RawPetMedics Tuesday Night Live: Hip. Dysplasia

Here we are again. I can't believe it. It seems like a week since the last time we did it.

Oh God.

You can tell he's a father.

Did you turn off your phones, chaps?

No, I turned it on so that it's recording.

Oh, very good. I have mine off. I'm just going to take the risk that I'm being recorded perfectly fine. How's things, lads? Did you have a very exciting week?

Oh, lots of bits and pieces this end. How about you? If people ask that question, you can absolutely guarantee they've actually— I have my answer ready. They're chomping at the bit.

However, I'm going to really upset him. I'm going to really upset him because I'm going to give him the lowdown for my last week of traveling around whilst being off work.

Give me strength.

Started on Monday, where they are. So go on, come on, Conor, you've got something really—

I don't have anything that interesting to say, but it's kind of, it's pertinent to what we're talking about tonight, so I just wanted to—

It's never stopped you before.

Oh, this is a horrific start, guys. I see you guys have been angling. There's something wrong. I was on that, I was on with Dr. Conor Brady and the bib there on Sunday, and we were talking about fish oil supplements. So I just thought how relative to tonight when, you know, that's one of the first things we reach for when your dog is suffering from joint pain, and fish oil supplements will be the very first groovy thing that we would reach for because we know it absolutely helps with arthritis, it helps with inflammation, like a fire extinguisher for the body, isn't it? And so many cereal-fed dogs particularly, but also raw-fed dogs if your meat is coming from indoors and that sort of stuff, you know, going to be low in omega-3, higher in omega-6 if you're fed grain and all this crap. So there's lots of reasons why you would use fish oil in this condition. And not to ruin what we might be talking about later on, but it was so interesting because they had on a fish oil expert and I thought, how could you be a fish oil expert? This guy had a fish oil company since the time he was a kid and immensely successful. But the guy is a lipidologist. Would that be the right word?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, and oh my God, it was so interesting. So they picked out the 12 top fish oil brands in the US. They said, right, they quizzed everybody, millions of followers. What are your top 12 favorites? And we went through them one by one. And so I went through them from my— with my hat on as a pet owner type thing. This is what I would, you know, I'm looking at omega-3 bang per buck and I'm, you know, but this guy gets into is it ethyl ester or is it triglycerides, different production. Ethyl ester is your refined oils. How do they make them concentrated? They refine the shit out of them. And I was like, oh, what does that mean? So what? This is the process. This is the result. The bioavailability is much less. It's cheaper to produce, it's easier to— everything, the storage is much worse, easier to oxidize. I said, this is terrible. And then he goes, plastic bottles, they let oxygen in.

And I'm like, what?

And he goes, yeah, glass isn't porous, but plastic is. And he goes, particularly if your plastic has a squidgy top on the top, a dropper. He goes, that's very— we all know that from when you did science in college. You'd always get those rotten dropper bottles if you were last to the shelf to get your dropper. Some of them were rotten because oil hates plastic. And little tiny tips like that. And I just thought, wow, I didn't know any of this. And so it was fascinating to learn about that. And then I stumbled into a Greener Postal bit, which we're going to talk about later. So that's what I was up to during the week. 3 hours of talking about fish oil supplements. Who'd have thought? Wow. Yeah.

So would he come on with us? Would he come on with us?

We can get him on.

Absolutely. Shall we drag— can you ask him?

We want a lipidologist.

Yeah, lipidologist. It was just so interesting because he was just like straight down the middle. This is the story with this. But also, like, you know, even Habib was saying, you know, they got the product, the plastic, the chemicals in the packaging of the pet food is leaking into the pet food, which is a problem. And that's fat's fault because fat likes to leach that plastic off. And so, you know, that's a big, big problem. So, okay, that's one thing. But then he was saying that the studies showing that the plastic bag of pet food is leaking contaminants into the household and that the pets and children living in the household with kibble are higher in these nasty contaminants because the bag is leaking the stuff out. I just thought, this is glorious. Why have I never heard this before?

BPA and phthalates everywhere.

I didn't know.

I thought, this is a gem. But he was explaining why fat does that. And I'm like, oh, this is just fiercely interesting. But you would have loved the danger of the refinement of it. And fat just hates being outside the body, let's face it.

Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when we did the new things for the new year and we talked about whether we're going to maybe cut out dairy, things like that. And I talked about making your coffee keto, adding butter, and you can mix it up with MCT and things like that, collagens and MCT. So just a warning, if you don't have a— let's not name the brand, but a blitz that has a metal thing to blitz in. I soon discovered that this stuff dissolves the plastic cup that sits on the top.

That's interesting. He actually made a mold of that.

You basically— so as you see it slowly deteriorate, you get little cracks appearing in all of the stuff, and it's— you can see that it literally is deteriorating over the weeks. So yeah, a little warning out there. If you don't think that that plastic cup can ever give stuff into your food, I know you can dissolve them.

Yeah, so therefore, is the take-home message here is if you've got fats of any— so that means oils, fats, whatever— do not have it anywhere near plastic. It has to be near glass. Is glass the only inert— is that the only thing that will do it?

I asked him what his favorite would be. Just, you know, and a metal brush does brush metal, but the metal is often lined with plastic, BPA-free. But if you're containing the fat, but also you'll have a plastic pump on the top. And he said there's two types of pumps. He says one pump, which 99% of products use, has— it just pumps and squirts, but there's a layer of fat at the bottom of it blocking the rest. Like, it doesn't have a seal that shoots across the top, so that bit there is oxidizing all the way down the tube. So he says they're actually nasty. They're just exposed to the air. That takes that one little bit, and now air is getting in. So it's not sealed. If you have a pump, you have to have an oxygen, uh, a seal-proof— it'll say it on the label, like Mercola's krill oil will say. You've paid much more for this bottle, but the pump is oxygen kind of you know, it doesn't let the oxygen in. So it's like, bloody hell, what can we do here? What's the solution? And he goes, honestly, capsules in a glass jar with a metal lid, kept it in the fridge.

And it was so disappointing because there was a company that used to do the omega-3 oils for heart stuff inside. So in the inner container was effectively a flexible plastic liner, and they used to pump oxygen into the outside of that liner so that actually the pressure built outside it, which pumps the oil out. And that's how they tried to keep it from oxidizing. It would stay, last longer in the pot. But some really interesting stuff because I got super concerned with the level of oxidation of oils, and especially after the Shanahan book. And yeah, they're sort of like super conscious about, you know, for companies that are putting oils into the food, about the consideration of nitrogen flushing, which is effectively loading the top layer of the thing in nitrogen rather than allowing oxygen to get in, or indeed, you know, even flushing with nitrogen gas, so an inert gas, into the plastic containers to try and optimize what's going on. But we actually did a trial through that, you know, the heat of that summer.

Okay.

And we actually had a little look at the remnants of herring oil in one of these large drums that you get, so that, you know, not small, insignificant amounts, you know, 50-liter drums. And after 3 weeks of utilizing it, we looked at the bottom layer without nitrogen flushing, and actually they still had a minute amount of oxidation. It wasn't oxidized very much at all. Okay, that's kept ambient. So yeah, I'm still out there. I think we need to do more research to to find out that level of acidity.

And is that because the packaging was so good, Bren, or is that because herring oil is innately resistant to oxidation, would you say?

Well, I don't know whether it's— I mean, admittedly, it's a cool warehouse. It was not the 40 degrees that was going on through the summer, but it was not, you know, in the freezer part, and it was not, you know, the packaging reasonable. You know, they weren't pumping oxygen in, um, you know, they were just drawing it off.

If you look at, if you look at off-the-shelf fish supplements, more than 1 in 10 fish oil supplements in the EU, 60 tested, nearly half are just under the recommended maximum limit for oxidation. Okay, that's according to The Independent.

Here's another one, um, and what's that maximum limit?

I don't know what it is. A combination of— I didn't write that, didn't take it down— a combination of global studies since 2015 show that on average 20% of fish oil products have XX oxidation. In other words, they're worse off for your pet when you feed them. So this is just really there, so 1 in 5 chance. And so you've got a, you've got a 50/50 chance if the oil is really, really fresh. So he said even if the product says keep it at room temperature, he goes, you're insane, put it in the fridge, it slows down oxidation. Because don't keep it at room temperature because they say you can, it's just a ridiculous thing that manufacturers have started saying. He says dark glass bottle in the fridge, and anything that lasts for years, worry about it. He actually started with the 2 cups, 2 polystyrene, 2 glass beakers, one with ethylester, the refined fish oil, and home with normal triglyceride fish oil, which is just the actual fish fat, in two beakers. They look the exact same, and he put a piece of polystyrene in each one. And as he was talking, the piece of polystyrene in the ethylester refined one dissolved and disappeared. A piece of polystyrene. So he said it's not good stuff. So I just learned so much. It was very, very interesting. So I've just—

I have to worry about chemical extraction.

I'm just going to say this, we've got this product here. It is krill oil. It's in a brushed aluminum. Can you see that? Hold on. With, with an aluminum lid as well.

Yeah, looks good.

So that should be— yeah, because an aluminum oxide is very, very inert.

Yeah.

So if any— anybody needs a bit of that, then just let me know.

What's the website, Nick?

Uh, no, email me nickthompson@holisticvet.co.uk. Nickthompson@holisticvet.co.uk. So that's good. That's a really nice intro, Conor.

Before we go any further, check check, check at the bottom there, guys. patreon.com/rawpetmedics. We deeply appreciate any support you can give us, guys. We are not a paid show, but if you can afford the price of a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, we absolutely appreciate this. It helps us do our thing. And also, you'll hear our podcast anywhere you can vote for a podcast. We really appreciate it. Give it the 5 stars, that kind of jazz. It really helps us move up those lists, and we are. But until we get to number 1, we're not going to talk about those positions anymore. But yeah, we are moving up though. I'm keeping track. How are we doing?

So Tobago.

Are we still number 1 in Tobago?

Yeah, Trinidad and Tobago. We were number 2, I think, in the, in the pet section. So we just need a couple more votes, guys. So we need to get there.

Number 1.

Dr. Judy was number 1.

Yeah, we're never going to get there. Yeah. So who wants to start us off, guys, on a bit of hip dysplasia?

I think, Nick, you've got some great X-rays. I think we did start off from the deep end. Let's go back to, um, what we should be talking about.

Shall we talk? I'm just going to give a very broad view with a few X-rays here. We've got those, Bren, can we blow those up? And I'll just take the guys through those. There we go. Okay, so there you go. On the right-hand side, you can see an exquisitely good X-ray. You see how detailed it is and where the blacks are black and the whites are white and what have you. That's a really, really nice X-ray. We selected it. Not only is it a nice X-ray, but you've got really nice hips, The hip is a ball and socket joint. You see, the hips are one-third of the way down there. You've got the hip joints are there. You've got the pelvis, which is that kind of amazing, looks like a screaming man upside down. I've only just seen that for the first time in my life. You know, that famous photo, if you turn that upside down, that's what you've got there. And the fact that it's so symmetrical, on that x-ray shows that whoever took it is very, very good because they lined it up really well. What you're looking for in a ball and socket joint is you've got a ball like this and you've got a socket like this, and you want that ball to fit beautifully in the socket such that you get really nice motion. You've got a solidity so that you can go belting down the field and your hips don't fall out. You've got good, you've got a good grip, because all the soft tissue comes— I need a third hand here. You got all this, all the soft tissue is around there, you can't see it on an X-ray, but the soft tissue is what keeps it all together. It's just a good seat in there is what you're looking for. And when you don't have those things, when you've got either a shallow socket, yeah, so this is a good deep socket like this, not too deep because otherwise you go the other way, but just right. Yeah, Goldilocks socket. If you go— if you've got a shallow socket, the ball is going to go like this. Or if you've got a decent socket and you've got quite a flat ball, then it's going to go clunking around causing lots of cytokine storms. And Conor Brady will tell you about that in a second, I'm sure. Also, the angle of the hip there's just a perfect angle. There's a name for the angle, I can't remember it because I haven't taken a hip dysplasia x-ray for probably 20 years. Cronenberg angle, something like that. Bren will no doubt tell us. This angle has to be perfect because it needs to align perfectly there such that the dog can put their hips right into the pelvic socket and then have nice straight legs going down. And as you see there, On that second X-ray, the socket is shallow. The ball is not a ball. It looks more like a deflated tennis ball. The angle is poor. And so those are really pretty poor hips. Does that mean that the dog is going to be absolutely terrible for the rest of their lives? Not necessarily. There's a lot that you can do. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be talking about nutrition. We're going to be talking about acupuncture. We're going to be talking about hydrotherapy. We're going physio and chiropractic and osteopathy and all these amazing things, because sometimes you can get these guys through. You can just kind of keep going, keep going, and support here and support here and support, and you can, you can get through. But there are, there are lots of things that you can do. If the dog has got a degree of dysplasia, it is not the end of the world. If they've got really bad dysplasia, they probably will need some kind of surgical intervention at some point if you're unlucky. So there you go. That's just a very brief— how long was that? 3-minute interview?

That was great, Brady.

That's how you do a brief interview. A brief— that's how you do a brief intro.

I can do briefs.

Okay, so I was only finding Sharpe's angle, which relates to—

sharp angle. Oh, very nice, very nice. There you go.

Gives you the difference.

You see what I mean? This is what I was, you know, I was talking about this. So if it's too upright, you're standing like this. If it's like this, then there's the pressure on top of that hip from the rest of the body is really high. And so you may get weakening here. And if you're going to break, you might break over here. So there's just that sweet spot just in between the two, too far up, too far down. It's all about engineering, and orthopaedic surgeons get very excited because it's architecture and they can do lots with it and they can put lots of bits of metal and what have you in there.

I love my power tools when it comes to orthopaedics.

So there you go, there's a little introduction. You can tell we haven't actually planned this. Who wants to go next? Bren, do you want to give us a little bit of physiology of bone and cartilage and maybe how they grow and and spaying and what have you. What happens if you spay dogs early? Does that affect the hips?

Yeah, okay, so I would say, so the next part really is going to be understanding bone is not dead, okay? This is a living part, you know, it's fully, you know, it's protein, it's mineralized protein, but it's only mineralized because in it there are cells which are alive, actively interacting with that bone, which allows that bone to fix. You know, if you break a bone, you want to be able to fix it. Okay, now for the joint itself, we need a little bit of cushioning, and those very similar cells, the chondrocytes, actually line that area of subchondral bone, and they produce, they utilize the nutrients to produce a nice firm cartilage. Now, dependent on some other genetics, that may be a weaker cartilage, and there are some genetic testings that you can do for your dogs to see if they're predisposed to osteochondrosis dissecans, which is a delaminating of that cartilage within the joint. There is also a test that you can do to X-ray your dog and to get all of those angles measured. So in the UK, that's done by the British Veterinary Association. Certain X-rays need to be taken at particular angles in order for us to send those X-rays off and get them scored. And so certainly if you're breeding, you might consider that. Although there was a bit of debate as to whether that was working for Labradors because they used to have a lovely scoring system of trying to say, look, the average breed is 32. If you can breed below 16, then surely we're going to slowly improve the Labrador population. And I think 15 years into that little experiment of trying to do that, what did they find? But Labrador hips were just getting worse. Now, a couple of things around that. That, okay, that weren't examined were things like nutrition, you know, what we're doing with nutrition, you know, the change of nutrition, increasing kibble foods that were going on, some of the differences as well in the life stages that they were giving, whether those life stage diets were appropriate for those growing dogs. Now obviously on top of that we've put another layer which is obviously not for breeding dogs, but we're talking about neutering. And so those great research papers done. I know some people don't like corporates, but one thing about the, you know, the corporates in America that actually dared to look at their data to find out were they giving the right advice and came up with those papers around, yes, tumors and things like that with regards to neutering, but actually more importantly joint disease. One of the reasons we were seeing increased cruciate ruptures, but also that reflected on hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia within some of these breeds. So neutering definitively will have an effect. And as I said, these are living parts of the body, and those hormones are going to have a growth effect on the system. Okay, so, you know, for both males and females, That does have an effect.

Twice as likely, the figures that I've seen. If you neuter really early, kind of 9 weeks, 12 weeks, what have you, you can be up to twice as likely to get— so that's a 100% increase in incidence of hip dysplasia if you dare to neuter at that level. So be careful.

There's lots of studies there to support exactly what you're saying there. It's the number 2 kind of when it comes to side effect count in the mental studies to kind of go against the idea of neutering dogs, abnormal bone growth and development. The very first thing that traps is that early neutered animals are taller because when you neuter an animal or spay, you're going to remove estrogen, and estrogen tells the bones to stop growing, doesn't it? So that's what closes the growth plate. So you have these taller animals and they're more susceptible to joint issues, they're more susceptible to increased cruciate rupture. And this guy— leverage Yeah, there's 4 huge studies here, but the biggest one was 759 golden retrievers followed for a few years. And so like, we know that it's increased, increased rupture and all that, but to get to the hip dysplasia one, here's some nice studies here. Can we get some figures? In their study of 759 retrievers, they noted early neutered males were 10% more likely to get hip dysplasia. That's not— doesn't sound like too bad actually. Or 10% were diagnosed with hip dysplasia. And a study of 1,800 had higher incidence of hip dysplasia than non-neutered animals. So yeah, it's definitely happening.

And that growth, as Michele said, is around the growth plates. And what we saw, certainly I've seen in male dogs, is if you neuter them early, you can actually delay the closure of those growth plates. Plates. So they actually end up continuing to grow because they haven't had that instruction to sort of like calcify the bones and close those growth plates.

Yeah, so hence they're taller. Yeah, okay, there's another one from a causing point of view Nick just mentioned about the nutrition. It's interesting, like this has been around since 2014, one of DogRisk's first studies that they came out with I think it was actually a master's. I'm not sure if it was ever published or not, but there was a survey sent out to 254, I believe, German Shepherd owners, and they found like just— it was really, really clear that raw feeding, raw food was protective to chronic hip dysplasia for whatever reason. But what's interesting was they included kibble in there as one of the diets to select, raw food, and cooked food. And do you know what diet came out the worst of those three?

Cooked.

Cooked did come out the worst. And I thought, how very interesting. And it brings me to a point that when people are feeding cooked food to dogs and they say, okay, I can't feed bone to dogs for whatever reason, and so they go looking for a bone substitute and they read online and they say, well, give a bit of eggshell. And I say, okay, you've replaced the calcium. And it's like, but you haven't replaced like chondroitin or collagen or your glucagon, all the cool hyaluronic acid. Where are you getting all that stuff if you're not feeding bone.

So that membrane on the inside of the egg.

Yes, pure chondroitin. And studies show that stuff is fantastic for arthritis. But even then, like, you're picking out individual things. So people buy calcium supplements, they feed seaweed because some seaweeds are higher in calcium, but that is just focusing on one single nutrient, whereas a joint is made up of many different building blocks and you need all those things. So just like me trying to get over my knee as a vegetarian, same knee operation 3 times in a row, I never fed myself glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid. Couple of supplements for the first week or two, and then I just assumed I was getting in my diet, never thought. So you can't actually replace bone too easily, and I wonder, is that a problem with the people that were feeding cooked diets? These were Scandinavians, so I think they're more likely to feed bone, but if you're on a cooked diet, you're probably not feeding raw bone, and you probably thought that putting calcium into your diet would be enough to replace a vital kind of nutrient for a vital food source for, for dogs. So it was very interesting that they were— these are very significant p-values as well. I mean, this was very definitely raw was very protective for these German Shepherd owners and cooked was the opposite. And I thought, well, very interesting.

This is good. This is good. To quote the study, it says, this study suggests that feeding a bone and raw food diet or raw meat, raw offal, raw bone and raw cartilage, raw fish, raw egg and raw tripe as supplementation to other diets or as part of the BARF diet showed protective effects versus canine hip dysplasia. And then as Conor mentioned, the cooked was actually worsening, but it says remarkably, feeding dry commercial food was common in both case and control groups and did not show any association with canine hip dysplasia.

No significance.

How amazing is that?

How amazing. If you look at the graph of that, Nick, okay, now this is 254 dogs, so it sounds like a lot, but when you're divided into 4 different diet groups, you're limiting who's in each group. That's not a huge amount of studies. And in the commercial dry food, the amount of hip dysplasia was 69 versus 61. So that is— when you look at the charts, you go, oh, that's quite a big difference. So that is getting, they would say, close to significant. That would be something where you go, okay, let's increase the sample size, do another study of that to increase the sample size to 1,000 and tell us if that is significant or not. It looks quite, quite a hefty difference to me, but it's not significant. And you do have to go to give them their dues they did better than the cooked diet. So that is interesting when I wouldn't have thought dry food was putting in, you know, the glucosamine chondroitin that goes in their orthopedic food that you buy for dogs with arthritis, doesn't it? You know, they're not opposed to it.

I wonder whether Royal Canin or similar would be inclined to do such a study with their foods versus raw food.

They would with their orthopedic food. That's what would support their prescription brand orthopedic food. They put in the nutrients that are missing from their standard diets. And then, yeah, and that's how you come up with this orthopedic food clinically proven to be good for dogs with joint disease. That's because glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid, all those things can help a little bit to take the pain away.

It's interesting this because some of the companies actually for those processed diets, it's not actually the chondroitin and things that they look at. The biggest gain was actually back to the beginning of tonight is the oils.

Oh yeah, sure.

You know, going in. So those are the biggest gains. Beth actually raises something interesting because, um, yeah, what in your opinion, therefore, if you're going to substitute bone, raw bone, into this diet, okay, ground or macerated or however you want to put it, instead of eggshell, do you feel you're— you've got enough in there, or is there anything else you need to substitute in? Because really eggshell is calcium carbonate.

Yeah, I wouldn't use eggshell. The, the absorption— I've looked for the the bioavailability of eggshell, and you can't find it anywhere at all. In humans, it might be down at 30% or so, but I'd have thought dogs would be a bit better because they've got better acid. But I can't find a figure. You guys seen a figure for eggshell, the actual bioavailability?

Also looked first, never saw that.

Anything— I know it's used as a phosphate binder, which is often why it's advocated for cats in renal disease and things like that, calcium, because it's got that phosphate binding option. But realistically, it is something that I've gone away from. I know Pitcairn used to be a big advocate of grinding down 15 different things within the diets that you then had to add in every single meal. And as anybody who's followed us for any length of time will know, we totally sort of ditch that to a bit more variety and giving accessibility to minerals and nutrients at different times through the cycle of feeding. So, you know, Beth, I wouldn't be, as these guys wouldn't be, saying, oh, actually you're deficient because you're not giving eggshell. I think actually what's in eggshell is probably fairly limited.

If anything, it's better than nothing, probably. But as Mindy says, what about bone meal? Bone meal is the kind of the result of rendering, you know, so your fat and gloops floats to the top for your jellies and soaps, I always say, and the bone sinks to the bottom. And, you know, pet food companies call that meat meal or dried meat, but gardeners will call it bone meal. So it's bone meal, and that has been processed under high temperature and high pressure. And you'd probably say, look, it's probably a source of calcium and gloop, but the fat has been removed and all that joint and cartilage stuff. So it's probably quite a poor version of calcium as well, to be honest. My opinion. There is a substitute and there is a product coming out of New Zealand called MCH Calcium. And this is what the sports people are taking. M for mother, C, H, calcium. So MCH Calcium is a, is probably the top-rated calcium supplement for absorption. And what it is, is ground-up bones. Now, in my opinion, from where?

From what?

From what? From grass-fed New Zealand cattle.

Oh, okay.

Hydrolyzed? It looks like white dishwasher powder. Powder. It's extremely— it's actually way finer than dishwasher powder. It's like, it's so refined I'd look on—

but what their boast is, is that it is a bit like this stuff, because this is, you know, um, you know, it can be grass-fed, uh, organic, you know, all the rest of it.

That's just the fact.

I always wonder, I always wonder, when you, um, are hydrolyzing this protein down to make it the peptides from the collagen, whether actually you are damaging it. I always wonder.

You must be. With that in mind, guys, I would suggest that I'm going back to real basics here. I would be thinking sprats. You know that whitebait has more, more available calcium even than milk, which is a pretty good source of calcium. Whitebait. Yeah. So if you go to the restaurant and you want a bit of calcium, then whitebait is the way to go. Be careful of the stuff they put on the outside, the batter, but that's another—

yeah, don't give them in batter with seed oils and what have you.

Let's not go there. Devil, devil. The hateful lake takes me back to air-dried sprats. I think it's about as good as you can get because the bones are so fine, your stomach, your dog's stomach is just going to whiz through those so, so easily and it's going to liberate that calcium so beautifully, as well as iodine and zinc and all those amazing things that you will inevitably find in marine animals. So for me, those little dried sprats or sprats of any description really would be the place to go.

I think if you're relying on eggshells, something like sprats or sardines would be wonderful. Michelle Fitzsimmons has just highlighted a really important point. Depending on who's selling the MCH calcium, they will say it's freeze-dried, and I always say, uh-uh, you're not allowed to sell sell non-heat-treated bone anywhere. So you're not allowed to package it and sell it anywhere because it's considered a hazardous item. So it's got to be cooked.

That bone marrow, it's that bone marrow that they— anything from— carry mad cow's disease.

Mad cow. Yeah, yeah.

So like, you know, from bones, you know, give me a break.

Lymphatics.

Okay, maybe. But anyway, so they, they will say freeze-dried because at a final step you can freeze-dry the product as a preservation method, and it's a wonderful way of preserving, which means the product doesn't need chemicals to ship it from New Zealand to here. So if they freeze dry down this powder, it's a great idea. Fantastic. But the thing is, if you ask any freeze drying company, any freeze drying company anywhere, or even cold press, we cook our foods at 40 degrees. Do you? How do you kill the bacteria? And they'll go, oh, well, we use natural preserves. How do you kill the bacteria in your product? And then they'll say, well, we have a heating step. We don't call it cooking. We call it a bacteria kill step. So all cold press foods and freeze dried foods that say they don't cook, it's rubbish. You can't you have to kill the bacteria, you have to get them to zero first unless you're using chemicals, and nobody wants to admit to that. So there has to be a heat kill step. So yes, it's freeze-dried, but that's a preservation method to get it from A to B rather than cooking it and then piling it full of chemicals, because it's meat essentially, it's protein, meat protein that wants to rot. So as Brent said, it was alive and then you kill it. So there is a bit of cooking. And, uh, yeah, so anyway, that's—

I think bone broth gets us around a lot of those problems because yes, there is a heat heat kill step, but it only goes to 100 degrees unless you— yeah, unless you're putting it in grape—

90.

Yeah, unless you're using a pressure cooker.

Oh, you're not using pressure cooker, which means you can get it to 120. So, so basically just you, you will take it up to the boil, that's 100, then you'll bring it down to, to a simmer. Is a simmer 90?

I thought it was 90, and a pressure cooker reduces the temperature. No, you know, you need less— the more pressure, less temperature. No. Is it not?

Wrong way around. If you go up Mount Everest, your tea will be lukewarm.

Yeah, boils at 60.

That's because it's a long walk and it's cold. Surely.

He's using a thermos flask.

Michael Hughes.

It's a long way up this mountain with a cup of tea in your hand.

I told you you were wrong.

I told you you need a better thermos.

They said my tea would be cold.

I'd stick my tongue out if it hadn't frozen off. But like, what's the point?

It's just because there's snow on the mountaintop. That's what it is.

What's the point in pressure cooking if it doesn't bloody reduce the meat?

It means you can take the temperature of water beyond 100 degrees and therefore you reduce the cooking time. You can take it to 120 or 130. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm surprised. I thought it saved people in the '50s money on gas.

And I think a simmer— I mean, are there any physicists there? I hope there are. I thought of a simmer was boiling water, and boiling water is more or less 100 degrees at standard temperature and pressure.

Is that correct? It's called Boyle's law.

Yeah, the nuclear scientist comes out.

Boyle's law equals Vt. Is it, Fiona? Is it P equals Vt? Was it P over T?

Probably Brady's Law, I'm always right. Look, Charlotte Davy says you can actually slow cook at high pressure, so there you go, there's an answer. But anyway, look, that was the calcium thing, but there's other words, probably, I'm sure somebody else has a bit here, but I always want to have a quick word about non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, okay? So I think as step 1 of things to do if, you know, you get this diagnosis and, you know, your dog is usually a bit older because for the first few years, muscles can take over and keep you kind of steady and whatnot. And then as you get older, it just gets harder and harder, inflammation builds, and the dog starts to go lame. Is that true, that the muscles will take over? So this is an older dog issue, I assume, unless like my old dog Meg, the poor thing, at 6 or 7, she was hobbled with this issue. But it's not the end of the world. So I think kind of step 1 is like, you know, the simple things to tick the simple boxes of chronic hip dysplasia. Lean that dog up. This is a long— most of these breeds are long-distance running animals, so have them really, really lean. Mo Farah versus Usain Bolt, if any of your dogs look like that. And you look at Mo Farah and you go, where is the bloody weight on that guy? How does he move 26 miles? So really lean, long-distance running animals, take the weight off the joints, which surely be a number one. And all the other simple kind of things. I mean, there is a million natural bits and pieces that you can put in that, but let's just just skipping past the natural bits and pieces that we might have time to come— we might do them in the, in the bit on the side because I've got some cool stuff to say about frankincense and curcumin. You should see the studies on turmeric, oh my God, for arthritis and whatnot. But just the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories for you guys, we know that non-steroidal anti-inflammatories have a really big problem downwind, so they cause loads of gut issues. Yeah, I think we're all pretty clear on that. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories cause bleeding, inflammation, ulceration of stomach and small intestine, them, big, big problems and whatnot. Okay, so living on them for a long term is probably not exactly ideal because they're going to upset your gut and your gut flora, fueling inflammation, and more NSAIDs are probably going to be needed and whatnot. But listen to this, this is interesting. Um, uh, although non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, that's like, you know, from paracetamol or aspirin, ibuprofen, and Metacam, all those dudes, um, 'While they induce gastropathy,' which is a patty of the stomach, I guess, 'and enteropathy of the intestines has been recognized for some time, investigators more recently suggested that such effects may originate due solely to dysbiosis.' That is not solely due to dysbiosis, that is perturbations in the gut microbiome. Loads of studies. Another one: 'Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory enteropathy does not occur in germ-free mice.' but when insert two bacteria names I can't pronounce are introduced, intestinal ulceration occurs. Wow.

Yeah.

And I was thinking, and then they finished that study with saying, so when something is introduced to help, let's say, because chondroitin, glucosamine doesn't upset the gut flora, but chondroitin does. So what they were saying was, okay, it shifts the gut flora, but what's the actual impact on the animal? So for example, a dog with degenerative joint disease will have a certain gut flora because he's inflamed and in pain. Pain. And when you put in chondroitin, which can mask a bit of the pain and help the dog a bit, the gut flora shifts. That's not necessarily a negative thing. It may not even be that the— it's not that the bacteria were affected by the chemical fed, it was the relief of the inflammation that settled the dog and shifted the gut flora. So they don't know if it's the chemical, the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory, that's affecting the gut flora, or the relief of the symptoms and the fixing, because the bacteria are so involved in fixing gut membranes and everything else. I just thought how wonderfully confused it is, but it doesn't sound good for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory use. So how do you guys treat if everyone has done everything right, the basics of what we've talked about before, getting the dog well fed, fish oil, you know, your natural solutions we'll talk about later on, really lean, healthy, you know, therapies and hydrotherapy and all these sort of things you can do. if you have to go conventional, and that's where we are with these chemicals, where do people have— where do you go? What's step— what's level 2?

I've got a list from Jean Dodds here, actually, and I'm just wanting— it's 9:41, so I'm going to just tease everybody with this, and then we can maybe go into a bit on the side and maybe go into one or two of them a bit more. So Jean Dodds, in her wonderful book Canine Nutrigenomics, page 130, she's saying omega-3 fatty antacids with the provisos that Conor so eloquently described earlier. But then she also says about other things to look at are, uh, the first one is actually deer velvet, okay, which is the deer velvet here. So that's a really interesting one to just really, really get into that. And actually, talking of that, I've got, I've got this book. It is book in a digital format, and I'm going to put that up on, um, Patreon. Okay, so you'll be able to look at that. Then there's, there's 500+ references in there for you to have a look at. But that's not why I'm giving the list. She also talks about green lip muscle extract, glucosamine chondroitin, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, S-adenosylmethionine— that's the liver one. She, she highlights spirulina. She highlights curcumin. I was just saying about curcumin and the figures. It's very anti-inflammatory and very good for joints. Even grapeseed extract, green or black tea leaf extract, MSM, methylsulfonylmethane, DL-phenylalanine, and homeopathic remedies such as Traumeel or Zeel. Z-E-E-L. Lots and lots of things to think about. Bren, any thoughts on that list before we jump into, uh, Patreon?

Um, remember, some of the herbs that we're going to talk about, um, Devil's Claw is a classic, can act in a very similar way to non-steroidals. If you're using both together, be really aware of side effects, okay, and do consult with your vet. Hopefully your holistic vet will give you some insights into that. Many people will see salicylic acid in some of these supplements, and effectively they're giving aspirin alongside the supplement and then won't realize they're also giving a non-steroidal, which actually they are contraindicated to use the two together. So just be aware some of the herbs will act in very similar ways. Really interesting, there are such a range of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and I know that we posted up very quickly that there was a, um, a study there where you can see degradation of joints with non-steroidals. And certainly some of the early non-steroidals would wipe out not just the nasty inflammatory prostaglandins, but they would actually also wipe out the protective prostaglandins. So studies like that, absolutely right, will cause that. And that's partly why you also get degradation in intestinal lining, is there is a level of prostaglandins that are required as protection. There is how it was thought. Now, it's really interesting you say that certain bacteria can aggravate that condition. And I wonder whether that's, you know, another interaction at yet another level that we need to look at, because there'll be a level of protection that should be afforded. So there are some later generations, one like Simuljex and things like that, which are now even for dogs with diarrhea supposed to be in there as a possible medication. I would honestly say, look, in the very short term, if you've got a lame giving a very short course of a good, well-known analgesic to assess, is this directly just down to pain or is there a physical reason why this dog is lame, is considered an appropriate action rather than necessarily immediately knocking them out and doing 15 tests under anesthesia and, you know, looking at X-rays and imaging and everything else. Yeah, just doing a simple pain relief test test is worth it. But there are some great studies, you know, um, VetPro and NutriVet released a multimodal with, um, boswellia, which is frankincense, um, in there alongside some other herbal constituents to protect the liver. You know, those are options that have been shown to be as good as some of the non-steroidal drugs out there. So there are options to have a look at. And realize every animal is an individual. And therefore, just as with some people, you might find that they're better with one anti-inflammatory than another. You know, the same with these herbal medicines. Don't go, oh, it didn't work with Boswellia, therefore I'm not going to bother with anything else herbal. You know, you might want to move to golden paste, you might want to use pure turmeric, you might want to use green lip. But hands down, the biggest jump I think you'll see is using a good source of omega-3 within the diet. And that is probably the biggest jump to benefit sore joints.

There's a, there's a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory there, Bren. The old versions of them were like, we grew up with Medicam. That's what my old girl was on, and Rimadyl. I managed to keep her off of until she was like 13, and then she needed it again. But I mean, the vet had her on at 7 when she was really hobbled with them, so bloody hell. But the new one here, Galliprant, here I'm just reading, it doesn't block prostaglandin production. You want prostaglandins, like, isn't blocking them wasn't a good idea because it has this effect for ulceration and they were important for that process, which I poorly understand. But Galliprant doesn't block prostaglandin production, good news, but it blocks the receptors for that. And that's why that is becoming a very popular drug, not because it's underpaid, to cause it.

What about that?

Sounds brilliant. Yeah, sounds brilliant. But on the ground, just as likely, just as possible to cause diarrhea and gastric upset in dogs.

Bloody hell. Well, there you go. Cheers on that.

So it sounds brilliant. Yeah, but experience in the clinic, okay, I would definitely say, um, I've seen as many dogs with gastric upsets on Galiprant as I have any other non-steroidal that's out there.

In relation to the fish oil thing, just to throw a cat among the pigeons here, this 'cause the green-lipped mussel, you know, it's great and all that, but you don't get a lot of omega-3 bang for your buck. It's complicated, I don't have time to get into it. It's phospholipids versus triglycerides. I'm only after learning this myself. But as it turns out, you know, it's very hard to beat fish oil. And that's just a fact when it comes to omega-3 bang for your buck, very, very hard. Nothing really gets close. But then you've got different problems with the food and the size of the fish and chemicals that they accumulate, bioaccumulate and all this crap. Yeah, so get all that. But listen to this, a study of omega-3 sources fish oil, krill oil, and green-lipped mussel. Green-lipped mussel did the worst when it was fighting cytokine-mediated canine cartilage degradation. So in other words, inflammation, cartilage damage due to inflammation in the joints. GLM came out the worst. Now, of course, you always have to wonder who wrote that study. Was it the person that hates GLM?

And what level of green-lipped mussel was it? Because was it fresh oil?

Yeah, exactly, all that. So, but isn't it like Bren said, so don't just stick to one. Maybe this fish oil didn't work for you, maybe try another one. You don't have to have all the science of exactly the fish oil you're looking at. Don't stress yourself out, go by recommendation, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Try something else, try a different green-lipped mussel extract because they're produced differently. You get different bang for your buck. You might get a 500mg tablet or a 1000mg tablet, and you'll think the 1000mg tablet is twice as good, but as I said in a previous RPM, they just put in 50% rice filler. Into the capsule. So you think you're buying a stronger GLM capsule, but all you've bought is more filler. It's got the same amount of GLM extract in it. Rotten to the core, this industry. So don't— definitely don't trust just one of those oils because that oil industry is very funny.

Right, boys, let's jump over, shall we?

Yeah, just before we jump over, I would always say, I think if it's got a long chemical name, um, just Be cautious, think about it. There are lots of alternatives first. You know, giving one element out of a whole mix of things that could be found in nature, I think, has consequences. I much prefer some of the benefits you get with some of the plants and herbs that we're talking about. It's not just a pure extract, but it can be the whole herb. So do have a look at the different options. They may have some gas gastric protection, liver protection, etc., if you're giving the whole herb rather than just an individual item.

And everyone's saying broth there. Broth is definitely a brilliant— for anyone that doesn't follow us over to patreon.com/walpetmedics where we do another 15 minutes, uh, this— the broth is brilliant. It's just stewed up, um, joint goo fed to you, so it's wonderful. And so absolutely use broth any old way. Ian Rooney was saying that, and so check out his comments there. Then he asked, what about plant GLA is good for joints. Studies do show it's effective, but their studies are humans. And what we have a problem with in a lot of dogs is that they're deficient in omega-3. And if you keep on jacking in omega-6, you're going to throw out that ratio and fuel inflammation. So you have this balance of, does my dog have enough omega-3? There's actually a test out there. It only costs $40. There's a test to see, check your omega-3 status. And so you can tell if you really want to be fiddly and just find out what are your dogs' omega-3s, how well is your raw diet doing? Send your dog for an omega-3 status. That'll tell you. And so if you start adding in omega-6 to a dog that needs omega-3, you're in big trouble. And then your GLA effect will go out the window anyway.

Okay. And I've got a quiz. I got a quiz for you and I will give you the answer on the other side. It is how good for you is deoxyribonucleic acid? Answer on a postcard or over, over in the Patreon, please. How good is that for you? Could you survive without it? Here we go.

Very good. Brilliant. Talk to you soon, guys. Cheers.

Take care. Speak to you next week. Oh, which is epilepsy and nutrition, just so that you know. Remember, it's epilepsy and nutrition next week.

Love it. Love it.

See you over on the bit on the side.

The other side.