Thyroid disease for cats?

Oh, the shamrocks are out.

Yeah, we're out.

Conor's with me. Nick's off doing one. I thought he was going to a beautician for a certain waxing procedure, but apparently he's having his lips done instead. So, let's get the full effect of these classic lips and tracky teeth. We can say what we like. He's not here.

We like that one.

Hey ho. So, let's just make sure everybody's live. So, good evening, everyone. For those that have missed out on Feline Fridays for a while, we're using this opportunity for Nick being absent for us to enjoy a little bit of feline health. So you actually came up with a paper, and so we're going to talk all about that with regards to nutrition, and there's a few bits that you guys need to know about feline thyroid problems. We're going to talk about the differences from dogs, uh, we're going to fill you in. So that's tonight, um, and we've also, uh, getting super excited because we're away in 10 days, 7 days I fly, I think. So it's like, yeah, that came quick.

I mean, it was always months away and then it was weeks away, now it's 10 days away.

So everybody, we're going to post on our Facebook timeline because they have just announced from Pawsome Pets in South Africa that the South African Pet Health Summit is now going to be available online. So you will be able to— because they just about sold all of their tickets. I think there's like a couple left for the live event if you wanted to turn up and still fly out there and join us in the lovely South Africa. However, for those of you who can't can't journey all of that distance, there is going to be an online live offering with some recordings available. So please look out for the post on Facebook. You will be able to sign up and Retha will welcome you with open arms. So please join us.

With the, you know, the CVA points, or CVE points they call them over here, continuing veterinary education, I think she has them in place for South Africans.

Is that a global thing or Pretty much, certainly for the UK, effectively it's self-certified that as long as you can prove that those are appropriate lectures for continuing practice development, then professional development, then you will be able to put those onto your CPD1 app and count them because they're going to be all about clinical diets, clinical health stuff that we're going to look at. So lots of stuff for you to learn.

A lot of vets, a lot of vets coming. The Johannesburg show will be bigger, and so there's quite a hefty vet contingent coming. So therefore you got to keep your information tight and sciencey, as we always do, as we always do. Yeah, but it's good. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward because it's, you know, the raw market hasn't quite taken off yet in South Africa as much as it's not fair to compare to the UK. The UK is really rocketing ahead with consumption. But yeah, the South Africa, US markets are still just not quite getting that hockey stick effect going yet. So I expect to be getting some good questions and hopefully, yeah, getting out. I'm looking forward to it now. I've got my talks already. You've got your talks ready to go, polished?

Or are you looking forward to your 17-hour flight to do? Yeah, I've got a flight. Absolutely. I've even got a stopover.

Oh yeah, you haven't got a stopover?

I think it's literally a couple of hours.

Okay, okay, I go straight. I'm going straight from— have I got to stop over?

No, you're going out to Doha.

Oh, okay. All right, I am then. I thought it was a 17-hour direct flight.

I think, Anna, you and I are joining up in Doha and then going down.

Ah, okay.

And I think that Nick is on a Frankfurt to fly. Sorry, he's over to Germany and then he flies direct from Germany.

Very good. Okay, cool.

So yeah, that's just if anybody wanted to know our travel plans.

Sorry, guys. Sorry. We'll get to it now. Anything exciting happen during the week before I start quizzing you and give us a little bit of background on thyroid?

I got my voice back after Croft, so I felt a bit gruff last week, but I am happy to say my voice is back and I feel a little bit better.

A lot of talking.

A lot of talking. That's— it's all of that catch-up, isn't it? As I said last week, a lot of people really impressed with how many people are feeding raw. I think, you know, people have to understand that fresh movement is definitely out there and rolling in. I think it's creeping up on so many of the veterinary professionals that they need to start really looking at, you know, what advice they've been using in the past and understanding that actually if you alienate your clients, you're really not going to go the right way. So, um, yeah, join the bright side and, uh, actually, uh, start, uh, being able to educate those clients on how to do it.

I made that point in the book, uh, 5 years ago, and I said, you know, it's just a force of market. So it's like when the market starts Choosing, no, I might start feeding pets fresh food. You can give out all you want and, you know, but at the end of the day, they will choose and make busy the vets that are supporting them in their decision. And that over time results in more natural vets because vets then go, okay, well, I'll humor this conversation. They look into it and they join the dark side. And slowly but surely, your bottom line starts to suffer. That's what moves markets along. It's a slow process. You want it all to happen overnight, but it takes time. But now you can definitely feel it. You can hear it. So it's a good thing, good thing. I've never been to Cork, I must go at some stage. Okay, look guys, we are Raw Pet Medics and you'll find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. And so we will jump to a bit on the side after that with all our pressing issues. Not quite sure what we're going to cover over there tonight, but it'll come as we're talking tonight. So those—

do you notice down the bottom there, there is this new bit where he's told me to take out all of the HTTPS hashtag Yeah, that's it. Yeah, good stuff.

But even the underscore, I don't get the point of having the underscore. Like, this is for people on podcast, this means nothing, it doesn't matter. Um, look guys, uh, so thanks everyone on Patreon, we, uh, very much appreciate that. But we're here for you on Facebook anyway, and that's what we do. And we're going to be talking about thyroid issues tonight. Well, first out of the traps, okay, um, tell me what a thyroid is, Bren. What it does, and then follow up with what's the difference between hypo and hyperthyroidism.

Wow. So it is a gland which in the embryo emerges, and I'm going to tell you why this is important, but it emerges from around the thymus area in the chest. And it basically, as the embryo develops, it moves up the neck and actually ends up with two little glands sat just either side, just below and either side of the vocal box. Okay, in both dogs and cats and all mammals, in fact. So in humans, if you get a reaction around that gland and it swells, we call it a goiter. Okay, so that's why you will find goitrogens. Okay, so things that will promote a goiter occurring within the mammals, okay, around that neck. And it is one of the glands which releases a hormone that effectively modulates your metabolism. So it's that one of those underlying hormones that will work out how fast your metabolism, metabolism needs to be, depending on loads of other external factors, etc. So it's all being fed by the hypothalamus and areas of the brain to do with hormone release, and that will effectively be releasing some of the thyroid stimulating hormones and things like that. So again, pituitary hypothalamus axis that we talk about for hormones, and you will get then appropriate amounts of thyroid hormone release. It's also important to understand that the parathyroid gland— so there is a small gland at the tip of that thyroid which is also really important for your control of calcium within the system. So when we talk about surgery and things like that, that's why it's really important that we are very delicate around that area and the parathyroid gland. So ultimately, two glands either side sitting in the throat help recognize what you should be having for your metabolism and how quickly you should be burning calories.

So what sort of hormones does the thyroid produce?

So you have a conversion of, so some precursors, so T3 and then into T4. So these will circulate, so you'll get free T3 and free T4 levels versus the protein-bound ones, which you will find in the bloodstream as well. So they will be looking at measuring those when they're looking at hypothyroidism, but also in hyperthyroidism. So hypo is a lack of because the thyroid hormone is being taken out by antibodies. The hyperthyroidism is because is an excess production by tumors. Okay, so it is a growth, a multiplication of cells within that gland.

Yeah, hypo is low. That's the way to remember. Yeah. And so you're saying hypo would be a low production of these free T3 and T4 from antibodies.

Oh, no, let me clarify that a little bit. Obviously, I've not quite explained it enough for you to comprehend. So the body is producing levels of that T3, T4, okay, but what is happening is that the antibodies are attacking that and effectively stopping that production, okay. So it's actually, you know, an autoimmune disease.

Yeah, but is there any other reasons why the thyroid would not produce lots of T3 and T4?

So it's actually not that it's not producing enough, So if an animal gets sick, then often the body is using up those levels of T3 and T4 very quickly. So you will get a low level in sick renal patients in cats, not because they've got an autoimmune disease of this gland, but because they're actually using up their thyroid hormone to try and help the body heal itself. So if they've got another chronic illness, Usually kidney disease we look at as one of those, but problems with dental disease, skin issues, you know, a chronic infection, you know, those are all reasons why that thyroid level may drop.

Okay. So the thyroid hormone is used all over the body to ramp up what? Like what are the top 3 uses of these things?

Basically, it's just trying to ramp up the body's energy production to fight infections. So, you know, it's just ramping. It's just saying to the body, produce more energy. Okay, so increase the metabolic rate.

Okay, cool. What about in cancer?

So in cancer, in the sense of if it's fighting cancer, or in the case of cancer for the gland itself, cancer in the body somewhere else, not the, not the actual thyroid itself. So in the case of cancer, obviously there's some issues with increasing the metabolism, uh, because effectively if you speed up metabolism, you could speed up the growth of any cancer. But generally, you would see the use of that hormone increase, therefore the hormone would generally drop.

Yeah, okay. And so is stimulating that hormone a good idea? Is that—

not always, no, absolutely not. You know, you don't want to go overboard with the thyroid levels, so there is a defined, you know, levels that you should be between. And Sometimes with thyroid levels in dogs, we look at people that have accidentally given too much of the thyroid replacement and actually can cause problems. You know, you'll get— start to get skin issues. Yes, you may get some weight loss, you may get some issues around behavior with that, but it is ultimately not good to go too high with those levels. However, the other thing is if you go too low, if you leave a cat or a dog with lack of thyroid, we see that actually there is an impact on kidney health. So you can actually increase renal disease if the thyroid level drops too low.

Yeah, 'cause everywhere in the body is relying on those hormones. So when the production of it, or when the availability of it is very low, everything suffers. It's not just one thing. So people often think the thyroid is this independent little thing, but it's like the pituitary and all the other bits and bobs, they are running the show. And keeping an eye on levels in the blood. There's another reason why you can have very low levels of T3 and T4 circulating, and that is if you don't have enough iodine in your diet. So that is a problem. But the iodine kind of linked to this, and we'll be talking about it later, but the iodine link to it is that the thyroid needs iodine to make these hormones. That's it.

And do you know, you said something really interesting. Well, Occasionally you do. Hey, and it was, it was a few years ago and you haven't repeated it. So you said something really interesting when we were talking about optimizing diets and balancing diets and all of these prescription diets which were coming along, and that you considered them actually experiments in deficiency, in basically those diets being deficient in certain things. And actually, when FEDIAF and AFCO came along and started to say, no, these are set levels that you need to be above, were totally inappropriate inorganic compounds, but that you needed to be above. If anything, it was just because they were going, oh, actually, we've not included enough of these within the high-starchy foods that we're producing for your pets, so we need to supplement that. Whereas actually we shouldn't really need to supplement those iodine levels in a healthy carnivore's diet. Okay, so, you know, if you've got plenty of meat, you don't need to go supplementing loads of thyroid tissue to try and supplement the levels of iodine, etc. There should be enough, even though it's not massive, there should be enough in the food. In an appropriate form for them to absorb.

Yeah, like, and don't mean to— well, I will be taking the conversation off on an iodine kind of slant because that's what we'll be talking about there. But, you know, we come from the sea and so iodine is a nutrient that we need, but it comes from the sea. And so there really isn't land production of iodine. Iodine is produced by, you know, the beasties in the sea. And so, you know, fish will have some, the plants particularly have some. And so the further you go inland, the more you see iodine deficiencies in people. So you get this Derbyshire neck, for example, in the UK, because it's inland. And so the—

yeah, I just thought it was all the bread they ate.

And I was dying to say that too. And then there's also Northern Ireland neck, but in, in mid-states in the US as well.

And so the Northern Ireland neck, very long.

Yeah, tough. But, um, there is, um, so the, the— look, the whole idea, I think I'm going to call come back to because it's about cats. But let's go back to the normal— let's come back to the normal thyroid questions. So is it true that we mainly see hypothyroid issues in dogs and we mainly see hyperthyroid issues in cats?

Yeah.

And what do they look like?

We've got to understand, for dogs, hypothyroidism, an autoimmune disease because of all of the things that we throw at our poor pets that live in our households. And actually, it's a reflection of what we're throwing at ourselves. With modern living, with all of the chemicals, all of the pro-inflammatory foods, all of that side of things. We're activating our immune systems way beyond what we should be doing, and that generates a lot of inflammation, which can lead to even further autoimmune, so self-recognition and attacking our own bodies. Okay. And that's where hypothyroidism and dogs living very closely with us seems to be a big problem. Now it's interesting in cats, some of the chemicals that we're exposing them to, and it, there was a great paper in the early 2000s looking at the why is it that cats are suffering from so much thyroidal cancer because it is a cancer that's occurring in those glands. And there were articles looking at one, the fire retardants that we started to spray everywhere, all over our sofas, all over soft furnishings, in carpets, you know, because we were so afraid of fire that, you know, in all of the artificial fibers and all of the horrible things that that could occur. Alongside telling people, please stop smoking while you're falling asleep, they also started spraying everything, bedding included, in retardants. And so some of the chemicals in that were also looked at as, you know, carcinogens and possibly responsible for the thyroid cancers. But the most interesting thing is that actually we also saw prior to this paper this increase in incidence when we had started not just putting meats in cans but actually lining the cans in a plastic liner to stop the leaching out of guess what, tin and aluminium into the foods. So we thought we'd stop leaching horrible things like that in that could cause other problems with the brain. And instead we started putting in plastics which would leach in BPA and I think it's, is it phthalates within the plastics? And they were also found to be carcinogens and goiterogens that can cause problems. So it became a thing that actually we also started then seeing pouches these plastic pouches with the same problems. So that's why so many food containers these days will profess to be BPA and phthalate-free to try and sell, you know, say that we're not leaching horrible things into your foods.

I wonder, I wonder, did they actually pin that down? Did they actually ever pin down BPA and plastics as causing this issue? Because isn't dog food stored in the same stuff? Why would dogs get away with it and cats don't?

Well, it's down to susceptibility, I guess. There's so many other things. Certainly the cat pouches were way and afar ahead of the dog pouches which are now produced. You know, pouched food was definitely— is a cat food thing. You still got it today. It's still a concern, and it's still— that paper is there. But just as we see so many papers written about why you shouldn't give high starchy foods yet we still have loads of starchy foods. You know, it's, um, yeah, we've still got that whole problem. Yeah, people turned the blind eye.

Yeah, yeah, I, I— that is good. So there's a possible environmental link as well. There's 2 or 3 reasons people are pointing their fingers at this hyperthyroidism in cats, which only popped up in the late '70s, first, first given a name in the late '70s. So this isn't an issue that cats have been walking around with in the wild. It was given a name in, in 1979. And it took off in the '80s and everyone's pointing their finger straight at ultra-processed food, but they can't pin down yet exactly what that cause might be. I am going to step towards that tonight. I've already talked about iodine and it's not going to be any surprise to think where I'm going to point my finger.

And so, so, well, I mean, it's just understanding, look, you know, we've talked about ultra-processed foods and all of the AGES and AILs and things like that with many guests about the risks they have and, and actually that many of these can end up being carcinogens. So you can understand that's a big problem. Now let's not hide from the fact that you say, well, why are dogs not suffering from thyroid cancers? Well, they are. I mean, I've just spoken yesterday to another dog that's had a thyroid carcinoma removed, you know, as one of the tumors. We see dogs as actually one of the highest sufferers from cancer of all species on the planet next to us. I mean, it's like, you know, if that's not a, uh, hey-ho, there is something going on here, um, what is?

And yeah, it's just interesting that it's interesting that one organ is more bothered in one animal than another. Like, so I was thinking maybe if it was a toxicity from something, you know, BPAs or iodine or some heavy metal or whatever, that the canned foods— canned foods are definitely at the top list. And I wonder, is it because cats have this lack of this liver enzyme for detoxing, so they're more prone to— they find it harder to release some bits and pieces, and so there might be— it might be harder for them to shed a toxicity in iodine or BPAs, whereas dogs seem to be better and they don't have this toxicity issue, whatever that enzyme is. I can't remember the name of it in cats.

Yeah, but we've also got that issue, haven't we with people's feeding habits. You know, let's face it, for dogs, what is the preferred feeding at the moment? I mean, not preferred in the sense of the greatest thing for your dog, but actually, let's look at popularity contests. Let's look at, you know, if we were looking at the kilograms sold of various foods, what would you say is fed to dogs mostly?

60% dry kibble.

Okay, whereas if you are looking at your cats, where do you think the proportion for dry versus sachet and tinned foods go?

Don't know, lower.

They're more like dry is lower.

Yeah, yeah, they're more likely to get the—

more people will be feeding sachet and tinned foods.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, I never thought about that. I just saw the figure from Susan Tixson, dry makes up 59% of the of the market by weight, and 99% of the recalls are salmonella by weight.

You know, I've just had a rant today with some vets that are still trying to go through this whole risk to human health from raw dog food, and it's just sort of like they still are turning their blind eye to all of those papers that are out there saying it is in dry I mean, they did this too.

They go for two things: balance, which I'm going to destroy tonight with cat food, and the risk. So what are the top symptoms of hypothyroidism in dogs and hyperthyroidism in cats, just so people can look out for it?

Okay, so hypo— let's think about that. If this is a hormone around metabolism, and to prove any rule there's always an exception, and I'll talk about about those particular breeds which like to be the exception. But the general rule is it's a hormone of metabolism. So if you go low, i.e., hypo, as you said, then you're gonna go slower, you're going to become more lethargic, you're going to gain weight because you're not burning off the calories, so you're going to get fatter, your immune system will slow down, so therefore or you won't be able to fight infections as much. So you're more predisposed to getting acne and skin infections and those sort of things. Okay, so think about low is slow, all of the stuff that you'll get there. So the dopey dog, you know, slow heartbeat, weight gain, and cold bit, which is a cold or hot, they don't like. They will get colder. Okay, so they will become a colder.

Okay, okay, that's, that's interesting. Slow means less, obviously you're going to be slow. Yeah, that Clicks into place now with the symptoms you see. Oh, very good.

So the next thing, so hyperthyroidism, so that's high, okay? So the tumor is producing more, you've got an excess, then you're going to speed up. So you're going to become, you know, popping out of your skin, really irritable, slightly itchy. You can still get some skin issues because your body goes into overdrive, so it becomes hypersensitive. To stuff. So, you know, the classic that we would see, so as you get the— your cat becomes warmer, what are the parasites that love a warm body and lots of flushing blood? Okay, is fleas. So you see the fleas jumping on, and then what do you get? You get the flea bite reactions. So the body goes into overdrive in reacting to the flea bites, and you get this disgusting little, um, miliary eczemas. So, you know, those are the things that when we see, we have to think, oh, this cat keeps getting fleas and it's very hyper and irritable and it's getting this. Have we just got a skin disease or is there actually some underlying reason for that? Do we need to start looking for hyperthyroidism? But then we'll also get the, they eat loads, you know, they're really ravenously hungry. They lose weight even though they're hungry. So they're shoveling food down and they're still losing weight because they're burning off the calories.

Because their metabolism is just rocking along.

Yeah. And that then drives into overdrive their organs. So liver can start to suffer from that overdrive. Kidneys can start to suffer from that overdrive. The heart starts to thicken and enlarge, so it becomes over-muscled because it's in overdrive and going super rapid. The blood pressure starts to rise. That will lead to further impacts on the kidneys, but also the eyes, so they can start to get retinal detachment as blood pressure is going through the roof. They are more predisposed to strokes because the blood pressure is through the roof. So you've got all of these consequences in an older cat to thyroidal cancer.

Interesting. And why does it happen in older cats more so than younger cats? It seems to happen from cats from 10 years of age. Boom.

It's length of time to exposure, but what happens, you know, one of those diseases of age is cancer, so you're getting more predisposition to cancers.

Okay, okay, cool. That's interesting. I have a slant on this. I always get a little bit intimidated when— this is Animal Cancer Trust, that's Vicky. When Vicky comes on and starts talking about— yeah, she does. Straighten up a bit because Vicky knows studies. And so hopefully I don't, uh, hopefully I don't, uh, see, Vicky's got a great phrase that I love to use. She, it's somebody else's, but Vicky uses it. And she said to me one night, she goes, what the abstract doth bestow, the methods and results doth take away. In other words, you know, people will say all this crazy amazing things that the study showed in the abstract. We found this, this, this, and this, and this. And then when you root through the methods and results, you go, no, you didn't. That's not true at all. So I just thought that was a lovely way of saying it. Anyway, listen to this for hyperthyroidism. This is a great introduction to a study in 2017. This study came up: consumption of canned cat food is considered a risk factor for the development of feline hyperthyroidism. Listen to these stats. The first case report of spontaneously occurring hyperthyroidism in cats was in 1979, and since then, the prevalence of feline hyperthyroidism has skyrocketed Hyperthyroidism in cats is now considered the most common feline endocrine disorder in the USA, with an estimated 10% of cats over 10 years old diagnosed with the disease. That's unbelievable. 10% of cats, of 90 million cats, now diagnosed.

But it's also really interesting. There's something you said right there, the first case. I'm going to come back to what you're going to finish off because that's— I think that's really worthwhile. But I'd just also like to point out, you know, there were many lectures through the '80s where it was all about recognition of disease. And as soon as more and more people were taught about how to recognize a disease, you suddenly get skyrocketing in recognition of that disease and reports. And the exact same thing with pancreatitis. It was really not reported very much, even though it was occurring, until in the '90s, I remember, so the early '90s. Very early '90s, there were lots of lectures saying you need to look at this disease and recognize it. It's really poorly understood. Something's happening and it's on the rise. You know, this is how to recognize it. These are the tests. And the tests to recognize it started to emerge through the main veterinary laboratories. And guess what? How many cases come into our door, through our doors now, saying my dog's been diagnosed with pancreatitis, my cat's been diagnosed with pancreatitis.

Yeah, like, there is that, uh, it's a chicken and egg thing because I think if there's a lot of those cases around and symptoms, it begets people to look at it and then you start getting tests and whatnot. So if the disease never happened before or happened in such low numbers, less than 1 in 10,000 or whatever, there is barely a name for it. But when that—

it's not to undermine what you were saying.

Yeah, no, I know what you're saying and it's a good point to point out, but I I think that's a part, but I'm not sure how big a part. So the veterinary industry can't find a cause for this increase in hypothyroidism in cats, but they're narrowing it down to this— of the latest two reviews in 2012 and 2015— to nutritional and thyroid-disrupting compounds, which is a nod towards what you're saying, Bren. Epidemiological studies conducted in the US have consistently identified consumption of canned commercial cat food— after that, there's 8 studies to point the finger at canned food— to be a significant risk factor for the development of feline hypothyroidism. Thyroidism. So there's 8 big long studies there. And as regards nutritional causes, they've narrowed it down to 3 they suspect, but they can't pin it down. Isoflavones, which is your stuff in soy protein, which seems to aggravate the condition. Selenium in pet food, which seems to aggravate the condition. And iodine. So whether it's aggravating it or causing it, there is— you are learning, Grasshopper, very good. And so, or iodine, which is known to be incorporated into feline cat diets at highly variable concentrations. And this is what gets me as I went down this rabbit hole, because iodine is a big kind of topic for me. We're selling a lot of seaweed and people ask you the iodine question all the time. They still don't understand. And so they're the 3 dietary things: isoflavones, selenium, and iodine. But just to talk about iodine just for a second, just to remind everyone, everyone's heard this already enough to beat a dead horse, but natural iodine and iodide. Natural iodine is bound up in food. Think seaweed, hard rubber-like leaves, bound up in that, uh, hard to break apart, hard to digest enzymatically. You've got to chew it all up, you've got to break it down with enzymes. And studies show, uh, so if I tell you a 2-gram scoop of Cannident contains X amount of iodine, that is when that 2-gram scoop is incinerated in a laboratory. That is maximum amount of iodine inside that whole matrix, but your body can't get that out and your dog definitely can't. So studies show in humans that we get about 20 to 25% of the iodine out of— so whatever it says on the label, your body's going to digest 20 to 25% of it. Now we can increase that by making it more soluble, you can do all sorts of different things, but if you're eating seaweed and part of a normal diet, you're getting 20 to 25% of what's on the label, you're absorbing. Also, it's coming at you slowly. You've got to slowly eat the food, you got to break it down, get into the cells, and that iodine is released and has to pass through the gut membrane through a rare kind of like osmosis. It's not a very complicated process at the gut membrane, and it gets into the blood. All right, now from that point, the iodine has to get into the thyroid, and that is tightly controlled. We don't want too much iodine getting in there because the thyroid will produce too much of these hormones that Bren has been talking about, and that will result in an excess production of these hormones in this hyper state that you don't want. So it's tightly controlled by everybody from the pituitary to all the other bits and pieces, how much of the stuff goes in there. So when the thyroid— this, this whole process has little carriers, little transporters, and when they need more hormones being produced, there's lots of transporters and they shuttle the iodine into the the thyroid and they make lots. And when the body doesn't need a lot of these hormones produced, there isn't a lot of transporters in the blood and the iodine goes off to the kidneys to be excreted. So when humans eat a higher iodine diet like the Japanese, they wee out more iodine. It's not harmful to the body. It's a very slow, normal process. So to say that the Japanese are eating 8 to 20 times their RDA of iodine every day, and they are, it's not of harm. If anything, it seems to be of benefit. And the body just handles it and excretes the excess iodine because it's a slow process. It's kind of like the way we hammer home the insulin idea. Spiking the insulin is the problem. If you have a normal amount of carbohydrates in your diet, it's not a big deal. But eating high carbohydrates, especially when they're refined, it's that spike of insulin. Okay, I've said that enough times.

So I've got a question for you.

Yeah.

Remember there was a show a couple of years ago where you talked about post-Chernobyl? They sent out— the Irish sent out loads of iodide tablets.

Just going to say that.

Oh, we're on the same wavelength.

So iodide is made in the lab, and the problem with iodide is that it is, you know, it normally is bound up in all this food matrix and chelated to a carbon molecule and blah blah blah. In the laboratory, iodide is just iodide. It exists on its own. It's 100% soluble. And it's highly ionized, so it's ready to go. So as soon as you take 1 gram, as opposed to the, the 1 gram of seaweed, you find 20% of it out maximum if you're a plant eater. Now you take 1 gram of iodide and every single bit of that iodide is going to go into the blood. So we know, studies show, just like many other nutrients like copper sulfate, which is causing a lot of the copper disease we see in dogs— a whole other night we're going to going to do on that. Copper storage disease popped up as soon as we started using copper sulfate. So iodide is rapidly absorbed and that creates a spike in insulin. So the slow process of your body sorting things out is changed by you putting iodide in a product. And as soon as you digest, as soon as that hits the intestines and the digestive enzymes come out, 100% of that is rushing through the gut membrane and straight into the body. And that can spike thyroid production, that can— production of hormones. So it can freak the thyroid out, it slams the thyroid. So it's the iodide in pet food that causes this disruption. And what they think is particularly the problem for cats is that if cats were deficient in iodine, they send out lots of transporters, that the thyroid gets aggravated, I need more of this stuff, and it sends out lots of these transporters, I need iodine. And if a thyroid deficient cat is given a dry pet food excessive in iodine, you get this huge rush of iodide that they think is causing the hyperthyroidism in cats. So people are starting to point their finger at the thyroid. And the reason we know— so there's a couple of other complications. So this effect of the thyroid doesn't wait around for this to happen. So when excessive iodine is detected in the blood, the thyroid shuts down. It goes, oh shit, there's lots of thyroid, there's lots of iodine around, and you don't want that. Okay, we don't want excessive spikes in iodine. So a spike of iodine in the blood shuts the thyroid down through this whole complicated process of keeping an eye and not to make too much of these hormones because we can drive the body into overdrive, as Bren was saying. So it shuts down. It's got a name, this process. It's called the Wolff-Chaikov effect. And we take advantage of that in nuclear crisis. Because when you have this radioactive issue, you've got radioactive iodine isotopes floating around, and they are really cancerous. And so what they give people is iodine tablets, which is a max— there's a lot of iodide. You take it, the thyroid, it slams the thyroid closed, and it closes. So when you eat a diet really high in iodine, as some cat foods— wait till you see these studies, I'm going to show you— when you eat perpetually high iodine, what happens is you can slam the thyroid closed, but it can't stay closed forever. Your systems have got to run. And so at one— at some point, your thyroid is going to decide, through some very complicated processes, that it's got to open up. And so you can have a lot of iodine around, and when that thyroid opens up to make hormones, you're going to make a lot of those hormones. And so this is this hyperthyroidism. Or the thyroid stays closed and you start to develop all sorts of issues as a result of that, and you start to develop hypothyroid issues like issues, not necessarily autoimmune disease, but that can kick in later if the thyroid isn't behaving.

The iatrogenic, which is called iatrogenic hypothyroidism, or indeed you can get euthyroidism, which is what we call when you've got an illness which is sucking out all of your thyroid hormones. So e-u-thyroid. Okay.

Ah, nice.

So we I don't think it's relating to our view on the EU, but you know, that's looking the life out of you. Sorry, I couldn't escape. But from a point of view of the euthyroidism, body's sick, overusing thyroid hormone, iatrogenic hypothyroidism is where you've probably slammed the door shut. You've put something in that's either causing the body not to be able to take up the thyroid, the iodine in the diet.

Yeah.

And I think some of the high sulphurous veg can cause some of those problems.

Sure they can.

And but it's interesting, isn't it? Because you talk about, well, iodine is really rich in the sea and, you know, all of that. We've got to remember that a lot of the land that we're on currently has been under the sea at points. Yeah, actually, if the land is treated correctly—

good—

and the bacteria and everything is working correctly in the soil, then the iodine that is in that soil, that is in the rocks that those plants are on, can start to take up those levels of iodine in the right amounts to feed our herbivores. Cause. It's only when we keep plowing the fields, disrupting that microbiome, stopping the ability of those plants to take up—

nitrogen fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer—

you end up having to then supplement your grazers with feeds to get their iodine levels up. So you've got this perpetual problem. So get it right, and actually even inland even in Derbyshire, you might find that those animals would have the right amount of iodine.

It's true, yeah, that's a good point. Even sea mist contains iodine, so it's part of the lovely smell of it. Listen to this study in cat food, okay? Talk about cat food, or, you know, the danger of raw dog food being unbalanced. Listen to the findings of this study. This is by Edinburgh et al. in 2013. Iodine concentration in commercial cat foods from 3 regions of the USA. So they they looked at 112 different complete and balanced cat foods sold in the US, 112 different products in 2010, and they made up an imaginary cat of 4.5 kg and 1.4 kg kittens. And they looked at all these different products from a lot of different views, from where their foods were made, what was it made on, the packaging type, again, brand variation, that kind of stuff. And they found dramatic variation among canned foods resulting in the ingestion of between 50 to 9,639 micrograms of iodine per day, which the latter figure is incredibly excessive and the other one is incredibly deficient. So massive variation. So you're expecting this, but wait till you hear the figures. So they say disparity in iodine concentrations may lead to development of nodular hyperplasia and later clinical hyperthyroidism if cats consume these diets. So listen to some of these figures. The range of iodine concentrations was widest for canned foods, similar to an earlier report from Germany. AAFCO states that the minimum iodine level is to be 100 micrograms. 16 of the 112 tested foods in the current study were deficient in iodine. So that's nearly, nearly 20%, and 15% didn't have enough iodine. So that sets your deficiency for the cats. And in terms of excess, a 1964 feline study that everybody used until recently reported that an iodine intake of 5,000 micrograms a day resulted in thyroid nodular hyperplasia in cats. 5,000 micrograms. In this study, just 2 of the 112 were excessive in that figure, and you think, oh, pretty good. But the problem was, in 1986, they dropped that 5,000 figure down to 3,000. The NRC said, no, actually 3,000 micrograms a day, and you're going to get this hyperplasia in cats that can result in hyperthyroidism. So 3,000 was the figure set in 1986. As a result of two more studies in cats. In this study, 74% of the adult non-therapeutic cat food samples exceeded this maximum concentration. 74% of 112 randomly selected. I was like, listen to this, it gets worse. It's like three-quarters of their products had excessive iodine and you're wondering why cats have hyperthyroidism. So, and this is iodide, I mean, bloody hell. AFGO, by the way, have recently changed this figure from 3,000 to 9,000, and I went looking for the studies and I can't find the studies. FEDIAF have changed to 11,000. So I— that requires more time for me, but that's where it is at the moment. It's highlighted in red with question marks. I wasn't going to mention it because I'm going to listen to the last, last two lines. We, uh, this is from the study. I'm quoting this from the study. We found a nearly 200-fold variation in estimated daily iodine intake among canned fish foods tested and over 20-fold variations for pouched and dry foods. So the variation in canned foods is massive for some reason. Regional differences in iodine concentration were found. Foods from California varied 472-fold in daily iodine intakes for cats. 472-fold! Foods from Florida, 358-fold, and food from Indiana, only 54-fold. And these guys people are standing over this product saying, this is the balance that we want, your product might be unbalanced. I've never seen such catastrophically dangerous— like, that's a poison. That is putting—

so I think, isn't it just, why aren't they shouting about this and what it's doing to our cats? How many cats have been dying of hyperthyroidism, yet they're concentrating on that stupid story about bird flu that I got wound up again at the weekend because New York are now talking about another food company that has to withdraw its food because they think it's got bird flu in it. And yet, you know, probably 1,000 times that number of cats are dying because of thyroidal issues.

Yes, or a safety— like, that's exactly That's exactly it. Like, at some day, some day, at some point, a raw dog food is going to kill a dog because of a nutritional deficiency. You have to find that out yet, but a complete raw dog food will do it. And when that happens, they will point their finger at that and ignore the tens of thousands of cats and dogs that are dying from aflatoxin and excess of vitamin D. And here's another example, there's copper sulfate disease. And they'll keep, they'll ignore, keep ignoring all that until they find this one example. I just can't believe this about iodide. It is a virtual poison. It is to feed iodide from a conical flask is an absolute dark art that you don't want to be thinking about. And just to follow on this last little bit, because I know we should jump to Patreon now, but people already—

yeah, I've got to talk about— I've got loads to talk about. I've got, you know, what these are going to do to your cat, all of these things, the alternatives that you've got that you should be talking about to your vet, um, you know. Oh, boy, and he's just off about iodine.

I'm blaming iodine. It is iodine, guys. It is iodine. I am 100% convinced it's iodine. You can't have those excessive figures and get away with it. Cats can't do it. They go deficient, then you give them excess, they're doomed. Can we do it on Patreon, or should we just do it all live tonight, Ben?

And we've got to keep those guys, you know, because we really appreciate all of the people that support us over on Patreon for the price of a cup of tea or coffee or a pint if you're really generous these days, then it would be wonderful if you'd come and join us over on Patreon. We're going to talk about all of the options that you have in treating feline hypothyroidism and, you know, not to ignore nutrition and diet and all of those things that we can do in prevention of feline hypothyroidism. So I think, wonderful. I would just use this opportunity whilst we're out to the masses, whether you're in the US of A, whether you're in Australia, New Zealand, whether you are in Europe and you're watching us and you want to hear more about clinical nutrition, you want to hear about just general how to start and how do proper balance and bones and all of that side of things, you want to learn more, please join us on the South African tour with the lives that are going to be available. We will put the links on after the show. Thank you, Reetha, for organizing this, and you'll be able to log on and join us in South Africa.

Absolutely.

Because I'll be too excited next week to go through it all. Because yeah, we'll be just about to get on a plane. So, and I do apologize for those people who are expecting CBD tonight, um, we blame Nick who's off having his lips done, um, and we'll be talking about CBD next week.

Next week, absolutely. That's good. Cheers, Brad. That was good.

All right, so see you guys. Thank you, everyone.