RPM Feline Fridays: Asthma

It's just like that, isn't it? It's just, I love to be coordinated.

Get it in time with the beat when the drums kick in. Oh, that was what that was? Yeah.

It'd be wonderful if it just would coordinate just perfectly, but I'm not an AI and I can't just be.

You try, you try. The mouse click doesn't work quite that way.

And we'll talk about mice later.

Anyway, hello everyone, we're here. Hello.

Oh, today, today we've got to talk about asthma. But, um, just before we do that, for any of you guys who want to support us, to join in, please do have a little look at, um, patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Information on there. We're going to be dropping some more feline stuff in following some of the stuff we've done today on asthma. So if you want more information, please do take a look at us there. Just for the price of a cup of tea or a gin and tonic at the bar. See, normally we say a pint at the bar, but, you know, obviously I'm acknowledging that we're in a more discerning audience at this time on a Friday. So gin and tonic Much better. And you can join us for more information all about raw and holistic health, but also a little bit about conventional health. And that's what we're going to be talking about in the whole. So should we kick off? I think, Julianne, you've had the misfortune, I guess, to some degree, of having a little soul that's suffering from feline asthma. So probably a really good perspective for many people out there to ask us about, and hopefully we'll give you lots of information of what your conventional vet may be approaching you with and what questions you might want to ask around that. You've probably got some really good insights in how to manage that conventional stuff at home because there's a behavioral issue about stuff over the face and things like that. And Amaya, you're going to have I'm waiting to hear the musical treatment version as well in this. I'm going to be asking you later because I know you've got a big thing about sound therapy. But lots of other complementary medicines as well that we're going to share with all of you guys watching today. Please do pop in the comments. We can see you live. Thanks, Heidi, for saying hello. If you want to say where you're from, just so we've got a spread of whether you're coming to us from the States or whether you're in the UK, around the world. You know, it'd be great to hear from you. So just pop in your comments as you're listening, whether you're on YouTube or on Facebook, we'll be able to see you pop up. And also whether you'd like to see us on Instagram, because that's something else that we're looking at. So we might just be crossing over the platforms. So, oh, New Jersey. Oh, you see, I'm already jealous. You know, we're on the wrong side of the pond. Um, so South Carolina. Thanks, Tracy. So yeah, good to see, um, where everybody's from. Oh, down in Texas.

Dallas.

Deep, dark South. Brilliant. Brilliant. So, um, where should we start? Where do you want to start? What's your biggest question that you had, uh, Julianne?

So I guess for me, like, it is, what else can I do? You know, I've said on here before, like, I'm a doer. You know, I like to know that I'm doing the best I can. Like, I'm I'm sure a lot of pet parents out there, you know, cat guardians, you know, you want to know that you're doing the best that you can. So we've got to a point where we are using conventional treatment. We've had to use a lot of behavioral therapy alongside that. I do always have my herbs down as well, which we'll come on to, but I'd really love to know, um, what, what else can we do? What are the treatment options are there? So like, I'll share a little bit about our journey and then I'll pass it over to you guys to share, you know, what other options that we have. So We had Leo from a rescue center. He was feral for the first 18 months of his life at the rescue center for 3 months, then we adopted him because he seemed quite curious with humans. They did a lot of behavior work with him. We had him, they advised us to keep him in for 6 months because he was, you know, he was very feral, and in order to kind of domesticate him to a degree, we needed to have him established in the home. So within 4 months of being with us, he started to cough in the home. Now, we've never really been a house with chemicals. You know, I learned about oils and self-selection with Pickles. So we didn't use a lot of products and chemicals and things. I didn't realize it was asthma. It took us a good 6 months to get a diagnosis. We had, you know, try an antihistamine, we'll try this, we'll try that, you know, without actually getting to the point where we did— and I might— I may get the name wrong, but we did the bronchial lavage, I think it was.

Yeah, bronchiolaviolar lavage. Yeah, basically A tube, for those people watching, for a tube that goes down the throat whilst they're under an anaesthetic, and we pump in some saline that flushes around the lower airways and allows us then to suck back and look at the cells that are in there to see whether that truly is consistent with an allergy or whether there is other issues that may be going on.

Bacteria. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely. So we had that done because when, when the vet would listen to his chest she couldn't, couldn't hear any, like, any obvious wheezing or any respiratory issues. But yet we— I had video footage. This is one of the things I would say to someone if you're not sure what you're dealing with, if you are concerned it might be asthma or a breathing issue, get it, get a video. Because it's all very well saying to your vet, oh, he's coughing, or he's wheezing, that looks different for every cat. So I managed to get video footage, showed the vet, and she said, you know, it looks like an asthma attack. However, I'm not seeing that present with, you know, presenting him when he's here on like on the table with, with the vet. So that's why we had that lavage done, and she said that, you know, it, it was, it was asthma. So I'm going to just pause there before I share more of the journey because then we'll talk about treatments and things. But I want to kind of come to you guys, you know, like Amaya mentioned about, oh, it could be a bacterial infection and things like that. So talk a bit about, you know, what are the, what are the signs can people look for? What other breathing difficulties could it have been?

Okay. So first of all, we have to differentiate from asthma and the similar other conditions, kind of bronchitis and others, because asthma is more like kind of an allergic reaction to, as it's properly called, right? Then you have other conditions that have similar symptoms and you have to make sure, you know, make a differential diagnosis to to be sure that it's asthma, because that's one of the biggest issues that people have. And if you have a bronchitis and maybe use steroids in a, like, say, okay, I think this is asthma, then you can do more harm than actually help. So it is very important to focus on the diagnostic parts and also invest in all this bronchoalveolar lavage.

Alveolar lavage.

It's really—

Easy for me to say.

Yeah, yeah. Spanish is the same thing, but in Spanish then, it's the same thing, just like that.

But the thing— and then you can do bronchoscopies as well. You can look into it. You can— I mean, you have to look because it's not that easy from the symptoms, and it's not that easy to— you can do images as well, but the patterns might confuse you. Uh, you're not always totally sure. So you need to gather a lot of information to, to make sure that this is the way to go. And yeah, so when you talk about infectious diseases, then you can look for mycoplasma, you can look for Bordetella, you can look for different bacteria. I really actually found weird bacteria that I've never seen before only by doing that testing. The lavage, and, and then the treatment changes completely, and then you might find an improvement that you weren't expecting because, you know, they were— they have been treated with steroids for a long run. When they come to me, usually that's what happens, uh, because I treat chronic patients and I, I'm not in a, in a normal practice, so I don't usually make the first diagnosis. So when they come to me, they're already, you know, been damaged.

And so most people will assume that if it's asthma, they're going to have a cat that's just doing it. But actually, there's quite often it's a cough.

Yeah, we've not had that wheezing there. You just did. We've never had that with Leo.

We've got the cough.

Yeah.

And so most people then think, well, it's a cough. So, you know, is that a bacterial infection? So the first thing that will happen, my cat's got a cough, they go into the vets, the vet goes, I've got 5 minutes to you know, talk to you. Here's your antibiotics. Your cat's got a cough, you know, it's probably— and if you're feeding raw, well, your cat's got tuberculosis and off you go, you know, because they think, you know, they just make that mind jump in their heads to some of the worst possible scenario.

So before that, where they say it's a hairball. So we had that, right? For some people— sorry to interrupt you, Brendan— there is that bit where it's like, oh, it's just a furball, it's just a hairball. And that is actually one of the things that we had issues with. We didn't know Leo. I didn't know if he did have a hairball. And after a good few weeks, I'm like, this is, this is ongoing. Like, if it was a furball, it would come up, it would come out, right? So, so that's the bit that we had beforehand. Sorry, Brendan.

No, I'm sorry, sorry. And also you have vomit, vomiting sometimes as the only symptom if it's very low grade. And, uh, and then they get confused between vomiting, hairball, and So it's—

yeah, yeah.

So I think what I was going to do, the imitation of the various coughs, but I think the first thing to do is— no, I want to hear how you felt Leo was. Um, could you imitate Leo's cough?

What was— ah, okay, okay. And sadly, I've got videos on my phone which now when I watch them, it makes— it brings me to tears because I wish we'd I should have followed my gut again and pushed for more answers, more investigation. Um, it— for— to start with, his neck was always out, right? The position of him, it wasn't just he was crouched down, right? I'm gonna get in full mode here. He was crouched down, like, kind of straight back, and neck was really elongated, you know? So it wasn't just like he was perched and then like, well, you know, trying to get a hairball out. His neck was stretched and it was like a and it was like coming from the throat but also a bit from the tummy. So like it sounded really fierce. It wasn't like a wheeze. And there were times when he had this a few weeks ago. We had a very stressful incident in the house. There were times when it sounded like he was trying to shift fluid. So like he was almost going to in between like a vomit and a really wet cough. Get that fluid out. And it wasn't until I did research online again, you know, going to then to my vet to say, this is what we're presenting with, this is also what I found, rather than this is just what I've Googled. But I saw videos of cats with asthma and I was like, that, that's what it is. The fluid on his lungs is what is causing this issue with this sound of the cough. It wasn't a dry wheeze, it was the trying to like move something.

And so this is where we have all of the issues around what happens to the motility of mucus once they get these problems with their airways, what happens to the bacteria that are normally populating the airways, and how actually as soon as they have any sort of disease, so inflammatory disease, in this case allergic disease, the secondary bacterial infection that can impact on them. So sometimes it's not wrong to give an antibiotic because if they've already established a secondary bacterial infection that's further reducing their oxygen uptake, absolutely, they need that support whilst we go through this. Now, there are a few things that we would look with complementary medicine, and we'll touch on those, to help try and reduce their bacterial load or increase their immune system's ability to take out that bacterial load. And increase the mucus motility. But right now, there's a few things that they will do to effectively reduce the mucus and so improve the flow by thinning it down. They will, which is things like bisolvane, which will actually help to dissolve that, make it more liquid, the mucus. Giving antibiotics, probably a first-line antibiotic like amoxicillin, would be their sort of port of call. There are other options with injectables, especially especially when you've got a cat that may be stressed with tablets. There are the 2-week injections and those are the things to consider, but they can have an effect on the rest of the gut flora and the general predisposition to allergy and inflammation, which is why we 3 of us look at complementary medicine so often to do with any disease, because as a little bit of a bouchon theory around terrain and actually changing the terrain of your body, the reason why you may or may not get these diseases, rather than the Pasteur method, you know, theory, which is all about there's a pathogen causing it. And so let's talk a little bit about how we can improve the general health, the terrain that your cat is giving to these diseases as we go forward. Really interesting what you said. I often will hear clients when they're talking about the cough. So the furball. And the other differentiation that has to be made is for the occasional fish bone or fine thing that they get stuck. So if you're mashing up that tuna or whatever it is and the white fish and that's got bones in it and you've been using the cooked method for that, this is one of the reasons the bones come away from the flesh in fish that's been steamed or cooked.

Sorry, baby Max just jumped up.

I was thinking, is it that scary? Playing with our mouse again.

Hello. Sorry, stop trying to hide behind a bushy tail.

So the things to think about are, you know, the softer cough, and we will often see in heart patients this more sort of cough. But that can transmit to the asthmatic, okay, that they can have an expiratory wheeze as much as an inspiratory wheeze. But it's, you know, something that can be the fluid buildup within the chest, the edema that's going on. So you'll get this sort of appearance. The furball stuff, absolutely yes, you can get that sort of coughing out.

There's got to be an outtake video from this, right? For sure.

I love it.

I mean, with somebody that cartoons the furball in. But often we will find as well sometimes abdominal sort of real heave that comes into that. And so look out for that. If it starts with an abdominal heave, so you've got that, but it's really coming from the abdomen pumping in and out, and then results in a— OK, then it's more likely to be either vomiting into furballs ingested that they're getting rid of. Than a cough. If it starts with a— you know, then you've got to think about what's going on in the upper throat and airway. So I could carry on for hours.

I mean, I love it.

Yeah, I've got the tuberculosis cough in the background just waiting.

But you know, the fishbone thing, you know, we also had an incident with baby Max. I thought at one point I was told I had two asthmatic cats. Because he had something. He came home, I was in the garden with him, he had a coughing fit. I thought, right, he's just— he's going to, you know, here comes his first furball. Nothing came up, and I'm like, okay, you know, it'll come later. So then the next 48 hours, we had baby Max, who was doing the exact same cough as Leo. And I'm like, oh my God, like, what is going on? However, I was in the garden with him for that first instance, and it sounded like something was stuck, and, you know, the hairball was going to come out. Didn't make any, didn't get any better. Anyway, long story short, ended up taking him to a specialist center an hour and a half away. He was there for 2 days, you know, a couple of thousand pounds later. They tell me he's got asthma, but when they went in and did the lavage and things with him, they could only see a little bit of inflammation. So we had antibiotics for him, keep an eye on him, you might want to do allergy testing, you know, you may need to treat him with steroids. Touch wood, every piece of wood I can find. You know, we've never had coughing with Baby Max since, apart, you know, we've never had it since. So I don't actually think Baby Max is asthmatic. I think what happened, like you said, Brendan, that there was something that got stuck, and actually what happened, there was then the infection and the body's response to try and get rid of it. And it's a foreign, you know, foreign contaminant in the body that then it was trying to deal with. So, you know, I think it's really important to look at when did the coughing start, you know, how long has it been going on for, all those kind of things that, you know, I know you boys have books and we make notes and things, but it is helpful in those sorts of instances to be able to look at the data around the symptom and the presentation, you know.

And this comes to one of my first aid tips because it's relatively easy to do and most cats as long as you're not going to throttle them with half a tub, will take it is to literally just use some honey. Just give them some honey, encourage some, you know, just calmly stroke under the throat, get them to swallow. Tiny bit of honey on your finger, just wipe onto their gum to encourage them to create some saliva and swallow. Now, if you've got a cat that's truly suffering from asthma, that will not abate anything. They will be, you know, if you lift the lip to put the honey on and they're blue, okay, you're down the vets.

Yeah.

Okay. That's, you know, there's no two ways about that. You know, but if you're just seeing that, no, they're coughing a bit more, they're extending their throat, they're sort of retching, you know, doing a lot of mouthing up, you know, pouring at the mouth. They're doing a lot of, you know, opening up their throats and putting their tongues out in a lot of, you know, stuff, then simply pop some honey in, allow them to swallow, see if that abates. That will work for furballs, it will work for spiders, for flies, for, you know, bones, things like that, any grass seeds, any of those things. It can really help. And if that stops it, yeah, you've just saved yourself an hour and a half trip to a vet and 2 days in and all the rest of it. And, you know, that side of things. So, yeah, first things, but always if it's persistent, okay, that it then is, you know, you've got an intermittent cough that comes back for more than 24 hours, absolutely go and visit your vet, your local vet, and just have a conversation about what could be the possibilities here. If it's a constant things that is ongoing, I would definitely say, you know, you need to be going sooner.

Yeah.

Right. If they've got a constant wheeze, especially if you're seeing bluing of the membranes, them being lethargic, you know, collapse, it's an emergency call. You need to be down there.

Yeah.

So I think we've got those bits out of the way. So the next steps then, you know, what point do they sort of move in for actually doing further investigations. I mean, you can hear it through the stethoscope. Okay, you can hear that sort of spasm of the bronchi as you're listening to it. The sort of inspiratory wheeze is just enormous when you're listening directly to the chest. And you do get that if they're in that throes of struggling. But I think ultimately, yes, bronchioalveolar lavage is something that you can look at, but it is something that they need to be anesthetized for. There's no way you're doing that conscious. Some horses would tolerate it. I know, Kathleen, you know, you used to have your horses done. Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's all about up through the nose and down through into their airways. You could get away with it to do those lavages, but sometimes we'll need to put a bronchoscope down because that can be brilliant. There's a little brush that goes down the bronchoscope that can actually do the swab as well as doing the bronchiolo— alveolar lavage, which is pushing at least 10ml of saline into the lung. You draw off about 2ml of that, comes back up, the rest is absorbed into the lung tissue. So don't worry, they're not drowning your little cat. And that 2ml is then sent off to the lab to be looked at under the microscope.

Yeah, that's what we did.

So that's that sort of stage. So we got beyond that diagnostics, they come back, there's inflammatory cells that are not just inflammatory, but they're showing allergy signs. So eosinophils, things like that going on. What did they say to you then next? What was the medication they, they offered for Leah?

So we were, we were offered and we actually were put on. I'm not going to say it right. I never say it right. Prednisolone. Prednisolone.

Prednisolone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which way is it?

It's a steroid. Prednisolone.

Prednisolone. Yeah, we were put on that and we had half a tablet. I can't remember if it was once a day or twice a day because this was a couple of years ago. And again, we kind of sat with that as a treatment and I'm like, that doesn't sit right with me. You know, how can I be putting a tablet into his tummy that is meant to support his lungs? That for me was like the disconnect, you know, like I'm like, okay, there's a steroid in the body and I appreciate there is value to using steroids. I'm like, is the steroid going into his tummy? Like, how does that work? So I then researched and found out that you could use aerosolized steroids. So like with humans, you've got your asthma inhaler. My grandma was asthmatic, she had 3 of the bloody things. We used to call them her puffers, you know. So that's what we call Leo's, who's got a puffer. So, um, we— I found this container, um, called, uh, by a company called Aerocats. And basically I should have brought— in fact, I will go and get it in a minute when one of you two are talking. It's a chamber, you put the puffer on the end and it goes over his mouth. So you talk and I'll go get it and I'll be right back.

That's great. So there's two forms of puffer that we look at, and one is the steroid base. Okay, so it will deliver steroid, dexamethasone or something similar, direct, betamethasone, even direct on into the lung tissue to suppress that adverse reaction, the allergic reaction. But there's also another one, the clonbuterols, the salbutamols, which are going to dilate the airways. So they relax the muscle that's in spasm within the lining of the lung tissue of the major airways. So there are two forms. And so you'll often see that you'll see one puffer, which is to be given on a daily basis or twice daily basis depending on the severity just to suppress the immune system reaction. And then there'll be the emergency puffer. So the one that you see people carrying around for if they are having an asthmatic attack, which is the ones that relax the muscle within the airways. So those are the different colors will denote which one you have. So I think it's the blue ones often for the relaxing, and the brown ones are often for the suppression of the underlying steroids. So go on, show us, Julianne, which one.

So we have a little, little bowl that everything goes in. So we've got a kit, basically. So we have a little water spray and a little bit of fabric. Now that is because after a few months of doing the work with him, which I'll come on to the behaviour work, we noticed he started to lose the fur around his lips and around his mouth. So we just use plain water, and I know we're doing Water Month after next, a few squirts on here. So when we're finished, I just wipe his mouth so that he doesn't lose any more fur. We've then got our inhaler, so ours is Flixotide, I think. Yeah, Flixotide. Okay. And then we've got our Aerocat chamber. Now, I am in no way like— this isn't about affiliation or anything like that, it's just what we use. But you basically— we shake the the puffer a few times. I put it in the end so it's like a seal, and then this bit goes over Leo's mouth. And this came in two sizes— there was a bigger one and this is the smaller one. And I hold it over his face, I give him warning when I'm about to push it, and then as you push that, to press that down, it goes into the chamber. Uh, he takes 8 to 10 breaths, and there's a little tiny thing here just under my finger there that moves it flaps so you can see the breaths that he's taking. When he's had his 8 to 10 breaths, I wipe his mouth with a bit of cotton, and then I've got a clicker because I'm a behaviourist. So I click twice to signify that he's done, and we used to give him a treat, but actually he doesn't want that recently, so he's having brushes instead. So that's kind of— that's our process in terms of how we give him the medicine. I will pause there before I talk about behaviour stuff for you guys to comment.

So the flucortisone, which is in the, is one of the steroid management. So that's the suppressive ones. There are the reliever puffers, some people will call them, the ones for the emergency if they are sort of really struggling to breathe in the acute. Those are the ones that relax the muscles of the airways. Do you have one of those as an emergency backup for if you struggle?

No, we don't actually. We don't. Our emergency is we've got tablets that are bronchodilators, but we've never had to use them.

Okay.

Okay.

So yeah, so no. So I said to the vet, you know, there's got to be a different way. So I found out about you using this version. She'd never used it with any cats, which again, my vet is quite, you know, not progressive, but I would say a good vet. But she said, look, learn about it. I'm happy to support you with it. You know, I want to learn more about it. You know, I wish that an option that more parents would do. But of course, it, it takes time. It took us 6 months from, from, you know, getting this kit in the house to now a point where I call Leo, he comes and sits on the pouf, the footstool, um, and he sits on the puffer. Um, yeah, so, you know, it's not a, it's not a quick and easy fix, right? Whereas a tablet, whether it's in a bit of cheese or shoved down the throat that's a quick and easy fix, but that didn't resonate for me because I was like, how can I be putting a tablet in his tummy when it's meant to help his lungs?

Yeah, yeah, it's a difficult one. Look, you know, it's all about carriage in the blood flow, you know, that's how it's, you know, how well it's absorbed, etc. There are lots of options that are out there, and for some people they can't train them to these chambers, but actually they, you know, once the cats are used to them and you know, that those chambers are really, really useful. Some people will initially just grab the child ones. The difference is that the child ones have a little sort of typical, the mask that you see coming down from the airplane ceiling, okay, you know, that fits over you. So it's more of a sort of triangle, whereas the cat-specific ones are much more of a cylinder, which will fit around their muzzles better.

Yeah.

And so those are the options. Now you can fashion something that's cone-shaped, okay, literally take then a rubber glove over that cone, just the simple disposable nitrile gloves that you used to get for around COVID, and you tighten that over the cone, put a little cross in the middle of it, and that will then mock that circular thing in the meantime. So you can sort of mock one up if you need if you've got the child one but you haven't actually got a specific cat cone at the moment, you can mock that up to deliver in the same way. But that's enough of my Yorkshire thriftiness.

And Amaya, what were you going to say just then?

No, I mean, about the— I never had so many issues with the chamber, actually. Actually, now I'm thinking I'm being very lucky. That's something that happens a lot, but I do believe that we have to address behavior and how people actually give a pill to a cat, because I know there are so many jokes about, you know, Hercules trying to give a pill to a cat. And there are many jokes around on the internet. But when— but the problem is that most of the times what I notice that it failed, like they couldn't, is because they simply grab the cat and just chamber like that. And it's all, uh, it's a little force. And, um, and once you treat— you, you teach them how to, you know, how to approach it, how to— how they, they are behaving, because there is a background on how they feel. And this is, this is what I, I really like about, uh, the asthma itself, is that it— besides on the immunos— uh, immune system part that we're gonna get into it later on, uh, we're gonna talk about the emotional emotional side of this and everything that it's related to the lungs, it's a— it has a fear. So, and allergies also, it's a phobia. So you have to be very careful in how you manage a cat that it's already so, so fearful, because it could be a menace in territory. I mean, there are many, many ways to explain this, but one of the reasons of asthma is a menace of territory. There is a— it could be they could be fearful for their lives or for something that's going on at home. Usually family disputes are also, you know, besides the cat, is not, not in between the cat, but the human side is very important. If there's been conflicts in the house and stressful situations that are more related to territory and how asphyxiated they feel, you know, there are too many people at home, the spaces are not you know, you'd never open the windows, you never, you know, renew the air. You use a lot of different— how do you call this— perfumes or air fresheners. Yes. And even, even the natural ones, you have to be careful. Sometimes we use certain natural ones to say, oh, I'm using perfume, but it's a natural one. Yes, but the cat may not have selected that. So maybe it's not good for them. It, it is a good natural thing, but it's not good for your cat. So you have to be careful of the environment and how the cat responds to it, and that includes the treatment and the chamber. You have to acknowledge that the cat is already a fearful cat.

Yeah, and, and that, that plays perfectly into two of the big homeopathic remedies for that, which is Aconite, which everybody will know is the short shock fear one, and Arsenicum album, which again has a lot of fear in that element. So those two remedies can be really, really useful. Aconite as a plant remedy, very good for reactive cats. So cats that are super sensitive to stuff that's going on and have a totally adverse reaction. Arsenicum album, one of the mineral remedies, they tend to be a lot more structured in their lifestyle. And if you change them out of that structure, okay, that also generates fear, that would be something that you'll see in Arsenicum. Yeah, so that's two very easy ways of looking at those. There are some great— there's a multitude of other remedies we're going to talk about for respiratory issues, and we can deal with those as local remedies. But for the mental situation that you've just talked about, where you can say, yeah, do you know what, absolutely, fear and anxiety and stuff that's going on in the household generates a lot of their attacks, those are two great remedies that could be reached for. And speak to your veterinary homeopath about getting higher potencies, because emotionally they will respond far better to the higher potencies.

I think that's fascinating that you mentioned that it's fear, because, you know, Leo was feral for the first 18 months. So, you know, what is a feral— what state is a feral cat in constantly? You know, fight or flight, fear, right? Because they're looking for, you know, food, attacks, Yeah, exactly. And, and also you just said there, Brendan, about, you know, cats that like routine. It took us 6 months to get Leo from literally from start to now. Like I said, I can call him and he comes and jumps straight up for it because he is a metal Chinese element. So it's all about routine, routine, routine, routine, routine, routine. So if anything changes, he's unsteady and we get asthma attacks come in. You know, when my husband left, Leo's asthma got worse. You know, when there were changes in the home, it got worse. If I've tried to introduce a new food, because there's part of me that thinks I should vary his proteins, his asthma got worse, you know. And it's fascinating because with Leo, the more rigid the routine is, the better he is. We, we have had times when we've had no inhalers. We've had times when we've got one puff once a day. At the moment, we're at two puffs, one in the morning, one in the evening. He does— I think there is an allergy component to it for him. We've never known the exact cause, and this is something that I wanted to talk to you guys about, because people say to me, you know, what is the cause of his asthma? Like, that's a great question, you know. I don't know. I do know that if Leo has certain proteins, we get asthma attacks. If he has rabbit, we have an asthma attack. If he has beef, he has an asthma attack.

Yeah.

Other than that, I don't know what else causes it, you know. I, I try to manage his stress as best I can. Like I said, whenever I notice that his routine is slightly off, I bring that back in straight away. But we don't— I don't know. I don't know.

Before we actually touch on causes, because I know Amaya's itching to go into that, but I'm saying itching for a reason, because itching, literally, we need to understand all allergies will give the same cellular response, okay? They are truly where the body is recognizing a foreign material, an allergen, that is then stimulating certain antibody formation, which is an immunoglobulin type E, okay, so IgE, that plugs on to specific cells within the system. Now, these cells that get excited, often the eosinophils and mast cells, are very similar response to those types of immunoglobulins, and they emit histamines, okay, but also some other cytokines, which cause all of that contraction of smooth muscle, which is spasm of the airways, all the way through to edema, fluid flooding the airways to try and push away those allergens and bring in cells that can gobble those allergens up. Okay, now whether your cat ends up with a skin problem, an eosinophilic granuloma issue, anything along those lines, is dependent where the concentration of those response cells are. This is the same for dogs, the same for humans. If you get hay fever and you get sinusitis, that's because the concentration of those response cells are in your sinuses. If you get really itchy eyes because the response cells are around your conjunctiva, if you get a streaming nose and sneezing, it's— they're in your nares. Okay, if you get asthma, because it can also affect people in the same way, you get, you know, the response cells are in your lungs and airways. So for me, you know, what's my biggest response because of handling lots of hay and grasses and things like that for the livestock? What do I get? I get a skin reaction. And now it's starting to slowly progress to a respiratory action. The more I'm being exposed. So I've got to go through a desensitizing because I've been sensitized through excessive contact. So it's the same for your cat. So now we can talk about, in that case, we get an understanding. It does not just have to be things that are inspired. So it's not just horse dander being inspired or, you know, human dander or pollens that's causing that because it's been breathed in, that's then causing the asthma. It can be anything that causes an allergy. And therefore, on to Amaia, because there's that— this brings in beautifully— she could talk about all of the things that cause any allergy and beautifully how actually sometimes just adjustment in other parts of the body's health can reduce your asthma.

Yeah.

And so am I. Yeah.

And the thing about allergies, um, I did a complete blog post about this because actually allergies, as I said, is a fearful— you are afraid of your environment in a way. There's something— you are reacting to your environment, uh, because most of the substances or particles that you get in are, you know, are harmless. Actually, they are not meant to cause you anything. So it's a reaction you get into this. And mostly you get this reaction through something that happened in your background, in your unconscious mind. And this is very noticeable in humans. That's why psychosomatic is really good in humans because we can tell what situation caused this. But in cats, we are not entirely sure how it happened. We can learn from, you know, if it's a feral background, if there's a with their mothers, and, you know, they didn't grow up with mothers. And, you know, of course, any stressful situation. But sometimes our stressful situations is the way you perceive reality. So if cats, if cats actually that seem to have everything normal, you have to try to analyze what is normal for your cat. So it's not always that simple, uh, to, to actually get into the cause and the answer to these allergies, but you have to try. And one of the best tools that I use for that is actually self-selection. Because yeah, because self-selection alongside acupuncture, because acupuncture is also really good. I don't do that, but I send people to do that. It's, it's really good for the symptoms to, to try to reduce the frequency in which you have to use steroids or maybe the other emergency, the bronchodilators, and try to get into a more natural treatment, let's say. So when I get a patient like that, what I do is simply analyze everything in their environment and get into the systemic part of the family, you know, say, okay, did you have any issues at home, the environment, how you clean, you know, Everything. We try to rule out everything we can. Then we get to the allergic, of course, in the diet. The diet is another very important part because actually there is increased risk of asthma if you have a cat that is overweight. Or also if they have dental issues because you, you know, they, there are more bacteria going around, there are more inflammation going around. So it's easier for the, for the body to react. into the allergy if they already have that trigger inside. Okay, so, um, how, how do I approach allergies mostly with mushrooms if I can?

We tried mushrooms and it didn't even go.

Yeah, yeah, but which mushroom?

Oh, I like umbrella polypore for this, but, uh, also, yeah, I like umbrella polypore in, in my experience because it makes the mucus more fluid. So if I have coughing, and maybe they had a secondary bacterial infection, I go for that. Then I might use— it depends, I might use cordyceps or reishi as well. Those are my selection. But actually, umbrella polypore was the most successful one. And it's really hard to get sometimes. And also, Chaga.

Right, okay. So really interesting because the chaga and the reishi are really great at reducing sympathetic drive and improving your parasympathetic takeover, which is really good for relaxation, to really try and get gut function working, to get your diaphragm, you know, working properly, calm your heart. Yeah, it's the vagal brake, you know, that all of that side of things. So that's where those two particular mushrooms are cordyceps, great for the immune system. So modulating the immunity reaction so that where there's excesses like autoimmune disease and allergy, cordyceps can be really great at modulating that. So that's why I was, you know, just to bring those, those mushrooms in. So sometimes, you know, not all mushrooms are equal and not only is it that the mushroom, but also the level of vitamin D that's within those, sometimes can be modulated by the amount of sunlight they've been exposed to, even after they've been cropped. So when they're drying them, are they dried in sunlight? You know, that in itself can modulate the immune system. So it could be— don't give up if you've tried one mushroom, okay? Not physically one mushroom, but you know, if you've tried one brand it may well be that you need to just take stock, look at which type was within there, review some of the other options that are out there, speak to your holistic vet about those options. Traditional Chinese medicine. So a lot of people are doing TCM alongside acupuncture, maybe a port of call if you can't find somebody that knows their stuff about mushrooms, because a lot of those TCM herbs will have mushroom mixes in.

Yeah, I think the mushrooms that we, we struggled with administration, right? So I, I'd spoken to Amaya about it. We've got a couple downstairs, and I am a firm believer of self-selection, you know. I, I only give tablets if, you know, we're like, we are treating something known, do you know what I mean? It's not, you know, just like give them a pill. And I, I might— one of my core principles with cats particularly is, you know, giving them a voice, give— using self-selection. So with the mushrooms, you know, we tried them on sauces, you know, as dried powders with a tiny bit of water. Nothing. And I was like, okay, it grates on me, but I'll try a little teeny bit added to food. And Leo, being metal, liking consistency, liking routine, consistency, walked up to the plate and walked away. And I'm like, well, he's not eating now, you know. I, and I can't have a food aversion from, you know, trying to help you, you know. So, so, so from someone that's tried it, like, it sounds great to have that suggestion, but it's like, how the hell did you get in the cap.

Yeah, there are some liquid also.

Yeah, so a lot— you've probably got a capsule like this that you are sprinkling on.

No, mine's powder. Mine was a jar of powder.

Okay, so, well, it's ultimately a powder inside there. This is just a dose inside a capsule. I do like these guys from a human side, but they actually do mushrooms for pets. Okay, because they do mixes depending on what you want, and they're organic and all the rest of it. But it's interesting looking at DIRT-E, which is D-I-R-T-E-A, are producing a lot of individual mushrooms. So you can actually— they come as a powder, but you can mix those with things like bone broth, and it's then giving a little bit of each of those as an option because your cat will be so sensitive that they may even discern between the different mushrooms. Bones. And so it's being given an option to actually, you know, mix some of that up, see which of those that they would go for. But you've got to give a background of one of the sort of bone broths or something like that.

It's kind of a ramen for a cat, right?

Okay.

I would say. Okay.

So anyway.

Yeah, but with the mushrooms, there are also some good— well, at least here in Spain, we have two— I have two brands that I really like. One is Ifas da Terra, and the other one, I don't remember, MycoLife, I think it is. And they have liquid version of some of them, and it makes it easier, for example, with reishi, because reishi has this bitter taste that it makes it more complicated to administer. But yeah, as Brendan said, I wouldn't give up. I will try to find other ways. And actually, sometimes, you know, diluting them makes it easier to get because most of them are powder or extracts. And extracts can be, you know, too intense for them. So, you know, I had some cats choosing mushrooms, but not all of them. The thing is that even though when I administer, you know, they got better. So, and about, for example, another thing that is important for if you want to make a differential diagnosis, which is not like— you still have to do the other stuff, right? But if you do self-selection and the cat is always choosing some of the, for example, garlic, or choosing an antibacterial essential oil, then you have to look for the secondary infections, or you're talking about a bronchitis. So be careful with that because I had a case that the woman was, you know, she was, she didn't want to do the lavage. So she was like, oh, are you sure? Are you sure I should do it? And I said, okay, just put garlic on and let's try the garlic and see what happens. And the cat was like this with the garlic. And I said, well, I don't know if you have any doubts. And yes, and we found bacteria. So Keep in mind that, uh, supramacognosy or self-selection can help you, uh, not only address the emotional side of things, also it can help you get into, uh, an accurate diagnosis. But it's not the only thing to do, in my opinion. You should do the other stuff as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And really interesting, you know, you talk about garlic and some of the other herbs out there that would fight, um, you know, the sort of parasitic infections. You know, we've not even touched on lungworm and the fact that there are some lungworms which will affect cats too. And, you know, that's something to be aware of. You know, one of the differentials, if you've got eosinophils in the mucus of the airways, is have you— you know, they might be lucky enough to flush out the larval stages of lungworm whilst they're doing it, but do check those fecal egg counts and larval checks. So collecting the feces from the litter tray, sending that off to one of the various labs around the world that do fecal egg counts. They will often do the larval counts as well. So it's a separate Baermann's technique that's required. So you might need to send 3 samples away. They'll mash it up, they'll deal with it, they'll sort out looking at the larval stages. But that can also, especially if you've got a cat that goes outdoors, Yeah.

Keep in mind that it's a separate, it's a separate test because most people say, no, I did already a fecal exam and nothing came through. But you know, for lungworms, you have to look specifically for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow. We're motoring on. We're 50 minutes in, guys. Yeah.

We didn't talk about nutrition at all.

I know. Exactly. So I'm going to quickly get you to talk about nutrition. Otherwise, um, I think Dr. Judy's going to chuck us off their page and we'll be having to do the rest on Patreon.

Go Amaya! Go Amaya!

Nutrition, uh, just get through. I was just kidding. Anyway, uh, 5 seconds.

Yeah, we are all quite nettings. What else? What do you expect?

Uh, well, no, it's what you said about, um, you have to try. If you, if you suspect this is asthma. So it's an allergic reaction. You have to rule out all the other reactions, as Brendan spoke about, uh, the skin, the, all the itchiness that you can have in the body and the inflammation levels. So for that, uh, make sure to— you can do an exclusion diet and find out. I don't do allergic testings because they don't seem to be very useful for me, at least of what I can get here, but I tend to do an exclusion diet and try to figure out if there's some proteins that might be affecting this or not. And, and of course, switching to anything that is pro-inflammatory. So goodbye, all ultra-processed foods. That's for sure. You can cook the food, you can do whatever you want. We can find different sorts of diets, but forget about ultra-processed foods because that is never going to help. Actually, it makes my job really difficult if the cat won't eat eat other foods. There are some things you can do to support it, but if I actually want the cat to thrive, nutrition is a big part of it. And especially for this inflammation process and the leaky gut and all the— the immune system is basically there. So if you want to modulate it, you have to help it.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so I would then add to that that actually the other part We've talked about the fear aspect. We've talked about, you know, the sympathetic drivers. There are ways to improve the parasympathetic drivers, the serotonin pathways within the gut and the gut-brain axis. So our gut will control what's going on up in our brain through the vagus nerve. It's not a one-way street. It is definitively two-way. I'm not going to talk about polyvagal theory again, but I will mention because you know I'm going to say bone broth. Okay, yes, Julianne, I haven't meant— Julianne, I have not mentioned mice yet, so just hold your snigger to your own. And just, um, just, you know, from a point of view of things that will improve the gut floral production of serotonin and how that then acts on the vagus nerve to help calm can make a massive difference. So think about all of those additives that can be L-tryptophan, L-tyrosine, as a couple of amino acids that can be added in. You know, looking at what's happening with your glutathione levels, which is often rich in bone broths, but you can supplement separately. There are glutathione supplements that are out there now. You know, I've just been to the Health Optimization Summit for people amazing the amount of things that we find from, uh, what's going on. Um, so these are a couple of supplements that they're doing for humans now.

So you've got brain—

beef brain. Okay.

Okay.

Um, and also like the organs. So it's a Belgian company, but they're importing from New Zealand from grass-fed animals, and then they are screening to make sure there's prions, there's no pesticides coming through from what they're fed, there's no other contaminants of heavy metals or anything like that within these products. So there are some great supplements that are out there that will augment what's going on with the organs before we even touch on some of the polyphenols, the plant polyphenols, you know, looking at, you know, some of the things like the primidine, which has a spermidine and polyphenols from chlorella and things like that, the DHAs, the EPAs that are within those that can again all augment all the things you would think as calming foods for your cats that can help in these circumstances with allergy and inflammation.

It's interesting you mentioned that because we've got— I've got down spirulina and I know, you know, and Maya and I've talked about this before about how, you know, it I didn't realize it can be relaxing for cats. And obviously I just thought for Leo it was an immune boost because he was having aerosolized steroids. Right. So it's interesting that we've now got that down regularly to try to support him, as you know, with, with other supplements.

So interestingly, you know, one of the biggest sort of metal contaminants within that, if it's a chlorella or a spirulina from the wrong areas, because some of them will raise them in clay pits. Pits, okay? They'll just have a water-filled bath and they'll create these generations of, um, those algae growing in those water baths in clay pits. If that clay, especially from some of the Asian countries like Vietnam, etc., they can be heavily contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals just because of where they're from. So it's really important to think about the source. Okay, source, source, source. Don't just go for the cheapest that you can find. You've got to look, and if your cat is rejecting it, think it might be that there's something else going on. You know, we've talked about the homeopathic remedy being Arsenicum album. If you've got a cat that's then being exposed to excessive amounts of arsenic, okay, in material form, that's going to exacerbate their issues.

Yeah, okay, we're ending the session making out like I'm poisoning my cat.

No, no, no, no. I'm sure you've chosen a really great version.

It's important because people look into the pricing of things instead of the label behind or the brand or the quality. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And the Belgian brand, I'm interested.

It's No BS. So N-O-B-S. I really like it. Yeah. So it's nobs.eu. Okay, is their website. If you want to find out more, click on.

And interesting.

Don't forget to say you found us on Raw Pet Medics.

Yeah, we've got 1 minute. We need something to get kicked off.

Yes. So do you want to do, uh, I think what we'll do is we will do each of us a little recording of the roundup for us. What was the most important part about today and release that to you guys separately, but just to give us some time to do that. Um, but I think as an overall, it's been great to hear your personal story. Thank you so much, Julianne, uh, for that. Uh, for those that want to know a little bit more, follow us on patreon.com/warmheartedmedics. Um, we are here next month, 21st of July. 21st of July, there we go. And we're talking about heat and overheating and how to avoid what you can do to cool your cats. Yeah. So there we go. Hot cats.

How to live in Mallorca and not let your cat die.

Right, 2 o'clock beeps. Thank you everyone that joined us. It's been lovely to have you here. We hope you've enjoyed it.

Yeah, we do. So take care. Good to see you all.

Bye-bye.