RPM LIVE Tuesday Q&A

doing there? So he— yeah, so Roberts has an all-Siberian Husky team. So there's 8, maybe 9 dogs, I think, which is quite surprising that there was that many. 9 Siberian Huskies pulling him along in one of the longest races in Canada. It wasn't the Idiotrod, it was the other one. Very long, grueling race, quite a high failure rate. Uh, and he says with the Siberian Huskies, which is rare in Canada, but he's all raw fed, powered by fat was his slogan. Oh yeah, yeah, he's got himself a load of followers in the last year. Mark, check him out, guys. I forgot where— Mark Roberts. Dr. Mark Roberts, canine nutritionist extraordinaire. He's the pancreatitis guy that led the way and cleared all that up for us about the role of fat and carbs and stuff. So he's great, and he writes nice articles once a week, those little videos, and quite scientific, very cool from Facebook. But he just finished that race, but they were saying that, you know, compared to the mongrels, they haven't a hope. The Siberian Huskies don't have the pulling power of the husky cross Chinook cross hound. I don't know what else they're crossed with, but, um, they don't have— they couldn't possibly win. But it's the fact they're finishing the race. And so I wrote a little piece there today, and I was saying, of all the advantages raw might have, you know, um, you know, whatever about a few little things about joints, you know, there's a few little studies that you could bring up about that, which was interesting. The sled dogs, the more protein they fed, the less injuries they had. At least protein, the most injuries over a season. So that was from Reynolds in 1996. I talked about a few other benefits. Then I mentioned the panting thing that you came up with, Nick. I credited you with that. Eat more CHO carbohydrate, the more you have to get rid of it. So now you're panting more, which is not good. I mean, who wants to be gassing out? So I came up with 3 gems and it really caught on. And lots of sled people were saying, is there any more information on sporting dogs? But I mean, you know, let's do a show.

Let's do a show on everything pertaining to sled dogs.

Yeah, top 10 reasons why we think the problem is we don't have— there's no— as the girls were saying in, in the UK, they said we have all Siberian, um, pulling teams, 3 or 4 doing different sports, canicross, biking, whatever. And she said the top 4 are all raw fed, the teams are. But she says, I couldn't tell you what the difference is between dry or raw fed because it's not like they're being compared. It's— there's a lot of raw fed teams out there now, you know. You can't do time trials, it's too narrow, there's too many factors. How your dogs can get injured, you know, it all depends.

You could do vet bills, vet bills per dog Oh, that would be interesting.

Who would they get involved? Would you get both sides involved in equal measure to measure?

You know what, monitoring their injuries to their dogs, you know, in those high performance environments.

That will be a good one because we already suspect due to that study in 1996, we already suspect the more carbs you're feeding them. So that was interesting anyway. So fair play to Mark Roberts, boo the bus for Mark, well done. That is a savage effort and apparently huge weight loss in the matter because it pushed that thing along any hills the dogs will start to slow, unlike the, the mongrels, which will just keep pulling. You can stand on it and go up a hill.

Was that a play on words? Was that like any hills?

Any hills will start to slow.

I love that Hills has got a— or they used to have a logo and it was, it was the H and underneath it, it said transforming lives.

Yeah, for the good or the worse.

I was gonna get a t-shirt. Yeah, it's absolutely true.

Yeah, you can be quite transformed sitting in a hospital for a few weeks. All right, um, I shouldn't say that about Hills. I've got no opinion about Hills. I'm sure it's wonderful. But anyway, guys, tonight is FAQ. We are Raw Pet Medics. You will find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, and there people can give us the price of a cup of coffee each month, and we deeply appreciate it. We see you doing it, and it's very, very helpful. And we are getting a lot more followers, and, uh, people are making their way over to Patreon, and we would just like to encourage more of you to do that if you can. We would deeply appreciate it. No problem if you can't, that's okay. We are here anyway on Facebook and anywhere you listen to your podcast and YouTube and anywhere else I'm forgetting. But, uh, guys, uh, do you have any burning things you want to get off your chest?

Uh, we're also on YouTube. Yeah, so, so if you, if you're not a fan of Facebook, we— you can see us on YouTube. And if you can subscribe and smash the like button That's a trendy way of saying it these days.

Is that right?

Like, but please, because then we get more people to the, to the, to the channel and we can spread the word much greater. You can actually help us with that simply by doing those two things.

So yeah, makes our tail wag.

And I thought since we don't have a specific topic tonight and it's very much Q&A, um, I really was interested in, uh, Conor's Valentine's evening show, which loads of people have appreciated and said was absolutely brilliant piece of showmanship and such a well-done job. Thanks, Conor. So I thought we'd bring on some asparagus. Okay, and we'd start talking about—

I don't know what you're talking about.

Okay, come on, Conor.

It's not easy trying to make, uh, yeah, it's just, it was just a difficult conversation. I said I wouldn't talk about it, and then near the end I thought, ah, I'll venture into it, I'm feeling confident now. And then the words started coming out and I thought, asparagus! Oh God. But there was surprisingly a lot of science behind it. Bloody hell, really interesting studies of incredible benefits. Um, so I thought that was kind of cool, but maybe that's another night we'll talk about that.

Indeed.

Only having you on, I just thought it was spectacular. Well done.

Yeah, thank you. That was— I'm sure we all made an effort at it. But what questions, what burning questions have you got to get off your chest there, Nick?

You've got a list of questions from our lovely Patreon supporters, and so I've got about 6 here. And the first one's from Jenny Hughes, which is very interesting. It's about hypermobility in dogs. We can talk about that in a bit, but the question is, I was from, from Jenny Hughes. Thank you, Jenny. I was wondering about hypermobility in dogs, its causes and its management. I have a lab whose hocks are hypermobile and I think I'm managing well, but a couple of customers mentioned it recently. I presume maybe she has a shop, a raw store or something like that. Anyway, she has a lab, don't know how old it is, don't know a lot of detail, but hypermobility Bren, do you want to just—

are we talking young lab? Is this a young lab?

Yeah, we don't know. We don't know. Let's assume it's a 2 or 3-year-old lab, perhaps.

Yeah, I'm intrigued by this because there is in humans a lot of association between gut flora, what's going on with, you know, ADHD and, you know, some of those side of things and hypermobility. So all of that link, isn't there, across inflammatory processes versus just is your gut flora in a certain way because of— and many of these are associated also with high-processed foods, which many of the people suffering from this are on. So you wonder whether there is a sugar link too. Now, but what is interesting is So my Labrador has one hock which has just started to drop in her old age, but I think there's a neurological element to this that she now has started with some back problems. So in older dogs, I think if they've got some slight neurological issues, then the muscle paresis, the weakness, can lead to the joints attaining an abnormal position. And so definitely see a chiropractor, definitely look at acupuncture, definitely look at all of the mobility support and anti-inflammatory stuff. If your dog has a young age, has any other behavioral issues associated with that hypermobility, one, I'd be super interested. Two, I'd be super interested if we could do an animal biome test look at what's going on with the microbiome, see if we can change some things there, see if we can do— remember the guy who did a lot of homeopathy and use of methylated glycine? Um, Tina— what's his surname? The guy—

Dr. Schmitz. Yeah, he's a Dutch fella, died about 15 years ago, did a lot of work on AD— no, on autistic children, and he brought around about 300 children before he died. Okay, I think he started fairly late in life. It's not that he wasn't busy, it's just he started, he discovered these things, and he was using, well, he would put them on a very pure dairy-free organic diet, he would increase magnesium and probably gluten. Yeah, and he was using homeopathics, one of which was the, the stuff— it's kind of buttery material that, that, that some newborns are born— what's it?

Is there—

oh no, no, calyx cervix. Yeah, so basically it's this buttery material that some babies are born in, and they— he was using that as, as part of it. But one of the big things that he was using, this guy Smits, was he was using the, uh, the homeopathic remedy derived from the vaccine that mum may have had or that child may have had in order to do a detox. And I'm using this quite a lot with a lot of animals that I see. Yeah, it's like dog is fine until they get a Lepto IV and then wrong from then on in. I will use the Lepto 4 vaccine in a kind of Tina Schmitz protocol to try and detox from that. Because if you, if your immune system has been hit, you know, maybe via the microbiome, then you've got to try and right that wrong. And I think that's a really good, it's easy, it's cheap, it's non-toxic. And so it's a great thing to look at. Tina Schmitz. Yeah.

So just to reiterate, hypermobility is just where we've got an excess. So rather than a restriction, which you see in many arthritic cases, you get an excess flexion of the joint so that things can bend the wrong ways. You know, that double-jointed feel, you know, all of that side of things. Don't snap it. Go on.

I sent you a funny picture, actually.

There was a really good set of lectures at the last BAHVS conference. Okay, so for homeopathics, um, by the way, I am now the president. And, and, uh, so that's going to be really interesting coming into the next conference next year up in Edinburgh. Um, however, um, really good set of, uh, lectures and talking about the historic use of vaccines in, you know, previous parents and going beyond. And people were saying, well, how does that transfer? And we've done so much talking about epigenetics and the influence of microbiome and the influence of vaccines on microbiome that actually it becomes quite obvious as to why that can be passed down the generations. We've seen so much stuff done in the early '20s about the effects of remedies on microbiome as well, to understand why they could resolve some of those issues. But actually going back to understanding where you've you've got influences of vaccines in the ancestry of those cases feeding down to the microbiome, and then a few other epigenetic things come in, you can understand totally why it can affect this, you know, suddenly.

Tell us why. I mean, in, in humans, hypermobility is double jointedness. How are we spending so much time talking about microbiota and it affecting double jointedness? I'm just Googling there, 10 to 25% of the population. If this is the same thing, if this is hypermobility, hyperflexibility type issues in a dog, what is the microbiota link to joints?

The microbiota link is that you've got, when you've got ADHD or you've got autism, you often have associated hypermobility with those cases. And we know that there is a link with those cases to what's going on with their microbiome and a certain microbiota. So there may well be a link that that affects the metabolism which forms your connective tissues and leads therefore to the two things happening in the same patient. Yeah, that's where the microbiota link is now. Where— how that actually changes it may be, you know, we talked about zinc a moment ago as one of the treatments. And last week, if you remember, when we were talking about zinc— sorry, two weeks ago when you were talking about it, eulogizing about it over Valentine's, You were talking about its effect on, you know, what's going on with your soft tissues, your skin, your ability to heal. But actually, if you eat too much of it, how it can affect your microbiota. Well, it may be if your microbiota are utilizing or sequestering the zinc.

Yeah.

Is that the link to why you end up with these other problems?

Isn't there a study in dogs that shows something about connective tissue? What was that study? Wasn't there vaccines and the connective tissue study? What was that?

Oh, there will be, I'm sure.

I'm just going to jump in with regards to double-jointedness. I think if you meet somebody who's double-jointed, you will not be able to tell unless they start, you know, bending their thumb to their elbow or something like that. You're not going to be able to tell. However, with a hypermobile dog, hypermobility, they're going to walk like Elvis Presley. They're going to be like rocking and rolling down the road. And so I think you are going to be able to see it.

Somebody said, don't tell dancers, we live for hypermobility.

Yeah, but if your joints are too hypermobile, you cannot dance because you need big— you're not big, but you need strong, resilient connective tissues because you're putting them through their paces every time you dance, which is a fabulous thing. But so, so if you're, if you're, if you're double, I mean, there are degrees. It's a bit like autism. Yeah. Again, or being on the spectrum. Everybody's on the spectrum. It's just that most of us are down at the bottom and there are certain things that might push you up the spectrum, what have you. Okay. So with this hypermobility thing, it's, it only really comes into play where you can actually notice it. Yeah, maybe some dogs are double-jointed, but we don't notice because they're trotting around and if they were human, they could dance. It's only when you get into the, oh, blimey, look, they're a bit all over the place. So I would say, yeah, there's the, rightly, Brend, there's the microbiome connection, which can be disrupted in a thousand ways, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, epigenetics, Just, you know, what was the microbiome of your mum? That's going to have massive influence on you as well. What are your antibiotic intake? But, you know, your vaccines and pharmaceuticals, you can do something about. So I'd be looking at the whole thing. I would also be looking at thyroid function as well. If that's— if you're low thyroid, then that may have an effect on soft tissue. So have a read of the Canine Thyroid Epidemic by Dr. Jean Dodds.

I'm so surprised that we're talking about double jointedness as being a major issue because so many kids I know, some kid turns around, look what I can do with my fingers, and they can touch their wrist and it's like, whoa. And it's like, I'm surprised that that's an issue. I thought it was just something you were born with, that your limbs and joints can, you know, appear.

When you start to look at the metabolomics and the effect of what's happening with your hormones And that actually these hypermobile kids might think it's a great trick, but you stick them in a stress situation of sports and you watch the injuries that they can sustain as they rupture cruciates and they have chronic— oh really, did you? Oh, don't tell me you were a footballer.

I was, 3 times, on the 3rd operation. Isn't this embarrassing? Actually, this might give people solace when they talk about But on the third time, third operation, on the third, he said, right, that's it. I was 34, 35, and he said, no more football. You are not playing anymore. So you're in floods of tears and you're thinking, oh my God, my life is over. I'm never playing football again. And he said, why? Like, he could never understand. I could never really get a lot of muscle down over my knees like the way you would see on a proper footballer. You know, I could never get that teardrop over my— he says, you're not doing your exercises. And the last two times I had been doing my exercises. And he goes, oh, what are you eating then? I said, please, I'm a nutritionist. And he goes, don't give me that, just tell me you're not. He said, tell me you're not a vegetarian. And I went, oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, I had been for this about maybe half a year before the, um, or a year before, um, I read the book, obviously, that, that year. What's her name? Catherine, what's her name?

Deep Nutrition.

Yeah, it just happened, it happened, boom, boom. And she, he said, I paused and went, I am. And he goes, where are you getting your glucosamine and chondroitin from? Hyaluronic acid. And I'm like, uh, he goes, tell me you're taking joint supplements. And I'm like, uh, I had sporadically but not like religiously. So where are you getting the building bricks to build back up your cartilage, you idiot? And I'm like, oh no. So that should give people solace because I have been telling people every single day, if you take that stuff out of dry-fed pups at 3 weeks of age, what do you expect but bad joints by the time they're a year or two of age? And I'm telling people this and I'm not giving it to myself. So everyone is an idiot. But that, but that was a low point in my life. Have I not told you that story before?

Oh yeah, you have, but I love hearing it every basically you were, you were out-nutritioned by a doctor.

It was dope. Oh, the best knee doctor in the UK, if it helps. He was— he's the top of his game. I want to add one more thing, sorry, just before we leave the vaccine bit. Uh, vaccine-associated polyarthritis. Um, so vaccines have been implicated as inciting, um, immune-mediated polyarthritis in dogs, but such cases are poorly documented within the veterinary literature. However, they do have 5 studies and they just link to 5 of them. Here's a quote from one: canine distemper antigens have been found in immune complexes from the joints of affected dogs with a rose of IMHA, immune-mediated, uh, haemolytic anemia, okay, and may suggest vaccine involvement. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. So there is actually a few cases of particularly the, um, the distemper vaccine being involved. And I thought, I'll give I do. I'd heard something in the back of my mind that they found it in joint material of, uh, dogs with, with rotten— who knows. There's something else out there, but I'll find it before the end of the show. Sorry, Brandon, you're going to say something else?

No, I was just going to say, so look, raw fed pup. Look, you've got to see the newbie.

Oh, oh, oh, you got a puppy!

I love these on a brand new bed. Look, she snuggled in.

Yeah, another black lab.

No, no, just one. Just one. No, the other, the elderly's on this side.

Okay.

Oh, wow.

Oh, cool. Love—

what's her name? Clem.

Clem, as in Clementine.

As in Clementine. That was, um, Winston Churchill's wife was Clementine.

So apparently it's because her father was called Winston.

Oh, interesting.

And so they thought they were trying to find a female-associated name with the father, and they come up with Clementine, which I thought was slightly wrong because that was his wife. But anyway, that's—

but it's just, it's an association.

Lovely. It's an association. She is beautiful. She has totally settled in. You can see how relaxed she is. Yeah, you know, all the dogs go to sleep when I'm talking to you guys. I don't know why.

Yeah, I think I could make a few guesses.

Absolutely brilliant.

I have a question for the vets. A client was saying that, is it possible for a dog, for blood tests, initial blood tests, to show no cancer and for my dog to still have cancer? Does anybody want to comment on that?

I'd say there is. It is possible. If it does show, great, that's a positive. But if you get a negative on a general, you know, pretty in-depth general blood sample, you can't say to your client, your dog has not got cancer. I've seen it many times. And, uh, Bren, just before we came in, you were talking about a couple of new tests, BRCA and another test. And what I was going to ask about those tests were, are they general? If your dog is positive on this test, they have cancer but you can't find it anywhere else? Or is the BRCA— I mean, that's the breast cancer gene in women.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, so, um, and it is associated with a degree of how cancerous that growth is, so how aggressive that cancer is. But what's really interesting is the NUQ, which is looking at nucleosomes. So that has a spread for—

Hang on, NUQ, how do you spell that?

What's NU? Yeah, NU and then hyphen. Yeah, Q, just a capital Q. OK, now available through NWL Labs in the UK. It's available in the States through Idex, I believe, but it's now available through NWL. You can courier it to them. It used to— they used to do it under ice and loads of other stuff, but they now have found that it's absolutely fine just as long as it gets to them with a cold pack within 24 hours. It's absolutely fine in the UK. Obviously we're not as hot as the US for some reason. And so they are now available. It costs, I believe, just over £100 including VAT. So what does it test for? Expensive. And it looks at nucleosomes. And did they— did associate it with a CRP, so a chronic reactive protein test, just to differentiate some diseases. But they now just do the nucleosomes. They do offer alongside that, for not much more, a full biochemistry and haematology. But it looks particularly at osteosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, and lymphoma. And the reason that it's so good is for all of those guys out there who are considering MRIs or PET scans or CTs as follow-up there's a lot of information now on using the new Q test as a monitor to see how effective any surgery or any treatment is and whether you've got any secondaries occurring. So for sort of ongoing monitoring, it can be a really good new test that's available.

That's fantastic. With osteosarcoma, you—

so Martina, it's N-U N-U-Q.

Can you write it up there, Bren?

Yeah, yeah, somewhere.

Yeah, okay, so this is really good because with osteosarcoma cases, they are heartbreaking because osteosarcoma often happens in long bones in the larger breeds, the greyhounds and Danes and all the big guys, and it's one of the most painful bone conditions, and often, as a— just to do something to give the dog some relief, they will remove the leg. The problem is that often the disease has metastasized to the rest of the body, and so you'll be presented with this three-legged dog who looks absolutely fine, but you don't know whether there's significant metastases or not. So I can see the nu-q— nu-q—

oh, great.

Test as being, are we going in the right direction? Are things happening? Because you just can't tell, you know, if you've got metastases in the vertebrae, in the liver, in the lungs, you may not see them until they're, you know, actually visible. When you visualize those, those, those tests with ultrasound, MRIs, X-rays, that was one of the cancers that Habib was—

Habib mentioned two studies of medicinal mushrooms. Extending the life in dry-fed dogs by a year. He just— it was lion's mane and turkey tail, the two mushrooms that he was talking about. And turkey tail is great, they pay a fortune for it over in Turkey, over in, um, over in Japan, but getting it there is the problem. But, um, so we've got lots of it, we've trodden it, it grows out of our logs, it's everywhere. Highly, highly anti-cancerous. But I think one of the sarcomas was mentioned. Now, now I'm thinking it was hemangiosarcoma, but just purely because you said that. But, uh, it was definitely one of the sarcomas, and he said a year for one of the most can imagine just from eating a little bit of mushroom. Fantastic.

We see some great responses for complementary medicine to hemangiosarcomas. I've got them, you know, 4 or 5 years on, you know, without problems. I've got from osteosarcomas, giving them 18 months where they've been told 6 weeks is, you know, where they're going to be, you know. And they just don't believe that And that gives them quality of life. That's the point. Not, I'm sick as a dog on chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Anyway, that's an aside. It was one that was a test that they used to have to ship them to Texas. So I think it might have been Houston, or was it? Yeah, university to get the test done. Under ICE in the States, but now I believe it's widely available. IDEX.

Which one? NuQ.

NuQ.

Okay. Okay.

Which is—

so NuQ is available in the UK with which—

well, in the UK it's with NWL, in the US it's with IDEX.

And how much would that cost a client to run that through a vet like yourself?

So I think it was about £100.

Yeah.

So I think it was about £75 plus VAT. Okay, for the test itself, a little bit more, you can get the full biochem sort of follow-up and haematology with it as well.

How do you know to do that? If the bloods don't show up with cancer, how do you know to go and spend more money on specific tests for specific cancers? Is it just purely based on symptoms?

You know, if you've got weight loss in an older dog, you've got maybe just not quite right, you maybe feel a mass in the abdomen and say for some people they want to know a bit more before they go in operations-wise. If you've got a lame dog that's not responsive to pain relief, you know, it's a really good thing to differentiate. Okay, has that got an osteosarcoma? Sometimes people will say, is that a swelling of the joint because it's an infection, or is that a growth? You know, so differentiating that.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, very good. And guys, this segues really well. We're talking about cancer, we're talking about medicinal mushrooms, and one of the questions from Patricia Lawler says, hi guys, I'd more information on medicinal mushrooms, please, particularly in relation to canine cancers. So I'm going to, I'm going to start. This is the product that we use here. It's called Chloriolus Plus, and it's a combination by Mushrooms for Pets. There are a few others. There's, there's, Brent, I'll ask you which one we have.

We have one next week. We really should be giving them a plug here.

We have— what? Oh, the mushroom guy.

Yes. Oh my God, I hope he's not listening. Anyway, keep going, keep going.

Uh, Rob Silver next week talking about this.

There you go.

Yes, real. Sorry, Rob.

So this contains Trametes vesicula, it contains Ganoderma, it contains, uh, Graciola, it contains, like, uh uh, Lenticular and Cordyceps millinaris. Okay, so that's what— you can look it up online. Okay, you can get it, you can get it from the Holistic Vet Store, but you can get it online as well. Uh, find— and I, I take it, you know, uh, because it's, it's an immunostimulant as well. Not— it's stimulant, it's just, it, it's a, it's a, it's an immunomodulator. Things that are too high, it brings down. Things that are too low brings up. It's super, super safe. That's a nice—

taking this as a regular addition, Nick. I mean, I do wonder when it comes to the medicinal additions, I can't help but shake or can't shake. Caroline Ingram, if she was watching, she would be saying put it to the side of the bowl, see if the dog wants it.

When it comes to the more medicinal, you could imagine Nick with a little pile on the side of the bed. Yeah, I'm gonna take it today.

I'm gonna take it.

Yeah.

Okay. So here's Zufarm. I take it when I fancy. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Never know. Your mind sees it.

Come on.

What does an oyster mushroom look like? You know, is it on your list of asparagus and—

Oyster mushrooms are absolutely delicious. Aren't they the big yellow ones that hang out of the bags? You can grow them at home. Oh my God, they're delicious. When I was a veggie, that was a big part of my diet. Loads of butter in the pan. You cook oyster mushrooms and you leave them alone. Don't move them until they brown, and then loads of salt and pepper. Oh my God, they were absolutely delicious. That was as close to meat as you'll get.

Very—

what's the word? Unami kind of— umami kind of a taste and smell. So yeah, I'm not sure.

I was shouting in the back of my head, ufarfu.

So yeah, I think a little bit of medicinal mushrooms now and again. I take them as well. I bought them to put them in PowerPaste. And I also kept some for myself, and I take them as well, a little bit here and there. And I think I don't see the harm in that, because almost all prey, uh, like when we were— you should have seen the amount of mushrooms that female deer would eat, uh, given the chance once they come up. So you'd find like 5, 6, 7, 8, 10% of their stomach contents. I mean, that's a 2 kilo stomach. That is a lot of mushrooms that they found. So if they get the chance, they will, uh, and I'm sure smaller animals will. I'm sure when it gets down to rodents.

Yeah, yeah, marks in the mushrooms on our fields.

So yeah, yeah, I bet. So I bet you it would be a part of their diet in small amounts through, through at least prey meat and stomach contents. So, um, yeah, I suppose yes, but I just— I'm no expert. But we do have an expert coming on next week, and so many things to ask.

I mean, I use, um, corpet. I've used it for many years. People say, well, it's not necessarily, you know, the wild fruiting bodies. But the thing is that they pharmaceutically grade it. So although it may not have as much of the actives in it, they actually grade how much actives in it so you can dose it more reliably. So that's CorePETS. So that's, that's one that I've used for 25 years when they first sort of like came and started talking about how they were growing. And the advantage was it was not stripping the wild environment of turkey tail and that side of things. So it is really trying to embrace, you know, because so many of the Chinese herbal companies you've got to be really careful with because they're sending guys out into the woods and literally stripping, taking out, taking out all of those, you know, fruiting bodies and decimating sometimes the environment. The other thing to remember and this is key to anybody who's using these, is actually they become more active when they are exposed to UV or dried and heated. Okay. That actually changes the activity up, which is really interesting compared to many herbs and how you're treating them prior to using them as medicines.

So I wonder whether the activity of digestive enzymes and stomach acid would enhance. Yeah, so your deer eats a mushroom, okay, goes into the stomach acid bath and then into the duodenum and gets a slosh of pancreatic juice, which is, which is all those digestive enzymes. I wonder whether that affects, you know, whether there's an enhancement there.

Yeah, so I've seen— it's a great— if you're looking for individual mushrooms, there's a great human company called Dirty Okay, so D-I-R-T-E-A. That's a great individual range of the powders, but they've activated them. So they were at the Longevity and Health Optimization Summit last year. Great guys. They use one of the TV chefs to design some of the teas and stuff that they make with them, the matcha combinations. So yeah, great.

Okay, and I'm going to give a little shout out, and I don't get anything from these guys, the Bristol Fungarium. Bristol Fungarium, F-U-N-G-A-R-I-S-T-L. Great tinctures, don't they? They do, yeah, and they're very, very dedicated. Just a couple of young guys set it up and they're just making some fabulous product. Bristol as in UK, Bristol Fungarium. Check them out.

I've got some of their tinctures that I use in my coffee in the morning.

Oh nice, yeah, that's really good. So yeah, another question we've got.

Just when I feel like it.

Yeah, we've done 2 questions in 35 minutes, gents. So, but that's okay because we're just, we're just free, free associating here. Okay, so Caden says, does omeprazole affect raw-fed dogs negatively? I'm still struggling with reflux stroke regurgitation after after a meal, and vets have suggested a meprazole and an HA diet trial, possibly B12 and folate test. Well, Bren, you, you did a bit of work back in the day. Do you want to just—

oh, there was, um, so there was some work done with the treatment of Helicobacter and the use of metronidazole alongside omeprazole, and in dogs they found it had no effect. In fact, if anything, a negative effect to the treatment of Helicobacter. And then that question came in as to whether actually antacids in the canine and feline world were actually of any use whatsoever. For shifting. So we know that there's a great study in 1985 by young somebody, I can't remember the long name, but looked at the acidity of dogs' stomachs post-eating, which actually in the first 30 minutes goes down to between 0.5 and 2.0 5. And as a pH, it then sort of gets to a point of just below 3 to 4. And then, you know, it neutralizes just before emptying into the, the intestine, the small intestine, which is great, just does not burn the small intestine as it mixes with all the bile and everything else. You know, that is a great neutralization. And there is a question, you know, one, are you affecting the digestion by reducing acidity, which, you know, if you see the acidity that happens when you feed a kibble. So the stomach emptying for a raw-fed dog within some of those studies was within plus or minus 73 minutes, around about 200 minutes. Okay. For raw-fed, if you suddenly put in kibble, to some of these dogs, they had a gastric emptying time which was ranging into the sort of 400, 500 minutes, and they were still full of kibble. They tried to say, well, is that just because the amount of water that they were consuming, you know, wasn't allowing that digestion? But obviously the pH rush doesn't last anywhere near that long, so they had neutral stomachs that could then ferment and you'd get, you know, bloating and all sorts of other issues occurring in those circumstances. And adding, you know, omeprazole hasn't, as far as I know, shown a change in that stomach acidity in that first 30 minutes of consumption for dogs. Slightly different for humans. We don't have that same acidity. We do have a peak just in that first 30 minutes, but it's not the same. And we often have a different stomach emptying time as well. So I just, I still debate that there is no place for antacids in dogs. We should be looking at the base to the inflammatory cause and, you know, dealing with that inflammation, you know, changing the diets, whatever it takes.

I was just going to say, what's the first place your mind goes to, Nick, for inflammation results in acid reflux and whatnot. What's the first place you go to before a map result?

I would go— they're suggesting B12 and folate, and that's not a bad idea. Yeah, because you may not be absorbing those vitamins appropriately, but I would go with food trials. Yeah, because— and I imagine Caden's done this, and I think he has, but if you've got a dog who is regurgitating on a regular basis and they are chicken sensitive or beef sensitive and you continue to feed beef twice a week, you're going to have regurgitation twice a week.

Why?

Because you get this inflammatory response to an inappropriate protein. So I would totally go with with food trials. There's another one that I use called Vomisan. Okay, and it's quite similar to your Biofunction 8, contains chamomile and mint.

Excellent product as well. They do a Keepers Mix Sensitive, you know, with lots of German chamomile.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, we'll edit this out later, guys. Don't worry.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

What's this new one? What's this vomisan? Yeah, what's that?

Don't show it. It's all in German and I can't remember what's in it, but it contains chamomile, mint, fennel, It's basically, it's a herbal preparation and I will use it where I would, where the conventional guys would otherwise use omeprazole. Yeah, as the name suggests, Vomisan, it's kind of vomit.

Surely worth a shot to do that. Like the reason we drink chamomile tea, it's called mother of the gut, German chamomile, most effective. There's a Greek chamomile as well, but it's fantastic. The studies abound, hundreds and hundreds of studies on chamomile, how effective it is. For so many things, and acid reflux is mentioned in the studies. It's just fantastic. Type in your gut ailment and chamomile and you'll find the studies from very low doses. So doses you would get from a cup of tea type idea. And we know it works because after a full dinner, you take some chamomile and you will relieve the bloating and gas, which is taking up some of the extra space in your guts. So it's really effective. So I think they're definitely worth a shot for us. The B12 and whatnot is, is, is checking to see if you're low on that. If you are low on that and you're a raw feeder, that should tell you that you have a bit of an issue going on because you shouldn't be low on B12, meat being the source of that. So it's like you have a massive hole in your bucket, but it gives you focus then as, okay, that's where the problem is. It's in the first part of your intestines there. And so you kind of know, okay, I'm on to something now and we know what this is because there's a lot of different reasons why you can get acid reflux, I suppose, and SIBO being one. But I'm sure there's many other causes. The food trial and whatnot, that's got to be the first things to try.

Jenny Hughes has asked, and I was about to ask, surely there's an Irish seaweed that's also really good?

Oh, wonderful. Yeah, I do hate plugging my own products on this show. I don't know why I do— I don't do that. Chamomile is just, it's simple, but it's got to be organic. So you want to get organic chamomile, and I always pair it with marshmallow, which is what BioFunctionate is, just over, just over my shoulder there. And a few seaweeds. You get nutritional deficiencies and whatnot, but you've got to feed, you've got to explore that single protein, nice, simple, easy to digest diet. Might be a time to try a little lightly cooked diet for a while. If you've tried all the raw diets, try and shift to a lightly cooked one if you wish. Bren doesn't like that, but because it's easier to digest. So when the guts are firing, it's something to cool off the jets. And so I have a bit of success with that as well, but it can be a bit tricky sometimes if it doesn't go away.

Yeah. And I think there's something else to add in here, and that's where so many people associate if they've got a gut upset that they should be lowering the fat and actually just adding in more omega-3s, you know, as an anti-inflammatory fat would be really useful for helping to seal and heal the gut, just improve, you know, what the body's able to do. Yeah, you're seeing the inflammation.

What about calcium? Can we not pop in a bit more calcium? Okay, now maybe like, let's say ground eggshell powder. Can we not try and copy the Rennie approach and say Okay, what about hocking in a bit of calcium here? Or are you just going after the omeprazole route and fiddling with things?

But is that not the carbonate that actually is their thought process in that when you're talking about adding in the calcium like the antacids, it's usually because it's calcium carbonate and they're asking the acid to combine with the carbonate, produce carbon dioxide and water.

Yeah.

So neutralizing the excess acid. Yeah, but do you really want to produce— you know, do you really want to try and do that? I mean, that's, you know, why would you neutralize the acid? You know, the acid is really good for good digestion at that point, and it's not hyperacidity that's often causing problem, it's inflammation. So get rid of the inflammation, stop buggering around— sorry, yeah, stop messing around with the acidity.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, cool. That's good.

Okay, here's an interesting one. I've had some success recently using probiotics, prebiotics, and anti-inflammatory herbs in recalcitrant regurge cases. How about that? We use a thing by Adored Beast called Gut Soothe, and It can be a game changer. So maybe it's a biome thing, you know, the biome of the stomach. That's a fairly little known area. Or maybe you're changing the biome in the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. And if that's inflamed, that then says, right, you can relax, Mr. Stomach. And thus you have less gastritis. Thus you have less regurgitation. Maybe it's working at that kind of level.

Sorry, I love a homemade, you know, just making, you know, mint, ginger and lime juice, you know, smoothie. You just, you know, blend that up. You can dilute it with a little bit of coconut water just to make it a really strong, pungent ginger shot that can be really good for soothing gut.

Yeah, those things do work. I mean, it's a fact that they work, but even shifting the diet, if you start thinking it's a biome thing, that's why shifting the diet is going to possibly help. If there is some troublesome baddies in there and they're enjoying what they're being fed at the moment, you've got to shift it completely. Change to a different protein, different supplier, lightly cook it to deform it, just change it to something else. And I think that's a good idea because you're going to shift the biome. Different guys will grow given different foods, and so now's the time for a change. But often people are stuck in that routine, but try one for a couple of weeks, try another, and definitely pop in those natural herbs you've been mentioning, that's definitely the first place to go rather than omeprazole, which the downwind effects of omeprazole are digestive upset. And you have digestive upset, nausea, and all sorts of things that come from it. It's like, bloody hell, that doesn't sound like a solution to a gut issue. It sounds like a temporary bandage on gangrene, you know.

Especially for a raw-fed dog, because if you're reducing stomach acidity, you're going to be reducing the first part of the defense of the gut. Yeah, because a lot of a lot of bad bugs are fried in the acid in the stomach. So if you reduce the acid, it means that some of those baddies might be able to get through. Also, the stomach acid, it's off the pancreas. And that's a whole digestive cascade. So if you put a spanner in the works in the car at the beginning of the production line, it means you're going to have a car that comes out the other end is not going to work by definition. So yeah, because the whole production line is affected by that first process. So I think be very careful with omeprazole. If it's the only thing and it does make a massive difference, then yep, well, maybe that's the thing for you. Right guys, let's— I've got another 2 questions from our Patreon people. Let's go over to our Patreon and let's have another 10 minutes and just whack through. At this rate, 2 questions would take us about 45 minutes. Let's just give a little blast to the last 2 questions over on Patreon. That'll be fantastic.

Yeah, come and join us if you can, that would be brilliant. You know, just on patreon.com/rawpetmedics and you will find us over there. Um, be great to see you, great to join our community, great to support what we do. Thank you so much. Um, but for now, until next week—

and next week, just reminders, we've got Rob Silver, yeah, so real mushrooms, Mushroom Man.

Yeah, real mushrooms.

Yeah, marvelous.

Okay, so we're gonna wait for that. That's brilliant. Um, and we're also— we're gonna need to update everybody about what we're doing because there's so much coming up. We're gonna get really excited.

Oh yeah, we'll do a rundown before Rob. Yeah, yeah. Okay, everybody, thank you so much. We're going over to Patreon now to chat a little more.