RPM TUESDAY NIGHT LIVE: OMEGA3,6,9 EXPLAINED

Good evening everybody, here we are, we're going to do omega fatty acids and it's Bren and I. We have escaped the noose of the Brady who is actually having— hang on, oops, I better switch my, uh, oh, oh, gold, oh gold, sorry. See, this is what happens when you don't have a Brady to remind you. Yeah, like he's going to remind us of anything, that's for sure. OK, so I think we've got— that's Pete happy. How are you, Bren?

Good, very good. I think just looking forward to Christmas, you know, a little bit of time off. We're going to have to do a little bit of time with family, so really looking forward to all of that. Some great positive things coming from Roarsafe. There's so many positives that we've had from the veterinary profession sort of joining in with a conversation. I mean, there's also— there's always going to be, you know, and why you keep finding them, Nick, and putting them in front of me is which those, those little articles, those little interviews that come up and I'm going, why are they saying that?

Yeah, sorry, I blame it. I blame it on my clients who do it. And Sasha sends me these things which will drive you insane.

So, well, I'm going to find out what's going on with you because you've frozen for some reason. Let me just get this, see if I can get you back.

I'm coming, just coming back here. There we go. I'm back.

You're back, but you're frozen. You look like your picture of an interviewer. It's great.

I apologize. Am I still frozen? Am I still frozen?

You are, but we can hear you loud and clear, so you can share your screen and we can go through a few bits. First of all, what about you? You know, what's, what's happened in your week?

Really good, really busy. I've got 3 announcements to make actually, which will kind of show you just how busy it is at the moment. So The first one is we have managed to get the t-shirts up and running. And I'm going to share that, that website with you just shortly. And the second thing is that on Thursday, you and, and Conor and I are all going to be on Simply Raw, which is the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society. If you go to the community, in fact, Um, Maudie, can you please tell us where we can find the Simply Raw gathering, please? And we can share that with everybody. I promised I was going to share it, and I will when you share it with me. Thank you very much, Maudie. You just joined, so that's fabulous. Maudie, please tell me, just send us a link so that Bren can put it up to to be interviewing us about, about 2022 to a certain extent. Am I back?

I'm just seeing if I can get you back. I've got you. Oh look, do you know what, I'm gonna just do this. On my screen you're frozen and I don't know why, but you know, if I, uh, I wonder whether I'm— hi, if I do this, you see, you are actually there.

So if I just Oh, okay, okay.

So really weird.

Don't you worry. So we've got the t-shirts, I'm going to show you those. We've got, uh, on Thursday at 7:30 we are with Maudie for Simply Raw Chat where she's interviewing us, which should be fun. She has to take the responsibility, which is brilliant, and we can do what we like. And then the third thing is tomorrow, and on in the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society in the community, if you look up Raw Feeding Veterinary Society community on Facebook, the dreaded Facebook, you can come and join our, uh, Zoom meeting where we are going to be reading— can you see me, Bren?

Can now.

Good.

Finally fixed the glitch.

Good. We're going to be reading this, guys. So whether you've read it or not, you're really, really welcome to come along, and we're just going to be discussing it. It's a fantastic book if you're just starting. It goes through all the basics. It's really light, it's got a very— it's not densely written. Yeah, there's a lot of space in there, a lot of room to breathe, and it's just a really lovely book. So we're going to go through that, something a little bit easy just before Christmas. So there you go, that's those three. So let me share my— the page. So there's my page there. Can you see that?

Right, I'm going to hide us for a moment so that you can fully display this.

Yeah, that's brilliant. Any, any joy?

Yeah, no, they're seeing that.

Oh, okay, great.

So Conor's trying to make an entrance now.

Oh, he is. Oh, here we go, here we go. Okay, so I'm just going to take you through this while Conor just gets settled. So we, um, we, uh, have made a website where we are promoting Pro Raw t-shirts. Okay, we are going to do these, we are going to do long sleeve t-shirts and all sorts of things, but we just thought we wanted to start somewhere. So please jump on. You will see the— it's rawpetmedics.tmill. Tmill as in t-shirt mill. Tmill. Brent, if you were able to put that on, uh, at the bottom of the page, that'd be really kind. Thank you. So that everybody can go there. £19 a piece, which I think is not bad. It's organic cotton and it's really good quality, soft Excellent cotton. And we've got these 3. So you've got— we've got 3 different— you've got lots, a number of colors, not loads of colors, but a number of colors to choose from. And there's— there is that one, Raw Feeding for Dogs: A 45 Million Year Fad. There's that one, which is a picture of a cat toasting a mouse over a fire. And the third one is, is Conor's one just there. Let's see what happens when I hit that. Oh, look at that, it does work.

And it's Tmail, isn't it? It's T-E-E. Yeah, thanks, Fiona.

T-E-E-mail.com. rawpetmedics.tmail.com is there. And the third one is, we asked 1,000 dog owners if their pets were healthier when fed fresh 'food,' and then you go to a pie chart and it's mostly filled in, and the most of the filling in says 'yes,' and then after there's a pink bit which went 'also yes, but in pink,' which I think is hilarious. Did you think of that all yourself?

I saw it on for something else and I nabbed it, so I was the first to introduce it to the raw world, that's true, but definitely not my original idea. I can't claim it.

Okay. Okay, well, there we go. So it's all there, it's dead easy. You've got a number of, a number of, uh, uh, colors to choose from.

That's cool.

Yeah, you can— yeah, it's basically— it's, it's, it's, uh, all the details there. And we even got— managed to get some lovely beautiful models to model the t-shirts. And we also went into the factory to see when they're making these wonderful t-shirts for you. And so We put a lot of work into that and I hope it cheers up your Christmas for you chaps.

Yeah, and thank you Fiona for all of your input and help. I know you've pushed for this so much that now it's great. Thank you so much.

Yeah, we'll be adding to that I imagine over time as the best ideas come in. We can pop in a few more on top of that. Our new RPM logo I suppose might be one in the next That's fun.

Yeah, I think, and also I think what we should do is ask all our Patreon people if they've got good ideas to put those forward. Yeah, that would be really fun.

Cool, that sounds good.

Marvelous, marvelous.

I think your volume is very high, Bren. Is that possible, or is it my volume's very high? Do you think his volume's very high, Nick?

He might be, yeah, getting a bit fuzzy at the top end.

Yeah, it's like your input is maxed.

Oh, you're Min?

You're Min?

Boom and Northern Voice.

Yeah, it's just booming, boy. It's booming, ready for Christmas.

So yes, okay, well, thank you guys. I had announced last year and last week, I put up a post that really stirred the pot, unlike me. And it was about, it was just about to post a picture of zinc, the actual compound zinc, you know, like it looks like really shiny silver. And I said, guys, stop adding zinc to your raw dog food diet, with a couple of disclaimers. And what turns out is something about these northern breeds, you know, there is some zinc deficiencies there, the proto-ZRD and a couple of bits that we need to explore and we will do in a later show. But what came up was a really hot topic about, first of all, the old Excel spreadsheets. And I said, guys, it's not really, you know, it just seems needlessly technical and I'm worried everyone's getting pet food PTSD. And oh, some people didn't like that. I hit them right in the spreadsheets and they they didn't like that at all. And so there was a bit of that, but what really came out of it was a lot of breed stuff. And I thought, you know, I'm interested in this because we do know the longer dogs have been living beside agriculturists or nomadic kind of folk, it depends on how much they've divided out this gene for amylase, which means carbs, you know, must have driven that a bit. So a few little discrepancies in breeds must exist if just on the carb front. I thought, okay, that's interesting. I wonder what else is going on. Tonight we're talking about omega-3s and fats, and at some stage all three of us have thought, is this going on in northern breeds, like evolving on a much higher, fattier diet and an omega-3 diet? Like when you see studies of the Inuit folk in the '70s and they realized saturated fat is not doing what we thought it would do because of these high-fat diets. And I thought, is there a doggy thing going on here when they spent so long evolving up there? And unless anybody's talked about that, I haven't. But what I just wanted to end this on was that it wouldn't be great to do a show because I have had my head wrecked all weekend looking into— I put up a post on Friday saying, guys, you're all specialists in your own breeds. Is there any weird little nutritional differences that you know go on in your breed but that haven't been discussed? And it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like, too much for it to be, uh, too much for there to be nothing there, you know.

Proper issues.

Reid, there's a very funny sound coming through there. Am I just— am I the only one getting that sound?

No, I'm getting it as well. Bren, is it when you fiddle with your headphones? I think perhaps. Oh, garlic.

Sounds like a metal tube. Can you undo your earphones and go back in again?

Sorry for the dead air, guys.

Yeah, it's better to get off.

We'll make it up to you. Just to give you a little taster, I have got this in the good old-fashioned— it's a little bit like Love Actually, you know, where the guy stands outside the— this is the biochemical version of Love Actually.

Oh, interesting. That's setting the bar quite high. I really like that movie except for that last bit. As if you're going to go up to the girl you love and go, I really like it, but that's enough for now. Come on, I mean, has any man ever done that? That's just ridiculous. But anyway, I was going to say there should be a heap of breed differences, and there probably is, but I had a good look and there's obviously nothing in the literature that I can find. But there's enough people saying, oh, I know a few ancestral breeds and this and that. So guys, there's a show in that. And what became clear was supplementation. People are very confused. How much do we need? Everyone's recommending so many supplements that people are just like, well, which supplements do I use when? And you're just trying to supplement your way to a good diet, which most people, it depends on where you are and they're confused. So this is a great starting stone to what will be a discussion on supplements, you know, so the omega-3 kind of jive, which I know you guys are ready. Have we told people about Patreon already?

We haven't got to that. We've been dodging about all over the place.

But, Bren, Your sound is terrible.

It's a lot of feedback.

You are speaking like Nurse Brand. Can you go back out and go back in again and keep the thing live?

I think so.

Okay, now.

Wow.

Yes.

It's like Darth Vader, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. Did you ever see the Eddie Izzard video? Of Darth Vader in the cafeteria. It's done with Lego men.

With Lego men.

Yeah, I just urge everybody to watch that. So funny. It's Darth Vader trying to skip the queue. Very, very funny. In the cafeteria. Nick, do you want to go on with your—

Shall I do my thingy here just while Bren sees if he can sort himself out? Okay, so guys, I really like biochemistry. Okay, I know we're all geeky. Brendan's got his thing and Conor's got his thing. And I love biochemistry, and I just wanted to share my love of biochemistry with you in such a way that it didn't scare you. Okay?

Okay.

So what we're going to do is, um, Bren, if you could make me big, if you don't mind, if you're not wrestling to death and jumping on your, uh, your microphone, that'd be great. Okay, so hopefully that— is that the right way around? Brady, can you see?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely you can. All right.

Okay, so here you go. This is the love actually. So organic chemistry for the practical among us. Okay. I did have it just as for the practical, but that sounded like it was for a practical exam later on in the thing. So that's not what it's about. So let's talk about these atoms. Okay. This is an atom of hydrogen. Okay. And it only has one hand to greet its friends. Okay. So it can only grab onto its friends with one hand. However, Carbon is almost like an octopus, but it's got an— is an octopus with 4 hands, and it can grab onto its friends with 4 hands. Okay, it's— so it's got— it can make 4 links, if you like, if you want to be slightly more technical about these things. Okay, so if you start playing Meccano with— ignore these for now— if you start playing Meccano with Carbon, this is just 2 carbons joined together and you're filling in all the, the, the ones that aren't, uh, being used with hydrogens. Okay. And you get this, which is ethane. Okay. Right. Uh, which is a bit like propane. Okay. Which is what you run your barbecue on.

Okay.

Okay. So, so, and you see 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1, 2, 3, 4. So it's all— it's like Meccano, literally like Meccano. Okay. So if If you, if you take, uh, one of, one of these links, if you say take these two links and they, they then join the carbon with, with a double bond, then, then the, uh, the hydrogens then go to either end and you've got this double bond here. And that would be considered saturated because every bond of the carbon is being used. And this would be considered unsaturated because we've got these two, these two here which can go ping, space, and grab some hydrogen. So that's unsaturated. And just out of interest, this is when the carbon really grips onto the other carbon with 3 links. Okay. And this is, this is ethane, like propane. This is ethene, and I don't know what that does, but this one is ethyne with a Y. And this is what makes your apples and your bananas accelerate in their— in the fruit bowl. Yeah. So if you put your bananas with your apples, all the fruit gets brown much more quickly. And it's because of this fellow here, ethyne. Just out of interest. Interesting stuff. Interesting stuff. So moving on to our fats. So this is a lovely, lovely— this one here is when you just get 3, you get 3 carbons in a chain, and this is called glycerol. Okay. And it's E-shaped. Okay. Can you see that E-shape? You've got 3 branches to hang on to things. And what the body does is it says, oh, look, we can put a fatty acid onto that first bit. We can put a second fatty acid onto that one. We can put a third fatty acid onto there. And that's how you get a triglyceride. Okay. So you get 3 fatty acids and 1 glycerol. Triglyceride, which is, which is essentially fat. That's what you detect in your body. And there's lots of variations because you've got— you can have any variations. So if you have a chain of lots of carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon, then that is— these are— these would be the— these would be the fatty acids. Okay. They're just basically big, long lengths of carbon. And so what makes— what's the difference between omega-3 and omega-6 and omega-9? And the answer is that the omega-3, there is a join at the third carbon. And with the omega-6, there's a double bond at the sixth carbon. And you guessed it, double bond at the ninth. Okay, so that's omega-3, 6, 9. That's the difference between the two. And they all have slightly different properties within the body. Okay, so nearly there, nearly there. So what So this is what the body does. It takes the fatty acids and it adds them onto the glycerol. And lo and behold, you have lots of different triglycerides, which is why pandas smell different from fish, smell different from sharks, smell different from— Conor Brady smells different from anybody else on the planet. Yeah, because there's such an infinitesimal variety. Okay. And this is it. So there's your triglycerides. Okay. And if you've got these triglycerides and all you—

all your—

all these bonds are unsaturated, you get really straight chains.

Okay.

You know, lots of straight chains. And when the straight chains, if they stack one on top of the next, they stack really nicely like a bunch of mattresses, one on top of the next. Very, very neatly, and therefore there's solidity because there's no movement. They're really, really solid. It's like one brick on the next brick. However, if you've got unsaturated bonds in there, see, there's an unsaturated one there that we were talking about earlier. That means that these mattresses, they can't lie quite well on top of each other and there's a lot more movement. Okay. And when you get butter with a lot more movement, it becomes an oil. What's the difference between a fat and an oil? The answer is a fat is solid at room temperature and an oil is, is mobile at room temperature. Okay, so it's very logical. It's all very logical stuff.

I can follow this.

And finally, so that was a cis-trans. Uh, this thing, where are we? So this is a— this link here is called cis. And you see how it kicks out to make it really quite rocky. Yeah, the body likes that. All right. They like— it likes oils essentially. However, if you really mess about with your fats in, in chip pans or you burn fats a lot and, and, and, or high pressure or something like that, you can get these artificial trans. See where it's kicked up into, into, into that. And the reason that trans is so dangerous is that the body sees that and it starts to put it through the metabolic system and then goes, oh no, it's a trans fat. And it, and it gums up the work. So it's a bit like putting, I don't know, two-stroke in your Ferrari. Yeah, it does go into the system and then goes, okay, and it can't work properly. Okay, so there you go. That's why trans fats are quite so bad for you because they're almost like the real thing. They're a mirror image, actually, in fact. Of the real thing, but the body and the body goes, thanks very much, and then goes, oh, I can't metabolize that. And so that's it.

And why did they— why did they invent trans fats, Nick? What was the point of them? Why did they try to push them over all the other fats for a while until we realized they were so, so bad for us?

They did that artificially in the early days because they had cottonseed oil, which, which, which was kind of industrial lubricant. But what they found is that when they, when they hydrogenated it, they put it with platinum to draw— to drive hydrogen on it and high temperatures and what have you. It produced Crisco, which is a really, really amazing kind of butter, lard substitute that makes fantastic pastries, really nice pastries. So the next time you go to Greggs, you've got to think, why have— why is these— why are these pastries so good? It's because they use these fats and probably Possibly, possibly trans, possibly those trans fats. But there's definitely these hydrogenated fats.

Hydrogenated fats. That was margarine, wasn't it? Was not the birth of the margarine industry. And then that's when they started incriminating things like normal butter as being highly dangerous with all its saturated fat. And then the nonsense came out. And then that fellow with his ridiculous fat story who hung around for 20, 30 years made it to the front of Time magazine. We went through that the last time we were talking about fats. And like the saturated fat business was any time they incriminate a real food, it's kind of like after 20, 30 years, we always go, whoops, butter, eggs, meat. You know, it all works for a while because they're trying to sell you something, you know, and of course they are.

And, you know, for a long time, saturated fat was related to heart disease and stroke and what have you in people because of Ancel Keys.

That is the—

kicked off. He was an epidemiologist who happened to be helping to make— was it Roosevelt had a heart attack? And he said, there you go, it's all the animal fat that he was eating. And everybody went, oh my God, Ancel Keys is right. He was a very persuasive guy.

He was.

And so with— so everybody said, oh, right, okay, let's go for low fat. So in 1977, it took them quite a long time to get it over the line. But in 1977, the American Medical Association said, right, that's it. Fat is bad for you. Let's all eat low fat. And when you look at the stats, there is a kick up from 1977 where obesity goes through the roof, child obesity goes through the roof, diabetes goes through the roof, and heart disease and everything else accelerates because we were eating much more carbs, much more polyunsaturated. So the, you know, Flora and the margarine of this world.

Yeah, talk about bad fats. And also when you take the fat out of a meal, you need fat is tasty. And so what do you do to replace that? You increase the sugar content, and then you have this whopping obesity epidemic. Eat low-fat, high-sugar foods for losing weight. I mean, my God. And now we know it's the absolute opposite. You know, it's just the opposite. And the bad fats thing is interesting, Nick, because you just touched on it. To make these trans fats, they have their own special processes. But the reason chips from the chipper are potentially so nasty is that that oil is boiled up at a at a terribly high temperature, not like boiling water. It's like huge hundreds and hundreds of degrees Celsius, and it's repeated. So there's rules, regulations in place that if your oil is used more than 20, 30 days, you need to replace it. Now you can imagine if you're skint and you're looking at 60 bread fires, you might say, I'll push it 60 days. And the problem, the reason they tell you 20, 30 days is because at that point, that stuff is so, so nasty, like so, so dangerous. And in the EU, the dodgy fats from chippers and spoiled kind of fats all go for incineration because it's a waste product. But it's not the case in the US, they go into pet food. And so these horrible many-time cooked oil, everyone takes it to the recycling bank, you know, you see these big huge drums and they pour their really toxic oils in and then they send it for rendering and that's boiled up again under temperature, floats to the top and you have your jellies and your soap and your pet And it's like, whoa, that is dangerous. So, Brad, you haven't fixed your sound, bud. That's still— yeah.

Oh, mate.

Yeah. He sounds like a robot. Yeah. Sorry, Brad. You can pass me your notes so I look intelligent if you want, and then I can just do a bit.

Sorry about that. Dr. Conor Brady, what have you brought to the party this evening?

Well, what have I brought to the party? Very interesting. So the— we have touched on fats, okay, a few times, but I started looking at— people start thinking, okay, look, what do we do to get fats into the dog's diet? How much— talking about how much to supplement the dog, people were clearly very stressed about that. And I said we will talk about this a few times, but starting with omega-3s, people talk about supplements. What do we do to supplement the dog? Do we need to supplement with omega-3? So that's a fair question, and I'm not going to speak for all of us, but speaking for me, I would say if your dog is on a really good raw dog food diet, outdoor-reared, grass-fed animals, turkeys sleeping in trees, a bit of fish, you know, I'm pretty sure your omega-3 content is going to be absolutely fine. Okay, in my opinion, for your average healthy dog, do you really need to supplement? I would say that need is probably not great. Okay, in good quality meat, the problem is we use a lot of indoor-reared chicken, duck, turkey, which are grain-fed, and we know they're high in meat, higher omega-6 than we would like, and that throws out the ratio. And the amount of omega-3 in internally reared meat is not great. And then you have these horrible CAFOs over in the US, which is 90% of the beef produced, and they're all grain-fed, and there's no omega-3 in that. There's just very inflammatory omega-6. So they're all issues that sneak in as you buy a pre-made raw dog food and whatnot. So it depends on the diet that you're feeding. Do you need to supplement? But check out the supplements, okay? What you really care about when you're buying supplements, there's loads of omegas, and maybe Brendan will talk about this because he's more aware of these end of things than I am. There's 3, 6, 9, I think there's 12, and there's lots of variations in there, and they all do different things. All we talk about is 3. We know lots about 3, but you could easily spend days talking about 9. If you did a doctorate on omega-9, it'd be the most important nutrient. You can't take any of them out of your diet. But threes are very cool. And at the moment, when you buy fish oil tablets, you're trying to get as much omega-3 in there, particularly EPA, DHA. They're the ones that dogs need. They're essential fatty acids. They can make a little DHA. They can convert a tiny bit from ALA, possibly. Nick, is this— they can more— cats can't do it at all, but dogs can do it the tiniest, tiniest bit.

They will do it a bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just put nothing that you wouldn't want to be relying on it. And when you think that 25% of your brain is DHA omega-3, you need this in your diet. And studies show even when pups are fed complete dry food and when they're supplemented with EPA/DHA, the pups can think better and all sorts of stuff. These studies are out there. So many studies of complete dry-fed dogs supplemented with that. You all right, Nick? You're going to say something?

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm good. I'm just thinking, is Brendan— how's your sound, Bren?

Can you hear me? Yep.

Oh, nice. Good, good, good, good. Okay, so we can get you. Good, man.

Really interesting. And the other thing that's really confusing to so many guys out there is the fact that you've got omega-3s as alpha-linolenic acid, and then you've got omega-6s as alpha-linolenic acid. And that's— that really helps just to confuse the matters because people have gone and named things so similarly. So it's just trying to differentiate between, uh, those. And then you've got all of the other things that come in with GLAs for the omega-6s, you've got SDAs for as precursors for the omega-3s that can actually now have been found to be converted really readily into some of the EPAs and DHAs. So it's, yeah, it's going through all of that, sifting through all of that information, and then realizing, wow, how do we advise people on which is the optimum? Because it also comes down to those ratios. And I love to read through your book, and you go through you know, these ratios of omega-6s to omega-3s, and you look at what's in natural fats for animals and what to expect in their cell membranes, and surely is that going to be the right optimal level for them to be digesting? And then you see all of these papers on the other hand, which some of them actually advocate almost reversing those ratios to improve health, partly because our diets are so bad that we have to try and rebalance them somewhat by adding in more omega-3s to try and lift that ratio up a little bit to help with reducing inflammation. Mainly it's about reducing inflammation.

Yeah, that ratio that Bren is talking about, I'll come back to the supplements and exactly what omega-3s are in different supplements so people know which one to buy off it. But sticking on that ratio a bit, When you go to AFCO, people can't believe it. This was one part of the arguments that we're having on Wednesday, and there were arguments. It was like, you know, of course AFCO have worked out the optimum nutrients for every dog. How do they make pet food? And these are people that use these spreadsheets. And I made many examples. I said, well, AFCO haven't got any recommendation for omega-3 in adult dogs. Nothing. So all AFCO have done is they've got a figure for pups, 0.05%, which I'll talk about what that looks like for in puppies. Essentially one sprat, which makes it easier, easy to work out. And, but, or 1/10 of a tin of sardines. But for adults, here's what they say for adults, okay? Listen to this. People are shocked by this, you know, all this time. And studies, don't forget, show that 25% of the best-selling complete pet foods sold in the UK contain zero or practically zero EPA and DHA. These are essential fatty acids, meaning the dog has to get them in his diet, and a quarter of dry foods off the shelf don't have them. And so AFGO say for dogs, not determined. 'While the minimum requirement has not been determined, sufficient amounts of omega-3 fatty acids are necessary to meet the maximum omega-6:3 ratio.' And you're like, that's it, there's no studies, there's no— sufficient omega-3 is needed. So what do pet food companies do? Lots of them don't include it, some do include it, and AAFCO are saying, okay, this ratio, as Bren was relating to, said, okay, AAFCO said it's most important the ratio doesn't go beyond 30:1, 30 omega-6 to 1 part omega-3. To give you an idea of what that means, That's a carnivore eating a meat-based diet. And a meat-based diet, as Brendan was saying about the wild animals, rabbits have a ratio of about 3 to 1. Okay, deer, 3 to 1. Grass-fed beef, around 4 to 1. And it goes up and up. Chickens, domestic chickens fed crap, 12 to 1. Pigs, 16 to 1. And studies show humans that eat these high omega-6 to 3 ratios of 15 to 1 are more prone to inflammatory heart disease and all the other horrible stuff that happens. 1s. And so we know if humans eat 15:1, we get really sick. And here's a meat eater that didn't evolve on that sort of a ratio at all. They evolved on a very low, as Bren said, close to 1:1, probably 2:1, 3:1. That's probably where dogs are. And if they're sick or they're coming off a terrible diet, there's a great argument for supplementing the dog for the first one, exactly what Bren said, because you have sickness there and you can expect a lot of deficiency coming off pet food, a lot of omega-6, very inflammatory. Don't forget, studies show dry food is highly inflammatory. We don't know why. There's a number of reasons, but a high 6:3 ratio is one of them. So the fact that AAFCO have not even got a minimum standard for omega-3 and omega-6, like the most vital nutrients, which means if you're dry feeding, I would say yes, you do have to supplement your diet or the diet with omega-3. Every study shows benefits from arthritis to steroid needs, skin conditions, all sorts of stuff, thinking in pups, aggression in German Shepherds. So there is a few studies out there, and the question is, what do you supplement with, guys? What's your go-to supplement? I've already measured all the omega-3 and gone for a bang for buck analysis, but what's your thoughts, Nick? What do you— when it comes to supplement, where are you at that?

I think that the variety rule is the key, okay? Because I think that all which is very boring, but you probably knew I was going to say that. But, but all of the oils, including flax oil, have their superpowers. Krill oil has its superpowers and pollock is the same and salmon is the same. Never buy farmed salmon. Always, always try and get wild salmon oil wherever possible. Algal oil. Green and muscle also. So they all have their superpowers, and I think that the, the real answer— I mean, you can look at what those are, but the simple way is to say, right, buy a pot of one and then don't repeat that for about 4, uh, 4 things. Okay, yeah, 4 different types, and, and you just, you rotate around. So it's kind of a non-answer, but I think that that's probably—

I like that.

Right answer, actually.

That's good. What about you, Brad?

Where do you go with these things?

Yeah, so I generally have always said I would prefer to stick to marine oils, things like that, if I'm going to supplement in. I tend— I've seen a lot of people have mentioned about salmon oil, and I've just said, look, anything farmed, knowing what they use in the farming process, more often than not and they will say, oh, well, there's withdrawal periods, etc. I will always avoid just because I know some of the delousing stuff will stay in the fat for much longer than the 28 days that they exclude them for. And I wouldn't want to be supplementing some of those compounds in. You know, they've been banned in farming, uh, on land for quite some time. And I would just say I wouldn't want to be putting those into an oil supplement like that. I think the other thing that's really, really important is that we're conscious that these oils that Nick quite clearly described, you know, the covalent bonds, that this, you know, how to make them unsaturated, can be corrupted and saturated and caused into trans fats through heating and, you know, oxidation. And as soon as they become oxidized, they go from being really beneficial for the body to actually being those inflammatory things that we want to avoid in the first place.

Yeah.

So we've got to be aware of some of the literature that's out there. I wonder sometimes, is it truly down to those ratios being wrong, or is it actually the types of fats and how they've been extracted that is then used in the experiment that could be pro-inflammatory for some of the heart disease. And then we've got, you know, so many other oils that are available out there. And certainly there's, you know, Catherine Shanahan talks about the plant oils being particularly prone because of how they're extracted to having this trans fat being in the, the end product.

So somebody asked about that, Bren. Somebody asked about plant and seed oils. Where are we on that? Do you want to just go on with that point there? Why?

So you've got to be really careful. Whilst they're in the seed, there's lots of antioxidants around those fats which actually keep them in good order. And this is one of the wonderful things about cold-pressed, mechanically reclaimed olive oils, which are bright green with all of plant antioxidants still in the oil, okay? Whereas if they've been heat extracted to get the max oil out of them, they're away from all the ligands that are within the seed that tend to keep them safe. Then all of a sudden you've got a product that has a limited shelf life once it's open to the air, okay? And, and as soon as that becomes an issue, then if you've got old oil, it's not a case of pouring an extra bit of sunflower oil on your dog's food because it's surely going to be more beneficial than not. Those oils, as Nick was saying, you know, they stack lovely. They, they are used by cells in the cell membranes of everything from your gut lining through to your nerve linings within the, the brain. You don't want those fats to stay sucked into that and stay in those cell membranes as possibly pro-inflammatory lipopolysaccharide sort of molecules going on for a long, long time just because you're not cycling enough fat through to replace them. So you've got to be really careful. Those fats are super precious. You want to give the best possible ones You know, certainly they're going to get some of those in well-raised animals, okay, for their meat, their baseline. But then we want to choose the best supplemented fat that we can choose from. There's a great one that I've come across recently, grown in the UK organically, ahiflower. Okay. And actually, as a plant oil, it's one of the richest in omega-3s over omega-6s as a 4:1 ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s, but not EPA, but the other way around.

There's no EPA?

No, it's stearidonic acid, which is actually found to be converted into EPA.

Can dogs do it?

Yep, apparently that is one of the mechanisms that they can also do. So that's really interesting. Now, I wouldn't— I'm not an advocate, as you heard right at the beginning of plant oils in many, many circumstances because there's no way that they can otherwise convert those. But that is the one plant oil, unlike— I know Nick talked about all of the others, the flaxseeds, etc. But actually, I am swaying towards considering for clients that really want to boost their omega-3s. I mean, you know me, I've talked about it before. I love eggs. I love, you know, yolks and that side of things. I love the marine oils and that side. So Mid-Atlantic sardine and—

I've got an oil. I've got an oil here for you, Bren. So if we look at Seven Seas on Amazon, okay, Seven Seas cod liver oil contains 120 milligrams of omega-3. It'll cost you £11 for 120 capsules. What does that mean, Conor? In essence, broken down, that means $0.76 per 1 gram of omega-3. They're max strength capsules. Will cost you €1 per 1 gram of omega-3. So actually their weaker ones are better omega-3 bang for your buck than their max strength. As long as there's not a whole heap of nasty filler in there, which is, which is strange. This is the nasty world of supplements. Max strength is actually worse value. And there's another max strength where it's only $0.62. So looking at how much EPA/DHA is critical when you're buying an omega-3 supplement, it's how much omega-3 am I getting? Because there's a whole heap of filler. A lot of these will have 25% olive oil in the back, organic olive oil, all sorts of fillers. So it's like, what am I actually buying? You are looking for EPA, DHA, those two omega-3s when you're supplementing your dog. Jill Hendricks, can you give too much omega-3? You can. The more, like, using a good bit of omega-3, like a good whack, twice what you might recommend. A therapeutic dose of omega-3 for a dog, guys, is about 100 milligrams of omega-3 per kilo of dog per day. 100 milligrams of omega-3 per kilo of dog per day. That's a therapeutic— my dog's got big issues, a nasty skin condition, but you want to be coming off that pretty quick. And the reason for that is because it chews up your vitamin E. Vitamin E is needed to break down all that fat. So yes, you can put in too much fat. Don't do it for too long, but your dog can take a good bit of it. These are fat-consuming animals. We'll come back to these fish oil supplements. And to Bren, exactly what Bren said, a study of 36 different brands of fish oil capsules revealed exactly half the products were at an oxidized level higher than the permitted, than the recommended limit. So that's 18 out of 36 fish oil tablets off the shelf were already oxidized. As Bren said, fats hate air, heat, and light. And interestingly, studies of people that consume omega-3s from their diet, it's heart issue preventative, whereas the studies of omega-3 supplements are nowhere near as impressive. There's only a tiny, tiny effect and some say none. So actually fish oil supplementation to protect against heart disease is not impressive at all. Eating it whole is. So what are your options? A tin of sardines in Tesco's, guys. A tin of sardines. This is the worst of your simplest options. 90-gram tin contains a whopping 1.3 grams of omega-3. Breaking it down into the figures above, that's 32 cents per gram of omega-3. That's half the price of a relatively crappy supplement. Sorry, you know, a lot of filler and crap. And with the sardines you get protein and all the omegas. And then, as Karen said, what about the cooking? Cooking destroys about 25% of the omega-3s in cooked fish. And the figures that they write on that tub are probably— I couldn't find out— are probably before the fish was cooked. They're cooked at 120 degrees for 30 minutes. As Bren said, that's not great for fats. They don't want it. It doesn't make them very nasty at that temperature. That's about 150 degrees and above. So it's still pretty good omega-3. You get good bang for your buck.

It's cheap.

Buy the ones in tomato or fresh or water, whatever. But the best one here is, um, your fresh sardines.

I'm going to stop you there. I'm going to stop you there and just say let's do the rest of that because I can feel you've got another 2 or 3 minutes in you.

I do. My favorite one.

Okay, let's go over. Let's go over to Patreon just to finish that off so that we've got everybody on a cliff edge.

Yeah, Nick, you bastard.

Oh, that rascally rascal. And then we're going to delve a little bit more into some of the reasons why I wouldn't necessarily use a cod or a fish liver oil as a supplement because of the vitamin A and D. If, if your dog is growing, fine. If your dog is old and arthritic, not so much a good problem. Okay.

And I'm going to talk to you about mercury. As well. So let's do that. Let's nip over to our friends on Patreon just now. But, um, guys, remember, you can get us on, on, uh, podcast rawpetmedics.com.

See how well we're doing in our podcast, guys. Number 2 in Ireland for pets and animals, and Trinidad and Tobago apparently, uh, number 3 or 4 in Canada in pets and animals. Like, lads, these are good fears. Guys, we need you to go in and listen to our podcast, would be great if you need to, but even if you're in there and if you can leave a rating, that really helps us because I just can't believe that. I can't believe that we're ranking in anything, but people, it's really starting to take off. This is great. I'm delighted with that.

What's the address? Raw Pet Medics stroke—

no, no, anywhere you listen to your podcast is Raw Pet Medics.

There we go. Patreon.com/rawpetmedics. And, uh, anywhere you get your podcast, you can find us there. You have a look at the, the Jeep, the tractor logo, and we will be there singing and dancing in your ears. Right boys, let's go over to Patreon.

See you all there in 2 minutes.

Oh yes indeed, guys. And just remember, when you join us, uh, we've got a pre-record over there. It's not quite as smooth streaming, so you'll find us in about an hour's time if you're looking for those. If you find a couple of guys talking about lawn mowers, you're lucky ones, because actually I try and swipe them out as quickly as I can. But it is quite amusing to some of you, and I even got a message saying they were really disappointed to miss the guys last week.

We need to get those lawn mower guys on just for fun. One more bit of free information for the people listening in relation to your eggs thing. Okay, so beef actually has 20 to 40 milligrams of omega-3 per 100 grams of the meat. Now that's beef without a whole heap of fat. Dog food is— when it comes to feeding beef raw dog food, you're getting a whole heap of fatty beef and the omega-3 would be much higher than that. UK lamb, 40 to 50 milligrams per 100 grams. Bren's beloved eggs contain about 90 milligrams of omega-3, twice the amount of meat, and that's only in a 50-gram egg, so it's actually about 150 milligrams of omega-3. Per 100 grams of egg. Egg is—

and I'm going to explain why that's not as lethal as Conor thinks.

Yeah, and I'm gonna say, boys, that I think that that 40, I think you said, for, um, for beef, I reckon if it was a regen, it's really well-raised UK, UK grass-fed beef from the, from the—

it's essentially like, like a regen website, Nick. I got that 40 Oh really? Okay. But that's it. But that's the beef meat. It's not like when you're making dog food, you're making slightly fattier stuff than the stuff you buy in Tesco. So anyway, who knows? Okay, let's move over so I can finish my favorite supplements.

Brilliant. Okay, take care. See you soon, guys.

Thank you, everybody. See you next week.