RPM Tuesday Live

Welcome, welcome everybody.

Coming at you, coming in your ears.

It's Tuesday, best day of the week. It's 7 o'clock, best time of Tuesday, and it's Raw Pet Medics, which is the best show on Facebook, obviously. Brady, do you think so?

A lot of people will say, as people, when they want to say something horrible, they always say, people said, people have said, and then they say the horrible thing as if, because they don't want to say it. But this is definitely the best show. We see the ratings are climbing all the time thanks to people's efforts. Oh, Bren, look where you are! Look at the size of your office, Bren. Looking great in the background.

So big, he's got an announcement. Yeah, amazing, amazing. Brendan is doing some amazing things. He's in an airport, but even then he's organizing things. Conor and I couldn't organize it when we were doing it face to face, but Brendan can do it from Birmingham, walking around an airport, Leeds, or wherever airport. He's that Clever.

It's like your parents, like your dad, your dad just coming in with just overbearing, like he, like he knows the kids are just not going to do a good job, but so he's going to come in and do it because we couldn't do it. It's the truth, you know. So nice one, Brian. Thanks for interrupting your holiday. That was very nice. But yeah, Nick, go ahead, give us an intro.

Guys, we're going to be— we've got the lovely Rachel from Boil and Broth, and we are going to be talking about broth, the interesting bits, the amazing benefits of broth. We really want to say thank you to all our podcast people. You can get our podcast on any medium you fancy. If you can give us a thumbs up or subscribe or do whatever you do on that medium, that would be amazing. We want to say a big thank you to our Patreon members, patreon.com/rawpetmedics, because your support allows us to get great speakers, guests. It allows us to keep the lights on, and it allows Bren to go on holiday.

That's it.

So I'm being facetious there. It's nothing to do actually. We spend things very, very wisely. And it allows us to do our show on the 2nd of December in Manchester, where we're going to have hijinks, and we're going to have lots of lectures in the morning, and then in the afternoon, we're gonna have some fun.

That's it.

Those are all going to be good.

Joe Valetti, it's all going to be good. I'm looking forward to it.

So Rachel, welcome. Rachel Boyle and Broth, you are very welcome.

Um, thank you. Thanks for having me on, guys.

Yeah, we need you here for this one. Yeah, have we tackled bone broth yet, Nick? I don't think we have actually done a show on bone broth yet.

Not directly. No, it's really exciting. I talk about it all the time.

So yeah, it comes up now and again, and kefir as well, which is another one. I mean, this show is going to be split in two with those two topics alone. And you manufacture both of those products, Rachel. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your business, how long you're going, where you are, what you do, give people a bit of a background before we get into the details.

Thanks. Yeah, that's great. Well, I love broth. I've been making it now for 7 years. I don't make it anymore, thank goodness, because it's hard work. Yeah, my husband helps out now. We have I have a small factory in North Dorset and yeah, but I started the business just from one slow cooker bubbling away the bones for myself because initially I was 15 stone. I had, I had Candida overgrowth. This is a condition that I developed when I was pregnant with my children and I had lots of antibiotics during my time of pregnancy. And as a result, it really disrupted my gut bacteria. And it was the same with being pregnant as well, because pregnancy is proven to disrupt the gut bacteria too. So I was really in a mess. I was very overweight, had lots of digestive problems, couldn't get support through the NHS. I spent 3 years on the NHS roundabout, as I call it, going into the doctors, getting a prescription for UTIs, and then a couple of weeks later I was in there for thrush. You know, so it was this roundabout that I went on for 3 years, and it was really, really debilitating. And I think the most frustrating thing for me was I didn't know what was wrong with me. So I eventually gave up on conventional medicine and decided to do a bit of my own research. I have a little bit of a background in health. I did like sort of personal training and nutrition when I was younger. So anyway, it sort of led me down the journey of gut health and it opened up this whole new world for me. It was like gut bacteria and, you know, lining and inflammation. And anyway, so bone broth is really big in Australia and that's where I first heard about it and had a friend over there who was raving about bone broth. So I thought I might as well try it over here because I couldn't get I couldn't find at the time a really good supplier of bone broth, so I started to make it at home. And, and I also discovered I could, you know, probiotics as well, which was something I hadn't heard of before, so to help rebalance the gut bacteria. But I couldn't afford— we were, we were not in a good financial position at that time with two young children. So I decided to start looking for a natural source of probiotics. And then that was what led me down the pathway to kefir water. So I I designed my own diet to get rid of Candida overgrowth, which is essentially a cleanse and then cutting out all sugars and introducing new foods into my diet as well. So, you know, lots of lovely vegetables and really focusing on drinking broth every day, having the kefir water every day. Anyway, I managed to cure my condition in 12 weeks and was completely symptom-free. And then I lost 6 stone over 2 years and I just— which was amazing. So it was really, really cool. And I felt naturally that I needed to go into business with it because it wasn't just me that was having these problems. There's lots of people around the world having the same problem. So I felt I wanted to get the message out there. So I started to just make the broth for friends and family and people would knock on the door asking for broth and they'd come back and yeah, and eventually it just sort of snowballed from there. I set up an online website, shipped my first shipment to London. This is when we were doing the frozen broth and yeah, from one small slow cooker, we're now into a small factory here in Dorset and have a small team of people. Yeah. And then we just I decided though, with my husband, it was really a decision that we, we would notice that there was a lot of commonalities between the pet space and the human space where, you know, people were struggling to find the right information for their dogs, particularly who are having, you know, which I believe is a lot of gut health problems. So, yeah, you know, and knowing the power of broth and how it can help humans, I did some research and discovered it was amazing for dogs as well. So I decided to get us a pet food license. So I applied to the APHA, which was not easy because we had to get a dual, a co-location license as they call it. And it took 9 months for the Food Standards Agency to approve it. I even had them coming to my house to come and check up on what I was doing. I was like, look, I'm just seriously only a small person doing this. I just want to sell it to pets. But anyway, from that it just sort of really grew and we become more popular in the pet space. And then in the last you know, probably 2 and a half years, Boil and Broth has really been all about the pets. And, you know, I'm really proud to say that our broth is, you know, a really good quality broth and people do get good results from it. And I truly believe it's because we don't add any vegetables in our broth. We only add more bones. And as a result, you get more protein from it. So, you know, people get a really high quality broth. And the other thing is, is because we're actually a human broth company that makes it for pets. We don't use Category 3 bones, which— so there's a difference. So a lot of pet companies will use Category 3 products, which means they're not for human consumption, but we only buy high-quality human-grade bones from local farmers in the area. So technically our products are organic, but we just haven't gone through the status of being organic because a lot of the farmers don't do that, unfortunately.

And Rachel, what's in your range? Just give us a little run-through of the range that people can get hold of.

Yeah, amazing. So we started off just with beef, lamb, and chicken, and now we offer more of the novelty proteins because one of the things that feedback that we were getting is that some dogs, you know, dogs have allergies particularly to beef and chicken. So we decided to offer like a full range of other proteins, goat, venison, and pork as well. So these are all now available on our website and in stores. You know, we're stocked in over 400 stores around the UK. You know, you can buy it online. Yeah, and we've got the— you can see probably some of the range behind me. We've got the larger— so these are the 120-gram pots. They are perhaps, you know, in comparison to some other broth companies, people might think that these are really expensive, but this rehydrates back to 3 litres. And I think the most important message that I can get across about our products is it's actually pure protein. There's nothing else in it. It's just— and broth has has 96% water. So when you dehydrate it, you've literally just got 4% protein left. So yeah, so it can seem like—

I mean, yeah, when you're shipping stuff around the place, shipping watery products is a curse because it's so expensive and it's just water. And so if you can dehydrate the product, what a novel step. I mean, that's amazing. That's going to open up the market for you, totally get outside the UK because it's so cool. And now you're going inside these cool little Ziplocs. You sent us a nice little package out of these different bits and pieces.

These are so cute. So we do a 35-gram pot, so these really work well for small dogs because you can get up to 21 servings from this 35-gram pot. It's just because of the rehydration process, so people can buy the pot and then they can come and top up with a little refill pouch. Now unfortunately we only do these in the chicken and the beef at the moment, but we do have plans to roll it out to the other flavours. But chicken and beef, believe it or not, are actually our Biggest sellers.

Yeah, yeah, I bet they are. Cool.

And do you post out, Rachel? Do you post?

Yes, we do.

People can order online?

Yeah, it's actually like pretty much next day delivery, so if somebody orders it now, they'll get it on Thursday.

Is there anybody in Ireland stocking your products yet?

Yes, we do. Gary at Well Fed Pets, he's our distributor for Northern Ireland and Ireland, so he's got us into quite a few shops I think Fetch My Pet Needs is one of our biggest stockists over there. Yeah, she's great.

Gary's great as well. Gary, he makes my supplements. So, yeah, I love Gary.

He's such a nice guy, he really is.

Hardest working dude in the pet industry. So look, these products, like, when people look at dehydrated products, it's hard for them to grasp the value for money concept. It's like when you buy your blueberries and you buy these blueberries that are 90% water and you look at the price of them, you get a small little tray. But when you buy dehydrated blueberries, you get 100 grams of powder and you see the price, it's like £25 and you go, oh my God, that seems quite a lot. But you are getting so much blueberry for that. You can buy the best quality, like I was going to say, outdoor, organic, wild-grown blueberries for the same price as the stuff you're getting from the supermarket. So the dehydration process, particularly when the thing you're dehydrating is almost all water, it can be a little bit of a hill to say to people, look, while you look at the price of our products, when you rehydrate this, we are at least comparable to everybody else. And then our shipping is much cheaper and we've got all the other advantages that go with that. So yeah, great, great product. Great idea.

Thank you. And the whole, you know, we really wanted to, you know, our power bill went up, I'm sure with everybody, you know, but for us, because we, you know, we are power hungry, particularly when we were doing frozen, it was like £7,500 a month. You know, and for a small business it was just totally not affordable. And then plus you've got all the extra packaging and all the shipping costs on top of that. But by doing the dehydrated, it was so powerful because it doesn't change the nutrition of the product at all. So it's the same product, you're literally just removing the water. And then we saved like honestly so much money on power and packaging.

How do you— what does, what does the dehydration process look like? We'll get to the broth manufacturing in a second, but The dehydrate— you don't have trays of water that you're dehydrating. I mean, how do you possibly dehydrate a pool of water?

Yeah, well, we've got a little bit of a technique.

Okay, okay, you don't want to give that away.

Yeah, you can't give away the trade secret. But yeah, I mean, essentially we do have an enormous dehydrator that is on, you know, and it takes a long time to dry the broth. It takes like 4 days, you know, but each time— yeah, I know, but you've got to remember it runs at a lower capacity. So once the water has started to evaporate out of the dehydrator, it then reduces the amount of power that it's using and it gets lower by time. So yeah, it is definitely more, more saving on the energy.

Yeah, so Rachel, with, with, uh, you're at Boil and Broth, uh, Judith has just logged on and she said, what's your company called? So Judith, Boil and Broth is, uh, is Rachel. And that's great. So we talk about bone broth quite a lot. I certainly do with my clients a lot. I think it's almost ubiquitously useful. We have to talk about histamines in a second, but we'll do that. But with what— where do you use the bone broths? Where, you know, I mean, you don't use them directly, but what stories, what feedback are you getting? From where people are using these, these type of products.

So what you mean, how people are using them in terms of what they're feeding to their dogs? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it's just amazing. Like, we— people come to us, they leave amazing reviews about the things that are helping their dogs with, you know. So we've had everything from dogs with low blood, low blood counts, that they've had the broth over a period of time and then they've seen their bloods come back to normal. We've had dogs that have just totally lost weight and just changed, changed their health completely. Underweight dogs as well that have put weight back on again from having the broth. And also just that, you know, you can naturally see, I think, in a dog, you know, and in humans as well, those who are having broth because they, they do look naturally healthier, you know, the skin, the coat, you know, the nails, you know, it is just an all-round fantastic product. And I mean, we say to use our product, we do recommend that people rehydrate it rather than using it as a topper. I don't believe that you get the same benefits from having it as a topper on the food, as a dry topper. And also you have to be careful as well because you want to be mixing it with hot water to kill any enterococci in water and all that sort of stuff. So, and anything in the broth as well that might be there. So hot water is definitely best to add with it. And then also what customers can do with our broth, which we're unique, and I don't believe that there's any other bone broth company out there that can do this with their broth, but you can actually set it back to a collagen state. So, you know, like how you get your— if you were to buy a normal frozen bone broth, you would open it and it would perhaps be a jelly. Well, you can do that with our broth. So you just have to follow the guidelines, put it in the fridge and let it set for 24 hours. And yeah, and it goes back to a jelly. People do trouble— have some troubles with it, but often it's because collagen is a natural protein and it is very temperature sensitive as well, so you really do need to make sure your fridge is nice and cold.

Yeah, it won't matter if it's jelly or slightly more watery as long as the nutrients are going in. And it is full— yeah, it is full of nutrients. Like, there's been a number of studies of broth, not as much as there has been of kefir, which is the other half of your business, but of broth there has been a lot of good studies. And they're saying that as well as collagen, like, one of the things— one of the nutrients— I just did a little tiny dig and And, you know, there's a number of kind of cool things that leap off the page. I'm just going to call them out. But it's not so much that you're getting a lot of calcium and magnesium and stuff from a little bit of magnesium, not a lot of calcium. It's not that that you get from the bones. What you do get in that broth is collagen, gelatin, carnosine, which is a really important one. We've talked about that a number of times. Glycine, proline, glutamine, hyaluronic acid, which would be joints, glucosamine, chondroitin, which is joints, proteoglycans. Anyway, I could go on. Those little bits and pieces, it's those sort of cool proteins. But if you just pick one of those. And, um, because again, there's not a lot of studies on broth as a whole, but there is a study of the components of broth. So if you look at, say, gelatin or collagen or carnosine, and you look at supplements of those amino acids and proteins, there's lots of studies on gelatin alone. Like, the stuff that you make your jellies with, uh, consuming it most often via collagen can increase bone health, reduce joint pain, and boost joint strength. Studies of rats shows it increases bone density in rats in just 3 months. Gelatin increases the mucilage in your intestinal wall, which is probably where the probiotic effect of it comes from, because that's where the probiotics live. They live in the mucous lining of your intestines, so it plays that role. It can help with GI issues as a result in rats, is what these authors think. It's because of the mucilage. And then gelatin also contains glutamic acid, which is another amino acid that helps protect the intestinal wall from damage and possibly prevent leaky gut. Finely gelled and contains glycine, which in human trials helps manage blood sugar levels in those with type 2 diabetes and reduces inflammation. That's just one of those proteins that I mentioned. There's like 6 or 8, and you could do that in carnosine, you could do it on the rest. So there isn't a whole lot of studies of broth as a, as a, you know, because, you know, companies just aren't doing those studies. They're doing the studies on the individual components. They'll go, oh, I wonder what carnosine does, and then they'll sell you the supplement carnosine when actually you can get the whole shebang in one goo. So I just think that's interesting. People go Googling for studies for broth, but that's kind of not the way you do it. But there is studies for broth, and there's been studies for broth for the last— since I think the first study here that I found was 1934, and they found that— yeah, yes. So it was a famous couple, apparently, Robert McGantz, an Irish pediatrician, and Elsie Widdowson. So they started the bone broth revolution, and in 2000s in Nebraska, they found that Chicken soup, simple chicken soup seemed to experience a mild reduction in inflammation to help reduce symptoms of respiratory infection in rats and humans. Yeah, and 21, same thing, they found growth factors increase and all sorts of cool stuff. Interferon reduces, all these things that you want to see. So that 2021 study was the most impressive. I'll share that from our Facebook page to show you what— that's the most impressive bone broth study. But that's getting all the things at once. So I'm excited by this. Like, I have never really looked into before until I prepared for this. Then I'm like, oh wow, there's actually a lot to this. Why do you take the fat off the bone broth?

That's a great question. A lot of people leave it on there, you know. I mean, we take it off because from a packaging perspective, you know, when we were doing the, you know, when we were doing the pouches particularly, you know, if we were to just put the broth in and then the layer of fat, we would just be reducing the amount of volume. So we decided not to do that. We actually for a while made you know, sold tallow, the beef fat, and all of the fats. We sold it for cooking fats, and then we sort of made fat bones for dogs. But unfortunately, we had to stop it because it's just so time-consuming. And I know so many people were upset about that, and we're really sorry, but, you know, unfortunately, it's just we have to make decisions about what products work and what products don't.

Because it's interesting that the fat is something that you remove, like, with dogs with IBD, as Nick was just about to mention there. But dogs with IBD, they're temperamental to feed. And so apparently when you're feeding broth and stews, the advice is to take the fat content off for these because when you've got IBD, they struggle with. But Nick had just mentioned there with these dogs with gastrointestinal kind of issue, they can suffer histamines worse because they lack the enzyme. Nick, what's the enzyme?

Diaminoxidase. And basically it gobbles up histamine. So if your gut is in great shape and your liver is in great shape, then any histamines that come through. Now I'm reading Dr. Paul Saladino at the moment, which is the Carnivore Code, and he goes into this in a really big way. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a stupendous diet of the— you're a bit like Shanahan. Remember when we went, we, we all read Shanahan like about 3 years ago and it was like, oh my God. And all the ancient, all the ancient tribes, they all use bone broth. You know, and bone marrow and what have you. And fat is prized as one of the key elements of health. So I can see why you would take, take off the fat, you know, for packaging and what have you. But if you can get to a stage with your dogs where you're getting some good fats in there, then I think that's really, really, really important. Now, as regards the histamine thing, one of the Everybody knows that there are a thousand benefits from using bone broths, okay? But the kind of the, the fly in the ointment, as it were, was histamine. There are certain humans and possibly some dogs who can't cope with the histamine, probably from the collagen that we find within bone broths, okay? And And therefore the argument goes, be careful of bone broths because they might make you itchy, they might make you flarey, they may flare your leaky gut and what have you. But if, if bone broth is part of the healing of leaky gut, then I think that there is a place for it to play. So if you can heal leaky gut, if you can promote the health of liver, then any histamine that does get through in the early days, it's going to be, it's going to be reduced because your gut is healthy. It's going to be reduced because your diamine oxidase in the liver is gobbling it up and in the gut. So, and also, which is really interesting, but Paul Saladino, The Carnivore Code, he says kidney is really high in diamine oxidase. So what you can do is you can increase your level. It's very cool. If you— it's quite a good supply. It's maybe one of the best in all the animal foods. So animal foods, fresh animal foods, are very low in histamine. It's only when they're cured or aged that you get this rise in histamine. So if we're feeding our dogs really great raw food, then the histamine levels are going to be low. Bone broth is very beneficial to the gut and everything else. So I think that there is a game to play there with the bone broth. And I have to say that I don't— I cannot remember any case where when we gave bone broth, we got an increase in leaky gut, IBD, or itchy skin. Yeah, all these histamines, all the histamine reactions. Unless you've got a dog who is chicken intolerant and you give it chicken bone broth, obviously that's not a great idea. So that, as far as I can see, is, is the diamine oxidase, the gobbler of histamine, which has to be a good thing because we're all very inflammatory and there's a lot of dogs with IBD, there's a lot of dogs with skin disease. So I think, I think for me, bone broth has to be part of that conversation. Where are you on that, Conor?

Yeah, kind of the same there. So that DAO, which is all I know it as, but now I mean, yeah, I mean, I always say DAO as well. I just call it DAO. I don't know how you pronounce it, but that's my effort. But yes, that's produced by the, the lining in the intestines. So when that gets hammered, when there's a war zone in there, it doesn't produce as much of it. So it makes perfect sense to me that they would struggle with histamines, but I still don't pick low histamine food for dogs with IBD, that's not the first thing that comes into my head because I just don't. But look, sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes you use the wrong stew. I'm now decreasing the fat for IBD dogs, but I'm not decreasing histamine because I haven't got that kickback yet from it. I don't see that, but I'm not a vet. I'm not— I'm doing most of my Zoom consults, so it's not like I have the same access that Nick would have. So, but it's not something I'm thinking of. I wonder, is this where a question came up, and I'm going to pass it over to you now, Rachel, to get your opinion on the histamine bit. But somebody said on my page when I posted about broth been on tonight. They said, oh, can you ask, is this why you don't give broth to hot dogs, as in, or warm dogs, whatever the traditional Chinese veterinary medicine term is, a Judy Morgan's kind of realm? And that's probably an inflamed dog or a dog suffering histamine, which could be the term they use, damp and warm. And I'm not going— no expert, I'm sorry if I'm butchering it, but it might be the same thing. It may be dogs that have this histamine intolerance and whatever What are you thinking about the histamine, Rachel?

Well, I mean, look, it's a great question. It's something that's come up with us for a very long time, you know, particularly with humans and now so with, with pets. And I actually wrote a blog about it because we were getting asked so much about the histamine levels in broth that I felt they needed an explanation. And because, you know, it would— anyway, so broth naturally does have high histamine. I mean, especially when it's a slow-cooked broth because it is cooked over a longer period of time. So natural histamine is produced and we pressure cook our bones. So actually our broth is lower in histamine in comparison to other broths that are slow cooked. But because the histamine intolerance is a gut health issue, I always recommend that people should have broth but have a very small dose of it and introduce it into the diet. So, you know, for dogs particularly, we recommend about 10ml a day just to have it. If you know, they don't need much, but it's enough to get that protein into them, those really important proteins that could perhaps get to work in the, in the gut and actually not have too much of an effect on, on the histamine levels at all. And quite rightly, as you said there, you know, if they're following a raw diet, then their food naturally is going to be lower in histamine anyway. So introducing that sort of next step with the broth is a really, really good idea.

So you're saying that you start low and then as gut and possibly liver health improve, you can, you can build up? Because if you think of it, all the traditional— well, all the traditions all around the world, bone broth is, is, is key. You know, if you think of the, the Jewish mother, if you get sick, she'll give you chicken broth, chicken, chicken soup for the soul. You know, it's, it's a very ancient way of healing people. And I think in days of old, everybody's gut was in better health because they didn't eat loads of crap. And their liver was in better health because it didn't eat loads of crap and, you know, medicines and what have you. And so maybe in days of old, the gut could tolerate it. But if we just go in gently to start with, with appropriate protein for the sensitivities of that dog, we can just kind of just come in under the radar. I think that's a great way to think about it. So thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. No worries. I mean, look, you know, I think it's just about using a bit of common sense, isn't it, really? You know, because it is a gut health condition, you know, and you can supplement DOA. I'm not going to say it, um, but anyway, so you can supplement that. Um, I don't know, can you get a supplement for dogs?

You should use a human one, but I prefer to go with just get a chuck a bit more kidney in. If you don't like kidney, or, and this is kind of from a human perspective, but if, if your dog doesn't like kidney because it is pretty strong, or you can't get hold of it, or you just can't bring yourself to kind of just wrestle with these slightly rubbery reddish things, there are people like, um, Hunter and Gather and there's probably others who do. They do desiccated Icelandic, and I'm, I'm not selling them, so you can get it where you like. They do desiccated Icelandic lamb's liver, and I'm actually taking that at the moment. So I may be having a positive effect on my histamine because it increases the DOA, gobbles up the histamine, and so we're moving in the right direction. So that's pretty exciting. I didn't even realize that. So Exciting stuff.

I think I have a— I have another hot topic here, and I'm aware that we're already two-thirds of the way through the show and we haven't talked about kefir yet. And actually, when it comes to evidence and like amazing effects, kefir has a lot much longer list because it's been more intensely studied. But last thing, another thing that you see when you're talking about broth is that you can see it's higher in phosphorus. And I saw one of the questions that came up was this phosphorus thing, which myself and Nick have battled off a few times, but I bet you— have you— I'll just say, have you been— has the phosphorus thing come up?

Many times.

Can he have phosphorus? It's like, well, he bloody needs phosphorus. If he doesn't have any, he's in big trouble. Does that come up often? I bet it does.

Yeah, all the time. We're often, you know, every— pretty much every day we're asked whether people can give their dog a broth or cat broth if they've got CKD, chronic kidney disease. Again, you know, I have to be careful, and this was actually something I wanted to throw open to you guys because I wrote a blog about it, but I was very careful in what went into it, you know, to just make sure you speak to health— veterinary health consultants before you give anything to your dog or change anything in their diet. But yeah, I really wanted to throw this open to you because actually broth naturally contains phosphorus in it because it's in the bones and you can't get away from that. I mean, we do use you know, high-quality bones. And I do think if the quality of bones is poorer, then you're probably going to get more phosphorus in there or other things happening. So yeah, what do you think about this, guys? I'd love to know so I can—

Do you want to go over that? Okay, I'm gonna— I'll just jump in. So we've been looking at this quite intensively over the last few years because the story that you get from Hills and Royal Canin and Purina is that that if you have a higher blood phosphorus because of your diet and because of your kidney disease, that is correlated with a reduced longevity with kidney disease. That's what they're teaching in vet schools. However, we've come out with some papers. Initially, Pete Colshaw said, well, actually, there's some papers in cats whereby if you give real food you don't get the blood phosphorus peak. Yeah, the body recognizes the real phosphorus and you don't get this. Whereas if you use the calcium, the artificial phosphorus salts, you do get this. And guess what they put into the kibbles of this world? They use artificial salts. And so you get this, wehe, or with the phosphorus. But with the natural phosphorus, you don't see that, and therefore you're keeping the phosphorus low. And that is even from their research, is correlated with better longevity. So I used to be very careful about phosphorus, and I go for low-phosphorus meats, turkey and tripe and what have you. But, you know, with, with Karen and Newton, for example, he was eating high-phosphorus foods for a very extended period and he never had a problem with phosphorus. And I've had that with many, many, many cases because when you have kidney disease, you, you're blood testing regularly. And I can't remember the last time we had an increased phosphorus even on a regular phosphorus diet. So I wouldn't have problem giving bone broth to a kidney dog. Okay. Because all the benefits are much, much, much enhanced. So that would be my thoughts.

Thank you.

No pleasure. It's there. It's in the literature. Yeah.

And that's actually— sorry, Conor, to jump in quickly, but, you know, that is absolutely, you know, what I believe as well, because there are so many health benefits in bone broth, you know, again, doing the approach of just giving it slowly, 10ml a day, you know, don't be silly with it, just build up over time, allow the pup, the cat to heal over time and monitor. I think that's, yeah, the greatest way to do it. What do you think, Conor?

I'll be the same as Nick, you know, that's a fact what he's saying. There's 2 or 3 studies there, 2 of them in cats, and, you know, phosphates were causing the trouble in cats and natural phosphorus didn't cause any damage at all. And they're like, oh, isn't the phosphorus isn't causing any harm here? And so that was in cats with replicated kidney disease, so You know, I think it's worth it. It would take a good bit of convincing now to convince me of any other way. Now phosphorus is one of the ones you need the most of. It's in absolutely everything. It's critical to life.

The paper to look at, guys, is Dobenecker. I think it's 2021, but if you just Google Dobenecker— how do you spell it? I can't remember, but it's pretty— it's pretty much D-O-B-E-N-I-K-E-R or something. Yeah. Yeah, maybe she's got— she's put it there.

The studies are in that kidney disease article I wrote on inorganic phosphorus.

So, okay, so Dobenecker, 2021, and he's got it, he's got it there in black and white. And I think that's really, really important. And when you step back and think of it, it makes complete sense. You feed the real deal. The body, which has been dealing with it for millions of years, recognizes it and doesn't get too excited. You feel the— you feed an artificial product and it's always like this.

Absolutely.

It's always the problem. It's always, always the problem. And look, there's somebody asked a question there earlier on, like, what about bone broth or eating bones? Look, the nutrients in bone broth come from eating bones. So yes, eating bones, you're going to get a lot of the benefits you're getting from bone broth. But bone broth is given to a lot of dry-fed dogs, given to a lot of cats not eating bones, gut-sick dogs that don't have the processing ability to digest meaty bones. There's a myriad of places to put it. And so, and good quality healthy bones may be better than intensively reared. If you were feeding a lot of intensively reared chicken and cattle from CAFOs, I'd be saying they'd be my least favorite bones because the last thing we moved to kefir then, there was a little study there that showed some bone broth can be higher in lead depending on where you get your stuff. And so the heavy metals, bones are a sink. So that's a, that's an issue too. So if my, my animals were being reared indoors intensively on, on crappy grain, I'd be thinking, yeah, like, uh, it's something to think about, that maybe good quality bone broth is really important. So, uh, yeah, there's just so many places for it, you know. Um, do you want to have a quick chat about kefir here? Because we do a thing afterwards, we do a thing called on the side. I'm not sure if we can do it if Bren's not here, Nick. Maybe we'll just do—

yeah, exactly. I think he's kind of— he's lurking in the background and he might be able to close this one down and then restart us on Patreon. I hope so.

He'll let us know if he's around. If he's taking off, we might just do an extra 10 minutes here, but we do it on Patreon. Let's— let's tell us a bit about kefir. What is kefir?

Okay, so a great question. A lot of people will acknowledge kefir as milk kefir because that's probably the most common kefir out there. You can buy it in the supermarkets. There's lots of different brands. When I started on my gut health journey, I was intolerant to dairy, so I didn't want to go down the dairy route for, for the kefir. So I actually discovered water kefir. And so instead of using— so how milk kefir works is it ferments using the sugars within the milk. And so rather than using the milk sugars to ferment, you use like a natural sugar to ferment the water kefir grains with water. So it's a very, very simple process. It's just kefir grains, water, sugar. We add a little bit of dried fruit in there to just add it, give it a little bit of extra flavor. For pets, we keep it original, so we don't add any other ingredients at all. We do for humans, like the mango and the cranberry. I had that.

Yes, I drank both of them.

Yeah. How was it, Brady? How was it?

Very, very good. As I said to Rachel, I'm going to say it live. As I said to Rachel, it's fizzy because obviously it's in a can, but then it's kefir, so you've got that extra fizz. So I was like, well, that's the initial shock. You got to take it easy with it, but it's lovely and refreshing. And look, what are you going to do? You're not going to drink anything, one drink and think it's amazing. So you'll have to send me a whole case, Rachel, and then I'll let you know.

I will. I will.

I'll be happy to send it to you.

I'm a fan. Like, that mango one was lovely. Yeah.

How much sugar is in it, Rachel? I'm a sugar Nazi, so— None.

None. Because what happens is the bacteria in the kefir grains break down the sugars and they convert them into CO2, which is why you get your gas. So you're active.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's made my day. If I could have a case, I'd be really grateful. My children would be so grateful.

Yeah.

Because You know, even San Pellegrino. Yeah, they go, oh, Dad, can I have some San Pellegrino? It's not Coca-Cola.

Yeah.

And I'm like, yeah, but if you look at how much sugar is in this, there's like 12 teaspoons per glass.

Do you give the same attention to the beers that you drink, Nick?

I wonder.

As Nick sips his beers. No, you're not having any Coca-Cola.

You're not having— yeah, there's not a lot of It's fermented out most of the sugar. It's the alcohol that kills you, not the sugars in the beers.

Yeah, there's just no way. So what is it? What is kefir? I see these grains, okay, and what are those grains?

So they're like little translucent grains, and they actually come from a cactus, the prickly pear cactus, usually originating in Mexico. And these grains grow inside of the cactus, and as they grow, they feed on the sugar water with inside the plant. Plant, and they grow and grow and grow, and they get bigger and they multiply, and then they actually start popping off outside the cactus themselves. And then the people in the local area, in the Tabicos they call them, they go around and they collect these grains, and then they take them back home and they ferment them. And that's how the, the natural probiotics is started.

No way! So are the little granules— so they, they contain the bacteria and maybe a little starter culture of a bit of, a bit of sugar as well?

Yes, absolutely. It's amazing, honestly.

It's yeast as well, isn't it? It's not just coffee, it's yeast as well.

That's right. See, the most thing, the most microbes that you'll find in the, in the café themselves is the lactobacillus range. So that's mostly made up of those and the bifidobacterium. So that's basically made up with that as well. And then the brewer's yeast, which is found in pretty much most fermented drinks, naturally fermented drinks, and the brewer's yeast is actually really good for the digestive system. And I believe that that's also what helped when I had Candida overgrowth, because Candida overgrowth is a fungus. So when you have a healthy yeast versus a— most of the harmful yeast, yeah, it sort of helps to create that balance. So yeah, that's my theory.

The weight gain thing is interesting because people don't understand is when they're— when, when they think of growth hormones in the— in, say, I was going to say the US, but I mean, whatever. But it's not actually hormones they use, but it's antibiotics. And it's a type of antibiotic they give that increases weight gain. Isn't that right, Nick? You're not allowed to use growth hormones anymore in North America, but it is an antibiotic they use for growing the chickens quicker. Is that something to do with weight gain, that your gut dysbiosis is just—

Yeah, if you use certain antibiotics, a side effect of using certain antibiotics is that you increase weight gain. You just skew the the microbiome such that you get better food to body weight conversion. That's essentially— it's food conversion rate. Yeah, yeah. And it's just artificially tilting the microbiome. But there are ways of doing that by giving probiotics rather than antibiotics, because with the antibiotics, you've got to stop the antibiotics before it goes to humans and then it goes below a certain level. But is that certain very low level, is that going to have an impact on your microbiome? Yeah. So you're tucking into your McDonald's chicken burger and you're actually taking on potentially if those birds were grown with that antibiotic, you're taking that on only low level. But the microbiome is so subtle that even tiny changes can make a big impact, you know. And if you're doing it once a week, every, every Sunday with the kids, whatever, that's going to have an impact. It's, you know, these things are— it's not what you do, it's what you continually do that, that has the impact, as we, as we well know.

So before we leave the main show here, guys, because I'm just aware of Brandon is there, and just in case we get cut off here, I just want to say, um, Rachel's human broth company is called the British Broth britishbrothcompany.com.

We've just rebranded.

And do you have pets and dogs, humans and pets on the same website, or do you—

No, so we, yeah, we decided to split the two brands now. So Boil and Broth is just for pets, and the British Broth Company is now for humans. So if you want some of the kefir, you have to go to the British Broth Company. Um, we do free samples for broth on there as well, so you can pick them up on the British Broth Company. And I've got a discount for you guys, which I'll tell you in a minute. On Boil and Broth, customers are entitled to get a free sample of bone broth as well. They just go and pop a sample into their cart and it comes up automatically. Yes, and we've got 10% off for all your listeners tonight, or viewers tonight, and it's— the code is, let me just double-check, it's RPM10.

Lovely, that's easy to remember, RPM10. And you get—

can you ship to the US? Can you ship to France? Two questions.

Yes, we can ship all over the world. So it's no worries, we offer free shipping for international over £80, so if customers come and buy 2 pots then yes they can have it for free. Then we also are offering subscriptions as well on the Human Broth site at the moment and we have it only on the refill pouches, so these are the 120g refill pouches. So the idea is to get people to cut down on their waste and to buy a pot and then top up with the refill pouch, that's That's what the plan is.

Is this the human broth or the doggy broth?

Both.

Oh right, great.

Yeah, so the subscription model is just coming on Boil and Broth, but everything else is happening on British Broth.

Yeah, really impressive, Rachel. Yeah, really.

So many people are saying here that they're buying this for their dogs and they're not buying it for themselves, and it's like, you know, everyone's saying the dogs just live so much better. Yeah, so Martina, you know you gotta buy it for yourself as well. I'm actually making a lot of broth these days. I'm buying a good quality chicken that's costing me, you know, a proper outdoor reared chicken, and they're huge. And so I'm eating, let's say, one of them every 2 weeks. I get about 3 meals for the 4 of us out of it, you know, you get a tin of kind of curry soup at the end of it. But I'm making a broth then, and then the dog gets about a day or 2 of meat off it. So much extra food comes off it, and then he's getting extra broth, then my kids are getting the chicken soup. So much off one big bird. So we are now eating quite a lot of broth. It was that Catherine Shanahan book that made me do that.

Yeah, just, just a little, a little tip just while— just before we finish, just before we finish, uh, Ellie has tried using collagen. She hasn't used the, uh, bone broth yet, but, um, for the exactly the same thing. However, in the Indonesian, uh, tradition, kids are given loads of bone broth, and having bone broth as soup is really common, you know, probably twice, three times a week you have a bone— it's basically bone broth and you add veggies and you add this, this, and this. And it's really, really good. But she's tried just taking collagen and she saw a noticeable thickening of her hair. So there is a— there is an aesthetic benefit from these things.

There is, you know. Yeah, I totally agree. Like, I've had broth for 7 years, my skin's so healthy, you know, I have long hair, my, my nails are good, you know. So I do believe in the product. It's amazing. That's why it's so fantastic you guys support broth as well, you know, because for all of us broth companies, you know, it's absolutely vital that broth gets out there. You know, that was another thing with the samples, you know, you can get it through people's letterboxes, you know, there's no excuse. Awesome.

Yeah, yeah, get it for the dog, get it for you, get it for the family, get it so that you've got long lustrous hair like, uh, he uses a lot of that.

He uses a lot of drinking.

I'm drinking. More. And guys, I'm gonna— I'm just gonna say, uh, uh, uh, with Connor, just to say, Rachel, this has been really fantastic, really, really enjoyable. Thank you so much. Please, would you stay with us for another 10 minutes? What we do is we treat our Patreon people to a little bit extra. Maybe we can do a little bit more on kefir because I think there's a lot. Yeah, let's jump into that. Before we do that, Karen has reminded me that the tickets— there are still a few tickets left to our event, 2nd of December in Manchester. You can pretend that it's education, but it's going to be an absolute blast. We're going to have a real knees up. And she's put the link just there. If you just have a look, she put it in at 19:47.

Excellent. And I will be there too. So I'm excited.

I'm really excited.

To come out with my husband, of course. So my lovely husband, he's going to be coming and helping. So yeah, it's really amazing. I'm so excited to meet you guys in person, and obviously all of your people that watch this and yeah, are into broth too.

So yeah, it's gonna be a bit of fun. Cool, that's great.

That's absolutely amazing.

Can you turn us off and turn us on again?

No, I can't. Bren's got all the controls.

Everybody