RPM Facebook Live: Itch 2 Back with a vengeance!

My name's Nick Thompson. Over on the far side, we've got Brendan Clarke, and in the middle, we have Dr. Conor Brady. Gents, how are you?

I'm great, I'm great. Nothing can be wrong on a sunny day. It's just, honestly, I was born in the wrong climate. I think I say that all the time, but I just, I am unputdownable on a sunny day. Yeah, I'd say it's nice. Are you digging around in the muck still, Brendan? The nice, in the heat, big redneck?

Yeah, that's what this is, it's mud. Yeah, it's just like Yeah, no, the garage is just about deconstructed now. We've got, um, you know, earthwork starting. Oh, it's just—

yeah, deconstructed, that's a very posh way of saying knocked down.

Well, I'm waiting to start eating out in these restaurants which do deconstructed apple pie.

I was—

I was eating those on the way to you.

I had my first meal outside a restaurant there recently because Ireland's a little bit behind England, and, uh, so we've got our dining going on, I don't know if you guys wear shorts anymore. I don't think anybody wants to see 60-year-old legs, but mine are 40 years old, so they're still very tolerated. So I was, uh, I wear shorts all the time in the heat anyway. And so I was down outside this restaurant and, uh, my prawns pil pil come, and first of all, they're soaked in boiling vegetable oil. And after reading that bloody Catherine Chandler book, you're looking at it now going, actually, I am not in— like, mentally, I've switched off. Look, I'm not going to be bursting that book to people, What— here's what happened. I'm sitting there, my two kids are behaving, and we get our food, and we're eating the food, and it's great. And I'm wearing my shorts, and I love these shorts, but then Elaine was pulling off the tail on one of the prawns pil pil with a knife and fork, and like a child, she just pulls off the tail and oil just spills out of the thing onto my shorts. And now I'm after taking my shorts out of the wash, and they've got a stain where you don't want a stain. I was planning on wearing these shorts for the summer, which Elaine says is perfect.

You've got to deal with the incontinent 40-year-old.

So to anybody listening, please, guys, you know, we give you a lot. So if anybody please has any tips for removing oil from shorts, I need them badly. I can afford new shorts. It's just I love these ones. They're my favorites. So if anybody knows how to get cooking oil out of shorts—

Dr. Conor Brady, that goes on one of these radio programs, always talks about vinegar. Maybe this is a new use for apple cider vinegar.

Yeah, I can try vinegar. Yeah, I'm worried that I'm just going to have the thing covered in mayonnaise and peanut butter and everything before the end of the night.

Okay, here's my thought. You get brown paper and you iron it. You iron the brown paper to soak it up.

That's a good idea.

If anyone's got any other thoughts, yeah, they're all saying vanish.

Vanish.

Karen Reed, cheeky monkey, says tripe.

Tripe.

You don't think that's going to work, Karen?

I was trying to be really holistic. They all come in with Just get a proper clue.

Okay, thanks for the tips anyway. How'd you get on, Nicole? Anything exciting happening to you this week?

Uh, yes, something not half as exciting as the stains on your trousers, obviously, Conor. Uh, but I've just, you know, I've, I've, I went away with the family for the weekend and it was the most glorious, uh, sunny days and we were with, you know, 6 other families and we had a week and we were playing rugby and we're playing cricket and it was all very, it was amazing. and I had a 3-hour journey there, 3-hour journey back, and so I've got a lot of the way through this book. Sorry guys, it's yet another book, but it is, it is, it's as good as Shanahan.

Whoa, is that why it's better?

This popped up on my Facebook stream as an advert for the book, and I— or something like, or on Audible, and I think it knows Oh yeah, we're sharing our room.

Oh, you're serious?

Yeah. When you listen to this, like, either— so one of two things, Nick. Either your kids had to listen to this for 3 hours in the car, or you had your earphones on and you weren't talking to your family all night. Which one was it?

We had to go down in two cars because the kids were finishing late and I had to go down and put the tent up.

Oh, lovely.

So I had the whole car to myself.

Nick, hold on. Put the tent up. I saw the video. You've got a pump in there and you set it going and You sat back in the car?

What?

Yeah, I should play it. It came out of a suitcase, didn't it? This is like— we have to put that— the video up of you, uh, of you doing that, Nick.

There you go.

Check this tent out. I want—

he has to learn how to reverse the, um, the video so that as he goes up rather than him letting it down.

Can you believe he's taking the thing down?

We're going to be telling our kids—

work out whether the kids were inside the tent when he was doing this.

It's the quietest they've ever been. Look at that.

20 seconds to deconstruct.

First time we're gonna be telling our kids, um, back in my day there was poles and strings and pegs, and you never had enough pegs. And if you took off the side of your soaking wets, you'd put your little brother against that. And it's like, oh my God, tents were hellish.

Anyway, proper canvas in my day.

Sorry, could I, could I start off on the itch, if I could be so rude? Oh, first of all, before we go to itch, I just want to say, uh, first of all, thanks to everybody on Patreon, uh, it's our Patreon followers on Patreon, sorry, uh, they are the people that voted for itch tonight. And that's probably the way we're going to do it in the future because it saves us having to think about it. There are too many to choose, so we, um, so the guys voted for itch tonight. And so you'll find us on Raw Pet Medics on patreon.com. And, uh, guys, if you have the price of a cup of coffee to keep the show going. We really, really appreciate it. Every little bit helps. If you have it, great. If you don't, you're absolutely free to watch. There's no, no stress at all. We totally understand. And the other person I want to thank is Patricia Gettin and her group Raw and Holistic Cat and Dog Support Group. And everybody knows I'm a massive fan of this group. It's the only group that I've ever been an admin of outside of my own. And so like, there's just a couple of things that are slightly different about this group. Because Trish actually provides a free service where if you say to her, I'm looking for a natural vet in my area, that's her thing that she likes to do. So off she goes with tail wagging and she'll find the nearest holistic vet to your house for nothing. So you just join her group and you ask her, and then they start building up a huge, huge database of natural vets, which is the first thing I like about them. They also have a buddy scheme, so people that are already clued into raw help newbies and they are signed on to them, you know what I mean? So it's just a really handy way of helping them so you don't get the same kind of new questions onto the page. So it's for really interesting questions. And they have a list of kind of natural admins. Just to quickly name them, there's me, there's Dr. Erica Halliday, there's Dr. Eileach Fishburne. Everybody knows those three, well, those two. Karen Rosenfeld is a phenomenal source in natural kind of thought. You should check her out. Ivana Hulub, Rita Hogan, and Jackie Gowland. I couldn't get into the bits and pieces about what they do, but guys, check out the page, Raw Under the List of Cat and Dog Support Group. Patricia, thanks for your help. She's also going to be on the page tonight, but, uh, really helpful for newbies that have questions. They might have the answers. Check them out. Thanks for your support, Patricia.

And just say on Patreon, uh, Patricia, when I did the, um, the poll, itchy dogs were way more than everybody else— 73 versus 35 for protein versus 17 for heart disease. However, they were all quite popular, I feel, um, and for 125 votes, that's, that's probably over half of our people on Patreon. And Patricia said itchy dogs and skin issues is the number one issue in her group, and she's got, what, 28,000 people?

39,000 now.

Oh, well, there you go. So the next one on the list was protein and then heart disease. So should we do it in that order? Should we do protein and then we'll do heart disease? Because somebody else has said they really wanted to do heart disease.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, those two are so just delighted to be talking into them. So protein next week, that decides, and we'll just do the poll every 2 or 3 times, 2 or 3 weeks. That makes sense. And then hitting them all the time. Yeah, okay, cool. Let's do that. Okay guys, tonight is itch, okay? And we've already covered it before, and you'll see it back through our Facebook videos. Just search on the Facebook page Raw Pet Medics and search for itch, and you'll find the previous video. So we've gone through some of our main tips and tricks that how we would deal with it, but that doesn't mean you pick the thing that's most likely going to knock off as many things in front of you. So it makes little point— I heard somebody pulled up their grass and it fixed their dog's chronic itch issues. That's amazing. I think what a Herculean effort, but it's not the first thing that lady did. The first thing is you go through the basics and you hit them again and make sure you haven't strayed into some mistake. In my opinion, I blame everything on food first because in my opinion, the majority of cases it's right. You get these issues coming to you dogs with recurring skin conditions and they have this allergy test and NASA-like reading with like, you know, environmental allergens, well, sycamore trees and dust mites and pollen and flea allergies. And when you fix the gut and get them stabilized and healthy and robust, those things just evaporate. So the word allergy just isn't correct there. So I kind of go that from the inside out. That's where I'm focusing. I'm not always right, but that's where I start because that's where I'd be strongest. So in that respect, when you're watching the previous video, please remember to go through your foods, move to single protein as Nick will push. Okay, that's a— that is solid advice here. Single protein foods, change your supplier, go to the same single protein from another supplier, but move through it every couple of weeks. Be a scientist, keep your notes. Is this helping? You know, move through your supplements if you want, reduce your supplements. We're inclined to dump a lot of stuff in. And finally, don't forget yeast, which at the heart of it is a gut flora, gut issue as well, food issue related. So you're gonna have to need to knock out all the carbs and sugar from that dog's diet. And there's a couple things you can put in that yeast doesn't like, which you've already covered. A little bit of crushed garlic, a little bit of dried olive leaves, some basic kind of yeast 101 things that can help. But it may be that's another show, to be honest with you. But they're the top 2 things I'd be talking about. I just wanted to finish after just re-enthusing about all I think about diet, is that atopy, asthma, and particularly hay fever is on the rise in humans over the last 20 to 30 years. I'm just reading this off the screen if I look a bit funny. And the main question was, is it due to more— is it more pollen in the atmosphere due to global warming? Is that why seasonal allergies are on the rise? And what the bit of literature that I'm looking at this afternoon said was that pollen season is getting stronger and longer. A recent study found that pollen season increased by 20 days annually between 1990 and 2020, while pollen concentrations in North America increased by 21% over the same time period. So they are getting stronger and longer, these pollen seasons. If it was a pollen issue in your dog and you've focused on food and you've gotten all those bits and pieces right and it was definitely seasonal, we're going to talk about some natural treatments that we all love and that kind of stuff that can help, then, you know, if it was a pollen issue, then things like covering your air conditioning vents with cheesecloth and indoor air purifiers and stuff that chronic hay fever sufferers have to use can alleviate that issue. However, the most recent study on this states the reason for the increase in atopy and hay fever in humans is unknown. Our data suggests that it's unlikely to be an increased exposure to specific allergens such as pollen because sensitivity to both indoor and outdoor allergens have increased. So that's kind of interesting. They had a quick look at what was causing all this. So in my, in the back of my head, I am just thinking we are getting more and more chronically inflamed and this is not helping us deal with seasonal allergies. So in the same way that when you get a dog with this nasal ingredient of environmental allergens and you fix the food ones and get the gut happy and robust and these other ones melt away, I have in my head, and I'm sure this probably isn't right, lads, but this is the way it works for me. I had like, your immune system is like a force field. You have so much of it, and if you are bombarded with cereal-based dry food and too much pesticides and just stress and an injury and all sorts of bad teeth, God, on and on. Then that's going to go, and then any sort of challenges becomes just a stressor for the immune system, and it has this hyper response. That's the way I think about it. So I think if I can pump up that immune system and make things normal again, that these everyday allergens that the dog should be able— they should be able for it. And that's what I'm personally seeing when I do these kind of recurrent skin and gut issue things. And that's the way I think about it. Might be a bit simplistic, but that was my experience.

And Shanahan would say that it's in the human sphere, the reason that we're getting sicker, that we're markedly sicker over the last 30 years, is sugar and vegetable and seed oils, which are screwing up our immune system. So if you're— if you don't—

she does, she does qualify that it's processed. So yeah, heat-treated and processed oils.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's difficult to get them any other way, so just, yeah, keeping it simple.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh, That is ruining our immune systems. Yeah, it's aging us. Yeah, it's putting us in the ground.

I think a lot of our feeders will say that.

I would come back into what Conor was saying, and actually it isn't necessarily choosing that single source protein, but moving those dogs onto raw, a good raw chosen diet, which is from pasture-fed animals with loads of nutrients in.

Exactly.

But actually it's it's that bit that does the maximum change for improving the skin rather than necessarily the fact that we've isolated them down to single proteins.

That's cool.

Actually, if you look at the studies that show, um, the, um, the amount of skin disease which is down to allergy, relatively speaking, it's quite low compared to things like parasites, which we talked a little bit about last time and, and certainly is, is top of the list. 80% of skin disease out there is on parasites. We're going to touch on that.

Tell us about that, Nick. Like, I mean, we dealt with parasites last time as it might be a cause of itch, but like, we didn't really get into like natural treatments. Like, these are raw feeders on here and the raw feeders are saying we're not putting vegetable oils and sugar in, guys. We've done the single protein thing. So, so next thing you look at will probably be parasites. So what about that, Nick?

It would be parasites. Okay. So there's a few natural ways to cope with fleas and ticks. None of them are as good as the Bravectos, the Seresto collars, the Advantage, the Advocates, okay, but they don't— they're not toxic, they don't have a list of side effects this long, they don't damage the environment, which I think is key. Yeah, when you put something on or in your dog, you are then going to be ingesting that in a really small way because whenever you stroke Imagine you put some advocate on your dog, okay, on a Tuesday. You then stroke the dog on a Wednesday and pick up an organic apple to eat. That organic apple is no longer organic because it's covered in a tiny patina of pesticide.

Yeah.

And that terrifies me. The bee populations are coming down.

Totally.

Yeah, they're coming down dreadfully. Insect life that, you know, insects are every day.

Water life.

A branch of insect life is being killed.

So we have some streams— sorry, rivers and streams. Remember those warnings around San Francisco Bay? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think we need to think about not just the dog, although if your dog's got fleas, you've got to get rid of it. You've got to think about your family, you've got to think about the environment, you've got to think about the ecology. So that's just a preamble really. But okay, so what can we do to avoid the pharmaceuticals. We can just, just use the pharmaceuticals when things are really, really, really bad, yeah, because we've— when we've tried everything else. And the trick when you've got fleas and ticks is to get in early and to go in really, really hard. The topicals that we use in my practice— and Brendan, you may have others— the topicals that we use here are cedar side. Cedar, C-E-D-A-R. Cedar, like the tree. That in my world means tree.

Yeah, it's a tree. All right, before you know it, it'll be like— this is like an animated dance.

Well, it's a bit like— it's like playschool, isn't it?

Yeah, do your fleas.

Hey, see, this is a tree, children. Okay, cedar side. It's just everybody says cedar.

What do you mean?

How do you spell cedar? I say like the tree.

Oh, cedar.

Yes. Okay, so cedar side, like pesticide, cedar side, it's a spray. You can buy gallons of it. So if you've got lots of big dogs, that's probably the most economic way of doing it. If you've got smaller dogs, there's a fantastic product, but by my wife's company, which is called DermaDog. I have to say this because otherwise I won't get any dinner. And it's called—

you have to declare your interest.

I do have to come to clear my interest, always being straight. So DermaDog insect Defense Spray. I can go and get you an example when one of the other two guys is having a chinwag. So that's to treat on the outside. To treat on the inside, there's a product called Billy Nomates, which has been around for probably about 10 years now. It's got a very good reputation. There are other— others— Pro Dog Raw has just come out with one called Keep Off Me, which is really quite a strong garlic and ginger and brewer's yeast. It's really quite pokey.

And there are one another one called Tick Toff, I think, is apple cider vinegar, garlic, and echinacea, probably fenugreek and all sorts of things.

And Tick Toff is really popular. That's Jo Arbon, holistichound.ie. Check her out, she's cool.

Okay, cool, cool. Okay, so these are the herbs that you put in the food, no harm to anybody. And actually, they're very good for you because they help with the gut and the blood and circulation and all sorts of things. Okay, so there's a lot to be said. Not only do they kill, but not only do they deter the fleas and ticks, they will, uh, they make your dog better. Okay, so the final thing is, and this is a little bit left field, but there are— no, there's two things. One is, one is a bit left field. It's called EM. As in electromagnetic, EM beads. These are tiny little beads that people with, uh, with, with fish, with, um, tanks of fish, they use it to cleanse the water. Okay, but it has been found, and I've got some very sensible clients who I trust who live in the New Forest who, who use—

in case you don't know, that's what we're talking about. Oh, that's a flea.

Nice. Graham is showing off his technology.

Yeah, lovely.

Oh, it's moving!

Oh yeah, look at that yoke!

Look at that!

God, I don't like that.

Okay, and these beads, what you can do is you can get them and you string them together, string them around the dog's neck, and my clients claim that that has kept her dogs flea and tick— ticks primarily because they're rampant this year. Apparently it's a really bad year for ticks, so anything you can do to avoid them is a good thing.

I wonder what's behind those, those colors. I want to know about that. I want to know more.

I don't know. I've looked into it and there's no— they talk about all sorts of things, always electromagnetic waves and what have you, but from a ceramic, tiny ceramic tube?

Yeah, it might be. I mean, I think a couple of people just put up a couple of things there, Nick, as you were speaking. There was just loads of recommendations coming up Somebody said diatomaceous earth. That's brilliant. The reason I like diatomaceous earth is because it kills, it kills things mechanically. Other topical chemical treatments kill things chemically while this kills them mechanically, kind of chokes them up a bit. Now it's a very fine dust. It's essentially the White Cliffs of Dover. Do it outside, you know, that kind of thing. I'm a fan of it. Bren is doing the plumber's draw, we call that. When you— how much is that going to cost? Okay, I love that would have been a meme. Now, Bren, you are going to criticize my product live on air. What do you not like about DE, Bren? Codex food safe.

Yeah, absolutely safe as houses, but I just have, you know, and some of the guys in the comments are saying, you know, variable response, and actually, you know, the whole stuff about choking fleas up. No, it's supposed to be about does it grind them down, does it interfere with some of the pathways and stuff, but unfortunately, I would always say test then treat, okay? For all of these products, no matter how holistic, how chemical, always test then treat, okay? Comb through. I think I've done a video on one of the Facebooks and things like that about combing through, what you're looking for, making sure that you— if you're thinking it's flea dirt and you want to differentiate it you know, sprinkle it on some white tissue, drip on some water, carry on combing through, and then if you, you know, fold it over the tissue, you come back and there's streaks of red. That is flea dirt. That is your pet's blood, whether it's cats or dogs, okay. That's your pet's blood passed out in little comma-shaped bits of dirt, which is then effectively the food for the little intermediate stages, so the nymphs of the fleas, okay. The the larvae. So that's what they eat on. So, you know, ultimately, that flea feces is gathering in your pet's bed, and that's where all of the off-stage larval stages are, and they will eat that flea dirt, and then they pupate and become adult fleas.

And it's the dirt that they have a reaction to, isn't it, as opposed to the flea?

No, no, not always. The dirt obviously is just another element that's gone through the fleas. Okay, the flea bites, the saliva of the flea, that often is the biggest influence of allergy for those dogs that are allergic to fleas.

You'd think they'd have a bite that doesn't alarm the immune system, wouldn't you? Like a tick.

Many dogs, they don't. Many dogs don't react.

But also quite the opposite. They want to evoke a response of bringing blood to the surface. They want to cause inflammation so that they can suck the blood. Okay, they can suck the tissue fluid that comes with effectively that reaction.

That's really good.

Thing is, if you, if your dog hasn't got ticks and you're going to, to the woods where you go every, every weekend, you can't test because you won't find the ticks until you've been to the woods. And therefore, something like the DermaDog Insect Defense or the Seaside is good, or the— just as an ongoing thing, I will give it from about Easter to about October, or, you know, first see any ticks, crack on.

I hate that.

Lyme disease is the biggest issue.

I'm just going to say, yeah, but it's only in a rare amount of ticks, but it's on the march. Ticks are on the march, and, uh, and that's just the way it is. Like, Lyme disease is to be respected. Something near and dear to me, I went through it, so I can— I know a couple of my friends, in fact 3 people I know. So to be respected, I, I hate ticks a lot, so I actually put a free tick remover tool in the things that I send out. But I posted on ticks 2 weeks ago, and, uh, DermaDog came up. Nick, you'd be delighted to hear. I said, guys, who's in— I don't want to hear from people that aren't in ticky areas. I want to hear people in ticky areas, what natural products have you had success with? Because it's going to be different for every dog as well. It's not always going to work, so you're going to have to change. So a good few products came up, but I got a hot lead on geranium oil, and somebody posted up a cool study on geranium oil that actually gets into the dermal layers and spreads like flea treatment would. And so in a way, it offers you that similar kind of protection. And in studies, it shows it's really, really effective in a lot of dogs. Not all dogs, but for ticks, it's really, really effective. So geranium oil, and DermaDog definitely came up, lemongrass. Oh, she's got rose geranium. That's it, that's it. There you go.

So check it out. So the other one we use in practice is the lavender and rosemary oils. Oh yeah, we generally would take 3 drops of each of those aromatherapy oils So these, if you don't want to, if you want to prepare it yourself because you've got aromatherapy oils at home, you basically 3 drops of each into a cup of water, you take the flea comb, you give it a thorough whisk through that, and you comb it through. But I would say with any of the aromatherapy oils, including the geranium and the rose oils, is offer them to the pet first. Put them on a cloth in their favorite bed. If they don't sleep in their favorite bed you know, they don't want to be anywhere near those oils. Please don't put them on your pet. You should look at some of the alternatives because that's a little bit of zoopharmacognosy that we've talked about before. But actually, you know, for some of these, they are therapy oils. And if you're applying them to a pet that doesn't want them, doesn't need them, or they may be contraindicated for the other issues they've got, you could be making their other health issues slightly worse. So I would say with any of the strong aromatherapy stuff, really offer it up to the pets first. Don't just blunder on in there. But I absolutely agree, Nick. I mean, we now broadcast around the world. There's people in the States, you know, North America, there's people down, um, you know, throughout Europe. We've got to remember it's not always, uh, looking at Lyme disease. There's loads of other tick-borne diseases. And absolutely agree, for ticks slightly different situation. You need to look at those protections. Luckily in the UK, if you're not on the west coast, so you're not in the Highlands, Lake District, Wales, down onto, you know, Cornwall, and then across the south coast, generally we're not too bad. Certainly we're really fortunate in the Leeds area, very unlikely to come across Lyme disease as a major issue. But where you are going to tick-borne areas, you're going to have to make that hard choice about giving a treatment. And I would— then the last thing I would say on this for the natural treatments is not necessarily just relying on one thing, but maybe considering a combination of them, of the amber beads, of the ultrasonic repellent.

Good idea. Does, uh, does—

okay, that's the ultrasonic.

Oh, cool. It works for the house.

How much success do you find that in its own right? Have you had people come back and say, yeah, this on its own has been brilliant, Nick?

I would always use herbs on the inside. I've used herbs in the food on the inside. I would use like Intake Defense spray on the outside, and if necessary, I would use that. Really anything to keep away from the pharmaceuticals.

Absolutely. I'd rather the tix than the Advocaat. I'm thinking, yeah, that's kind of close to the truth. It's not just Lyme disease that ticks carry. They call it Lyme disease and co-infections because it transmits a raft of different infections. It's not just Borrelia or whatever it is. There's a great tip there from Rachel Mack. I don't know if it's true. I'm just reading out some of the ones I'm finding here. A lint roller post-walk to catch any ticks that are crawling. That's a pretty good idea. So if you're walking in woods, you're supposed to cover your legs even with tights, you know what I mean? The thinnest layer will stop them from latching on. But that's why—

I just think of men in tights now, that's like—

that might happen now they're going for pairs of shorts. So I think, yeah, so like you kind of, you should be covering up your legs at a minimum when you're walking through woods. That's something you need to get prepared for, but your dog can't do that. So you do need to be tick aware for yourself as well because your doctor is not going to diagnose a tick bite most of the time. And even if, even with people with Lyme disease struggle to get a definition, get a diagnosis. And just before we bust on to the tests Bren, somebody just posted back there, and it's quite typical, something you hear. June Kershaw said, I've tried absolutely everything. You know, she's done the single protein diet, she's watched her vaccinations, doesn't chemically overdo anything, and she's tried absolutely everything, and still her dog is very bad. And she made something that kind of puts up my, my spidey senses, and she said, but still my dog is itching, her skin is going bald, her skin is starting to flake. And when I hear flaky skin, I immediately start to— if I see a dog chronic itch and a bit of bald and a flaky skin my first thing is it might be yeast, okay, because yeast is chronically itchy and it's hard to put back in the box just because you're doing everything right. It doesn't go away by itself. And more to the point, it is so cheap to find out. If you're down the vet, ask them to swab the dog. They'll tell you if it's a yeast issue or not, and then you can ask your vet for advice on how to fix that. But maybe we should do a yeast kind of show, lads, and get your opinions on it. But what are the other causes when you see flaky skin going bald, flaky skin, what other things?

Like, you want to remember, you know, the itch can be exacerbated by any number of things, but certainly secondary infection. So where the balance has been disturbed from diet or whatever else the underlying inflammation is, and then you get secondary infection, that can set off a whole other raft of immune-mediated responses and inflammation, and that can be itchy in its own right. So, you know, look at the bacterial, uh, issues, look at the yeast issues, and then look at the bacteria. You have to get those back in the box before you can, you know, totally address the itch. And this is why some of the medicines that are out there also fail to work. You know, there's a monoclonal antibody now used, you know, Cytopoint. And one of the big things, you know, people come to me saying, oh, it's no longer working. And there's a couple of reasons. One, it could be that the dog is now effectively wiping out that drug. But the other big one is that they've actually picked up a yeast and bacterial infection, and that's not being addressed, and therefore the Cytopoint is not going to work any longer.

Exactly. Yeah. So, Ben, so someone turns up to us and they've got— they want to do a food allergy test, they want to— or not just an allergy test, they want to find out what's bothering this pet. And there's a range of options, and there's a lot of confusion over what works and what doesn't. This was a slide that we did when we were all— that was our first seminar together, guys, if you remember 4 or 5 years ago. I put up this slide for the allergy testing. This was a study by Bethlehem in 2012, and they said— they concluded after looking at the allergy tests, at patch testing, which is this one, and blood, they said a positive reaction on a dog with these tests is not very helpful. So if they identify an issue, oh, you've got a problem with protein, that's not very definitive. For example, if it's done with blood, it's maybe 35% right, 15% if it's IgE. In other words, they're very low readings for blood. But if they're negative, in other words, if the protein didn't turn up, if the, if beef wasn't on the list, or pork, or chicken, or whatever environmental allergen, well then for patch test, if it didn't elicit a response, that's very, very reliable for a patch test. The problem with a patch test is it's kind of gruesome. But the serum, the blood test is only still at best 80% effective if it's not on the list. In other words, these things aren't definitive. So, Bren, where are we with allergy tests?

And can I just clarify, Conor, are you talking about patch testing for food or patch testing for indoor allergens like house dust, or patch testing for pollens?

Allow me to check, because what do you think?

The simplistic way I look at it is that, that patch testing or blood testing for indoor allergens, house dust, or outdoor allergens, pollen, is pretty reliable. But any test there is for food is not reliable, as you see there. So I suspect those figures are for food testing.

Okay, that's interesting because that's the peanut test for people is definitely a skin allergy test. That's the standard that they use, isn't it? Is, have you got a peanut allergy? Right, let's do the peanut allergy test.

Yeah, but that's because peanuts will provoke an anaphylactic IgE, and so maybe going in the skin you will get a good reaction, whereas with—

so mast cell response is through IgE. And this is what also alarms me with this, is that they're looking at the IgG levels, and that's misled loads of vets to say as soon as the IgG levels are up, let's call it an allergy to that thing.

I thought that was definite. I thought that was definitely—

IgG is exposure. Okay, so what, what we do with desensitizing vaccines is actually you drive the immune response towards IgG so that you reduce the IgE response, and therefore you desensitize the animal. So this is why it is so important that your Understanding. So this is, you know, guys, you know, I always say to everybody out there, you know, at least, um, you know, tests are at best a guide, at worst terribly misleading. Okay, and there's a couple of reasons around that. Well, more than a couple, but I'm just going to go through a couple tonight. One is you can only test about 30 allergens tops in any of those tests. If you go beyond that with skin testing, you're at risk of provoking more anaphylactic-type reactions and things like that because the amount of stuff you're popping into your poor little dog, you'll have a patch both sides, all the rest of it. You just don't want to go down that route. So that is one of the downsides of doing the skin tests is that it's a higher risk because you're putting in some of the allergens. There's a higher risk of an adverse reaction. Taking the blood off, then again, they can only test with— and it's quite expensive, you know, we're talking £300 to £400 to do these blood tests because— and even then, to test those proteins, you know, they're looking at specific antibodies for those allergens. You're only going to get about tops, I think it's 20 foods. And for the environmentals, they actually split it down into trees grasses, and then other weeds they call them, but generally flowering plants, okay, and they will split that down, so you'll get about 6 or 7 of each of those, and then you get on top of that usually the house dust mites, the forage mites, the moulds, and then occasionally you'll get sarcoptes or something like that thrown in as the the sort of mite range and sort of autumn stuff that might be going on. So again, just right there, there's more than 7 trees in the world, okay, there's more than 7 grasses, a grossly misunderstood plant. So you just wouldn't believe the thousands of possibilities that are out there. So if you look at this slide, you know, we were talking just earlier about the fact that 15% if there's a positive result, it's only 15% accurate for the IgE. Why is that? Well, actually, if you find the one thing positive on that test, please don't think that's the only thing that your dog is allergic to, because you've just missed the millions of possible allergens that are also out there in its environment. Yeah, so you cannot, cannot make an assumption that you've hit the nail on the head with that one.

Yeah, I see a lot of itchy dogs, as do you, Brendan, and it's quite frequent that it's quite often they haven't had the blood test. You know, this dog will be 2 years old, it'd be really itchy, or been on prednisolone and Cytopoint and goodness knows what, and an antibiotic for an infection and washes for yeast and what have you. So we will change the diet and do all those things, but sometimes it's very orientating, it's very helpful for the owner to get a blood test to see. And I think that 19 times out of 20, they will be on those common allergens. Yeah, if it's worse in the summer, they are often on that.

I'm going to come to that answer to that query.

The thing is, if they're negative for all 20 indoor allergens and all 20 outdoor, you can't say that that is a clear test. They are not allergic to those.

And you are right, Nick. I just checked that study there, okay? And it is in the diagnosis of canine adverse food reactions. So you're spot on.

Okay, so testing for food is hit and miss. It's very hit and miss. Testing for indoor allergens— I always do this, point at the carpet— indoor allergens is pretty reliable, and for outdoor allergens it's pretty reliable, but it's limited. It's a limited test, and therefore, you know, if you've got 20 species of tree in your town and you only test for 6 of them—

yeah, like, they're just a dizzying amount of fungi just dumping stuff into the air every day. It's just, it's impossible to—

so there are a couple of other things that we just need to bring up because I'm conscious of time. We've got saliva tests from, you know, our friends over at Nutriscan. Okay, that's an IgA and IgM, supposed to also therefore be seen to show up contact sensitivity. So almost hypersensitivity reactions as well as true allergies. Okay, is how it's been put across by our great colleague Jean Dodds.

Yeah, she's back.

And there are a few other people that have thought that they've been sending off for a saliva test, um, and it's not actually been for those antibodies to be looked at, it's been for what we call a bioresonance test, and they've ended up paying, um, so the Nutriscan, uh, I think is in the region of £300. Yeah, there we go. But you will often find the bioresonance tests can be as low as £60. Yeah, I would say there are some great bioresonance people out there, but 9 times out of 10, I'm afraid, guys, we've come across people that if you send 2 samples to them, they will give you a pre-packed result, okay, send it out to you as to, you know, almost a sampler. And I am disturbed by how easy that is So I reckon if you're paying £30 to £60 for a test that's going to tell you all of the ins and outs of your allergies, your pet's allergies, it probably isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Well, you know what, I got caught with that, lads, so I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I got caught with you, Conor.

I promoted EasyDNA, and I shouldn't have named the company, so no offense to EasyDNA. I'm sure it's a very reputable company. I'm just saying that that's the guys I link to. And yeah, so, but the test is quite cheap. I did contact one of these Bioresonance allergy tests there last week, guys. I don't know if I told you, but so I just asked some very direct questions. I said, what's the difference between you and NutriScan? What's the difference, you know, if I was to send two samples from the same dog, am I assured I'd get the same readings and that kind of thing? And the answers were just absolutely not clear, not transparent at all. So I was not happy. I asked the questions again, they evaded them. I said, okay, gone. So I lost a lot of faith, but you'd already flagged that with me, Bren. And so, yeah, so now I'm taking— I recommend them, so I took them off my— I'm in the process of taking them off.

Did you send them two samples?

That was a hair analysis I did years ago. I sent hair analysis from the same dog an hour apart, and the readings came back— I mean, not even a bit, a little bit different, completely different readings. And, you know, I'm sure maybe the way I handled it and all sorts of things may have been the case, but I didn't realize the same thing was going on with— and I'm sure it's true to bioresonance just like everything else, and if it's used, done correctly by people. But I can't have faith in that at all, let alone these tests that we're looking at here. It's like, okay, I can't be telling people to go do these tests if I can't trust the readings. I don't— the only way to do it is an elimination diet. There's a couple of great points here for guys, from people. Therapy oils should be put into a carrier oil. Thanks, Jan. Eileen Davies says, heads up guys, real amber is expensive. So don't expect an amber color to be cheap. So that's a really good— that's a really good tip in almost everything that you do in the natural world. There is always a cheaper version of it. Remember when I made raw dog food, I wanted to put green tea in one of these products, and I want— I had a choice, €20 kilo or €420 kilo for my green tea. Both enable me to say green tea, but only one has active kind of bioactive compounds in it. That's the €420 kilo. How many people do you think are spending €420 a kilo on, on green tea in makeup products and that kind of stuff? That's the difference. So it's very tough to trust. So go by your reviews. Reviews are great. If something's got thousands of reviews, even Amazon's useful for that, and you can check out the reviews and then buy the product from the company themselves off Amazon. But reviews, people are smart, they're clued in. If the stuff works, you get the reviews. Once those reviews go to the 400, 500, 600, 8,000s, There's another really famous product that falls into that, and that's CBE. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, but another crazy effect, I think, guys— CBD for itch, would that be a good idea?

CBE or CBD?

CBD.

CBD for itch, there is work to suggest it.

It's all about the nerve pathways, and effectively it's blocking some of the itch pathways going through, so you reduce the itch. That way, as well as some of the benefits you're going to get from the oils itself, you know, the essential fatty acids.

Yeah, good for so many things.

Penny Lane says my cats would rearrange my face if I tried to spray or pat them with anything at all. What's the point of having cats? I don't understand why people have cats. No, I'm sorry, I love them, I respect them as animals, but it's like, I'm not just— if an animal's not even going to let me pat them, what is the point. Have them out the back, you know. Oh my God, a cat.

Okay, it's gonna be a week, guys, that Connor's not gonna be on here. We're gonna just—

I did live with a cat. I'm also allergic to some cats, but, uh, I, I, um, I did live with a cat once over in Australia, and he was, he was great, crack carrot. So I am only messing, sort of.

Um, okay guys, 1945.

Last tip. Okay, so guys, two tips for me, natural things for seasonal allergies. My two top tips at the moment are quercetin however you guys want to pronounce that, quercetin, usually with bromelain. So you buy that online, really effective for anti-itch and natural. Give it a go, try it on its own for a couple of weeks and see if it helps. And the other one is the nettle remedy. Fresh little green nettles, pick a few of them, put them in a mug, cover them with hot water, which kills its stinging ability, the formic acid bit. But there is a whole heap of stuff in nettles that are good, that are going to help you with your itch. It's kind of like venom and antivenom. You know, so there's a lot of truth to it. There was a great study backing it up showing its antihistamine effects are unbelievably effective. You can use a little bit of the tea or you can mulch it all up and keep them as little ice cubes and pop them in as food as you would spinach or broccoli. So, you know, there's a bit of truth to those sort of things. Any other very quick natural tips, guys? What would be your go-to for relief?

What about wilting? If you wilt nettles, because there's loads of nettles around at the moment, you just wilt them and put them in the food like you would spinach.

Oh yeah, if you just dry them out, it stops the sting.

Yeah, if you dry them, that would do it. But you just put them in the steamer.

Yeah, steamer.

Yeah, and then throw them in. It's just cheap spinach. That's a good one. Yeah. Homeopathics can be useful with pollen allergies, so definitely worth looking into that. So just wipe your dog down, and if necessary, wipe it down with some of Conor Brady's nettle tea when you come back from your walk so that you reduce the amount of pollen on the dog's paws, legs, belly.

Yeah, there's a lady there said, uh, what would you recommend? She's clear dog's got clearly got a yeast issue in the paws. Guys, I wish I had the product to hand, but I don't. There's a product I constantly recommend for this. I don't recommend products very often, but it's called Dermacin, and Dermacin is made by, uh, it's over in Czech, I think, um and you have to order it in, I'm afraid, but it's about €50. But it is a liquid that they isolated a yeast that lives on the outside of roots because think about it, roots are this soft little structure that live in the wet soil. So fungus will just have that for supper and they try. But all plants in Europe anyway house this little parasitic yeast, single-celled yeast on its roots that attack any fungus that try to attack the root. So that's how roots don't rot in the ground. And so these Czech scientists said, well, cool, we can take this and maybe use it to fight yeast infections. And that stuff— so they contacted me a while ago. You get contacted, I say yes to free things because I love free things. And they sent them out and I tried them. And the trial is up on my website. Now I can put it up on Patreon, I'll show you. But mega effective for— it's an oil that can go on the paws, it's an effervescent tablet that you can wash the dog in for yeast issues. If I had a stubborn yeast issue Dermacin oil or Dermacin oil or the Efresson tablet is a really good idea for that stubborn paw itch. It's a really amazing product.

And you know, if you don't want to buy a product but you've got it in your kitchen already because you're already feeding it to your dog, I found apple cider vinegar. Somebody, Lynn Hobbs, has just mentioned it, I think. You know, I have found, you know, bathing their feet down twice a day with that really affected to reduce yeast Even you can use it in ear formulations and things like that as well, you know, for yeasty ears. And we need to touch on ears are, you know, effectively just curved over skin, extra moist, extra hot. So you've got to think, you know, all of the stuff we're talking about for skin here is the same situation for ears. If your dog just has recurrent otitis, so ear issues over and over again, it may well need to be treated as if it's got a skin issue. It's just the fact that actually that area of the skin in the ear has been affected and actually showing the symptoms. Yeah, so do take all of the stuff we've talked about today and the last time about skin, about itchy skins, and you can use that for recurrent otitis.

All the stuff that I talked about keeping fleas off, I did a little the short post, uh, April 29th on Patreon. So you can, you can see it there. I had a client talk to me today. She said, I'm, um, I don't— I, I want to contribute to Patreon, but I don't want to be stingy. What's kind of an average contribution? And I said, I reckon it's probably about $5.

Yeah.

She said, you know, I don't know whether to give you 5 quid or 50 quid. I said, you want to give us 50?

Really great.

Give us whatever you're comfortable with, and the average is about $4 or $5, which is an expensive coffee.

Yeah, at the end of the day, I think it's what we're trying to impress upon people is what they're comfortable with, okay? Because some of the guys have been great, and I've seen some amazing contributions, and thank you so much for all of those. And, you know, for those that can't afford it and they just— they're putting in, you know, a dollar a week or whatever it is because we're around the world, then that's just great. It's great.

I just put up that coconut oil thing. Remember I promised I would do that weeks ago? Um, but you know, I spent a day and a half on that piece because I went down a total rabbit hole, uh, and it's really interesting. But you know, it's 2,500 words, and I put that up on Patreon. So it's because I know the Patreon money is there that I can sit there and give it a day and get to the bottom of coconut oil, uh, and wrote it, and I put it up on Patreon. And honestly, I wrote it in such a way that I thought this would actually be really good in the book. So if I was ever doing a 2.0 that's the, you know, so I like putting out quality content. I don't like doing rush jobs, but to do that, it does take me time to sit there and just totally zone in and do it because you gotta, you gotta be in a place to do that sort of stuff. So I put that up on Patreon just before we came on in case you started slagging me that I didn't do it. And so thanks. And once again, thanks to Patricia Gatton, guys. Raw and Holistic Cat and Dog Support Group, fabulous Facebook group for free. My god, they've got a massive bank of information. Just get on it and get help for nothing.

It's great.

So thanks to them for their support tonight. And right guys, and next week it's already been polled, so we know protein.

Protein.

I can't wait to do that because there's plenty of protein.

We've obviously been working on him because he's already softening to the idea of Feeding Dogs 2.0.

No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, that was just a way of getting the name of the book in there. I happen to be on YouTube.

Conor, if you could get the book done by Christmas, that'd be really good.

No problem. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'll just hide under a rock. No, I'm waiting for my hair to grow back after the last one, so I'm just— I need to recoup. Um, so look, guys, uh, that was great. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, really good. Yeah, we thought— we suppose we'll see you all next week, guys. Thanks for being here, it was great.

Thanks for all your feedback.

Keep commenting underneath the video if you've got any questions, and we'll see you for protein this time next week.

Yeah, all right, all the best, guys.

Thank you.