Heart Health

Conor Brady, Dr. Brendan Clark, and me, Dr. Nick Thompson. We are the Raw Pet Medics, and we are coming at you through the microphone, through the speakers, through the podcasts. Absolutely, uh, in every direction. Uh, we are on Patreon, and people support us. Amazing, you know, uh, dozens and dozens— how many people? Hundreds, actually. People support us on Patreon, and we're incredibly grateful for that. And you can join us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Basically, you just go to the website and you put in Raw Pet Medics and we will jump out at you. And we're on podcasts and we're on YouTube. Anything you can do to follow us, subscribe, and all that stuff would be gratefully accepted.

Got some exciting news because tonight is going to be the first night that we're going to transfer and we're going to be live. Over on Patreon, I found a little bit of a widget that has sorted out where we're going from here. So we're going to be live. So if you want to flip over straight tonight, I think I need to record it as well because otherwise it literally is live and that's it. You're done.

Things can go wrong.

So can you engage? Can you ask questions on Patreon as well?

Yeah, they can ask questions and everything else. So it's going to be interesting.

Oh, so if I open Patreon right now?

Yeah, I tried it out last week. I did a little—

Oh, look what you've done.

—exploration as to how I could do that before I uploaded the video. So guys, get ready for a marathon. You can't leave at 8. You'll be still listening to us whittle on till half past.

The proper after dark stuff. There's also, there's other news, isn't there? Because it's somebody's birthday today.

Oh, it is.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.

Thank you guys, thank you guys, that's really, really kind. I am 21. I've done it 37 times. This is my 37th time being 21. Nice. And I'm very, very happy with it.

And so I've done 21 Are you really trying to challenge the maths out there? I'm not.

I mean, come on, 63 yet. You're looking fit and healthy.

Word on the street is that Nicholas Thompson can do a muscle-up, everybody. For anyone that doesn't know what that is, uh, check it out online. Check it out online what a muscle-up is. And Nick can do it and I can't, and that is really, really bothering me. Uh, so it can't be a strength thing, it has to be a technique thing, like gymnastics, like doing a cartwheel. It's not like it just has to be shown to me and I'll be able to do it.

Have a go, my brother. Okay, so I did a muscle-up, but I did use a band to pull me up, which is a cheat, but it is a muscle-up. That's definitely cheating.

That is great. That has just taken you down, I mean, 75% instantly. Excellent. That makes me feel great.

Nice one. How strong was the band? What was it attached to?

A crane? It was very strong. It was made by NASA to save on rockets. Actually, it will get you. It will get you to the moon. Like the Apollo. Nice one. But muscle-ups. Yeah, I'm working on muscle-ups. I want to be doing muscle-ups by— where are we? September. A full muscle-up by mid-October without any bands.

That's what I would like to do. I'm going to erase you. Okay. I need someone to show me. No, I don't have anyone to show me. Oh, you've got, you've got someone showing you, you've got someone helping you every week. You've got a person, I bet, haven't you? You have, you've got a person. I was using YouTube.

Show us on Patreon the technique for muscle-up.

Well, no, I don't, I don't want to see it on Patreon later video.

I can't watch that.

I'll tell you what, I'll send, I'll send it to you as long as you, because it's with the band, don't post it to anybody. When I do the, I'll show you the, the weak muscle-up. But it is a muscle.

There's no point showing it. Is that what you do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be like showing me a half press-up where you're kneeling on the ground. Just don't show people that. Don't commit that to video because emails will eat you alive.

I'm going to see you do a muscle-up.

If you can't do a half press-up kneeling on the ground, then it's very substantial. Anyway, anyway, so I also, from my beautiful wife, I got a very interesting book. It is called Free Radicals. And it's by a guy called Mike Jay. I've just started it this morning. And the flyleaf says, how a group of romantic experimenters, romantic as in historical, not as in given to persuasions of love, how a group of romantic experimenters gave birth to psychedelic science. Nice. Cool. Oh, I like it. That's cool.

Is that people that— is that everybody that was under the influence when they came up with their discoveries, like the double helix and mRNA, uh, technology and everything else? They all attributed to being on an LSD trip?

I can't— I can't tell you that, but it does start with Joseph Priestley during the Priestley Riots in Birmingham in 1779. So I think that's pretty much pre-LSD. But they're into all sorts. It's, uh, it's, it's going to be very interesting. I'll tell you all about it when I'm finished. I'm going to keep popping over to Patreon to see.

People didn't know to watch it on Patreon. There won't be anybody there. Why would anybody be there watching this live if they didn't know about it?

Unless, yeah, there won't be anybody there now. It's not going live to Patreon now. It's going live to Patreon as soon as we finish here. Oh, immediately.

Oh yes. Okay. Right.

No delay. Onto business, guys. Speaking of no delays, onto business. I put up a post yesterday. I had a client whose dog had a grade B2 heart murmur, and I was kind of like, okay, I'm not fully sure if I'm the person you should be talking to. But we talked about hearts and diet and all sorts of stuff. Lots of stuff came out in the half an hour. I learned so much from her. And she mentioned a few bits and pieces, and I mentioned a few people that she should talk to. That was that. And then I put up what I learned and a few other bits and pieces on a post yesterday, and it was very well received. A lot of people out there with their heart issues, all the usuals. You know, you got Cavalier King Charles groups and Dobies and Dashies and a few other people, but a lot of people affected, a lot of people have been going through it. So I thought, I know nothing about this. I know we've done a heart day at some stage in the last 3 or 4 years, but I'd love to know more about heart murmurs and what diseases are we talking about. Is it just MVD? What is that? That's kind of what I'd like to learn from you guys tonight. What can you do naturally? What do vets do to detect these things? How do you measure it? What are the different measurements? All that. So there you go. That's my pitch.

And you're telling us about a VetMedIn study as well. Yeah. Yeah. I have that ready. And is it, is it a really well-formulated, unbiased and independent study, would you say? I don't want to ruin it, but abs—

no, it's got major, major issues. And I credit, I credit Rod Russell from the Cavalier King Charles something group, which I'll name him later on because it was from his piece that I was led. And so well done to him. He came up with the goods. He wrote a great piece for ResearchGate, which is published online. I can send people the link, but but it is a really dire kind of pull apart of the only study supporting this particular med. But I just wanted to, let's set the scene first and get the details of how we can normally do it because understanding what the naturals do and what is vasodilation, what do the meds do to help the heart? Why do you wanna control how the heart beats? All that kind of stuff because that will lead into a little 3-minute diatribe on this study that I've prepared. Heard. So who wants to start us off on heart murmurs, B2 grade of heart?

Well, okay, let's start with what a heart murmur is. Okay. And the last heart one we did was actually on dilated cardiomyopathy and sick heart muscle. So this one really is about the valves that we're going to be talking about tonight. So mitral valve disease, that's MVD. Okay. Because a lot of people did ask, what do we do in those circumstances? What are the symptoms? What's going to happen? So let's just have a little construct about what murmurs are. So murmurs are turbulence in blood flow that creates a reverberation, a sound that we can hear through our stethoscopes when we place that on the dog's chest. Now, there are some major things that can cause turbulence. Firstly, physiologically, the thickness of the blood. So if your dog is under or overhydrated, or they've got excessive cells, i.e., they're sighthounds and they're used to having really high numbers of red cells because they're running machines, that can change the thickness of the blood. And they can have a normal heart architecture and still have turbulent noises going on in—

Called a haemic murmur, no less.

So that's the first option that we've got. So don't panic if your puppy goes in to the vets and they say, I can hear a murmur. It should be rechecked, especially if it's a quieter murmur. It should be rechecked in puppies, sometimes even on a daily basis it will change. But even in older dogs, if it's one of those breeds that's predisposed to murmurs or is but not diseased, then they should be rechecked before they start piling in with medicines or anything like that. So, so get those checked. Don't panic if you, if the vet says they hear a murmur, because the next question you should have is, how loud is that? What grade is that out of 5. You know, that's the first set of grading rather than the B1s and 2s and things like that that you're talking about. And so I would say, look, most people won't usually be too worried until that murmur is moving into a grade 3 out of 5. You know, grade 2s, they'll be monitoring very carefully. Grade 3s, they might be monitoring less frequently. So for the grade 1s, so grade 3s, they'll be monitoring more frequently. They'll probably even be investigating with an ultrasound. And it's only really through ultrasound will then start to go into typing that to look at the laminar flow within the heart, looking at the ejection profiles in the around the valves. So that brings me to the next thing that can cause turbulence, within the heart, and that is if the valve isn't working 100%. So if you've got leakiness around the valve, so that means that the valve isn't shutting tight as the heart, as the blood flows. So imagine there are two atria. I'm just going to, so that they can see me a bit better, just do this for a moment. They are going to, there are two valves, two pre-parts, the atria on the heart. There is then the ventricles below. So there's 4 chambers and the atria act as injections into those ventricles to load them before they beat. So they will contract slightly earlier. And so they contract. Lubed up. So that's the lub. Okay. And then ultimately you've got that flows through the valve, you know, a little valve here, and that sits in the ventricle on one side. Ultimately, when that ventricle then contracts, the valve snaps shut, okay? And that's the dub, as you then get the ejection of that blood up through the arteries. Now, for on the right side, that goes then into the pulmonary arteries and round that way. And on the left side at the same time, strangely. So that's the other chamber goes into the aorta and that's around the body. So one side pumps blood around the lungs and the other pumps blood around the body and then it comes back. Okay. So that pretty much is a very brief anatomy. And sorry for those that feel I've massacred anatomy lessons in that description, but that is ultimately what we're trying to do. And on those situations where the heart valves are supposed to shut, if they're not shutting tightly, then you can get blood flow back into the atria from the ventricles rather than out the aorta. And that turbulence basically is what you then hear. Okay. And that can be over the heart base, up around those valves. Sometimes we also get, when the atria are in, if there's narrowing of the valves, if there's other issues, we'll get sounds emanating from the heart or down to the apex of the heart. You'll get them being throughout the whole beat, and you'll therefore get other noises and turbulence, and we'll start to describe that when we make our notes about what we're listening to. Okay, and I'm sure there's a cardiologist out there going, oh my God, they know nothing, these guys.

Yeah, I think that was really good. You can see why he did so well at vet college, guys. That was, that was, that was a textbook, that was a textbook answer. So just to, just to fill this out, just before I get into that, I'm just going to ask a question. So everybody knows about veins and arteries, and arteries take blood to the body, and veins bring it back from the body back to the heart. Therefore, the question, my friends, is which is the only artery in the body which carries deoxygenated blood? Yeah, normally deoxygenated blood comes from the body to the heart to be pumped to the lungs. Okay, so Which is the only artery in the body— don't you answer, Brady, give everybody a chance. And just while we're talking about that, when I'm thinking about heart valves, they're a bit like parachutes. And literally, when you open up a heart, they look like parachutes. Because so if you imagine we've got a parachute and we've got somebody descending below the parachute, okay, that's kind of what they're— if you take a kind of half parachute, that's probably more accurate. It means that with the parachute, When the blood is flowing down over the curvy bit of the parachute, it can flow easily through. Yeah, the parachute collapses and the blood moves through. Very nice. Great system. But what happens is when those ventricles then engage and increase the pressure, the parachute is then inflated. And if you have a couple— yeah, bicuspid means you've got two valves. And the other side is tricuspid, they then inflate and stop the blood flowing up the other way because of this parachute effect. It's an amazing system. And if you get damage to that parachute, you get thickening of that parachute, it's not going to abut quite as beautifully against the other valves in the system. And when you get therefore that ejection of blood, that's where we get these murmurs. Now, what you've got to remember is that if the deficit is big and you've got a lot of blood going through that deficit, i.e., blood going in the wrong direction within the heart, and there's a lot of it, it's going to be less noisy than if there's a tiny little hole. For example, If you get a leak in a tyre, it will go because the pressure is pushing the substance through the hole, and it's really noisy. Whereas if you empty a bath, that is to say, the hole at the top of the bath is very big, that can be an almost silent effect. So, Just because you've got a loud murmur doesn't actually mean that you've got a big deficit, and cardiologists know about this, but they have to make things fairly simple. So they say if it's not a very, uh, if it's not a very sonorous, if it's not a very noisy heart murmur, then you're probably okay. But the truth of the matter is that if you had a tiny little murmur and it was making a lot of noise and that then enlarged, it may reduce in volume because there's the amount of flow, the amount of fast vibration is reduced. I think it's really important. So the answer to the question of which is the only artery in the body which carries deoxygenated blood, the answer is it's the pulmonary artery. This is the artery that— it's an artery because it's taking blood from the heart. That's where it gets the definition of artery, is it not, Brendan? That's right. But because it's taking blood from the heart to the lungs to be oxygenated, that blood is deoxygenated, and therefore it is the only artery which carries deoxygenated blood. That's one of the few things that I do remember from vet college and There you have it. Great.

We do have some correct answers out there. Well done for all of you who've answered.

Who has answered it correctly?

Oh, let me scroll back. I've seen people wishing you happy birthday. Denise Thomas. Thank you. Okay. Sonia Phillips. Well done, guys. Well done, guys. Marilyn, sorry, no, it's not the aorta. But there we go. Yeah. So there are people out there.

Well done. The fact that you knew the aorta. Was very good. And then it came from the heart, so that's, that's 50% of the marks. Excellent, excellent.

So, so we're talking about that now. There's been a few questions already, you know, for people that are out there worrying about grade of heart murmur, and my vet is asking me to literally get the echoes done— that's the ultrasound done— as soon as they hear any sort of murmur. There's a couple of things, and Grady's just— well done, Grady, for just coming back at the right time.

I've been speaking, I've been speaking, and they're not listening to me. Guys, put me on the camera.

We've put on a sensor so that every time you open your mouth, you will be shut down.

It's really good.

It's to improve the show, mate. It's okay. It improves our ratings. It's okay, it's good for business.

So for years, for years, there has been an app made, yes, by one of the pharmaceutical companies, but it is free. And there is an app that helps people. So you can monitor the respiratory rate of your dog. So you can get this app called Cardalis. There's a few others that are coming on, but as I say, they are trying to flog drugs.

Bear in mind, they are trying to scare you so that you buy their drug.

Just— yeah, it doesn't on the app. All it does is it makes a graph, and it is a case of, you know, there's many, many cardiologists will say use this app because it's readily available. It's a really great way, and there are studies that show if your dog or cat has a respiratory rate in sleep, i.e., at rest, so not just after they've come off the park, below 20, then yes, monitor the murmur, but don't panic. You're not really in a problem. Between 20 and 40, you should be having that heart reassessed to see, do you need to do any further investigations? If there's some indicators to do so, then an echo with a cardiologist is probably the most appropriate next step. Okay, there are some blood tests that can be run to look at the stretch on the heart. So, ProBNP and troponin are two markers that look at heart muscle damage. Those can be done, but ultimately, your cardiologist can look at the flow, look at where that murmur's coming from, and assess whether edema is happening within the lungs and that's why the respiratory rate's going up, et cetera. So 20 to 40, definitely get a normal check-in. Don't panic, but just get a normal check-in with your vet to reassess. Do you need to do anything else or at least get them on a start of some treatment? Above 40, and the app actually tells you this, then it does say if they're asleep, then you need to contact a vet, usually even out of hours. Contact them, speak to them, check what's going on with your pet. It could be another cause, it could be pneumonia, it could be any other element of things. But ultimately, if their respiratory rate is above 40, they need some treatment fairly darn quick. And you should be looking at that. Again, that is at sleep, guys. Now I know that somebody's come along and added to their app some great options here. And he's nodding away. Go on, tell us about your little escapade into—

Look at this, I'll share it and you can have a look.

But while you're doing that, Conor, I'm just going to emphasize this is the respiratory rate, which is the number of breaths per minute. So if it's under 20, you're probably okay. But if there's a concern, just, you know, make an appointment at some point. If it's between 20 and 40, breaths per minute, the respiratory rate, then you need to get that investigated. And if it's above 40, you need to be talking to the vet that day. Okay, there and then. Respiratory rate, you don't need an app, you know, you can just— well, you're sitting on the sofa with the dog next to you, the dog is at rest and maybe sleeping. All you need to do is count how many breaths in a minute. And that, then you have it. Or in half a minute, multiply by 2. Or in 15 seconds, multiply by 4. It really is that simple, okay? You can use the app and just tap it every time they take a breath, but that's making something simple into something even simpler.

It does also record it, so it'll take a time sample.

A pad and paper are quite effective at that, I find.

Check out that screen there as well. Okay, should we enlarge? Yeah. So look, this is what it looks like. And so this is on DCBholistic.com. Go to the tools section up in the corner here. And it's down the bottom. And so you just tap the screen to get the thing going and then you breath, breath, breath, breath. Okay, so that'll tick all the way down to 30 seconds. And on and on and on. Okay, and then eventually you get— I'm just gonna stop it. And then underneath there, although I'm not logged in, I couldn't be bothered doing it. It'll graph the results. So you set— you save each result. And underneath, you'll see a graph, it'll graph your results. So what that enables you to do— I'm just gonna stop sharing that— what that enables you to do is that you can get your dog's ordinary resting respiratory rate, okay, because you're not quite sure where yours is, is it 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, they'll take a nice little average but you'll be able to see it going up. So when you have a nice little graph, you can actually track if you do it often enough. If you're a Cavalier King Charles owner and the dog's 6 or 8, 10 years old and you want to track it, it gives you a nice little graph and you can see it sneaking up a little bit. And so even that's a nice little early indicator. My question is, asides heart murmurs, what else do vets do to diagnose actual mitral valve disease and therefore we need to put you on medication? Surely it's not just by heart murmurs. I mean, do they measure the size of the heart, the thickness of the heart? What other tools do you have in your disposal before a vet makes a diagnosis and might recommend medication?

So that's what we were talking about just as you came on. So there's a few things around looking at the echo and the time to get an echo done. So an ultrasound of the heart. So these days, ultrasounds of the heart, where we used to do effectively a heart score looking at X-rays, where effectively if they exceeded 10.5, looking at vertebral score, scoring of the heart. So that's the addition of the length of the heart by the diameter across the heart. If you add those two together, if they are 10.5 times T4, which is the thoracic vertebrae 4, going backwards. So you then sort of measure and count backwards on the chest of that dog that brought it down. So it was less So it would tell you regardless of the breed, regardless of the size of the dog, then they would say if it's above 10.5, that's a large heart. If it's below 10.5 or thereabouts, then it's a normal heart.

Some breeds have that figure. Cavalier King Charles, a number of healthy young Cavalier King Charles with figures over 10, and so, and they don't have heart disease. 10.5. So these things, these things, and it's like, it's like a light heart murmur. These things in isolation aren't necessarily something to worry about. Yeah. Okay.

So they're guides, but that's the, that's what the X-rays were doing. Now, obviously there were some limitations, as you've just pointed out, with doing that. And as ultrasounds have improved and every practice is now getting better and better equipment, and you're finding that, you know, more expensive ultrasounds are available to normal practitioners and more and more people are training to do some of those those general scans of hearts, that's fine. I would still say at least a cardiologist or somebody with a certificate in cardiology is going to start measuring more accurately all of those hearts and giving you proper scoring and looking at where is that damage. They'll look at the flow of the heart. So they're looking at the coloration that you get with a Doppler ultrasound to show that Is there just forward movement of the blood? Is there any back ejection of blood? They look at all of those. They'll look at laminar flow within the bloodstream, etc. So there's loads of bits that they start to look at and loads of measurements at different levels of the heart that they start to look at— thickening of the heart or dilation of the heart or issues around the valves themselves so that they can determine exactly what's going on. So that's really what the ultrasounds are there for now.

You mentioned 3 different things there. What's the difference between Doppler, echogram, and ultrasound? So echo is ultrasound.

Okay, so ultrasound is the frequency that it's using to penetrate through fluid. So it can't go through air. So there's only certain areas that you can get through. You will use that sound Now, echo is the fact that it bounces back to the probe to be detected. So that's the echo part, but it still really is just using ultrasound. So those two names are interspersable. Okay, the Doppler is all about looking at how fast a particle is flowing away from you or towards you. Okay, so you can actually measure that just by the frequency change of that, and it will give you a speed at which that is flowing. Okay. And then the more complex ones will look at multiple points and start to give you a nice picture of, you know, flow rather than just looking at a point.

Because they seem quite expensive. This lady said that she spent £900 on an echogram, and I thought, how often do you have to do an echogram in a Cavalier King Charles who's borderline? And you're you're thinking, I need to keep an eye on this. So how often do I have to spend £900?

So good ones will cost, they were costing about £65,000, that's £65,000. They are coming down, but depends on the quality. If you want the ones that do even more, then they're always going to stay quite high. For those that are the ones that were being used 10 years ago, they'll probably be a lot less in cost now, but the definition will be less. And how you record stuff and how quickly it records that stuff is there. But remember, you're not paying for the equipment, you're paying for the downtime of the equipment, you're paying for the maintenance of the equipment, but you're also paying for the expertise of the person driving the equipment. Absolutely. Okay. And that person isn't just a vet. They've probably done a lot more training. We're not just talking hours, we're not just talking weeks, but we're probably talking about years of experience as well. So you get what you pay for. If you want to find out from Dr. Conor Brady how bad your heart is, you're probably going to pay other a lot less than if you are going to find a top cardiologist doing the ultrasound who's been doing it for 30 years.

You're paying for them having done it for 30 years. You're paying for 30 years worth of experience.

Yeah, you think we're expensive, wait till you try somebody—

That was not undermining you, Conor, as they say. No, absolutely, absolutely not.

No, I totally got it. So tell me, Nick, so if a pet owner has a diagnosis of borderline borderline, like this B2 grade. Do you understand this B2 grade? And what can you do naturally to say, to keep the wolves from the door where they say, you've moved along the ladder here and you need to be careful because there are treatments coming in, medicines that they give before chronic heart failure comes in. So the dog isn't outwardly sick yet and they put them on something like the way they're using statins today before people have high cholesterol and they're using it as a preventative. So with that issue, what are the things that you can do naturally to help this mitral valve disease type issue?

Yeah, I think this is really, really important, and it comes back to good old-fashioned veterinary medicine in that if you've got even a 15-year-old dog who is running around in great shape, the, the— my adage to my clients is if they If they are running around like a 2-year-old, then it must mean that the heart is functioning, even with a murmur, to the capacity of a 2-year-old dog. Yeah, the functionality of that heart is to the level of a 2-year-old dog. So one always has to take this in context, and this is so important with all aspects, whether you're looking at kidney disease or skin disease or heart disease, whatever. So when a cardiologist looks at your dog, they shouldn't just dive for the echocardiogram. They should be looking at the general health of that dog and the skin health and the everything else health. They should be looking at the exercise tolerance, okay, which is just a question, you know, does your dog fall over when they when they run up a hill. They should be looking at the color of the mucous membranes. They should be listening to the heart to get an idea of the silhouette, the size of the silhouette of the heart. They should be feeling the artery and vein in the hind leg in order to get the femoral pulse so that they can match the output of the heart to what's happening in the rest of the body. And these are things that a good cardiologist will do before they even start thinking of, oh, we needed a £900 investigation. But also looking at the context, you know, how old is the dog, what is the breed of the dog, and how are they performing in real life. We actually had a a dog who had a heart block and he was called Moss and he was probably about 9 years old. He was a chocky lab and every time he got excited, he would keel over because the electrical input from the top of the heart wasn't reaching the bottom of the heart and therefore he fainted whenever there was any extra demand on the heart. And if you're a cardiologist and you're presented with a dog who's fainting, then you're going to be thinking of these much more advanced disease processes. He did not have a murmur, but he did have heart disease. So it's very important to have a holistic conversation, even with a cardiologist. And if they are a good cardiologist, they will not be scared of the H word. Let's look at this holistically. In terms of therapeutics, there are drugs that the cardiologist will use. They probably won't talk to you about diet. What has diet got to do with heart? Heart doesn't affect heart. No, not at all. We've got a good cardiologist that just talked about that. Yeah, well, that is fantastic.

I'm sure they exist. I'm sure some of them do.

And if you look at it from, from a human perspective, what is the number? I think it's so number one killer of people in, in, in the USA at the very least is, I think, heart disease. And then it's cancer, and then number 3 is pharmaceutical prescriptions.

I thought guns was the number 1 killer.

No, I think that's number 5 or 6 or something like that. Yeah, way down. So, so, and, and everybody knows that this diet— in humans, diet and heart disease are massively, massively linked, and yet that hasn't crossed over to our, our, our colleagues, which is a real shame. Now, what can we What can we do? And the simple answer is, if you're feeding a good, varied, raw food diet including green vegetables and organ meat and good quality meats, and you've got plenty of variety of meats, you're probably in the right place. Okay, so if it were me, every Cavalier King Charles in the country would be on a raw food diet. And not on a kibble. Yeah. Okay. Because they're low in taurine and carnitine and—

There you go. All of these important elements. Yeah. Critical point. There's a number of natural things you can do. I can't speak to the herbal side of things, but, you know, hawthorn and stuff are going to come up and a couple of others. And you guys can talk about that as to how they work and why, because that'll lead us on to the vet medicine conversation. Do that over on Patreon. But a lot of people when they have these conditions, they supplement with natural nutraceuticals. Okay. So this is, as Nick just alluded to, taurine, you know, best— that's, you know, from the bull, you know, Taurus, taurine. And it comes from meat. And you've got L-carnitine and you've got arginine and maybe some omega-3. And people talk about those. And there's a supplement out there. They'll wrap them up, they'll put them all in. What's it called? Called, there's one there called Cardiodol and it's £20 for 250ml. And it's those amino acids that are chock-a-block in raw-fed dogs. And so a lot of raw-fed dog owners are supplementing with those nutrients. And I would say, I only went to, I had a quick look to see if there's any data to support the idea of when a person is absolutely full of these nutrients, is adding more on top like putting bricks outside a well-built house, will that help the heart? And there's no evidence to suggest that somebody that isn't deficient in omega-3 is going to benefit from oodles of omega-3 if you already have enough. If so, meat provides a huge amount of nutraceuticals, including— if you're feeding heart meat, you've got enough coenzyme— well, I'm not going to say you've got enough, but you've got a great source of coenzyme Q10. You've got enough taurine, L-carnitine. So like those things wouldn't be where I would personally spend my money as somebody who knows absolutely nothing about heart disease. My interest for the last 5 minutes for people that are listening on Facebook for— would be that what else can we do, Bren? So, you know, what do you—

Omega-3s, I would definitely say, are worth supplementing because I'm afraid even in a raw meat diet, I would still say they are woefully deficient because we're not including brain material in raw meat diets. So and, you know, getting them in modern farming, just knowing that our omega-3s aren't necessarily in our farm animals as high as they could be. Omega-6 is too high in our poultry. So, you know, getting the omega-3s up, you know, it's really hard to overdose on that because the likelihood that you're going to get above a 3 to 1 ratio omega-6 to 3s is really low. There's quite a lot of diets out there, including some raw diets that don't necessarily publish their figures that are down at 20:1 ratios and below. Okay, so I can talk in turkey. Yeah. So, so just be aware of those. I would say I definitely would say you can't go wrong with supplement with omega-3 as a nutritional supplement. And, you know, obviously, as you've just said, heart, good healthy heart is going to be rich in all of the ingredients that a healthy heart requires. So if it's under stress, a really good thing to do is just increase the amount of heart material that they're getting to eat. Okay. So that's, those are a couple of simple nutritional bits that you can aim to do without getting too complicated and spending a fortune.

Just jump in there, just a couple of things to jump in there. The time to change your diet for heart disease is before you get heart disease. So if you've got a Cavi or you've got a Dachshund or you've got any of these breeds, Dobe, who are predisposed to heart disease, then you don't want to wait til things go wrong. Yeah, your Dobie's got cold feet, till your cavi at 5 years old is developing a murmur. The time to treat those dogs is from day one. You know, the day they walk through the door is the day you start treating for heart disease. Do you need to treat that normal dog? Yeah, I've got 3 sighthounds downstairs. Do they need to be treated for heart disease? No, they don't. Do they need food to protect them from heart disease? I think they do, but actually they get it every day. To summarize what these two learned gentlemen have said, make sure you're getting heart into that dog on a regular basis and make sure you're getting the omega-3s. That's short for fish oil, generally low mercury, clean, high EPA, DHA fish oil. So if you get nothing from this talk but those two things, fish oil and heart. Those are the two things to remember.

Think about a dry-fed cavy, right? They are getting no— unless it's been supplemented— coenzyme Q10 or L-carnitine. L-carnitine is not a required amino acid, because— and so where the only source of that is meat, and they put between 4 to 10% bone meal— I don't know why they put more than 4% because it costs more than wheat and grain— so, you know, you are getting bone, dried bone matter as your meat ingredient, and you're not getting bugger all L-carnitine and very little taurine as the DCM scandal demonstrates for us every single year. And coenzyme Q10, these are major, major antioxidants of the dog, of the meat eater's profile, and they need huge amounts of taurine, not the paltry amount that they supplement in dry food. So to Nick's point, if you are dry fed, you are asking for these conditions like DCM, you're asking for it because you're starting off deficient in a dog genetically predisposed to have this issue. So loading up and protecting. Tell me about the— in the last minute that we have, somebody tell me about the herbal places where you would go to. Why is hawthorn so awesome for hearts? Dandelion tincture. What are we talking?

Let's do that in Patreon. I want to do that.

I want to do the vet medicine study because I've prepared it and I don't want to waste my time.

You can do both. Yeah, I'd like to stick to time because I'm absolutely— no, I'd like to stick to time, full stop.

Because he's got a party to go to, mate. That's why. We did the party on Friday night.

It's, it's, it's important here. It's important here for Facebook people to know because before we jump to part 2, a lot of them aren't on it. And so I'll just do the vet med one. But tell the people here that are listening what horrible bits you would do just before we bounce. Okay.

Just— okay. Look, anything that will improve circulation, okay, is good. And Cretaceous and Arnica are quite often used. Cretaceous even as a herbal medicine. Those Arnica and Cretaceous as homeopathics. However, there are also a load of other things to do with how the heart feels. So there is a product by Weleda called Cretaceous Compound, which actually has not just Cretaceous in it, but a load of other remedies which are all about the consequential stuff. If you have heart disease for a length of time where the heart can become more irregular, that you start to get buildup of fluid that you start to get the feeling that your heart is bursting in your chest because the chambers will start to enlarge. You can get a dry cough. So if your dog's cough sounds like this, that generally is what we get when they're trying to cough a large area of the heart out and there's nothing in the airway. If it's a lot gruffer, if it's a lot more like pneumonia, you get this sort of phlegmy material that will come up. And so that's a totally different sound, a much coarser cough. Or if you've got inflammation in the larynx, you get a much coarser cough to it. But if it's just that, that you hear that soft cough, then that could be that either the heart is getting too large inside the chest or that you're getting fluid buildup in the lungs. And that's where these other remedies can be useful. Okay. And then some of them will improve the issues around sick heart muscle that's been stretched for too long.

Okay. What about natural diuretics, vasodilators, you know, things that can—

Some of those come about within those remedies that I've just talked about within those compounds. Can you spell Cretaceous?

Cretaceous. It's Hawthorn for non-nerds.

It's a species of horn. Yeah, but we'll either— it'll be under Cretaceous. So it's C-R-A-T-A-G-E-O-U-S. Cretaceous. Yeah, that's really good.

That's a very popular herb that you can use. And there are herbs that you can use as natural diuretics as well. And dandelion and things like that, but they are not going to be as potent as furosemide, for example.

If you've got a dog that's respiratory rate is over 40, okay, please, when they're seen, if they've got edema in the lungs, don't mess about. Let the vet give a diuretic. Totally agree. Okay, absolutely. Please, please do not cause your dog suffering by going for something less potent because it's natural.

Googling. Yeah, Googling and trying to find what can I put in here? How many supplements? You know, get some expert advice and then, you know, you can decide.

Use the drugs to get stability. Yeah. Yeah. And then use the herbs to enhance that stability.

On that note, I want to wrap it up here, guys, because one of the most common drugs that they use out there for, for MVD is Vetmedin. And I want to mention this great breakdown of the study by Rod Russell. There's actually 3 resources I want to mention on this, on these diseases, by the way. First of all, we're on Dr. Judy Morgan. Hi to everybody on Dr. Judy Morgan's, by the way. We never say hello to him. We forget that we go out to the US on our page.

Oh, I don't think we forget.

Judy Morgan is the absolute Cavalier King Charles Queen. And what she doesn't know about mitral valve disease and murmurs and whatnot is not worth speaking about. Check out her page. She's got a awesome blog and she talks about natural versus pharmaceutical treatments of those diseases. CavalierHealth.org is brilliant. Mighty Hearts MVD Community is also brilliant. And I'll be— what's Rod Russell's page? I want to give him a plug because I took these ideas from him.

You find that and we'll share it over on Patreon.

Okay. Yeah, I might put it up on— maybe I'll put it up on the Facebook page for Cavalier Health. Org. He writes for that and he's awesome. He's obviously clearly a scientist. I'll put up on the Facebook page for people that are concerned and looking for more leads. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Thanks for that tonight, gents. That was very educational.

Just finally, uh, I need to give a plug for the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society 11th International Annual Conference. It is on nutrition, dermatology, skin, hormones, and we are going to be in Palma in Mallorca If you have even the slightest interest, or you just want a few days with an excuse to be with your mates, it's the 17th and 18th of October, 2025. The list of the speakers is absolutely awesome.

And you'll also see the fine gentleman on your screen right now at the conference too. And, you know, that's all I can say. You know, if you want to come to a great conference, come and see us two as well. And we'll be comparing and you get to see us. Otherwise, of course, there is somebody.

You too. Come to Helsinki, everybody. Come to Helsinki. Don't go to their party.

Come to mine. I'll mute him. Oh no, sorry. That was cutting him off. I'll mute him. There we go. So you can see us in a nice sunny environment. That's going to be lovely and warm in October. Vitamin D, good for the heart.

That's our excuse anyway. So, uh, it is the 17th and 18th of October with the, the, the lineup. Lisa Hansen, who we've had on the show. Dr. Mark Craig, who's brilliant. Rita Hogan, who we've had on the show. Tobias, who we had on the show. Uh, Anna Hein Borgman, who we've had on the show. Billy Herkman, who we've had on the show. Caroline Ingram, who we've had on the show. Rita Hogan. They are They are top, top, top. And so to see these guys for the price, I can't believe they can do it for that price. But they're all going to be there and it's going to be beautiful weather. Please come along.

I wish I was there.

I'll miss it. And Brady won't be there, which is probably the most attractive thing about the entire conference. My wife is pregnant.

I have berated her already. And I just said, well, this is ruining everything. This is ruining my trip to Mallorca. How dare you? No, you can't. You can't push. You can't push an 8-month old pregnant woman, not just because of her size, but dangerous territory. Oh, she's not in the house.

I can say I'm going to tell her this is being recorded and somebody's going to send that out.

Female audience, that's not going to go down well. It's going to go all over Facebook. Neat as a pin. So yes, that is it. But I will be in Helsinki doing my thing. That's actually on Thursday. I'm going in 2 days. So hopefully there's airport parking for me. Yeah, thanks to everybody. Let's bounce over to Patreon, guys. The kids are downstairs and expecting me to put them to bed tonight. Okay, well, let's rock and roll. Yeah. All right, great tonight. Thanks a lot, lads. See you later.