Dr. Conor Brady and Brendan cover intestinal worms, lungworms, and Toxoplasma in pets, explaining fecal egg counts and the Baermann diagnostic technique. They compare chemical dewormers like fenbendazole with herbal alternatives including pumpkin seed and black seed oil, and discuss how omega-6 linoleic acid in diet may affect parasite susceptibility.
Chapters
Eddie, dude, just like that. You see, you're just about to say something.
I was just going to say, of the people that I was at this expo on the weekend, obviously I'm going to be talking about this. I just can't wait because I'm still fizzing from it. But I was at the expo and you get to meet a lot of the people that pop up on the side of the screen at some stage. Brand, it looks like there's been a 10-second delay. I'm nervous, Brand. Why aren't people?
I'm always nervous when I say that too.
This is not— or not see it. Usually it's Rachel Mack. If Rachel Mack does not appear in the first 5 seconds, I go, oh, there we go. So, um, yeah, but you know, when you see people along the side, like, I met most of them. I met most of them at that expo. And so they come up to you and I like, I don't know, I can't— you can't click on these profiles and see, um, uh, who— what they look like. No, it's not like quite like Facebook. I can't click on these images here that comes down the right-hand side. Maybe you can.
Most of them have their dogs anyway, so don't worry about it.
Yeah, but it means when you— oh, Rachel Mack's there, brilliant. There you go. Yeah, look, and I met— who else did I meet? I met Janet Nixon, who I couldn't believe what Janet Nixon looked like. I said, you're Janet Nixon? I had this completely different picture, so I couldn't marry the two in my head. Rachel Macca.
I've cheated a little bit because I've had video conferences with some of these guys, so I sort of know what some of them look like. But anyway, tell us more about the Expo because it was a great time. Shame we couldn't all come.
But Nicole as well, Deb Aston, I met all them. So yeah, it was amazing. It was really busy, like it was a big crowd, 300 people. Uh, so Caroline Griffith did a great job organizing all that, if she's listening. Fair, fair dues. Um, she had on a lady from Britain's Got Talent with her dancing dogs, and she went down before me to like, you know, not Simply the Best, but this is the greatest show, and the music's pumping, the lights are down, her dogs are dancing, and I am just cacking myself. I'm just going, I just can't follow this, this is awful for me. And so I was just—
didn't choose your intro music.
'But the second greatest show.' That was the first thing that came out of my mouth. It's like, how do you follow the greatest show? And everyone's screaming and loving it, and then I come on and it's like, you know, so it was, um, but anyway, it was good, but it was a big crowd. And I have to say, for the first time, I was a little bit shocked. I was like, oh, that's quite a big crowd, you know. And, uh, so that was the first time that's happened to me, and it's like, oh, that's great. So stuck for words, missed a few bits and pieces, but it went on grand. And after that, yeah, everyone was just so positive. Everyone's mad into us. Uh, good trade stands there, meeting people, uh, before, during, and after. It's just, it's just unbelievable, you know. It was so good. I'm buzzing after it. And you get so many ideas and so many well-wishers afterwards, and, you know, keep up RPM please, and all that kind of stuff. Mr. To You, um, and all that kind of stuff. So it's just great. I just have a notebook full of ideas after it. I just, I can't wait to get on there, you know. So it was good.
Well, for carrying, carrying the The whole team.
Yes, I'm much taller in real life, apparently. I always say, yeah, we put Nick in a box when it comes to photographs. Little do people realize. What about you? You were at a wedding or something there, Brad, weren't you?
Oh yeah, bless. One of my nurses got married on Saturday, and as Charlie was walking out the church, she was walking in. She had a great day. So it was brilliant. So she had a great time in the evening. Lovely do, lovely lass. She's hopefully enjoying herself not watching this somewhere nice and sunny away from it. I think she's having a proper honeymoon later in the year, but that's great. So nice. So that was all good.
Yeah. And somewhere warm with lots of parasites.
Yeah. And then obviously it's sort of, I went up to the Lake District for a little bit of away time. Had a nice day on Sunday with my father, just, you know, a bit of, you know, father-son time. He's getting older now, so it's nice just to catch up and see where he's at. I start to see my grandfather in him now.
That's the thing.
He's got to that age, you know, he's, you know, well over his 80s. So, you know, he's sort of like, just starting to pick those bits up. So it's nice to spend a little bit of time getting out, physical exercise with him. And then Sunday came, sorry, Monday came. And oh, the weather was torrential. And hence, guys out there, I'm really sorry, but this is one of the reasons that Nick is not with us tonight.
Oh yeah. He knows.
Sorry, Nick Ross, if you're listening. I forgot to say it to him.
Yeah. Nick took it upon himself to go for a great walk, and so he went for a very, very, very long walk. Heavy going with a badass, they say in Ireland. And so he decided to go for a 20-mile hike, and I think he probably got halfway before the weather turned extremely nasty on him. And so he is now holed up in bed. And so there you go, guys. He is listening to us with a thermometer hanging out of his mouth. And so get well soon, Mick Ross.
I was wondering where you were going to say hanging out of his— I think you were warned by a 6-year-old about your mouth.
Surely the only way you need to take a human thermometer reading. But look, tonight is— look, we are— sorry, first of all, patreon.com/rawpetmedics. We are ever so grateful for anybody that drops onto that and can afford the price of a cup of tea or coffee. And many of you that I was meeting at that show do that, so I'm really, really appreciative of that. We all are. And thanks very much. If you can, great. If you can't, not to worry, it doesn't matter. We're going to be here anyway. And Tonight we, largely Bren, are going to be talking about strange little critters. A few of them you've heard of and a few little factoids about some bits and pieces out there. Where would you like to start, Bren? There's just so many doozies.
Well, you know, having done the thermometer joke, we shouldn't really start at that end. I think from a point of view of— I love the way you say mainly me. Come on, you've been doing the research, or is this just because you're hanging from the weekend still?
That's a definite fact. I arrived Friday morning and was talking and whatever else from Friday, Saturday, and then by Sunday I was hanging on. But you get through Sunday on the adrenaline, but by Monday and the weather and the late plane in Birmingham, I'm like, oh my God, I just wanted to get home so badly. But nice coming back to the kids. Who wants to get going? I've got an awful lot here on Toxoplasma gondii. And I actually put up the wrong image as Bren highlighted, of course, the cat with the cloudy eye. That wasn't Toxoplasma gondii, this very famous kind of parasite of cats and humans and all sorts of animals. What was it, Brendan, that I shared of that cat?
Well, to me it looked more like a herpetic lesion of the eye from another thing, and it may be because lots of people get it mixed up with Toxocara. Okay, so there is, just as there is for dogs, there's one for cats, and that's the one that actually can cause eye lesions in young children. But I think we need to deal first, what is a parasite?
Oh yeah.
And, you know, why do we sometimes get disease from them? And I think it's really important. And tonight, guys, is not going to be about how can we throttle them with loads of meds or anything like that. This is going to be a little bit of a review of some of the unusual stuff, how we can actually help our cats and dogs from hopefully getting these and improve their health and their immune systems, and maybe some natural options to give them too. But firstly, what is a parasite? A parasite is an organism which does not benefit the host. It literally uses the host as its food source. So there's no mutual benefit like some of the normal gut flora. There's no great things. But what they would normally do, if they're in the right host, they will use that host not just for food but also for a way of reproducing. For the internal parasites, that means they would usually sit within the gut or some area that they can pump out eggs and larvae which will then be passed out in the feces in most cases. Few exceptions, and we're going to deal with some of those tonight.
Yeah, as their name suggests.
Yeah, but generally that's, that's what we're looking at. External parasites will feed off your pet, be no benefit to them. They may then drop off and lay eggs, etc., like fleas do, like ticks do, but then come back to feed on the host. So that's what we want to deal with.
That makes sense.
Yeah, with internal ones.
Yeah. And I guess it's interesting that the most successful internal parasites, which are the most widespread, you know, the most successful parasites don't actually harm the host too much because they're trying to get their eggs done. I mean, of the ones that we're going to be talking about tonight, they are— some of them are very rampant and they are really good at what they do, as we're going to learn. So yeah, they are just really brilliant. They can cause a bit of damage on the way and they can go wrong and all that kind of thing. But what about gutworms, Ben? Do they build— do they always build to such a point that your dog gets dangerously ill? And I'm including all of them in that— roundworm, whipworm. Do they always build to a treacherously dangerous, instantaneously dangerous point?
Not at all. And the point is that actually they are so good usually at hiding themselves that actually That's how they can spread so vastly, you know, through populations because, you know, if they killed the pet there and then, then they're not going to be able to spread around a big population because, you know, it's just going to be overwhelming. Bang, that's done. You're out of it. Okay. They don't get to move from that. You know, once the dog is dead or the cat is dead, they're dead. You know, those worms can't wriggle out and reinfect. They rely on their eggs being distributed. To actually reinfest. Let's go through the general cycle of intestinal worms, for especially the roundworms, is that you ingest the eggs, which are effectively hatching into larvae. They are swallowed, get into the intestine, and this is an important bit, usually where there's a level of inflammation encourages them to then pass through the gut wall.
Oh.
And then they pass up through the vessels to the liver, effectively go through the liver, up through the diaphragm, through the lungs.
Bloody hell.
And then come out into the airways, okay, where they then are always maturing. Where they're then coughed up in the mucus and swallowed and go back into the stomach. And at this point, they're maturing into full adult worms, which then have the mouthparts, instead of to burrow in and do what the larvae did, to actually latch on and start feeding.
Wow.
Once they've done that, you've got in normal roundworms up 200,000 eggs a day is what a single roundworm can produce. So you imagine you've got one, you know, hanging around. It can do enough to spread everything. You will never know that that dog has a worm. It will just be distributing eggs.
Wow.
And the— it's only when there's so many that have done that that they're elbowing each other out for space that you actually normally see full worms in the feces. So that's why, well, I never see worms in the feces, they can't have worms. That's not how you look at whether your dog has worms because if they're elbowing each other out for space, that worm is dead dead. If it's in its entirety and it's in the feces, that's a goner. It's never going to reproduce again. That's done. So the parasite doesn't want to do that. So this is why we always talk about worm egg counts as being so important. Now, also be aware, if your dog has a worm egg count of 1 or 2 or maybe even 5 eggs per gram of certain worms, then it could be that they're ingesting the worm eggs and are actually passing all the way through. So if they've gone and properly troughed down on feces that's out there, but their gut is relatively healthy, then what may have happened is that they've chomped those through and passed them out the back end.
Oh, that's interesting.
That's why when we look at this, we look at 25 eggs per gram as being that cutoff above which it's unlikely that they've ingested these eggs. It's more likely they're producing these eggs. So 25 eggs per gram.
Yeah.
So that's why there's that cutoff. Now, if they've got less, it's not, oh, they've not got it, don't worry about it. It is they may have just not been producing a lot of at that time. So we advocate retesting a week later and maybe distributing over 3 different defecations to retest rather than just one, just in case there was a cycle of production.
Yeah.
Okay. So Do, do look at— don't overly get worried if you see a very low worm egg count, but do retest. But if you're negative, pretty much we say just retest 3 months later for most people. If there's loads, if it's 200 eggs per gram, then really you need to be embracing at least some of the herbal wormers. Some of the other options we may touch on, but I'm not advocating that you use those. They will have some environmental impacts, they will have some risks.
Yeah, we've covered them. We did a couple of shows on worms and they can look at this.
So they can look back at that.
Yeah.
So we're not going to go too much into that, but I would certainly say, look, you know, if that's the case, yeah, I've got spaghetti bolognese tonight as well. That's my meal. Great.
Yeah. Get your dinners.
Thanks, Lorraine.
We're starting with the friendly ones, by the way. It gets —guess it goes downhill, believe me. And that's interesting, you know what you said back there about the worms and gaining entrance, because most of us would subscribe to the idea that parasites are just awesome at picking out the 4D animals—dead, diseased, dying, disabled—the weaker animals, young pups, really old and infirmed, lower immune system. They can get anybody, but they do have a preference. And so it's interesting that for gut worms to get in initially, the dog has to consume this little half egg larvae type thing, and then it needs to actually gain entrance. And so if you were to say have leaky gut or damaged, inflamed irritable bowel disease and your guts are just hanging in there, you know, and they're inflamed and damaged, then that makes instant sense that if you were eating gut worms in that instance, low immunity because it's smashed from this inflammation as well as a damaged gut lining and the worms are just going, hey, here's my chance.
And there is one more addition to this, and this is where else they can come from. And many people don't realize that actually the majority of Toxocara have probably passed into your puppy when they were still in the womb or feeding from mum, because at that point, that's when their immune systems are lowest, and therefore the migrating larvae from the mum under stress, which is being pregnant, basically will come out from the muscle that where it's been hibernating and effectively run its way through the placenta or through the mammary gland and be ingested. But if it's coming through the placenta, it's straight into the bloodstream. There, Toxocara particularly are great at actually staying hibernated in the muscle until such time as they feel that that animal is stressed, and then they will pass back through the bloodstream, through the liver, and up through the lung and be coughed up. And then, so they don't have to be eating them at that point later in life. If they go through a stress, moving home, change of diet, new dogs in the house, get put into a rescue situation, have an illness, are put on medication that suppresses their immune system, any of those things could spark those hibernating larvae back into activity and then go through that cycle. Yeah, that's interesting. So that's specifically for the Toxocara.
It's the same with the— it's the same, you're saying Toxocara now and you're throwing me off because I'm just trying to get this other word out here. Toxoplasma. It's the same with Toxoplasma gondii, which is this really famous cat parasite, but it can get into humans. And there's a few, many examples of when that— it doesn't reproduce in humans. The cat is where it wants to be and reproduce there. So, you know, that's the aim. But it doesn't mean it doesn't infect wildlife and our meat and sheep and pork, and then we eat that meat by accident and it can get into us. But they say it only harms us when we are severely immunocompromised. So after chemo, is one of them. And the second one was after some of— I think it was HIV, AIDS, HIV. What was it? And there was— anyways, which makes sense. Your immune system is absolutely annihilated and then it can cause serious, serious problems to you. So now before beginning with certain cancers and certain chemo— and that's, guys, this I'm talking off the top of my head here— they recommend testing for this or treating it before you even go on that, because for it to emerge during that or after that treatment, it would be it would be trouble for you. So I thought that was interesting. Well, because normally it insists— okay, where it insists on humans is a bad idea. If it gets in, if it can insist on your brain, but sometimes you won't even know it's there. So I think a quarter of the world, or what was it, three-quarters of people? How many people got infected with this disease at one stage?
Um, it's a lot, especially for rural people. Yeah. Um, and that's, that's the thing. So this is where it's really interesting. We come back to— we had a great lecture at the RFVS, uh, last year by, um, Amaya Yeah, who does our Feline Fridays, and she gave a great lecture showing how these protozoal diseases do what I just said with the worms and actually are encouraged to cross the gut lining when there's a level of inflammation. And so we see that actually as the first barrier within the immune system. Is that gut lining. So if we could say if your immune system's good, i.e., your gut barrier is good—
good flora might be the first barrier and then the membrane might be the second. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you're not going to pick up necessarily those particular parasites because Toxoplasma gondii is— a normal cycle is through mice and cats. And it passes through in a cycle continuously reinfecting one over the other and again it's pointless killing the cat because you're not going to get perpetuation of distributing that particular parasite. So cat faeces is the, you know, the nemesis people would talk about touching but generally because people aren't great at washing their hands properly they'll wash their hands, but they won't necessarily wash them properly. And it may be that they haven't perceived that the cat has been to the loo out in the garden where they've been gardening, and therefore they pick these things up. Yeah. So it is a case of if that person has an immune system which is compromised, and you've said two very notable ones, cancer, so chemotherapy, or HIV. But let me tell you, anything that suppresses their immune system, and that's even pregnancy, because it's important to not reject the child, the hormones are released to suppress the immune system, which allows those organisms to come into those systems. But also, if you've got somebody with a compromised gut in that situation, even more likely to pick it up. So young children with viruses that are in that situation may pick it up. People that have been eating inappropriate foods and have a horrendous bout of tummy upset and then get exposed to this may pick that up. The next level of the immune system may take that out if they're strong enough. But if they're not, this is where those organisms can sit elsewhere within the body and cause inflammation. And if that happens to be the brain, that's where they may get meningitis-like symptoms.
Yeah, imagine, imagine if you were an animal that explores everything with its face and eats everything, loves a bit of poo. And imagine if you fed that animal some product— I can't think of anything offhand— but a product that spikes inflammation that we know drives inflammation 10 times more than raw. The studies show drives gut enteropathy, so enteropathy, so which is disease of the gut. If you feed a product like that to your dog that drives inflammation, which means lowers your immune system, that increases gut issues, well, buddy, you are asking for it. And I just thought, that's kind of interesting what you're saying because that all marries up to what people believe they're seeing. Here's a question for you, Bren. So if, you know, cats eating mice and birds, and that's the cycle there, okay, that's how that, that's how Toxoplasma runs around in a circle. And, you unfortunately for us, the cat will then wee everywhere. So the most common sources of Toxoplasma infections in humans isn't actually from indoor cat litter trays. The number 1 and 2 sources are actually eating meat, particularly pig and sheep, and also gardeners out gardening in the soil, and that's where the cats have gone for a wee. Cats are only actually infectious with Toxoplasma for a couple of weeks, and then they're immune for life. So it's a really small window. So pregnant people don't need to be terrified of their cat. They need to get smart about what's happening and all that kind of stuff. Listen to what Bren's saying. But listen to this, right? So they eat lots of birds. I started thinking, I wonder how many, how many birds get eaten by cats. So free-ranging domestic cats in the US, Bren, give me a figure of how many birds free-ranging domestic cats— so these are guys that live with families, free-ranging domestic cats— how many birds do you think they kill each year? Estimate.
So I No. So there was some data that said 85% of cats had bird or mouse DNA in their feces, even though the owners perceived that they were being fed conventionally without any exposure to those, you know, to that wildlife. That I think actually also crossed over to those that perceived that they spent the majority of time in the house or within vision. Okay, if they went out, so monitored if they went outside. So God knows where they were getting those mice from.
So stick a figure on it, in millions, how many millions of birds?
How many millions of birds were— so what's the cat population of the States currently?
It's nice to say, say, I'm going to say 120 million. Surely not. Yeah, it's 90 million dogs.
Wow. Yeah. I would have thought there was more dogs than cats, as it is in the UK.
Because— oh, you're right, there's only 58 million. There you go. My bad, my bad. 60 million. 60 million.
He's always prone to, you know, exaggeration. Yeah, so yeah, I called him out on that.
62.43% of statistics are made up. So how many million— how many million birds do you want to take? Just take a guess because you're not going to get anywhere close.
300 million?
Between 1.3 to 4 billion birds are taken by domestic cats each year. And guess how many mammals? Now you know we're in the billions. Billions. Oh my word. So what we're going to say about 3 billion, 6 to 22 billion mammals based on a huge, huge sample of— isn't that unbelievable? That came out 2 years ago. So that's— this is where this Toxoplasma thing is running through cats.
Like, let's laugh at us feeding raw. Those cats are already feeding raw.
Yeah, I bet you all those cats are vegan as well. They're just going there topping up those protein reserves.
That's right, that's been driving them. That's because that's another study, isn't it? That actually if you feed them raw meat, they're less likely to hunt.
Oh, is it? That'd be a good one.
I want that one. So I'm sure that's— I'm sure I've heard that reference. I'm going to dig that one out. I'm sure there is. I'm going to talk to Amaya. I'm sure she mentioned it.
Amaya will have that in a heartbeat. Here's one more question for you, Bren. How many— bearing in mind Toxoplasma, while it's a cacti, can harm humans, okay— how many Americans die of Toxoplasma gondii each year? Many Americans are killed by it.
Killed by it? Yeah. Let me say, should we say, um, it's not in the billions.
It's not in the billions. No, I'll give you that hint. 10,000. Oh, 750. It's a quarter of all foodborne pathogens in the US. A quarter of all foodborne issues are Toxoplasma gondii, 750 deaths a year. And so about one-third of people have antibodies to T. gondii in the world. It's unbelievable. The most fascinating thing about that one— it's going to—
so not how many were infected, but how many died? Dead. Oh yeah, no, infections-wise, it's, it's rampant.
It's one quarter of foodborne infections. I'll finish it. Just want to get through this one little bit here. The, um, zombie rats, we've heard about the fact that Toxoplasma gondii unbelievably makes rats and mice seek out cat wee. So I mean, I mean, what an unbelievable adaption, how clever. So the rat and the mice don't mind the smell of cat wee, they're attracted to it and they go, oh, cat wee, cool. But when there's cat wee, there's a cat and then it gets eaten and Toxoplasma go, ha, got you. And so I'm reading about this, knew this was coming up and some people might have heard that stat, most people have, but did you know they're not the only animals that get conned by it? Chimpanzees, they get infected with Toxoplasma gondii, they don't cook their meat. They're more attracted to leopards. Can you believe that? And leopards are their only proper predator. And so I just thought that was incredible. And then I thought, is it possible in humans? Absolutely, it's possible in humans. And there was apparently— it's a male thing. In males, we found a strong gender-dependent effect of toxoplasmosis on the pleasantness attributed to cat urine odor. By infected men, whereas actually the opposite is seen in infected females, which they couldn't explain. But infected men find cat urine more, more interesting when they're infected with Toxoplasma gondii, as if a domestic cat is going to do anything interesting or less threatening, because that's an interesting one.
Some people are super sensitive to the smell of cat urine and other people are almost oblivious to it. And I wonder whether it is that, you know, they become you know, it's not a problem.
Yeah, or like maybe this is the way crazy cat women actually have husbands a lot, because they just don't mind the smell of cat wee. They don't mind the smell of cat wee.
I'm just saying, people—
oh, I'm saying, okay, no, but you know, if you were— if you had 20 cats and your house—
he says with a cat behind him— you're always going to defend them.
I'm not going to be able to get this out. But, uh, yeah, you want it— you want to— you want a male with a Toxoplasma gondii infection, and then he won't mind the smell cat wee in your house. And then we've got one more interesting bit. As Amaya had said, actually, people with latent Toxoplasma infection were found to be 2.5 times more likely to have obsessive compulsive disorder and 2.7 times more likely to have learning difficulties. Oh, that's interesting. And the last bit, Amaya, you've made reference to Amaya. She said unbelievably that Toxoplasma gondii is more, is switched on let's say, by linoleic acid, omega-6, and not oleic acid, which is omega-9, which is from meat. So linoleic acid is your plant oils, it's your plants, it's your plant, plant, plant. That's linoleic acid. And so it likes that. And the experimenters, when they first discovered this, only not too long ago, they took the— oh, my dog's just after scaring the life out of me, busting through when I'm talking about scary things.
Oh God, yeah, but the thing that should scare you is the ghost that's behind you.
Yeah, but, uh, so as I said, so they took, they took, uh, different animals and you can pump them full of amigas, uh, omega-6, and this, this bug likes it. So the point is that this animal is turned on by plant oils, linoleic acid. Now I'm butchering the explanation for that, but I just thought that's very interesting because pet food, plant-based pet food, high carbohydrate pet food is really high in omega-6. And that's the problem. You want omega-3, which is if you're eating meat, you're getting omega-3 and omega-9 and you're not getting all that omega-6. So I'm thinking that's very interesting that another thing about pet, particularly plant-based pet food, actually drives up omega-6, which is actually attractive for Toxoplasma Gandhi. Anyway, look, that was my last little interesting bit on that. There's a heap of parasite suggestions coming in here, Bryn. They wanted— back, going back up to the start, two people came in and they're all saying, what about lungworm? When you were talking about the entrance to that, to the body, can you talk a little bit about lungworm and tell us a bit about that?
Yeah, so look, there's some main differences between what we consider lungworm. Now, lungworm we would consider affects the chest, okay, so may cause a cough And really, we need to differentiate. There's a big one that's talked about, is Angelus strongylus vasorum, okay, which is actually closer to what heartworm does in where it resides, in that it will reside in the major vessels around the heart, okay. Now, this is one which can be ingested from snails and slugs. It has been reported that if you leave dog bowls out, that it could be that those eggs are found in the slime that those slugs and snails leave on dog bowls. But we all know as raw food feeders, we're going to clean our dog bowls. So what's your problem? Okay, it's more likely that they are going to come from ingestion of slugs and snails. And this certainly is how it passes from fox to fox because it doesn't just dogs, okay? So you think of the scavenging species that are out there that may come to ingest those, you know, foxes are classic. Actually, yes, the obvious one is going to be hedgehogs and those sort of, you know, small mammals that are going to ingest those. But generally, that's how our dogs are considered to get it. Is by ingesting these things or contaminated feed bowls from those. And yes, it was usually a continental thing, so continental Europe, and it has passed with a lot of toing and froing into the southeast of the country and is slowly moving north. Lots of threats because it can cause clotting disorders because it lives in the major vessels of the heart. It naturally will try and thin the blood, stop it from clotting around them because you don't want to kill your host. So it may then cause bleeding disorders, and this is the risk that, you know, if they're going in for surgery and they've got these conditions. Again, different type of test because they lay the larvae into the major airways, which are coughed up and swallowed, pass out onto the feces where the slugs and snails come along, munching on the feces and pick up the larvae, get infected as an intermediate host. Clever. So when you are monitoring your dog to see if they've got these, you can do one of two things. You can take a blood and look for the antigen that's, you know, floating around, okay, and see whether that's there. There's a new test for that. Or you can do a Baermann's technique, which looks for the larval stages of the lungworm. Okay, so they have to put a special filter paper into the whole process, let the larvae draw up that filter paper, and look at those under the microscope so they can see them. So that's Angelostrongylus vesorum, just the first one that we need to talk about.
Is that what people call lungworm? When people say lungworm, or is foxworm a different beast?
No, no, that's, that's the one that most people will now term as lungworm, and You know, it is a, it is, uh, you know, problem elsewhere around the world, but, you know, it's relatively new. Since about 2007, I think, was probably where it particularly started to hit, you know, uh, people quite notably. Yeah. Um, and lots of people were advertising about it.
Indeed. I see, um, that's always the problem. I see, uh, that the fecal egg count people— there's a few different groups that do it, lots of people do it— can now test for worm, but it's still using feces samples. So they're not doing either of the techniques you mentioned. They're using feces samples.
No, no. So that is a feces sample. The Baermann's technique is from feces. So they— that's how they're doing it. You need to take 3 samples because they will vary through the circadian rhythm for when they're producing those larvae. So you take 3 little samples, mash those together, send them off to wormcount.com VetLab, give me another one, there's a number of them out there, okay, and you literally can ask them to add lungworm into the profile. Now this is the really good bit for this particular test, the Baermann's test for looking for larvae, it isn't just for Angelostrongylus vasorum, it will also look at Oslerus osleri, which is the one that's passed by sheep and cattle into the What's it called? Osleria schwarzweilii. Sounds like you've had a few. Yeah, it's you at the weekend. Anyway, and then there's Chronosoma vulpis, which is the fox lungworm, which you talked about. Okay, now these would, rather than being totally life-threatening, may cause a chronic cough in your dog or cat. Because they will create little nodules where they sit truly within the lung in the larger airways and the bronchi, okay, and there as little nodules cause an irritation. Now, the benefit for them is as they produce the eggs and larvae, obviously those eggs are going to be coughed up on the mucus that their irritation is causing and swallowed more often, therefore they're perpetuating that level of stuff. Now, the fox— so if your dog is out there eating fox muck, okay, you might think, oh, filthy habit, wash their mouth out, you know, maybe I just need to give them some more vitamin B's. But it is worth getting a worm count done for looking for larvae if that happens a because especially, especially if they start with a low-grade chronic cough.
Can you describe that cough? Susie Greaves asks, what sort of cough are we talking about? A deep lung cough or I'm trying to clear my throat cough?
It's probably more a deep lung cough. It's a bronchitis sort of cough.
It's going to be more of a smoker's cough. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm thinking, I'm thinking because of where the worm is, conventional worming techniques probably aren't effective.
So a single dose isn't necessarily that great. Okay. Now, interestingly, for Angelostrongylus, which is in the bloodstream, yes, some of the ones like milbemycin, okay, some people won't like, but it's better than some of the other wormers that are out there. A single dose which lasts in the body for 24-48 hours will probably deal with 90% of those infections. But you've got to be careful if they've got a huge level of lungworm problem, as in the Angelus strongylus within the vessels of the heart, and you kill them en masse quickly. This is probably the number one reason for horrendous side effects. If your dog has huge numbers of worms in their vasculature and you kill them en masse quickly, then of course what's going to happen? The body's going to react massively to all of those dead worms within the bloodstream. So you're going to risk disseminated intravascular coagulopathies. That's easy for me to say, but that is basically where you get lots of clots forming all throughout the body, using up platelets, risking bleeding episodes, you know, all of those things that you really don't want to happen to your dog. So you've got to be really cautious. If you've got positives, then think, you know, you can start to improve your dog's immune system, try and reduce some of those worm egg numbers, okay, some of those worm numbers. Then you've got to look, and that could be through using some of the herbal wormers as well, Okay, and then keep monitoring, maybe get an ultrasound done, check levels that the heart may be affected before you choose carefully with your vet what treatment you're going to give.
Okay, so it does sound like you're going down the chemical route once you are in.
No, herbs first, herbs first, because you may find that that's sufficient if your immune system can deal with them and you can support that, that might be sufficient. But at least monitor, don't just give those herbal wormers and assume you're done. Definitely work with your vet to make sure you clear that infection.
Sasha wants to know how long lungworm takes to cause a problem in dogs, please. The conventional working advice is monthly for lungworm.
So that's purely and simply because although the treatment of milbemycin may be a single dose, it will only last 24 to 48 hours in the body. Okay, however, if they ingest a larvae, it will pretty much take a month, whether that's an intestinal worm or a lungworm, to go through a cycle to an adult. So therefore, if you just do them on a monthly basis, you should be dealing with the worms as they mature to an adult. Now, when it comes to if you're in a high-risk dog and you've decided to use a herbal option and you are finding positives on the lung, on the faecal egg counts, this is where you may consider actually they're high risk, they're doing inappropriate things. If you really can't stop them eating fox muck, you know, eating slugs and snails, you know, you can't change what's happening out in the yard, you know, for looking after your pets, you know, that you're just chucking them out in the garden and they're doing what they like for however long. Then if you can't change those, you may have to resort to some of the herbal wormers constantly. Now, Nick's quite happy with this, and there's some great products out there like Vermex that do that. But for me, I prefer to test than treat. Look to see, have I got a risk patient? Then treat appropriately. And if the herbs are working, brilliant, done. If they're not, don't just go, I can't do anything else. You need to step up what you're doing. Are you supporting the immune system better? Are you getting the gut sorted? Are you— you know, all of these steps before you even get to, can I use a conventional wormer? If you are going to use a conventional wormer, be very careful. Now, we've talked about fenbendazole. You know, people are out there advocating a little bit like ivermectin for improving the immune system against COVID, you know, was talked about. Out. That's a wormer. You know, you can't say you can't use chemical wormers on one hand and then go treating the immune system and fortifying it with the same thing on the other. So, you know, make up your mind. Either these are super dangerous, you don't want to touch them, or they're going to help. And you need to look at doses. So fenbendazole, people will talk about, it's a brilliant anti-cancer drug. Well, hold on. It's also a wormer. and you may need to embrace that for treating fox lungworm. So slightly different to the angiostrongylus because you may need to be giving fenbendazole over a long period of time, sometimes up to a month on a daily basis of a specific dose in order to rid them. Now they say start with 9 days, then retest. And if you've cleared it, you've cleared it. But you may have to go as long as a month if you were just going to resort to that and, you know, you didn't want to look at anything else. Yeah. So take advice, look into all of the options that you have. You know, there's some great products out there. I think there's something called CanX, isn't there? Uh, you know, there's, there's all sorts of things that are, you know, um, you know, out there from seaweed products that could be really useful. You tell us a bit more about that. You're a seaweed man.
We're all still using— because remember, only half a year ago you kind of, you kind of said how many studies are behind that? Like, you know, it doesn't— all most Irish people know about red seaweed during the famine, like it's an anti-helminthic. There's a product compound in it called kynic acid. And if you look at particularly some of the Indian stuff, kynic acid is one of the things they use red seaweed and kind of— it's not the only thing, it's not the only plant that contains it, but that's one of the compounds. But the amount of studies in support of that are weak. And so I was appalled at that because I think, oh yeah, red seaweed and pumpkin seeds. Everybody knows about pumpkin seeds, particularly some species of pumpkin. Cucurbitaceae is the group of vegetables. I mean, cucumbers are in the family and pumpkins and all sorts, but particular pumpkins like Styrium pumpkins have loads of cucurbitacin. So most people feeding EU organic pumpkin seeds are hoping for some, uh, anti-helminthic protection from that. And your natural question was, is there studies for that? And I'm like, well, poo, no, there isn't like a really effective— but then when you look at rose geranium oil, all the studies for rose geranium oil for keeping away fleas and ticks, it's all on cattle there's nothing on cats, dogs, because it hasn't been looked at. These studies cost a lot of money, you know, drug companies do them, so you're bereft of the actual critical study to hold up to people like you have for some things. Like you can say brown seaweed cleans dogs' teeth because they did studies on it because they wanted to show you so they could sell the product. But in this case, we're a little bit adrift for support of natural worming preventatives. So even if you look at the ingredients of— and I am a supporter of Vermex, I think it's a good When you look at any of those products individually, it's— or ingredients individually, there isn't like a solid cat or dog trial you can say, oh, that's just annihilated the worms. It's not used to treat worms in an animal, it's used to make the environments significantly less attractive to the worm. So I think giving— Vermex is given for a period of time, like Billy Nomates, you give it and you give it and you hope that ramps up a little extra layer of protection. Nice healthy dog, nice intact gut, that's all really good. So those things are good for that, but not to treat worms.
Yeah, and so, and it's really interesting, Sasha's put in a about grapefruit seed extract. Yeah. Okay. And actually black seed oil as well. These can be really useful. Yeah, really useful as extracts. But my concern with, as you said, the pumpkin seed, it's out there. There's actually studies to show where they've trialed it in farm animals and that it's, it's been shown to be ineffective. Because although the active ingredient, if extracted, would be really useful, when you give them just ground, the ground, um, seed flour, okay, so even if you've ground it up and it's still in the seed flour, it's not releasing enough of the product. You have to literally give a ridiculous amount to actually get the toxic levels of that product into the animal.
Were they treating worms or were they trying to prevent worms in the cattle?
So they were treating worms. So they'd infected the animals with a certain level and they were looking to see how much that treatment would actually deplete those parasites.
Yeah. And actually a lot of the studies. Yeah. So that's just to highlight the point again that Yeah, seaweed and pumpkin seeds wouldn't be my go-to if I suspected worms in the dogs, you know, I'd be going the grapefruit seed extract. I am going to, because I keep threatening to do it, I'm going to have a quick look through the literature, see what I can find on what animals, and I'll dump them up on the RPM page just to see. But that's not the first time I've heard that about grapefruit seed extract. I think you need to be holding the hand of somebody knowledgeable using that. That's quite a potent stuff. There's wormwood as well, which is another herb which is really effective for treating worms, but you need to be chatting to someone. Sasha knows exactly what she's doing because that's her job.
And Katarzyna, I would just advocate you, unfortunately for a lot of these supplements, there isn't enough studies done in pregnant bitches or pregnant queens for us to be able to absolutely hand on heart say they're ultimately safe. Now, there should be no reason why they would cause harm But we cannot give you— there's no studies out there to say they are harmless.
It's almost like— yeah, exactly, it can't. I'm not saying it is, but it's almost always a matter of when it's in whole food form, you're usually— that this is not the issue. What happens is that particularly with grapefruit seed extract is you've gone to another level there and you're taking out the good stuff and you're feeding it in a dose, whereas pumpkin seeds on its own, as Brian was saying, good luck eating enough pumpkin seeds to kill a worm infection, you know. So That's the thing. It's about preventative medicine is way better than cure. But if you're in the cure—
maybe if it's in that flour form, maybe it sets like concrete around the worm. Yeah. Would you stop eating pumpkin seeds?
In answer to the person's question earlier, Styrian pumpkin seeds are the one in that Cannex product, the one from Styria, which is somewhere in, let's say, Syria. Styria in Syria? It's pretty unlikely. But the pumpkin seeds you eat from there, they're much pricier. They're about 3 times the price of the organic organic pumpkin seeds, they call them organic from, from Asia. But I strongly recommend the Styrian pumpkin seeds. They're the ones that are full of cucurbitacin. They're the ones that are going to get the job done. I believe that's the ones I use in that.
Does it also act to improve gut health generally, do you feel? I don't know.
Full of vitamin E, zinc, selenium. I mean, all the—
you would think, yeah, that's the sort of stuff that maybe is actually more about increasing that barrier and stopping the inflammation, you know.
Listen, we also wanted to— we don't— we've run out of time, so we'll move to Patreon for 10 minutes. But we've got to address this last worm, which is tongue worm, which got so— but before we do, let's ask Brian a couple more questions and see what his brain is like. Okay. And just, just while we're talking about weird little bugs, okay, how— and everyone can play this game, guys, it's the same price. How many species of leech in Britain do you think? How many species of leech in Britain? Oh, 217. And in the US, 17. Well, listen, that's only a quick Google. I'm no leech expert, but 17 in the US. There is 17 discovered. Yes, of course, you could easily be another 183 lying out there, Brian. But Brian said there was 200, so I think maybe they're just not looking hard enough. Never prone to exaggeration. Yeah. And in the US, how many more species are there in the US? Just, just to give the Americans a—
oh, then let's say 50. 100, 650 at the moment.
They're finding all sorts because they just got so many wetlands. That's just 2 ticks. How many species of tick in the UK? I hate ticks so much. How many species? Many different species. 20? 90? Not yet, 90 in the US. 20? Yeah, I know.
There's some, there's some that I'm, uh, yeah, some must have been imported.
Yeah, or yeah, or his leg fell off and it's like, oh, I found a new species, I was dying to get my name on. The five-legged. Yeah, uh, last one, second last one.
How many? The mouthless one, of course, which is the one that just got pulled off without a tick It's like, there is—
is there a mouthless one? Is there a Mr. Starbucks? I was looking for me question.
Oh look, come on, it's what you'd leave the mouth parts behind. Oh yes, yeah, I found a new species.
And my dog is dead. Um, how many, how many mosquitoes are there in Britain? Many species of mosquito.
Oh, thank God for that. How many mosquitoes?
Yeah, it's like Go on.
How many?
There's 34 different species in the UK. There's only 7 species in— yeah, and about 30 of those 34 are native to the British Isles. Okay, so that's including Ireland then when they say that. How many of those 30 want to bite humans? 23 of them. 23 of the 30 mosquito species will happily bite humans.
Well, by any mammal.
By any mammal, right? Yeah, I kind of thought they were much more specific than that, you know. No, apparently not.
Yeah, they'll be bloodsuckers.
Just guessed, uh, 100 million. Uh, so she was actually thinking the same way.
No, I think that's the total number of—
yeah, all in Scotland, Rachel Mackell say. Apparently so. And there's 200 mosquitoes, 200 species of mosquitoes in the US. Last question, because this is going to be an easier one now, Brian. We're going to be expecting you to get close to this one. How many species of snake are in Britain?
Oh, that's quite low actually. I think that's 4. Oh, you nailed it!
I could only— I knew there was 2. I mean, I knew, I knew about adders because Nick's always gone on about them, and I knew about grass snakes because we have them, and that's it. I didn't know there's another 2, but there's one there.
Slow worm?
Yeah, the slow worm. How could you call a snake a slow worm? Had to Google him, never heard of him.
Oh, usually in rock walls. I've seen quite a few in the lakes. Yeah, they sit in the dry stone walls. Easy. So as you're reconstructing, oh, just, you know, what insects, anything that's around that's appropriate size, up to even small voles and mice and stuff like that. But they are, um, so that, so when you do a lot of stonewalling, you know, the sort of stuff that you do when you do conservation, so you're rebuilding dry stone walls all the time, that's when you'll see them in the summertime. Cool. You catch them at that point.
Nice. And the last one is a smooth snake. And I was just thinking, what genius called them a smooth snake? What do you want to call them? A smooth snake, as opposed to what other type of snake? You know what I mean? Aren't they all smooth? How do you run on your belly if you've got lumps and bumps? Look, that is it, guys. So there was a little bit there, but we're just running out of time here. So we want to do tongue worm, and let's just give that a quick 5 minutes. It deserves a battering because of what's going on. So tongue worms is a hot one. So let's move that to Patreon. What do you think, Brent?
Yeah. Okay. Other than we've got to say, look, it's a tongue worm because it's shaped like a tongue, not because it burrows into your tongue.
I'm actually surprised I didn't know that. I didn't think to look it up.
No factoid, really? Did you not even look it up? I didn't think to check.
I didn't think I didn't look at life cycle stuff. I just went straight to anyway, the darker stuff. But that's mad.
Okay, interesting. There we go. So yeah, if you want to join us over on Patreon, please do. It's great to see you all. And thanks, guys. It's been marvelous tonight. We've loved to watch the messages as they come up.
That was very good. As always. Yeah.
And hopefully we'll be back with Nick next week if he can drag himself out of his bed. Yes. And yeah. It's been great to see you all. Yeah, see you all over on Patreon. Toodle-oo.
