RawSafe Tuesday night live: Lumps and Bumps

Lovely.

I'm alive. Hi guys.

Everybody.

Hello.

Hello. Hello.

Hello. Oh, it's always good to be a minute late just to keep them guessing as to whether we're attached or not.

Yeah.

And I always love it when it takes a few moments for the number of viewers to actually come on as well.

Yeah.

We're a bit slow, but they're even slower than us. So I think we've got some excuse.

Rachel Mack is 6th today. Oh, Rachel, come on, you're dropping down the ranks. Normally you're first, you were 3rd last week, I think. Oh yes, disappointing.

A few thank-yous to say to various people tonight, but we'll get into that, that's fine.

Yeah, um, I, uh, I had to— speaking of, just, I mean, it's very topical, but I had to send Dudley off for, um, I didn't send him anywhere, I brought him. He had 2 lumps on his chest, very topical for what we're talking about tonight, and I knew about them for the last 4 or 5 months until the groomer said, "He's got 2 lumps there on his tummy." I said, "I know, I just haven't been looking at them." Very kind of Irish thing to do. It's grand, just don't look at them and just leave them there and don't annoy him. And so eventually I just started feeling a bit guilty. And then once Elaine said, "I really think you should bring him down to the vets and get him checked out." So he got a biopsy last week and she said, "Look, I don't want to preempt anything, Bush," 'cause it's good news that when I took the sample, it was kind of oily. It felt oily, the sample. She goes, that's good news. So I thought, oh, I'll take that to the bank because one of them she said was quite movable and one of them wasn't. So that's a very topical conversation, which is why this lumps and bumps thing is going to be really useful to me tonight. But before we get into that, anything exciting this week that somebody wants to divulge?

Or I've got a couple of things to talk about, guys. The first is I was at Dogstival for the weekend and the number of people who came up and said they found us at Once entertaining and educational was really fantastic. People would come up and go, I'm a real fan, it's fantastic, thank you so much, you know, you've helped me, my dog, my— you know, it was— it's really, really gratifying. So we are doing some good, guys. I'm pleased to say it is wonderful. That's nice to hear. The other thing I was going to talk to you about is I've just read this, and I just— there's a, there's a questionnaire at the beginning. So if I can steal a couple of minutes, I won't take you through all of them. There's, there's 13 questions, and I got 10 out of 13 wrong. Okay, so I'm just going to run the first few. This is a book about how actually the world is not half as bad as you— as the media makes out. Okay, here's the first question. In all low-income countries across the world today, how many girls finish primary school? Because that's an indicator of progress, I guess. A, 20%. B, 40%. C, 60%. Everybody have a little look. Have a— what do you think? So A, 20. B, 40. C, 60. Low-income countries, girls finishing primary school.

I have to admit, I've read this book, so now I'm just gonna— I'm not gonna think so low as to get all the questions right and brand wrong. It's not— this is not my time. Leading, not today. Okay.

Oh, go on, go on. I think you should go first and then I'll be going.

Okay, so everybody's saying kind of 20 or 40, and that's exactly what I would have said, guys, except Mindy Nelson Stapleton has got it right. It's C, 60% of girls in low-income countries finish primary school. How cool is that?

I think a lot of them finish primary school and it's at that point that the prejudices come in and they fall out of being able to go.

Is that not the case?

Oh well, I can— well, okay, no, no, I can go a little bit further than that. Uh, let me look here. Bear with me, we're not going to have any dead air. Uh, oh yeah, here we go. Uh, worldwide, 30-year-old men have spent 10 years in school on average. How many years have women of the same age spent in school? A) 9 years, B) 6 years, C) 3 years. 9 years, 6 years, 3 years. If in men, 30-year-old men, 10 years in school, what is the figure for women around the world? Guys, everybody watching.

See, I wouldn't be surprised if that is where they fall off because that's primary school ends.

Okay, so Brenton, what are you saying?

I think, let's go 6.

You're going to go 6. Everybody else? Michelle says 9 years. Mindy says 9 years. Angela says 9 years. Lynn says 6. The answer is 9 years. So actually, it's really similar to the men, which, which again is why this lovely book is quite reassuring. Because if you, if you, if you just, you know, read The Guardian or something, you'd think that, you know, uh, we're the most educated country in the world and everybody else is, you know, eating bread and water. That is very, very, very not the case. So there you go.

That's it. It's a cracking book. It's like, it's like, it's a breath of fresh air because at the moment we are in a society where everything like negative news gets clicked, you know. So if the Guardian online— everybody will be guilty of it because they have to try and replace the lost income that is newspapers, which were there for the people. And now they have online kind of platforms where you're competing for eyes. And negative stories— we heard a negative tweet travels 6 6 times further, 6 times more, whatever. So you're surrounded by negative stuff, but that book flips it on its head and goes, guys, there has never been less murders, there's never been less hunger, there's never been less— boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Halfway through the book, you think, I feel amazing. You're getting up in the morning going, I'm not listening to the news this morning. It's there to make me feel agitated and annoyed and that things aren't great. And we lucky pigs living in this beautiful— we are so lucky. If you haven't been imprisoned or tortured or, you know, starved or molested or kicked out of your house, you are top 3-5% and we still will find something to complain about. So that book was a revelation. I strongly recommend that book. It's fantastic.

Yeah, don't we love to bury ourselves in first world problems?

I mean, I think our brains are wired for negative stuff because like, you know, that's dinosaur poo, start running, you know. So you've got to be aware for negative stuff more than positive stuff. Like, that must be it because you're trying to keep alive. Now it's like You're just buried into this little stressful thing, and next time you— next thing you know, you're, you know, sitting in the sitting room with the windows.

I know that Conor was watching the, uh, Jurassic Park: Lost World on Saturday night instead of the Jubilee celebrations.

Oh, I tell you what, not on BBC One, we went to see Top Gun: Maverick.

Amazing.

Fantastic. Even if you don't like Tom Cruise, even if you're not really into into planes. It really is a rollicking good movie.

See it in the cinema. I mean, there's a bit of cheese at the end, double cheese, but, uh, I just thought I was just— I couldn't even eat my popcorn.

I want no spoilers. I'm being taken out to cinema this weekend. I'm not going to be corrupted by— I want to relive— what was it, 1989, the original?

Was that right? Yeah, 30, 30 years ago it was.

That's just from earlier, wasn't it?

Yeah. Listen guys, we better get into it here, like we're 10 minutes at the end. Yeah, lumps and bumps. Before we get Patreon.com/RawPetMedics, that's where you'll find us. Thanks for everybody, it's been good lately and the support is very much appreciated, so it definitely helps this side. So thanks very much to everyone on Patreon.

Thanks to everyone.

Tonight is a bit lumpy.

We do appreciate, and we do appreciate you coming up as you did to Nick and saying how much you enjoy us. It's great to hear some feedback from you guys, so thanks again for all of you guys that come up to us. I've even had people locally saying, recognize you?

I was at Flogitude last week. I didn't want to be with Nick's story because our festival was probably a little bit smaller, probably the Irish version of whatever one you had. But it was packed, it had a heap of people, and I had two people come up, you know, they asked for a photograph, and I'm like, a photograph?

You don't even know that photograph.

I mean, sweat marks on my arms going like this after talking for an hour. She goes, I just love pet medics. It's like, oh, that was so nice to hear. There you go. I think, I think, uh, yeah. So anyway, listen, um, who doesn't love a groupie? So, uh, lumps and bumps tonight. Where do we start with lumps and bumps?

Okay, I'll tell you what, I've got some stats for you, uh, really remarkable. I just had a look 20 minutes ago at these. So, uh, here's a paper, uh, let's have a look, uh, by Sava February '22, and in the introduction he says, in a remarkable thesis of how cancer was transformed from an obscure and mystical condition to a medical problem, Koblenz notes that the death rate from cancer in people increased almost 20-fold between 1850 and 2009. Now, is that unbelievable, or is that unbelievable? And in dogs, the figure is 1 in 4 dogs will at some stage of their life develop neoplasia. This is the AVMA, who you can kind of love and hate at the same time. And almost half of dogs over the age of 10 will develop cancer, which is a frightening statistic, which is kind of worse than humans even. I think that the statistic is that dogs are the, the most cancer-prone species on the planet.

Yeah, I mean, without being able to light their own cigarettes and pump in all the various chemicals that we know we shouldn't be doing and eating or drinking and ingesting on a regular basis, dogs don't get any of them. They only get what we give them and put into them, and they get way more cancer than humans. They get way more cancer. I mean, that is striking.

So let's go back a moment because let's think about the diets, because Is it not the case, you know, for ourselves, even though we feed ourselves so much junk, because we do, quite frankly, you know, just because we've been led astray, but yet there are enough of us at least intermingling that with some good diets that actually up to this 2009, how much of the majority had switched to a convenience food for their pets just because that's what we'd always been taught as you know, going to be complete and balanced and all of the other myths that we've dispelled. Nearly said something else. And, you know, ultimately that is where we're at. Is it not indicative that these dogs that are being fed these convenience diets are being pushed down a route to certain disease?

Well, I've got some stats on that, guys. There's a wonderful guy called Thomas Sandberg who I interviewed actually on Georgia a couple of years ago, and he's got a website which is called longlivingpets.com, which is A, very interesting, and B, he's always keen to raise money to help him with this project. And he is doing a 30-year project between the year 2000 and 2030. So he's, you know, two-thirds of the way through it now, and he's got at least 6,000 raw-fed dogs and cats from around the world, and he's following those over the 30 years. Obviously, some will die as the years roll by, and And his experience is that in the normal population, the incidence over 10 is 1 in 2. But within his raw-fed population, because he's following it and he's asking people, has your dog got cancer, have they not, he found that the figure is something like 3%. So it's a remarkable change, even if you look at the lower figure of 1 in 4, so 25%. Throughout their lifetime, 25% down to 3% in the raw-fed population. I think that that's really, really very funky.

Really interesting stats as well. If you look, there's a link I've put up on Facebook to Horizon from last night, which was, uh, about a lady who suffered from cervical cancer, and she was talking about even though she had some fairly radical surgery, did she make the right decision? And there's a lot of discussion about stats for various cancers and stuff out there and looking at, is it always right? There's, there's some interesting stuff about actually only 4 to 5% of cancers respond well or are helped by chemotherapy. Yet we grasp for that because it's what we've always been taught. There is lots of information about actually how many people, when, you know, found through, you know, they died through trauma or, you know, road traffic accidents, they looked at the stats for the number of people that actually had cancers undiagnosed but were living happily without any treatment whatsoever. And it was really interesting to see. Just so watch that program because there's some really interesting stuff.

So look, you've mentioned that word neoplasia. What can you tell us, Brian? What What is neoplasia? Why does, why does cancer form little lump and bump? Of the first most important lump and bump tonight, what is neoplasia? Why does it do this? What is this out-of-control growth that is a tumour?

Neoplasia is cancer, by the way, guys. Yeah, so we're clear.

Yeah, yeah, that's what we need to say. It's basically, rather than a normal turnover of cells, the genetics that switch a cell off and tell it to die, okay, so that it can be replaced by a fresh cell, gets interrupted. And what ends up happening is that the parent cell, the old cell, stays in place whilst the new one pushes in. And if that's a really rapid process, then that grows really rapidly. And if it's a slow process, it stays really small for a very long time. That is neoplasia in a nutshell. We need to probably resolve a few misconceptions of What is metastatic cancer? So that's where things move from the original and actually spread through either— well, 3 ways: through the blood, through the lymph system, which is a tissue fluid drainage system, or along fascial planes. So that's the sort of areas between muscle sheets, the fibrous planes that cells can move along. So those are the 3 sort of main areas that metastatic spread— to spread away from primary tumour is. That's often mixed up with just how malignant a tumour is. So, a malignancy is just how aggressive, how invasive that tumour is into the surrounding tissues. So, some very complex thoughts there. So, you've got a benign lump, which is very just a lump. You know, it often will sit quiescently, maybe grow at various rates, but doesn't really shift from where it is. You've got a metastatic mass, which has spread out, so it's shed cells and spread them out around the body. And then you've got a malignancy, which is where it may also metastasize, but it will generally be about how aggressive it is to invading surrounding tissues.

Okay.

And so, Leslie Dipple has just mentioned that— Leslie Dipple, by the way, was one of the people who came along and said how much she enjoyed and was entertained by the Raw Pet Medics. And she has rightly mentioned The Cancer Code by our good friend, friend Jason Fung. That is an absolutely dynamite book. I could not believe my eyes when I read that book.

It's fantastic.

It's a game changer.

When the vet said to me a couple of days ago, taking the biopsy from Duddy, she's feeling the lumps, okay, and you're hoping for a lipoma, which is this fatty lump that you see on some dogs, and we'll talk about that because that's an important lump or bump to talk about but the vet wanted to just straight away, she said, okay, you know, this bump feels quite rigid and that's a concern compared to this bump here which I can move around. She goes, I'm less concerned about that one. What's that about? Why would a cancer bump be— why is that more rigid and the lipoma more movable? Lipoma being the fatty lump that older dogs tend to get.

So when we talked about how malignant a tumor is or benign a tumor is, so if it's benign, it often will be within a a walled-off area, and it won't be invading other tissues. So it'll be more mobile.

Okay.

Whereas if it's quite malignant and it's invading surrounding tissues, it becomes more fixed to those tissues as it reaches in and claws into that other tissue.

Interesting.

It can be mistaken occasionally if a lipoma is actually underneath a muscle layer, then it can feel like it's quite fixed, which is why doing the tests are necessary to sort of determine what's going on with that. Okay, so I'll let Nick go first.

Okay, I would say at this stage you can't tell what the tumour is pretty much by looking at it or even feeling it. And I think that with the vast majority of tumours, you need to get a needle into that tumour in order to do that initial— it's called a fine needle aspirate. What you do is you put put a hypodermic needle into— it's the simplest test in the world, and you can do it on a conscious dog in most cases. You put the needle in, you pull back on the syringe, and some of the cells enter the tip of the needle. And you then take out the needle and you squirt those onto a slide, which you can then put under a microscope or send to a laboratory for them to put under a microscope. And I think that unless you you either know what the lump is because there have been lots before and it's behaving in exactly the same way, but even then you can't be 100% sure. Or unless you don't want to know what the lump is, as, as Conor was saying, you need to get a needle into any lump that you don't like the look of, or your vet doesn't like the look of, in order to say, is this a tumor? And if so, is it malignant or is it benign? Is it going to spread or is it going to be just sit there and just grow a little bit, or is it just a cyst or just a lump, you know, bit of gristle or something like that?

I think it's— what's a cyst?

A cyst is an enclosed part of the skin where a gland is feeding into a contained reservoir of tissue. So basically it's like a water balloon, and they will usually be full of either liquid material or kind of Philadelphia-y, kind of pussy sort of material.

And basically, this is full of sebum.

Yeah, I get one behind my ear, guys. That's really weird. I get these, this little round lump behind my ear, usually stressful times when I'm working my ass off. 2 or 3 of them. I went to the doctor one time, he goes, that's nothing. And I said, no, I wanted to go away. And he goes, it'll go away eventually itself. But he says, I can take one or two out, he says, but they'll just come back. This is a little thing. And I actually got one there a couple of weeks ago, a little small little round thing. It was 'Oh, don't say that. I just thought you couldn't see it.' She goes, 'Oh no, I can see it's a little red.' And that's a— so that's a cyst, and that's my sebaceous glands filling up this little thing. And, and then eventually it bursts, which was very enjoyable. And but it was, it was like bloody stuff and stuff, as opposed to— yeah, I thought it was going to be like—

sure, sure you're not suffering from tubercular boils?

Would you show us and maybe have a little squeeze of it on camera?

So apparently there's a, there's a section of the population that love that sort of stuff.

So, oh, definitely. I'm not, I'm not one of them. I used to live with a girl who was a nurse and she just used to love popping spots and blackheads. Oh my gosh. Anyway, very handy to have around when you're in your 20s. Um, Nick, you mentioned there, uh, oh, your lumps and bumps, if you don't like the look of it, isn't that the key thing? How do I, as a layperson, and all these other people here, they see a lump or bump, they go, when do you start getting worried about a lump or a bump?

As soon as you see it, I would get it checked because until you or your vet can develop x-ray vision, you've got to get it checked and you've got to get a needle in it, I think, you know. And it was really interesting, I used to do, when I was doing a fine needle aspirate, I put 2 or 3 and I thought I was being very virtuous doing 2 or 3 needles into this, these lumps of any description and Then an American girl came and saw practice with me. Becky, if you're watching, hello. And she said, we were taught at college to do at least 8 needles. And it's very logical that if— because if you do, the more you go into it, the more your, your sample is going to be representative of the tumor itself. However, the one downside to fine needle aspirates, for example, with mast cell tumors, which are potentially very nasty, is that once you start sticking needles in them, it is like poking a hornet's its nest. So that's the downside for me of fine needle aspirate, but that's kind of 1 in 100.

That sounds very much—

and actually, well, let's, let's talk about mast cell tumors because I think that's, yeah, a really sort of notable thing about mast cell tumors is their fluctuation in size because of the histamine release.

Yeah.

So what they may, they may be first seen as something that's even 5mm across. But what will happen is that they get knocked, they release histamine. All of a sudden, the edema, the fluid that builds up around them makes them swell to, you know, 3, 4, 5cm across. And then it fluctuates. So it'll then, as the histamine subsides, it'll go back down. So if you've got a mass that's quite small but is getting this big fluctuation, absolutely do as Nick says. Get that checked out, talk about the fact it's a fluctuating mass. I think, yeah, very nasty tumors, we get very aware of those, but it's not necessarily sort of fitting with the rest of all of those lumps and bumps from little warts. And getting 8-needle samples from a 3mm wart, I think, is going to be a challenge for anybody. I think, you know, that there is a difference. I think when we start to see something that's very much in the skin surface, of dogs, definitively, then I'm sort of, I'm always of a mind to monitor them, find out how quickly they've come up, you know, whether they're growing rapidly or not, to make that decision about how quickly we pop a needle in to check it out. I think with cats, slightly different. I would definitely say for cats, especially if they're sun worshippers, just as with us, they can get tumors, especially squamous cell carcinomas of the ear tips. And the nose. Any sort of areas of crusting on the nose, on the bridge of the nose, or on the ear tips, definitely, definitely get them checked out by your vet sooner rather than later. Because those are—

What I will often say to, yeah, I'll say to people that if you've got a lump and you're monitoring it, when do you get worried? You know, you take it to the vet and they said, no, I think it's a lipoma. When do you then change your approach to that. And I say if it changes in character, so if it changes in color or size or texture, yeah, then you reappraise what's happening. Okay, that's a good thing.

Really easy on skin, but lumps and bumps like us, okay, so the more skin you have out like me, so you've got to be more aware of the sun. And when you get a lump or bump on the skin and you look at— they're the sort of tips that most people are aware of. If it changes in in shape or color or, or it's got a crust on it or bleeds, you know, it's like, okay, shit, this is different. So there's an interesting question, uh, do dogs get skin cancer? Totally, yes.

Skin and soft tissue. Skin and soft tissue. I've just had a look, uh, skin and soft tissue are the most common cancers that we see.

So yeah, but they're totally covered up, like, so is it just like completely localized on their nose and not like They wouldn't get skin cancer on their back and legs if they're completely covered.

So the thing is that obviously we think of UV being a stimulus of skin cancers, you know, just an aggravation. But you've got to remember there are so many other chemicals that they're in exposure to, that they're running through, that they're— and, you know, I was even— and thanks to Rachel Mack, she sort of raised this the other day, a really interesting point of up in the Hebrides and also down into Cumbria, just the level of exposure back in the '80s to Chernobyl, to the, the stuff from all that came over in the rain clouds because the wind was in the wrong direction for us guys. Um, you know, the level of radiation and actually the level of cancer rates, um, for all of those islanders and how high it actually is because of all of the stuff they were eating for local food and crops, um, and they're general exposure. So, you know, don't forget, even if you're feeding the most ideal raw food, don't forget there are so many environmental issues that we have in modern-day living that can still affect your pets and cause cancers.

It's interesting, after Chernobyl, um, the IRA here in Ireland, there was chat that we were more worried about your Cellophane and we thought, okay, if anybody was going to plant a bomb anywhere, Cellefield would be a great spot for it. But the problem would be is that we would get a belt of it here on the east coast of Ireland of any damage that happens. So that would be a little bit self-destructive. And around the Chernobyl kind of worst of the Troubles times, we got iodine tablets posted out to our house. I don't know if that happened in Britain, but it happened in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Every house got an iodine tablet just like that, a packet of iodine tablets. Most people still have them because who takes iodine tablets? But, uh, but they post them out lickety-split. I thought, isn't that interesting how quick the government can act when they just thought, well, this might be a risk and these might help, as if like, you know, a big green cloud is coming towards you. Where are my iodine tablets? But like, isn't it interesting they could do that, they couldn't send you out a few vitamins or minerals during COVID I thought, whoops. Anyway, um, we are— it's now half 7. Can I move on from this, the cancer boom?

I've just got one, one thing. I'm just going to jump in, uh, Talking about chemicals, try and avoid the chemicals that you can avoid. Yeah, obviously you can't avoid plastics in the water, microplastics in the water, you know, estrogens in the water, la la la, all that sort of stuff. But what you can avoid is the overuse of toxic pesticides where possible. You can minimize the use of those, and you can minimize the use of worming products. By using people like wormcounter.com who don't pay me anything to say their name. There are others, FecLab and Westgate are others.

What chemicals around the house, Nick, you're talking about?

No, not even chemicals around the house. I'm talking about the wormers for dogs because many practices will encourage very routine worming even though most adult dogs don't have worms. And I think we need to check in order to be safe but also the routine use of flea and tick products even when it's not tick season, or even if you're in an area where you— where there aren't really many ticks.

So, and this isn't just, uh, uh, us being weird, this is actually something that's been put out by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and the British Veterinary Association, as you know, please, please be careful with how much flea and worm stuff we use. So please, you know, don't think it's weird and wonderful. It really should be mainstream and you should be talking about it.

I thought Habib's book, Habib Becker's book, Forever Dog, did a good job on the environmental chemical kind of aspect where he said like, look at the chemicals around your house, the crap you put in your grass, like the stuff around your garden, house, scented candles. You wash your floor in anti-life and then that dries up in 10 or 15 minutes and turns into a powder and goes into the corners of your house and your dog's got no hands, he's going around sniffing up all the time. So they're more prone to these chemicals and they've got a higher content of these nasty chemicals in them than we have because they're closer to the ground and they get it in the face all the time. So they made a very good point of why it might be the kind of window dressing, because I blame diet and all the other parasite control and stuff, I blame overuse of all that, but all that other stuff adds up. You know, we're still using Roundup on the streets here in Ireland. Those guys are going out with a little cloth mask on and they're spraying the streets and around the trees. There's no weeds around trees and it's like, this is where kids play. This is like, we drive past this, the dogs are sniffing up the corners of the streets. So there's a heap of chemicals around the house and home that can be replaced easily. Probiotics as opposed to anti-life on your floor, uh, that kind of improvements.

But, um, glyphosate in the States is under many lawsuit actions for this exact reason, you know. It's, uh, it's out there.

We're on, we're on the Habib Show, aren't we guys, on Sunday at, uh, 4 o'clock?

Yeah.

4 o'clock. What's it called? What is—

what's it called? Uh, what's this— what's the show called?

It's not Inside Scoops. I can't believe you guys have it on the headline.

You've got about 4 or 5 social accounts and I followed them all. To my credit, I followed them all, but I can't remember the names. I've got the Rodney Habib and I've got Planet Paws and I've got everything. Anyway, uh, so that's going to be great.

Yeah, if you want an extra dose of 3.

It's less good for the American population, but, but, uh, Khabib will be there, so he'll be able to— he's a voice of reason among us crazy Europeans.

He knows, he knows how to run a show. So, uh, that's gonna be great, guys. 4 o'clock on Sunday if you want to check us out on Planet Pause. Um, listen, I need to move on from these lumps, from the, from the cancer lumps and bones, because there is a million other things we can talk about Can we talk about lipomas and warts? They're the two most common lumps and bumps, although we could get into some of the more juicy ones that I do want to mention. But let's start with lipomas. Lipomas are— and what can we do about them? And we've got 3 or 4 minutes for each one of these.

Brad, you do lipomas, I'll do warts. How about that?

Okay. Yeah. So lipomas are effectively a multiplication of the adipose tissue, the fatty tissue within the body. The same things that I've talked about with cell multiplication happen, only actually because of how those fat cells work in laying down surrounding fat, that's why they can be a little bit more squishy. So they tend to be like a stress ball sort of squishiness, and they quite often will grow in the subcutaneous fat tissue. So they'll be underneath the skin layer but over the top of the muscle. And that's why they tend to be mobile. Quite squishy. They often are benign, but it usually is the fact that they will grow in areas of high motion. So if you, if you get them under the armpits or in the groin and they start to cause friction, that can be more of an issue. If they are growing just on the flank or on the chest wall, then, and once they've been diagnosed and you know that they are lipomas, okay, then you may just monitor them and make sure they don't get infected, they don't cause a problem. It's not something that I would cosmetically remove unless it's actually an issue.

Okay, why do we get them? What's, what's the crack?

I'll just say to Bren, have you ever tried belladonna for treating lipoma?

I've tried pulsatilla, actually. I find that's been quite useful for especially Labradors with these fatty lumps. But that's— it is actually in the, the materia medica for soft multiple fatty lumps.

Do you put it on the lumps? Do you feed it to the animal?

No, it's given as a remedy orally. But I tend to now go far more down a certain method called Ramakrishnan's plussing for these, just to treat them. Reduces risk of aggravation, but it actually also means that you give them an underlying predisposition, you know, to create cancers. You can give them a remedy around that intermingled with that more sort of local remedy for the type of mass that's appearing.

And can they be reduced, lipomas, by these?

Yeah, I see many of them at least stop growing or shrink, and that's great. Okay, as far as I'm concerned, the thing with lipomas it tends to be more of a cosmetic thing for many people getting their heads around, you know, that they've got some lumps and bumps on their dog. And, you know, we as a society seem to be almost opposed to the slightest risk that something might go wrong in the future. And it's that risk aversion that we've probably got to get over tonight, that actually, no, look, they can live with these happily for a long, long period of time. This is not going to be the thing that causes the demise of your pet. Leave them alone. Because sometimes invading and trying to remove these, all it does, it's just a symptom that the body has been exposed or has an issue going on that needs to be corrected. Why don't you start to address that rather than trying to just remove the cosmetic outlook?

Do you think that, that raw-fed said dogs have less lipomata— that's the plural of lipoma— do you think that the raw have less? I think they do, but that might be just wishful thinking, and I've never really looked at the population.

If what Bren is saying is true, if it is like, you know, let's say a toxic thing, because that would be like if we're not quite sure where these come from, because this is a quick, quick, quick, uh, little read about them, and nobody ever tells you where these come from. Why they got there, and there's a few different solutions that, you know, you probably wouldn't recommend too many of them. But so there was the complete dearth of information of where lipomas come from, that some breeds might suffer them more than others and all that nonsense. But like, it's interesting that Marissa asked there, are they painful? I don't think they're painful, but I think it's just a cosmetic thing. But if they— if it's the— if the cause is toxic stuff, okay, well then why wouldn't cutting dry food out of your diet be your number one solution? You've got to reduce your amount of your toxic load. My God.

So you've got genetic predisposition because definitely there's breed predisposition to these, but it will occur in all breeds. I think diet, absolutely not more than the fact that if you cut out glucose going into the diet, you're going to starve those cancer cells or slow them down. So, you know, you've got that element of ketogenesis, let alone cutting out all of the processed horrible oils and stuff like that that may be going into into the food. But you've got environmental stuff. As Nick says, cut them out where you can. But actually, you know, in modern-day life, can you cut out all sorts of radiation that we're exposed to? Uh, can you cut out all sorts of chemicals? You know, Roundup, you're not in control of that. That's the council, that's the farmer, that's, you know, other people. You cannot wrap yourself in a Michael Jackson bubble tent and expect to be able to live your life and not be exposed to things. It's not going to happen.

Okay, that's a fact.

Yeah, I completely agree with the reducing kibble. Here's a stat for you, and even the NHS have got this on their website. It comes from a study. In fact, Conor, we saw this guy in Helsinki about 3 years ago. Remember when we went to Anna's for the conference? There was a French guy stood up and talked about ultra-processed food, and they've done the study.

Yeah.

And in this study, and this is absolutely mind-boggling, just sit down everybody, each 10% increase in ultra-processed food is correlated in humans with a 12% increased risk of cancer. Yeah. And we feed our poor— we don't, but many people do feed their dog 100% ultra-processed food, and we wonder why 50% of them are getting cancer at the age of 10 or beyond. You know, it's— I think that's just a whacking statistic.

Crazy. And the solution is veterinary diet, high in carbohydrates, ultra-processed. How could that ever be a solution to cancer in a dog? Imagine having cancer-formulated dry food. I mean, it's just insane that that's not the time to start thinking about diet. So, Nick, we've only got a few minutes left, so tell us about warm warts. Uh, what is a wart? Why are they so gross? And what can you do about them?

What's a benign— they're a papillomavirus that if you get a tiny little nick in your skin, the papillomavirus, they love when skin, uh, heals. They, they, they, they jump into that wound and they, um, they overproduce tissue. So which is why often in children and old people or in immunocompromised people, you'll get warts. It's a classic. And I can talk about this because I had warts on my hand. This is my hand, and I had warts over here when I was in practice. I'm talking about 12 or so warts. You know, maybe it was the stress of being, you know, the first few years in practice, because let's face it, that is very stressful. But, and I tell you what, I tried everything. People would come in and say, oh yeah, you rub it with a piece of meat and then bury the meat bury the meat, or you rub it with hazel twigs, or, you know, every week one of my clients would say, oh, have you tried X, Y, and Z? And then somebody came in one day and said, what you need to do is you just need to chop a clove of garlic and rub it on the, on the warts. And you know what? In 2 weeks, the lot disappeared.

Ah, that was one of my tips.

I love it when he steals it from you at the end.

I love it.

It worked that quick?

It worked in weeks. It was just— but it may have been just— it was— we caught them at the right time. It definitely wasn't— they were not going anywhere. They were there to stay. So it was— it may have just been me and garlic. It may have just been we caught them at the right time. I don't know what, but it definitely made a massive, massive, massive difference. There are chemicals that you can use to put on them. You can take the dog to the vets and they can freeze them off using carbon dioxide. Side, um, as well.

Those things now, the little can sprays that you get, which, uh, you can freeze the warts and verrucas off. You can get them from the chemist. But I would say Thuja tincture, so Thuja officinalis as a mother tincture, um, painted onto the warts, pretty much like the garlic, um, I've also found really useful, um, in those circumstances.

The, uh, there was other— I was looking for, uh, kind of natural solutions to, um, to, um, warts. Anyway, Healthline did a nice article on it, but the top 2 or 3 that were coming up repeatedly— the number 1 was raw garlic, pop it on it and leave it on. Some people are saying leave it on for a little while, put a stick of plaster around it, and then take the plaster off after a while. Apple cider vinegar, not quite at its full strength, so 2 parts apple cider vinegar to 1 part water. They said it's acidic, it does the same job as a lot of the acids they're trying trying to sell you. And you'd pop it on and you'd leave it on for hours and then take the plaster or bandage off. And you'll— then you let that dry out and you get to scraping, then you do it again. It's like, oh, okay. Raw garlic. Bee propolis was a third one. These are the ones that they had a few— that they had a study or two for. And I was thinking, okay, it's getting a bit weaker now. It's not getting any better, Nick. This is going to get worse. Tea tree kind of worked. Here's a great one, that duct tape. So duct tape was found— yeah, I swear to God, there's 3 studies on the use of duct tape to sort out warts. And one of them was— believe it. I swear to God, one of them, it outcompeted cryogenically sorting it out, and the other one, they said it found no difference between it and cryogenically freezing it off, which I'll take because it's— I'm telling you, it's a bit sore when you're doing it that way. I had it as a kid. But I don't know. And then there's another smaller study, probably by Mr. Duct Tape, which was pretty pathetic, but it also worked as well. They start off with a little patch and they cover it over. It's like this idea of smothering it with a piece of meat. And I can't help, Nick, But when people come in and they're giving me these ideas, I bet you they're outside going, I'm after town and put a piece of meat on it and bury it in his garden and he's gonna do it. What a dope. Well, maybe that's what the duct tape thing is. He said to put it on, to take it off. I don't have the exact process.

Did you also sell them to a witch for a penny?

Yes.

Running around naked around an oak tree. But, um, in the middle of Hampton Beach.

Too much information.

Yeah, but so the duct tape one was more effective than freezing in 2 out of 3 studies where they pitted them against each other. I thought that is interesting. Tested. I'm not sure the exact process, but if people Google and you tend to be a bit warty, give it a shot. There is many other lumps and bumps that we haven't even touched the sides of, guys. There is skin cysts, although Nick did talk about cysts, so let's skip past that. But kind of cool looking are cherry angiomas. What's a cherry angioma? Oh, are you stumped?

No, no. Well, I was just wondering. So angiomas is basically reflecting around blood vessels. Okay, so anything that's a benign growth around blood vessels will have an angioma on it. So if it's then in the spleen, you know, there might be hemangiosarcomas or angiomas. Okay, because they're benign, sarcoma is more malignant within that spleen. So all that you're looking at is you can get get sort of these smaller growths which are blood vessel related occurring on the skin, and just because they look like cherries.

I've seen it on the side of a dog's face before, a little red bumpy, looks like a little raspberry. And I've got—

and I just think in future we just also need to do— we'll do lumps and bumps for the mouth because there's a whole other thing that we need to know about when you're looking at lumps and bumps in the mouths. And I— we could spend another hour talking about that, so we'll do that in the future.

What are the bumps on their muzzle, the little tiny bumps where their whiskers are, but they're not necessarily with whiskers coming out of them? I've seen those tiny little bumps on the dog's muzzle. What's the story with them? Do you know what they are?

Maybe folliculitis?

Maybe just folliculitis.

Folliculitis, where a follicle— you've got a follicle there and a hair grows out of the follicle. Yeah, yeah. So what's really— this is not lumps and bumps, but this is really, really interesting. We have noticed with Bluebell, yeah, she's very short-haired, that normally her whiskers are back like this, but if she's really, really, really excited to see you, her whiskers will move forward. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Like an otter, they move forward like, like they're trying to feel, feel you. Yeah, isn't that amazing? Have you ever noticed that, Brandon? Have you ever noticed that with a dog before? I've never noticed it in my life.

I can't say I've seen that on a dog before. I've got, I've got one more frequently asked question, or not frequently asked question, table quiz kind of question here. Does anybody know what the bumps around your nipples are called? Bumps around the nipple, what are they called?

Brilliant.

Yes, I knew you'd like that, Nick. You love an old word or a name.

I do, I do. But did you know that most nipples are 12 inches apart regardless of what size you are?

How can that be?

So big guy, I'm not even going to talk about girls. I'm not going to talk about girls, but guys, get, you know, help when you're skinny or really, really big.

12 inches.

I think it's 12 inches, but it's a standard.

Is that how you measure everything, by the distance between your nipples?

I'm sorry, mine are only 10 inches apart. What does that mean?

Or maybe it's 10 inches.

You're prone to exaggeration. It must be 12 inches. It's the same distance as this.

I really hope your nipples aren't 12 inches apart, both of you, and I'm the only person with 10-inch nipples. Horrible things being found out about me. Anyway, the answer to the question, uh, about the bumps around your nipples— so the, the brown areola is the brown area around your nipple, okay? And the bumps are called Montgomery glands, clearly named by a British man. I mean, if ever you've heard of it, Montgomery with a mustache.

Wasn't he a general in the desert?

He was the African— He was a clever guy, wasn't he? He was a legend. That guy did some pretty impressive tank warfare in the desert. So do you know what the Montgomery glands do? I should hope you do as two vets and me the non-vet of the group.

Release pheromones to improve the—

No, that's actually— Pheromones that say, "Suck here." No, that's what someone said the bumps around your nipple are.

We know that there is a glandular release around, you know, the dog's nipples for the puppies. That's the whole point of it.

Montgomery glands do. Now you're on target. The Montgomery glands release—

You said I was purely guessing.

And you said pheromones first. Come on, Brad. But this is actually to moisturize the nipple. That's what the Montgomery glands do. And I thought, okay, that's kind of interesting. Moisturize the nipple because, you know, pheromones. Enough. Uh, but then I'm looking at my own nipples as I was reading this, having a good look, and I've got these bumps around my nipples. Tell me I'm not the only man that has bumps around. Like, I understand, okay, you know, when they were designed, the men and women in front of the mirror massaging your nipples to try and work out whether they can see bumps around. Not this again. Um, but yeah, so like, why would we bother having bumps around our nipples? What was the point? Who's sucking my nipples? You know what I mean? You know what I mean though? What is the point?

How did you take this off in such an obscure direction? We were having a serious discussion.

It's a very serious— I wonder why men are born with nipples at all. I'm sure everyone, like, I've wondered that. But to even have the down to the bumpy bits, it's really weird, isn't it?

I thought anyway, do they do the same thing in men? Do men have Montgomery glands?

We have Montgomery glands, but I can't ever say I've ever seen my nipples moisturized by them. My nipples are feeling very moist today. Jesus.

All we need to do is we need to start giving you a load of progesterones and estrogens and then see how well you start to produce milk. Let's see what happens. Men don't ever still get breast cancer, you know. We actually have all the organ tissues that are there that are necessary. The difference is the hormones and how those are released by our ads.

So interesting.

So now the fact is, the fact is men have got nipples but they don't need them, you know. So yeah, so that will be because of what, the Y chromosome, I presume? Something like that.

And give us something else like a can opener, you know, beer bottle opener, something useful. Nipples, utterly useless. Um, so look, I've got other lumps and bumps here.

I'm glad you didn't say that to your mother.

Um, I've got other bumps here, but I can't really pronounce them. Uh, dermatofibromas, different types of fibromas. Does anybody know? Does anybody care what a fibroma is? I don't think it's just—

it's just the tissue type. It's the fibrous tissue. Okay, so that's a certain cell type that will produce fibrous tissue. Normally the oma is really where you're talking about more benign growths. Okay, so fibroma fibroma, it's a fibrous tissue benign growth.

Okay, but get them checked, get them checked.

Anything you don't know that until it's looked at under the microscope. So you can't look at it externally and go, oh, that's a fibroma, you know. No, that's diagnosed once somebody's looked at it under a microscope, seen the fibrous cells and seen the way they're reacting and the fact they're not invading surrounding tissue.

Cool boys, look at this. This is, this is gold. Catherine Alderson says, and this sounds very good, nipples are created before sex organs in the fetus. There you go, that embryology. Brilliant, Catherine, you're an absolute star. Star.

Yeah, there you go. I remember what the hormones do to them afterwards, that's what makes the difference.

Yeah, yeah, I remember having a look at scan of my first, my first kid when she's been born, Holly. Boy, or well, obviously she wasn't, she was 20 weeks old, and the first scan. And, uh, I was kind of saying, oh, you know, I have a doctorate in biology, I think I'll be able to tell the difference between a boy and a girl, let me see the scan because do you want to find out? Elaine wouldn't let us find out. I said, show me the scan, I'll be able to know, as if I would know anything. And I was looking at the scan, and on the way out she goes, what do you think it was? And I said, it's a boy. And she goes, and she just smiles and kind of winks at me, and I just thought, yeah, she knows I'm a legend at biology. And then when the baby was born, and she looked exactly like Dad. She had like a comb-over and a big red face, and she was angry. I said, geez, that looks like Dad. He's like Dad, and he, he, he. And then they took Holly away and put her in the little Perspex box and cleaned her off. And I said, oh my God, he looks exactly like my dad. My dad had died 5 years before. It's like, oh my God, Elaine, this is amazing. And after about 10 minutes, someone said, why do you keep saying he? And I'm like, because it's a boy. And she goes, no, it's a girl. Watch, because we've been telling you it's a girl.

That's the umbilicus, it's nothing more.

They are identical at 20 weeks. You wouldn't know because just a little bump that I thought was a willy and it wasn't. It was this. So there you go. So, uh, you don't know much, Conor, as it turns out. But, uh, there you go. So that's brilliant. That was an interesting one, guys. Good.

I hope a lot of you guys out there, um, Got lots of information from that. Lots more information. There is another link to a previous cancer talk that we've done, so that's up there for you guys if you do want to refer back to that. Lots more information to come as well because we've got to concentrate on cancer. It's such a big thing in our pets that we really need to talk about. Yeah, things in the mouth I've talked about already. Then we need to start concentrating a little bit on some of the internal organ stuff. You know, I had some clients talking about anal gland tumors, and we've got to talk about how to maybe deal with those, etc.

But yeah, next week there must be a heap of stuff we can talk about in the mouth. And I mean, have we even done teeth that much?

I mean, teeth and lumps in the mouth.

How about that? That would be kind of cool. Lots to go on in the mouth. And actual science of how all that gingivitis stuff works would be pretty cool.

Yeah, that sounds really good. Um, can I just do a plug? I'm going to be in London on the 18th. Sally Tobin, thanks for reminding me. I am the world's worst publicist, uh, at the Natural Pet Healthcare Show on the Saturday at about 12 o'clock or so. I'm going to be doing a presentation on raw food. That's great of them to invite me me along to that. So if you're in London, if you fancy coming along to the Natural Pet Healthcare Show, it'd be great to see you. Great to see you there. And so next week we're going to be doing teeth and lumps in mouth.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. Mouth ailments, that would be good. There's another lump— cold sores. That's another lump or a bump. That would have been nice.

I don't know, that's viral.

Okay, yeah, it's still a lump.

It's still a lump. Well, you've also got urticarial lumps, so we could actually do another— give it— let's give it a month or two and we'll do another— we'll do another turnaround.

Pustules.

Oh yeah, zits.

We should have talked about this. I actually got it. I got a little red— like, I don't get many spots. Never had— I wasn't a spotty kid. Well, I swear to God, I'm doing— getting my webinars up on the website, and like, I'm— how often do you have to shoot stuff at home? Not often. And it's like, okay, the 2 or 3 days— I'm going away, by the way, on Thursday for a couple weeks. I told you that, guys. I'm not gonna be on Raw Pet Meds next week. I won't be here for teeth. I'll have to think about that. And so anyway, so webinars, and I was shooting a couple of webinars. I swear to God that I wake up in the morning, big red spot on the side of my nose, and then Holly— or mom had to— mom, Jesus, Elaine had to put foundation on it to hide it. So there's another lump, an angry little red lump that never really turned into a spot, and it's just sitting there for the last 4 or 5 days. I'm like a bloody teenager going around the place apologizing for my exist.

Same as these things behind your ear.

Yeah, talking to people like this all the time, it's really weird. I have to get a nose chain and hook it to my ear so people just think it's normal that I have these things. But, uh, yeah, big zit. Oh, that's really annoying. Um, squeeze it, says Sue. Yes, thanks, Sue. I have been, I have been squeezing it, but nothing, nothing's coming up, Sue. But I'll keep you posted on Facebook.

It's the worst thing to do with these. Get yourself sorted How? Yeah, get yourself one of those facial steamers and all of the other bits. Get your oil sorted.

Yeah, okay, man, maybe.

Yeah, anyway, we'll, we'll see whether it's flared up for Sunday on Inside Scoop.

Salicylic acid. Oh, that's the one they use for warts, Gabrielle Joy. I'll give it a go. I'll lash it on. I'll let you know if it burns my face.

I'll be very cross because I have to get these done because we'll be laughing at him on Sunday.

At 4, big red patch here. Well, the Salas didn't work anyway. Um, right, so guys, um, that was good. I'm sweating here. I have to go into my kid and read her story, so I better