Conditioning The Gut For Probiotics

Hi, this is Rita Hogan, and welcome to the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. I'm a clinical canine herbalist, and I've been practicing for over 20 years. This podcast is all about your dog.

Through an herbal lens.

So let's get to it and dive right in.

Hey, everyone, this is Rita Hogan, and I am doing something special today. While recording this podcast, you may hear an echo. An echo. I am recording this podcast in a big renovated barn. Like one of those big red barns that you see on the side of the road with the tall ceilings. Like super tall ceilings. Yeah. I'm in the upstairs of a big red barn in Bellingham, Washington. So, not forgetting about you guys, bring in the podcast to you on the road. So it may sound a wee bit different, but we're gonna go with it, right? We are gonna go with it. I have been on the road. I just finished up my California tour and went right into California, Oregon tour. Went right, right into Seattle. Did a couple events there. I did a book signing at my hometown Olympia, Washington bookstore. Made it into the window. It was a little personal, personal goal of mine, a wee bitty goal to make it into the window of this bookstore. I had been telling everyone I that I knew and all. Also, I'd go sit in front of that window all the time and try to manifest my book being in the window. And bam. In the window. Did a book signing there with standing room only. That was super fun. Did a little hybrid talk of part about writing the book and then part about what some people that came there should know about the book and some facts on file about holistic healing and the doggies ecosystem. It totally fun. I am in Bellingham now, and we are doing like I am in this recording studio. I. I will be tomorrow. It's on site here. I'm staying in the Airbnb next to the studio. But we are recording the Herbal Dog. So I need all of you to manifest awesomeness in recording the Herbal Dog, because the engineer tells me that he's done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books and he's only had three people read their own book. Hmm. I hope I'm up to the task. I not hope I am up to the task and looking forward to it. Gonna have fun with it. Definitely gonna have fun with it. Trying not to bore everyone out of their minds. Hopefully I won't do that, Right? Hopefully I will not do that. Last week's podcast, I was talking about our sponsor, Goodness gracious. And someone asked about their pork and salmon recipe. A couple things they wanted to know Was, is it wild salmon? I went to the website goodness gracioustreats.com and yes, it is wild salmon. And hats off to goodness gracious for that because a lot of times when you see salmon on something, it is farm salmon. And farm salmon is nasty. Goodness gracious supports ethical. Ethical raising of animals. And farmed any fish is not ethical. Their pork comes from ethical sources. And it's pork, sirloin, pork liver, wild salmon. So from an energetic standpoint, that is going to be balanced. Okay? Pork is kind of cool to cold. Wild salmon is nice and warm to hot, and that is going to balance that out. So if your dog doesn't have anything super major going on, this is going to be a good recipe. Nicely balanced. Spinach, eggs, carrots, plums, oysters, organic sprouted dried sunflower seeds, ground eggshell, omega 3 sardine, herring, mackerel and anchovy oils, organic kelp. Love it. So I hope this answers your question, right? And I love. You know, I actually thought it was pretty cool how they wrote in about a sponsor, right? A sponsor. And that's. I mean, obviously you guys are listening, right? You never know when you're talking about things and you're. You're putting stuff out there. Is someone listening? Anybody? Anybody? Yeah, anybody. So thanks for writing into the podcast and feel free to write into the podcast. Ask me crazy questions if you want. Ask me anything, and I will try to answer during my book tour. I am doing all my podcasts from the road, and so I get my emails. My lovely assistant Bri sends them to me for podcast emails. We get hundreds of emails a day, but we have the podcast emails tagged, so we do get them. I can't answer your questions. I did want to say a big thanks goes out to goodness Gracious because they are a sponsor of my book tour as well. So they not only sponsor the pod, they sponsor the book tour. So Amy Ren's the owner there. I am so grateful for their support. Absolutely. Totally grateful for their support. So give them some love. Goodness gracious. Treats dot com. All right, so we are going to talk about preparing the gut for probiotics because a lot of people don't realize that we have to prepare the gut for probiotics. I talk about this in my book, the Herbal Dog. If you haven't got it, oh, my God. Go out and get the herbal dog and someone give it to Drew Barrymore. Okay, we're manifesting that right now. The Drew Barrymore show. Herbal Dog's gonna be on it. Plants and dogs taken over. Okay. That's what we're manifesting right now. You heard it today on the podcast. New goal. So we have to strengthen the gut in order to prepare for probiotics. We have to. And so we're gonna talk about that today. So strengthening the glycocalyx and iga, which I will tell you what it is. Okay. Don't worry. But that's what we wanna do. We wanna strengthen the glycocalyx and iga, okay? We want to do both of those. And it's, you know, it builds a resilient gut barrier. And before introducing probiotics. And this is especially so insensitive or, you know, the immune compromised individuals. Now, in the herbal dog, there is a section on sensitive dogs. I think it's like 142, page 142. It's right. Right after page 137. It's right in there before the end of. The end of the chapter. But like, dogs that are immune compromised, dogs that are sensitive, we want to build up the glycocalyx and IgA, so that commensal bacteria, which is good bacteria, can actually stick to the gut wall. And we want to do this before we do anything like fmt, which is fecal transplant. A lot of dogs come to me and their moms and pops will say, hey, we did the fmt. It failed. Okay? One of the reasons why it always fails is because it's not prepared for. Okay, so what is glycocalyx? I kind of like that name. I feel like it's a good name for a pug here. Glyco. Come on.

Calyx.

We could have two Glyco and calyx. I like it. Future plants. So the glycocalyx is this, like, protective layer. It's kind of gelatinous, right? And it's this layer that's lining the intestinal epithelial cells, okay. And it's really rich in these things called mucopolysaccharides. Let's say that together. Mucopolysaccharides and glycans. And why this is important is because, one, they block pathogen adhesion. So they're keeping the little nasties from adhes, like from adhering to the gut wall. We don't want the little nasties on there. We want them flushed out the system. They also tend to, like, I don't know how, like house digestive enzymes, okay. And they support gut bacteria, number one. They do it and they do it well. And they protect those junctions in the gut that need to be tight, okay? They protect those epithelial cells. Epithelial cells. I'll be saying epithelial probably tomorrow when I'm reading my book. So we want to deal with glycocalyx, and then we also want to deal with iga, right? IGA is super important. Secretory. Can we say that word together? Secretory. What a weird name. You know, I could be completely immobilizing that word, but secretory, iga. And that is an antibody that is secreted into the gut mucosa, okay? That's the slippery, slimy part of the gut and in the large intestine. And it's an antibody. So what it does is it is a blaster of pathogens and toxins. It neutralizes them, okay? So think iron Man. It is the ironman of pathogens and toxins. And it brings down inflammation and it helps. Here's the key, here's the kicker. It helps train immune tolerance. Okay? So that's really important for dogs with allergies and autoimmune systems or. I'm sorry, autoimmune diseases, not systems. But autoimmune issues, conditions. That's really important. You want to train immune tolerance. That's what we all want. That way your dog can eat more than one protein, right? Capiche? I know. So how do we nourish the glycocalyx? How do we rebuild it? So in the herbal dog, I talk about this. I have a few things that I like to use. I like to use plantain, I like to use colostrum. Okay. And I also like to use saccharomyces bolidarti. But we can elaborate on this a little bit more. And you know, I've been. I do some here on the podcast. I might do something in a training, you know, and I keep my notes, put it all together, and hopefully I'm going to put together a gut course someday. Not this year, but next year. It'll be fun. Anyways, we want to nourish the glycocalyx, okay? We want to give it nutrients. Those nutrients feed the mucosal layer in the gut, okay? That's just the skin that's in there, the slimy skin that protects your dogs gut from things getting over into the bloodstream. Okay? And we want to support epithelial. Epithelial integrity. We want, we want, we want good cells lining the skin of your dog's large intestine. And remember, everything I say usually kind of does hit home for you guys. So how do we do that? Well, there's A few things. So L Glutamine. L Glutamine, okay. Is a good supplement that helps with these little things called anterocytes, and it also supports good junction repair. I like L Glutamine for dogs that are more cool. Now, I don't know its energetics, but I have found that it's been more successful with dogs that are cool. And I have found that sodium butyrate tends to work better for dogs that are warm. That is just a theory. There is no evidence behind it. I am just telling you my experience. It's anecdotal, but L Glutamine and sodium butyrate. Okay. Also, there's also something called L Lysine butyrate, which is really hard to find, but in commerce. But I tend to go with the sodium butyrate. So L Glutamine or sodium butyrate. Pick one. Try one of those. Really good. So the dosage for dogs is about 250 to 500 milligrams per 10 pounds of body weight. That's for L Glutamine. I am going to half that for sodium butyrate. Okay. In fact, I'm going to bring that way down. No, I am going to say for sodium butyrate, I'm going to go with, let's see, 100, 200 milligrams for a small dog, 100 gram milligrams for a little itsy bitsy dog, 350 milligrams for a medium dog and 500 milligrams for a large dog and maybe 5 to 800 milligrams for an extra large dog twice a day. Okay. I'm going to do that. It's a lot less than L Glutamine. And, you know, start out tiny and you work your way up. I do think that 500 milligrams per 10 pounds, you know, that's the recommended for L Glutamine. I do think that's a little high. So I would start lower. And then there's. Wow. I'm going to try this one, right? I always try this one. I wrote it down before I started recording, so. Acetyl D Glucosamine. Nag. Okay. Nag. I've been called a nag before, so I kind of take offense to that. Yeah, that acronym. I kind of take offense to it. However, N Acetylglucosamine. It builds what's called mucin. Okay. Mucin is just a big word or a little word that sounds big for particles that help build healthy mucilage in the gut, okay. And these things build the glycocalyx structure. So this is really helpful in leaky gut, right? Super helpful in leaky gut. And we can use things like aloe vera, and I tend to use those for dogs that are warm. Aloe vera, just the inner leaf gel, not anything else. And you can get aloe vera gel as a powder and add it to your dog's food and it's a wee bit. It's like 1/16 of a teaspoon for an extra small dog, then 18 for a small, 1/4 for a medium, 1/2 for a large and 3/4 of a teaspoon for an extra large dog for this purpose. And slippery elm, I like to use for dogs that are cool because it's neutral in its energetics. I use marshmallow root for dogs that are warm because it's cooling. They're both really high in mucilage. That's that, that sticky substance that we're looking for. They feed, okay. They, they nourish the glycocalyx and they protect the mucosal linings. That's important. And then we have some things that help. You know, plantain leaf, I talked about that, right? Plantain helps build healthy glycocalyx. Okra. Okra for cool dogs. Okra helps build glycocalyx. And chia seeds are also good. So and I. When you give chia seeds and they form a gel and act as a fiber, it doesn't have the same effect. So what you want to do is you want to make a tea out of chia, right? Grind some up hot water, extract it and then give the little thickening water. Okay. Just like you're going to do with marshmallow root. Plantain leaf. You can use a glycerin, you can use a tincture, you can use a tea, any of that stuff. And you can find out how to use that. In my book, the herbal dog plantain leaf is in there. I don't think I. Chia's in the back and the pendances. But yeah, I don't cover okra in my book. But these are some things like, you know, you. I just can't put all the information in one spot. They cut a whole bunch out of my book. So we're just. I digress. And we're just not going to. We're not going to go there. But another thing is bone broth, okay? Bone broth has glycine in it, it has proline in it, it has collagen, and it's got mucosal support, right? It supports the mucosa and that's what we need to do. I one of my sponsors for my book tour and one of my clients for formulation is Fido's Bone broth. Really great bone broth. They test their bone broth for heavy metals because the bones could store heavy metals and they are beef bone based. If your dog can't do that, there's another great bone broth company out there called Crude Carnivore. Flo is the owner, we love her too. Check them out, those two bone broths, they're awesome. And Green Juju. Green Juju carries bone broth as well and they're one of our sponsors for the tour and sponsors for the podcast. So I mean it just can't get any better. And again I'm not going to have anyone be a sponsor for me that I don't believe in their product. So it's easy to talk about my sponsors products because I use them all the time. So just started carrying the Phyto or the Phyto's bone broth, the freeze dried bone broths in my store. Check those out. Canineherbalist.com Another thing that helps build good glycocalyx is omega 3s, okay? Omega 3s, omega 3s reduce inflammation, they help protect the mucosa and you know that's fish oil. Green lip muscle Green juju again has their organ based food that has a equal like a balance ratio between omega 3 and omega 6. So that's good, you could use that as a topper. So those are some ways. Let's just recap. So L glutamine, sodium butyrate, Nag N acetyl, D glucosamine, aloe vera, plantain leaf, slippery elm, marshmallow root, Saccharomyces bolidarti, okra, plantain leaf, chia Also freshly ground flaxseed. You can make a chia flax infusion out of that bone broth. Omega 3. And I think I did mention Saccharomyces bolidarti. Those are ways to build glycocalyx. Okay, now let's talk about iga. So one of the things that I have been hammering home is our stress and to get a hold of our stress now one of the ways that secretory IGA okay is depleted is through stress. And stress can lead to chronic inflammation, it can lead to more infections, it can lead to gut dysbiosis which is when the gut is a mess which is what we are talking about all of these things deplete secretory iga. Okay, so we want to rebuild it. How do we do that? Well, some of the things that we just talked about and ding, ding, ding. Colostrum. Okay. Colostrum works really well for cool dogs. It has what's called immunoglobulins in it and growth factors. And grass fed colostrum is a good way to go. And you want to start really slow, just like saccharomyces bolidarti. You want to start very slow when you are dealing with sensitive dogs. Okay. Just a little whisper of it and then work your way up. For a healthy, warm dog, you can definitely use colostrum. But I would use it and mix it with like plantain to bring down some of the heat there. And then we have like turkey tail mushroom. Mushroom extracts in general. Real Mushrooms is a sponsor here on the pod. And I love their mushroom powders. Mushroom powders are a great way to modulate the immune system and support mucosal immunity. You want those mushrooms in the gut. Okay? In the gut. I mean, to be processed through the gut here. That's very important. And then we have ferments. Now warm dogs. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out my energetics course or the chapter three in my book, the herbal Dog. So warm dogs do well with larger amounts of ferments, you know, more often more frequent amounts. Cool dog or not warm dogs. Cool dogs do. But warm dogs can tolerate some ferments, small amounts. But small amounts are fine as well because they give lots of prebiotics and they give lots of conditioning foods, you know, conditioning substances that help condition the gut. But the mushrooms are good at that too. And then we want to make sure our dog's zinc levels and vitamin D levels are up to par. And you can test for that. There's a great company out there called Parsley Pet. Parsley Pet has a nutritional test that you can do at home, and it is wonderful. Chelsea of Solutions owns that company, I believe. I think she runs that parsley pet. You can use them or Dr. Judy's got a test for vitamin D on her website. Check that out. But zinc helps with secretory. I need to say it like 60 times. Secretory. Secretory Secretary IGA. And so does having good levels of vitamin A and vitamin D. And that's essential for mucosal immunity, right? For the immune system in the gut and IGA regulation. One good source for these types of things is cod liver oil. So Solutions carries a fermented Cod liver oil, and that's good for dogs that are cooler. And regular cod liver oil would be probably a better choice for dogs that are warm because cod liver is cooling. So those are some things that can really help, right? They can really help build up that glycocalyx and, and iga so important. And you just want to condition the gut before you start throwing probiotics at it, right? Because probiotics are expensive and FMT is expensive. You want to make sure the gut is healthy in that conditioned, not healthy, but conditioned. We all want healthy but conditioned so that these types of treatments will work. So you really want to watch the stress, your stress, your dog's stress, physical stress, emotional stress. Make sure we're getting age appropriate exercise because chronic stress depletes secretory IgA and glyphosate. Try to use as many organic substances as you possibly can. Environmental toxins and glyphosate decrease secretory IgA and food sensitivities. That's what we're trying to get rid of. It's a vicious circle out there. Antibiotics, antibiotics, antibiotics. You know my feeling on antibiotics. And if your dog has done antibiotics in the last like a little while, and I would say even up to five years ago, do the antibiotic recovery protocol in my herbal dog book, then look at conditioning the gut. You can do that while you're doing that antibiotic recovery protocol. So we just need to support your dog's gut terrain. Okay. I would say definitely four to six weeks, you're going to have a stronger mucosal barrier, there's going to be more resiliency in the immune system and you're gonna. I'm kind of reduced the risk of what's called probiotic backlash. Like that basically is when probiotics give off histamine and when they cause bloating and diarrhea reactions. We don't want to do that, right? And then we just want to gently introduce probiotics. Right? Start low and slow, low and slow. And you know, bifobacterium are good soil based organisms if you know those are appropriate. And then the cool thing is, is that green juju, One of my sponsors has come out with three new probiotics. I love their fermented mushroom. I absolutely love that. And with each batch, now that's the batch, not bottle, but the batch, the batch number. Each batch number is going to have different organisms in it based on what is going on at the farm when it's being produced. And this is the same for the three probiotics. That they are coming out with. They are coming out with a probiotic called Farm, which is. Oh, my God, it's awesome. It's derived from fermented milk, raw milk. Right. But there is no dairy in it. So for those dogs that can't tolerate dairy, they can actually do this probiotic. And again, each batch is going to have new organisms in it. And then they have one called Leaf, which is derived from organic, like, dark leafy greens. That one is like a kombucha based without the kombucha. And it's going to be friendly yeast and probiotics. And then they have one called Soil, which is also a different type of kombucha probiotic. It's wild, fermented, and between the three of them, plus the mushroom, plus some of your other favorite probiotics, like, there's a lot of them that I like from Adored Beast. We as a community can rotate, rotate, rotate, rotate, rotate. And that's what we want to do. We want to keep rotating these different species of probiotics or for healthy guts, because each species is going to interact with your dog in a different way. And the more we can help the gut, the less chances there are of disease, of autoimmune, disease, of cancer. So when we nourish the gut and get ready for probiotics, they're going to be much more successful. So I'm very excited about this. I hope you learned a lot today. If you have any specific questions, write into the pod. I'll answer them. And I hope you enjoyed my big barn extravaganza. It's definitely for you. And thank you for your support. Thank you for your support on my tour. Thank you for supporting my store, k9herbalist.com while I'm on my tour. That helps me stay on my tour. Thank you for listening to my stories about my sponsors and podcast sponsors. You know, all of this would not be possible unless I have sponsors and wonderful people like you that are supporting me and following me and taking my courses and just listening, you know, Just listening. I'm glad that you know, when I put out these podcasts that you guys are out there listening and again, take what resonates with you and leave the rest.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Dogs are Individuals. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app. And don't forget, sharing is caring. So if you love Dogs Are Individuals podcast, share it with your friends and family who love dogs. This will help me so much. And remember, as a listener, I appreciate you much thanks to Resonant Media, my Podcast production team. This podcast is produced by Drake Peterson and edited by by Mike Fry. Any questions, email the show, go to k9herbalist.com Click podcast contact in the menu and then fill out that form and I'll answer any questions here online. Okay, so thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individuals Podcast and I'm going to talk to you in our next episode. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for veterinary care. This podcast doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor, veterinarian or healthcare provider first before starting anything new. And that includes herbs. I'm not a doctor and I don't treat disease or prescribe anything. I'm a traditional herbalist providing herbal support education only. Regarding any products I may suggest the statements made regarding these products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The efficacy of these products has not been confirmed by FDA approved research. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. All information presented here on the podcast is not meant as a substitute or alternative to information from your vet. Please consult your veterinary professional professional about potential interactions or other possible complications before using any product.