And it's involving this nonsensical version which is like absorbed a tenth, like a tenth as well as natural. It's like there's so many issues.

And, you know, it's also really interesting, is it, that they arbitrarily have sort of gone a 2 to 3 times level for cats over dogs? Yes, I didn't check. And I can only presume that that's because they realize just how much, you know, from a raw meat fresh source, cats would obtain. And actually, as soon as you start processing it out and adding in artificial alternatives, cats just don't do as well. So I think really, you know, uh, Fiona, you asked, you know, do we need to supplement this? I would just say, look, there are things to do if your dog is having issues with its nerves. Um, maybe it's having cognitive disorders in later life. It's having issues with healing. Maybe it's had a big operation. Maybe it's had to have a massive blood transfusion because of blood loss, because of an accident. Anything that requires a huge amount of cellular regeneration, then that would be the time to think about how do you enrich the diet. So Conor's talked about some options in organs, in, in eggs that you could add to, whether that be duck eggs or goose eggs or things like that, instead of just— and especially the yolk. Okay, so this could be just adding yolks into the diet, and how you do that in those circumstances where your dog is having an issue. Now, of course, there are supplements, but then you have to do your due diligence, as Conor was talking then about about what are the forms that have been put into that supplement. And this is what I'm coming across so much now that I'm afraid to say that the, um, jungle has truly come to the Amazon, okay? As far as supplements, it is just one of the Wild West of where to purchase such health, um, options. And I think you've just got to be really careful when you're going on there, even some reputable companies. Yeah, if they've got a really inexpensive supplement, be really careful about what is in there. Is it just a really good value, or is it that actually they've worked a way around the system? They may not declare the form that that product is in, and they have just gone, do you know what, I can make that in a vat, I can make it really cheap, loads of people are talking about it. Yeah, why on the market? And bang, there you go. And that's why you've got to look at, you know, people like Conor does his research for Dogs First, you know, people like Amrita that I use for some of the human stuff that's out there as well. Um, why I'm going to those particular places for products? Because they've done the due diligence to look at what's in there.

Great show. We should totally do a show where we hold up You know what a good— like, I feel for people walking in to buy vitamins and minerals. It's just such a common question. I'm doing up a list at the moment of like, look, these are good examples of vitamins and these are ones that you wouldn't buy. You know, people want food sources and natural sources of this and that. And, you know, where do you get your vitamin E from? That's a common one. I mean, it's so complicated. I'm confused. I'm confused by it, you know.

And I'm guessing, Dr. Conor Brady, thinking about people on the other side of the Atlantic, I think this is the sort of thing that Dr. Judy would be looking at when she's stocking product. You know, she's selecting out, you know, what is in there and not just grabbing the cheapest product that's there.

Yeah, yeah.

Actually, one thing almost forgot, and I must say this before we finish, for everybody who's looking at Facebook right now, if you're in the UK, there is a— we did a show on mushrooms not so long back. There is a great company called Dyrtea, okay, D-I-R-T-E-A, produces a great line in mushroom products. Boots the Chemist have their product on half price today only online. Okay, half price. You could not get that cheaper anywhere else, and that would be free free to your local store delivery, so no delivery charges and half price. It is cheaper than you can order it anywhere else online. So just, sorry, just a quick one there. I'm not big into Boots, but I just came across it. I was notified and I thought I'd mention it.

So listen, when I, um, I, you had mentioned about methyl, uh, um, methylated kind of vitamins, okay? And, uh, in my haste, this is an old bottle I can see here, but I'm still taking I won't waste anything. If they're there, I'm going to eat every single bit of them. And I just go online, okay? And this is probably Amazon's version. I hope not. I hope I didn't buy it from Amazon, but there you go. And the point is, it says— is that backwards for you, or is that correct for you?

It is backwards. Just quickly flip your mirror thing.

Nick would have fixed me at the start. You can't fix this. So methylated B vitamins and betaine, which is exactly the compound that I said was higher in these sled dogs taking the krill No.

Oh, betaine.

Oh, so tell me what I'm talking about.

So it comes in, it comes in when you need to understand when you should and shouldn't take betaine depending on what your genes are doing. So this is why Dirty Genes will tell you all about it. It was very much on trend, um, probably about 2 years ago to really supplement betaine in your diet, and it is something to be aware because for some people it can cause some issues if you're not methylating properly.

Oh, interesting. Hmm. I have been taking this quite regularly for the last— I'm trying to make my way through it and just get it out of the cold. Like, I've got this part. I was going to eat these now that I have them, so I just— it just goes—

sorry, I don't know. Go for it. Just take them.

Yeah, I know you've ruined them for me now. Like, it goes to show that, like, You know, it's extremely complex. Like if you're just dealing with one vitamin, I could spend hours trying to learn about it and go, okay, what is the best version of this? Who says, in what respect, in what health capacity? Does it matter if you have a disease? Does that change things? It's so complicated that I just literally heard you say that, no, listen, if you're taking B complex, I thought I needed a pick-me-up and they say to make sure it's methylated B complex. So I just took it, but I didn't see the fact that I had betaine written on. I never even thought about it. I said, I'll get onto my friend who knows lots about vitamins. And she goes, I'll take that methylated B complex great because it's just the one. Sent it out to me because she owns a vitamin company. And, uh, it's like, great, okay. And, uh, no, she doesn't know, she just worked in that company, so she works somewhere else now. So I was like, that's great. But I don't even think about the fact— and then you go and say, oh, careful with the B10. It's like, holy shit, it's so complicated. I mean, this is— it's tough for people. And then another thing is that people put these things in without knowing if they need them or not. And it's like, we've never actually looked under the hood, which is what you're always pushing. You can get these major The what? The MFK of the mother of MTHFR genes.

MTHFR gene. Yeah, as I've said before, the motherfucking gene. Yeah, yeah, sorry, did that bleep out?

I hope it bleeped out.

And, you know, that is one of the main methylator genes, uh, that's certainly in the Magnificent Seven. But, uh, and Karen did point that out earlier, why did we not mention it? But there is So many other genes that you need to just go through. It's just brilliant. I have gone through that book and actually some of the cases that you think you've chosen well, chosen supplements and tried to correct them in a certain way. And actually he highlights, admittedly for humans, and it's— there's a little bit of transference that you have to do across to canine But just looking at why certain probiotics may not work, why certain vitamins may not work, what may be going on with their ability to detox, what may be going on with their ability to manage histamine, what may be going on with, oh, just, you know, the whole liver capability. Some of the stuff about your mental approach to life So if you're somebody who's always slightly late, very laid back, don't really care about other people being a little bit late because we, you know, we just accept it, you know, that actually there is a gene for that, believe it or not, which is in this methylation gene. That's just, you know, it's just crazy stuff.

Yeah. Anthony is asking, are we talking about betaine, the prebiotic? I'm not quite sure. I think you might be talking about— I mean, Is it? It is a pre-product.

It is, it is. Um, okay, I was going to go because for some people, as I was just mentioning there, it's— that's— it can be problematic. Not for everybody by any means, okay, but for some people it can be problematic.

That's interesting because like you're trying to get betaine into the blood. I mean, you need it. That's— betaine is great. That's what keeps your, uh, homocysteine down, keeps your— keeps your inflammatory markers down. You want betaine. It's, it's a good thing. But why would I have a problem?

Sometimes blocks the ability for your body to naturally convert your homocysteine through the pathways and using vitamin B12 as a methyl B12. So there's some complexities. It just gets so deep. Okay. It is like a— you think, how hard can nutrition be? Because let's face it, I'm still alive. Okay. My parents didn't have a manual of how to feed me.

My friend's dogs live till they're 16.

Exactly. So you think it can't be complicated. And actually the thing is variety. Okay. And actually when you realize that realistically there are so many people around you who aren't necessarily clinically showing you their problems but have huge problems because of eating their processed diets. And often they won't mention it because it's one of those things that they've got a wobbly gut or they're carrying a few more pounds than they want to carry, that they suffer from some joint pain, but they don't go down the road going, ow, my hip, I can't hope. They don't do that. They just grin and bear it. There are so many of these these low-level issues with inflammation are going on. The level of type 2 diabetes that we have in the population, yeah, you know, the level of heart disease, the level of cardiac plaques that are building up, you know, all of this stuff that's going on, you know, underneath the surface. But yet, so really, we do need to understand there are layers upon layers of complexity, and it's just amazing how how the body functions and has evolved to work. So I am constantly amazed when I read books about the depth and detail.

Oh yeah.

Um, you know, but it is something that floats my boat.

Is there a test? Is there a test I can do to get these, uh, MTHFR genes?

There are. Okay, but so there is for about— because test I could do, so you can do I think there's certain genetics ones, 23andMe, a few other options that are out there, genetic testing. Now, Ben Lynch just says, whoa, hold on, you can do that. You could look at what you're predisposed to. You can even get genetic tests now that will tell you whether that gene is methylated or not. Thanks, Ben. As some of the guys online have said, well, you can look at your degree of methylation through your Dutch test. Test. So there is one for men as well as women.

I didn't know that.

It will talk to you about that. And there is, however, the scrub options that are given in the book for dirty genes, actually, that he calls it doing the laundry. Actually, you can, through looking at your symptoms, pretty much give yourself an idea of the genes that may be not methylating very well and dirty and need cleaning. Okay, and then that's the point. You can go through these cleaning processes for as little as 2 weeks and review the changes, and that will tell you whether you are born dirty, have become dirty, or whether you aren't affected by that at all.

Yeah, but like, I don't really have any ailments. I feel okay.

Ah, so you think, so yeah, like what symptoms, you know, I don't know. Brilliant. No, there are so many things. So just about your ability to how quickly you can go to sleep at night, whether you're kept up with thoughts of new ideas. And yeah, really, he says when he texts me at 3 AM, I've just thought of this.

Yeah, well, if I work late at night, if I work late into the night, I'm doing I'm doomed. If I work past, you know, 11, 12, I'm doomed. But like most nights, I'm out like a light. Out like a light.

Gene for that.

But that's a good thing, surely, that I go to sleep quickly and well. I don't wake up. I'm like, you know, I really don't wake up unless I need to get my foot outside the duvet.

Guys, okay, we've kept you, uh, well over time. Um, we're going to say goodbye. Maybe we'll have a quick chat on the, uh, yeah, we'll talk more stuff. So if you want to join for just a brief 5 minutes over on Patreon. Please join us at patreon.com/rawpetmedics. You will catch the end of this. It's been great to see you all. Thanks for all of your comments. Don't forget to put some extra comments in down there just to tell Conor about your filter system for your water and how your plumbing works. Yeah. Oh, wonderful, guys. Take care.

Thank you. Cheers, Pete.