QnA Feb 2025 with RawPetMedics

Buddy, I'm in the middle tonight and I am feeling the power. This is awesome. This is new for me. I'm not nervous. I'm okay. I'm in control. For those listening on podcasts or anywhere you get your audio, Bren's on the left, I'm in the middle, and Nick is on the right. So I'm going to do the introducing because I'm in the middle and I feel like I've got the conch. So we are Raw Pet Medics and tonight is Q&A night where you send in your questions and we do our best to answer them. You'll find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Thanks to everybody who's in there, and they're the questions we take first, guys. So do, if you're looking for that extra bit of content we do, we do an extra 20 minutes at the end on Patreon. Do join us for that bit on the side, and we appreciate everybody in there. If you can, great. If you can't, not to worry.

Nick's disappeared.

Nick's disappeared. That's all right, we can handle it without him. He's fine.

We're still having some issues for some reason. This wonderful thing is Facebook's still messing us about.

Are we up on Facebook as we speak?

I'm having a look. I'm seeing what is going on.

Oh, the drama.

Oh, the drama.

Do you want me to keep on talking while you sort of talk bits and pieces? I can take the pressure off. Do you know what? Just until we get Nick back in, I'm just going to go straight out of the traps of the very first question, and then we can come back to chatting about our various lives. And it's more important. Oh, Nick, you're back.

For some reason, it's very good.

Anything happen this week, Nick, that you feel you need to report to the people? Not really. Not really.

It's just been really busy and really wet. Just taking the dog out.

It's just miserable.

I'm up to my eyes in mud. And then you've got to clean. I've got 3 dogs to clean when I get back in the door.

Yeah.

But it means that when it's dry, it's absolutely glorious.

I've always wanted a boot room. I've always wanted a room to step into. Do you have one?

Coming.

You've got one coming. Is your house still being built, Brian, or is it not?

You know, because we keep going and correcting it every 5 minutes and adding a bit on.

Oh no, chaos.

Brady, when you come to design your house, make sure you talk to us because there's things that we, well, that Bren is doing in his process. And if I was building a house, there are certain things, I mean, we've had a bit of a chat about this, but yeah, definitely make sure you run it past. In fact, we could have a whole show on what you need for your new house.

Yeah, or PM to improve. Yes. Yeah, I will definitely do that. There's a few people that have built houses around me and Yeah, I will learn as I go along. I know nothing at the moment, but I want a boot room. I want to be able to come in with a couple of big mucky dogs and not care that they wait until they get into the house to shake. Dogs don't shake before they go in, you know. Can't do that, Dudley. No, no, no, he just waits in the porch where it's dry. He could shake there. No, no, wait till the door is open, come in, and then shake where the shoes are.

We started— so I have this wonderful stone trough that we purchased.

Oh yeah.

Goats because I was feeling really nice to them. And now, and then, um, my wonderful wife saw this and went, that would be perfect for sticking just outside the back door. So when you bring the dogs around, they're going to have, you know, a little nice warm and cold tap outside. Outside? And then we started with— so then we're going to have a boot room, a drying room, because we do a lot of walking and we come in soaked and, you know, you see them all the time when you go to various houses out in that you rent out in the wilderness. And it was like, oh, drying room, you know, like a boot room. You come in, you can take all your wet stuff off, you're not worried. And then before I know it, we've now got a little dog shower in the corner of the boot room just in case it's cold outside and you don't want to wash your mouth.

Tell me you've made it without telling me you've made it. You've got a warm shower for the dogs in your boot room. Oh my God. That is quite the luxury.

I think that's called mission creep.

Yeah.

It starts as a boot room and then it turns into a doggy wet room.

A doggy parlor. Yeah.

Oh, parlor. Very nice. I can imagine that the— I imagine your wife in the shower.

Sorry.

I can imagine when the shower is taken and Brent's then using the dog shower in the boot room is what I was trying to say. But yes, so I'd like a boot room. I'd like that. And I'd also like a pantry. I don't know if any of us have a pantry.

Not really, but I think very useful, really, you know, just so you can store, so you can make pickles and make jams and, you know, loads of Jack's Roll.

Slab just to keep it cool.

Oh yeah, brilliant. Like they do in the Victorian houses.

Yeah, really good. I don't get it.

So you get a big stone slab and basically it acts as a heat sink, so it takes the warmth out of the pantry, so it keeps it cool. That's what the whole point was. So you ended up with thick walls, a big stone slab, and basically it would stay at a constant temperature. So it was just that whole—

and then you can do the whole prepper thing. Oh yeah, fill it with food for things that last forever.

Yeah, just in case a nuclear bomb ever lands on Ireland for some reason. Yeah, well, England and the wind will blow. Isn't that far? That's the whole point.

Okay, I'm gonna kick off because Caroline Cross She says, we've been talking about mud, and she says, I've got 6 poodles, 2 of them white, and I'm in rainy Scotland. That trumps me. So Caroline, you can have the first question. She's saying on YouTube, and greetings to all our YouTubers, please subscribe and tick and, you know, all that stuff. That'd be brilliant. And she says she'd love a pantry Wouldn't we all? And she says she's asked a question on Facebook about gooey poops. Should we do that one first?

Gooey poops, great start.

I'm just going to relog into Facebook and make sure that everybody's there and happy.

Okay. And in the meantime, okay, so while we're looking for Caroline's, Caroline's question, I've got another one here from Patreon. Okay. Now this is really, really interesting. And it's quite a long question, but it's very well written, so it's a pleasure to read. And this is by Ida, and it says, riddle me this, my dog— which is a very nice way to start. Riddle me this, my dog nutritionist colleague that keeps a pet shop also has a few customers so far that have had rusty discoloration around the eyes and paws when on raw. When the veterinarian has them switched to Hill's or Royal Canin unallergenic kibble, the redness disappears completely. I was wondering, could it be yeast or somehow extra porphyrins due to raw diet? But why, oh why— yet more kind of Shakespearean tones— why, oh why does the vet kibble make the rusty redness go away? This is driving her insane. I am quite intrigued too. Most are some kind of water dog, Portuguese, maybe Portuguese water dog, and one is a Bichon Frise. So very interesting. Any thoughts, gentlemen? Um, Bren, you have, uh, answered it to a certain extent on Patreon. Do you want to just take us through that answer?

So, uh, well, yeah, um, I initially would look at And allergenic.

Yeah, easy for you to say.

They are ultimately usually hydrolyzed feathers and other useless bits of protein that's, you know, got virtually nothing in there other than, well, it's effectively protein powder, isn't it? Just reconstituted into a kibble cardboard and then tried to be flavored in some way to make the dogs eat it. So there's very little as far as some of those levels that we'd look at for iron. Now, they've got to be bare minimum because they're supposed to be FEDIAF compliant. But I just wondered whether when you're feeding raw, you've got a lot more of the iron-based compounds in the myoglobins, etc., that's going to come in. And therefore, are you going to have more porphyrins rich with iron and that rusty color is ultimately the oxidation of the iron salts within those proteins, and that's what turns to that rusty color. That's why when saliva is licked onto the pore, the same thing happens, that they— it tends to oxidize. It's not usually yeast unless you're getting positive yeast in there. That's usually something— the reason that they're licking more is, you know, when they've got more yeast, it's not usually the yeast that causes the discoloration unless it's that waxy gray black stuff. So paw friends, I would just wonder, therefore, are these dogs still suffering from epiphora? That's a new word for you, which is an excess tear overflow from the eye regardless. And it just happens that when they're on the anallergenic diets they're just not getting as rich a diet in iron. Possibility there. I think always, look, just because it's raw doesn't mean it's going to resolve all allergies. You know, if you're feeding something that's not right and not all raw is equal. So it's also important to understand, you know, are there other things within that raw diet that are causing continued problems? That's the only thoughts that came to me. And what about you, Nick?

I would be looking because— so my question to Ida would be, were all the dogs on the same raw? Was therefore, was that company having a bit of a problem somehow with that batch?

Supplements within that batch?

Yeah, that kind of thing. Maybe it's, you know, whatever it might be, a seaweed, a maybe a probiotic, maybe they were using a mineral premix, you know, because however, if they were from different raw food companies, the probability is really low. And so that would be my thought. It is— I'm glad the dogs are better. And you're talking about epiphyra and moisture from the eyes, but what about the feet? Yeah, how come they're getting red feet, that kind of says to me that they're licking. But Ida says in another answer that according to the owner, not licking.

So I would debate. I think I see a lot of people coming to the surgery assume that the dog isn't licking, but when you see the paws, yeah, when you see the paws that are red-tinged like that, that orangey, you know, reddish tinge, that usually is the saliva oxidizing.

Yeah, because dogs learn if they get shouted at for licking, they learn to kind of go behind the sofa and have a secret.

Yeah, I'm just going to lie down. Yeah, not sucking. Yeah, Doodly's a chronic paw licker, and so I can totally see what that— like, on the beers of of light-coated dogs, raw-fed dogs, I can't see how it's nothing— how it's not the iron in the food. I think that must be it because like I was just Googling, having a quick Google to see if there's any studies out there on iron supplements in humans, and the more iron you eat, there's more iron in your saliva. A couple of studies show that. So the more iron you consume— now both of those were iron supplements, so who knows— but the more iron you take in, then the more iron will be in your saliva and the more iron in your saliva, the redder you're going to leave on a white coat. So that seems to be the most likely thing. I wouldn't say it's yeast just because if you're jumping from raw food to dry food and that solves it and you're, you know, that would be the opposite way for yeast and you just know by the smell and the itchiness and all that kind of stuff. So it sounds like it's interesting.

It would be one of those that I'd want to so much understand more about the companies they're using and the supplements that are in there.

Do you not think the beer prints of white-coated dogs get, uh, quite get a bit bloody, get a bit red.

I don't think it's blood from the food.

Not blood, I didn't mean to say blood. I just mean, yeah, the saliva and the red staining, isn't it? It's just that kind of I eat meat for life, you know, face. I think there is a little bit of that. And, uh, you know, um, but coming out, that's around the beard. But did she say her eyes as well? And so you were saying, Brandon, you can come out in the tears too. And that's the case with diabetics, isn't it? Can't you have sugary tears?

Um, you can, you just exude sugar from There's natural enzymes, natural proteins within the tears and the saliva. These contain iron compounds. That's the porphyrins within that protein, and that's what then oxidizes.

Now, Conor, you have got a product called Oculus Prime, and you're too modest to mention it, so I'll mention it.

Yeah.

And you use that for Epiphora, yeah, where you, where you have staining with the Bichon Frise and breeds, you know, the pale breeds like that. How does that work?

So like, I don't actually promote that anymore. I still sell it. I've got a lot of customers. I know you can see by the reviews it works. A lot of stockists, and, uh, it really works. Do you know what, what kind of puts me off about something? It's an anti-inflammatory is what it is. It's the, it's the guy that we were working with as a seaweed scientist, and, uh, he just said casually one day, that works great on membranes. So he, like, he said something, something, and then something to do with eyes intoxicating series. And so it's just a potent anti-inflammatory. And so the approach I took in, you know, 6, 8 years ago, me, you know, and another guy that I was working with, I was like, well, if it's an inflammation thing, as I think we'd probably all agree that, you know, well, maybe we don't, I don't know, from my simplistic point of view, an inflamed dog is going to have these leaky eyes. It's like a smoke detector. And often when we get everything else right in the dog, often those tears dry up. So I want that to be the first mode of approach for people. So it's like when you get these dry-fed dogs and the tears are streaming and crusty eyes, I'm I'm like, hang on, to me there's a lot of different ways to cool that off without piling in anti-inflammatory. How much omega-3 or turmeric or, you know, and pile this in to cool. It's like, well, let's just turn off the heat from inside the dog and cool everything off and get all that right. And then these little symptoms and the itchy paws and the recurrently bad ears and the skin condition, they evaporate and they go away. So I'm now— I know I no longer push that forward. I've got— I've got a— I'm followed by raw feeders, you know what I mean? These guys already have done the bits and pieces. So I just think it's a little bit more complicated than that. So I think that I don't know, I no longer promote an anti-inflammatory type idea for really much anything. I feel like there's something else causing that, and I want to know what that is. And until I know what it is, I couldn't tell you what supplements it is. So you need to talk to a natural vet. So that's where I am with, but it's still very popular. You can see it works, the groomers like it, but it's an anti-inflammatory approach. Seaweed is potently anti-inflammatory, particularly two of the ones that I use, one of them in particular is very expensive, but it does the job. But that was the approach, no more secret than that. There's other products you can put in like Eye Bright and Golden Seal, and all those things have merit, but I want to know why the eyes are leaking. That's my new thing. Yeah.

Oh, I did a whole study on that before I left university on epiphora. Yeah, S1s and S2s in cats it was specifically, but it had a lot of crossover into dogs, and that's basically looking at tear film production and why we get epiphora. And then all of the differentials for from tear block tear ducts all the way through to, you know, inturning eyelashes, but actually various viruses that can cause problems within the eye and you end up getting excess tear production. Yeah, all the way to the other side.

Diet wasn't mentioned when you were a young vet.

No, diet wasn't a thing.

Yeah. Funny, isn't it? That, that how, you know, because when I was at vet college, nobody was talking about the microbiome really at all. And things like chondroitin glucosamine was, yeah, you know, give it a go sort of thing. It was, it was kind of just lurking there in the background. And now it's amazing how these ideas evolve, don't you think? Just over, over, over time, things that you weren't thinking about 20, 30 years ago are now, you know, just blindingly obvious, blindingly useful.

Yeah.

And it makes me think, crumbs, what are they going to be talking about in 20, 30 years' time?

Yeah, definitely. I think it's a long time, 20, 30 years in health, with the speed science is moving, the speed of science.

The speed of science.

Yeah, like, you know, we've already had antibiotics.

You say that, but then I always reflect on where they were talking about the microbiome for mental health issues in 1911. At a conference. And you just think, you know, it's one of those— is it a fashion thing that actually, you know, those Levi jeans are going to come back into fashion? Yeah, the microbiome eventually came back into fashion. And, you know, people have suddenly— because let's face it, you know, antibiotics have taken a huge swathe of a century.

Yeah.

So suddenly people realizing that actually maybe this isn't the best way to deal with bacterial infections.

Yeah, fighting them.

So, yeah, I do know, and I feel, I feel, I'm not—

no, I feel the same way now about probiotics. I am getting to the point where it's like, I feel that we might look back on some of our probiotic approaches and go, we really didn't know what we were doing. We were just lobbing in species and hoping that we knew what would be best for that animal in that house on that diet at that time. How could you possibly know? I mean, yeah, you can have a twin brother in the same house on the exact same life, you think, with a completely different biome. It's like, not completely different, I'm sure Michael Bogdanski would disagree with that, but I am more confused than ever with probiotics, to the point that I'm like, I think maybe prebiotics is what I can handle at the moment, and I see a few microbiologists that I like are saying the same thing. It's like, I'm not sure, like, when you're in a dire situation, yeah, give me anything to get me out of this trouble. But I think a lot of people are using probiotics like they're a normal part of the supplementary protocol, which whatever that you consider that is, I don't think that's a good idea. I think you can actually shift the biome. This Chinese study of 5 months long shows if you keep on taking them, eventually the gut goes, okay, I'll look like that then. And how is that? How do we know that's right for that dog? So I'm really confused. And I bet you every year with probiotics, you look back over the last year and go, oh, I just learned some cool new things. Yeah.

I mean, it was like that. I don't know whether I've got the book here, actually. Robin Chutkan did a whole book on the gut microbiome.

That was a nice book, actually. I got that on Audible.

Yeah.

What is that one?

It's Robin. So R-O-B-Y-N Chutkan. So C-H-U-T-K-A-N. Sorry guys, yes, there's other book recommendations coming.

Yeah, I didn't—

not from me. It's been a while, it's been very quiet on the book front.

And yeah, I've been consumed with American politics.

Oh no.

I'm trying to wean myself off because it needs to get you anywhere.

Me too, I am neck deep in it, I really am. I just, I can't stop looking at them. Redneck deep. No, sorry.

So from a point of view of— she was talking about constantly, you know, people would be for Clostridium difficile taking probiotics on a daily basis for a year, you know, capsules even for a year to get there. And if they stopped, that they were recurring. And that actually, she then talks about the colonics, you know, moving to the colonics and actually how much more effective it was. And that's why, yeah, really embraced that way of doing things. You know, you've just got to screen the dog, you've got to do the microbiome, you've got to sort of try and find one that's not had antibiotics for, you know, its life, hopefully, that it's got a good diversity score. But there's so much, as you said, there is so much we don't know about the microbiome, which makes it really hard.

How do you flush that patient out beforehand, Bren, to make sure that the bio—

so it's interesting, there's a couple of people out there, I Some people that are feeding the crap chews have given various other supplements to effectively reduce the bacterial load. The conventional guys are giving antibiotics. You know, I couldn't believe I was at a conference and one guy said, did you know as little as 3 days of metronidazole in a dog will cause dysbiosis? As little as 1 day of metronidazole in a cat will cause dysbiosis. And in the next breath he was talking about in order to prepare the gut for FMT, they give them antibiotics. It's just, what are you doing? But anyway, so in a strange about turn, I actually looked at— there was a treatment for SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, called Atrantil. When I was discussing this with Rowan, it's a combination of 3 herbs. Seems to reduce those particular bacteria in a significant way. And for some, that's enough for a reset. But actually, it's also really useful to use that to effectively reduce overall bacterial numbers so that when you insert— it's like harrowing the ground, okay? You take out all of that grass that's really strong, and when you resow the seed over the top of that with herbage to make a nice mixed sward with you know, various herbs in, they have chance to populate the terrain because they're not going to be choked out by the overwhelming grass.

Clearing the weeds before you throw down the seeds. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

So that's what I tend to use. So that's that combination.

What about— okay, so I had a scope because of my age, and what they did is they gave you like a magnesium -based purge, okay, so that you just get rid of everything, you know, you've got some salt coming out.

Yeah, the good old Epsom salts.

Yeah, and I just thought that's a pretty good way because no way are you ever going to sterilize a gut, okay, whether you use metronidazole or you use Atrantil or what have you. But if you can just reduce the numbers, just flat reduce those numbers, it's got to be a good thing if it's a numbers game.

Yeah, I'd say, you know, that's fairly hectic. You know, you've got to be sat on the toilet for how long? You know, I'm not sure that many owners—

Oh, you don't want to be too far from the loo.

I'm not sure that many owners want you to be giving Epsom salts to their dogs as a flush out. True.

But in theory, it would be quite—

I feel like that's kind of salting the earth though. I feel like Epsom salts, that feels like—

Yeah, that's how you kill a ladybug garden. Is that going to be sticking around, the body's going to be continuing to purge when you're trying to put in some friendlies.

Dude, this is some horrible imagery here. Sorry for the people listening. I've got another question here, guys, not just to get our image of Nick running to the toilet out of our head. This question is long, but only purely because I've got something interesting to say about it. This is from Miriam to me. Are mineral supplements necessary in homemade food? And are they any good and which ones are they? And other such questions. So are the mineral supplements necessary in homemade food? Are those supplements any good and which ones are they? I would say, first of all, we've done a nutrient every, every month for a while. So you'll see each of the minerals that if you're worried about them, the best nutrient kind you can add is the one you're deficient in. So good luck trying to find that out if you're not taking blood tests and all sorts of things.

There's a wonderful French company that if you're really worried about your pet or yourself, you can take a hair sample and they put it through a nuclear mass spectrometer and actually look at the mineral contents. And they have a set scale for dogs, and they will adapt it for dark hairs and light-haired dogs, and they literally balance that and they look at are you deficient or not.

That's interesting.

So, so do you—

what do they call—

oh, um, they were at London Vet Show and, um, the name has escaped me.

Okay, so if somebody was Googling them, they would, they would just put in, uh—

these guys will find us, these guys will find it.

For those guys who follow us over in America, I do believe they are going to be in Miami. Um, they— that there is a Miami or Orlando Orlando. Sorry, Orlando. Yeah. And, um, Orlando, Florida. And we are— they talked to me that they were going to be at that show, um, and they use the same French company. Um, so for those people in the UK, they could go direct, but for those people in America, they can go through the American company.

Yeah. So it's Judy Morgan's, uh, show on the, uh, 12th, 13th. Yeah, the International Yeah, in the Hilton. That's going to be awesome. That's good. That's a big show. So, uh, come on, come on.

Um, just while we're here, guys, let's just do a shout out for Reetha's, um, show in, in Johannesburg and in Cape Town. Did anybody have the dates? Just—

yeah, it's the 27th, 20—

sorry, 28th, 29th in Johannesburg, and it's the 7th, 5th, and 6th in, uh, in Cape Town.

Yeah, okay.

Um, yeah, that's going to be absolutely awesome. That's getting close, guys, that's only 30 days away. But back to Miriam's question, look, about these supplements, um, I think people are very confused about what supplements work and what supplements don't work. And here's a very simple way to remember it.

Oh, okay, just— there's, there's a lot of flashing up on—

you guys have to let me answer this question.

Just one second, just one second. So please, there is a difference between nuclear mass spectrometry assessment of minerals within the hair versus bioresonance. Total difference. And if it costs you, um, you know, 30 quid, okay, which is what, $50, um, then it's probably bioresonance. And then it's super important— now I absolutely would use bioresonance, but I want to know that the person who's going to give me the report is experienced and knows exactly what the machine is doing, and not somebody who's just basically taking your money and making a buck and just, yeah, printing out random— printing out a random generation.

Okay, so just, just, just say that again just so that people can pick it up. So there's bioresonance and there's nuclear magnetic resonance, where there's basically— yeah, so what they'll do is, I would imagine, they will, they will burn the hair and then that gas will be sucked sucked into a machine and be kind of filtered out. A little bit like, you know, if you get a, you know, you have, um, when you're a kid you had felt-tip pens, and if you put it on paper, you know, blotting paper, that a red, it will go out and the red would filter out from a bit of green, will filter out from a bit of blue and what have you. That is, is spectrometry, guys. And all you're doing is you're just using a really, really fancy machine and you're looking at minute quantities of these things. But the principle is exactly the same.

There you go. Interesting. I'd be interested to hear what the price difference is, though. I mean, if it's like £500 to tell me my dog has a vitamin D deficiency.

It was actually going direct in the UK to France. It actually worked out at um, after postage and tax, I think it was about £90.

Bargain for all minerals, and that's it.

And toxins. It actually also looked at mercury levels, arsenic levels, heavy metals.

Okay, now we're talking.

That's not bad. Um, what was the other—

how does that compare to a blood test for those minerals?

Oh, uh, just, you would not get it.

No way.

No, not for that. It's, it gets ridiculous when you start to try and do mineral assessment.

Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so it's like a viable way of doing it then. I saw, uh, John Campbell on YouTube. I don't know if you watch John Campbell. He's a great dude that teaches the nurses there in the NHS, but he does great lectures, little 20-minute shows on just those signs. But he found in a shop in the UK, it does rapid vitamin D tests, which I didn't know existed. And it comes with a pinprick and you prick the top of your finger and you put it on a little bit of solution. It's almost like a COVID test, you know, rapid COVID test, and you put a drop on. £6 is all it costs. And it comes with 4, it comes, it's got your control bar and your T-bar. And you measure the response to whatever way the lines are against the 4 or 5 lines they give you. And they'll tell you if you're between 0 to 30, 30 to 90, 90 to 120, 120, whatever. And you can pick your bracket quite clearly, pretty well. Like if you're, if you're terribly deficient, it'll let you know, or you're excessive. And he says he's been taking quite a lot. He's taken 4,000 units or something every day as an older man. And he was deficient.

So I just thought it's a good start to like, hmm, so how good is your supplement? What? How good? And that's why, you know, doing some of those tests. So this is just takes a couple of pricks of dried blood. Okay, you send it off, they will do that assessment for you, but they do all sorts of other assessment beyond just what's your level. So, you know, if you just shout that out for the people on the podcast. This does omega-3s to 6 balance. Okay, but there is a vitamin D option that's the same thing.

And would they know if I sent in dog's blood into that? Would they know? They just analyze that blood and tell me what was in it?

Yeah, they just give you a—

How much is it tested? That's what I'm doing.

I'm cheating the system and I'm using dog's blood.

Oh, cool.

Although you sort of like, you do have to accept that they will do this. It's a 40-year-old dog. What?

Okay, yeah, he's doing great.

Because it's beyond middle age.

I'd love to know what my 3:6 ratio is. How much would it cost to— like, do you have to take— is it like a whole Excel spreadsheet? You tick the ones you want and then your price goes up, like, yeah, when you're doing a blood test for tropical diseases.

Yeah, yeah, they normally do, uh, for the omega-3s, for example, it's, uh, pre and post. It can be about £175 to do a pre and post taking your supplement. Oh, we've got to take the supplement for about 4 months, um, just so that you can assess. And everybody's an individual. This is what's been wonderful to see with this test is that, you know, people assume I've just taken the dose that, um, whether it's they've decided to go off-piste and take their own supplement, uh, rather than take the Zinzino supplement, we say that's fine, just do the test. And they do the test and then they get really disappointed when they're totally underwhelmed by the changes that their supplement has made. And It's interesting, even with the Zinzino supplement, I've had massive differences in, you know, we've had to change up the amount that that dog has had to then make a difference ultimately with its ratio.

Yeah, that's what just John Campbell was saying. He was taking 4,000 units, which is like probably 10 times what the NHS says to take. Both the NHS in the UK and the HSE in Ireland, ridiculous tiny figures for like once you're 65+ in these sort of latitudes, you should be taking good doses of vitamin D. I mean, very, very obvious we need to be doing that. But he was taking a good high dose and he says, I'm still not touching the sides of what I needed at this particular time. Could have fought an infection a few weeks before that, you just deplete your levels. You could be stressed, lacking sleep. And look, let me get back to this question.

So yeah, hang on a second. Delta biomarkers in Lyon, France. Is that—

that sounds like the ones.

Delta biomarkers in So I just did a quick Google search and went straight to those. So there you go. Delta biomarkers in Lyon, France.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Sorry.

That's all right. I am going. Can you just mute the two mics, Brian, just so— So I've got one. I've got one very— No, don't do that. Just put me on my own screen. You don't need to do that, guys. You can just come back. That's okay.

He was missing us.

Here's my very intelligent point.

Still hasn't realized he's in reverse.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Switch him on again. Switch his volume on again.

Yeah, yeah, this is not going well. I'm going to write an essay and just transfer to Facebook. I'll turn myself around. There you go. Does that make you more comfortable?

Yes, it does.

So with the supplements, think good, the bad, and the ugly. You have 3 different types of supplements you can take, okay? You've got vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. And the amino acid supplements are good. They work because they can really build amino acids in the lab. They're very easy to make. It's just building blocks and a big line of amino acids. You can't go wrong. You know what proteins look like, and the supplements are really highly absorbed. So, you know, the supplements are great, and it's usually like the shape of the thing, like, you know, L-glutamine and L-taurine, the way they like to— very well digested, and they work fab. Okay, so if you are low on taurine and you wouldn't eat meat for some reason, heart meat for example, then a taurine is wonderful and it absolutely works, okay? There's nothing wrong with those mineral supplements, which very few people actually take. You know, if you're very low on tryptophan because you're eating dry dog food, then take a tryptophan supplement. It might help with your behavior. Sure as hell won't help with a raw-fed dog's behavior because they get so much tryptophan in their diet. That's your amino acids, that's the good. Then you got the bad, that's the minerals in the middle. And with minerals, you've got some good mineral supplements and you've got some bad mineral supplements. And the problem is the body doesn't like mineral supplements at all. It doesn't like minerals you know, it's what they're inorganic elements, and to get through the membrane they have to be holding the hand of a carbon molecule, and then the gut membrane sees the carbon molecule and says come on through. That's chelated, chelated to a carbon molecule, and we can make that in the lab with a lot of effort, and those supplements cost a lot of money, so you don't get them in dry pet food. In some good quality foods like Matthew Murrays food in Australia and a few others, these guys do it too, Bell Duke do it too, fair dues. So because there's not— that's no small difference, by the way. It's a large difference in cost. So these are the things that pet food companies sometimes don't get rewarded for. So that's a good thing from Bell Duke. So a few companies really give a damn, and they use chelated minerals. So those minerals are more accepted than, you know, minerals on their own. The bad, really bad side of minerals would be too— an exact, for example, would be things like iodide, which when it's on its own is rocket fuel. It's 100% absorbed. It's very soluble, very ionic, and boom, straight through the gut membrane, straight to the thyroid, and you'll get that issue. So iodide on its own, dangerous. Okay, very careful how you supplement your dry dog foods with iodide. It's a black art, as they say. But the iodine that's wrapped up in seaweed, for example, you see 100 grams of seaweed has a gram of iodine, and everyone goes, there's a gram of iodine in that. Yeah, but you can only digest 20% of it. So you only get 20% of the iodine that's on the actual label of what the supplement says it contains. So it's very confusing. That's why people in Japan can eat 8 to 20 times their RDA of iodine. It's tied up in the food. Just because you incinerated a piece of seaweed in the laboratory and used your spectral machine to see how much iodine is in it is irrelevant to the digestive process. It's bound up with all the alginates and fiber and gluten. You just can't digest it all. So iodine, and the other one that's really ringing my bell at the moment is copper sulfate. Copper storage disease in dogs. Did you know that the difference between the— in the liver of copper of a dairy— of a grain-fed cow versus a grass-fed cow is nearly double because they supplement the shitty grain rations that they're giving the cattle. And copper sulfate is rapidly absorbed, bam, straight to the liver. So when you get these diet formulators telling you how much copper is in your liver and the copper readings are really high, it's like, well, that's probably not the same as Irish grass-fed beef, you know, and some of us finish on grain for a week, some finish on grain for a month, and that will vastly change the— so I'm getting really interested in all this. So, and then there's really poor mineral supplements like zinc oxide, magnesium oxide, iron oxide. They're also all the shit they use in dry pet food. It's really poorly absorbed. The dog does not get much of it, so they use loads. And then the ugly is the vitamins, as we discussed in the last one. We can't even make those vitamin E. They're too complicated. Isomers, the difference in distance between the things. We can't manage all that. Vitamin D is virtually a hormone. We can't build that stuff in a lab in any way. So the vitamin E molecules, Nick was saying, what was the amount of vitamin E? 125 different constituents. How many can you make?

Normally 15 in a really good quality product.

That's ridiculous. So it's like 15 of 125. So you're only getting a tiny fraction. So I'm sure that's better than no vitamin E, and often it's matched with some natural vitamin E as well. But the thing is immensely complex. There's 4 different forms of tocopherols, 4 different forms of tocotrienols, and it's like it's just— so the vitamin supplement industry is, is ropey. So if you need vitamins, you know, natural source of vitamins would be great. I'm sure it's great to have some manufactured vitamin E if you're in desperate need, but— and then some vitamins are easier to make than others. And vitamin C is—

so a question has come up. From— let me just go back first. Tracy has asked, so is that why when you take magnesium, they say to take it with zinc?

Well, like, some minerals partner with each other, other minerals clash with each other, use the same pathway. This was the AMT pathway through the membrane. So when you take like zinc and copper together, they fight for preference. So if you overload on zinc, you won't absorb any copper because the zinc shoots through this and takes up the AMT of these stuff. So some minerals need each other to, to work better. But on that kind of basis, I can't remember them all. Nick had a spectacularly complicated chart. Remember that chart you had up, Nick, that showed the relationship between minerals? And it was just incredibly complex. So one often needs the other or benefits from the other.

Can you remember the reference for that, Nick?

I can't. I can picture it in my mind. If I, if I could think, uh, of the lecture, I could find it. It on the PowerPoint, uh, but if I was going to go through the whole book, it was very useful.

Yeah, so like, you know, vitamin D, D3 come and you take— do you want it with K2? It's like, yeah, we do want vitamin D and 3. So things partner up together and some minerals do together, but it's also important to keep some minerals separate from each other.

Yeah, iron and calcium.

Iron and calcium. So these guys use the same pathways, and so it's not as simple as I'm just going to use lots of studies of pigs show that it disrupts the gut flora because what's not absorbed rests in the poo and something will try and find and eat it and it'll disrupt something else. And so you can't make a complete food because of this clash of minerals. And this chart, I hope we will find, we'll pop it up on the Facebook page, but that would answer the clashing and the working together, the synergistic effect, and then other ones clash off each other. It's so complicated. It's complex is what it is. Complicated is something you might understand. Complex is just too, too much, you know.

So variance is great because it allows the body to have a little bit more pick and choosing. And actually, as you say, chelation and binding into the molecular structure of proteins and other elements means that actually the uptake of that mineral can be far more controlled. You shared with us last week, week before, was it about the calcium and phosphorus in the difference between inorganic and organics within foods. And there was a paper that I think you shared said, look, even in dogs, and you picked it out from, was it 2 years ago or something like that, that you stumble across these papers when you're doing the research that you are.

I remember that one.

So it wasn't just—

Oh, sorry, that was the— Oh yeah, that was a great one. The phosphorus and renal disease study.

Yeah.

I thought it was just two studies of cats.

I love the way I can remember the stuff that you read.

I've gone through the last week, I swear to God, I feel like I had— it's not that I had no major things hanging over me, and I went through a proper just week of just digging through things. I've got 20 papers opened on my phone at the moment. I don't know why I need to prove to you. I have 19 different papers ready for reading, and like just gems I'm digging up. But this one on dogs, studying the effects of natural phosphorus or phosphates on the kidney function of dogs? And it was the same answer as we had in cats, which is it's the phosphates, calcium diphosphate, and all the horrible crap that's used in dry food is what impacts kidneys. Kidneys don't like that stuff, but natural phosphorus is not having the same effect at all in dogs because they're phosphorus-eating machines. Why would phosphorus be a problem to a dog? I mean, it eats phosphorus. That's one of its main things, you know. So that's a gem. Can't wait to share that one.

Mineral relationships. I found it and I've just put it up on Patreon so everybody can have a look at that.

So if you want to sign up to Patreon and join us over there on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, pay us just the price of a pint, I would say.

Price of a cup of tea, I'd take.

Oh, would you?

Yeah.

Is that builder's cheap from the roadside cafe?

Yeah.

No, it's going to cost you £2.50.

50.

Yeah, from a roadside cafe standing in the freezing rain and wind.

Price of a cup of tea on Oxford Street, that's whatever, whatever that might be. Um, I've got the next question we're going to do over on Patreon. I'm sure you've got a few there. Can dogs with chipped teeth eat raw meaty bones? Should dogs with chipped teeth eat raw meaty bones?

Oh, nice question.

I like that one.

Let's do that over on Patreon. Yeah, uh, just now.

Oh no, we've got 2 minutes.

1944, guys. Shall I tell my joke again? For people who haven't heard my—

oh, here we go.

Oh my God, I don't know, have we heard this before, Nick?

Yes, we have.

We want to hear this.

Shall I do it?

Okay, I don't know.

So these two old codgers in a nursing home, and one says to the other, I say, Charles, when was the last time you had sex? And Charles turns around and said, well, I would say probably 1945. Reginald, old boy. And, uh, Reginald then says, my God, that's a very long time. And Charles turns around and says, well, I don't know, it's only 20 hundred hours right now.

Not bad.

You didn't remember it because I said that one about 2 years ago and you groaned immensely.

I am reminded of, uh, Some of those guys joke— what was his name? He's a British comedian. He was on like one of the American chat shows, and he said like, my wife has begged me not to say any rude or crass jokes as soon as I came on, but he said I have to tell this one. And I was like, it's very— his very first few lines of them, he was talking about— no, I'm gonna butcher it. I'm gonna— let me, let me get it straight. I'll do it on Patreon. Let me get it straight because I've only just watched it on YouTube about 48 hours ago. It's so funny, I don't want to butcher it, so let me prepare because I hate reading jokes.

Have a think while Brady's just thinking.

We'll give you 3 minutes as we go over to Patreon.

I'll find it.

And guys, just a little reminder, takes us about an hour to have recorded, downloaded, removed the profanities that Conor's prone to, and then re-uploaded the video onto Patreon. So do bear with us. Usually we've got it up there within the hour. To do all that. So please, please bear with us. Otherwise, great evening. We've cracked through— it seems like a lot, but actually it wasn't very much at all.

However, we have talked quite profoundly about a number of different things, which is quite nice.

I think so, yeah.

Brilliant. Okay, and for anybody who's still looking to join us in South Africa, I think there's a few tickets left. So, you know, bring yourself, bring your vet, advise your vets about it. It's going to be a real mix, and we're going to try and keep you all entertained. And in addition, as a free bonus, you get Dr. Anna as well. So why not come and join us in South Africa? Okay guys, great evening. See you over on Patreon.

See you on the other side.

Uh, Brandon's