RAWPETMEDICS TUESDAY LIVE

Good evening, good evening, good evening. I miss all the comments coming straight in. When you used to go to Facebook, you need the girls to be straight out of the traps. You'd see all the people coming in, uh, so now it's hard to know when you're live. But, uh, yeah, good evening everybody. We, uh, behind that poster we are hiding, you can guess it. By the name on the poster. For people, uh, on listening on podcast, we've got, uh, Dr. Josie, uh, Boog here tonight. I would have said Boog had you not just pronounced your name moments before we came on, so we will find out where that second name came from. Guys, we are Raw Pet Medics. You will catch us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics where any small contribution helps us keep going, and we deeply appreciate it. So thank you patrons for being on there, and we'll always do a little bit on the side afterwards for 10 minutes, uh, so thank you to those guys. Uh, but I think we should just get straight into it tonight. Normally we have a little chat around. Is everything okay, guys? Is there anything you desperately want to tell us before we start?

I've got— oh, Nick, I just want to share my t-shirt.

Oh, interesting.

It says, it says Truth Seeker, and it was a present from my good friend, uh, Dr. David— no, he's not a doctor. He should be, but he's not. Dr. David Cordes. Oh yeah. And, and, and we were talking about truth-seeking, and he said My friend, I've got a present for you. He was here visiting a few days ago, and I actually met, um, uh, gosh, what's her name? Tess. Dr. Tess Laurie.

It must be Tess.

I did, I did. And I just shook her hand and said, Tess, I'm, I'm really starstruck.

Yeah, I'm jealous. Where did you get to meet her, Nick?

She lives 10 miles down the road, so that was, that was Absolutely great.

Wow, that's a big one. Tess just got a big paper out there recently. Did you see it? No, what was that? Yeah, is that not the, um, the review of, uh, the, uh, it was, it was COVID-related. Uh, so I'll, it's very, very juicy. I'll share it to you. I think it was Tess that got it. I think it was Tess Laurie's team.

Yeah, but, um, maybe, maybe when we go on to Patreon, we'll talk about that.

Yes. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, at the end.

Yeah, you're gonna have some juicy bits at the late, late.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Brilliant.

So, uh, we can't look, we've We've got so much to discuss tonight, I can't delay any longer. Josie, hey, welcome! Let me, uh, the wonders of Tinternet, let's hide this, we don't need that anymore, and bring you on. It's great to meet you, um, and yeah, so looking forward to tonight.

Yeah, where'd you get the second name, Josie?

Yeah, it's German.

Oh, it's German. Okay, Boig.

Very good.

It's German, Boig. Yeah, I've got relatives in Greifswald, Germany.

Okay, cool. And where are you now today? Where do you live today?

I am in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Very good. And what do you do? Yeah.

What do I do? I have had a holistic house call practice down here for 23 years.

Okay.

Yeah. And I am now branching out into doing more phone consults for people all around the country and possibly world and doing more online education. Stuff, actually.

That's good. We get asked all the time, particularly for people in the US, is there anybody you can recommend over here that can do Zoom consults? Uh, so look up Dr. Josie. We're going to put up our links as we, as we go through this.

And you guys are doing the raw feeding. I, I was raw feeding my cats back in— actually, I just realized today it's 30 years ago. I was raw feeding my cats when I was in vet school in the mid-'90s. So yeah.

That's rare.

Interesting.

There's quite a few that eat mice and birds. What are you on about? Yeah, in the UK, yeah, it was raw fed.

And what are your, what are your, uh, special areas of interest, Josie, so that just so people know where you're coming from?

Um, it's in traditional Chinese veterinary medicine, acupuncture, and I've been an herbalist since before I went to vet school, so I love the plants and I love working with the plants and the animals. I do acupuncture, I do energy work, I do Reiki, all different kinds of things. So I try to get the animal balanced and then wean them off the pharmaceuticals that they've been put on and help them live really long lives. I mean, most of my animals, I think acupuncture really is a preventative medicine. And when I can be doing it regularly on patients, um, they live 18, 19, 20 years.

Oh yeah, so Nick shared a great— Nick shared a great one there a few days ago. Nick, on your page, you said, uh, a good doctor is not somebody that gets you on meds, they get you off them. And I just thought, that is a great line. That's— I, I—

that's awesome. Yeah, we need a t-shirt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Another one.

I say, yeah, another one. I say to my clients, the best vet is the vet who you don't need to talk to. Yeah, that's, you know, I am in the business of putting myself out of business, you know, and the more that happens, the happier I am.

Business is good. I'm not seeing anyone.

Well, I tell my clients, I'm like, I don't cheat my animals. My animals exist as emotional support for me, but I don't have to treat them, you know. I feed them good food.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, you know, definitely. So what are we talking about tonight, guys? What is the, uh, what's the main topic here?

Librella, I think.

Yeah, talking about a pharmaceutical.

What is, what is, what is Librella? We covered a bit of this last week, but we dashed through it. Huge topic. Can you tell us a little bit about it, Chelsea?

Lubrella is actually not a pharmaceutical drug. It's a pharmaceutical product. It's a recombinant genetic product. So it's genetically engineered to, um, as a monoclonal antibody to bind to a very specific substance that the mammalian body produces. So we've all heard like monoclonal antibodies, we heard them during COVID So they can design monoclonal antibodies now. This is part of the whole new tech thing along with the jab and all that. So they can genetically create an antibody that's injected into the body that will bind to different substances. And the monoclonal antibody for COVID bound to the COVID virus. This monoclonal antibody binds to something called nerve growth factor. Um, and when I, when I, before I use any new pharmaceutical drug product, whatever coming on the market, my rule of thumb over the last 30 years is to give it 2 or 3 years to see what happens because they will release these, the FDA, at least in the United States, will release them. And those first 2 or 3 years are really the clinical trial period of this medication. So, um, We're in the clinical trial period of Librella. Now, I also kind of reverse engineer. So I go back to my physiology, I go back to my biochemistry. I want to know what this drug is doing and the potential ramifications in the body. So we're talking about nerve growth factor. And nerve growth factor, it was, I think it was one of the first of these growth factors that were discovered. Now in functional medicine, they're using a lot of them. It's actually a peptide, a small protein, and it's exhibited all throughout the body. And it has to do with repairing neuronal growth in adults, neuroplasticity, creating new dendritic sensory neurons, um, in a growing animal, young animal, it does all kinds of things to help our nerves grow. Now, it's in every single tissue. It's in the central nervous system, it's in the peripheral nervous system, it's in the cardiac tissue at high amounts. It's also found in joints in high amounts. Now, when they first discovered this, there's some really good information out there, but they were like, wow, look at what this thing does. Um, maybe we can use it to treat degenerative neurological conditions. So they isolated it and it started injecting it and had like horrific problems by doing that. So they backed off that and were like, this isn't a good idea because we're having some really nasty side effects.

Animal trials, animal trials, Chelsea.

Um, these were actually— there were some human trials. With it. Okay. And then, and what's interesting, I just want to throw this in here, lion's mane mushroom. I'm a big fan of the medicinal mushrooms. Lion's mane mushroom will actually stimulate production of nerve growth factor in the body. So I've been using lion's mane mushroom to stimulate the body to make its own nerve growth factor. And I think there's a big difference when the body makes a makes a protein like this versus injecting it externally in the body, right? So what they did is they found it in joint tissue and they're like, wow, they tried blocking nerve growth factor in joint tissue. And because it has to do with the sensory neurons, they found that they could eliminate pain in the joints by taking away the nerve growth factor. So they designed this monoclonal antibody and they went through actually 3 different similar drugs. There was Eli Lilly and another company had one, one round. They stopped at the, like the level 2 trials. They were seeing too many weird effects. So they just bailed out. Then there was one with Eli Lilly and Pfizer. They got to level 3 clinical trials in people. And all of a sudden they started seeing what they're calling ROPA, R-O-P-A, rapid onset progressive arthritis. And every single person who was given this injection, they were seeing joints just completely like disintegrate almost in front of them, their eyes. And they had to go in for emergency joint replacement surgeries. So there was a panel, I guess, on the FDA of arthritic and arthritis MD specialists, rheumatoid arthritis specialists. And they're like, guys, we got to pull this clinical trial because these are just way too severe side effects. We got to stop it now. Okay. So then they had, they probably went back to the lab and tweaked it a little bit. They'd invested a lot of money to get it this far. Can't let that go. So they tweak it a little bit. They come out with Selencia and I haven't had a chance to dive deep into that. And now Labrella. So Solensia is specific for feline growth factor. Labrella is specific for canine nerve growth factor. When I looked into it, I went to the Zoetis site and got their FDA summary of approval. And when I started reading through it, it's almost laughable, honestly. Every single Concern that is brought up, they don't— they literally say, we don't know. So they have—

Can you give us some examples, Josie?

So yeah, I'm going to give you examples.

Great.

So first of all, in the FDA summary of approval, the FDA has this statement. They say veterinarians should advise owners about the possible adverse events and side effects before using this drug. The FDA encourages dog owners to work with their veterinarian to report any adverse events or side effects potentially related to the use of any drug, including Labrella. Now the problem is, at least here in the United States, the pharma reps for Zoetis are going out to every, all these clinics and literally telling veterinarians that there are no side effects. That it is safe to use in any dog and there are no side effects. And I have had more than, I probably had 20 vets come to me saying, but they said there were no side effects. Now, and there's a problem, there's like a disconnection here too, because I feel as medical professionals with medical licenses, we have a certain responsibility to be able to give informed consent to our patients and dig a little bit more deeper into things than just listening to the pharmacology rep, the pharma rep walking through our front door.

Yeah. So, um, Josie, is it true— I'm sorry for interrupting your stream of thought here— is it true that the, um, the lack of side effects that are reported, uh, in the EU and US literature aren't the same as the side effects reported in the Canadian literature in the insert in the box? I heard that the Canadian literature has a list of side effects that would kind of curl your toes a bit.

Yeah, they are different. Now the only thing that was done— there were two studies done. There was a study done in the United States and there was a study done in the EU. There were two field studies. They were for 84 days. The one in the United States was 135 dogs and 137 control dogs. That were given 3 injections. The one in the EU was 84 days, 138 Labrella dogs, 143 control, 3 injections. Now they put this on the market, and this is what got my attention because I had a colleague come to me about it. They put it on the market for monthly injections. And I said, well, how long are you supposed to give the injections? Oh, indefinitely. And I was like, you mean for the life of the dog? Oh yeah, indefinitely, every month. And the field studies were only 3 months long. The longest study they did included another study that had 6 additional monthly injections. So that would bring it out to 9 months, but in the 6 additional monthly injections, they did not include a control group in that study.

Naughty, naughty.

Yeah.

I've got the Canadian, uh, datasheet here, and it says there is no safety data on the concurrent long-term use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and Librella in dogs. In clinic— here we go, Josie, this is backing up what you were saying— in clinical trials in humans, rapidly progressive osteoarthritis has been reported in patients receiving humanized anti-NGF monoclonal antibodies. The incidence of these events increases with high-dose and in those human patients that receive long-term, long-term meaning more than 90 days, non-steroidal therapy concomitant with anti-monoclonal antibody NGF. Dogs have no reported equivalent of human rapidly progressive osteoarthritis, which is quite reassuring.

Yet, yet, yet, and were they even looking at it? Were they even looking for it in the studies? They weren't doing X-rays. X-rays on these dogs. I couldn't find that anywhere. Ooh. Okay. So in the dog, we're in the, in the human, in the dog report, they don't, they literally say there was a 2-week laboratory safety study that did not provide sufficient data to support the safety of concurrent use of Labrella and NSAIDs. Now, if you have a dog coming in lame and arthritis, what are they going to be on? They're going to be on And most likely, yeah, anti-inflammatory. The other issue was, okay, the safe use of this product with other monoclonal antibodies has not been evaluated. The other monoclonal antibodies that are being used, a big one is Cytopoint.

Oh, I didn't know that was a monoclonal.

Yes, that's a monoclonal antibody. So all these dogs with skin conditions because their bodies are so inflamed, are coming in lame with arthritis. Well, they're going to pop them with Labrella on top of the Cytopoint. Second thing, evaluations were not made to determine if interactions occurred between Labrella and veterinary vaccines.

Oh, hmm. Now we know they've got no data there, Josie. Is that what you're saying?

No data. Yeah. This is FDA. This is out of the package insert, United States package insert. Then the safe use of anti-NGF monoclonal antibodies. Okay. That's the concurrent use with that. Um, it goes on. Long-term effects, which may occur more than 9 months after the use of Labbrella have not been evaluated.

Wow. And yet they're recommending it's used for indefinitely.

Yes, indefinitely. And there's another one they're finding. Nerve growth factor is expressed in high percentages in cardiac tissue. They have no data on how this will affect dogs coming in with cardiac issues. And this is literally one thing after another. This was not evaluated. We do not have data. We do not know. We do not know. We do not know. The scary thing that I'm most concerned about is immunogenicity, and they do mention this on the package insert. So let me see. Okay, so immunogenicity is the ability of a foreign substance such as an antigen to provoke an immune response in the body. Now we're injecting a recombinant genetically designed protein into the body. If the body, its immune system decides to react to that like a foreign body, it's going to provoke an immune system, immune response to it. Now they're saying that they have not found, oh, where was it? All therapeutic, this is in the Freedom of Information summary for Labrella. All therapeutic protein products have the potential for inducing an immune response response, immunogenicity, following administration to a host, like a humoral immune response and the production of antibodies in the host. These host-derived antibodies may bind to the therapeutic protein and may result in decreased effectiveness or increased risk for an adverse reaction. Due to the limitations of the assay methods performed to evaluate immunogenicity, immunogenicity, clinically relevant conclusions or correlations were not determined from the immunogenicity data reported. So in the package insert, it says treatment with Lebrella may result in the formation of anti-Lebrella antibodies and potentially the loss of productive effectiveness. Now, if we're talking about this producing the body producing antibodies to the Labrella, we're going to form antibody-antigen complexes, which then can do things like lodge in the kidneys and create glomerulonephritis. It can create autoimmune reactions, and it can even lead down the road to cancers. But we're not going to talk about that because our assays couldn't prove it. And so that's my biggest concern. But when I do—

we do know, Josie, from, from basic immunology, the more times you repeat antibody, the protein injection, which is essentially what it is, it's a peptide, the more likely you are to get that adverse reaction.

Yes. So it's going to be like an amyloid being laid down in the kidneys. Yeah, well, yeah, it's, you know, you get the glomerulonephritis or those antigen-antibody complexes lodging in the glomerulus, but then you can also drive into to activating the complement system and you'll have a full-blown meltdown. I have had some of those reported to me. And there's a couple of websites on Facebook of people reporting adverse events and somebody had their dog literally bleed out in the middle of the living room floor on them. So it's, yeah, there's no way. The other thing is there's no way of predicting how an individual dog's going to respond to this.

Yeah.

And the other thing is, is people, it's not meant for dogs with any kind of neurological problems because it's a nerve growth factor. And they aren't, veterinarians are not screening for neurological problems in addition to arthritis to use this because they think there's no, there's no side effects. So there now I've had multiple reports coming in. Their vets are giving it to like 4-year-old dogs that, you know, fell wrong or have a slight tweak in their leg and they're coming lame and they're giving this as the injection for pain.

Yeah, not good.

We were talking about this last week that, you know, it's the inappropriate use of drugs starts to really cause even further drive down the line of, look, this could be really problematic. It's, you know, yes, I have heard also some people say it's been brilliant for their pets. They've had some great initial results, and it's been really useful. I hope towards the end we'll get to talk about alternative pain management.

Yeah, definitely.

People are really struggling, you know, with, with this news because their pet has responded but they don't have any alternative currently being offered by their vet for pain management.

Well, this is— and this is a sneaky thing about this, is there are these miracle stories that they're holding up of dogs not being able to walk, and they're injected, and then boom, they're up and walking. I have an old client of And she's been a client of mine for 20 years and she moved out of state and she contacted as soon as she saw my Substack. All of this is written down in my Substack report, the quotes from the inserts, everything. And she had a dog who was in rehab. He was actually doing great. He was going on 2-mile walks with her, but her rehab vet was like, well, he's slowing down on the treadmill. And then this new product that could come out could, that could really help him. Now, it wasn't that he wasn't already doing well. They gave him the injection. They gave him a second injection. She didn't notice that much difference in him. And then she let him to go, she let him out in the backyard to go pee and came back and he was dragging his entire back end in. He had, so there's, what also is happening are these acute collapse episodes, which I am suspicious about that ROPA issue with it. But vets are like, oh, well, Lubrella doesn't have side effects for her. So they're not even following up, like doing X-rays or checking into what's really going on. There have been some dogs that have had collapse episodes and then people have waited it out as well. So waited out until the body removes this antibody. Now they still don't even know. In the package insert, they're like, we assume that this antibody is removed from the body like any other antibody. Antibody. So they're— they literally use the word assume in the package insert.

Yeah, so do you assume that the body just produces enough NGF to overcome the antibody over that month? Because they say do it on a monthly basis, uh, and that's why they need to repeat it, rather than it's actually the antibody going from the body?

They did curves on effectiveness, so they— and they figured out, and they do talk about that in their insert, about how they came up with the monthly injections, because they see the effects start to wane. Now, that— whether that's removal of the monoclonal antibody from the system, whether that's an increase in NGF, we have no idea. There's just— it's just a big box of unanswered questions.

Anecdotally, when you look at the groups, there's a number of groups there, they're, you know, kind of like Novovac and a few of the other drugs that have a couple of questions. But, and you'll see that people say that their dog can go terribly lame in the back end, but it does, well, in some cases it wore off and it took them, the figures thrown around are 30, 45 days, you know. So in keeping with this, you need it monthly, it does seem to wear off. So, you know, that is one little bit of good news. Other people were saying that their vet was advising to take liver and kidney readings after the first injection to see that the dog was taking it. And I thought that doesn't sound like too bad a reason, but it's not too bad a suggestion, but it doesn't put great faith in the compound really, does it? No.

And one of the side effects that they did list in the package insert was an increase in BUN. And also skin problems, which was interesting because, you know, is that immune system issues? That's the part that's more disturbing to me than anything. It's because this is almost acting like another type of vaccine. Instead of injecting the antigen, we're injecting the antibody and how that interacts with an individual dog's immune system is just just a gamble.

It's a good example of— for people don't, you know, this is a great example of getting a drug to market as quick as possible, uh, and not looking for side effects. And so when you say or question, is these side effects— well, it's not shown to do that, it's not shown to do that. Well, nobody's looking. So it's kind of like vaccinating your control group, because when you do that, then, uh, they'll say, well, of course we haven't found any side effects with this, that's because you vaccinated your control group or didn't use a control group. And the control group obviously doesn't get the med for 6 months, 9 months, a year. And a stage 3 clinical trial is in the population. Okay, so stage 1 is in-house, stage 2 is a very small population because we're a little bit worried that there may be major drama, 100 people, 100 animals. And then stage 3 is big release, you know, but controlled, tightly followed and monitored by the drug companies and the FDA who have our best interests at heart. And then they follow that first tranche of 1,000 or 10,000 releases. And they have a control group in mind and they compare after a year, the incidence of X and Y. And so if you don't do that stage B, which you think would be required, required bloody science, they can safely say, well, that's not shown to do that. It's not shown to do that. And so people take from that as well, that means it doesn't do that. Was it? No, you never looked to see if it did that. You never looked to see if it had an effect on pregnant females. You never looked to see that, so you can't say it. All you can say is we don't know. And it's a glorious way to sell a drug because you just— as long as you don't look. Or they did look and they don't publish the results, which is even scarier and a very common thing that pharmaceutical companies do. They'll run 5, 6 trials, they don't look at side effects and don't publish them, you know.

Well, and this— what, what fascinated me about this is this package insert. I mean, you should really— I want to almost frame it and put it on the wall. They use the words, this was not evaluated, this was not evaluated, this potential interaction was not evaluated. They— yeah, they're honest about it. And so, you know, it's really incredible.

Yeah, that's scary. What are the— what are the alternatives, guys? We've got 3 nerds here that we can ask. I mean, everyone's going to be listening to this. There's definitely good news stories about Librella. People say, it wasn't for Librella, my dog's last 2 years of life was totally improved. I don't think anybody here is doubting the fact that it's a— I'm sure it's a godsend for some dogs. Clearly the reports we can see for the amount of time that they were using it and those last year and that kind of thing. I think when people learn a little bit more about it, maybe they'll say, okay, well, we'll keep that magic very strong. The bigger the front, the bigger the back, as they say with drugs. Maybe keep that. If they were to keep that to the last kind of hurdle, what are the other alternatives for a dog suffering osteoarthritis and these sort of conditions? What do you guys recommend, all three of you? What do you do, Josie? What do you recommend?

Well, right now I have a 14-year-old, 85-pound German Shepherd Husky mix, and she turned up lame at 3 years, and I got her X-rayed and I got her hips checked. And her hips— I cried when I looked at the X-rays. Her hips were in such bad shape, and I adopted her at 3 years old. So what I've been doing, she gets exercise, exercise, exercise, walks. We do walk over cavalettis in the park. We walk up and down hills, side hills. I do acupuncture on her. I do red light therapy on her. I've got her on Chinese herbs. I've got her on a raw diet with lots of bone broth and raw meaty bones. And, you know, the Chinese herbal— the herbal remedies really helped. There's some really good herbal combinations. I use one called Boswellia Complex that has Boswellia, turmeric, and celery root extract in it. And celery root extract has a specific affinity for pain from arthritis. And I've used that. I started taking dogs off of carprofen and Metacam just using that. It comes in tablets twice a day and it was very effective. If they need occasional help, I will give her doses of Metacam, but I do it maybe if like a grooming session's coming up, something that I know where she's going to be really sore, I'll medicate her for a couple of days out of the week. And then not use it.

So completely agree with you, Josie, about the Boswellia complex. Yeah, we use that. It's a MediHerb product.

Yeah, yeah, MediHerb. Exactly.

It's really, really high quality herbal formulation coming out of Australia. Uh, difficult to get hold of in the UK, but we're using that here and I really love it. We use it for IBD as well because Boswellia is great for calming down. A very inflamed gut. So that's— that's— yeah, I completely agree that that's a, that's a powerful intervention. Anything else that you use, like supplements or anything?

Well, I, you know, I stopped using so many of the glucosamine supplements when I started giving them bone broth. I really try to get food-based. And now I just went to— it was really funny, a year ago I went to a conventional veterinary conference that was focused just on pain. And a neurologist, board-certified neurologist, got up and was lecturing to him, to us. And he says, well, I'm coming out with this supplement and it has type 2 undenatured collagen in it. It's just this miracle. And he said, and then he put up a slide of a chicken back and he said, and they make it by like cooking chicken backs for a long, long time over low heat. Yes, I'm not kidding.

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, isn't it funny, like, so many of these dry-fed dogs, dry-fed dog owners don't realize that the dry food— most dry foods are entirely absent in glucosamine, chondroitin, collagen, hyaluronic acid, vitamin C, because healthy dogs can make a little bit, uh, a so these are the crucial critical joint building compounds and you remove them from the pup from 3.5 weeks old until the pup is riddled by 7 or 8 years on the knackered joints and then they sell you the solution which is ground up cartilage in a capsule sold you for a buck a capsule and people pay that thing and it helps these dry fed dogs. The studies of glucosamine and chondroitin are hard to tease apart because often there are study of deficiency. If you use dry fed dogs in your study and you give them glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid, to write they're going to benefit because they're getting none diet. It's interesting to see— it would be more interesting to see what an appropriately fed dog— will more glucosamine and chondroitin help those dogs? Well, probably not. They're getting enormous amounts in their diet already in the best possible form, which is eating cartilage and bone. You can't improve on that. So can you just keep piling up bricks outside the house? No, probably not. And maybe something else might be needed then. But if you're a dry-fed dog, something as simple as collagen— and that guy will make a fortune off that, that's running around thinking collagen magic ingredient. It is a magic ingredient, so feed it to them.

It is, you know, crazy. I raised my— I had to raise my hand in the back of the room and say, oh, you mean bone broth?

Yeah, I'd say they loved you being there. Yes, you have another question. What about you, Bren? What do you do for, uh, for troublesome cases? Where do you— where can you go on the, uh, well, you know, the, the, the, um the conventional side as well, like what are the safer options there?

Okay, look, safety always comes in a matter of you've got to check what that animal's otherwise suffering from. If they've got other conditions concurrent, you've got to be mindful of adapting any medication to that. I would say there's some real easy wins though, still with nutrition in mind, talking about omega-3s, you know, Many of our standard diets out there, we're still at a 10:1, if not a 30:1 ratio of omega-6s, pro-inflammatory, great for the immune system, but pro-inflammatory omegas versus omega-3s. And actually a lot of the functional medicine practitioners say, look, you should be down to 3:1 ratios. So 3 parts omega-6 to 1 part omega-3. So 3 times the amount. Of your standard diet. That's a 10 to 1 ratio. And so supplementing omega-3s, hands down, I think is a given. Most people will think of it for skin and glossy coat. No, it's for any inflammatory condition, any inflammatory condition. So I definitely say that would be definitely in my top 3 supplements that's got to go in. I do absolutely agree. You know, anything that reduces inflammation in the body and sealing and healing the gut with bone broth, let alone the benefits you're going to get in the rest of the body, you know, is sort of doing it on so many levels that, you know, it's got to be in there with supplements. Boswellia, I love as a herbal supplement. There's some great products in the UK from NutriVet, which is also VetPro. We've talked about in the past on arthritis Drugs, I would always, always say, I think there is a great way of synergy between medications where it means you can minimize the dose but maximize the pain relief by adding more than one way of controlling the pain. Okay, so talk to your vet if you're— I'm not going to go into the depths of those right now. I have on the arthritis one before, and I think I think it's really down for you to speak to your vet to discuss that and not just to accept a non-steroidal again that's causing your dog's gut to upset. That you don't just go in for an opioid and say, oh yeah, you know, everybody's using gabapentin, let's just chuck gabapentin in for a laugh. You know, we could—

I could do a whole nother talk on gabapentin. That's one of my wonderful favorites.

So, you know, there are ways to combine. Yeah, there are vets out there that specialize in pain management. You can certainly talk to them about the drugs. I love that Josie does TCM and acupuncture. We use that a lot in the practice. I find it really useful. Rather than red light therapy, I do tend to use laser because that's what we've got. Very similar. And it's a way of our nurses effectively giving acupuncture but without needles. So our nursing team can often deliver laser therapy to the patients, and that can be a great adjunct to therapy. Movement, not vigorous exercise, but movement, I think is so important. So physiotherapy, looking at, yeah, all the way from chiropractic, all the way to hydrotherapy. Have great places again in pain management. I think, you know, looking at that, a massage, all of those can be really, really useful. So it's a complex— you've got to find what fits for your dog, you know, that's gonna keep them in the right place. I think I haven't even touched on how their mental state, their, you know, parasympathetics can come to play to reduce inflammation, you know, cutting out sympathetic genetic stressors, you know, is so important. You know, all of those factors. If you've got a really short-nosed dog, you know, actually thinking very carefully, you know, is that boas essential to reduce some of the stressors that are causing inflammation in the rest of the body? You know, it's a really difficult— I hate talking about short-nosed dogs and boas therapy, you know, surgery, but it is, you know, we shouldn't have bred them that way in the first place. Sorry guys if you've got a very short-nosed dog, but you know, from a point of, you know, thinking sympathetic stressors, not being able to breathe is a massive one.

Yeah, it is.

Okay, so yeah, okay, I've got a couple of lotions and potions to throw into the mix here before we talk to Josie about how people can get hold of her because she's doing worldwide Zoom and online consultations. First one, you're talking about TCM, and so we have got— we get it in from New Zealand, deer velvet. Can you see that? Oh yeah, deer velvet.

I'll tell you what, let me just give you a favor. I'm gonna just—

do you wanna blow me up a bit?

I'm gonna blow you up.

So people understand it's deer velvet.

It's deer, like the picture. Yeah, thank you.

He's only thinking of his velvet jacket.

Yeah, so basically the Chinese have been using this stuff for immunostimulation, for anti-inflammatory effects, for kind of general well-being. They're using it with the oldies, and they're using it with arthritic conditions as well.

Can I just say a quick— it's a Jing in TCM. It's called a Jing tonic, and the Jing stored in our kidneys and our bone marrow. And bone marrow. So it has to do with the kidneys and the bones.

So amazing. So super, it's really natural, natural product. The other one, which is really interesting, this is one again from our friends at MediHerb. These are, these are the people who make the Boswellia complex. This is Salagesic, which, which sounds like it's going to be an aspirin. Well, no, It sounds like it's going to be a non-steroidal because of the name, but actually it's from white willow, which was one of the original back in the 1740s or something, which is where they got aspirin from initially. Yeah, so it's salicylate, which is the active ingredient in aspirin, but this is in a natural form, and therefore the chance of getting ulceration in the gut is virtually zero. Really, really interesting. Elements that we can bring in. And each dog, even if you get, you know, two dogs, they are identical twins, they're German Shepherds, they've both got the same degree of hip problems, they may need completely different cocktails. Yeah, it's going to be a very simple cocktail when they're young, younger, but a bit achy. And when they get old, they're going to need, you know, more and more support. It's going to be different for all. There will be commonality, but you have tailor-make it. And I think that's one of the beauties, is trying to make the perfect fit for any given presentation. So Josie, tell us about where people can get hold of you.

Before Josie gives us the— I just had a quick look online there as Nick was talking about Deer Valley, but just to see, you know, has the West caught up with anything that, you know, every time the East says something, you know, the West catches up thousands of years later by doing a study but I'm looking for something, have they done anything on deer velvet? And they've got a really cool study here of a lot of different mice in different situations using deer velvet, but there's way too many huge words to read it out, it's a long intro, but in very short, big, big changes, benefits, pathological histological images of the hind paws showed that a treatment with deer velvet reduced immune cell infiltration, synovial hyperplasia and cartilage damage, on and on and on. It definitely shows massive potential, but we're not quite sure of the exact mechanisms yet.

So I thought you were going to come up with it and they grew a new limb.

Yeah, I'm gonna rub it on my head.

I still want you to do that and you suddenly end up with two antlers.

Oh, that'd be cool.

Or a unicorn.

Us over this side of the—

Totally agree with Conor that there is some great science. This is produced by, as you can imagine, the New Zealand Deer Velvet Council or something like this. But in the back, they provide the references.

Well, Nicola Cresswell is now saying, oh great, Nick's got a book.

Oh, Nicola, Nicola, you can go off, people. Okay, and so we, we've got references galore. Yeah, you know, and If you went back 2,000 years, it would be quadruple that number of references.

I mean, how amazing must the stuff be? If you think about what a deer has to do every year, okay, look at fallow deer, they've got these palmate antlers, okay, so it's a big solid strip, I mean, red deer, older red deer, I mean, they are huge and heavy. If you ever pick up one antler off the ground, you'll see that is a considerable bone. These guys have to grow, and some girls and some of the cervid species have to grow two of these every single year, and they've only got 4 months to do it. So can you imagine what— I mean, they knock them off, you'll find them everywhere in November, December. If your dog wants to chew on them, go to where deer live and go into the brush and you'll find them there. But, uh, but like, they start growing them in April and they have to be ready to go by the end of September. These two enormous bone structures, can you imagine the amount of calcium alone? And what this velvet does to make that happen is phenomenal. So there must be something—

it is incredible, isn't it?

Yeah.

By the way, I've got digital versions of this document guys. So if anybody wants those 700 references, then just give me a shout, email me.

And did you say you're giving lots of free samples of your product away, Nick?

I'm not giving any samples. I'll give you the data, the PDF, and you can see for yourself. And we've got lots. We've got Sean in New Zealand who sends it over.

It's great. You can buy from you, Nick. Yeah, all right, cool.

Yeah, we make it. Ellie's done the, uh, the packaging, so it all looks really lovely. And it's a TCM product, get your Jing going, which is always a good thing, I think.

I like that.

So Josie, where can, where can people follow you, uh, find you? Where, where would you like to see?

Um, the easiest is probably on Facebook under Josie Beard DVM. Um, I'm on Instagram at Dr. Josie Pet Vet. Um, I am going to be starting a 12-month preventative wellness course where pet parents are welcome, vets are welcome, um, that we're gonna go through seasonally through Chinese medicine on how to treat each of the organ systems by the season and the 5 elements. So we're gonna take a big deep dive.

Love it.

It's gonna be experiential. I'm gonna teach people how to stimulate acupuncture points at home. How to work with their animals manually and just love it, you know.

Yeah. And so they'll just catch you at your socials and drop you a little message.

Yeah.

And, uh, you'll show them how to sign up. Loving the idea.

Yeah, exactly. There's gonna be— I'm gonna, I'm gonna be coming out with more stuff on my socials on that. And my Linktree, you can find all my links. I'm also on Substack as well.

Cool. So love it.

It's actually really exciting. Well done, you.

That's great. You're— pick your brains for 5 more minutes. Can we just— tour of gabapentin because that actually might— yeah, have we got— we'll do it on Patreon.

Yeah, I mean, I, I started seeing all these animals coming to me with gabapentin, so I sat down one weekend and did the same thing.

We're gonna do that over on— we're gonna pause, say goodbye to the Facebook guys, and we're just gonna say, yeah, you can come across before you give away all your secrets.

No, I will.

Yeah, guys, I have freeze-framed, um, Conor's impression of a moose to go alongside Nick's impression of a lipoma. So we're slowly gathering through the year. You wait till Christmas, that's going to be a right calendar. Anyway, thanks, Bren.

Yeah, we still haven't shown all your 'I'm a lumberjack,' um, pictures with you and your Canadian, um, Uh, your Canadian budgie smugglers chopping trees, so be careful.

Yeah, Chris has been furnishing us with a lot of very good—

yeah, difficult to look at, but, uh, we just hide them in a deep vault.

It was okay. It was worth the tails of Goodby Gamer. It was.

Yeah.

Um, all right guys, that's great. Just find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Thanks everybody for the help there, we do appreciate it, and we will see you next week for whatever we've got planned. I'm not quite sure what that is. And then for patrons, you'll see us over on Patreon as soon as Bren uploads it. We're going to dash over now to Patreon and do a little bit with Josie on gabapentin. So thanks everybody for joining us, and we will see you next week. Thanks all. Thanks, Josie. Great.

Josie, just stay with us here. Cheers.