RPM TUESDAY NIGHT LIVE: Q&A March Edition

And here we are again, guys. How are you? Brendan, how have you been?

Yeah, good, good. Lots of interesting stuff. I learned a lot about mushrooms last Friday. So yeah, that's interesting herbal mushroom stuff. So that's what it was all about.

Is that called a risotto?

Not without rice.

Fantastic. I did a mushroom foraging course last year and there was about 20 people on it up in the Devil's Glen, it's called. It's a famous enough woods where we are, very old woods and lots of cool mushrooms about the place. And the guy was so interesting, but I think there was only about 2 Irish people on the course and a load of Eastern European, Polish, Lithuanian people. 2 lads I knew that I used to work with, and it's like they are just mad for foraging. They just knew exactly what they're talking about. They were barely listening to your man. They just said roughly, where do we go? And off they went. They were picking up all sorts of things, but they were picking up fly agaric, which is that red toadstool with the white spots on it. And it's in all the fairy tales because that's the sort of stuff you need to eat to think of the stories that most fairy tales are about. And that's a fact. That's why they have these magic type mushrooms in there.

Let's not advocate that people are going to start taking fly agaric.

Yeah, no, we're definitely not. Don't do this at home, folks. But the guys were— these guys were using it as anti-inflammatory, pain relief, that kind of thing. Now, he was saying he was soaking it in vodka for ages. I was thinking, are you just going on a lad's night out and taking a lot of bloody garcinine vodka or drinking vodka? But they swear by it. They use it as a rubbing for a salve on their shoulders and stuff. And anyway, very, very interesting. So yeah, love a bit of mushrooms. That's a field I haven't explored.

It's amazing. In Europe, apparently, if you're a mycologist, you are revered to the heavens. Whereas if you say to somebody in the UK, I'm a mycologist, they'll say, sorry, what have you trodden in?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

Is that a really awful thing to have to look at people's manky feet every day?

Yeah, or their bums. Yeah, it's the real— well, it's a real— it's best because we see this as— if this is the move, this is the Western society move to seeing natural stuff as quaint. And kind of like, oh, mushrooms, how quaint, as if they have any idea of the powers of turkey tail or chaga or reishi or any of these things that have been so well studied, so well used in Eastern medicine. And we are so miles behind and only coming back to it now as if like, oh, the studies now show, you know, it's so— yeah, I love a bit of mushrooms.

Oh, some great stuff on just even honey fungus, looking at, you know, the, you know, what's going on with that and how that works as a medicine. So amarilla, you know, in the the medicine world. And just, it's— and you don't believe just how big these things can be underground, you know. We're seeing these fruiting bodies, and just, I think the largest one in America, there is something— it's like 350 tons in weight. Yes, it's the largest living organism.

Yeah, and the largest thing on Earth.

There's a— guys, for anybody that's interested in this mushroom stuff, there is an unbelievable book called Entangled Life, uh, written and read by this English guy with this cool accent. And you've just got to listen to it. Don't buy to read, buy to listen to on Audible. And I think Nick is actually calling it up, but the guy— that's it, Nick, you must have put me onto it.

That book is just coming out the right way, or do I need to change that?

No, no, that's the right way.

Oh, it is?

Yeah, Entangled Earth it is. Um, so, uh, just a fun— not Entangled Life. Okay, yeah, just phenomenal insight into the whole— and it says like that huge honey fungus in Oregon that's like spread over thousands of whatever meters, kilometers, it thinks— he says it thinks in decades and centuries because it's there so long that it wants to engineer the landscape. So it says, if I grow this way and feed these animals or pests, I'll attract this, and these plants will grow, these trees will grow and rot, and I'll get different things. So it's thinking in completely different time scales than we are. And I just thought that was just a fascinating concept, that the whole thing is we're responsive, it moves, it communicates, but yet with no nuclei. And it's like, uh, I just bloody— hell, I love that.

So this is just to give him a shout out because this is who I went to see, um, speak about mushrooms. So you can see that, that's his book. So it's Martin Powell. Okay, you know, really, really good. That's another, another book. So we're already 5 minutes in, 2 books down. Keep watching, there's plenty more to come.

Just this mycology business, you know, the, the big, the big, you know, thing is the biggest thing on Earth. Yeah, it makes a a blue whale look like a mouse. Okay, this thing is so, so, so, so big. And if you stimulate it at one end, you will get responses at the other, a little bit like the whole, you know, when you twist an electron at one side of the universe, you will get a corresponding twist with another, you know, that, that convergence kind of thing. And also what's really interesting with Merlin Sheldrake, he says we have been raised thinking I know what a dog is because it starts, you know, starts at a nose and ends at the end of a tail and four feet and what have you. But when it comes to plants, there's this whole idea of where does the plant stop and the mycology start, because they're so intertwined. You could say that a forest is actually one enormous organism, and you've got kind of tree-ish things above, and then you've got mycological things below. But You can't find where one starts and one stops. It's like completely mind-blowing because modern science— tell me when to shut up— but modern science says, well, this is this and this is this and this is this. But actually, when you really, really look at it closely, it's not as black and white as that. Yeah, yeah. This is really very—

we never knew how to look at it. We never knew how to measure it. And so we never knew there was this worldwide web of communications between plants. One plant gets injured and it's letting other plants know. Other plants will adapt their chemicals if, if, if even if they're not injured. Injured on the basis that somebody else it knows got injured. I mean, how could you even believe that was possible 50 years ago?

You know, they're even teaching kids about this now. So the BBC did a little video on the Wood Wide Web, which is effectively how trees communicate with their saplings to give them nutrients through that mycelium, or to kill off you know, and drains nutrients from other trees that are trying to get in on their action. Yeah, it's just amazing, isn't it?

It's crazy. Yeah, very, very interesting. That's enough forest talking. The last little bit, there's a yeast product for dogs called Dermacin made by these Czech scientists, and Dermacin is unbelievable. It's made on this yeast, it's based on yeast, okay? And what these Czech scientists, they were looking at the roots of plants that were growing in the soil, and they said, these are little moist, nutritious little things. How come no fungus ever eats them and rots them? And that's because all plants in the world house this little single-celled parasitic yeast outside it. And it feeds the yeast and the yeast sits there and eats and is happy enough. But if any fungus tries or any mold tries to attack the roots, the single-celled parasitic yeast attacks the fungus. So there's a tiny little millimeter of empty space around every root. So it allows the root to persist in this heavily kind of controlled mold environment. And so the Czech scientists said, wow, a parasitic yeast, that's pretty cool. So they took it out and they, grow it in their culture and they put it as a topical ointment on top of dogs with terrible yeast conditions. And it is unbelievably effective. I called out 4 or 5, they gave me 6 or 7 samples and I tried it out. I have nothing to do with this company, by the way, guys. But I tried it out on 6 or 7 terrible dogs and like half of them saw an instant remarkable improvement where other drugs have failed. So it's called Dermacin and the website is just worth a read to show how they found this yeast, how they use it, highly patented product, very, very cool. If you're suffering a stubborn yeast infection, you've tried everything else, it's worth the money, it's expensive to ship in.

How do you spell it? How do you spell it, Conor?

D-E-R-M-A-S-I-N, Dermacin oil. Dermacin, it's not the name of the company, but it's the name of the product that they make. But their company's website is just so interesting, it reads like a fungus book, it's just very, very interesting, so there's something to that. So guys, listen, what are we talking about today? No doubt we have a billion messages questions. How— who's feeling what to start us off?

Yeah, please do shout and we'll do a few from you guys and we'll try and get through as many as possible. So I tell you what, guys, let's try and do as many as we can and not be ranting on. Says he who's just been ranting on about mushrooms. Yeah, apologies. First one, very quickly, is somebody very interesting from the States that she has been following us for a while and she said Is it dangerous to feed raw eggs? And if so, should we cook them? And how does that fit in with the, with the raw food paradigm? And that's really— and I asked these guys, I had a thought, but I always like to check these things, keep up with, with, keep up to date. And I've asked a few people around the world as to where they are on this thing. So the conclusion therefore, just to keep it brief, because if we could talk about this for 5 minutes, was that In humans, if you feed a raw egg, you will get about 50% absorption of the albumin. The, the, uh, yeah, the albumin, the white in the egg. But if you cook it, lightly cook it, you will— that will go up to about 91%, uh, uh, um, bioavailability. However, that is with an omnivore, okay? But we're not dealing with an omnivore, we're dealing with carnivore, and they may be able to squeeze a lot more absorption out of that protein. So I think this is kind of work in progress for me in that we know what raw versus cooked egg is like for humans, but what about for dogs? Wouldn't that be fascinating?

Don't we also have this argument, and I know Conor's going to talk, he's done a little article for those of you guys on Patreon, you know, look at the link below, join Patreon, and you'll be able to see his article on eggs But I had a— because when in that discussion, my mind was sort of like going, well, so I understand there's loads of people talk about increased absorption if you lightly cook food. Why aren't we advocating lightly cooked food? And eggs obviously fall into that in this study that's been done. But we've then got to think about, well, how does that change things? Is that good enough? Is it good enough for assimilation of that food, or is it just good enough to increase the energy output of that food? Or there's lots of different factors because I think one of the biggest things that I've looked back at some of those messages and they looked at what the energy output of those foods were when you digest them rather than actually your ability to assimilate the products within it into your system. And there is a difference. And, you know, people say, well, we did so much better as humans because we got so much more energy out of our food through cooking it. Is that what really turned us around from the old hunter-gatherers and stuff? We've seen health issues with cooking foods, with processing foods. Is there real benefits in the long term of lightly cooking eggs, soft boiling them under 100°C? I'm not going to mention anything more. Just from a point of view.

Guys, I've got to jump in there. At the moment, I'm just reading. Sapiens by Harari, which if you're interested in the evolution of human species, amazing.

Yeah, it's great.

Amazing, amazing, amazing. A must-read. But he is saying that the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the human race was when we became farmers. We were healthy and happy, and when we were hunter-gatherers, we became less healthy. We shortened because of malnutrition. We got more energy, which meant we could reproduce, which meant Mother Nature was very happy and evolution was very happy. But we were less healthy. So I think that Brendan's got a massive point there. Just because you're taking in more energy because it's more bioavailable doesn't mean you're more healthy. So the plot thickens with regard to eggs, but in the short term, likely boiled eggs where the yolk is still runny seems to be the place to be.

That's where all the fats are because we've got a difference between protein and fats as well. Because, you know, we've talked a lot about fats in the past and, you know, we're super conscious of making sure they're in the best bioavailable form. I think we said that eggs at that time were— seemed to be a really good package for our omega-3s and 6s. But we didn't know how much effect lightly cooking, not high temperatures, as Conor pointed out quite rightly to me, you know, we're not talking, you know, getting it above 60 degrees if it's going to be lightly boiled in the yolk, and we're not going to get the Maillard reactions that he was talking about, 120 degrees, is that right, Conor?

Yes, anything over 120 for a little bit of time and you get this Maillard reaction where protein and sugar bond and cross-link and you get that hard to digest bit of steak. Damn, I overcooked my steak. And, you know, find an undigested steak in JR's guts. That's all that, what that was about. But also, when the egg turns from clear to white, you're looking at a Maillard reaction happening. That's, that's the protein bonding together. And you would have thought if you allow that to progress, if you cook that at high heat, that becomes very hard to digest. So an overcooked egg is harder to digest. But Nick was spot on with the, with the figures there, uh, 50%, um, digestibility in humans up to 90% when you lightly cook it. And it's the same in dogs, there's not a big difference. You would think that dogs have a huge different processing ability to humans, but when it comes to comparing meat and chicken, they're only like, maybe like, say humans can get 70% of the chicken breast, dogs will get 75%, or 80% versus 85%, not dramatic differences. Big difference of fish from 70% to 90% with dogs, but with eggs it's more quite similar. So the cooking thing is interesting because Becca had just done a bit there and she would wouldn't put it out unless she had done her bit of research, and she's one for boiling eggs. And so we thought, okay, it makes the protein easier to digest, so you get a bit more protein. There's about 6 grams of protein in an egg, and so if the difference between 50 and 90% digestibility is the difference between 6, you know, 3 and 6 grams of protein, so it's a bit of a difference if you wanted to save the protein. But then Bren was saying, but does it denature other things? Does it affect fat? Does it oxidize fat? And fat hates being cooked. Some fats take it a lot better than others, and it turns out the fat in an egg doesn't mind too much. The big problem with cooking the fat, which is the other half of the egg, 6 grams of protein, 5 grams of fat, give or take. So we do want to keep that in good nick, but it turns out cooking the fat in an egg at the low temperature Bren was saying isn't too stressful. So 100 degrees water, the egg gets to about 70 degrees, 80 degrees, whatever. And that's not too bad. If you cook it at a higher temperature, particularly the cholesterol turns nasty. It forms this thing called oxysterols, which I never knew of before. And that's potentially bad with eggs, but not out with a lightly boiled egg. The only other thing that is gonna—

Don't scramble 'em.

Don't scramble 'em. Yeah. Fry the hell out of 'em. But, uh, the only other thing is vitamin loss, which nobody has talked about. And there is definitely vitamin loss in cooked eggs. One study found that cooking eggs reduced their vitamin A content by 20%. Not a whole lot. Another found, uh, an 18% loss of vitamin D. Not the end of the world. And another found it reduced their antioxidant concentration by 6 to 18%. Only tiny drops in the grand scheme of things. So like, if, if those become that way off that you kind of say, well, am I looking for the protein from this egg or the nutrients? And am I overthinking it? So it really depends. Eggs are just incredibly nutritious. I prefer the fresh fat side of things. I like my dog just gets so much protein, so much amino acids that I'm not after an egg for the amino acids and the stuff that's in there. I'm actually after it for the cool yolk and all the cool vitamins that are in there. So the cooking, the light bit of cooking kills, destroys two things in the egg, and it trips an inhibitor so you can't digest protein. So the light cooking kills that. And also avidin, which takes the biotin out of the egg. So if you get into the nitty-gritty, there's pros and cons of it, but they're kind of minute and it depends on what you're after. And I'm after a nice fresh yolk. I love fresh fats. So that's where I am on that.

And there is an environmental question here because Actually, if you're cooking, you're using probably a fuel to heat up the water to boil the eggs. So actually, on a green aspect, I don't think it's a good thing to be cooking your eggs.

Yeah.

And guys, what about the quality of the protein? Do you think because proteins don't like heat, they will denature because of the sulfide bonds and what have you? So you may absorb more mass of protein, but what about the quality of that protein? I just think Mother Nature doesn't usually get it wrong, and if she's been offering dogs raw eggs for 45 million years, I think that there's probably the net balance is going to help. However, if you're looking simplistically, then soft boil. Is that about where we are, where we're at so far?

If you've nothing else to do and an old soft-boiled egg is your thing, you know what I mean? Go for it. I've got two kids and I'm not thinking about soft-boiling these eggs, but look, it's totally up to yourself. I mean, there's pros and cons. Nobody really knows. The energy thing is very interesting. They did a great study on snakes and they found that cooked food, they get 10% more energy out of cooked food because if you lightly cook it, you slightly break down the bonds, you uncoil the protein and lay it out a bit and it makes it easier to digest, so therefore your body uses less energy to, uh, to get the job done. So that's the— probably the energy difference that you're— it's easier. Well, I don't know.

Well, I think if you make nutrition, that's the key thing. Exactly. I think you change the protein structure enough that the body can't assimilate that protein. All it can do is to break it into creating energy. So, you know, it chops off the nitrogen, uh, puts it through a pyruvate pathway, and you release, you know, the carbons in the amino acid. You effectively, what you're doing is just using it as a sugar. I mean, it even drives up insulin when you give cooked protein, you know, that's the point. So you've got to understand that, yeah, it comes back to that argument. Yeah, more energy, more nutrition.

Yeah, that's the balance.

When you're looking at digestibility, really dig down into those papers as to what they're talking about. Are they talking about assimilation of protein? Or energy. And I think that's a really fine point.

And I wonder, I think the denature of protein happens up at the higher levels. I believe it happens up at the Maillard reaction type level, 120 degrees, where you really insult the protein. Ultra-processing kibble, for example, is a perfect example. Canned food, which is 110 for 30 minutes, but still. So it's really denaturing the protein, I think, makes it hard to digest, makes it hard to assimilate. I wonder, would 70, 80 degrees do that to a protein? I'd love to know if there's any chemists out there that could answer that question, guys. We would love to know the answer. So where are you on the cooked or raw? Where are we? I'm right in the middle now. I was actually— yeah, now I'm back to— I just, I don't care enough.

Do you know what? This just goes to show to all of those guys out there watching us, we can talk about anything for over 15 minutes, and we said that we were going to crack through these questions, pardon the pun.

So I've got, guys, I've got a question here. It's slightly eggy question from Harry Collett. He says, why does my 9-year-old poodle get acid reflux after raw egg? Never used to. The plot thickens. Could it be too much fat? Poached eggs are glorious, which I presume he/she means that poached eggs don't do it. Go.

What do you reckon?

Oh, how many drunken people have taken a raw egg and then, you know, couldn't hold it? I mean, yeah, I don't know what that is.

I would say it's a fat thing. I'd say it's a fat thing myself because the raw egg is going to be just pure honest-to-God fat in the yolk, whereas when you cook it, you're maybe going to change the—

your dog just doesn't like the feel of it sliding down the throat into the stomach and it turns them into a bit of a panic.

It does feel disgusting.

He's obviously done the drunken trick.

Anyway, we were supposed to do about like a couple of minutes on each question and we managed to fill up 15 minutes on that one. This is why this FAQ is never going to end. We're going to be doing this when we're old and grey.

Yeah, we are.

Look, I did a post today on— by the way, we are on Patreon, guys. We didn't say at the start. We're on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. and any of the questions that come into Patreon, they're the ones we're trying to address. So thank you to our patrons that give us the price of a cup of tea or coffee per month. It really, really helps our side, uh, and so thanks. That's on patreon.com. So this is where we're getting our questions from.

But if I could, I think we've got to touch on Jane. Jane, uh, I think you're listening out there. I've seen your name crop up. Yeah, um, yeah, there's a few people that have asked about this, uh, for incontinence in their old dogs, male dogs particularly, because we did concentrate a little bit on female dogs with the neutering bit that we did last year. I think if we can maybe touch on male dogs. I hope you don't mind, Jane, I think you wrote down quite a lot of your information on one of the Facebook posts, so we're not really repeating anything that's too private, I don't think. So if you would just nick Maybe have a little bit of an understanding. So this is an old dog neutered late because of recurrent UTIs or urinary tract inflammation, possibly male dog, I think. Male dog, yeah. And they are now left post-neutering with some residual incontinence. What do you think?

Okay, I think that the nerves need just a little bit of sprucing up and maybe the endocrine system needs a little bit of sprucing up. So I'd looking at acupuncture, osteopathy, chiropractic to get— to make sure that the nervous system was zinging, simply speaking. From an endocrine point of view, if he's been neutered, he's going to be missing his testosterone. So we can start looking at— there are some herbs that we can look at down that line. But also, if I am presented with bitches or dogs who have been neutered and have never been well since, then you can get canine testicle, canine ovary, and that can be a very useful way. Bren, how about you?

What would you—

I've stolen your glory now because those are the obvious things. Any— yeah, any—

yeah, well, I always look at these for the older, the older boys. I mean, you certainly got to understand you know, if they've had hormone drive, you know, what's gone on with their testes. Are they normal, abnormal? If there's any lumps or bumps, a lot of people don't realize this, but Sertoli cells release a lot of estrogens into the system as well. So, you know, you're withdrawing that estrogen. That also, you have some drivers for the prostate enlargement, a little bit like a growth factor. You can get benign hyperplasia of the prostate, sometimes even get prostatic cysts. And if you— neutering is often quoted as a resolution for that drive, you know, and will allow the prostate to shrink back, but it can leave some dogs effectively with damage to their, what we call the sphincter that's at the exit to the bladder. And if you've got damage to that because of a really swollen prostate, sometimes they are left without being able to close that properly. Always, always, always watch out for that sphincter. It's really important in not getting infection or bacteria coming up the urethra back into the bladder. So if there's any signs of dribbling, etc., keep checking their urine so that we're making sure they're not picking up urinary tract infections because that is no longer sealing the bladder off properly, because that could also lead to further irritation of the bladder wall. We talked about a great product, I think NutriVet do, VetPro do the same one, NutriCyst, which is a protection, lots of quercetin in there, a few other things like the glucosamines and things like that to improve the health of the bladder wall. That could be really useful in these cases. Whether to use propylene or not, Side effects of propylene, I would definitely say are low. Too much can make some dogs faint or get aggressive. Yeah, I've never seen it, but technically you can. So, you know, you've talked about hormones, and there is that element of treating that sphincter to try and improve the strength of that with nerves, with acupuncture, definitely use that. You know, I've used some remedies certainly for these incontinence cases. If they've got really strong smelling urine, strangely enough, a remedy made out of benzoic acid, it's like horse urine strength stuff that they smell like, can be really useful alongside a bit of pulsatilla, even in a male dog. But those are, you know, a couple of things to look at, but definitely, definitely check that the back's okay, the nerves are okay, you know. And if there is a nerve problem, opium can also be a really useful remedy for those bladder incontinence. So as a remedy, not as potent heroin.

I've just thought of another thing. Ginseng for old dogs, it's very good. The Chinese are very keen on ginseng for for increasing your yang energy, which is that male energy. So they— that can be very useful. And also Causticum, homeopathic Causticum 200C. If they're not too rickety, then a 200C can be very useful. Causticum, I reckon that works in about 50% of cases when everything else has been looked at. And great.

Loads of ideas there, lads.

Conor, any, just any thoughts?

Absolutely not. Someone just mentioned organotherapy. That would be the only place I'd be thinking of. I don't know anything about what you're mentioning there, so that's a complete veterinary issue. But somebody was saying feeding testicles for dogs without testicles. Yeah, like, nobody really knows anything about that, but we do know that it works when you feed— now I'm treading on dangerous water here— but you're feeding like raw pancreas to dogs with insulin deficiency that we know that works since the 1920s. That's how they discovered insulin. They did tests on dogs, and there's been studies of people using thyroid to reduce the need for thyroid supplement, thyroxine supplementation, in people with low thyroid action, and on and on. Natural cortisol from adrenal glands. So there is a lot of sense to organotherapy, but how much testosterone can you feed? Do dogs absorb testosterone that way, or is it just as building blocks? Does it pass through the gut membrane barrier as testosterone? Perhaps hormones do because insulin does and a few others. So I'm totally at sea, and I would, if it was my dog, I'd give it a go. I just need to know if it was a testosterone— can testosterone help this dog? And if so, get some dried testicles in. Lots of treat manufacturers in the UK sell that, so I'd give it a go.

I tell you what, we do know that if you give thyroid glands as part of a trachea, yeah, if you give enough of those, the thyroxine will get into the gut and will pass the gut membrane and will actually potentially give a dog hyperthyroidism.

Yeah, we had a big problem with that from the US. There was a treat manufacturer in the US who was putting in canned food beef thyroid, ground-up beef thyroid, and he made canned dog food out of beef thyroid and laid out a load of dogs, and people said you can't feed thyroid. Well, that's not quite true because a dog is a whole animal eater. He will eat a rat, he'll eat a rabbit, and he eats heads. And people are worried about the occasional bit of— is there any thyroid, leftover thyroid juice on a chicken neck, duck neck, neck. But I believe, although you guys can— I'm standing to be corrected— the thyroid of a bird is down in the chest cavity, it's under them. So when you, when you lop off the neck of a bird, automatically you're not getting the thyroid off. I've never seen a thyroid on a bird's neck, and as a manufacturer I was looking because you use necks and bits and pieces. So I don't believe it's an issue, a little bit of thyroid anymore than a little bit of liver. And it's just in mega quantity when you're talking a beef thyroid, like a big huge lump. Yeah, you wouldn't let a dog eat that that's a heavy kind of secreting organ, like that's gonna lay him out.

I love the way you portrayed these huge lumps on the cow's neck, because I have never seen a cow's thyroid that big. I mean, that looks huge. The closer you get to the camera, but you know, it's like, it must have been a really cold day for that poor bullet.

Conor, you've got some questions on testing. I think that's really important.

Okay, let's fly through these. I've got 3 important ones. Okay, so we mentioned vaccinating, did a thing on titer test. I cannot believe still today in 2022 that a Chihuahua and a Great Dane get the same size vaccination. And by vaccination I mean booster. I'm not sure if it's the same for puppy shots. The very first question is, I believe that adult dogs are given the same vaccine dose from Chihuahua 1 kilo to 50-kilo Great Dane. Is that true?

Yes.

Oh my God. Is there a difference? First question, is there a difference between puppy shots? Do you do different size puppy shots? No. Why don't you do different size puppy shots?

Because it costs the manufacturer. It would cost to do—

Come on, please tell me there's something else in that.

No, no, no, I think that's it. Because even in humans, they've only just started doing kind of pint-sized, well, small half shots for children.

I'm thinking of pints to my child. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Small size.

So even in humans, they've only just gone there in the States. So this is— we're in the dark ages with this stuff.

I'm shocked. Okay, so people won't be happy to hear that because they rightly believe that— there's two studies I shared, two studies, they're both from the 2000s, and it said Moritz Al was the most important one. And he's found that the smaller dogs suffer vaccine side effects way more, particularly from 7-in-1, and particularly if you use multiple doses in one veterinary visit. So that was a really interesting study, not a massive difference but like double the amount of larger dogs and surely that's because you've got a certain amount of adjuvant in that vaccine. It's not so much the live or dead vaccine particles I think that people are worried about, it's the adjuvant, it's the thing that's used to stimulate the immune system into action to kick the beehive like the thimerosal, this mercury-based stuff that I believe is in rabies vaccines. Question 2, do they still use mercury in rabies vaccines?

I think in some of them they do. Brendan, you'd know that better than me, but I think they do.

So yeah, I'm not going to be an apologist for all of the vaccinologists out there that are making vaccines because there are a lot of bad things that they stick into some of them, and I think a lot of them are changing. So, but they, you know, within the adjuvants, certainly the mercury salt stuff in the thiomersal is all about killing any bacteria in leptospirosis. And killing off the virus as much as they can. They do try and wash it down, you know. So strangely, they put it in, kill the stuff off, and then try and wash it clean. That's like, you know, breaking a fluorescent tube in the room and hoping you can sweep it all up and there'll be no mercury left. I think, you know, the likelihood of you doing that is still quite low. So, you know, but gone are the days. You know, I always chuckle to myself and it makes me realize why I'm so mad because we used to play with mercury on the school desk. And make manometers out of them to check the pressure that you could create by blowing through the tubes that had had the mercury poured in.

Oh, he said blow, don't suck.

See how the conversation descends as soon as he starts thinking about blow. I was talking about feet.

I have to give you guys, just to give you an idea of how the vaccine manufacturers, they actually know that this stuff is really, really not healthy for any live mammalian tissue. In the West, they don't use— generally speaking, I'm talking 99% of vaccines do not contain any of this mercury-based thiomersal. Whereas when they go to, to supposedly third world countries, on multi-dose vaccines, i.e., you keep pulling a vaccine out of one large pot of vaccine to save money, they will use thiomersal when they're not dealing with Western consumers who might be able to say, you know, start a trial, might go to law and sue them. So that is, that's pretty Pretty, that's pretty scary. I've just read The Real Anthony Fauci, and if you really want to be terrified by vaccines, that is a book that is massively enlightening. Don't read it if you're not feeling strong.

Yeah, um, before we get kicked off, yeah, YouTube or Facebook, wherever we are, we need to bring it back and we need to say, um, what if Titor, uh, Nick, what if Titor shows low antibodies. So when a blood titer— for anybody that doesn't know, most you guys know— a blood titer, instead of a vaccine or a booster at a year, a shot in the dark, a blood titer just simply means to measure, to measure the blood and see are the antibodies from the puppy's vaccinations— like when you adequately vaccinated this puppy for his viruses adequately, vaccines for bacteria wear off, your leptospirosis, that's recommended every year if your vet believes the risk of the jab is worth it. So, but the booster or the blood titer you measure the blood, but sometimes you're not going to find lots of antibodies. Sometimes you're going to find bugger all antibodies, so a figure of 1 instead of 10 or whatever. What does that mean for the animal? Does that mean that the vet should revaccinate, or is this whole— is the memory cells not at play as it was with this whole natural immunity to COVID and that kind of thing?

Grant, do you want to have a go at that? I've just had a little rant, so you can—

No, no, absolutely. So we've done vaccine titers, antibody titers, which neutralize antibody for the last 25 years plus as a practice. You know, we've got lots of experience over doing those, you know, sending them off to Glasgow or indeed to BioBest in Edinburgh and getting a true titer. Became really expensive. It is much more expensive to do that than a VaxiCheck. Did it for years. We've got loads of data about how the exposure of those in our local area. I mean, we used to do them countrywide as well, but, you know, we could look at postcodes which were, you know, effectively getting wild-type vaccines, so that the virus was out in the wild, so they'd been protected, they were going out there, we were fact-checking or titer testing them, their levels were at a reasonable level, and all of a sudden the next year you'd suddenly find that there were 22,000 instead of, you know, the 256 or thereabouts that they'd normally get on a standard virus neutralising titer. Now, that shows wild type vaccination, because a normal vaccine might raise you to just sub-10,000, it would never get you up above that, and so you'd see those. And so it's really useful to know what active viruses were out there affecting our populations, and even my own dog, you know, got exposed to infectious hepatitis a couple of times but produced a huge amount of antibodies in response to that. Now, those are cases where if you can monitor and get a more of a movie picture of how your dog's immune system is varying then actually it gives you a much better idea of if that low means they're truly low, or does it mean that they're just not getting re-exposure. And unfortunately, the testing for VaxiChecks is a 1 to 5 scale, okay? It's literally, you know, much shorter. It's looking quantitatively at your amount of antibodies. It's not looking at qualitatively at how strong the bond is with your virus. So it's more about, is there enough quantity being produced out there? And if you find that 2 of the 3 things that you're testing for are relatively high, so parvo and infectious hepatitis, but distemper is relatively low, maybe low but not negative, and then the next year those 2 are still really high but your distemper has dipped down to what they would say is a really weak level, I personally wouldn't be too worried. One, as long as the dog is staying in that area they've always stayed in and you're not just decamping down to Birmingham to go to Crufts or something like that, or indeed that your dog has probably started to produce cellular immunity rather than necessarily antibody-led immunity because there are some of those things in especially distemper where we see an increase in cellular immunity with time rather than the antibodies staying really high. And we can't measure those, which is a downside to some of these immunity checks that we do. But you've got to have the experience and the, the follow-through. So some people say, why do you take a vaccine check every year? It is not about just trying to get the money out of you guys, honest. It is about looking at that movie camera of how your dog's immune system is performing so that we can make an informed choice about what, how you should, your biosecurity going forwards, you know, and what your relative choices should be and how you might manage your dog rather than just saying, well, it's low, what do you do, vaccinate. I don't ever want to be caught saying that to an owner as their only choice is to vaccinate. And unfortunately, there's a lot of vets out there that read, as soon as it's low, you vaccinate. And that's not what we're trying to achieve.

That's the problem with some of the more well-read kind of— like, the WASSAVA guidelines back this up, 2016 WASSAVA guidelines. That was the quote that I put on the piece. And to say that it said, look, we don't recommend annual boosting, we should be doing a maximum every 3 years, but that doesn't mean you should vaccinate every 3 years. When serology is now available and you can just measure the blood. And this is what the promotional title test was. They actually specifically named VaxiCheck and another, and another brand made by Merck. And so VaxiCheck is this brand of these little kits. I, I imagine them something like the lateral flow kits we use for COVID. I don't know what they look like, lads, it doesn't matter. But what people are saying is that why is there such a disparity in price? I've got one little idea that I can put for this, but why is there such a massive disparity in price, particularly in different countries? Australia, cruel prices for it, it seems. You can get some decent prices around the UK and the US very varied. And I would say that when you're measuring the blood, your vet can be measuring for like, are they just doing distemper? Are they doing parvo? Are they doing 3 core viruses? Are they putting 7 viruses? Because however many you check, the more things you check, the more things— is that not why?

We had this just the other week, okay? And literally you've got to compare apples with apples because what if you go in for a health check it will cost a certain amount if you go, you know, because that's the vet's time, you know, to do check your dog head to tail, do all of that stuff. Okay, what we then have is some vets will quote what it is to just do the blood test. So roughly that costs about £25 to £35 for doing the vaccine checks. Depends what they can get it on and how many dogs they're running at any one time.

So what does that get me? The £25, is that the cost of the kit to the vet? Do you mind me asking?

That's the cost of the kit and effectively time for that test to be run. Okay, so if you're doing lots of the test, okay, together, then it'll cost— that's the actual test. To do the whole thing with a health check is going to be the health check cost plus that.

That.

And I've had people comparing, you know, oh, it's going to cost me, you know, £75 to get the whole thing done together, okay, but I can get somewhere that will do it for £25. But they're not doing a health check and they're not doing the advisories necessarily. So you could get advice if it's low, oh, you need to vaccinate, and then you've got to go in and vaccinate. And that's just like crazy.

I think that what the figures are putting out there are so cheap I mean, your time, your clinic, and everything else deserve— you deserve like the— Jesus Christ, excuse me, like a 20-minute, half an hour health check. You should be paid properly for that. And as regards like the vaccine check, whatever the kit costs— I didn't mean to push you for that, but like even if the kit costs you— because let's say you buy 10 of them in a box from Vaccine Check, they sell them to vets in little kits, they're not hard to use, and any vet could have them sitting on the shelf. I imagine that's the way. 25, so they're just sitting there. So why wouldn't the vet have them on their shelf? So the figures I've gotten in that post that I put up this morning was like, you know, £150, $150 for a rabies vaccine. What? Mine's $300. This is in Australia. $150 Aussie dollars, $300 Aussie dollars from this vet. No, post your stuff to Perth and that's $86 per. And it's like completely varied prices. And I thought, is this just a factor of people kind of I think some vets don't want to do them. I believe they just don't want to go there for some reason. I think they probably still see it as a bit of hocus-pocus perhaps, but it's still like, you know, it should be, it sounds to me like it should be the same price as a booster because you pay for the kit and you put some margin on top of that, which you should do as a business. So you've got your health check and then the vaccine check and your margin on top. It doesn't seem like a very expensive thing unless you're testing for lots of things. So if you test for more things, Bren, it costs you more money, I imagine. Yeah, I want this Stempertech to my dog and you're like saying you don't need to. I want to see if the antibodies are there. Okay, another $100 or €100, whatever. Is that the way it works? You have to use a different kit, I guess?

Yeah, no, no, uh, the, the kits come with the 3 viruses, you know, to check, uh, in one go. So that's all you do is— there's no, um, you know, there's no sort of individualization there. Somebody's put a post up saying about this, the vaccine check will send out an individual kit. I've not ever come across those. As far as I know, you have to buy them in 25s.

Um, I used to get them in 10s, Ben, but, uh Maybe they've changed. I send mine off to a lab now because they're so fiddly to do, and I don't see—

and I'm really fortunate to have some great nurses that do these checks, and we group them onto a Friday so they do them all in one go, which just makes it so much more economic.

What's the name of the clinic, Bren, just to remind people if they're in the area?

Tower Wood, uh, Tower Wood Vets. If they come to Leeds, they can get their vet to send the blood through to us, we will run the tests and then report on those. Okay, so that's an option for you guys.

Or if you go to BioGal, B-I-O-G-A-L, that's the company who makes VaxiCheck. They used to— I haven't looked at this for a long time because I've just been doing it— you will get a map of practices that stock VaxiCheck. VaxiCheck is the easiest. It's a bedside, it's like a lateral flow. Yeah, yeah.

And they're an American company, so all of the United States guys should have a similar map for the United States.

Yeah, in the US, for anybody listening in the US, you have Gene Dodds' efforts there, HemoPet. H-E-M-O— I always think there should be an A in there— H-E-M-O-P-E-T. HemoPet. And they have they have a huge offering. So you can— your vet can post in in 24 hours, 48 hours. I imagine there's this timeline limit on that, on that posting the blood coagulation and all that. So, but you can post blood samples into Hemopet, and there's like a, just a shopping list. It's like, oh yeah, let's leptospirosis or whatever, and you can, you can shopping list your way out. But core vaccines are really, are probably the ones you'd be looking at, and that's a very cheap way to do it because they are doing it on mass, and that is actually more of a blood bank idea. So it's a nonprofit kind of venture. HemoPet in the US, their prices beat anything that, that the more hefty costs that people are quoting. But if there's a reasonable price coming out of your local vet, well then brilliant. Ring around, guys.

I remember, you know, the virus neutralizing titers are still available, but they do cost about £120 for the actual test at the moment.

What does that mean? What's the name of the most utilized?

That's the 20P lab.

It's fancy. It's the gold standard, really.

Yeah, because it looks at qualitative as well as quantitative. So it's looking at the strength of bond to neutralize viruses. So how good that antibody is at taking it out.

No way.

And actually, it's a far more extensive test of, you know, there's a number of cells that they're effectively putting concentrations of the serum into to look at how effective it is at taking out virus.

That's so cool.

WSAVA do say that the VaxiCheck is more than good enough, which is why we changed.

That's why we changed back in 2012, I think it was something like that, across the VaxiCheck, purely and simply because a lot of data came out saying it was just more than enough.

Just an observation before we move on, Guys, Diane Bignall in, in Canada says she's being offered $285 for a rabies titer. I'm not— I don't even know what we would charge over here for rabies titer, but do look at the Hemopet.

$110 on Hemopet.

$110 bucks. There you go, that's your answer.

You have to pay your local vet for the blood to be taken, which is the check.

And not only that, be careful because your country of origin will require you to go to a certain laboratory that they recognize for that titer to be read. So you can't just send it anywhere. If you're in Bogotá, you can't just send it to Hemopet and assume that that's going to be okay, you know, for your local authorities. You've got to be sure you talk to your local vet about which labs that you can send it to and what that cost is going to be.

Emma's on here, Rutherford. She says that she can send from the UK to Hemopet pet. She's got a Paladine dog. So that's interesting. I would have thought that's quite a distance.

Um, so I do it, I do it every week. I send GeneDogs bloods every week, more or less, in a little polystyrene box.

Or like, uh, you have to be careful with it, but yes, you can for the thorough testing.

Yeah, the most difficult thing is getting it through, uh, customs, American customs.

Any tips, Nick? Do you lie? No, no, no.

She likes— she will— she's written how this is how you do it. This is how you get it through customs.

I saw that on the website. That's all right. Check out the website. Also, she's got a great Q&A on tighter testing. So that was the why the tighter is very important. Oh, damn it. I had one more question. I can't remember what it was.

And make sure you mark it for airmail, okay? Because the thyroid stuff is shot if it sits in the post for 10 days on the slow boat to China and then gets to the USA. You just need to make sure that it goes airmail if you're going to send your bloods.

So it must be— that's a great topic.

I'm not promoting the practice here, but if anybody wants to send bloods to Hemopet but they're just daunted by getting it through customs, if they send the bloods to us, we will send it because we do it on such a regular basis. Okay, Bren would probably be exactly the Yeah, sounds good.

So use the labs. Listen, that was brilliant. We just started mentioning thyroid. Did we ever start talking about thyroid? There's a lot to thyroid. I haven't done much on hypothyroidism.

I think we'll do a special one on thyroid.

I think, yeah, that needs its own day, doesn't it? And Jean Dodds's book is just unbelievable.

Yeah, I'm crying every time I talk about that. So we won't talk about it next week.

Thyroid Epidemic is the book. Have a read of that before we do it. So yeah, yeah, happy to do that.

So do we know what we're doing next week? We had a plan, but I don't think we should talk about our plan yet. So just in case we don't I'm not ready for next week, but, um, okay, so we'll save that.

Nick's skipping the country, so he can't do next week.

So flying, we'll be flying off, uh, next Tuesday. So we'll be with you on a magic carpet to a place that makes magic carpets, actually. So that's pretty good. Yeah, nice. So, uh, but the week after, so next week it's just you guys. I'm sorry, guys. Sorry, everybody.

Yeah, don't worry.

Yeah, something to talk about.

More fun, probably, let's face it.

Yeah, okay, well, the week after, let me know and I'll be here to chat. We can do thyroid if you fancy.

Yeah, thyroid could be good. We could save it for you until you come back because I know you like a bit of us. So we'll think about when— announce it during the next couple of days, Brian, won't we? On there?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Have a look through the Patreon requests and have a pick.

Great.

Okay, guys, Guys, that was great. Appreciate all that. Appreciate your time.

Yeah, join us on Patreon if you want some more answers. And there's so many questions come up. There's some great ones on feeding pregnant bitches and lactating bitches. I'm going to try and answer those individually. We'll have a little chat about that amongst ourselves.

We should do that live. We should talk about that live.

Yeah, I think that's a really great one. Maybe we do that next week.

Maybe do that next week.

Reproducing know, because there's lots of breeders out there asking constantly about what to, uh, to talk about that. So maybe that's where we go.

I think that's what we should do, that, because I'm always a little bit scared when somebody introduced themselves as a top breeder and like, you know, all these kind of accreditations, and I want your advice on feeding my pups. You're like, oh God, you know, it's always a bit of squeaky bum time because like this is getting into, you know, you know, it's just a higher end of things that you're always worried Never coming.

Let's talk about puppies.

It's marvelous. And kids. Chocolate puppies. What's the story with that? How did chocolate eggs come into Easter?

Oh, so there's a whole live there.

Yeah, a giant rabbit hops into your room and lays chocolate eggs in tin foil. I mean, what sort of weird Christians? Bloody hell. I'm one of them. I don't even know what's going on. So listen, guys, let's do reproducing bitches next week. That sounds Sounds good for Easter, little babies, right? Sounds good. Yeah. Okay, amazing.

All right, take care. Good to see you all.

Thanks everybody.

Absolutely. Talk to you soon. Bye.