RawPetMedics Tuesday Live: Infection Control 2

Good evening.

Good evening, everybody.

I'm going to leave it peaceful for a moment. I'm supposed to start playing that little tune that she's got at the beginning and see if anybody got confused as to which channel they were watching.

I was on Judy's show there a little while ago and the song goes on for a fair bit. It's for a minute. It's a minute. She loves it. One time she had this, she had a video out there a couple of weeks ago. I love Judy. I'm a massive Judy Morgan fan. She's probably and, uh, she was, um, she was fuming about something and she had to play this. She was like, oh, where's the song? She put the song on and she's sitting there waiting for the song to play before she could go into this absolute mad one on somebody that was, uh, saying mean things about her. But, uh, love Judy Moore. Get onto her page, guys. She's fantastic.

People were saying mean things about her? That's really surprising because the guy spread it to me.

Oh, she's just— yeah, he was saying some nasty stuff. Oh, look, you know, she's, she's got 800,000 followers now, so you're going to attract a couple of loonies, aren't you?

So, um, yeah, actually, I would just like to— at that point, for you guys out there watching us tonight, um, please, you are on an open forum. If somebody tries to befriend you, please, we've got no control over people joining. We don't want to have that level of control. Uh, please don't automatically think that we vetted them. And allow them to enter your network. So just, just be warned. It's great that we've got a great community, but occasionally we've got a few bits that, you know, will just get in and we, I do try and warn people after the show and just take that out, but I just thought I'd put it here as a quick show warning now.

So fair statement.

Good, cool, cool.

Could I, could I say, Brandon, there was a lady that approached me today. She wanted to know when do you do the RPM cats bit? This. How often is that on? Where can she find the old live streams? Could you just tell her now because I know she's watching?

That's great. Yeah, so they are, um, live on, uh, the video section. So if you go into Facebook at the moment and you click on the videos, scroll back roughly once a month. Okay, they're going back now. Um, uh, you'll find those, uh, for the Feline Fridays. Uh, so anybody who wants to join us for Feline Fridays, um, the next one I believe is the 11th of November, as far as I'm aware. So that's the next feline, and that's going to be on feline hypothyroidism. So we're going to do a hypothyroid session. So anybody wants to join us, 11th of November at 1 o'clock. So that's an afternoon session. So that will be by then Greenwich Mean Time. We're back into the winter. So it's going to be really dark in the evening, so we want to do it midday just to keep our souls raised.

And I'm going to say a big shout out to our 372 patrons who are every month giving us a little, and sometimes not such a little, boost to say thank you for coming on online every week. So we really appreciate you saying thank you to us, and we say thank thank you to you. You can find us on Patreon, on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Thank you. Now today, um, uh, Conor, uh, you know Joe the best, so do you want to, uh, be the MC for this, for the evening?

Oh, oh, the pressure. Um, I wasn't ready for this. Or not. Okay, so, okay, somebody else.

You're never stuck, surely?

Yeah.

Joe was put on to me by Trish actually from Raw and Holistic Cat and Dog Support Group. Trish is no longer with us sadly, but that group is going strong thanks to some of the admins around here. There's Fiona Moore as one of them. And so Trish just said to me one day, you've got to check this guy Joe out, his company's fantastic, his products are fantastic, his story and his research that he puts on his website, which is particularly what I kind of judge these products on. Is fantastic. So she was gushing about Joe for ages, fellow Irishman. I thought, okay, this is ticking all the boxes and he's a probiotic nerd. So I thought, this sounds fantastic. And then you start looking at the research on his company website, ingeniousprobiotics.co.uk, and you'll get a lot about where Joe came from. He's going to tell us himself as well, but he came from a cleaning background, industrial cleaning background. There's nothing you can tell Joe about cleaning down and products and that kind of stuff. He knows that. But it was when he saw the power of these natural probiotic cleaners and the difference, the dangers from some of the nastier ones and the benefits of the better ones, he makes a leap to these probiotic cleaners. And it started with cleaning environments and then into pet products. But it's the fact that Joe comes with a whole heap of knowledge and is just so sound with us, just an absolute top, top bloke. So I am a massive fan of Joe and his products. Luka is the pet products that he has, but he's going to tell us all about them. So Joe is the man. So let's bring him on and let him talk for himself.

Yeah, good evening, guys.

Thanks for having me. How you getting on?

Yeah, good. This is great. I'm just delighted to be here. And, um, uh, I've, I've, I've written, uh, well, I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything out, so, so I, I vomited up about 3 and a half pages of notes, and I've just realized how ridiculously optimistic.

Yeah, yeah.

So Maybe I'll get through one of the pages, you know, that'll be something. Yeah, well, that's great. Thanks very much.

That's the stress of coming on, Joe, because I know it can be a little bit kind of stressful coming on, which ironically is going to destroy your gut flora. So I'm sure we can talk about that down the line.

But go ahead.

Tell us, what was the start for you, Joe? What's the cleaning background? What was the start of all this?

Well, for us, it was very much about air. And cleansing air. So my background was in health and what we call health and wellness in the built environment, which is a fancy way of saying looking after people when they're inside a building, any building, or train or whatever it is. So making sure that they're not in a draft and the temperature's right and all this kind of stuff and ventilation. And that drew us into air purification because we became more and more aware of what we were breathing. And the control we had of that in, in the industry I was working in. And, and actually how little was, was thought of, of that element, you know, what's in the air we're breathing in. And most people don't really spend a lot of time thinking about it. But for an adult like us, we breathe about 12 kilograms of air a day. So that's quite important to your health, you know. So that was the background. And And it went, it went on from there. So we started, as well as taking bad things out of the air with the purification, we got into then being able to put a good thing, we found it was a good thing we could put back into the air, which is probiotics, more about that in a minute. And the idea, our entry point, if you like, with probiotics was that we knew if we put them through the ductwork of the air conditioning systems into where people were spending the time, and these probiotics were landing and getting into the soft furnishings and so on. That they would be— one of the things it did was keep away bad bacteria that caused smells. And they did this in a way that didn't have any chemicals. So for us, the initial idea was to stop people using so-called air fresheners, right, and full of formaldehydes and so on. So there's a real link with, you know, for us, there was links with all kinds of bad health that was going on that we thought we found that we could actually do something about. So this move forward and a little bit with the guy from where they make Luggett in Luxembourg, and we got chatting with him and he's— and he started mentioning other things as well as this, that there was another— that they did all these cleaning products. And when he said that cleaning operatives were 58% more likely to develop lung cancer compared to office workers, he had me. Look, here I am sort of a decade and a half trying to take bad things out of the air for this reason. And now I get a chance to basically aim the fire extinguisher at the base of the flame, stop it at the source. Right. So that was our background. So we got all kinds of excited and thinking we were going to change the world with the cleaning industry, which is not an easy world to change. But at the end of the conversation, I'll never forget it because one of those turns of phrases that somebody who doesn't speak English as a first language and to come out with something that sticks in your mind. And he said, but what gets me out of the bed in the morning is what we can do to help animals. So I'm like, whoa, what? Hang on. Well, so this was where we started to sort of change and go, okay, we need to be doing this. This is, this is calling us. So being able to reduce chemical exposure for humans and animals, that was our then entry point into, into probiotics. So from there, we started talking to vets— sorry, guys— and started learning about the animal care world. And that was a real revelation. That was a kind of a strange experience, you know, going to the vet where I'd spent money for 20 years on a plan with the cats and finding that they didn't want to talk about this. And then finding out what a corporate vet was. Hang on, but I didn't know that, it's just got a local name. So that was kind of interesting, to say the least. But luckily, there was another local vet who I knew kind of socially, and knocked on his door, and he just took the lid off it. And he said, microbiome, come in, talk to us, you know. So we were talking to lots of different people at the time, and we were talking to this particular vet. And it, it started to really draw us in. The things that he was finding, you know, were really turning our heads. So we moved into an office about 3 years ago. And this lady came to visit us, who was like one of the neighbors. And she saw the Luke on my desk. And she said, my, my newfie was just about to have his ear, inner ear removed. And I was really worried about him. So I went for a second opinion to this vet. And not only did he not have to have the inner ear removed, not only did he not have to have the surgery, but the infection stopped. And I've had this mentioned as well by some of our stalkers who share the same story of different dogs. So I mentioned this to the vet and he said, I can't remember that one, but there's another one. And he starts telling me about this repeat ear infection situation going on 7 years. And he says, what we do is we take a swab, and they're really— I'll tell you about them later, they're fantastic vets, Wiley. So you've heard me talk about them loads. But we take a swab and we know that when the dog comes back in, it's a damn different bug than it was the last time. So we, you know, make sure that the antibiotics are targeted, and we, we, we do all that, infection goes away, and lo and behold some number of couple of months down the road, dog presents again with infection, different again, different bug. And he says what's been happening is we've been wiping out the microbiome. And then you're killing all the good bacteria. And the ear is defenseless. And then something else comes and sets up home in this lovely, warm environment with lots of food. And you're in a situation where this different pathogen gains the ascendancy because it's all about balance. So he says, yeah, we just use the LUCA and that stops, you know, what's your point, Joe? That just, just like that. And I'm going, wow, was I just involved in that? That's just amazing. So we've—

so what is, what is, what's the difference between, let's, what's the difference between using an antibiotic in the ear and a LUCA product?

Okay, so what we're talking about here is probiotics and the World Health Organization classes it as just microorganisms that give a benefit to the host, whoever's using it. So that's— it's a very broad kind of wide thing. But what the guys at the back of the factory— so we're the UK representatives and a couple of other territories— and what they've done, they've managed to research and find the right bacteria. And there's a— we can talk about this because this is really important, getting the right bacteria and cocktails of the right bacteria and say, this is going to do this job, and this one's going to do that job. So then when you put the probiotic and you're using it as a cleanser, basically we're cleansers, that's the main thing. So when you're using it as a cleanser, you're putting it into the ear, then you're creating that microbiome, you know, you're going to have a good healthy microbiome because we're taking it out of a bottle and we're putting it into the ear. So here we have a microbiome that's going to be healthy, it's researched to hell and back. And it's qualified with the right European bodies and so on, making sure it can't be able to develop a resistance or anything like that, and only got a certain lifespan and so on. So putting those into the ears, and basically then they're cleansing the ear, they're eating the organic waste that the bad bacteria would otherwise feed on. So it's not just a case of keeping the bad bacteria away, it's actually cleansing So like when we're using a dental product, we're getting into the sockets, getting into where those bits of organic waste would get to, and the bacteria would get in between the, you know, up into the gum between the tooth and the gum, and we're getting in there and we're eating that organic waste. So keeping the bad bacteria away, yes, and preventing infections, yes, but cleansing at the same time. So you got that continual action. So that's the main difference and the The ear is a very good example of a very good way of describing the action of the probiotic. Same with the skin, the skin allergen spray we use, or other dental, other wound care and so on. So we put the microbiome on instead of wiping out the microbiome, because look, everything's got a microbiome. And sorry for the germophobes out there, not many raw feeders would be germophobes, I know. But you can't get to a non-bacterial— okay, right. If you're NASA and you've got the right mechanical equipment and so on and protocols, yeah, you can get it. You can make your printed circuit boards that are going to go into a space machine without bacteria. You can do that. But for everybody else, normal people, you're surrounded, there's more bacteria on you and in you than there are cells of humans, same as your dog, same as your cat. So if you, if you in this case with the ear, what they're finding, they would wipe the microbiome out of the ear. It's going to get replaced. We're surrounded by it, by, by biome. We're breathing it in a million bacteria a day minimum. So what we do there is we instead of creating that vacuum for nature to fill, we put the microbiome in place. We do it slightly differently in the different products. And we know then that we're not going to have a situation, we get these repeat ear infections, and preventing repeat ear infections has been a particular great success, but also a success, it's great to just reduce the use of pharmaceuticals and antibiotics in particular. Without, you know, we're not a medical device, got to say that we're not a medical device, we're a natural, I guess you could call us a natural cleanser, really. Yeah, I'm going to draw a breath now.

Here you go, Joe.

This is—

I've just got that from my cupboard so that everyone can see. Yeah, that's the— there's a bit of a shine on it from the light.

German Shepherd with a toothbrush. I love that pic.

There you go. Okay, so that's the dental care. Oh, I should have got the ear one, shouldn't I? And that was the allergen one that you were talking about.

Yeah, you know, and I never knew until we got involved with this, just that the serious level of skin issues with them and general health issues with pets, dogs particularly, but cats to a lesser extent. But it's just been amazing. And we've had some heartwarming— I mean, it's just a wonderful way to spend your day when you're getting people— look, we're not a silver bullet, don't get me wrong. But we just get these fantastic results back from people saying, so glad I found the products. 'Thank you very much,' and sending us pictures. And in some cases, I have to say, sending us pictures that turned your stomach. And sometimes, you know, things that if they sent us the before picture and said, 'What do you think?' we go, 'No, we're not touching this.' But luckily they've accompanied with the after picture as well. So all is well, particularly in wound care, because it's more dramatic.

Yeah, there's good stories behind the dental. I was having a look at probiotics being used in washes for the mouth. I was thinking, God, it can't really be that effective. But there are some really serious gingivitis studies on all sorts of animals for various kind of the probiotics. I'm sure some of them that are being used in that, but they're going down to species level. So it's like, you know, we say Lactobacillus and we say bifido, but these guys are going right down to species subspecies because they say this particular type of Lactobacillus, whatever, it does this. But if you use the wrong lactobacillus, whatever, it does like the opposite. So these broad-spectrum probiotics come in for criticism from some of the top skin and gut flora professors. I've only spoken to one of each, but they, and they say we might have a problem with these broad-spectrum in the same way with broad-spectrum antibiotic problem, which is, you know, you're napalming a lot of stuff. And with broad-spectrum probiotics, what do you, which tool do you need? What are you trying to do in this situation? So that's why it's interesting that this group, Luxembourg, wherever they're from, they're so highly refined in these products that they, they kind of know, like the itch product I've used with some, some success, I have to tell you. Like when it's had a dog that you're trying to fix on the inside, as you, as you're alluding to earlier, uh, something just to take the itch away. And you're always looking for that product, you're always looking for something that is not a heavy hardcore pharmaceutical. And the itch spray has really helped. So whatever, the hot spots as well, you know, it's worked for us. So yeah, that's a great product, that one. Yeah, I really like that one.

I mean, you're right what you say, and getting the right probiotic is really— and like you say, if you're on with Bacillus subtilis, then it's the various strains with the Bacillus subtilis, and we do lots of other ones. So the guys— and you mentioned it— the guys are working on something which I'm really excited about at the minute. A couple of years ago, they did this thing where they were— because we do stuff for water as well, we do probiotics for koi carp and all sorts of stuff. Go in the water. So with a fish farm, a trout fish farm in Germany, and they identified a probiotic that they could use that was already existing in the water, right? And you think, okay, that's really interesting. And part of the reason they were doing it was just to be clever and develop their science, because most of the people over there, more than half the staff are PhDs in either microbiology, biochemistry, or they're vets, you know. But now what they're doing is the same techniques, they've started this skin— I haven't mentioned this, but they're testing the skin of healthy dogs and dogs with atopic dermatitis around Europe. So that's something we'd like to talk to some people about, you know, if you want your dog tested, talk to us. It would need to be— the swab would need to be taken by the vet so that it maintains the efficacy of the of the, um, the studies as a whole, and they're just gonna, you know, so just taking the swabs from the dogs, feeding it back to the guys, and, um, and then from there they can even continually refining. So that spray you're talking about, in a year or two years, they'll be adding probiotics to it all the time based on what— and the thing is, you know, the microbiome of that, of a dog, is going to be different not just in different countries but in different parts of the same town. The ones that live near the river, the ones further away, they're going to have different, you know, the houses they live in, the food they eat, the places they walk and all that. And two dogs could be very healthy with completely, you know, very different microbiomes. But as long as it's all about that balance, as long as the good guys are way, way more than the bad guys, we can have some bad guys. That's not a problem. Because we've all got like staphylococcus on our skin. That's no problem. That's why we always say wash your hands before you go near your dog's hot spot or whatever. Don't bring the stuff to the, to the open, the broken skin. But yeah, so that's, that's the thing with these guys, they're always developing, and you've got to get those probiotics right, even down to the fact that some good bacteria, if you get, if you get a probiotic that's a good, a good guy, but he can develop a resistance, that makes him no good. But also because that resistance can be passed on to a pathogen. And when the pathogen learns to be resistant, it's a bit like having a memory stick in your laptop, and then you've got a program and you share it with your mate and he puts it in his laptop, and they share this resistance ability all the way around. So when you're looking at antimicrobial resistance, which is a big thing for pets as well as humans, and you see that the deaths from AMR are about the same as the deaths from breast cancer. And you see that a lot of the talk is about how do we, how do we develop a new antibiotic? It's always about the new, developing, creating, selling something else. And we're going right back and going, you know what, let's just stop the AMR happening. Let's, let's reduce the amount of antibiotics you use. And when we need them, God, they're a godsend, aren't they? They're brilliant. But let's, you know, if we don't need to use them, let's use something, let's use something different. And we see in people using— and again, we're not— they're not a medical device, but seeing people using the wound care instead of antibiotics. And that is just absolutely— just blows my head. I just love the fact that we're part of that, you know.

I'll tell you what, Joe, this is absolutely amazing. I mean, Bren and I went to vet college a very long time ago, and there was absolutely no mention of probiotics on the— on the topical probiotics. But there was— and there was hardly a mention as regards probiotics for the gut. And what you're saying is that in the treatment of otitis externa, which is inflammation of the outer part of the ear, you can make radical transformation without antibiotics. And again, Bren and I have been at, you know, a thousand dermatology conferences, webinars, and this kind of thing. And I personally, I have never heard with otitis externa, just as a example. I've never heard a dermatologist mentioning probiotics. Brent, have you ever come across people saying you don't need antibiotics, you just need a probiotic? I've never—

yeah, that's another conversation. I think for quite a while, because like I say, we're not a medical device, so we're south of the border, if you like, on that. And to get up there where you get recognized, that's going to take years of results before you'll find it find its way into mainstream.

Now, it sort of leads on to one question that I did have though for you, Joe, which was about the— because we talked about this with Lucille last week— about if we're going to use a great probiotic like yours, what sort of cleaning regime would you propose first? Because just throwing it on the fire, if you like, as the, you know, you've got a huge bacterial overgrowth or yeast overgrowth and just putting LUCA onto that seems like we're almost missing an opportunity to do what we do in the gut sometimes, which is to reduce bacterial overgrowth, reduce that first and then apply LUCA. What's, what's your current sort of situation, having studied LUCA and its effects? Are you just smearing on, getting on and ignoring everything else, or are you saying no, actually you can clean down with something as long as there's no residual antibacterial action that you can then apply LUCA? What's the situation?

So the advice when we get asked about like somebody saying they're already on a course of antibiotics, And we would have to take a very responsible line, a very, you know, we've got to be really responsible here. We're not vet, I'm not vet, I haven't seen the dog and so on. So one of the first things we say is, especially if it's oral antibiotics, finish off the course. Again, worried about AMR, antimicrobial resistance, from the misuse of antibiotics in that case. Cleaner products also a big part of that, but that's another topic. Normally, we would say, and again, we're not a medical device. Normally, we would say the way it's been used, let me phrase it like that, by people who've had success is we just use it. The probiotics will outcompete. Now, if, and they'll continue to outcompete, and they'll also be consuming, and the way they're at, and this is important, the way they are outcompeting, it's not just that they, they're swamping the bad bacteria. So the bad bacteria has no room. They're starving, they're eating the food, right? So the cleansing is— if someone were to say, I am going to do an antibacterial microbiome wipeout, can I use your product afterwards? We'd say, yeah. In fact, what we've done in some cases, I've explained it almost like a, a relay race. When two runners are running side by side, before they get that, make sure that baton's handed over properly so they're both running flat out together, and then the one will drop off and the new guy continue. So you have a seamless handover. So yeah, if somebody wants to do that, I'm okay about it. If we can avoid it, we'd avoid it because just why be having antibacterial products that might be breathed in or whatever. Avoid if you can, but if you think that's the way to go, then yes, but get the probiotics in there straight away before that area has a chance to be colonized by something that you don't want to have. Does that answer the question?

Yeah, because we've got people that will apply honey to wounds, you know, the manuka. We may have— and that has some antibacterial action, so you're sort of wondering, is that going to affect the leuka? You'll have people using colloidal silver. I'm not going to press that too much. You'll have people that will go through various other cleansers, you know, right from saline up to chlorhexidine to clean out a wound before then packing it with something to help it heal. And it's trying to make sure that these guys that are listening tonight have got an idea of, well, actually Yes, there's certain things you may be able to clean with saline without worrying that that's going to affect the leuka. You may be able to use Lucilin, which effectively turns from hypochlorous acid to saline, you know, once it's been on the wound. So, you know, is that then okay to use leuka? It's not going to affect the leuka's probiotic.

Okay, so refining the answer, if you come into the end, if you do a cleanse, right, I'm going to do this antibacterial cleanse. and then I'm going to apply the Luga. That's okay. If you're going to continue to use the antibacterial product, and Luga is a bacteria, you're going to inhibit the action of the Luga. So we say don't use it at the same time. If you have a crossover, then we understand that on day 1 of the crossover, you might be killing nearly all the Luga, and day 2 slightly less, and day 3 of this one. So that the point where you're aiming at a point where it's only Luga. That's the point. And you have a crossover, but using the both at the same time, no, you're going to kill it off. And so don't do that.

Just to clear it up a little further, Sue's pressing here. Do you have to cleanse first when you're using a probiotic to say clean a wound? Do you have to cleanse first?

Okay, so we would normally say cleanse with boiled water that's cooled down. And then we say thoroughly dry as you can, you know, dabbed and sometimes the wound is wet and you can't get it. So, and then sometimes you've got foreign bodies. So, you know, and sometimes you just got to go to a vet. It's like, this needs attention, right? So be responsible. But yeah, we'd always say, clean it with something like cooled boiled water. And then dry as much as you can. So you're not spraying the probiotics onto like a layer of water and cleansing the water. You want to be getting into the skin. So if it's a bad wound, and again, if that's the case where somebody was using a, a once, a one-action antibacterial, you know, a once-through antibacterial, so you use it, it's gone, and then the Luka on top of it, yeah, absolutely fine with that. You know, be safe, be careful. If they were saying we just want to use the Luka, I'd also be fine with that. But if they're more comfortable to do a cleanse with something like hypochlorous acid or whatever. Yeah, no problem, as long as they don't then continue to use it on top of the probiotics. And the probiotics won't stop the antibacterial product working, but the other way around, uh, yeah.

And so where are you with that, with the use of colloidal silver, John?

Well, um, I do have a definite opinion of this, and I know I can put some noses out of joint a little bit. Um, um, I just do that, I just do that naturally anyway, but, uh Yeah, me too. So I first came across this type of product in the cleaning industry. We were doing an exhibition abroad and got talking to one of the other guys, and we were just shooting the breeze over a couple of coffees over a couple of days. And he was telling me about back in the day, he had more experience than me. And he said they used to use in hospitals in certain areas, they used to use a silver-based a nanoparticle silver-based cleaner, which works very well as an antibacterial, but was, was so bad for the environment that they stopped using it. Now, the aquatic environment. And for a cleaning product to be bad for the aquatic environment is no big news. The vast majority of cleaning products out there are harmful. And they'll say, when you look at the safety data sheets, they'll say words like harmful to aquatic life with long-lasting results. They'll say things like, do not release into the, do not release into the environment. It's a toilet cleaner. You know, the ocean starts at your toilet or your drain or your bath or whatever. And this is, so this is going straight, just, there's nothing in my hand, I'm just demonstrating. So most of those products, but what would be bad for aquatic environment, but what was particularly interesting about this product is they stopped using it. That's really interesting because the cleaning industry use all kinds of stuff. And I don't hear about them stopping using stuff. And even though we say it's about 58% more likely to get lung cancer and all this kind of stuff, doesn't cut any ice really. It's changing now from pressure from the end user, of course. So I didn't think any more about it really, and then as we got more involved in pet care, it came back up. So I thought, well, I better check the science, and there it was. There was a paper saying, yeah, this stuff is bad for you. And you're talking about the lower end of the food chain in the aquatic life, you know, the stuff that the that the worms feed on, that they then feed the fish and so on. And it's a product that just does not go away. And one of the articles I came across was Dog's Naturally magazine, the one in America, and they said exactly the same thing. But also they said if it's poor quality— if it's good quality, it'll just pass through into urine, but if it's poor quality, you can build up in the cells. So from a purely environmental point of view, I gotta be really careful because, you know, like, say, putting those out of joints. And I have, you know, a vested intent here, if you like, being a kind of competitor product. And you don't normally talk about competitor products, but from a purely environmental standpoint, I don't like it. And we do, because we do all the cleansers, we do cleaning products, the environmental element of that is big, is big news for us. You know, what goes down your sink, that empty bucket of bleach or kind of, you know, it's just—

you never think about that. The toilet book or nothing.

I saw one, I was— what I was— I had a— I was researching, I was thinking about tonight, and I was looking at an old ad that I— and I found it on YouTube for a particular product, a bleach-based household name product, and it used to say kills all known germs dead, like that, you know. And so I was just look back on YouTube and, um, the Peter Cushing, uh, Vincent Lee, whatever you call it, uh, kind of voice, you know. Um, and they will come on the television as I'm watching this, which is just Sunday morning, this ad. I can't mention the brand, but this woman in the ad walks into the toilet, it walks into her WC, flushes the toilet, and then all these cartoon baddies come out of the toilet and she's selling her odor control, her odor masking chemical. That's not going to solve the problem, she's going to mask the odour. And, and I wanted, I wanted to be watching it with somebody and say, have you seen this? Have you seen what I'm seeing? And it drove me— I should have mentioned I was going to say, but it just drove me nuts. So she's walking, she flushed the toilet with the lid up. Now, the problem with lids is that they're free, not going to buy anybody's product because you got the lid, you don't need the chemical. You're not going to have things splashing out. Your toothbrush is going to thank you. Put the lid down before you flush. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, right.

Even—

God, I didn't even realize.

Even in COVID, one, you know, from a ventilation point of view, the ventilation gurus were saying close the lid of the toilet because the COVID is airborne in droplets, right? So yeah, but that was people just trying to sell more chemicals. Anyway, that's a good digression, but that just drove me nuts. Where were we? What was the question?

All that's left me with is an image of you stood peering down the toilet seat.

And then he's always— put the toilet seat down. I'm like, put it up. I mean, I need it up. You need it down. Now I have 3 girls in the house, so I don't have a choice. Do you know, Joe, you put me onto a cracker of an idea, right? I was in my house after speaking to you for the first time, and like that night I'm sitting there thinking about cleaning chemicals because I was switched on to this more about the house than I was the dog products initially. And I have this little baby, she's— I just washed the floor in, you know, Anti-Life, just about to name the classic product. And, you know, and my baby's crawling around the floor and her soother drops out of her mouth and she picks it up and she puts it back in her mouth. And I kind of flinch and I went, geez, I don't know if I would prefer she dropped the soother on a dirtier floor and put it back in her mouth or a floor that's just been wiped in Anti-Life and put the Anti-Life in her precious little gut to napalm her gut flora. How could that possibly be good? Yeah, I get chatting to you and you said you showed me, you sent me this YouTube video of a professor saying, look, that antilife lasts for maybe half an hour and then it dries into the water evaporates and the dry powder then blows into the dust of your house. This is why dogs are more susceptible to because they're sniffers and they've got no hands and then they're in the dust all the time. And I'm thinking, wow, and then you've got this bare bit of floor half an hour later and it's just colonized again. Whereas with probiotics, you have It's like now that I got this stuff off you as a concentrate bottle, it sounds like I'm plugging your products, but I need to. It's a liter bottle and you throw a cap in the mop bucket and you clean your floor. And now I feel like my floor is like doing something. It's like, yeah, and I've got one for the surfaces and I just— it cost me nothing. I don't spend—

I don't—

you can't spend any money on this crap anymore. You're not changing your plastic bottles. It's the same bottle I'm using still. And now I don't— I can lick my finger.

I can—

I'm now using I'm buttering bread, much to my wife's delight, and chopping fruit on the countertop. And it's like, I'm not going for a chopping board. It's like, well, it's already a granite countertop. I just wipe it down afterwards with my probiotic wipe. It's completely changed how we're living in the house. And someone keeps on talking about laundry detergent in the comments there about 3 or 4 times in a row. Like, even the laundry detergent, the smell that comes off your clothes are— or the FOCs, those chemicals that—

VLCs.

And it's like when you, when you read into how potentially nasty those compounds are, we're wondering why cancer is exploding in humans, but there's some low-hanging fruit here, lads. And I'm thinking, so the laundry detergent is coming to me as the next order for me because— and so yeah, it was the house that really got me going.

I've just had, uh, and, and all the, the, uh, regulars will know, I've just had, uh, uh, done 10 rounds with a septic tank outside. And we had a problem with a septic tank. And I was talking to the guys who empty the septic tank, and I was saying, should we use a probiotic in the septic tank? And they were saying, well, you can if you want, but it won't do any good. And I think the reason that putting probiotics in the septic tank, which is the logical thing to do to make sure that you've got all the good bugs there and to counter if there's any bleach in there and all that kind of stuff, I think the reason that it doesn't work in most households is because everybody uses anti-life. Yeah, so you, you put a probiotic or a rabbit or whatever into your septic tank and then you flush a load of anti-life beginning with a D ending with an S with homestos in the middle. Yeah, so, so it's bleach. It's just bleach, hypochlorite. So, and I think that's why it's not working because, and, you know, even if you don't use bleach down the loo, then you're using it on the, you know, there's one beginning with D ending with L. I won't go any further than that, that everybody uses to, to, to, to, to clear the surfaces. And, you know, that's going to get wiped and that will go down the sink as well. And that's super, super, super powerful antibacterial effect. So I think as far as septic tanks are concerned, I think they probably do. I don't know. You're the expert. Expert, but that's probably why they don't.

What do you think? I think in France, where they have a lot more septic tanks because the geography is different, a lot more septic tanks per head of population, and I think our guys were saying that on average, the amount of the time span between one emptying of the tank and the next emptying of the tank by the tank emptying contractor is times 2. So the tank is emptied half as half the amount of time. But for the people who don't, which is great, not good for the contractor, but for the people who don't have the separate tank and you think you put all that stuff that you just mentioned and it ends up, it just ends up in the rivers and it ends up in the ocean. And there's a whole big thing going on there that probably won't get into tonight where they're talking about the acidification of the ocean. And if it keeps changing the way it has done since the Second World War, they reckon by 2035 or something like that, the small little crustaceans will actually dissolve and there won't be the bottom of the food chain would be gone. And the effect that that has on CO2 in— because we, for years, I was very, very focused on polar ice caps, energy efficiency stuff that we did with the heat pumps and so on. But now the poison is out there. And, you know, you mentioned again with the home, there's papers now showing a direct link between cleaning products and child obesity. So cleaner products and child asthma. Now, yeah, if they can connect, and as you were saying, Conor Brady, you know, the dog is lying naked on the floor that you've cleaned with that product. He's not showering like we are. He's— and if it's a cat, it's just whatever. As Dr. Becker says, whatever you clean your house with will end up inside your cat. So yeah, if these products are doing this to children, what are they doing to our pets? They're about the same size as children, but on the floor. And without getting too political, the problem becomes for these companies that, that you haven't just mentioned there, Nick, um, is that how do they—

I didn't say anything.

Yeah, but how do they change without leaving themselves exposed to having a Roundup situation or a Teflon situation where they're exposed and, and for decades and decades of damage? How do they change? And I reckon in 5 years' time you won't be able to buy the kind of product that you've just talked about. Oh, from a specialist, because it's now becoming, you know, I'd like to think that the voice that we're putting out there is helping this, but I have to bring it back around to you guys, because it's the pet owner who recognizes this. And the pet owner says, unlike the industry that's using, and I'm talking about millions and millions, just in the UK, millions and millions of liters of concentrate, nasty stuff being used every year, right? But it's the pet owner who says, and the pet, the holistic-minded pet stockists who are where people go for their advice. That's a whole other thing I'd like to talk about as well. But, um, uh, that's a really, it's really interesting, um, uh, view of the industry, why, why that situation is where people aren't happy with the vet and they're going to a holistically minded pet supply shop and getting the right advice. And that's fantastic work going on there, free advice as well. But, but these people, these are leading the way and said, look, this is what it's doing. My dog's got dermatitis, a topic that he's got, and he's covered in— look at the state of him. And you're looking at what's going on inside him, and you're getting to trying to get that right, and proteins and whatever, and changing the diet. You're looking at household sprays, you're looking at cleaner products, you're looking at road pollution, you're looking at off-gassing from furniture, you're looking at all these kinds of— but the canary in the coal mine is the dog who's naked in the house. So, but these people— so the pet owners are ahead of the game. They're aware, certainly the raw feeding ones, they're aware, they're open-minded, they're looking to do better. They're an absolute joy. I just love it. I just love it. They're brilliant to talk to. And those, those stockists that we have, and it was really interesting. And before we run out of time, I just want to say we did Pats recently, because we're looking for, looking for more stockists, you know. And I was worried that how am I going to have a conversation with a non-holistic pet shop? What am I going to say to them? I don't know how to have this conversation. And because the people that we know— I've been in there where people walk in and they're asking advice and they're bringing a dog in, and look, and the dog's got a broken leg, they're taking them to the vet, don't get me wrong. But they're getting advice from nutrition from people who run these shops who quite often started into business because it's what they love, or they had an issue with their dog and they've researched it, and they've become this fantastic source of information. The same with some of the the moderators in the groups, you know, Carla's group and Patricia's group, it was just fantastic. So I was worried about this. Yeah, but I didn't have that experience. What I did experience was a number because I was sounding new people out to come up to stand. And I'd say, you know, do you sell Raw by any chance? And they'd say, yeah, okay, right. We know how to talk now. This is great. Because, by the way, we have an affiliation between Luca and Raw because they're both trying to solve the same problems. At the same time. Um, but some of these people were saying, yeah, we're just starting raw, ordered my freezers and we're going to do it. And I said, oh, brilliant, brilliant. Uh, so you're watching RPM? Uh-uh, what's that? Um, have you read Conor's book? No. Okay, do you know about these groups on Facebook? No. So I just wanted to give a shout out there that these people need bringing into the fold as well, because at the moment, the, the, the, by and large, the shops selling raw are really into it and they know their stuff and they can advise the client so you get the right, you know, the appropriate diet for the right dog. But this whole, where raw is becoming more popular, you've got to make sure that these people are reaching out to more dogs and there's loads of room, there's loads of room for expansion in that industry. But we just need to make sure we reach out to these people and get them educated so they're not unwittingly giving bad advice.

And, you know, so, so, Joe, just in the last minute, I've got 3 more pages of notes. 2 things, 2 things. Number 1, number 1, please will you come back and see us? Everybody's absolutely bursting at the seams to hear more, so please would you come and see us in a, in a few months would be the first thing. And the second thing is, in the last minute, what is the key message that you'd like to leave with everybody this evening?

Protect the microbiome. Protect the microbiome, protect the microbiome. That's it. And if you're protecting the microbiome, you're not using chemicals, you're looking after the gut, you're not putting stuff in and around the dog that he's going to inhale and wreck his microbiome. That's it. Protect the microbiome and it'll protect you.

Amazing.

Good. I like that.

It's a good—

very good. Good.

Really good.

Okay, so amazing. So Joe, would you stick around with us for just 10 minutes? We'll just do a little extra extra, and you can just again, um, distill some wisdom for our Patreon people. They support us beautifully, and we'd like to give them just a little bit extra on the side. If you can stay with us just for a short while, we'd be really, really grateful. Otherwise, Conor, do you want to— do you want to see us out?

Uh, no, I just love that. Like you said, there's just so much to learn, and like from skin to guts to environment, there's just, uh, there's just huge— it's a huge— and we know nothing about it. It's just like, like you said, scratching the surface. It's just— there's just so much to talk about that. And there's so many of these biome people out there. And I think there's more of a role for these products than we can even possibly understand. So the more of these sorts of targeted, specific probiotics that come out, the better, probably, because I'm looking at the broad-spectrum probiotics now thinking, hmm, you know, I'm not sure anymore. And, you know, they do seem to have some benefits. And then the studies have very little benefits. And and there's hardly any studies at all of harm because it takes too many patients too long, you know, the issues can be too varied. It's very difficult to see harm from using the likes of something as kind of as soft as a probiotic, you know. So it's a whole untapped subject. So yeah, get Joe back and there's a number of other things we haven't talked about, the Italian study and a number of other bits and pieces. Yeah, okay, so well, thanks very much for that. I knew it was going to be brilliant. So that was great, loved it.

And guys, if you've loved what you've heard tonight, you can find more about us on your Audible or your other audio podcast station, find us there under Raw Pet Medics. We're on everything from Spotify to Amazon. So yeah, just if you need to go out for a walk and you want something to listen to, just find us there. Joe, thank you so much. You guys that are going to join us on Patreon, that's patreon.com/rawpetmedics. We'll be sharing the video that we're recording with Joe in about an hour's time. So for some extra gorgeous snippets from Joe, listen in on there. Join us on patreon.com. It'd be great to see you guys.

Otherwise, next week, what we've got next week, we haven't got anything lined up, I don't think.

Oh, we have to do those. We have to do the shops and stores that sent us in the snippets of their products after we did our self-promotion bits. So we'll have to gather up a bit of info for that to maybe hit that next week.

I tell you what, next week it's going to be the 25th. So that will be the last Tuesday of October.

Oh, that'll be it.

That'll be Q&A.

There you go.

So the week after that then will be the—

We'll be putting up a post if you want to put in your questions. We've got so many questions from last time too. We've got loads there, but we'll be putting that up on Patreon. So get in there if you've got some burning questions. But for tonight, great to see you all. Thank you for joining us and look forward to seeing some of you guys over on Patreon.

Nice one, Joe. Thank you very much.

No, it's been great. Thank you. Cheers.