RPM Thiamin

Let's get live, Conor!

Oh no, good evening! We are the Raw Pet Medics and you are a wonderful audience and we love you. And we love the people on Patreon who, uh, contribute to us on a monthly basis. Thank you very much, uh, patreon.com/rawpetmedics. And we love our people who support us around the world. Believe it or not, people listen to this drivel around the world on the podcast. You can get the podcast on every podcast medium you can think of. Spotify, Apple, you name it. Anne-Marie Brockie gets the prize for being first in, and we get the prize for being the last in because it's 19:04. So apologies, guys, but we're here at last.

I'm going to fess up. This was my fault. These two guys that way, we're absolutely on it. I've just come back from Nottingham University talking to the veterinary students and it was, yeah, great. So tell us about that, Brett.

Tell us about that.

So they're doing a nutrition week for all of their students and looking at launching projects that they need to talk about. They're doing that, talking to all, you know, whether it be a kibble company, all of the sponsors. Vegan foods and that side of things. They've got to make an informed choice themselves about appropriate ways to call. So they called us, well, they called the RFVS and asked if I would go and speak because Nottingham's, believe it or not, relatively local to me, 2 hours away. And so it was great. So got an opportunity to stand up and yeah, just have an open conversation. So sort of obviously did a how to try and make it responsible and then a lot of just getting them some more impassioned about nutrition and why it's so important to owners and why we can avoid the amount of medicine use. Nottingham have just done their own study very much like DogRisk on the effects of raw on atopy, finding very similar results. Wow. You know, the reports of it being as good as Apoquel and, you know, looking at the, the medicines. I mean, what sparked them off to looking at it is when they looked at the diets that they were on. Yeah. Out of the, I think it was 1,300, 1,200, 1,300, something like that. I only saw briefly. There were 394 on raw feeding.

Amazing. Listen, mate, will you bring us that study when it's published?

I presume it's not published yet.

Hopefully they're going to bring it as a poster to the RFVS conference.

So I will look forward to seeing it there.

Okay, so that would be amazing. And come on, tell us about you, this epic flight to somewhere over the other side of Europe.

I will absolutely tell you about that, but just on the On the subject of talking to universities, every year I go to Glasgow University and speak, or I do a Zoom because of the thing, and it's really good. So you've got Nottingham University, hopefully that's going to be a recurring invitation. I go up to Glasgow, so therefore we need to say Edinburgh, where are you? Liverpool, where are you? Cambridge, where are you? Surrey, where are you? Oxford. Bristol, where are you?

And is there a veterinary department in Oxford? No, there's not.

Cambridge.

Very slack. So universities, if anybody knows anybody at the universities who we can talk to to try and show what's been done at Nottingham and what's been done at Glasgow for many years actually, well done Glasgow, we would be really, one of us, all of us would be very happy to go along and delight and entertain the vet students.

I'm surprised, I'm surprised Nottingham, I missed the start of that, Brandon, so I'm so sorry, I was changing my earphones, I didn't hear it. So something exciting is happening in Nottingham, but I'm surprised because isn't Knight the professor of nutrition in—

I think he's at Lincoln, I think he's at Lincoln, isn't he? I think he's at Lincoln.

They used to have Mike Davies, who's now working down in Dorset, And actually, I've discovered this is really interesting. There's, um, Nikki Camack, and hi if you're out there, Nikki, um, did a little presentation, um, and was talking about the number of board-certified, um, nutritionists in America.

Yeah.

And then there's this thing about the RCVS that if you're a specialist, you are supposed to have a diploma in your specialism in order to be called a specialist.

Yeah.

Just go and look, everyone, on the RCVS website for the only person who claims to be a specialist in canine clinical nutrition.

Okay.

And see if she has got a diploma.

No, no, she's not even on there. So all of the board-certified people, of which there's only a handful in the UK, are not actually on that website at all.

Wow.

But the one person who is doesn't have the qualification.

Oh, I don't like that.

That is juicy. For those who didn't follow the bit about Nottingham, when I said the professor, he's the guy that pushes the vegan pet food. On the world. And, uh, so anytime you see a piece on nutrition in The Guardian— University, yeah, there was definitely some connection to Nottingham. Okay, that's very good.

Uh, for some reason they wouldn't allow me to debate alongside him. They had him yesterday. There was a degree of separation, and I can't understand why.

I should just put the two of you in a big, big swimming pool full of beans and just see, see what happens.

See who wins.

Yeah, that's what this color is. It's bean juice.

Carnivore against a veganivore. Nick, you had a bit of drama in the air, did you?

We had some drama in the air, quite literally. Conor, you've got some important news, but I'm just going to bore you with this incredible tale. Can you remember that film? What was it? Where there was the Siamese cat and the dog and the English bull terrier had to find their way home? The Great Adventure, The Great Journey, The Wonderful Journey. What was it, Brandon? Because he's ancient, he knows, he knows the movie. He's ancient like me. Uh, yeah, do you know the movie, guys? Does anybody know the movie? Come on, guys, you've got to back me up here. So it was a Disney movie, was it? Anyway, it was this epic journey where they had to cross the Rockies and the Andes and the, the, the Australian desert and everything, and they found their way home, and everybody Incredible journey. And that was it. That was Ellie and I. Okay. So very briefly, this is the deal. So we got up at 3 AM on Thursday morning to get to, I kid you not, to get to Riga, which is in Latvia. Okay. Latvia is kind of just below Finland. Okay. I didn't even know where it was as well. Latvia, it's a wonderful place. Beautiful people, amazing food. Great. Really, really worth visiting. Riga, beautiful. But I didn't know where it was because I am an ignoramus. Anyway, so we had two flights, one to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Riga. We were meant to be there for morning coffee about 11 o'clock. And we thought, great, we'll have a bit of morning coffee, then we'll have a good long lunch and everything will be great. We actually arrived 19 and a half hours later into Riga. After going from Bristol to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Denmark, Denmark to Sweden, Oslo, and then finally from Oslo to Riga. And for 10 hours of those 19 hours, we did not know whether we were going to get to Riga or not in time for me to be on stage on Saturday morning— no, Friday morning— in order to talk to 63 vets. This is amazing. So Latvia, 1.5 million people, right? And they can field 63 vets in a room to listen to a talk— me warbling on about raw food for an entire day. Nobody fell asleep, which was absolutely brilliant. And so if you, if you multiply that up, we've got about 70 million people in the UK, and therefore the, the UK equivalent would be about 2,400 vets in a room listening to raw food. So Go Latvia! They are streets ahead. So the day on day one, spoke to the vets, brilliant, professional. They got it. They totally got it. And a third of the audience were feeding raw anyway. So of 2,400, that would be what, 8,000? No, 800 of those vets would have been feeding raw as an equivalent. On the second day, I spoke to the general public and there was again about 60, 62 people in the audience and the questions they were coming out with. One woman said, How can we modify the zinc-copper ratio in diets?

Is that the first question?

That was the second question on the board.

And your answer was?

And the answer was just feed great food and everything will be okay.

Don't challenge me with that stuff. Lots of herbs and seeds, that's what Nick always says.

We had a spectacular day. I just, I just did, I just did, you know, just simple stuff, but the questions and the atmosphere and everything. So, um, my salutations, my greetings to all of those people who were there. I, I talked about Raw Pet Medics a lot, and so I hope some of those guys are going to be on the show tonight. Um, so greetings if any of our Latvian colleagues are are here. Anybody in the raw food family, greetings to you.

So I had a drama a few days ago. I was speaking to a group in Australia. Have you been speaking to Matthew Moore, either of you? Yeah, you have. Has he not— did he tell you what happened? No, he didn't tell you what happened because he's too much of a gentleman. I would have told on him straight away. So large group of trainers in Australia, APDT, the Pet Dog Trainers Association. And I'm, and, uh, you know, I'm lying in bed and my phone rings and I'm like, who's ringing? Put it on silent, I'm asleep, you know. And, um, Thursday night, and then one of the kids cries and wakes me up, and then I see 4 missed calls on my phone. I went, oh, that's not good. And then there was a text message saying, Conor, where are you? You're supposed to be on half an hour ago. And I'm like, what?

Not again.

Yeah, not again, Conor. I swear to God, I swear to God, I checked that so many times I thought I had OCD. I was like, it's definitely on at 9 o'clock on Friday. I had the arrows went the opposite way.

Everybody, for everybody who's watching this, we all know what to get Conor for Christmas. I would like you to send him all— what do you send him? We're going to laugh after Christmas to see if he's received what everybody thinks you need in order to get online on time.

And that's so— so then I, so then I had to agree at half 12, 1 o'clock in the morning. They said, so can you do 5 o'clock in the morning? And I was like, yeah. And then I'm like lying there going, well, Well, maybe I can get a few hours sleep. I'm just lying in bed like this for a few hours. So I got up and had like 2 or 3 coffees, then I was a jittery mess. And then I'm on at 5 o'clock in the morning. I was like, oh my God. I think it went all right. Matt was doing a lot of the talking and Sarah Fisher took over some of my space. But anyway, terrible. Look, there's one thing I wanna do before we get to time. And if we get to today at all, if we get to it, there's something I wanna tell people about. It was supposed to happen today, but I had to tweak. And when you tweak, it puts it on another 24 hours. But we have a study an attempt at a study. Okay, we are doing a study and it's going to kick off tomorrow. You've heard of Wiley Vets in the UK and they have an enormous number of vets working for them and they have great access to dry and raw-fed dogs. And we, myself and a few others, and Rich, who's the director in there, and Vicky Adams, who is a top veterinary epidemiologist, highly published and just awesome at doing studies, they can do a great study between them and they can just look back retrospectively at the last year and compare big group of raw-fed dogs and a big group of dry-fed dogs. How do they get on? How do they compare? How often do they go to the vet for what? And a number of other things that are recorded. Very simple stuff, guys. The data is there, and we are putting that together, and we're going to crowdfund for that study. So I kind of just wanted to say to people that, like, the reason most of us are feeding real food to their dogs is because at some stage a bit of science was done that probably convinced us. Very few of us jump based on an anecdotal story of somebody that talked to us on the beach. A lot of us are encouraged by like Habib or me or anyone on RPM here, when we do the talk and we get a study and we beat it down with people's necks, look at the results of this. And we've only got a small handful of those studies, 4, 5, 6 studies, most of them produced by Helsinki, Dr. Riskin, Helsinki University on a shoestring. And so we use those studies and they're very, very useful for getting the public to change. And when the public see these studies, they're smart and they know the truth when it's presented to them, which is one of the reasons why you're not allowed to debate science in public anymore. And so Clearly the market is responding. The UK, 20-25% of them stuffing real food into their pets now, and it's not because the veterinary sector is pushing that message, but the vets will change when enough of these studies are gathered and presented to them. It's a fact. It's just a certain critical mass of these studies have to be met before most vets will kind of come on board. And so we need to get this study done, guys. It's so cheap. People think science and research is expensive. It's not. It's so simple. 40 grand is all we need to get this study done. And we have endorsements from all of us here, and it's going to be Habib and Becker are going to get behind us, and we'll get Helsinki to do it, and we're going to get all the kind of raw feeding nuts to say, look, we've got to get a bit of help. Price of a cup of coffee, as we say, uh, for us, but this time maybe directed at, uh, at this study. Uh, we also want to talk to your raw dog food manufacturers, so your pet shops, anybody that profits from these studies coming out. These studies rise the tide for all those guys, okay? So if wherever you get your pet food, I want you to send, the study comes out at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning, I'm gonna be beating you to death with this for the next week or two. And wherever you get your pet food from, I'd like you just to share this study and the page that it's on, it's on experiment.com, it's gonna be coming out tomorrow at 9 o'clock in the morning Irish time. And I just want you to share it with them and say, look guys, this is where we get this, if we get this out, it's called citizen science, okay? Or public science, it's science by the people for the people. This is the stuff that matters. So instead of complaining and what can we do to change, you can get studies like this off the ground. We'll find out who's healthier, who costs more to own. We'll get more people feeding real food. And that's the way to win the row. So I really hope, guys, you'll all get on board. Thank you for that promotional bit of time there, lads. And we will start really pushing this tomorrow morning.

Conor, just say again exactly where they need to go to contribute.

Oh, they'll hear.

Everybody will be keen.

Yeah, experiment.com is where you're going to find the study. It'll be the most expensive study on there. Most people gather 4 or 5 for preliminary analysis where you just have a look at data. We are for 40 grand going to get the study done and publish it. It's going to be published. So, um, that will be on experiment.com. The exact link I'll send out when it's live and, and, um, and you can actually, um, donate on it. Because if I send it out before that, people will click and it'll come to a dead end and Okay, you know, so it'll be live tomorrow at 9 o'clock morning. I'll put it up on RPM and Dogs First, and I'll share it amongst all of us and hopefully get the vets on RFVS to give it a bit of a push. And, you know, that's— yeah, so can't be too hard to raise 40K, guys. There has to be 40,000 of us that'll just give a euro, you know. So let's see if Habib and Becker sprinkle a bit of fairy dust on it, and we'll see if what effect 8 million followers can have on them on something like this. I mean, because I want to see if it happens again. Then it's like, okay, Helsinki University, they could do studies for 20 grand. I mean, she's like, oh, 20 grand, I'll get that's sort of 20,000, it's nothing. People think research costs millions and millions and billions. It's not at all. The really meaningful works are just comparisons of populations that have already been done. You know, what is like the people that get the treatment, the people that don't, compare them. Very simple. So yeah, look, I'm very animated by it. I really want it to work. So let's see what happens.

Yeah, Cheryl's on board. So Cheryl's going to be paying half.

She's loaded. Nice one.

Yeah, thanks, Cheryl.

Excellent. That's going to help. Lovely. Is that a misinterpretation?

Interpretation of her declaration.

Anyway, fully on board. Maybe it means drunk in the way if she's found or something like that. But, uh, guys, who's going to start us off?

I'm gonna kick you off, boys, because I'm going to read you the ingredients of a Hill's, uh, kibble, and then I'm going to read you the ingredients of a Royal Cannon, and then I'm going to read you the ingredients of Rice Krispies by— they are by Kellogg's, right? Here you go. This is Hill's— get this— this is Hill's Science Plan Light Large Breed Adult Dog Food with Chicken. Now, if that isn't a mouthful in more ways than one, I don't know what is. But here's the ingredients. Well, I'm going to give you the— I'm going to give you the analytical constituents. Protein, blah, fat, blah, crude protein, omega fatty acids, it's crude ash— calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium, vitamin A, vitamin D3, vitamin E, vitamin C, beta-carotene, L-carnitine, and then metabolizable energy. The additives are iron, iodine, copper, manganese, zinc, and selenium. No mention of any B vitamins, including B1. Now, if we look at the same from Royal Canin, who thankfully call their food medium adult, which makes things a lot easier to understand. Thank you very much, Royal Canin. But they say, they say that the, their analytical constituents— protein, fat, crude ash— they don't add ash, by the way. It's when they, they burn it to get rid of all the carbon-based stuff.

So it's leftover after burning.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

And then they've got Omega— oh, it's even less. Even less. It's protein, fat, crude, crude fiber, omega-3 fatty acids. That's their analytical constituents. Their additives are vitamin A, vitamin D3, iron, iodine, copper, manganese, zinc, selenium. No mention of B vitamins. We then go to— we then go to Rice Krispies. So here's a little quiz. What's the first ingredient in Rice Krispies? Gentlemen?

Oh, barley flour, surely?

No, surely not. Rice.

Rice.

Rice.

It's rice.

It was too obvious.

The second ingredient is malt flour.

Okay, the second— what? Okay, so that's pretty obvious apart from Conor. It's pretty obvious. Here's just getting a little bit more into the weeds. What is the second ingredient? And this is stunning. The second ingredient in, in, in Kellogg's standard Rice Krispies. You're welcome to guess.

Salt, sugar, barley, flour.

Sugar, Sugar.

Yeah, these guys got it. I think, I think there's some people out there with the box in front of them.

Fiona, just like, Just being smartasses.

Look at this. I think this is actually a good answer. I think air.

That's a good answer. Yeah.

What's that? I can't see it. I'm on the Rice Krispies page.

Sorry. Air is the second biggest ingredient.

Oh, nice.

Nice. That's really nice. Okay.

But look, and Cheryl's in with snap, crackle, and pop.

That's the first thing I always hated. I always hated those two. I don't know why.

Okay, so let's look at the mints and fits in Rice Krispies. This is just as a comparison. Obviously you can't live on Rice Krispies forever, but would you like to live on the Royal Canin offering or the Hill's Science Plan offering? And they stuff it with omega-6, and we know how hideous those things are. Anyway, back to Rice Krispies vitamins and minerals. Iron as ferric phosphate, niacinamide. Oh, that looks nice. So it's essentially niacin, niacinamide, vitamin B6, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin B12, B1. They do actually add thiamine hydrochloride, folic acid, vitamin D3, and vitamin B12 in order to fortify it because they've absolutely stripped the original rice ingredient of all the good— germs come out. What's ironic is that they strip it out and they then make a feature of the fact that they have to put this goodness back because they've stripped it out in the first place. Now that is marketing, gentlemen. Anyway, so what I'm saying is there's— they do add it, they do, they do add B1. Sorry, here we go, this is me getting ranty. They add B1.

Conor, we're going to take you off, you're going to be like that.

They add B1 to Rice Krispies, but our friends at the food corporations can't be bothered to put it into our dogs' diets.

And I'm really surprised. I'm surprised that, you know, they could be putting in something like in those ingredients, they could put in something like brewer's yeast, which would be higher in B, because I'd be very surprised they don't put in thiamine. It's the one that's smashed by processing. And so they'd be ultra sensitive to thiamine. And I would be very surprised if there wasn't an ingredient in there that was known to be high in B1 and they'd actually did— brewer's yeast is often one of them. That's the cheaty way to get in a lot of B's. But because I'd be surprised when you look at reviews of pet foods, there was like from 2009 to 2013, just 4 years, there was 5 enormous recalls of pet food for vitamin issues. There was actually 9, and 5 of the 9 were due to inadequate B1, inadequate timing. So as a result, Markovich in 2014 took it upon themselves to examine 90 pet foods sold in the US, and 12 of them were well below the minimum protocol set by AAFCO. 12 of the 90. So timing deficiency is rife in pet food, and there's been a number of issues since AAFCO states it's 'inverted commas,' this is AFCO 2008 who set the regulations, 'because processing may destroy up to 90% of the thiamine in the kibble, allowance should be made to ensure the minimum nutrient level is met after processing,' as if you wanted your dog to have the minimum. So there would be an awful lot of dogs, and that is before we consider what B1 is needed for. Thiamine is pivotal to carbohydrate metabolism, to glucose metabolism, at a number of different stages of it. And so if you are eating a high carbohydrate diet, you are known to be more deficient in B1. And so this is a mega dual problem on top of all the other things that will go wrong. Antimicrobials and all that, gut flora, which will upset your, your, your thyroid being kind of how much you're absorbing, all that sort of stuff. But just the direct issue of eating a high carbohydrate diet and not eating a high B1 diet is a huge problem that the West is having. And so this just led me on to one more little thing while I'm on a roll. I had a look at the thiamine levels, the thiamine deficiency levels in the UK, and they are surprisingly high, but they're higher in older people. Uh, so the reported prevalence in the UK according to Oxford ranges from 8 to 31% for elderly people living at home and from 23 to 40% for those living in nursing homes. Are deficient in thiamine, which is a massive, massive problem when we— when the studies show large doses of thiamine are so, so effective for things like Parkinson's disease, and a great number of studies on that. And so yeah, I just thought all that was very interesting. I wonder what state the poor old dogs are in. Uh, so I just— yeah, bloody hell, that's not a good thing, is it?

Brent, where are you on thiamine? What's your— what are your thoughts, mate?

So, well, I mean, if you look at some of the conditions that they're associated with, um, I mean, you know, cardiovascularly, um, there are certainly, uh, some diseases that are reported. Uh, neurologically, um, is probably the, the main ones where you've got the peripheral neuropathies, um, particularly that they report on for— on the human side. So this is going to happen on the, the canine side But I do sometimes wonder just how common this is. You know, there's lots of people— we're going to talk a little bit about thiaminase in a moment, but I think a lot of people sort of go, oh my God, you know, this, this is really, really important. We've got to get this vitamin, you know, understood and into the diets. But actually, clinically, how much do we see that deficiency? You know, if you're feeding, especially on the raw side, if you're feeding it, if in the raw materials that we're giving in enough? Does it need to be fortified into the diet? Yeah, I get it in kibble and processed foods, but is it because we're seeing so many fresh foods within our practices that actually we're not seeing necessarily those level of problems? Or is it that we're misdiagnosing, you know, all those CDRMs? Is it that actually there is an element of thiamine that needs to be added in alongside the vitamin E, vitamin C, the, the, um, EPAs, DHAs, uh, that would help in those situations. Getting the testosterone right, as we were talking about last, last week, um, getting the LH levels down. You know, there's so many multifactorial things that go on with this. I think just saying thiamine is responsible for X, Y, and Z well, actually it's about 26 conditions, I think is maybe a bit misleading. Although we did have one follower actually saying that their dog was diagnosed, I think it was in South Africa, with thiamine deficiency. And that's the only one case where they said definitively that's what it was. And I believe it's because of the fish that they were feeding Because there's a few ways that you can't get—

that you don't get enough thiamine if you're not having enough in your diet. And Jane Eastwith says, what are natural sources? So basically a raw food diet. You've got meat and bone and pork, fish, and green vegetables. You will get loads and loads and loads and loads of B1. But so there's 3 main ways that I can see. Number 1 is you're not getting enough in your diet. Number 2 is you are getting enough in your diet, but you've got a gut problem, and so you're not absorbing the B1. I'm just talking about B1, not all the others, yeah, as in the B complex that you can find. B complex. And number 3 is that if you've got kidney disease, you can leak B1 and other B vitamins. And it strikes me that if you've got B1 deficiency, you may have other B vitamin deficiencies. So I'm thinking if you've got even the slightest worry about the B vitamins, then get some, some B complex. It's got to have B1 and all the rest and B12. Yeah, because brewer's yeast, for example, doesn't have B12 in it. So you have to just be a little bit careful about that. But because it's water soluble, you can't go wrong. You really have to take 300 tons of it every day— I exaggerate— in order to, you know, to, to get an excess. Because, because it'd be— it's water soluble, any excess you'll just pee out. So it self-regulates. So it's a very, very, very safe vitamin to give. So if in doubt, get some B complex, get some brewer's yeast in order to get your B1, B6, B5, and all the rest of it. So that would be my thoughts. The other one was there's a big difference between adequate B1 and deficiency, but there's this gray area in between where you've got subclinical manifestations of symptoms which aren't quite very, very, i.e., frank deficiency, because deficient, frank deficiency is pretty rare. But I would say, as the, the human studies show, Conor, that you've just said about older people's homes and, you know, so many people, there's a lot of people who are not quite getting adequate. They're not on the ground, but they're not adequate, and they're definitely not in the, in the right zone. So I think we need to think about that with vitamins is that just because you're not deficient doesn't mean you've got the right levels.

Yeah, it's like, it's like coming into winter. If you're elderly, it's not like slightly too little vitamin D is not good news. You want to get that up. And so you're not going to be down at zero because you'd be in dire straits then. But on your way down, you're going to be more prone to sickness. There's a lot of different reasons why you can be insufficient in thiamine, lack of it in the diet. So POWs used to suffer, uh, beriberi, um, all the time because they fed them white rice. And when you take out the husk and the germ from the rice, which is lots of thiamine, they would have done fine on that. White rice is terribly deficient in it, so they used to suffer terribly. Actually, the, the disease itself— beriberi, um, I just love this dude— a Polish physician discovered this in 1912, and his name was Kashmir Funk. And I just thought, what a name, Kashmir Funk. God, I wish that was my name, Kashmir Funk. But yeah, so the POWs used to suffer it all the time. And from one of these stories I was reading about it, it's from an old Sinhalese word meaning I can't, I can't. That's what beriberi means. And so you can have two different types. You can have like a wet type and you can have a dry type. And a wet type is like a circulatory issue and you're going to get a lot of swelling and stuff. And the dry type gets really bad pain. And it's the dry beriberi that the POWs used to get. And so I can't, I can't be— and neurological pain. And I said it was absolutely awful. They couldn't walk with it. So beriberi was the lack of B1. But not just it being lacking in the diet, you can have things like a lot of the raw fish. I have a chart there that I'll share on Facebook later on to show. Bren alluded to earlier on, certain fish contain an enzyme called thiaminase. And so those ones down the left-hand side, you can't be feeding that to dogs long-term because it'll gobble all the thiamine in the diet and then you don't absorb any. The fish on the right do not contain thiaminase, so your dog can eat more of them relatively happily. So, you know, from salmon down to a few others that we like to use. So you have to be careful of— I think sardines are okay as well. So if your raw dog food manufacturer uses whitefish, it is important to ask which whitefish is being used in that. So the type of fish, but also coffee will do it to you, and tea. They also contain thiaminase, but your dogs aren't drinking that. GI issues, meds like Flagyl and diuretics, kidney disease and diabetes, excessive exercise. So if you're hard working your dogs, you're going to be deficient in thiamine. It might be something to consider. Infection, pregnancy, lactation, alcoholism if your dog's an alcoholic, and hyperthyroidism in cats, and any impairment to your liver or antioxidant system can cause issues as well. So there's a whole lot of things can— but I mean, do people ever check for thiamine? Would a conventional vet check? Was that something you would ever check in? No, it's very limited.

I'm pretty sure there is a blood test for it, but I think it's one of those that, you know, somebody is not going to go down those lengths. I mean, I was looking at LH after last week. We were looking at LH testing, uh, in fact, just before last week when we were talking about it, uh, you know, and some of these tests, yes, it's doable, but, you know, who wants to pay £700 to check whether LH is responsible for their dog's illness? You know, uh, has it gone through the roof? That's the problem with some of the rarer, um, tests. Suddenly prices go up through the roof. Um, really interesting. I've just posted up there, uh, one of the, um, articles about thiamine and its generations. So de novo generation, yet again, this is where bacteria produce the de novo vitamins for our animals, and then we consume those. So it's really interesting when I was looking at the companies that are producing modern foods now. So they can produce 32 cows worth of protein an hour through fermenters. Okay, literally they are fermenting bacteria which will produce an amino acid spectrum which is similar to a cow or you know, whichever creature you want to pull up, okay, as an amino acid spectrum. And they're pumping those out and then they're saying this is as good as 32 cows worth of protein. What they're missing is the fact that it is so hard to keep that nutrient profile right that they don't accidentally have a contamination and die-off of that fermentation process. That actually all of the extra vitamins and minerals conjugated to those amino acids are not in that. So just to reiterate, that protein is not the same as the grass-finished cow that's come off the field. Okay. So yes, it's great that they're looking at sustainable ways of bringing it on, but there is still that deficiency in where these vitamins are in that process. They are playing at making up the rumen, but they just haven't got the technology to get it right, to mix all of those other things in there in the right proportions.

No doubt. Yeah.

So great. Where are you at then with how often have you seen thiaminase actually being an issue?

I'll tell you about thiaminase because I learned about thiaminase a very long time ago with— and the way I think of it, which is not very advanced, but the way I think of it is that dark brown oily fish, dark oily fish are the most likely contenders for thiaminase. And if therefore you're giving— because Fiona was asking a question, can we give them every now and again? And What I was suggesting, have done for years, is that you use a bit of brewer's yeast on any dark oily fish, and then you've got plenty of thiamine going in, which if there is thiaminase, that will compensate. So what are your workarounds for thiaminase, for oily fish? For—

I don't think— surely an occasional feed of something that contains thiaminase. I mean, it's not something that needs to be in every meal. I mean, you're fine. So if you've got your hands on 2 or 3 thiaminase heads of some fish, I wouldn't be worried about it at all. If you're concerned about it, don't feed it with your thiamine-containing food and just say, right, that's my thiaminase meal, and your dog eats that for a day or so. It's not going to get in there and disrupt your system and just start gobbling all the thiamine around your body, you know. I personally wouldn't, but that is in naivety. That's not based on anything except there's not going to be fish out there that you eat and suddenly it destroys all your thiamine and makes you sick. Surely not.

And of course, the other— so absolutely brilliant workaround, which is variety. Hey presto, we're not talking about that enough. Okay, but obviously if you're really stuck, then you can look at, you know, using some organ material if you're really squeamish about adding stuff in. You know, you can even go back to source and look at—

is that sold in the UK?

Yeah, you can get this online.

Beef brain.

Yeah, but it's not from the UK.

It's from New Zealand. New Zealand.

Tested for prion.

Good, good.

Full of glyphosate, but no prion.

Yeah, no, they do actually tox screen it, so that's the end.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

I know.

I checked.

I had another little doozy here. A lot of the issues, so like, you know, your dog's got more prone to gut disease if you're on dry food, as studies show, 2 studies now. And so yeah, we know that. And I just had a look at the rise of gut disease in humans. Like, thiamine deficiency was a big thing because as you get older, why do you get more deficient in thiamine when you're older? Because your diet gets simpler. And one of the reasons they think the diet gets simpler is because your gut flora starts to narrow as you get older. And so you have less call for different food groups. That's one of the reasons why your appetite might go down. I'm sure there's many other reasons. You get old, you just don't want to eat very bits and pieces, whatever. But another reason is gut disease. So listen to this for— this is from whatever university, Washington University. 3 paragraphs here on the rise of this, the worrying rise of IBD in Western societies. Eating a Western diet impairs the immune system in the gut in ways that could increase infection and inflammatory bowel disease, according to a new study from Washington University in '23. The study using thousands of mice and people showed that a diet high in sugar, dry food, and fat causes damage to paneth cells, immune cells in the gut that help keep inflammation in check. When these paneth cells aren't functioning properly, the gut immune system is excessively prone to inflammation, putting people at risk of bowel disease. And then it's becoming a more globally accepted phenomenon in Western diets and lifestyles due to their high-carb tendencies. So I just thought, wow, this is a really big problem. So as you get older, I don't think that protein and fats and stuff— it's a higher carbohydrate diet. When I just look at my mom, it is a higher carbohydrate diet. It's just, oh, what did you have for tea? I had a couple of pieces of toast. It's like, you had a couple of pieces of toast? Would you put an egg on it or something? Her diet is just so plain. And I look at that, and where is she getting her B1 from? Do you know, she would sit there and— and she doesn't sit there, she's not bloody decrepit, she's got more active life than I have. But like, you know, So it's very interesting that goes undiagnosed. And a person that put me onto thiamine deficiency, she had a collie that got spooked when she was 9 months old at a critical behavioral period in the dog's life. Got spooked by two goofy dogs. And as a result, this collie got agoraphobia, wouldn't go out of the house. And this girl's well experienced with collies and she knows what to do, but she said she started Googling vitamin deficiencies and agoraphobia just to try to find an answer. And that's when she stumbled across thiamine deficiency. And a couple of books and a couple of articles, a couple of— she goes, look how prevalent it is. She got on to the main guy that sponsors this. There's a number of resources, by the way, if anybody's suffering Parkinson's, there's a whole website dedicated to thiamine use in Parkinson's. It's called highdosthiamine.org. And they give you all the studies. Another guy there, eonutrition.co.uk. But both of them talk about megadose thiamine. And they said that the longer you are out of thiamine, the more you have to stay on megadoses, that it never gets back up to normal. It seems that you just have to keep taking these and they said that the doses being put out there by the powers that be are like vitamin D, not touching the sides of where an older person that discovers they're B deficient, B1 deficient, needs to get it, which is mega high doses. Isn't it funny that vitamin D and B1 seems so bloody beneficial, so bloody easy, you know, to take these things that we know, you know, 30 to 40% of elderly UK people are deficient in B1. I bet it's the same for D. You know, and they will have a very strong protective effect for your health if you get these. Simply cost you tuppence. And these aren't the lessons that we get coming into winter. Isn't it very strange that we don't hear these things?

Are cheap. This is the one that we use. B complex contains a bit of everything. Yeah, from Metabolix. Give us a shout if you want some. It's, it's easy to get. You can get, you can get them online.

They said that the B1 needs to be— they said that when you're doing B1 on its own, this guy EO whatever his name is, it was when you give B1 on its own, it needs a bit of magnesium because those two things work together. So if it's, if it's, if you're using it on its own, he gave some, his, his one was, this one's got magnesium, choline, and inositol in it.

Is there not a modification of that spidergram for the vitamins, for the minerals that actually also includes vitamins and amino acids.

I bet there is.

There would be. There would be.

Yeah.

If somebody can find that and post it, you know, come on, find it for us, guys. Put it on there.

I really want to find this guy said this guy's favorite, uh, was, uh, thiamine tetrahydrofurfural. Yes, disulfide, which is one of my favorite thymines. And obviously, see, my top 3: thymine, tetrahydrofurfural. What was that? What was that movie? Miss Imelda Hay? Remember that? Put your brains in the jars. Steve Martin movie. Oh, so funny. Miss Imelda Hay. No? Okay, it doesn't matter.

No.

Oh, it's very funny. A little bit of Steve Martin. Um, guys, we've got it. We've got a dash. We're at the end here. Uh, so listen, Thanks to the lads for joining us. Thanks for listening to us on podcast wherever you are. Don't forget to give us a rating if you're listening. Thanks to everyone on patreon.com. We see you all. We really, really appreciate you being there. Don't forget to check out that study that's going to be posted tomorrow on Dogs First and Nick's page and RPM's page and everywhere else that you're going to see. And don't forget that we've got a show coming up on the 2nd of December in Manchester, and we're challenging you to beat the Coneheads and see if you can beat us. And if you do, there's awesome prizes that we started announcing, but you won't beat us because we're too smart. And so tough luck, we're going to keep those prizes for ourselves. Any other announcements, guys, before we hit the road?

Go to Eventbrite.

Yeah, great book.

Signed book. Signed. Let me just get to the right side.

Okay, there she is. Lisa.

Got two of those. Thanks, guys.

Okay, so that's the 2nd of December. You get the tickets on Eventbrite. It's going to be a morning of, of, uh, entertaining but informative lectures, and then the afternoon we're going to do Q&A, and then we're going to have some fun. We're going to do some doggy nutritiony games, quizzes, and things like that. So that's going to be amazing, guys. There's loads of really great questions there, so should we just nip over to Patreon and just do a few of those. That would be really cool. And there's a t-shirt draw. The t-shirt draw is closing when, guys? Is it this?

It's 24 hours.

Yeah, okay, get into the t-shirt draw.

And, um, any tickets bought, any tickets bought before the next—

whatever the deadline is, I should have actually had— if I'd have had time Oh, I'll just go and get it. You know what we're going to do? We're going to leave you to just do a little roundup of what we talked about today.

Oh no. There you go. You can take a picture of that, everybody. Do you know what I am going to talk about? I was in Aldi there the other day and they have coffee roots, coffee plant roots, short little things about that size. Hard as a hob of hell and they're only €2 and I thought what a wonderful chewing item. Now that's going to put the cat among the pigeons and people will say Conor, your dogs can't chew on sticks and I'll go well, your dogs can't maybe but Dudley loves chewing on, well, a rolling pin when he was a baby was his favourite thing, one solid block of wood just when he was indoors because I didn't want meaty bones around the place so I wonder how does everybody feel about a dog chewing on these coffee roots? Have you seen them? They're like kind of thick as a fist and about that long, like a very, very large fossilized poo. And they're really strong, and Duddy is a serious chewer, and he's not breaking it down, and he loves it. And I thought, that's great, way better than a plastic bone or a plastic toy or a plastic rope. I mean, surely if little bits of a tiny stick goes in— um, isn't coffee bad? Yeah, coffee itself is probably not great, the, the fruity beans. I wouldn't feed too much of that to my dog. But, uh, the coffee root that comes out of that plant, I'm sure, is fine, although I haven't Googled it. But the wood just doesn't splinter. It's like, it's, it's just a very, very hard— anyway, I'm all over it, guys. €2. And so if you don't like meaty bones, but you know, maybe some people show pictures and the dog's sitting on the couch eating a meaty bone, and I'm like, why are you letting your dog chew a meaty bone? Oh, look at that! Yellow one's the one I want. I hope I got the yellow one. Oh, that's a nice one. I like that. Yeah, cool.

Yeah, RPM Live Live, plenty of different options. Have a look.

Lots of different colors, lots of different goodness.

Tmail/rawpetmedics.

Yeah, thanks for reminding us, Fiona.

Sweatshirts and everything there. So thanks, Fiona. Right, guys, wonderful. Take care.

Talk to you soon.

Move over to Patreon now.

Love you.

See you soon. Thanks, guys.