Nick and Brendan explain how dogs absorb B12 through four protein interactions, why stomach acid and pancreatic health matter, and which foods actually contain it. They cover why omeprazole blocks B12 uptake and debate whether lightly-cooked diets work better than raw for dogs with digestive issues.
Chapters
Good evening, it's your favorite time of the week. It's Tuesday, it's 7 o'clock, and that means it's Raw Pet Medics time.
Yeah, anytime I see two eggs beside each other in a picture, I always think a bum. I always think bum cheeks. Do you guys not think that?
Oh God, it does.
It just looks like a bum to me. Yeah, so we're not talking about bums, we're talking about B12. Um, so yeah, guys, uh, we are—
we love a hard pair as well.
Are you one of those?
I can't go past that without talking about hard pear joke.
I was in here like a conference.
That's a conference pear, by the way, not anything else.
Why? What's a hard pear? I don't actually really know. There's a hard pair of butt cheeks. There was a, there's a famous movie, The Commitments. Tell me you guys have seen The Commitments.
Yeah, I loved it. I saw it twice.
And he's describing your man. Remember the girls were talking about the little lad that brought over the drinks and he said he's got like, but like two eggs in a hanky. Yeah. So ever since then, I guess that's part of the Irish in me. I just see two eggs and I go, yeah, that's commitments. Guys, we're all pet medics. Sorry for the delay, a bit of BeLive issue, and, uh, but hopefully you found us thanks to the magicianry of, um, of Nick actually and Bren. So thanks, lads, for sorting that out.
Oh, it's Brendan. It was all Brendan. I haven't got a clue.
Not a clue. Yeah, thank you.
It's great to see the people joining us through YouTube. Yeah, yeah, do subscribe to our YouTube channel if you've jumped on there for the first time.
Please subscribe, makes a big difference.
Yeah, it will be brilliant.
Yeah, hit subscribe and watch along this evening, and you can look back at some of our other videos that should be on there. And yeah, it's another resource, another way in to find us. If you're not already listening to us on your favorite podcast show, whether that be through Audible, whether it be through the BBC— no, not on the BBC, we're on Spotify and Amazon. Yeah, and multiple others. Can you roll them off?
No, I get confused. Bonnie Lambert's on the RFES info page.
This is all because I cheated and I chucked it on that just in case.
Oh, I put us on everything.
That's really cheeky.
Do you know what? I've got admin rights to about 4 or 5 different pages and for some reason Raw Pet Medics is the one that's been withdrawn. I thought somebody's done something weird, they're not happy with what we've been talking about, and so I've just stuck them on.
They didn't like our hot topic last week, it seemed, for some reason.
Oh yeah, you wrote a post on that. What's, what's that all about? Go on, give us the inside.
Yeah, uh, I spent a while on that. I— look, it wasn't like a whole lot of people found it, uh, unpleasurable, displeasurable, but a couple— there was a few people that said, why are you called Raw Pet Medics and having a show about a guy who has a a cooked food product. And I just had to retaliate. I just, I couldn't say nothing. I started a bit with that. This, one of my favorite sayings is, the lion doesn't turn around when the small dog barks. And I think that's a great saying. And I started with that and I said, unfortunately, I'm not that lion. I've never been that lion. I envy him. But, uh, no, look, I think it was a— look, it was a, it was a point to be made that this is a cooked diet and what's our belief about that. It could have been asked a bit nicer. Anyway, I just went through it and I said Matthew Moore is not just some guy. If you just look at who he is and listen to him, and one of his approaches to get vets on side, because it's not like they're flocking to raw. Oh no, people are flocking to raw, but the veterinary industry is not. So let's face it, it's not exactly being stocked in every veterinary clinic. And so Matthew Moore's idea here to use a lightly cooked food and, and present it to vets in terms of a health product for various different diseases is brilliant, and it's clearly working. So he's moving vets over and all sorts of things. But then I just went through some of the advantages of a lightly cooked food. Just because we're called Raw Pet Medics, you know, lightly cooked food is brilliant. There's many, many advantages to it, many times to use it. I mean, anybody that works with dogs, certainly nutrition-wise, you get the recurring gut issues. And the more you do recurring gut issues, the more you realize lightly cooked food can play a really significant role here. It's a real get-out-of-jail-free card sometimes. And as I posted this post, you could see half the people underneath saying exactly, I could never get my dog onto raw after terrible gut conditions. It never came back that the dog could take raw again. So there's many conditions and all sorts of issues and dogs having a terrible gut, kind of surgery or a little bit of chemo or even the person's having chemo and they're worried and it's like there's a million reasons why people might do it but also it's easier to digest lightly cooked meat. People don't realize that lightly cooked meat is easier to digest, not heavily cooked meat where it's been processed to hell and it's tough but a lightly cooked meat is actually easier to digest and gives you 10% more energy so it's better for the sled dogs when you're working them hard. But, uh, so there's many times you might do it. So it also increases the taste. Dogs will choose cooked meat over raw. Sounds like I'm totally slagging raw here, but the taste trials reveal dogs will take cooked meat before raw, particularly heavy cooked meat, because it's tasty. That Maillard reaction of bonding protein to sugar and that black line you see on a burger, that smell, that is called a Maillard reaction, and that actually makes people want to eat it as well. So there's a few different reasons. If you had a picky dog, you might move on to cooked food first, and if you have a cat, God knows, there's all sorts of reasons why you might start with that product and move on. It can be a gateway product. So that was what the post was about. I just listed the reasons. I said, they're the reasons. And the final reason is they want to feed cooked. So it's none of your business. It's still a great product. You know, what are you getting head up about what somebody in a different country is feeding their dog? It's like, I just thought it was mad. But look, it wasn't everybody.
I think, you know what, I think anything that means you get away from kibble and ultra-processed food has got to be a good thing. And Matt Uris, he's producing a, you know, a really great non-ultra-processed food. It's processed, but it's not ultra-processed.
Yeah.
And therefore there's a lot of healthful benefits. And it's a gateway drug to going into raw. You know, if you see you've got a perfectly healthy dog and you go on to his stuff and they get even better. And he says to you, because he promotes raw food in his practice, note bene, he's going to say, well, we got that much benefit with the cooked. Why don't we go the full hog and try the raw? So I think there's no criticism. If anybody out there knows everything there is to know about nutrition, please let us know because we'll have you on the show immediately.
Yeah, he recommends— one of the points was that he uses calcium in his product and said, look, First of all, the market is not there yet, although Julie Morgan is trying to say you can lightly cook tiny bone fragments, that is not a big deal. The market is not ready to hear that yet. So you're not putting ground bone in a product that's cooked. It would just be too difficult on social media. So he does use calcium, but he recommends raw meaty bones all the time. So if you just listened, you know, you'd hear that that's his advice. You've got to feed raw meaty bones too with this product. It was just the fact that all those points were missed in the rush to say he includes vitamins. And it seems like vitamin D he's thinking about cancer, longevity, B3 in aging. He said like older dogs plow through B3. And while meat is the source, just like this little B vitamin we're going to be talking about tonight, you wouldn't be able to feed enough meat to get enough B3 if you're drawing down hard on it for whatever reason. So you can supplement with B3. Vitamins happen to be quite well absorbed compared to their mineral counterparts, much harder to absorb, much harder to fabricate in a laboratory. So there's lots of— and he believes vitamin D should be many times the current AFGO, which alone is a whole show. It's like how after all this research and talking to Steve Brown, those guys are doing a lot of work on what the optimum figures might be. We should be talking about that. We don't know. And he says it's at least 5x of the vitamin D that's in there at the moment. And he says, where are you going to get that vitamin D from? And they all feed liver. How much liver are you going to feed? Because then you're going to blow out your A and your copper and that interferes with zinc. And he says you can't just add in more sardines, you've got too much sodium. So he says in some cases there is a very good argument for adding in these things, particularly if you're using disease as the kind of push for one of these products. This might be good for this, this might be good for that. Vets love a bit of that. So, you know, I just thought there was so much behind that, Michael couldn't have time to talk about that. And I thought I'd get the article. That is enough about last week's show. Anything else happen in your lives, guys, in the last, last week?
I'm just prepping a presentation for Helsinki because we're all going to Helsinki. and, uh, we're going to be, uh, getting together and talking nutrition in Helsinki. And there's a quote I came across that said, if you haven't got at least 100 conflicting nutritional paradigms going on in your head at any one moment, you're not a nutritionist, you're a dogmatist.
Oh, oh, I like it.
Oh, I like that.
And I think that's, that's good because we— there's, there's more we don't know about food than we do. John Ioannidis says food science is bullshit. Yeah, and he should know. He's one of the most cited scientists on the planet. Okay, so I think we, we, we all collectively, ourselves included, need to get off any high horses we might be on and have a little bit of humble pie and say, let's learn about food.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the bottom line. Yeah, but what I did— what I did want to say, it was my birthday on Saturday. I was 21, guys.
Very good. You don't look at it.
Oh, is that— is that— is that backwards?
Yeah, it is backwards.
Sally Tauben will kill me. Here you go.
There you go.
Yeah, yeah, no, seriously. Okay, beautiful Isabella Tree.
I'll tell you what I'm gonna do just so that that shows. One sec. Keep it up, Nick. Keep it up, you're gonna be—
look at that. I'm not on commission, but I should be. Isn't it beautiful? Look at it. It's a tome.
Oh yeah, I like a tome.
It's a tome.
Yeah, nice.
So tell me, I want to know, this is a burning question for me, Nick. In that book, The Wilding, okay, is it truly about rewilding? And if it is, does it talk about not just letting land go fallow, but actually the importance of truly allowing animals to. To graze through that area?
I've only read the intro, and ruminants come in within the first few paragraphs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. You can't just. You can't just walk away from. From land and expect it. It will take a thousand years to create whatever the centimeter of soil. But if you get cattle on there in Australia, they're Turning around soil. They're starting to build soil within three years or Of starting regenerative practices. So, wow, it's, it's, oh yeah, 3 years. Um, wow, they're gonna kill me for that, but you just need to read that. Call of the Real World, Charles Massey.
Yeah, one sec, second book. Come on, guys, I hope you keep taking the notes. Christmas, Christmas is coming.
This is the Bible of regen, okay? And it's set in Australia, but you know what, if they can do it when they don't get rain all year round, then we sure as hell can do it in the UK and in Europe and in large parts of America, you know, and even in the dry bits of America. They're doing amazing things in Nebraska where they don't get, you know, um, Gabe Brown, he's up in Nebraska and he's turned his place around incredibly, and he's now making great money off, you know, what was really poor soil which was overused with fertilizers and pesticides and what have you. But there we go, you know what I think about, you know what I think about regen. It is, it's It's the future.
It's old news, but like, did you see that in Yellowstone where they had the pass in the room and Spice and whoever else goes through Yellowstone, and it wasn't really working for them as well until they introduced the wolves again, until they got wolves. You see the pictures of the before and after of that valley where they said, and we didn't release the wolves, and in 3 or 4 years the valleys had come back because the wolves would predate in the most likely places. And that's— say the valley in the stream was saved and all this plant life came back, and now the animals and I thought, so it's not just the ruminants but the animals that follow them in. That's more of a problem letting those guys through because people have a much bigger problem with predators, don't they?
I think that's brilliant. What they've— what they actually said was when we reintroduced the wolves, we redirected the course of the river. Yeah, because they changed the beavers and the, you know, the wildlife and, you know, the water voles, the bank waterfalls and the banks. Yeah, they changed the banks, you know, when all these big ruminants came down to graze. And so they changed the watercourse and they slowed it down and improved the wildlife. And it was, it was an absolute game changer.
The water quality, because the ruminants— if the predators aren't there, the ruminants will stay by the river eating all the lush grass. But instead, the predators hang out by the river because the ruminants need water. So they'll always pick off one or two, but then the ruminants go away and leave the grass, which roots and holds the riverbank and cleans the water. And then boom. So what a turnout. So the problem is, because I was hearing— I mean, we haven't even started talking about our show tonight, but this is interesting. I heard that, uh, the UK has a huge amount of highlands. Okay, so I'm not sure what the definition of that is, but it's over a certain level and not a whole lot grows there, a lot of scrub. But a heap of different ruminants can eat scrub. I mean, easily, even from shrub. But when you look at the diet of zebra and wildebeest, it's sticks and twigs. They eat dirt, really poor quality forage. And so why can't they be passed over the Highlands and just allowed go free? And, um, we don't have the wolves so easy because you can't really have wolves walking around You know, Hyde Park.
Well, that's why they wanted to reintroduce the lynx up in Scotland, isn't it? Oh yeah, not the golf course, that's Lynx the cat. Yeah, I think some people got that mixed up when they ticked the yes box.
Yeah, love golf.
But then suddenly realized, yeah, having a big wild cat running around might not be so advantageous to—
But you know what, even if you do have wolves, the incidence of wolves attacking people, which is what everybody's scared, you know, big bad wolf and all that stuff. It's very rare throughout history. You look at the last 500 years, the instance, okay, they might take farm, they might take ruminants on, you know, in a farm setting, but they will also, they'll take out the weak ones, but they'll take off any other predator that might come along. And there's many instances where you've got farmers in Australia, in North America, where they reach a happy medium. Yeah, it's, it's a bit stressful to start with, and they're taking off animals, but in the end it's like, okay, they take one or two, but it's a lot less than they would if we didn't have the wolves around in the first place because they scare off all the other bad guys.
Yeah.
So I think that there's a lot to be said for that.
Yeah.
So guys, are we going to talk about—
yeah, yeah.
Um, somebody wanted to know why we're all in green tonight. Okay, we obviously want to to go eco.
Supporting Ireland in the World Cup, is that not what it is? Come on, there's very little point supporting England, let's face it.
Did you not see how we won? We won against all odds. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That won't last long. Maybe it will.
It was 14 men. Yeah.
Who cares about the football or the rugby or whatever it was? I don't care.
I don't care.
It's the opiate of the masses, boys. It is.
Yeah, yeah.
But if you like it, if you like it, then enjoy.
Why not? Um, look, guys, we don't coordinate.
This just happens. We're so in sync. We're so in sync.
Yeah, it's a fact. Listen, we're here to talk about B12. We are on— before we do, we are on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Uh, if you can, great. Um, the price of a cup of tea is all we ask each month, and we're here each week regardless whether you can or you can't. No problem. But we do appreciate everyone on there. And, uh, so thanks very much. We do appreciate it. We do see you, and we're going to keep on trying to give you content there as we, as we go along. So guys, B12, who wants to start off? Nick, did you say you want to start?
I want to start.
And just before you start, Nick, I just say to the guys, the majority of tonight's B12 program will be on Patreon. It seems to be so long talking about ecology and everything else. Yeah, true. Go for it, Nick.
Okay, so vitamin B12, it's one of the B vitamins. There are 8 B vitamins, and here's a secret nobody will have ever told you this. B12 is the flirtiest. Not only is it the biggest, it is the flirtiest of all the vitamins in the B family. And here's the reason why, because it flirts with 4 other molecules going from your mouth or your dog's mouth into the cells in your dog, the liver, for example. And I'm going to tell you about those 4 flirtations. Okay, here we go.
Nick, while you do that, I'm going to put you on the main screen because me and Conor are going to just chuckle in the background and go and get a glass of wine.
Yeah, I am.
Now he's on the large screen drinking his wine.
Thanks, boys. Okay, are we good to go? I've got a nice little diagram in front of me which I've put on Patreon. Yeah, for all our Patreon people, thank you. This diagram is there. I looked through about 20 diagrams and they were— they all didn't put in the salivary R protein and they only started to do that, or they, um, made it too damn complex. And so this is a— or they made it too simple. Yeah, so this is a compromise between too simple, too complex. I think this is about right, and I'm going to just take you through this story because once you've heard you can then look at the diagram and go, aha, now I understand what he's talking about. Okay, so flirty flirty has 5 dalliances between the mouth and the cell within the body. And here we go, this is what happens. So cobalamin is bound to protein. Yeah, it's normally found in milk and eggs and meat. Okay, and liver. And that then is bound in the saliva to Salivary R protein, okay, they've got to call it something. That's a terrible name, but that's what they call it. Binds there, that then goes down the oesophagus into the stomach, where pepsin, which is gastric pepsin, which is a protein enzyme, breaks down protein, and hydrochloric acid is secreted from the stomach wall. That's important with some of the stuff we're going to talk about in a minute. So The cobalamin and the protein are then separated. Okay, so the first partner is separated. Okay. And what happens then is it goes through the stomach and this little fella called intrinsic factor comes along. It's produced by the stomach and they both enter into the stomach. The cobalamin joins to its second partner in the stomach, which is the protein from the parietal cells. It's an R protein. So first you have the salivary R protein, then you have the gastric R protein. And so it goes into the duodenum where it is acted on by the protease from the pancreas, and the pancreas removes that second partner. And it allows intrinsic factor, which comes from the stomach— remember the stomach, really important to have a healthy stomach to make this whole thing work— and the cobalamin in the gut, as it travels down from the early gut with the pancreas and the protease, mixes with intrinsic factor. And intrinsic factor, they have a lovely walk down through the small intestine till they get to the distal, the far end of the small intestine, just before it enters the the colon. And the only way that cobalamin, this super important cobalt-dependent molecule, whacking great molecule, can get through that area at the far end of the stomach is with intrinsic factor. Okay, it's the third partner which allows it to come through from the gut into the blood. And then in the blood, it mixes with its final partner called transcobalamin. Now there are 3 different types of that, so you could say, well, it's a right old tart, and it flirts with 3 types of transcobalamin, but we'll just call it transcobalamin. So transcobalamin is the 4th partner, and it takes it from the blood into the cell, and it is stored beautifully in the liver, and there's all sorts of circulations and what have you, but essentially that's it. 4 partners from mouth to cell. There you go. Have a look at the diagram and you'll find it really quite interesting. The two key things are you've got to have the healthy stomach, therefore, to absorb cobalamin, and you've got to have a healthy pancreas. And I get really excited about pancreases these days. So there you go. That's my story, gentlemen.
They're the two key bits, isn't it? So when you start talking about how important it is to have a healthy stomach, when your dog doesn't have a healthy stomach or upper intestinal tract, and you can suffer. So that is interesting. So that's starting to tell me why vets are always checking for B12. You know, when you've got a dog with a chronic gut condition, it's one of the first things they check for. You often hear dogs getting B12 injections when they're suffering these gut issues. What exactly is going on there with these gut issues? I thought it was always a test for a SIBO, a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, because I heard those guys the simplest understanding. Somebody said those guys like to eat B12, and I was like, oh, okay, that makes sense to me. And then I was thinking, that's probably not it. It's the fact that the inflammation they cause in the intestinal tract is just blowing out the dog's ability to absorb it. Is that what's going on?
Or— oh, so, uh, yeah, I'm having that question. So when you've got, um, the usual look at, um, blood test for malabsorption maldigestion, bacterial overgrowth is a B12 TLI folate. Okay, so the TLI is about maldigestion. So not enough trypsin-like immunoreactivity. So not enough enzyme being produced by the pancreas and therefore digestion. The folate is about bacterial overgrowth. So loads of folate would generally mean you've got loads of bacteria producing loads of folate in the gut and a lack of B12. So it also would help with B12 production, but a lack of B12 is because the cobalamin, the B12, is absorbed mainly in the small intestine at the level of the ileum. Okay, so the end part and therefore if you've got inflammation interfering with the absorption, that will drop.
Okay, okay.
So it's not because bacteria are eating it, yeah, because it's not being absorbed into the bloodstream because it's a blood test.
Yeah, so it's messing with the machinery that's involved in, in bringing those things across. Why do they pick B12?
Guys, just got to jump in there for a second. Fiona said that's not the diagram on Patreon. The diagram that I've just described is the one that I put on Patreon, which is the kind of simple but not too simple one. That's just B12. Yeah, which is too complicated for me to even begin to look at. But the one on Thing is the digestion, yeah, from mouth to cells, the full part.
Sorry, I put that diagram of B12 because, do you know what, I'm one of those visual learners, and so Somebody was asking, so this is, believe it or not, a molecular diagram of D2. And then I look at which bonds change.
Who has that in their house?
And I look at how that changes to D3, what makes it a more active molecule and everything else. It's like having little things like ornithine. Do you not have your little ornithine molecules floating around that you can you know, look at how you can change that into spermine and spermidine and, you know, all of those.
Oh, I'm getting interested now.
But the point is, I thought, you know what, just as an exercise, so I get a visual learning, I can understand all of the stuff that Nick's going to talk about, I'm going to build this molecule. And then I pulled up this diagram and I just went—
which I just— yeah, even Brent didn't want to build that.
And I went Maybe not.
It's like an FX model of the cutty saw. Yeah, it's a great idea.
I literally ran out of balls.
Yeah, it's just who sits down and does that? I hope you had a good childhood, Bram, but it doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you're at home building molecules furiously. Get him more balls and sticks. He loves building molecules. That's the ideal vet to go to, somebody that's been doing this since he was about 4 years old, building molecules. So it goes to the liver, lads. Did you know how long, how much B12 do you have at your liver in any one go? How long can you go without eating B12?
Oh well, about 5 years. You've got about 5 milligrams. Sorry, mate.
Yeah, that's all I have. That's my only fact. My only fact.
So the likelihood of being deficient is tiny.
So that's interesting. So then really, when you are seeing a B12 deficiency, you're seeing some sort of disease. Something's going on. The chances— unless you're— I mean, okay, if you're not eating B12, which we haven't told everybody, it's all meat sources, dairy sources, all the meat. It's a B12— is it— is a meat, dairy kind of thing. Uh, so if you're not eating that, let's say you're vegan or vegetarian and you're not taking the right supplements, you could be deficient. But other than that, is it just— is it kind of when you see a B12 deficiency, you're assuming some form of disease. Is that what you're thinking?
So yeah, I'm thinking about stomach— there's some kind of gastritis, some kind of chronic, you know, they're either not producing enough acid— remember it was acid and— oh yeah, so if they're not producing enough acid because they're hypochlorhydric, yeah, i.e., not enough acid, that can make a difference. Or they're on omeprazole, which reduces acid proton pump, or they're Or their stomach is just like unhappy, it's inflamed, it's been, you know, and they're not producing enough pepsin because the tissue is inflamed and unhappy. Or pancreas. There's so many dogs with pancreatitis now. Yeah. What if they haven't got frank pancreatitis? And so I dreamt up this week, last week, what about a lazy liver syndrome? Lazy liver, lazy pancreas syndrome. Where they haven't got a perfect pancreas, they haven't got EPI or pancreatitis, acute or chronic, but it's just there. And therefore they're not producing enough pancreatic protease, therefore the B12 is not being cleaved from the R protein from the stomach and therefore can't join onto the intrinsic factor, therefore can't be absorbed later on. Yeah, so if your stomach's unhappy, you might have problems with B12. If your pancreas isn't happy, you might have problems with B12, and often those two things will go together. So that— I always ask the question, why do dogs, you know, raw-fed dogs who otherwise look absolutely great, why are they coming in with B12 deficiency? And to me, the answer would be You know, their stomach is unhappy, their pancreas is unhappy, maybe from when they were on kibble or, you know, previous diets. Or maybe—
definitely hearing about B12 a bit in raw-fed dogs. Like, I mean, it's clearly a big thing in dry-fed dogs. I mean, when your consults are dominated by these recurring gut issues in dogs, and it's usually dry-fed dogs, I have to admit. But in there is definitely raw-fed dogs. And somebody said to me as we came on, I think Karen said, don't forget to mention or ask that raw-fed dogs are having this. So that diet will be full of B12, and yet still we're seeing that. So it's not like they're off the hook in the old stomach.
Can we talk a little bit about ingredients? Somebody said, you know, they want to know, and obviously I included this eggs, okay? And I— but I also included a little saying that we shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket, in that there are so many sources of vitamin B12. Okay, yeah, so, you know, commonly dairy, eggs is what we look at, but all of the meats, especially organ meats, you know, it's going to be in fish, it's going to be in— okay, um, now I want, I want to, yeah, I want to ask you guys, because a lot of people will look at a B vitamin as actually a brewer's yeast extract being full of vitamin B. Now What's your thoughts on that?
I was definitely of the belief that was the case.
I don't think it is because I looked at this. I've been using B12.
Or have you looked at the same paper I have?
No way.
Yeah, I don't, I don't think it contains B12. Okay, the, the only place you get B12, the only thing that makes it are bacteria and archaea, and therefore they're full of— in ruminants they're full of those, and you know, copromorphs rabbits, they recycle their poos. They, you know, rabbits eat their poos, therefore they get it through. I'm not sure what—
it definitely has no B12. Brewer's yeast is a source of B vitamins but does not contain B12. Are you saying it's not even a source of the rest of them, Brent? That would be new.
Oh no, it is. It is a source of the rest. It is the source.
There's a paper on B12 production. People talk about B12 and they talk about yeast and things like that. And actually it's a misconception. There's other B vitamins.
Yeah, okay. I never would have thought. I didn't even know which ones, but that's interesting. Okay, that's cool.
So, um, now you can get B12 from fermented plant foods such as tempeh or seaweed-derived foods such as nori or lava bread. Lava bread is the delicious, actually, uh, seaweedy porridge that you get in Wales. Which is rather good.
Here, this is Siobhan McShane. Nutritional yeast contains B12.
What is nutritional yeast?
It's yeast flakes that taste slightly cheesy that you put on different foods when you are—
yeah. Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
Nutritional yeast, uh, B12. Hang on, let me just check this. The most reliable and consistent source of B12 on a vegan diet is a supplement. However, eating foods fortified such as nutritional yeast may help. Notably, a mere 2 teaspoons of nutritional yeast, which is very little because you pile it on, packs a whopping 3 times your RDA of B12.
What is it though? What is it?
It's just yeast flakes. Yeast?
Yeah, which yeast? Because that's really interesting. So who wrote that, and was that by— is that a paper?
That came out of Healthline, Google's excuse for health information.
Yeah, precisely.
I, I looked at a number of, a number of resources say this, but actually if you look at the science papers, they suddenly go, oh no, actually, okay, it's slightly different. So sometimes they perpetuate common myths.
Saccharomyces is called Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Yeah, exactly. This is something that we need to clear up here, guys.
Yeah, hang on there. Oof, very interesting. We're getting to the bottom of it live on air.
I like it. I just thought it was an interesting point to look at.
Um, yeah, look, this is, this is verifying. This is 1996.
Oh, hang on, no, let's take it back. Yeah, brewer's yeast. Uh, so what's nutritional yeast?
That's the same one, the same one. Is that what that's okay? I'm getting something.
Nutritional yeast, here we go, is, uh, is also known, known as nooch, is a deactivated yeast, often a strain of Saccharomyces cervisiae. I think therefore I am— somebody needs to prove that nutritional yeast actually is a source of B12.
It's not coming up. Well, it's not coming up.
I'm just looking at this. It does have some B12, 17.6 micrograms. But then the paper that Brendan and I read said it doesn't contain B12. So I think we've got some conflicting information here. Michelle.
Michelle says nutritional yeast and brewer's yeast are different. Oh, Michelle, don't do that to me.
Well, tell us how the difference is. Why are they still naming them both of the same species? So is there a subspecies that we need to know about?
Interesting.
Michelle, we'd love it if you could put up in the post.
Give us more.
Yeah, yeah, you look at that while we're chatting on about B12.
Guys, omeprazole is a very common drug that's used in pets. You hear about it all the time. Can you just tell us a little bit about what omeprazole omeprazole does, and would that not have a downstream effect then of this B12, as well as, uh, it's also setting your biome and whatnot. So what's omeprazole do and why? Just give me a quick bit on that.
So really interesting, it's a proton pump inhibitor, okay? So it should, in the majority of people, it will reduce your stomach acid. And in doing that, therefore, as Nick was saying earlier, that would be why it interferes with B12 and, and uptake, um, down, down the line. However, there's interesting papers that suggest that one of our arguments for not using an antacid or a proton pump inhibitor in dogs and cats is that they don't change the acid significantly. And therefore, would it interfere in dogs and cats with the vitamin B uptake, um, or is there another mechanism mechanism that would cause that problem. Because as Nick has said in the past, this is an exponential scale with the pH scale. So literally, as you increase the acidity, I decrease the number. Okay, then, yeah, the difference between 3 and 2 is a 10-fold difference compared to the difference between 2 and 1. So you've got to understand that a dog's stomach acid is very much more concentrated than a human, normal human stomach acid concentration. It also makes it a little bit hard when people say, oh, there's not much acidity difference between a kibble-fed dog at pH 3 to 4 and a dog that's, you know, raw-fed and is 2 to 3. Yeah, there's— oh, that's, that's not very far apart. It's actually quite—
yeah, 10 to 100 times.
And many raw dogs are actually even lower than that. So, you know, it's all about those averages and what other things they've fed, etc. But yeah, wow, there we go.
I heard the other day—
here we go, thanks Siobhan. Siobhan McShane has quickly put a little bit up saying apologies.
Oh, apology accepted.
Apology accepted. You missed it.
I was getting worried for a moment.
Contains a heap of different things though, look at that.
Yeah, these are all the other vitamin Bs.
It's amazing, it's amazing. No B12, so therefore British cheese has no B12 unless they fortify it, but that's cheating.
Yeah, yeah, well, we've established now we don't mind a little bit of cheating here and there.
You so much, you're not going to refer to it in every single week.
People hold you to things. They said, but you said 6 months ago. I was like, I did say that shit.
Yeah, in fact, actually, that came up with one of your comments on dogsfirst.ie with regards to vitamin E because of the vitamin E that was being supplemented. So we're talking about vitamins tonight, so I thought I'd refer to because alpha-tocopherol, if you go to excess, can actually be correlated with a decrease in life expectancy than if you gave an appropriate dose. And obviously then somebody put in, how do I supplement vitamin E? And I said, we did talk about this back in the show on vitamin E, and we talked about tocotrienols being a better spread of vitamin E. And that's really important to understand that we were not talking about fortifying just alpha-tocopherol. And I actually had a consult with somebody asking about this very thing today. Okay. Because they have been going in and giving loads more vitamin E because they want to protect the nerve system and the, you know, the fats and everything else that they were giving, not realizing that actually they were just giving one isomer of that vitamin because that was the one they could make in the lab.
They couldn't make the rest of it. They didn't even realize tocotrienols were there. And then they realized how to make them. But there's another two parts of the hormone that they can't get near. So they're still only making a part of it. I like the wheat germ oil. That's where I am at the moment. I love a bit of wheat germ oil.
Yeah.
And nuts and seeds. Nuts and seeds.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. Guys, we're at 19:44, so I'm going to say we need to talk about the live live. We, yeah, this is, this is, we do this live, but we're going to do a real live live. And I'm just going to look at our, here we go. And it's on Saturday, the 2nd of December. It's in Manchester. The tickets are still there. Are there still tickets left, guys?
There's tickets, there's tickets, and there's also stalls. So like we have, we have a few and we are selling well, but we don't push it hard enough. And so when the tickets are gone, they're gone. The room is only so big and it's not going to get bigger. So we do want to promote it. Look, it's going to be a bit of crack. It's going to be a Christmas party. And so come one, come all. It's going to be kind of a bit of fun. So we've got lots of little things planned and I thought we'd just get it all done in one big session on the day and have a few talks and have a bit of fun, a bit of quiz, get a bit of interaction, audience participation, bit of fun, you know, a little bit of a change from the norm. So I thought that would be good fun. And I think Fiona was saying something about have you few stalls at the back, few vendors at the back, we've already got them half full, so they're flying in. So if there's anybody out there interested, you think you're going to fit the kind of Paul RPM buzz, we would be delighted to have you there in person in Manchester.
You'll be able to have a chat with us, a bit of fun. There's a, you know, we're going to have a few drinks towards the end. We've got a bit of a quiz and entertainment. We're going to get Conor doing his thing on the stage.
Don't say that.
That's making me wait 5 years. I'm not absorbing my B12. But yeah, no, I'm looking forward to that. We've got a number of things coming up, but that's going to be good. That'll be the end of the year, kind of end of the show show. So I'm looking forward to it.
And we're going to do lots of Q&A because we always get 300 times more questions than we can ever answer. So we can have big Q&A sessions, or we can even just sit down and have a coffee, have a drink together and say, what about this? What about this? What about this? You know, let's— we can talk philosophy, we can talk regenerative agriculture, we can talk biochemistry. Brendan might even bring along some of his molecules.
I'm going to say that's going to be one of the quiz questions. I'm going to put a molecule on the table and you've got to say, guess what? You're smart.
So in the morning it's going to be lectures. They're going to be light lectures and it's going to be plenty of Q&As and we're going to find some nice topics. Maybe we'll put out to people, what do you want to hear about? You know, I'm dun dun dun, which— so it's fun for you, fun for us. And then the afternoon we're going to have some nutritionally orientated fun.
Yes, yeah, I like the game, I like the interaction. Yeah, Carol Higgs says not the shorts and nipple measuring, please.
Yeah, that neither of those two things. Best you don't want to see.
Yeah, we could do nipple measuring on the way in, I suppose, and we could do a graph then on the way and see if there's any sort of relationship between where you're from and the distance between the nipples, if you wish. Whatever you guys are into.
If it fits a bell distribution.
A curve. Who has the furthest apart nipples gets a prize. Okay. A prize for the furthest apart nipples.
No holding them apart, Gil.
Oh boy, he's come to that.
I'm going to hand you a shovel and then just advise you to stop digging.
Yeah, that was Carol Higgs. Right, cool. Guys, off to Patreon. I was going to tell you the very boring start of where B12 came from. But I think I might anyway.
Patreon. Okay, no, Patreon. Let's do Patreon.
Cheers everybody, it's been so great to see you all. Thanks for joining us. You know, if you do want to join us over on Patreon, it's patreon.com/rawpetmedics, and we'll have tidied ourselves up by that point. Yeah, look forward to seeing you next week. Are we Are we going to be recording something live at Dog's Risk Helsinki and then just posting it out to everybody? We'll do that all three together. We'll do a little review of what happened. Yeah, who was on. And, you know, I think it'd be great because Dog's Risk is a great conference for those that haven't gone before. And we'll bring you what happened and great takeaways, I think.
Yeah.
There might be one or two lectures I miss just because I'm seeing them all the time. Yeah, Nick's first thing Saturday morning.
Oh no.
It'll be a quiet one. Anyway, listen guys, thanks very much. We will talk to you all soon. Thanks for joining us. Sorry for the delay and we will see you next week. Cheers.
See you guys.
