Dr. Victoria, a UK veterinarian practicing holistic medicine in Switzerland, explains how ticks transmit disease. Borrelia requires 16-24 hours of attachment to spread Lyme; infection rates hit 70% in parts of Switzerland. The hosts weigh natural prevention methods against chemical treatments, which report side effects in up to 66% of cases.
Chapters
Back in the day, we were misters, and then, and it was like, no, you're not, you're not doctors because you're not doctors. And then all of a sudden, right, when was it, like mid-'90s, we became doctors, hey? Yeah, I know, just like overnight.
Conor, I would love to have that over you too. I would love to have that over you too. Sorry guys, could you call me doctor please? And we'll call you honorary doctors. But look, it's fine, don't worry about it.
So come on, Conor, tell us what you're up to because I know you're enjoying life.
I am down in a mobile home in cold, wet weather. It's not too bad, it was kind of half sunny today. You know when you go down the beach and you think it's not hot today, it's not sunny, you spend an hour or two on the beach and I can feel it, and I've been on the beach for an hour or two, so it caught me. And we have an inflatable canoe, I highly recommend them, guys. You, like, it's really good quality, almost like the things that you stand on and paddle, but You sit into it. It's actually a canoe you sit in, not a kayak. A kayak is when you sit on top of it. And it takes 2 people or 2 kids and an adult. I'm going up and down the river. I can go out to the sea. It's just—
Oh, can I just say, okay, the one thing you've got to be careful of as soon as you've got an inflatable, okay, and you go out to sea, it might seem like a great idea, but as soon as the wind suddenly changes direction and it's offshore, you're about 5 miles out.
I got us, yeah.
So don't do that for a trip.
Chopping your fish for bait on the side of the canoe with a really sharp Stanley knife, I suggest that's probably not a good idea, Conor Brady.
Yeah, this is fantastic. I'm just going to get Elaine to hold a rope to the top like you do with the kids and she could just drag us down. I think that would be a great holiday. So 2 weeks of this is— well, no, it's not 2 weeks, it's 10 days. My house is only up the way, I can nearly see it from the beach.
You didn't go home for this podcast, so we've got really useless sound.
Yes, sorry, I won't be doing much talking tonight because— have you anything to say or do before we bring on our guests, guys?
We've got the wonderful Victoria from Switzerland. Conor, I'm going to let you introduce her, but just to say, I've just been camping in the most beautiful, beautiful campsite. It's a tiny little valley. I'm not even going to tell you where it is because otherwise everyone will go there. And we had 10 days away and it was just fantastic. The weather was generally pretty good. We were camping with the kids and had an amazing time. So missed you last week, not. And, um, and so, but it is quite nice to be back. So how about you, Brent? Any, uh, any news?
Well, we've just been working really hard, uh, on the Health Sensei side of things. So, um, so hard in fact that, uh, bless Rowan's put himself in hospital. Good luck to him. I know that he's, uh, again, he's got himself a perforation, so he's, uh, Bless him. So we wish him all the best. He's going to have a week in hospital, hopefully a recovery. Um, but they've just managed to release the podcast on HRT, uh, why you might have struggles with estrogen excess and weight gain. So there's a great podcast. Go over to the Health Sensei, visit that, just like it and, and go through. Um, great if you've got any family members that are struggling with HRT— mothers, grandmothers, wives, you know, whatever. It's, uh, it's worth a great listen. Okay, great podcast over in the States.
Uh, Blue Veil Meadows says nothing over on Facebook, question mark, question mark.
Well, that's always the challenge, isn't it? No, it looks like you're just going now.
That's interesting, guys on, uh, on Facebook, if you could just shout if you can see. Yeah, and guys on YouTube, please just shout.
YouTube definitely can see us and it looks all live on Facebook.
We won't restart because it's going out as podcast, it's going out on YouTube, and Facebook, we're just going to have to sort this out because it keeps lagging.
And we can re-release the video.
Yeah, we can re-release the video so they can just jump to YouTube for the moment. They know what's happening. Facebook have experienced this a number of times, so I think we just keep going on, guys, as if they're cool.
We've got the video, we can share it.
Yeah, big thank you to the YouTubers. And if you can smash that like button, and if you can share, share, share, that'd be good. Uh, Libo's friend says not working on Facebook as well.
There you go.
Well, maybe that is— that you— a US thing, maybe.
I'm gonna post on Facebook saying, uh, guys, just go to YouTube, you know, everyone knows.
That's all good. Right, we're gonna bring in our star guest, and hopefully this will work properly now.
So Colleen O'Hara says, I can never get you live on Facebook. So it sounds like it's maybe it's a US thing. Ah, the wonderful Victoria, Dr. Victoria from Switzerland. Um, I don't know a lot about you, but I think you've been speaking to Conor a wee bit. Conor, do you want to do a little intro for Victoria?
I first met Victoria as the most highly regarded natural vet in Switzerland. Not to bring you down a peg, but there's not a lot of natural vets in Switzerland.
Ouch.
Yeah, but you are the best, and you were at the conference with us, and everyone was speaking very highly of you. You are one very highly qualified natural vet, and we'll go through all that. But I believe you're English-born, and it always strikes me you've got such a Swiss accent. That you spent quite a long time in England, that you picked up— you must have Swiss parents. So do you want to tell us the start? I believe you grew up in England. You're English-Swiss. I mean, you're— you since became a Swiss resident, did you not? So do you want to tell us the start to that? You started in England?
Yeah, so I was born in the UK to two British parents who grew up in the south in Dorset. Um, typical upbringing of, I guess, for a vet. Had horses, dogs, didn't have cats. Moved to London for vet school, studied vet school, um, did an internship in equine at the RVC in London again, then did a PhD in biomechanics of horses, and, uh, and then decided that actually I didn't want to finish the PhD, so I never did it, um, and got an opportunity to come and work in Switzerland for the International Equestrian Federation as a vet advisor. Working in horse sports. So that's how I ended up here. Uh, after a few years, um, at the FEI, decided that I wanted to stay in Switzerland but not stay with them. Um, so decided I better figure out how to practice in Switzerland and get my degree authorized here. That's what I did. Well, I've learned French along the way. I didn't speak French when I arrived.
Wow, very good, very good. Because I assumed you were French when I was talking to you. I assumed you were Swiss when I was talking to you. Because you're fluent in that. But like, what the bit in the middle you've skipped over there, which is incredibly impressive, like, you were— what were you doing at London Olympics? Tell us about that bit for the FEI. What were you doing?
So basically, as the International Federation for the, for the sport at the Olympics, we were— our role, or my role particularly as a veterinary advisor, was to take care of the health of the horses and make sure they're not being abused. Basically make sure that those sports horses are not being doped, not being hypersensitized, if we can put it like that, make sure that everything goes to plan from the federation's perspective, and the show goes on. So, um, so basically I was, I was behind the scenes a lot, uh, in the barns looking over horses, seeing what people are up to, how they were preparing their horses. Not just physically but maybe from a veterinary perspective as well. And a lot of those horses are getting acupuncture, and not just, not just at the Olympic Games but at different competitions I was going to. So when I had a sit-down and said, well, I want to stay in Switzerland, what do I do? And I somehow decided to go and take an acupuncture course. Honestly, I had no idea that there was Western acupuncture, Chinese acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, nothing. But I I happened to go to Qi Institute at the time and learn traditional Chinese and never looked back. Completely changed my life, everything.
Like a window into other therapies that might exist that you hadn't even heard about as a young trained vet. Isn't that incredible? That wasn't even mentioned in like, you know, and maybe in the future, guys, you might look into these other therapies that are used a lot by the top animals on the planet. I mean, that's incredible.
Yeah, and there's more and more evidence-based medicine around acupuncture. I mean, the WHO accepts it as a valid pain treatment. I mean, we can treat other things with acupuncture and Chinese medicine, but I was really shocked after the first week. It was a week on site and then several times I went back to Spain, but after the first week, I remember I came back and I said, why did I never learn anything about acupuncture? That it even existed? Nothing about the evidence medicine behind it, nothing. Was really kind of disappointed, but then suddenly this new world opened, so super excited.
It's because it doesn't sell drugs, Victoria, that's why you weren't taught about it. And how did you go from there? So you discovered acupuncture, and then what, what other holistic therapies did you get into? In small animals, I presume, as well?
Everything.
Yeah, well, I've been a member of the Raw Feeding Vet Society more or less from the beginning, huh? Hiding out behind. Um, but I remember very clearly in that first acupuncture course my teacher saying, stop the kibble, it's totally bad, it's too hot, too much yin deficiency, etc., etc., etc. And I thought, this woman is crazy, what is she talking about? I mean, we're supposed to feed kibble, right? That's what we learned. Um, and now 10 years later, I'm like No kibble, please, no kibble. Totally convinced. So yeah, I'm doing a lot of fresh food. I did the CIVT course last year, so I'm about formulating and balancing and so on fresh food, which is something our colleagues are quite critical of, shall we say. So I can do a FEDIAF diet, or if you like, if you want. And then I studied like Chinese food therapy, Chinese herbals, Balance Method acupuncture. Um, I dabble a bit in other things, but principally I'm around the Chinese side, and I'm going to start a chiropractic course in the next few months.
Awesome, love it.
Uh, are you interested in, in ticks and the whole kind of tick-borne disease stuff which you're going to be presenting this evening? What, what, where, how did, how did that manifest?
It's bread and butter, right? It's everyday stuff. But basically what I realized— and for a long time I didn't feel confident enough in my French to launch anything— but I realized that the French-speaking community have very little about holistic veterinary medicine. And so I decided that I would start communicating about it, and I started a small blog. It's not very big at the moment, I need to write a bit more. But basically at my practice, 6 weeks ago, we did a kind of open day where I did 15-minute presentations on a whole load of subjects, including vaccines and cytopoint and ticks, among other things, and food, and so on and so on. So, um, I did a bit of a delve into the tick side because with my background I can't not go looking for information. So I was looking at the data sheets in Switzerland, I was looking at the ESCCAP, uh, to try and find published information that our colleagues would be on board with. And that's how it came about.
Cool.
What did you find, Victoria? I believe you have a few slides there.
I'm dying to know.
Do you want to present for 15 minutes and then we'll pick your brains, or should we just jump in as we go along?
What would you prefer?
Feel free to jump in. Let's keep this interactive. It's more fun that way.
Yeah, well, we're going to put the slides up so people can see them, and then we can ask questions in the background, so you'll still hear us chirping in at various points.
Yeah, yeah. So the first thing is the tick life cycle, and it's really important to understand this because, uh, we have the adults, they're going to lay their eggs, uh, then they're going to develop into larvae and then into nymphs and then back to adults, well, back to adults who are then going to lay their eggs again. And what I didn't know and I hadn't ever learned about actually is that for most tick-borne disease, there's no transovarian transmission. So when the egg— the adult lays the eggs if that adult was infected with a tick-borne disease, for the most part, those diseases are not transferred, with few exceptions. And I was like, wow, so, you know, we're always worried about these little larvae that when they attach to the dog or the cat or the horse, whoever, like maybe we miss them, but those guys are naive actually, like they're not infected. That's crazy. I was amazed by this.
So they get infected when they jump on an infected deer or sheep or something that's just wandering past?
Okay, yeah, so the little guys, the larvae that are really, really like really small, a couple of millimeters, normally they're attached to smaller hosts, so they'll go to like mice or rats or birds, and then if the first host is infected, then they potentially get infected. Okay, so those guys are naive. If they happen to jump on a host that's infected, then they get infected. But if the first host is clean, then they're not going to get infected with disease, and then they're not going to transfer it to the next host either.
Can they get infected on the next host, or the third, or the fourth host?
Yes, so each cycle. So the larvae have one host, and Then they feed, then they drop off, and then they hang around. It can be a while. They develop into nymphs, and then they would attach to the second host, okay? And then they feed. So if the second host is infected, they get infected, or maybe they even get infected with multiple diseases. It's possible. So at each cycle or each stage of the cycle, there's an increased risk that the tick is going to be infected. So when you see the adults attach, they're easier to see, right? They're bigger. And when they're full, they're like 1 or 2 centimeters or sometimes even bigger than that. And I have a lot of clients, they stress because of these really small larvae. And actually those larvae, for the most part, then they're not transmitting disease.
Cool.
Interesting. They're victims.
They are poor guys.
Cool, nice.
Yeah, Brandon, is that the largest, largest the, uh, I think there is, it's the screen share is just, uh, has changed your format slightly, your presenting thing.
So I was just bringing you in, Victoria, just as we, uh, um, just go through some other bits. We've, uh, you said there was some exceptions. What's the exception to that? Exactly, vertical transmission.
So I'm actually just trying to pull that up. I'm sorry, I had this in big capitals. So yes, Babesia or Paraplasmos. So Babesia, as we should call it now. Yeah, okay, which actually you guys don't have in the UK, so it's kind of redundant in the UK.
Oh, except for that odd case in Nottinghamshire that came up from a dog brought in from Oh, um, uh, from abroad. In fact, I think— or in fact, I think it was associated with a dog brought in from abroad, but then the tick transferred to a dog that had never been abroad, which is why there was a concern because of that tick life cycle, I'm sure.
So maybe it came in on a larvae or whatever, but as a general rule, you don't— you guys don't have Babesia, which good for you.
Indeed, so it's very much more about the risk of the fact that ticks do not feed just once and then fall off and lay eggs and that's it and that's the end of them. It's the fact that they will go back and feed again and you know each time they're going on to a host there's a risk that they've picked up from the previous host, especially if that's a deer or some other wildlife that's got that tick-borne infection, and they are then transferring it on to you. And if you're in that line, whether that be human or dog, then there is a process. Now, it's not instantaneous, is it? Because this is what most people are worried about. It's that as soon as they latch on, oh my God, that's it. So tell me, what's, what's the process once those ticks attach?
Well, first of all, they need to find their host. So they'll start calling on the host, and if the host is not particularly attractive to them, then maybe they don't even stay on that host. I mean, I've been out for walks with my dog and I come home and I find a tick on my partner, and he did not come with me. So, you know, they can jump for a ride. It doesn't mean they're actually going to choose that host. Maybe they're going to use it as an opportunity to find another one, but then they kind of wander around for maybe 20 minutes, 2 hours, depends. They definitely don't jump on immediately. But what I found really— what I find really interesting is that actually depending on the disease and the type of tick, the transmission time is quite variable. So if you look at the slide, the Lyme disease, which is what we're— we mostly discuss, right? Um, actually it takes from the first opportunity, should we say, the minimum attachment time is 16 hours. 16 to 24 hours. Yeah, so if you're doing a check on your dog or cat— mostly dogs because cats seem to be less affected anyway— if you're checking your dog once a day really thoroughly, the risk of Lyme is not great, huh?
That's very reassuring.
I mean, checking them and removing the tick. You don't just look at it and go, oh, that's nice, just leave it in place. But check the dog, remove the tick, Actually, if you're able to get them off in that 16-24 hour window, then your risk is nearly nothing, right?
Wow.
I'm just going to emphasize that, guys, when you're watching. So if you check your dog at some time during the day, if the day is 12 hours long, say, if you check them at least once during that period, ideally towards the end of the day when they come back from their second or third walk of the day, and you check them really thoroughly and you just remove any tick you find, the chance of getting Lyme disease is virtually zero.
What about a large hairy dog? I mean, my chances of finding everything on even Dudley, cocker spaniel who can grow, you know, hair quick.
Well, you just swap him out for a whippet, mate.
That's a good idea, thanks. Yeah, I can put a shave and blow dry on him.
You do a dog transplant for a proper dog.
I'll tell you what's making me uneasy, Victoria, is that column in the middle, which I know you're going to get to, risk of ticks being infected with Borrelia, is some studies saying 30 to 60% of ticks.
In Switzerland, that's what we have, yeah. In my region, we're actually more like 70% in some reports, but no, it's quite a different situation here to the UK. But if I just go forward to my UK evaluation, On the UK government website, they have written that 4% of ticks in the UK, Ixodes, are infected with Lyme disease. 4%, maybe increasing to 8 or 10% in some regions at some times of the year. Yeah, so 4% risk, it's better.
That's better now.
That also depends upon where in the UK as well, doesn't it? Because we've got, you know, variation depending on whether you're on the west coast and in the wet and warm all the way down south and south coast.
And who was looking? Because we had the UK which was backed by Nottingham or Bristol University, one of the two, the professor of it, yeah, he backed that big tick project and they released a study saying, I mean, it got published and it said 30% of UK dogs walking around with ticks and that figure was absolute nonsense. It even said in the methods, this may be because of the way we collected the samples, you know, it's like you even admit it. So like, I wonder, is there a healthy dose of dodgy tick drop information in there?
And who paid for the study?
Sorry, exactly, who's paying for the pizza?
Exactly, yeah. So yeah, if you're getting these small nymphs or larvae that maybe haven't already been infected. Obviously, the further you go along in this life cycle, the more risk you have. But I found that really actually quite shocking that in the UK, on the government website, it's written 4% of ticks are infected with Lyme disease. Crazy, crazy. So, um, I actually don't know if you— I— no, I did check. Marylimb is available in the UK, right? Guys are vaccinating against Lyme disease for dogs in the UK?
Yes, yes, there is a Lyme disease vaccine by Merial.
Yeah, so we have it here. Yeah, yeah, it's quite good.
How good is it and how safe is it?
I don't advise it, it's quite controversial.
I think it's very similar because as one of the spirochetes, it's very similar in its production to the the leptospirosis vaccines. And so we all know the risks. If you don't know the risks, please look at our leptospirosis vaccine video from 18 months ago. That's up there, you can see that video at any time. But the real risks are, you know, if the reaction is more likely than the risk of disease, you've got to think really carefully about taking those vaccines. Yeah, right. Now I do know that the Merial are the ones that have at least tried to take out thiomersal out of the process, and they've also taken out the aluminium hydroxide as the adjuvants in many of these vaccines, as they've done with one of their leptospirosis vaccines in the Eurocan L Multi. And I believe, talking to them, that's what they tried to do with the Merylin. But you may know different, Victoria. I don't know whether you've come across that. Do you know what the reaction rates are even?
I didn't look, to be honest, because with the risk so low—
avoid it anyway.
Yeah, and you need to look at the disease severity as well. I mean, it's nice to talk about, okay, there's a risk of the tick being infected, 4%, nearly 70% in my region, okay, but what if my dog gets Lyme disease? What does that actually mean? And 95% of dogs are asymptomatic. That's so even if you're unlucky enough to get infected with Lyme disease, for a lot of dogs they don't have clinical disease. I'm not saying it's good to be affected by the Borrelia, but is it actually causing a problem?
Oh, that's interesting. I certainly would have a debate with you about chronic inflammation and how we and dogs often will try and prevent symptoms coming forth of Lyme's, but the consequences can be long-term chronic issues with inflammation. And that for some is marked, and I have treated a number of dogs that have been stuck in that and had to go through effectively treating Lyme's to get them out of it. And there are some good methods out there that are talked about, certainly on the complementary medicine side of you know, functional medicine, getting them through. But absolutely, I mean, it's one of those really hard diseases in people to diagnose quite often, especially when they're sort of 3, 4 years into post-infection. And I think very similarly I'm seeing that with dogs if they've sort of had the ticks. I mean, I'm literally speaking to somebody— and hi if you're out there and you're listening today— speaking to somebody this week whose dog We'd been through chronic inflammation, very similar to another case of mine, and I'd asked several times about ticks, but they live in Lincolnshire. Lyme disease, almost unheard of in those sort of areas. But actually, one of the considerations is that when this dog was a puppy, before all of its conditions started and it had problems, was that it had a tick infestation back in Cornwall when they went on holiday and they sort of was young, they didn't really know much about ticks, didn't know enough necessarily to get them all off in time. They'd spotted them and then started taking them off, hadn't had any prevention treatment or anything. So I think it's one of those things, do look out if you've got a dog with chronic inflammatory disease, you know, what history does it have that's not just, it's not just Lyme's. I mean, especially if they've been abroad, there's all sorts of weird and wonderful tick-borne diseases over in Europe and in the States. So yeah, is that not a chicken and egg thing, Brendan?
You know, if you're going through a chronic illness or you're suffering some sort of autoimmune disease and, you know, force field plummets, then if you're walking around with the parasites, that's— you know, it's a whole terrain thing that we all know. This debate we've brought up a lot of times. A lot of people walking around with Giardia, they don't have that vicious gastrointestinal upset, but when the time is right, up it comes. You know, we could say that about lots of things, all sorts of strange diseases, and when they measured— and Karen Becker was also mentioning that you could— what, you have the antibodies, like, it doesn't mean you're fighting an infection at all. So I wonder which one of those comes first. You've got this chronic inflammation, chronic sickness that's gone undiagnosed, and then, you know, Lyme just says, this is good for me, I'm going to have a go. So that is it on the leptospirosis bit. A Swiss study, thanks to you guys again, 300 dogs, 290 of them were adequately vaccinated for leptospirosis. So 290 of the 300 cases were within their year of leptospirosis jab and they still got the infection because vaccinating against a bacteria is very tricky. It wanes quickly, not like a virus which we take at once and you know, challenge studies 7, 9 years later, you're still fine. Like our MMR jab, we don't keep taking it every year. But bacterial shots like your Lyme disease, like leptospirosis, they are much riskier. See the side effects, you have the lack of efficacy. It's like, oh, that's a big way of whether that was risky. I didn't even know it was a vaccination.
And that study you referred to actually was when we had what we call the L4, which is the equivalent of L2, Lepto vaccine in the UK. And then they brought out the the quadrivalent, which protects against 6 serovars. And so all of the Swiss vets were advised that they should start the vaccine again, do 2 doses, following that study.
Oh yeah, and who did the study?
Yeah, yeah, an independent researcher, I'm sure. So, so Alexandra Topic, who I think I know, but she said, um, there are phenomenal Chinese herbs for symptomatic Treatment of Lyme, Victoria, can— so there's two things. Number one is what do you do to protect dogs from ticks and Lyme, Borrelia? And number two, if they do get it, what do you do?
Well, it depends. That's always the first answer, right? So protecting from ticks, generally what I advise is avoiding the heavily infested areas during the periods of the year when they're the most active. In our case, spring and autumn. In hot summer, once you get over like 30 degrees and we don't have so much humidity, generally we're a bit safer. But I use either products in the food or essential oils or repulsive products, collars, medals, different solutions. Depends on the individual dog and what the owner wants to do, to be honest. And then I have them brush the dog over when they come back from the walk walk, so if there's any ticks running around, then hopefully we're brushing them out before they get in the car or before they get back in the house. And then have them checked at least once a day, ideally twice a day. And then if you find any, then you obviously remove them. I actually have more cases of anaplasmosis, so I do do the 4Dx iDex testing as I have a lot of dogs that are unprotected, and I get a lot of positive anaplasma cases, but then when I check them clinically no anemia, platelets are normal, no clinical signs. So they obviously get infected at some point, but those dogs up until now have always been doing fine. I haven't yet to treat a Lyme disease in Switzerland despite these high percentages.
That's very relevant.
That's really interesting. And you said about medals, Victoria, just— I presume that's not like a Victoria Cross for bravery. Can you just tell us about Can you tell us about the medals? Because I think I know what you're going to say, but just in case.
Yeah, so it's these small medals that you put on the collar that you have to leave the collar on all the time for them to work, and basically they emit an energy that is repulsive to the ticks, so it avoids them attaching to the dog.
How science-y is that, or how un-science-y is that?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, but that aside, do they work in your experience?
The problem I find is most of my clients and myself, I don't want to leave the collar on the dog all day, so when he comes home I take it off. So generally I don't find this, that's the best solution. I have some people who say that they leave it on all the time, works really well, they're happy with it, they don't do anything else. So again, it's pretty individual, and I always say do what works for you.
Okay, there would be a very easy study in that, just to put 10 dogs with the collars on, 10 dogs with the collars off, off you go into a tick-infected area, Bring them back in the day, count the ticks.
Yeah, what's wrong with that? Right, Conor, you're gonna have not the collar on, me and Dick are gonna have collars on, okay? Yeah, we're gonna go into a tick-infested area and just—
you guys are vets, you're gonna pick them all off when you see them.
So it's, uh, yeah, but the thing is there are some dogs who are tick magnets and there are some dogs who are more repellent to ticks, okay? So you'd have to be— you'd have to need a lot more than 10. Because you may have 10 repellent dogs come back with no ticks, even though they have the medal or not. So do you find that, Victoria, you've got repellent dogs and attractive dogs?
Yeah, of course, of course. So I have quite a high population of patients, or non-patients if they're in good health, that are fresh-fed, so either raw or cooked foods. And so I don't— I mean, We always say that a dog or cat that is in better health, then it's less of a magnet to these parasites. So do I see less of it because I'm mostly having those guys eating fresh food, real food? Maybe, maybe.
Cool. Why do you think that is?
Natural defenses, natural odors, less interesting. I mean, parasites tend to go where there's problems, we see.
How do they know? How do they know, Victoria? How do they know who's weak? I mean, when we talk about using the colors and the ultrasonic kind of like a sound, uh, there's energy, there's, uh, the scent, there's, there's chemo, there's heat, there's carbon dioxide. Like, it hangs by its back legs from the top of a piece of grass and it's waiting. Questing is what they called. But I literally had to do a quick Google before I came on so I knew what question was. And they still don't know of the 5 or 6, but, you know, because if we said carbon dioxide— we were chatting before we came on— if we said it was carbon dioxide expulsion, we would say, ooh, dry-fed dogs, we know, breathe out more carbon dioxide, thanks to Nick's finding of that cool study, than raw-fed dogs. So that would be interesting. But how— what kind of waves are you giving off if you're a sick creature that a tick could pick up, and how does he pick it up? What is—
thing is, we've got people like Annaheim Bjorkman in Helsinki who've got dogs who can pick up cancer way before the blood tests. Okay, maybe there's a scent thing, maybe there's a pheromone thing. You know, when you get— when you feel ill, you smell different. Maybe that's— yeah, it's that kind of thing, you know. Or if you like, if you're really anxious, you will sweat changes and you smell kind of sour. Yeah, so maybe there's that kind of thing going on with sickness. Yeah, and, um, in the old days, doctors used to smell you, didn't they? I'm talking like 100 years ago.
They'll go, you smell like diabetes.
You do?
Yeah, I smell my diabetes. Okay, interesting.
Victoria, it's one of the basics of Chinese medicines.
Wow.
Smells.
Wow, that's cool, I love it. Yeah, do you know anything about the attachment of these ticks, Victoria? Like, I mean, is there— what other defenses is there aside this metal that you use? What about oils, like herbal oils? I know rose geranium oil has great reputation, but is there— is that something you use? Is there much herbal stuff?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I have different, several different formulations of kind of like spot-ons that you apply at different intervals on the skin. Maybe you put it on before you go out, or I have some people who make up their own products. I quite like a product that has apple cider vinegar and garlic in it, and honestly, that product works really well if I forget it's getting a tick. And I have a few people who tell me the same thing.
So ACV and garlic on the skin, in the food, In the food.
Okay, cool, cool, cool. Garlic.
Yeah, yeah, there's products like that, like Tick Toff and things like that in the UK as well. Yeah, they mix those sometimes with echinacea as well in those products.
And DermaDog, DermaDog I use.
Yeah, I'm glad you said that, Conor. Thank you. Yeah, this is my wife. My wife makes it, though, isn't it? It is a topical. Uh, it's, it's, it's cedar Rose geranium, cedar, and lemongrass. Yeah, it's nice. We use it for our children.
Yeah, as cheap as chips, that product, guys.
Martina also says that there's Dr. Karen Becker's spray works over in the States.
So, you know, vanilla, based on vanilla. That was an interesting—
that's in their book, isn't it?
It's, uh, yeah, interesting, interesting. Guys, do you know, do you notice that actually, uh, perfume smells different on different people.
What?
Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, I kid you not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, listen, all, all the women watching this, can I just warn you not to share your wife's perfume? And all the guys will be going, really? No, but, but yeah, if, if you get, if you get 10 people and you use the same scent on 10 people, they will smell different.
Oh, that's interesting.
We should try that this weekend.
Yeah, I'm going to the pub later actually, so I'm going to try that. Yeah, so a bit of Chanel No. 5. It's not weird, Elaine, it's not weird, it's science. It's science. Victoria, did you do any— do you know anything about how long it takes these tick products, these chemical spot-ons we're told to use, that probably not a whole heap of us are recommending here at the moment? So far nobody has recommended them yet. Do you know how long they take to affect the tick and get rid of them?
These guys you're talking about, right?
Yes, these guys. Now we're talking. What do you know?
So what I know is that about two-thirds of dogs that are treated with them are gonna have side effects, which is quite shocking. Seriously? So a lot will have diarrhea, vomiting, or GI signs, hence why it's advice to give with food. But then also on the listed side effects, then we have like itching, redness, inappropriate urination, PUPD, so drinking too much, peeing too much, urinary incontinence, even lethargy, anorexia, inappetence, convulsions, muscle tremors, ataxia. And that is what's listed on the Swiss data sheets when I put together all of the products from that group there. I mean, that's a lot of side effects, huh?
Yeah, well, and 66% is crazy high. These are for the, these are for the Bravectos and the NexGards of this world, yeah? Bravecto especially, I presume, yeah?
All of these guys, all of these guys.
Okay, Cridelia and Simparica.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And also some fipronil and things like that?
Yeah, so fipronil, that's the next slide, funny you should say that, because there was a really nice study a few years ago looking at the behavioural effects of giving fipronil, which probably doesn't work for ticks anyway, for some years now, but it actually changes the emotional and cognitive behaviors of dogs. I mean, that's kind of scary too, right?
I haven't seen that. Oh, I want that study.
Did you not see the— is this not this— isn't there another Swiss study where they took the— is this the CSF from children that had other conditions? And I think what they found was that if they'd been in contact with a pets that had fipronil, they could detect it in their CSF.
Oh boy, interesting, interesting.
It goes, it goes just about everywhere. But, um, yeah, I mean, so many people have seen this product around for so long that they think it's so uber safe. But, you know, isn't it one pipette can kill a whole hive of bees in about 10 times over? It's just It's horrendous in the levels of toxicity to insects, full stop.
In unborn children as well, didn't they find? Was that the same study, Brian, or was that another study that Rodney did?
I think that was another study, yeah.
Unborn children they're finding it in.
And didn't Rodney say that he'd done some studies before and after and that it impacted the— it was noticeable impact in the microbiome?
Oh yeah, oh that's interesting. I wouldn't.
I once had a client who came to me and said, if my dog is exposed to fipronil, i.e., Frontline, she'll get a fit. So I said, well, I'd suggest you don't use Frontline. She said, no, no, no, if I use it on the other dogs and I don't use it on this dog, they still get fits.
Yeah, yeah, I can believe that.
It gets everywhere. It gets including everybody in the household.
But in relation to this transit time of disease from 16 to 24 hours that you said with, uh, Borrelia, what, with Lyme disease, was it 16 to 24 hours before?
Exactly, yeah, yeah, 16 to 24 hours.
So how long does it take these guys? Oh, here we go, now this is it.
Yeah, yeah, so this is how it's written, this is how it's written on the Swiss data sheets. Um, if you actually go looking at the published studies and so on and so forth, then those times are probably let's say, a high, because they will have some effect earlier on, these products, but definitely not 100% efficiency. And so I think the Swiss data sheets is quoting the 100% efficiency, and actually when you look at Bravecto, when you get to like 8 weeks, um, it's, it's like 70% efficient.
Whoa.
So it's a lot of breakthrough potential, right? And at like, by the time you're getting to 12 weeks, it's something like 50%. Or less even. So yeah, so when you look at this, you say, okay, Nexgard, it's 48 hours, Bravecto 12 to 48 hours, Credelio 8 to 48 hours, Simparica from, from 12 hours, Frontline I couldn't find any data for, and Seresto is 24 to 48 hours. So that's not when you give the medication, like when you give the tablet or when you put it on the skin or whatever, that's once you've already given it the time to kill those ticks.
Yeah, okay, so that means they've got a window of opportunity because it was the— I can't remember the figures. Is it— you've got 16 to 24 hours, yeah, was it? Which means all of them, there is a window of opportunity for the tick to bite before it's knocked out by the next guy or whatever.
Yeah, if you hit the wall that day.
And we have a lichia here, and a lichia can be transmitted in less than 8 hours.
Okay, wow.
And that's kind of scary actually. So if you go back to the slides here, I mean, 8 hours. I mean, I mean, when those products came on the market, they were selling them saying 4 hours tick kill time. So I assume there's probably some effect, at least that's what the farmer were telling us. But that's what's on the Swiss data sheet. And they even say, like, as a caution, it's necessary for the parasites to have started their meal on the host to be exposed to the the product. Therefore, risk of transmission of vector-borne diseases cannot be excluded. Oh wow, it's written black and white on the data sheet.
This product works really well unless it doesn't.
The tick has to start feeding to get a belt of the therapy.
It's logic, it makes sense, makes sense, right?
Yeah, never thought of that.
Yeah, so that's what really shocked me is actually when I saw this time to really kill the ticks, like guaranteed tick kill time, and then I saw this tick transmission time based on really what's happening, like what diseases are present, how long do they take once they've attached, how long do they take to actually transmit disease. And with Ehrlichia, it's not really present in the UK unless it's a dog coming in from abroad. That's probably a bigger problem for us here. Less than 8 hours, that's scary. In the US they have several diseases, Rocky Mountain, that can be transmitted in like 6 or 8 hours as well. So that's more scary for us. But when you're looking at Anaplasma and Lyme, 16, 24, 48 hours for transmission, often asymptomatic. And I hear you, Brendan, like we can have these chronic infections for sure. And as you say, Conor, like at what point is it the chronic infection or is there something else going on? At what point do Giardia and Borrelia lift their head and say, hi, I'm going to cause havoc now. But then I just think, okay, so actually the natural route is probably better, right?
Or it is good.
It's good, yeah. Less harmful, less risky.
I think what we could say accurately is both are imperfect, most likely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of when you, when you rely on the, on the chemicals, when you rely on the spot-ons, you take your eye off the ball. Uh, it's kind of like when we did our sunscreen bit, guys, which, uh, I thought went down very well. You put on sunscreen, which I didn't do today because I'm kind of after that sunscreen talk, I'm confused. But you, you put on sunscreen and then you leave your kids out in like 30 degrees for, for 2 or 3 hours. You would never do that if you didn't have sunscreen on. You'd leave them out for 20 minutes and got right kids in, you come, get in out of that, you know. So what you do is you take your eye off the ball, and what we didn't, we didn't realize was that there was a massive lack of protection from sunscreen. And so you are actually bombarding them with it because you, you laid on far too much confidence on the chemicals. And here we are with the spot-ons. You put a spot-on on, no point in checking for ticks it's got, you know, at no point being tick safe or tick aware or picking your times, picking your places like you said, all that goes out the window because the chemical will protect me and yeah it's interesting, that is what you do, that's what it does to the mindset, you totally rely on it, it's very, very interesting. We are already at 47 minutes here guys, we haven't once said that we are Wild Pet Medics, you will find us on patreon.com, we'll have to chop this bit out and put it in, patreon.com/wildpetmedics That's who we are, and we have just been talking to Dr. Victoria. Dr. Victoria, we— do you want to tell everybody where they find you? We actually do another 10 minutes, Victoria, but we do it over on Patreon, which is just— it won't— you won't notice anything. Awesome. Where will people find you, Victoria? Where can they find you? This blog that you're writing now, and where do you want to send people? We'll also do it on the Facebook page if you're happy.
Yeah, so I have a Facebook and an Instagram. It's Vétérinaire Holistique, it means holistic vet in French, Dr. Victoria, and the blog is drvictoria.vet, and you can register, and then when articles come up, then we can, we can send them to you. And then for the practice, it's Vet Equilibre, means balance in English, and I'm in Yvettes-en-Leban.
Awesome, we're going to share all that. I got that email from you, Victoria, so we can blast it again from the Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. And can people— is it possible to speak to you without going to your clinic? Is it possible to do that? Are you doing any sort of telecommunications? You are?
Yeah, I am doing a lot. Well, fairly regularly I'm doing teleconsults, so people in France, in Canada, different places, someone in Turkey recently.
Great, brilliant, great.
Well, I think if we'll put those up on Facebook, we're going to share this video again properly in its full form on Facebook, and you've kindly offered to take this and subtitle it in English so that everybody could understand Conor, and in French so that everybody could understand us all. And I think that would be just wonderful. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you everybody for joining us over on YouTube Live, and we look forward to seeing you over on Patreon. As I say, go to patreon.com/rawpetmedics Join us over there and that video will be posted in about an hour. Don't forget, of course, you can also hear us on your favorite podcast, so listen out for your podcasts on just about every platform that is available because we are flirts with just about every organization that will want to listen to us. So you cannot get away from us. Yeah, thanks to Pete that's putting us out on Spotify, on Apple, on, well, as I say, just about every format you can think of. So please listen to us there, subscribe, like.
I want to talk to Victoria about how she removes ticks if we're going to be removing ticks every day.
That's on Patreon.
Yeah, let's do that on Patreon.
Twisting to the right, twisting to the left.
Very important.
Okay, there you go.
Yay!
Thanks guys, we will talk to you over on Patreon.
See you on Patreon guys, thanks.
