RawPetMedics Tuesday Live: Epilepsy and Nutrition

Hello everybody, guys. Welcome, welcome to all of you across the pond in the fair US of A as well. Tonight we have a real mix of people. I hope you're all enjoying what we can bring to you on epilepsy. So thanks to Dr. Judy Morgan's page for joining us tonight. Over in the UK, it is nighttime.

I think we should introduce ourselves actually, because our wonderful American audience, they don't know who we are. So I'm going to kick off. We are Raw Pet Medics. We've been going, what, 2 years now? 2 years too long, some people say, but 2 years nonetheless. Okay, so my name is Nick Thompson. I'm a vet, and I've been doing this thing for over 30 years, and still enamored with the whole thing. I'm working near Bath. I do homeopathy, acupuncture, nutrition, herbal medicine, everything, but really, really going deep on nutrition. And it's great to see you all. We've been working with Judy Morgan, who is just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person, and she's said bring the message to some of her people. Bren, yeah.

So I'm Brendan Clarke. I'm a vet also. I'm younger than him. Okay, so I've been only doing this for 25 years.

No, no, I'm joking.

Okay, it's nearly 30 years. I try. So I'm a vet first and foremost. I do holistic medicine, so I do a lot of homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal medicine, and we love talking about food. So in the practice It was great to join these guys to start bringing to everyone out there all of our inspiration about nutrition and stuff. So that's why we're doing Raw Pet Medics, and that's what we're all about. And I hope that you enjoy. If you want to see any of our backlog, we've got over 100 videos now on Raw Pet Medics. So just all you need to do, come like our page, follow our page, you can access through the photos and videos, all of the backlog at the moment. So just have a look at that. But also, I'd love it if you would join us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. There you will find lots more information, a little bit on the side that we often do after the show. And if you want to ask questions, etc., it's a really great place for us to sort of interact with you at that point. That's not so live, but it's certainly— we will get to answering all the questions that are put up under the video. And there's lots information we get from tonight that we'll pass on through there. So Conor, who is not always where he is tonight, it sounds like he's in a bar because that's what Conor likes, it's a place he likes to hang, but really it's just next door to his house. I think he's got a party on at home, but he's going to tell you more.

Go for it, Conor.

You've unmuted me. This is, yeah, so this is unusual for me, this is not my normal seat, I'm sitting on a throne. I'm actually in a hotel tonight because it's my 5-year-old's birthday party and the house is in absolute chaos, I'll be honest with you. I thought maybe I'll just do it down at my mother's house and I go down to my mom's and she's just pottering around, just making me tea and it's like, no, mom, I need the house to myself. Can you go and sit in your bedroom for an hour? But you can't tell moms that, so I've gone up to the nearby hotel and I thought I had this room to myself, but I have been joined by a couple of people having a chat. Sorry about that, guys. My name is Conor Brady. I am the young energetic sound one of the gang and you'll find me on dogsfirst.ie. That's where I do all my bits and pieces. I'm the non-vet of the gang. I have a doctorate studying the effects of nutrition on behavior, but I love canine nutrition and I think and speak and talk and do it all day long. So yeah, love what we do here. This is fantastic and tonight is a great one, epilepsy. We have done epilepsy before, but it's been so long ago And there is so much to cover in this that who wants to start us off, guys, and give us a background? What do we talk? What is epilepsy? Is it the same as just seizures? Are those two things the same? Help us out, somebody.

Oh, Bren, that sounds like it's got your name all over it. Yeah, I've got a case in the corner, guys, the lovely Megan, and I'm going to tell you about her. Maybe I'll kick off after we've got some basics. I'll take you through just to give you a kind of a a picture of epilepsy, of neurological problems. She actually had myoclonus, so it's not technically, but I want to broaden the conversation to make it deeper and wider than we would normally think. So I'm going to talk to you about Megan shortly, but Bren is going to give you a little bit of background.

Yeah, so tonight, look, there's a thank you for all of you who've put a comment on the pre-show poster that we stick up every week, and I love to see those comments. There's lots of information on there. Some of those questions I've already answered, but I would like to first kick off— look, there are so many things from, as we say, differentiating from epilepsy, which often is something that most dogs which suffer from true epilepsy will suffer from between the ages of 6 months and 4 years for their start point. Okay, so that's the sort of normal age that we look at. However, me and Nick would just implore you not to assume that if your dog has a seizure, that it's automatically just going to be epilepsy. And there are lots of dogs which are put on medications straight away when they've had one seizure, and then we see them as a referral and we're unwinding truly what is the cause of their seizure. Pattern. So epilepsy is one thing that I'll come back to and explain a little bit more about. There are lots of other things which will cause involuntary jerks. We've got dyskinesias, which can often be nerve impairments, or even fibrocartilaginous embolisms, which interfere with the normal flow of electricity down the spine. And you'll have really weird back leg movements where the dogs can almost be throwing themselves around, but they are fully conscious at the front end. Okay, that's an important differentiation. There are all sorts of episodes like Spike's disease in Border Terriers where they'll get cramping syndromes. So there's episodic collapses, which are faints because their baroreceptors, the pressure sensors within the vessels, aren't right for boxers. And all of a sudden, they'll just collapse, faint, Okay, and they'll be absolutely still. There'll be no true seizures. They have just fainted. The heart is suddenly sped up because it doesn't realize that things are going there, and their pressure will come back, and they'll suddenly regain consciousness without, you know, just like, what's happened? So just be aware of all of those differentiations between true epilepsy and the levels of other idiosyncratic seizure sort of type things, collapses that we see. So it's really important. I'm going to let Nick carry on for a second just to go through therefore about—

Just going to add in there, just because the dog goes over and collapses doesn't mean it's necessarily a neurological, a brain problem. Yeah, because if you've got significant heart disease, you can collapse and have a fainting, as Bren was saying. Okay, and so you have to differentiate those two things. Just because the dog goes over doesn't mean it's the brain, it could be the heart. Also, if you've got advanced liver disease, you could be feeling so grotty, you could go over and you can get, you can get fits from the toxin due to liver disease, but also, and also kidney disease. So we are taught as vets that there is a syndrome, this kind of collapse, sudden collapse syndrome, and you've got to then pick the wood from the trees. The other thing that I say to my clients is that If it is a true epileptic fit, everybody's allowed one fit, yeah, because sometimes just fits come out of nowhere and never ever repeat. So I will normally say to people, if they say my dog's had a fit, I'll say, okay, if it is a true fit, then we may not need to go for the phenobarbitone, the Keppra, the heavy pharmaceuticals, you know, get the heart checked, get the liver checked, get, you know, these things. And if it's is, it could just be a one-off and therefore let's not panic too much. If you've got an increasing frequency or an increasing severity, that's when you've got to do something either with pharmaceuticals, phenobarbitone and such like, or with non-pharmaceuticals. There's a lot at our fingertips and I've got some cases that really bring that thought to light, I hope.

Yeah, I would absolutely back that. I often will say to people, look, when you are using medication, nobody is expecting that to be a zero seizure count. Okay, they're just trying to reduce the numbers and the severity of seizures. So I will often say that many vets, when I was graduating, would say unless they're having more than 2 seizures a week, they wouldn't generally treat them. Now that things have changed a little bit, and that depends on how often, you know, how long that period is going on, because the more severe the seizure, the more likely it is that you're going to have a distinct hypoxic event which will worsen that area of the brain which is seizing. It's like having a little firework box with the lid off and somebody's dropping matches all around, just throwing them randomly, or there's sparks coming from the fire, and then all of a sudden one of those sparks because it's past, you know, going down a certain pathway, they've smelt a certain odour, they've seen a certain thing, their behaviour is going in a certain direction, that spark hits the firework box, bang, goes in all directions, all areas of brain are stimulated. So I would definitely say, you know, consider that when you're coming to looking at seizures or things. And we do have a specific video on what to do in a seizure situation. Conor, you wanted to say?

You're on. Oh, I'm on?

Oh, great.

I am absolutely despising being muted. I am hating it. Is this what being polite is like and waiting your turn? Because I am not digging it. It is not suiting me and I'm uncomfortable. So I'm back. So I was going to say, I can't remember. It's just so good to be out.

He just wanted to speak.

I was going to say, Okay, just run us through, if you could give me 30 seconds on my dog's having a seizure, what do I do during it and what do I do immediately after?

Okay, I'll just recap that very briefly then for you. I would say, look, if your dog's having a seizure, do not hold them down, okay? Do not stick your fingers in their mouths to try and clear stuff out of their throats, okay? You will lose fingertips. You know, they're chomping, they are uncontrollably spasming their muscles. Those muscles on the head, the masseter muscles, are really powerful. Okay, so if they are sick, okay, because often they will be unconscious, they will make lots of noise, which is not because they're in pain, but just they are tightening all of their vocal cords, all of their chest muscles, all of that, and it's going through spasms, and therefore you'll get uncontrolled noise. They may urinate, they may defecate, they may vomit, all of those things. They may salivate excessively. That's if they do produce too much into the mouth, physically move them away from that. Okay. Some people will put a coat underneath their neck so that their head's tilting down slightly to try and keep their airway clear. But literally, please don't hold them down. If you are in a park outdoors, attach a lead to their collar at that point so that when they wake up, the first thing that they do on reset is usually go back to basic instincts and they will run or they will bite, okay? Because they don't know who you are on that first reset, so just be cautious. They could just be unaware of what's going on. If somebody's holding them inappropriately, they're going to struggle and may bite, not because they're purposely doing it. Same thing if they're out in a park— attach a lead, because if they run, the last thing you want is for them to disappear over a road or off into some other area of danger. So you just want to be safe with that. You may need to dim the lights. If you're indoors, this is easy. You draw the curtains, switch off any excess sound. If you're out in the park, you may take your coat off and put it over their head area. Don't hold it down, but just put it over their head so that they've dimmed the lights. You're muffling the sound. That's all. You try and reduce stimulation. You're reducing those sparks from risking cycling back and going back into the fire workbox and setting it all off again.

Yeah, but do talk to them. Do talk to them calmly. Yeah, they need to know you're there. And as soon as they come back out, to hear your voice in a calm— yeah, if you're hysterical, that's probably not going to help. But if you're calm, you can kind of just teach them out of that to a certain extent. So calmness is really, really important. You will not be calm for the first dozen fits.

No, it's a bit shocking to watch.

Yeah. And you will gradually learn that you know, there is life after every fit in most cases.

Yeah, Diane, please.

Something that is really, really good at that point, if you are unsure of what's going on and you've done those initial things that I've just talked about, get your phone out, start videoing. Really, really important. One, it'll tell you how long the seizure actually is because it will seem like forever. Okay. And two, it's really useful to the vet to be able to understand, is this a true seizure? Is this a collapse? Is this a grand mal episode, which is where everything's going? They're vomiting, they're urinating, they're paddling, you know, tonic-clonic, okay, which is the tension and then the relaxation of the legs as they're paddling. All of that that's going on with a grand mal seizure. Or is it a petit mal where actually this is almost a just lose focus? Something's not quite right with their behavior. They may become twitchy, they may lose consciousness, they may collapse, but they don't have all of the other symptoms. So we can look at those differences if you video it.

That's good. The video is great. And also, if your dog is lame as well, seizures aside, any real issue where you can— there's a physical symptom, it's always good to get a video of your dog walking down the street if he's lame, so your vet can have an idea of what sort of lameness we're talking about. Much harder on a veterinary table where your dog can't walk a straight line. There's some great tips coming in there, guys. There's going to be a couple of comments coming through the comment section because we've got little control when this goes out to YouTube. We're learning how to do that, so ignore— there was a comment back there that's— yeah, but, um, but we, uh, there's some great—

don't see it on Facebook, it's fine.

Great, some questions, there's great, um, questions coming here. A dog's recently been diagnosed with fly catching syndrome. What's that?

It's where they look like they're fly catching. I've actually treated one of these last year and he did really, really well, and basically I just treated him with a non-pharmaceutical epilepsy regime, and he did really, really well.

What's that, Nick?

The what? The regime?

Yeah.

I'm going to tell you in a second. I've got a lovely case.

Lovely. Very good. And so your vet needs to be shown this kind of video. And the worry for me as the non-vet of the gang is that I bring my dog to the vet, and not to be a doubting Thomas, but I'm concerned that more hardcore, more lifelong drugs can be given at this point. If that has been going on, I'm sure the vet has made a good accurate diagnosis at the time, but is this— where do we lie with this? You can't doubt any vet, but there is a concern that medication is often the first thing that's reached for. Is that a fair thing to say, or is that unfair?

I think if they go into a status epilepticus, which is where they don't stop seizing because that firework box keeps getting lit up, okay? And you go to your vet and your dog is seizuring. And somebody's made a comment about that, that they've just had that this weekend. And certainly then they may need to have intravenous drugs given to keep them in a stabilized state where everything calms down, effectively smothering the firework box until everything stops, and then they can bring them round again. Now, that's an exception. I think if your dog has a seizure, it's important to look at a number of metabolic diseases. So, you know, is there problems with the liver? Is there a problem with the kidneys? You know, is there something else going on with our hormones that's maybe leading to this and their electrolyte balance? There's, so, you know, having a conversation with your vet, not just saying they've had a seizure, oh my God, I need medication, or the vet saying, oh my God, you need medication, I've only got 5 minutes to speak to you, is actually to have a conversation and say, look, my dog's had a seizure. This is what's gone on, what do you think, and what do you think the differential possibilities are? And Nick's going to talk a little bit about some differentials that are out there.

What about, there was a big announcement there last couple of years where they're adding on more and more side effects to some of the less favorable flea and worm treatments that are out there. Is there side effects that might induce a temporary kind of fitting state in your dog? And the concern then is that your dog is put on seizure medication when actually it's a side effect, and you'd hope that that wouldn't actually happen again and again. You'd expect it to happen less. What's the, what's the thought?

So there's two things that I would say there, and many of you who are following us today will not be on these medications because the reason you're here is because you want to avoid them. But if you've got friends and family that are using them, to think about one, look at the MDR1 gene predisposition, which is effectively their ability to detox the brain from those chemicals. If they have that deficiency, they need Effectively, it's a specific glycoprotein pump, and if they have that deficiency within that, they can't efficiently pump the drug back out of the brain.

How do you check for that?

So it's a simple swab inside the mouth. You send it away to a company like Laboclin, and they will just genetically test them for that.

How much, how much is that?

And yeah, £50. So I guess that's going to be probably about €50 these days and probably about $50 just because the pound is so useless. Yeah.

And so would you— that sounds like pretty sensible information for somebody that believes they need flea treatments for their dogs with no fleas. Should you always swab dogs to check if they can take them?

I would personally, but there's one other thing that people don't realize. There is another drug out there on the market which actually interferes with the same pump. And so for dogs with skin disease, okay, especially if there's an immune suppressant, which is a cyclosporine being used, that cyclosporine actually also downregulates that pump. So if you then use one of these flea products alongside it, you will actually get the same risk of side effects, okay, that those dogs with the genetic fault have. So do watch out for that. So those are two points I was going to say on that flea and tick treatment regimes.

Okay guys, this brings me to a couple of cases that were very pertinent to this. So the first one was years ago, I was doing talks— this is pre-COVID when we could do talks and what have you— and we were talking about using, you know, trying to avoid flea and tick products if your dog hasn't got fleas and ticks. Pretty logical thing to to do, but, you know, that seems to be difficult for some people to get their head around. Anyway, I was talking about this, and then at the break time, she came along to me and said, oh, my dog is really, really sensitive to Frontline and any exposure, and they will get a fit. Okay, and I said, well, I would suggest you don't use the Frontline. And I'm sure at this stage she was thinking, 'Who is this idiot? How much do I owe you?' All right, and she said, 'No, no, no, I realize that. I don't use Frontline on my dog. My dog will get a fit if I put Frontline on the other dogs in the house.' Okay, so it can be supremely sensitive. Bren, go for it.

Did you see the— there was a paper written on that of the actually when the people are applying these products to their dogs, that actually they now are able to detect that not just on the other pets, but on the children and all of the family members. You know, they don't realize how much that spreads throughout the house.

It's incredibly potent. Yeah, the British Waterways were announcing that canals and any relatively slow-moving bodies of water and lakes they're polluted with these things. San Francisco Bay, the San Francisco Chronicle had to plead that people with dogs with flea treatments on their necks stop using San Francisco Bay because it's killing, you know, tiny, tiny bits of life because they're so incredibly potent and these go into the waterways, not a good idea. Anything you can wash your hands after or wear a glove. I mean, to say that these are not neurotoxic or dangerous to humans is idiotic.

I mean, of course. I raised this very thing in a council meeting at the British Veterinary Association, and the immediate comeback at that time was, well, yeah, because we coat seeds with it to stop pests getting in there. We coat, you know, the crops with it. It's used everywhere. You know, fipronil is one of those things that actually causes the death of bees and things like that. So they were trying to blame the farmers for all of that contamination. And then I think somebody has done a study on some of the other types of flea stuff that we don't use in those crop protection scenarios, and they're still finding it in the waterways, and they now can't really sort of explain, well, you know, it's because of this. No, it's because of the stuff we're spotting on our dogs.

Yeah. So let's get to some treatments. So we've got— we know of a more conventional route, but Nick, you said you've got a couple of case studies.

I've got another one. I've got another one, and surprise, surprise, it's because of a flea and tick product. There's there's a product over here, Americans, called Simparica. I'm not sure if you have it over there, but if you do a Google on Simparica, S-I-M-P-A-R-I-C-A, yeah, you'll be able to find out if there's an American equivalent. And I was presented with this lovely, lovely dog. He's called Muddy Paws, which has to be one of the best dog names ever. You know, Dudley would, I'm sure, enjoy being called Muddy Paws. Anyway, So he was presented to the vets with fits and they put him on phenobarbitone. He did fine with phenobarbitone, but he's still having fits every 2 or 3 months. And so they came to me and said, is there anything you can do? We don't want to just give more and more and more pharmaceuticals. And so I looked through the history very, very carefully and lo and behold, he started with his fits within about a month of starting for the first time with Simparica. He had an idiosyncratic reaction to this drug. Now, obviously they didn't use this drug ever again, but the fits persisted, you know, and this— I saw him maybe a year down the line from when he first had the Simparica. Therefore, conventionally, what can you do? It's like, well, it's in his system, that's it. What, what can we do? Let's just, you know, um, give him more drugs. But what we can do using homeopathics, we can use Symphytica, which has been made into a homeopathic, uh, potency, and give it back to the dog. It's a little bit like hair of the dog back to the dog. This is really, really powerful, and this is really basic homeopathy. This This is primary school homeopathy. And so I made up a potency of Simparica for this guy, and within 3 months the fits stopped. We improved his diet and we did, you know, little bits and pieces, maybe a bit of MCT, maybe a little bit of CBD, but the main thing was the remedy. If they didn't give the remedy then they may get fits back again. So incredible. It's not guaranteed, but it's cheap, it's easy, and totally non-toxic. So if you've got, you know, never well since a certain drug— and let's face it, there are a lot of those, those cases around— then definitely talk to your homeopathic vet to think about whether they can use that as a homeopathic remedy.

It reminds me of— it reminds me that there was a study out there on belladonna being used for seizure control, and I was thinking, belladonna? Bloody hell, that's that's going to lay you out. And of course, it's a homeopathic kind of dosage of belladonna, but incredibly effective. And like they say, there's no studies for these things. It's like, this is incredible. It's just another like, oh, that was actually— that's essentially a homeopathic mixture that you're talking about there. So that's fantastic, guys. That's interesting. Give us another case study there, Nick. What else have you got?

Okay, so, right, so we've got the frontline case and we've got the the Simparica case. And what was interesting with both of those cases, the vets— because we're not trained in this, we're not really trained in toxicology, we're not trained to kind of look back in, in forensic detail at what started, you know, what, what, what was happening when all this kicked off. Yeah, because things happen for a reason. Now sometimes you can find out and sometimes you can't find out, but nothing happens for no reason. Okay, so, and sometimes the dog will give you that clue and that will lead you down a certain line. So it's definitely worth looking in some detail, and homeopathic vets are all about the detail. They will go through the history in great detail.

Yeah.

Okay, so here's another, here's another, another case which is really very interesting. So this is a lovely, lovely dog called Kalu who I treated for years and years and years, and he was having fits and the owners were quite distressed with the fits. They didn't want to go on phenobarbitone, and he wasn't having fits very frequently, maybe only every 3 or 4 months. And then as a homeopath, we looked at why, when he was having fits. And you know what? He was having fits when he got itchy. That stimulation was too much for him, and it pushed him over into his fit. Threshold, and he had a fit if he got itchy enough. So all we did was to treat his itch, and he never had a fit again. Okay, now I am pulling out the black and white cases, and most, most, most of the cases that I deal with are not as, you know, we gave, gave a remedy and never had a fit again. However, it shows the possibility of these things. Okay, you've got to work with your vet, but also consider a homeopathic, a holistic vet who might be able to do things that the conventional guys are not able. It's all about teamwork. We've got to work together.

Can I ask a simple question here? So this dog where the itch kind of threw him over threshold, to me as a non-vet, does that suggest that his threshold is very low? Can it be that a person can be extremely inflamed and be more prone to these issues? It takes less for them to snap. Is that a very simple way of looking at it? Like if you focus on reducing inflammation in the dog with all the usuals, reducing stress, good quality food, anything, fish oil, whatever is your fire extinguisher, would that help? All these things do seem to come into the whole approach to epilepsy seizures control. They're all the usuals. They all seem to be anti-inflammatory. Is that it? Is that like trying to increase your threshold? Is that it? Totally.

Bren, you were just talking about this earlier. Do you want to take up?

Yeah. So somebody asked on the pre-questions just about flavonoids and our understanding of things like quercetin. Conor, you love quercetin, and to why they can be so useful in seizure cases. And we sort of concentrated a little bit on the seizures which can be related to inflammation, either because of drug toxicity, either because— and there's pesticides, things like herbicides like glyphosate. Somebody's just mentioned that. You know, their dogs started to have seizures following, you know, being next door to crop fields, and quite a lot of them will be sprayed off for cropping with glyphosate. There's inflammatory diseases like Neospora, Toxoplasma, you know, even Lyme's disease, which can all have effects, cause lesions within the brain, lead to inflammation. There's even, you know, cases where upset gut flora can lead to seizure stuff because of inflammation elsewhere in the body. So I would say where they're really successful, and this is what needs to be looked at, is definitely use some of those. They can have brilliant effects to reduce inflammation throughout the body, and that can make sure that there are improvements as far as the seizure activity. I would like to bring in some cases for true epilepsy where we've ruled out through MRIs any other lesions of growths or any other inflammatory areas. We've ruled out through bloods that their organs are fine and everything else. And I would certainly say, look, one of the best ones that I've used for stopping seizures in their tracks is rather than trying to find the constitution of belladonna, can be really useful in some cases, Brimonium, things like that. I would definitely say Proteus, which sort of overlies a lot of those as a bowel nozode, can be really useful in halting seizures. So if you see the pre-ictal behavior, a spray onto their gum. If you see them actually start to have a seizure, often they've got the lips drawn back. So you don't need to touch them by spraying because you can get them into liquid form. The spray onto the gum. It's absorbed through the mucous membrane. That can halt the seizure. You can repeat it every 15 to 30 seconds, up to 6 doses, and have amazing effects. But often I will find the cases stop after the first spray. Now, some people would say, well, I've tried ice cream. I see. I've just used ice cream and that stops them. And you're right, if you change their mindset in preictal behavior, I've also seen some cases that, but it's less predictable.

Just tell us what Proteus is just so that people can find it in the States or over here.

So that is a homeopathic bowel nose aid. So it's effectively, back in the 1920s, the Pattersons did a lot of work, and Dr. Conor Brady wasn't aware of this, but he's looked at some more recent work on how your bowel flora can change in certain directions in response to disease. Okay. And they were doing studies on this and they looked at effectively the certain types of disease and they cultured the gut flora of those patients. What they then did is made remedies from those gut flora. Okay. In potency. So they were giving the actual bacteria back and they actually then saw the resolution of those diseases. And they did the same for looking at constitutions in homeopathy. And they realized that there was a crossover in constitutional makeup and those balnosoids. So they often cover, like, miasmatically a number of different remedy types.

Linda says, please, can you spell it?

Proteus is P-R-O-T-E-U-S.

This, guys, this is the most we've ever talked about homeopathy with you two guys being top of your game at this. We very rarely bring it into the conversation and it just is so useful. Do you know what's strange? Like, and to there's a number of other kind of natural treatments, natural, just alternative treatments that you can try. And, you know, CBD has been mentioned there many times in the slide for very good reason, guys. When you type into Google Scholar, if you're looking for your studies, and you just type in CBD for seizures, CBD for epilepsy, whatever your thing is, in dogs, in humans, in rats, very heavily studied in rats, there is a preponderance of really high quality, really well controlled studies to show that this does reduce seizures. There's absolutely no doubt. It's also extremely safe product to be using. So this, again, you talk to your vet about these things. If they don't support CBD, you might need to talk to a more natural-minded vet. But like, the fact is this CBD stuff works. In fact, I was having a look on Google. Ireland has this issue, but that, you know, we don't like any drugs that make you feel good, anything that actually works, you know, they aren't, they aren't good. So for example, CBD, everybody was just happily buying it online and using it for their epilepsy and seizure pets and kids until the government got involved. And so I was saying, no, we can't have this, it comes from a cannabis plant. And they said, well, there's no THC in it, so the psychoactive part of it has been removed completely. And although a little bit of it will probably actually be useful, but we can't have that, you know, some ridiculous concept from 100 years ago. Okay, but we want the CBD bit. No, you can't have that in Ireland anymore. There's stories, if you type in CBD mother's plea into Google, into any Google, Ireland particularly, you'll see just unbelievable amount of stories. There's a classic one. That one there actually is, is what is her name? Let me call up her name. Vera Toomey. And she had to walk the length and breadth of Ireland because her kid was having something like 10, 20. The words were backbreaking seizures a day, backbreaking seizures a day. And she just starts using CBD and they go away. They're gone. They've stopped. So these are drug-resistant seizures this kid was having. So the drugs that they were recommended weren't working. And the advice from our health authorities were stop doing what you're doing and go back on the drugs that aren't working. So that has been, that has been many examples of that. But for CBD, it's an utter scandal that this woman couldn't get what she needed. She had to move— like, some of these mothers were moving their families over to, over to London, over to Holland to try to get what they need for their kids for these ridiculous, uh, so it just shows that there is an alternative. So CBD is a huge one. I've got a big article on CBD on my website, dogsfirst.ie. Where I list all the studies for all the things CBD is useful. Seizures is just one bit of it. But another one I wanted to tweak was given to me by Karen. Another quick tip was by Karen Becker, and she mentioned it to me a couple of weeks ago there on the health, on the podcast they do. And Karen said that the rosemary thing, we are very concerned about rosemary causing seizures. And what Karen highlighted very quickly was that there isn't a jot of science or studies to show that that's actually the case. When you go looking, and I won't get into it now because we're running out of time, but like there is, there was a great article actually on a website called The Holistic Ferret. I thought that was a great name for a website. And Holistic Ferret does a wonderful breakdown of the difference between rosemary oil and essential oil or rosemary extract. They're different kind of compounds, different ways of supplying rosemary. Rosemary oil and essential oil, you want to be careful with those things, certainly with your cats who lack the enzyme to break it down. It can be very dangerous to them. But you need to use a specialist called canine herbalist Rita Hogan. Talk to some of these people. But essentially, there is not a single study that suggests these cause seizures in kids or whatever. There was in the review study just lumps rosemary in as causing seizures and doesn't use a study to support it. And everyone references that study. It's 1999 study, and everyone references that study to show rosemary is dangerous, causes seizures. See the literature review. But in the literature review, there they don't link to a single study showing the cause of seizures. What they suggested was in a single French study of a single child was that an essential oil, probably applied in high dose, can cause some issues because it does contain some compounds that are known to be a little bit aggravated in that respect. That is not the same as rosemary extract, and now rosemary has been thrown under the bus. It's a wonderful antimicrobial, so it's a fantastic natural preservative that pet foods and treats are trying to use. But then people said, oh, my dog can't have that, it's given seizures. It's the same thing, guys, that was done with the garlic debate where they said, well, it's in the onion family and it's poisonous to dogs. Not a single study ever suggested that. Onions are poisonous to dogs because it contains thiosulfate, but garlic, also from the onion family, doesn't. So there was never a study to back that up. It was just a lot of people getting very animated saying this is what happens when dogs eat garlic. There was only ever one single overdose study of a, you know, a group of, I think, 7 labs fed 125 grams of raw garlic a day. That's 25 cloves a day, and their bloods are a bit wrong after 7 days, you know. So I just wanted to highlight that bit, the rosemary. I thought that was very interesting, the difference between oil and extract. And I wonder how many times that has been done to natural products, you know. Uh, not only are they thrown under the bus, you know, there's not enough evidence, there's just never enough evidence to use these, to try these harmless products, but then they're also thrown under the bus as in to say, oh, they can cause issues. Like your medications can cause issues. Give me a break. Surely worth a try. Anyway, that was my—

yeah, my take on that is that if you've got a dog with epilepsy, just avoid rosemary. If you're suspicious or if you're thinking, I don't want to give my dog epilepsy, you have got to give bushes and bushes and bushes and tons and tons of rosemary before you even get anywhere near a toxic level of rosemary. So For the normal dog, rosemary is just good to go. And if you've got an epileptic dog, just avoid the stuff, you know, just be on the safe side.

There's no evidence that feeding rosemary to dogs causes seizures. I can see in the side that people are saying 100% was linked to it, but you know, when it's a statement like rosemary ingested causes seizures, and it's like, okay, well, show us a study that—

but then you've still got that situation where if the smell of rosemary is enough to go through a certain pathway in the brain it will provoke. So some people will say you make them smell a coffee and they will have a seizure, or you make them smell roast dinner and they will have a seizure, because it just happens that the lesion within the brain is in that area that is stimulated by that smell. So it doesn't actually have to be a chemical physical action on the dog's brain to cause that.

I think one of the chemicals has come isn't it? That's the one of the ones that they're worried about. And essential oil will be higher in that than the extract. Extract has all these other compounds. And what they're saying, that rosemary oil is— or rosemary extract is actually so wonderfully beneficial that actually might be helping you in so many departments that a tiny little bit of camphor in the background probably wouldn't be the end of the world. It might be at homeopathic levels. Of course it's not, it's much more than that. But you know what I mean, I just thought it was interesting. I'm not saying go give rosemary extract to your dogs with seizures. I'm just saying that there was actually studies that say we tested 100 dogs with seizures, which is— they're trying to, you know, that's not out there, that doesn't exist any more than garlic is called making dogs sick. Those studies don't exist. But maybe it's happened to somebody's dog for a reason, for Andrew to explain. But I just thought that was interesting. I always just assumed that was just concrete done in the literature, but not at all.

Of course, rosemary's being used a lot now as an anti-mold treatment for kibble biscuits to suppress mold. So a lot of people are seeing that in there. So there's a little bit of that going on as well, isn't there? That people are getting alarmed by, you know, where they're sneaking things like that.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's harder to avoid.

I saw you holding up MCT oil. There's a nice little study. Yeah.

So somebody asked about using, you know, an MCT oil, and this has studies. I think— is that the Frontiers one?

That's the one. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Nice study on dogs. So that's a study in dogs. So this actually was back in 2015, something like that. I think the RVC did a lot of work on ketones and ketogenesis to reduce seizures within dogs. And I think on the back of that, a lot of people have looked at this because it's, you know, effectively promotes ketogenesis. And effectively, if you're trying to lose weight and, you know, reduce your insulin resistance and doing all sorts of things like that, then using that. But the brain can use ketones as an energy source, and actually they found that brains that were using glucose as an energy source actually were far more unstable, I believe, with the electrolytes and more prone to going into seizure activity. And this was actually, I think ketogenesis has been used for decades in children, in kids, to reduce seizures. And so it sort of makes sense. And guys, you know, if you want to reduce your medications that your dogs are on, you know, certainly getting them not just using MCT But look at ketogenesis. We often talk about Keto Pet Sanctuary. They've got lots of help on there to help look at ketogenesis. There's lots of books out there now that talk about how to balance the level of carbs. So it's not just about feeding raw, it's not just about reducing carbs. It's also about balancing protein versus fats for your calories. There's a few things out there because we can convert protein into glucose in our systems. So you've got to make sure that the fat calories are appropriate as well.

Okay, I've got a case. Bren, would you be able to put up the picture of Megan there just in our last few minutes? So this is Megan, beautiful girl, lovely little Jack Russell Terrier. She was having myoclonus. Okay, so she went through a strange kind of gut-orientated problem. And because we know that the gut and the brain are massively linked, we— she was having myoclonus, which is kind of like a mini seizure, and she was having up to 40 of these per day. Can you believe it? Okay, and this Sally, her owner, is just, you know, wonderful and very keen to get on top of things and very, very, very driven and it's great working with her. And so we, we, we made sure her diet was optimized. It was a raw food diet. We put her on MCT oil, and that was part of it as well. We used some herbs, but one of the key things— we used homeopathics. We used, um, uh, 3 key homeopathic remedies, uh, Cicuta and Cocculus and Ignatia. I think it was. She's got a big long history, so I'm just giving you this from memory. And she went down to 0 or 1. We took off the— we changed the remedy and she started to have more of these myoclonus events. And so we went back on to her original remedy and they came down again. And I think this is a really, really fantastic demonstration of the power of homeopathics in these neurological cases. That's it. The other thing I just wanted to say, literally in the last couple of minutes, was if you've got a dog with epilepsy, make sure you have ruled out hypothyroidism. Oh yeah, just have a read of this book because fits can be the first early, early, early sign of hypothyroidism. So this is a book by Jean Dodds Wonderful book. What does it say? Jean Dodds, Dr. Jean Dodds, The Canine Thyroid Epidemic. You can get it on Amazon and Kindle and goodness knows where. Please, if you've got an epileptic dog, you've got to read this book.

Yeah, that's good.

There you go.

A few other little tiny bits that we haven't mentioned, but there's a study—

should we do them next door on the side?

Oh yeah, okay, let's do it. Okay, yeah, we haven't told our American friends.

Loads of information. We've got— you will hear some of this on our podcast. You will see our podcasts are published now on Spotify, Amazon Audible, everywhere, pretty much anywhere you can think that a podcast would be published. Pete's on it to make sure that we're published there. So thanks, Pete. And if you want to find out some more information about a month down the line, you'll hear the Audible podcast produced, and so keep an eye out for that. For all of our Patreon guys, look, there's going to be some extra bits on the side, okay? And, you know, thank you for that. If you want to join us on Patreon, you literally go to patreon.com/rawpetmedics and you will find us there. We put a little extra video on every week just to help you guys understand a bit more in depth.

We're just— so we're just going to tack on an extra 10 minutes over in the Patreon, people, so that the Patreon people feel a bit special. Yeah, and we think, we think they very much are.

They are very special. That's what we're gonna—

we're gonna, we're gonna disappear over there. We're gonna give it an extra, an extra little turbo charge for our Patreon people, and we'll see you there.

Good evening, America.

Yeah, and thank you to Dr. Judy Morgan for entertaining entertaining, uh, us being on her page, um, and hopefully she allows us back on. Um, yeah, upcoming broadcast, just very quickly, uh, we've got Feline Friday this Friday. So if you want to join us on best start for kittens, uh, we're going to be talking with Julianne and Amaya and going through that. So if you're into cats and you want to know a bit more about cats, then please put your questions on the post, uh, for and join us back here. That will be 1 PM GMT. That works out at 8 AM Eastern Standard Time.

Fair play, Bren. You put out an awful lot of free content, Bren. Nick as well. I've been keeping you in for years. But like, you guys seriously put in a serious amount of work. What other vets are online putting out content all the time for nothing? Bloody hell, lads. Fair play. Fair play. So that's a—

and on that, Connor, you are back next week because we have Q&A. So for next week, if you have any questions, we do a question and answer every month. So because it's a long month this month, we've done two. So this will be the second one. So if you want to ask any questions, look out for our post, put the questions in there. If you're on Patreon, make sure that you ask the questions. We do look those as well.

Bridget says, how do we find you? Basically, Bridget, you go to Patreon and you just do a search on Raw Pet Medics. Yeah, boom.

And, uh, Caroline Ingram is, is coming, guys, in a couple of weeks, or 3, 3, 2, 3, 4 weeks, whenever we can fit her in there. So ZooPharmacose, we want to see a bit of the science behind what goes on with ZooPharmacose. We know it works, we can see the YouTube videos, but I want to know a bit more. I want to see it in other animals and whatnot. So, uh, getting a juicy little podcast from Caroline Ingram coming up, so that's going to be exciting because ZooPharmacology was mentioned for a lot of people suffering these issues we're speaking about tonight. So, um, very good. Yeah, okay guys, we'll see you over on Patreon in a couple of minutes.

Brilliant, take care.