RPM Tuesday Live(ish) 29th August 2023 QnA

Hello everybody, it's not actually the evening, is it? Because we're pre-recording.

I closed my blinds to block out the absolute belting sunshine that's outside. So, uh, yeah, that's something.

Excellent, excellent. Okay, so we're doing Q&A today, guys. Uh, Brendan is not with us because I think he's on holiday. He's got something important on. It has to be important if he's going to miss an RVM. He's really diligent, isn't he? Bren is really, really diligent. You and I have taken holidays left, right, and center. Yeah, it's kind of nice.

His messages come in about maybe half 1 in the morning and it's like, oh, Bren, what are you doing? He's up there working away, putting you to shame. And then he might send you a message at half 6 in the morning, so, uh, that can't be healthy long term. But yeah, he's a— he also, he does all the technical stuff as well. But we have DJ Nick on the decks tonight, so I have absolutely no worries that things are going to go smoothly.

Uh, we've got lots of, uh, questions from Patreon supporters. Thank you, Patreon supporters. You can join, uh, our Patreon supporters and give us, uh, a quid, two quid, uh, for our American followers, that a quid is a pound, or two, or three, or five, or ten. But that support is really, really, really well supported by us. We really, really, really love that because it just helps us to do our thing, and I think it's really, really good. Can you remember the thing? Yeah, patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Oh well, that's pretty easy. And also you can find us on podcast. On, yeah, on, on all the major podcasts. So yeah, this is good. We're sharing, sharing the love across the world, which is remarkable, isn't it?

You were sharing the love there over the weekend. Where did I see your image? Was up talking somewhere. Where were you?

I, uh, well, Ellie and I and Maudie, which is not very good English, Ellie, Maudie, and I went to Edition Dog Live, which was not in Shropshire. It was Stoneleigh, which is just outside Kenilworth, Coventry way, right in the middle of the, the country. So it's really easy to get to from most places. And, um, it was a really, really fantastic— so it's, it's, it's a bit like a mini Crafts, but it's a mini Crafts which has been liberally doused with holistic thinking. So we're talking, talking about raw food, talking about natural, um, answers to many questions rather than just jumping straight into a pharmaceutical approach. Many, many, many, many of the people there are immediately thinking, what can I do more? What can I— how can I, how can I try and minimize the pharmaceuticals? So it was really good. The vibe is great because everybody's on the same page and had lots and lots of really great conversations. I did two presentations and, uh, In the morning, 10 o'clock, I did a presentation, just a 10-minute presentation, so you can just sit down, get, get some—

get something to do.

Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, I tell you what, it's more difficult to do a 10-minute talk than it is a whole day seminar, bizarrely. So in the morning I talked about converting senior dogs over to raw, and in the afternoon I did about canine obesity and its effects on our dogs. So they went down really, really well. And the answer to those questions is senior dogs, senior dogs, he says, putting his mind back. So it's basically there's 4 different transitions you can do overnight, or you can do a 4-day transition, or you can do an exponential transition where you go 1 teaspoon, 2 teaspoons, 4 teaspoons, 8 teaspoons, 16 teaspoons. That's really nice. That's the one I'm going for mostly these days. Or you can do take as long as you like, which I don't think is a great idea because otherwise you take too long to do it.

And you do need a plan.

You do need a plan, I think so.

Yeah.

So, and then we talked about obesity. Obesity— did you know Alex German published a paper in 2017, said that obesity and overweight dogs in the UK— and I think it's about the same in the States— is 74%, and that was in 2017. I would wager that it's 80%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tell you, the other thing that was really fantastic is most of the dogs wandering around— and there were a lot of dogs wandering around at the Edition Dog Live event— most of them were trim and looking great. I saw a lot of wastes, whereas when you walk down the high street, it's only about 1 in 10 or 2 in 10 I reckon that you can actually see the waist and they look trim.

It's a bit like looking at the beach pictures of 1971 Miami and, you know, 2021 Miami. And it's like, it's just incredible the difference. But it's quite obvious what the implications of that is like, you know, it's very hard to maintain a waistline if 50-60% of your diet is bread. Very hard. You don't go to the gym on 50% bread rolls, you know, and we're expecting our pets to do it. So that's an interesting observation about the predominantly raw-fed, probably, group. High protein anyway. Even if they're choosing dry foods, they're probably choosing the high protein stuff.

Yeah.

So that's very interesting, interesting stuff.

Isn't it good? So I would suggest everybody, please, please, please consider— and I'm not being paid to say this— Edition Dog Live. They'll probably be doing next year. They'll probably be at Stoneleigh, not Shropshire, and It's a fabulous event. I think maybe we should think about doing an RPM thing there, possibly. It's because it's just the whole— everybody there is totally up for it. So how about you? How's your week been?

Good. I'm away. I'm away at the moment. I'm on holidays. It doesn't look like it, but actually I was thinking of getting a photograph of my office just as a backdrop so you can actually do it anywhere you want. That's a good idea I just had. No, but I'm on holidays 30 kilometers from my own house, and it's a place called Britis Bay.

Check it out online.

It's just such a stunning, gorgeous beach and you get up every morning and you do your nice big long walk up this beautiful beach.

Amazing.

So it's great. But I forgot the dog's food, of course. And you get downstairs and you wake up in the morning and he wants his breakfast. And I tried to get him onto one meal a day. I failed, which I think is part of the FAQs later on. But this dog was not happy on one meal a day. And I pushed that for a year, year and a half. He was just so insistent about food. So he's on two meals a day and it works better for this dog. Breakfast and, you know, kind of afternoon meal. So anyway, breakfast time.

Are they the same size, both of those, just out of interest?

No, he needs more food in the morning time because he gets his huge walk ideally first before he gets his breakfast, but he wants more food in the morning time. He just needs a suggestion of food in the evening time, like a chicken thigh. So that's kind of what he gets, to be honest with you, to try to keep the teethies clean because I could notice a bit of tartar built up on the inside of his canines that I missed, that the groomer pointed out for me, which I was mortified about. I'm supposed to be the guy keeping teeth clean and like, oh, don't say that. People in the groomers as well, keep it down. But no, so yeah, I whipped up a couple of scrambled eggs for the dogs. The dog wasn't thinking about it, you know, 3 eggs, bit of butter, bit of salt, who cares? And I had some leftover porridge that you had cooked porridge for the kids in the morning. And so a bit of porridge, it's so cold in the mobile home in the morning time, you have to eat something hot and I'm not going cooking meat every single morning. So cook a bit of porridge left out there and I gave some to the dog, scrambled eggs and porridge and a sprinkle of cheese for some reason. 'cause he likes it. And I gave him this little, in a heart-shaped bowl, and I said, I'll take a picture. I don't often do it. I said, I'll just take a picture before I go for a walk. And he's lapping this up, loving it. And I thought, what a lovely high-protein meal for the dog, tasty, you know, in a pickle. And I put it up on Facebook, but yeah, like most of the responses were like, ah, that's cool, you know, but some were like, hmm, few questions, Conor, you know, and people see the carbs in the bowl and they see the butter and it becomes like, like a bit of a, not a panic, you know what I mean though? People would just kind of say, oh well, I'm not sure about the carbs for the dog. I'm like, this isn't an everyday feed. And even if it was, it's a bloody great feed for a dog. I mean, pity about this dog getting 3, you know, organic outdoor-reared eggs for breakfast. So I just thought it was kind of funny that there's still a bit of PTSD, like, oh, the butter would upset my dog's stomach. And I'm like, why? Why would animal fat upset your dog's stomach? That's interesting, you know? 'Cause I don't mean swimming in butter. I just mean butter I would give the kids, which is a lot. I give them a lot of butter, like, you know, good. So yeah, so I just thought it was interesting. I'm kind of watching the feedback going, oh, that didn't go absolutely perfectly. It was like, I meant it as a throwaway. Look, dog's eating a bit of scrambled. If it's good enough for my kids, it's bloody good enough for the dog.

Yeah, totally.

Totally.

No, it's interesting, isn't it? I think the myth persists that you must feed the same thing every day or And that's kind of where it falls down. If you did that every day, he would be the size of a house after 6 months. Yeah, totally. But what you're doing is it's the invisible ingredient, which is you're giving him variety. And I think that's amazing. I think that we need to always consider variety. Variety is what's going to stop you getting excess nutrients and becoming deficient in nutrients. So really interesting. There's a question about B12, talking of deficiency. Oh yeah, we should do a show on B12 soon. But, um, let me, uh, shall I, uh, grab the first question?

Go first.

Okay, I'm gonna— I'm just gonna read this out. This is from a wonderful supporter, Patreon supporter called Michelle Charden, I think. T-J-A-D-E-N. And she is in Woodstock, Woodstock, just outside Chicago.

Chicago.

Yeah, and, um, she's, she's, she's a, she's a massive supporter of us, and, and, and I think she's going to be really happy that we're doing a question here. So Michelle, this is all for you. I'm gonna, uh, read this out now. It's a great question. I am fortunate to have two great raw food companies near me where I can source organic pastured beef, pork, turkey, lamb, goat, duck, rabbit, chicken, raw goat milk, and pastured duck eggs. Lucky, lucky Michelle. My issue is finding a good source of omega-3s. Inside the— no, after the Inside Scoop, which was— is Rodney Habib's weekly thing, which you've been on, uh, there, Connor, uh, with Connor and Mark Saint-Ange— oh, we got all the names today— Mark Saint-Ange discussing all the pitfalls with fish oils, I decided to feed fish instead of oil as I preferred Whole foods to supplements when possible. That's an interesting point. I live in an area where it's hard to find fresh fish. Yeah, that's because you're about 1,000 miles from any coast, if my geography serves me correctly. I live in an area where it's hard to find— I'm feeding 14 dogs. 14 dogs.

Wowzers.

Wow. Close bracket. I've been rotating canned mackerel and sardines and freeze-dried salmon. I have 2 questions. Number 1, I make fish chowder with, uh, fish, eggs, and raw goat's milk. Brackets.

Delicious.

Yeah, and a small amount of veg and feed it as the main meal twice a week in my rotation. Considering I feed pastured meat and eggs, which should have some omega-3. There's another really interesting point.

That's, that's its main point.

Isn't it nice? Is fish twice a week enough, or should they get some daily? Is fish twice a week enough, or should they get some daily? That's another interesting point. And the second question is, does fried— does freeze-dried fish contain enough omega-3, or is some lost in the freeze-drying process? So I think there's about 5 or 6 really interesting points there. Great question. And I'm just about to run out of battery. Oh no, you start there and I'll start talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just going to run around for a second.

I'll talk about the main bit that leapt off the page there for me was, first of all, Michelle is a very clued-in raw feeder and feeding a phenomenal diet. I mean, outdoor-reared beef, pork, hard to find, turkey, very hard to find and very expensive. Lamb. Beef and lamb is a dime a dozen here in Ireland and the UK, but outdoor-reared stuff in, in the US is much harder to find. So you're jacking your prices up. The point is, if these are outdoor-reared, and most of them are— beef always is, lamb always is, goat— and she's saying organic and pasture-reared, so you're hoping they're not CAFO, kind of fed grain, which would— so here's the thing, if you're feeding outdoor meats, there is almost certainly enough omega-3 in that diet for an average dog, in my opinion. I would say for the average dog, and I think there's a big kind of focus on fish oil because it's fabulous and a lot of Westerners are deficient in it. Okay, so when you look at the bloody Mediterraneans with their great diet, you're looking at people that get lots of omega-3 in their diet, fabulous omega-3, great quality omega-6, and so, you know, really good quality virgin olive oil and lots of omega-3. We don't get enough omega-3. So if you were to take 1,000 Italians, say, and 1,000 Irish people, the fish oil tablet would be far more effective in the Irish people. If you wanted to prove that your fish oil supplement was good for arthritis, you wouldn't use Mediterraneans in your study. You would use, you know, Londoners or Dubliners. So that's, that's a study of deficiency. And so omega-3, you don't want to be deficient in it because you'll get inflamed and you want to have your omega-3 and 6 ratio perfect. Good. So lots of 3, not too much 6. And if you're a plant eater, then we— good bit of plants, you can have slightly more 6 in your diet, omega-6, that's plant oils, it's okay. But for a carnivore meat eater, they really want to have lots of omega-3 and that comes from animal fat. And it's not just fish oil, it's not just fish fat, it is outdoor-reared beef, goat, lamb, full of omega-3, more than enough than your dog would need. Now, if he's very sick and he's got skin condition and he's inflamed whatever. But for the average dog, I personally wouldn't be with a diet that started that email. I would say, oh, that's fabulous. I couldn't see that being deficient in anything. And such good quality omega-3 in those fats because it comes lumpy meat with fat and untouched by a factory, you know, frozen, perfectly great fat that your dog will be full of. I don't think you need to focus too much on jacking up omega-3 after that. You can actually have a counter effect where you give too much. It's not— you're not trying to fight inflammation all the time. If that's what you're thinking about omega-3. Because if your dog is healthy, inflammation is trying to help you. It's not something to be repressed all the time. So I'm not sure if that dog needs more omega-3. A little bit of fish here and there would be about as great an addition, but that's only starting with the first couple of sentences. Nick, what are your thoughts?

My thoughts is that wolves and dingo-type dogs and canids have been wandering around in the Chicago area for millions and millions of years. That is to say, they are thousands of kilometers from the sea, which is the main source of omega-3. Where did those guys historically get omega-3 from? Because we know for humans and canids that omega-3 is massively important to balance pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory effects. So it stands to reason, therefore, that they must have been getting omega-3s either from the, the rivers. Yeah, salmon, you know, I don't know whether they— you get salmon all the way inland in, in Chicago, but yeah, they may have been eating fish sources of some sort or another. But I would, I would wager that they would be eating beef or equivalents, you know, aurochs or, you know, these kind of things, or pork or wild boar or turkey. Turkey is— they're pretty ancient turkeys, aren't they? They've been strutting around in the States, I think, for a very long time. Lambs and goats and what have you, they would be going around. And ducks for sure, rabbits for sure, chickens probably. Goat milk, yep. If they— if you, if you take down a pregnant or recently a nanny goat, that's the word I was looking for, a nanny goat, then you would dive into that mammary tissue and you would be eating some degree of goat's milk and duck eggs. Yeah, those canids are going to be getting into eggs because eggs, if they're laid on the ground especially, that's just a free lunch and that's that. They wouldn't be going into that. And QED, therefore, they must have got everything they needed. And what, what Michelle is doing, or her suppliers are doing, they are emulating that because they are offering Michelle and all the other very sensible, um, very sensible, um, people around that— my, my thingies are just talking to me, so forgive me. So, um, yeah, that's why, yeah, um, so yeah, so therefore I would think she is probably feeding enough just with that because the pasture, yeah, the, the pasture-fed meat is high, you know, is, is much higher than CAFO meat. CAFO is, is confined animal feed operation, i.e., you, you put cattle into a prison camp and you feed them high-carb grains, so that they— omega-6 and loads of omega-6 in those meats. So it may not be that the omega-3 is particularly high, but the omega-6 is definitely much lower. Plus, CAFOs are disastrous when it comes to welfare. So she's supporting a really fantastic thing, and the benefit to her and her dogs is that there's plenty of omega-3 going in there, but it doesn't have to battle against stacks of omega-6.

Yeah, exactly.

So whatever is there is probably enough because a ratio, you know, ratio can be up here, a ratio can be down there. It's just a balance of those two things. So I think that's interesting concepts coming through there.

So you mentioned that you're popping in a few sardines and tins of sardines and that inside scoop, the guy that you mentioned there, Mark, his name was St. Dong, and he's like an expert of fish oil. I mean, my God, the guy was incredibly clued in. But I was doing a cost-benefit analysis of the different fish oils and, you know, what you're paying per gram of EPA, DHA, EPA, DHA, the omega-3s you really want. And to cut a long story short, we've done a fish oil, a few talks before, but tins of sardines have lots of omega-3 in them, even though they've been cooked at 121 degrees for half an hour, all tinned food, the omega-3 lasts. It's quite— once it's contained in that, in the juices. So you do get omega-3 from that and it's not completely alien, weird looking. Nasty fats. It's pretty good and it comes with protein and nice, you know. So that's a cost-effective way of putting in omega-3. But as she was alluding to, the supplement industry is a major, major problem. 50% of them are at their point of expiry when you buy them. And then as soon as you crack that top, it gets to oxidizing. And once it goes over that edge, it takes more from your body than it gives you. And 10% of them are dangerous. And it's like, wow. So you can imagine where the pet supplement industry is, or if manufacturers— no offense to manufacturers— they buy their fish oil in a 5-liter plastic and they pour a glug in every time they do make food. That's not fish oil you want to be using. So she's right to think, what's the best way to do it? And the freeze-dried bit came up at the bottom. So how do you feel about freeze-dried fish? That's— it's a pretty good quality stuff, I imagine.

I mean, yeah, I've had a look at this and I've got a— I've actually got a paper. Let me just grab it here. Oh, here we go. So this is a paper from, I think it's from New Zealand. It's 2003. It's called Fatty Acid and Sterol Composition of Frozen and Freeze-Dried New Zealand Greenlip Mussels from 3 Sites in New Zealand. And they start the abstract by talking about freezing is known to maintain the, the fatty acids composition. Okay, that's where they're starting. And so what they wanted to do was to compare freeze drying with freezing. Yeah, you take a known preservation method, and you compare it with a fairly new preservation method. And their conclusion is interesting. And so this is the second one was the freeze drying thing. This is the second comparative study investigating the lipid fatty acid and sterol composition of the New Zealand green-lipped mussel with added interest in the effect of freeze drying on the lipid content of the mussel. This study showed that there was no major significant differences in lipid sterol and fatty acid composition between freeze dried and the frozen samples of greenlip mussel. So absolutely great. So therefore the very short answer is freeze drying maintains most things. And I was speaking to, um, a guy who makes freeze-dried. He's— it's a new company called K-O-K-O-K-A-C-A-Y-A, I think. Have you come across them? Anyway, no, they're making— they're making freeze-dried food. And he was saying that freeze-drying not only maintains most nutrients, i.e., pretty much all nutrients, it kills the bugs because they hate the process of freezing will maintain the bugs, but then they dehydrate. Bugs don't like that. And then they, the, there's another process in there which they really hate. And then that's it. So these freeze-dried foods are sterile. Now, is sterile food what you want, that's another question. However, freeze-dried food is generally very safe if bacteria are a concern to you. So it's just that freeze-dried thing came to mind.

Yeah, listen, they, yeah, they feed the armies. That's what they feed. Any country with a standing army has massive freeze-drying potential. So, you know, Britain, France, US, China, they have huge freeze-drying capabilities. And so that's where all the freeze-dried foods are made because these guys have spare capacity. So it's unbelievable. It's the stuff they send up to the Mir space station, although fresh food is the number one request up there. So it's wonderful and it preserves everything. And those foods are picked at the right time. They're not sitting on a shelf and transported here and there. They're picked and they're deep frozen and then they're ready to go. And then they're freeze-dried, sometimes freeze-dried on the spot. Berries are freeze-dried on those farms pretty much. I mean, they're transported and frozen. So you don't have this 2, 3 weeks before you pick them up. Where they have to preserve the ethylene gas in your grapes that never go off and that kind of stuff. So there's a big problem with what we consider fresh produce. So freezing and freeze drying is wonderful. It's quite pricey because the process is expensive. I do hear that the freeze dryers, in order to kill the bacteria, have to use a heat kill step. And they don't call it a cooking step because they don't want to market their food. They want to market it as raw. So, you know, particularly over in America, they use the word raw on all the kibbles. It's like raw coated. It's like, what? You know, raw kibble in a bag. And it's just, how is it raw. So they use the word quite flippantly, but, um, I think the freeze dryers do— you have to get it over 70 degrees for a time to kill Salmonella coli. 72 degrees has to be there for a little bit to kill Salmonella coli. That's not a hot temperature, that's not something to worry about. So I wonder, is that the step they do before they freeze dry it? And if it was, if that's not the end of the world, that you're talking about, you know, wonderful, wonderful quality food. And what's the difference between hair and fur? These are brilliant foods. And if you put in the odd real ingredient in there, perfect. I mean, we're spending too much energy thinking, too stressful about it. That's wonderful food. It just— when you rehydrate it, it does look a bit like vomit. It's very hard to keep the consistency of the bits and pieces, but sure, the dog doesn't care, you know, he doesn't care at all.

Yeah, it tends to be really tasty, really tasty stuff, doesn't it?

Oh, like, it is, it's as good as it can be, it's as fresh as it can be once it's rehydrated, you know.

Yeah, because all the flavor, yeah, the flavor, yeah, you know, So essentially, you know, it's like having berries straight off the tree or it's meat, you know, fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh meat. Yeah. So a lot of really, really good stuff going in there. They use freeze drying to preserve enzymes as well. So, yeah, if you want to keep an enzyme for 20 years, you just freeze dry it at, I don't know, -60 or something like that. So that's how they do that. And so this is really very, very interesting. You were saying it's 70 degrees. For how long, do you know?

It depends on the substrate that's going through. The problem is lumps of meat, the core has to get to 70 degrees, so that increases the time a lot. But mince gets there very quickly as long as the mince is flat. But they can't have the mince completely flat in the ovens because it costs money. So they put the mince at maybe an inch thick. So it becomes a weigh-up of how long do you want the mince in there? What temperature do you use? Quicker temperatures means shorter drying times, which saves you a lot of money when you're producing tonnage. So now you're like, okay, well, instead of 70, I'll just push it up to 80, and that way I'll get the stuff done in 12 hours instead of 8. These are the tiny little changes that go on in the background and nobody knows. All you have to do is write in your paperwork it was 70 degrees. Did anybody check? No, there's nobody checking. All they check is show us your microbiology. So nobody checks the process. And so it sounds a little bit untrusting of me, but it's the problem. We don't have regulators going in there checking these things, and the closest we have really is raw safe and ideas like that where random audits where people can just walk into your premises going, 'Hey guys, here to inspect your freezers.' And it's like, 'Oh God, show us your import documents for these ingredients, show us your processes, show us the temperatures of your ovens.' Checking those things is another level of like— nobody does that in the food chain. That's why we have these issues that we have with ultra-processed food. And, you know, can I ask you a question here, Nick? This is from Liz H, another follower. That took us— we spent a lot of time on that one because that was a really well-structured question. There was a lot to it.

We did cover a lot of ground though. Yes, we did cover a lot of ground. So yeah, it wasn't just— so that was 5 questions in one. Just, just—

it was. Yeah, honestly, I would never doubt us. I would never doubt us, Thompson. And here we go, here is one for a vet. My hypothyroidism dog has had 2 general anaesthetics this year already, and each time he's had really itchy skin afterwards. What's going on there? And it takes a while to get back to normal with the help of Skin Ease capsules. No, we don't know what— I don't know, promoter of them. Oh good. Why does this happen to him? Why is the dog getting inflamed after his anesthetic, Nicholas?

Okay, you keep talking.

I think I will, because I was just waiting to see if you're going to come back in seconds or minutes. But while Nick is, uh, looking for stuff there I will just, from what I understand of hypothyroidism, I always remember hypo is low, hyper is high. So a hyperactive child, but a hypo-responsive child, that's far more worrying. Okay, so hypo is low. So when you hear of hypothyroidism, you know it's low thyroid, so it's an underactive thyroid, and that issue is far more common in dogs. Hyperthyroidism does exist, often a little tumor or something on the pituitary, on the thyroid, and it results in these issues. But that's more common in cats. So hypothyroidism is more common in dogs, which I'd like to know why, Nick. And but I'm not familiar with any of this inflammation business after the GA, which is news to me. So what's going on?

Okay, so hyper, as you say, it's cats, you know, and we're talking 10,000 to 1 go hyper. Hyper when left to their own devices. If you feed them loads of thyroid tissue, even dogs will go hyper. But generally speaking, cats go hyper, dogs go hypo, low. Humans can go hyper or hypo. Why that is, I do not know. However, the person to read on hypothyroidism, low thyroid, in, in dogs is Jean Dodds. J-E-A-N-D-O-D-D-S. Aha, good man.

What's backwards?

Backwards?

Oh, I was going to turn it around. What a dummy. Oh my God. Anyway, they get the idea.

Yeah, uh, yeah. So, um, she's written the book Canine Thyroid Epidemic, just there. And so that is the book to read. Whether she talks— I don't think she talks about cats and why the difference. It's some strange metabolic issue. I don't know why. And that irritates me. But it's interesting. Humans go either high or low. Anyway, so hypothyroidism is a lot more common in dogs than we were led to believe. Gene Dodds has told us that 40% of aggressive dogs in the United States are hypothyroid because at vet college— yeah, at vet college, you're taught that hypothyroid dogs are fat, lazy, and chilly. And then that is only a subset of all the hypothyroid that you will see. You can see hyper dogs, you can see skinny dogs, you can see dogs that are just completely normal but they keep on getting skin infections, you can see dogs who've got persistent liver problems, you can see Even gut problems, inflammatory gut problems, can be linked to hypothyroidism because your thyroid— I always think it's a bit like a thermostat, you know, the thermostat in your house. It's only a tiny little thing, but if you just tweak it slightly, your entire house, every room in the house, changes temperature. And that's exactly how the thyroid works. And therefore, every cell in the body, as well as having an insulin receptor, every cell in the body, they have a thyroid hormone receptor as well. So it means small or persistent changes in thyroid or insulin can have profound effects on the whole body, which I think is amazing, which is why insulin is such a big issue. The book to read on insulin is by Benjamin Bickmann, B-I-K-M-A-N-N, I think double N, and it's called Why We Get Sick. Wonderful book. And I was talking to people about this. A lady came up to me over the weekend at Edition Dog, and she was saying, oh, my daughter gets a lot of acne. Could this be to do with her diet? And I said, yes, absolutely. If you've got persistent high levels of glucose, meaning high levels of insulin, that can be associated. The other one is, is, uh, Dr. David Wheat Belly. Wheat Belly, he talks about acne, and there is, there is a, a direct link between sugar, insulin, and acne, which is really interesting.

Very interesting. Also Lustig on YouTube. If you look at Professor Lustig on YouTube and type in The Skinny on Obesity, uh, and he gives a 4-part video series on how insulin works with diagrams, which is very handy to look at. So it tells you exactly when you take insulin, when you inject it, this is what it does. It takes the sugar and it pumps it into the fat stores.

That's its job.

And so he's got this wonderful way of explaining it because the guy's all over it. He was the guy that discovered the leptin issue, uh, the switching on and off of hunger with fat. But, um, uh, so anyway, okay, Nixon, we've got hypothyroidism. Can I just comment on one thing? When people eat thyroid and, uh, they worry about it spiking, kind of causing hyperthyroidism, just a note on there is one example of that happening in dogs where some ne'er-do-well took beef thyroid, which is quite large because she's a big thing, you know, and they take this beef thyroid and they dried it out and sold it as pet treats and they put it in canned food and it resulted in a lot of dogs getting terribly ill very quickly, instantly, you know, the body— you're taking the hormone that was in that thyroid, so it's thyroxine, and then if you eat that, you've suddenly got a huge spike of thyroxine and boom, you're causing this hyperthyroidism. So people panic about eating thyroid, but I would say your dog is a whole prey eater. He eats tiny amounts of thyroid quite regularly. It's not a big deal to him. It's actually quite normal, probably extremely beneficial if you think about it, all those organs and bits and pieces are. It's just that he's not supposed to be at a cow's thyroid for dinner. That's not normal food for him. We're talking about a whole mouse, a whole bird, a whole frog. So I just wanted to put that bit in in case people are freaked out about eating thyroid. Eating thyroid, they're often worried chicken necks and duck necks make up a considerable part of the chicken and duck food your dogs are eating. Believe me, necks are the cheapest bit of meat off the bird with a bit of bone in it. But the thyroid isn't on that neck that we've ever seen because the thyroid in the bird is down, actually down, it's in a funnier different place because they're flying animals. It's down in the cavity so it doesn't come off with the neck then. So you don't often see it attached. So not to panic with that one, it's a big myth that's out there. Sorry, Nick, back to your thyroidism and the GA.

No, absolutely great. So my things are doing funny things again. Anyway. So what was going to say? Oh, yes, there was a, there was an incidence of dogs getting hyperthyroidism in, I think, Poland, or from, from I think Polish imports. Yeah, no offense to our Polish family, but the— when you see hypo— hyperthyroidism in dogs, it's almost always dietary. Okay, so if you see, if you, if you see it, it's usually that. And I have seen it in the UK as well. And, um, you know, and these are even in very reputable manufacturers who do religiously remove thyroid tissue. So you've got to ask the question, where is that thyroid tissue coming from? Yeah, so it's a question. So if your vet turns around to you and said you've got hyperthyroidism in your dog, then you need to think about, well, the food, the food, which is all the more reason to feed variety.

Okay, dried treats. I think dried treats are dangerous because treats want the cheapest meat possible. Once it's dried out, you have no idea what it is. So beef is beef. They don't have to tell you what organ it is. They don't have to tell you what part of the beef it is. It's just beef treats. So that's a concern, perhaps more so than the complete raw made in the UK. But who knows? Who knows? I would be instantly sampling my treat. If my dog has hypothyroidism, great titnick, I'd be keeping that treat and getting it analyzed, send it to the vet and say, tell me how much thyroxine is in this product. Awesome.

That's a good thought.

Really good thought.

Okay, so to the question. This is quite nice, actually. Talking around a subject is very— it's more interesting than just going, yep, it's this, this, and this. Next question, I think. Okay, so the information after the GA—

information after the dog got 2 general anesthetics and she's itchy after it. So what's going on there?

Okay. It's impossible to say for sure, but what goes through my mind is that when you have a general anaesthetic, GA, you are pumped with toxins. Yeah, just as, you know, alcohol will make you fall over or go to sleep. These, they use propofol, they use isoflurane, these things. Isoflurane, it's a chlorine gas. Okay, it's toxic, but you use it so carefully and at such low levels that you have this very essential anesthetic and your consciousness is reduced so that you can do surgery, which is, you know, one of the most amazing parts of medicine, you know, because otherwise you've got to hack legs off. Which is what they used to do in the old days without any anesthetic. And so it's a wonderful thing. However, it is a toxin whichever way you look at it. And so my thinking is that either the dog has a degree of sensitivity to something in those anesthetics. Yeah, propofol, for example, is— they used to call it magic milk. It's a white milky solution. And as well as the propofol, it will have agents and carriers in it, okay, or whatever regime they used. Drugs rarely come on their own. They usually have excipients, which is a posh way of saying other stuff in the liquid, other stuff in the tablet. And you may not be sensitive to the protagonist, the star of the show. You may be allergic to the walk-on part who came in as part of that, that medication. So that would be number one, a bit of, a bit of reaction, bit of sensitivity to that thing. The other thing that I think is, is, is worth thinking about is maybe there was some kind of disruption of the biome. Yeah, the toxin goes in, the, the bugs are not happy. Or maybe if the dog— I'm just thinking out loud here— maybe if the dog was in for a day or two, then they would have been— what they would have been feeding it, God knows what they're going to feed it. Usually they're feeding, you know, Hills or Royal Canin or something like this, and if that's unfamiliar to the dog, then, uh, that might be it. What they do really commonly, there's a— there's a— Hills do a thing called AD, which is kind of for, uh, post surgical recovery. Okay, now what actually dogs need is just great food. You know, go home, have some great raw food, and off you go. But they— it was, you know, it's an opportunity for them within the market. It's like, here's some pâté that you can give to your dog, and they will, you know, just to get them going to the other side. I think you were mentioning scrambled egg earlier. I think scrambled egg is just gonna say—

yeah, yeah, yeah.

And a bit of porridge and a bit of butter. And off you go.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'll give you the recipe later.

Yeah, uh, yeah, okay. So there you go, that's my thought. And, uh, the Skinnies capsules, they're really, really great. They're really useful. I use them a lot. I import them from the States. Uh, in the States you can get hold of them from allergicpet.com. And it is not a panacea. It's not, you've got an itchy dog, here's some herbs, dog stops itching for life, forever. However, it is one of the tools that we use when we are presented with itchy dogs. And I would say in about 40% of cases, it's a very useful tool. So in the States, you can get hold of it. We, we stock it now. We are going to— there we go— we are going to be starting the Holistic Vet Shop in the next few days, and so you'll be able to get hold of this if you, if you need it. So this is good. So there you go, that would be just a few thoughts.

That makes sense. Isn't it funny, like, because the skin is, it's a symptom, you know, the skin, I always say it's like the smoke coming out the roof of a burning house. And so you can give supplements to stop the skin issue, but I'd be kind of thinking, okay, why is, why are my smoke alarms going off? And I think, I think it's, it could easily be the GA upsetting things, but it could also be the stress. I mean, stress will smash your biome, and you're sitting in this place for 24 or 48 hours, there's other dogs barking that don't enjoy it as much as you do. Who wants to be away from mom and dad that long without being told what's going on? And you're just waking up from a GA. So yeah, big biome smash. I wonder, I bet you there's a few papers out there on general anesthetics and stayovers and biome, and I'm gonna find them. So that's interesting, I'll have a look around tonight when I'm having a glass of wine. And then yes, what was the third one you said? The diet. Yeah, they definitely will feed. It's hard for them to take in raw feeding because, you know, no offense to the conventional veterinary sector, but but they're kind of still terrified of fresh food and they don't want the hassle of taking in your raw, we'll just feed them this really high quality tin stuff, which is grain-based. So this dog is recovering and suddenly he's fed wheat, but if you stay off wheat and glyphosate and all the other stuff that we know is in those tins, if you stay off that stuff and then you go back on it, the body goes, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want any of that, particularly with my biome and stress. So it is an interesting thing and it's, who knows which one of those is the issue, but Yeah. Okay, cool. Very good. I love it.

That's really, really good. That's a good— some good thoughts there. Okay, so last one. Yeah, because we've got just 4 or 5 minutes.

Yeah. Okay. Big list here.

All from Patreon stuff.

Yeah.

So this is from Patreon. So this one's from Sarah. Maybe it's Sarah. I've got clients who spell Sarah, but they call themselves Sarah. So yeah, Sarah, Sarah Horton, this is your question. Hi guys, I've been listening to Fast Like a Girl Summit on health, longevity, and fasting for females and their hormones. Great, very, very good stuff. Do you think fasting for dog is good, and how would you see that? Also been hearing amazing things about humic and fulvic acid for pets. And you, what are your thoughts? Years ago I bought some fulvic acid powder for dogs and they loved it to the point of one of my dogs getting hold of an empty packet and licked it clean. Amazing. Thank you for all— thank you all, uh, you do love the show. Happy bank holiday. So brilliant. So Sarah, Sarah, that's really kind. Thank you. Um, do you want to have a go at that?

Yeah. Um, Okay, so let's just skip the fasting for a second. I know you're strong on that, Nick. And I said I tried it on Dudley and I do. I'm a big believer in intermittent fasting, which Nicole, I'm sure, will expand on. But this, the humic and fulvic acid, which is going— are these amazing properties that come from more compounds that come from soil and just fantastically useful. It's like it's almost like typing in CBD into Google Scholar and you will go down every single rabbit hole. They are used for so many issues, from digestive issues to inflammatory issues, used in different doses in different ways. It's amazing. I can't pretend to be an expert in it, but every time I hear people talking about it, I go, oh, I wish I knew more about that. To me, it's almost like medicinal mushrooms. It's a field that I know is, is amazing, and I just know very little about it. But you can see the studies about it's one of the reasons surely gut sick dogs will eat soil. When you see this kind of pica behavior in dogs, pica will be like where it's eating an unusual object, it's not normal, he's eating wood chips, which is a common enough one, really bad inflamed guts, IBS, IBD dogs eating wood chips and bark and stuff, you know, for whatever reason you could probably talk about that and make some guesses. But the soil one is surely interesting. It may be one of the reasons why they bury their bones. Do you ever see a dog, you know, bury a bone and it's half poking out of the soil and you can't help but think, pretty shit job, buddy. I mean, I can see it. Anybody with half a nose would find that. I can see it. But maybe what they're trying to do is preserve it and cover it in these amazing compounds, soil-based probiotics, which we know are amazing. And so there's so much stuff in soil that makes it so amazing. It's one of the reasons why I think dogs eat soil when they're gut sick. I love them. I know very little about it. And I think particularly of relevance is the fact that your dog got at that powder and started eating it. That's classic zoopharmacosy because these wouldn't be normal ingredients to be pouring into your dog's bowl willy-nilly, but it would definitely be an ingredient that particularly with an unhealthy dog, but you never know even in healthy dogs, that if you did have a source of them, you put them to the side and let's see your dog show interest in them. And if your dog does and he'll take them himself, I would trust them. And well, particularly for your gut sick dogs, if you had some on the shelf and you put some beside the bowl and he took it, well, I'd give him more. I'd say, all right, buddy, you'll be getting another bit before lunch. So very interesting stuff. I want to know more about it. So I will put that on the to-do list. What about, what about you, Nick?

Humic and fulvic acid. So fulvic acid, I don't know anything about particularly, but it is in soil and it's very, very essential. And there's a lot of good literature to suggest that it's very healthy for gut. Humic acid is from humus, which is the organic component of soil. And it just, as you're saying, Conor, correctly, that it just suggests that soil is an important component, not necessarily continually, but as part of the, the picture that we should consider when we're feeding our dogs. I've actually treated one or two itchy dogs by just feeding them clean, frozen, and then thawed soil. I say clean, meaning it hasn't got any cat poo in it or, you know, anything like that. And I freeze it in order to remove parasites, but it means that the fulvic acid and the humic acid and the beneficial bacteria are maintained. And it's— that's a really interesting one. And even there's Annie Forte, who don't sponsor this show unfortunately. And unfortunately they do. It's— I think it's, it's a clay that they get from somewhere in Germany. So it's a soil, if you like, that they can, they can add. They've, they've looked at it and they've made sure that it's safe and what have you. And you can just get this stuff and sprinkle it on. So that's really interesting. That's just come to mind. I've never I never really looked into it. I made a note somewhere. Yeah, I've got it on my to-do list, which is on a box.

I think it's soil. Like, you got, you got humic, uh, you've got humus, you've got the fulvic acid, you've got, um, soil-based, um, organisms that we're now using as antibiotics essentially. They're incredible, and the studies abound by them. You've also got, um, studies of bentonite clay and, and more like clay and all this other stuff that where you eat these and they do absorb toxins. And I thought, nonsense, until I read that book Toxic that Brian keeps on going on about, at least the first bit of it. And there is plenty of evidence to show that they will get together the nasties in your guts and you can then pull them out. I thought, oh my God, soil has so many benefits. This is a whole prey eater. He doesn't eat out of bowls, he eats off the ground. It's been rolling around in the ground, and you know, so bits of that stuff goes into his life all the time. So Very, very interesting stuff. What about the first part, Nick? Intermittent fasting, fasting the dog. Are you pro or con?

I am totally, I'm totally in with intermittent fasting or fasting, full stop. Yeah, you don't want to fast for 3 months because otherwise you'll die, obviously. And you need to be— thank you— and you need to be in in reasonable healthy shape.

Yeah.

With, you know, if you're anorexic, I think fasting is probably not a great idea. If you're in a bad place in your mind, then possibly fasting is not a great idea. But for, you know, general Mr. and Mrs. Average, I think it's a really good idea. And Mr. and Mrs. Average Dog as well. We feed pretty much once a day. Now, you were talking about Dudley, about him not being able to really do once a day feeding and Here's the truth of the matter is that we've got Bluebell, who's 4, and Mouse, who's 2, and both of them just went off. We were feeding twice a day because they were young, and both of them just kind of went off breakfast. Now, now Bluebell, she's a complete guts, and she would eat 5, 10 times a day given half a chance. However, she does great being fed more or less once a day. Ellie likes to give them a chicken wing after they come in from the walk in the morning. I wouldn't do that because I'm a bastard, obviously.

Yeah, you stick to this.

Yeah, I do more or less. But more or less they have one meal a day. And the beauty of that, I always say to clients that fasting is to the pancreas what sleeping is to the brain. Yeah. Okay. Really, really important. And also the gut, I think the gut. And Sarah Sarah was talking about longevity, fasting, and females and the hormones. And I've never come across that apart from in order to be a healthy female, just as is to a healthy male, you've got to have great metabolic health. How do you have great metabolic health? Fasting is, is the way to do it. It helps with, with the, the mitochondrial health, cellular health, any, any fat. If you're not carrying too much body fat, then you will not be carrying too many fat-soluble toxins like dioxins and what have you. So I think that's what it comes down to. It's like fasting is good for humans and fasting is good for dogs, intermittent fasting for example, because it pushes you towards a better metabolic state. So the question for me is, why is fasting good for you? Which is kind of a simple question, but it's because throughout history we've had a lot of fasting going on. Like every winter, many, many peoples all around the, the globe will run out of food towards the end of winter.

Didn't have fridges. No, didn't have fridges. A few pots with some fermenting vegetables and fruits in it, and it's like, bloody hell, I'm hungry. Yeah, you don't roll out of bed and eat bran flakes. Actually, you know, I love the explanation someone had about fasting because they said consuming food is an enormously energy-expensive thing to do. So when you stuff your face at Christmas time or whatever your holiday is, and, you know, you pass out in the chair, that's your body shutting you down. Sit down there while I deal with this hell you're after giving me, 2 kilos of Quality Street. And so it takes 8 hours to digest and assimilate a meal, pass it up through the gut membrane into the blood. It takes another 8 hours to pack it all away. It's like, right, bloody hell, the toes need something, the eyelids, and oh my God. So after 16 hours is the magic number for this intermittent fasting. So fasting itself is more of day 2, 3. It's a long thing. That's the thing that you're thinking about. That's fasting. Intermittent fasting kicks in after 16 hours when this process is done. The body suddenly has enormous reserves. It's like all these extra troops have just turned up to the front lines, like, give us something to do. And that's what the Nobel Prize— one of them, I imagine. I think it's been done twice for similar projects. But they found cancer cells and it's called autophagy. The body goes into housekeeping mode. It's like cancer cells, zap, zap them, they're not supposed to be there. Look at your knee. But they also suspect it's the same with the gut lining. So you're constantly turning over your gut lining all the time. But if you're constantly whizzing cars down the M1, they can't get the tarmac on the roads. They're like, will you just ease off for a moment and let us get this stuff down and fix up this gut lining? And you know, you're developing a few little issues here. You've a little pocket there with bacteria, we've gotta sort that out. You can't keep the cars going down the M1. So fasting just reduces the traffic for a moment to let the job be done. So this 16-hour window is the crucial one. So when I say I can't feed Dudley the one meal a day, that worries me a bit because I want this 8 hours of feeding a day for us, 9 to 5. If you wanna start later, which is the easiest thing to do 'cause breaking your fast is easy, just put that off 'cause it's not the most, not the meal I want. So if you start at 11, you don't know if you could finish, eating at 7 and you've given your body that magic 16 hours. Even better if you gave it 17 hours, 18 hours, because then it's got an hour or two of this autophagy stuff to go through. So Dudley gets fed 2 meals a day, but I keep them close enough together, 5 hours, 6 hours max. So he's not eating for 18 hours. So I know he's still getting his fast, so I don't worry so much about it, you know, that way.

Absolutely brilliant, because I'm a bit of an extremist with many things. And so I'm always saying to people, we should be feeding once a day, and many people have a problem with that. And you know, say, oh, my dog just can't do it, or they get hunger pukes or what have you. So yeah, kind of a compromise situation is feed twice a day, but as you say, you bring them as close together as you can in just one phase. I like feeding in the afternoon because I think that in days gone by, we nomadic humans will have got up, had a drink at the local river, and then gone hunting. That's how it works. But, and dogs, they will not have a tin of Pedigree Chum waiting for them when they're in, you know, in the Serengeti or something like this. They have to get up, they have to exercise. That, yeah, so exercise always precedes food. So exercise is another part of the, the, the, uh, the the dance that we play, that our body plays in order to fully metabolize our food. So before you eat, guys, have a good dance. Yeah. Put on some funky music and dance. This is— Jamie Richards told me this, and it's a brilliant idea, isn't it? Right. Dinner in 20 minutes. Okay.

Yeah. Happy body. Let's do some dancing or do some exercise if you don't want to dance.

Do some exercise because then your body thinks, aha, you're chasing after a gazelle, we're going to get fed shortly. So brilliant. It's really, really lovely. There you go. I think we've done that one.

I think we are. Listen, it's now 25 past here, so I think we should pause. We promised to get 2 questions done on Bit on the Side, so we'll do 5 minutes on each question because we're over time here. But I love that. Geez, Nick, we got through 3 questions. That list on Patreon is getting longer. And longer. It's just, it's just so nice to chat about things. And yeah, you know, it's just to have a question to guide you, you could talk for ages about it. But you do miss, you do miss the people's opinions coming down the side, don't you? Because my eye often goes over there. You miss, you miss seeing them. So we've got a couple of cool questions lined up on Patreon, and I would like, uh, yeah, so we'll get to that. So guys, we're on patreon.com/rawlpetmedics, and also anywhere you listen to podcast. And if you can leave us a review, we do deeply appreciate it. It really helps the cause over here. Brendan will be back in the hot seat next week, I'm sure. So I think so, isn't he? I don't know, because again, we're not quite sure where he's gone. We didn't need to ask him.

If he's not here next Tuesday, we'll send out a rescue party. How about that?

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So somebody has to feed those goats. Yeah, he's probably just lying down there as well.

Absolutely amazing. Thank you for that. Thank you, everybody, and we'll see you next week.

Toodaloo.