Excess and Deficiency

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. Hello, guys, this is Rita Hocan, your host of the Dogs at Individuals podcast. I want to take a second to thank my sponsor of the podcast, realmushrooms.com and just talk really briefly about Cordyceps mushroom. They carry Cordyceps militarius. This is a cultivated mushroom of cordyceps. It's good for the lungs, kidneys, the immune system, the microbiome, and definitely to support healthy mitochondria. And I like cordyceps for cool dogs. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out my energetics course on k nineherbalism.com but cool dogs don't really like a lot of cold. They seek out heat, they like to be warm. They're baking in front of the fire. They are much more laid back dogs than warm dogs. And cordyceps is quite warming. So I just kind of like to take energetics into consideration when I am recommending them for our little canine pups. They can be mixed with other things that are really quite cooling, like rose hips to bring down their heat, but you want to keep energetics into consideration. So cordyceps really helps protect and fortify the kidneys, which is needed right now in the wintertime when things are cold and kidney energy is waning, and they strengthen the adrenal glands and increase vitality. So check Real Mushrooms out. I carry their products in my store and also on realmushrooms.com can't thank them enough for sponsoring the podcast and allowing me to speak to you guys every week. Real mushrooms.com so what are we going to talk about this week? I was thinking about the difference between excess and deficiency. And why was I thinking this? Well, I have been working on my Herbal Dog. That's a working title, the Herbal Dog working title here of my manuscript because my book is coming out this year. It's the first day of January and I can say it's coming out this year, most likely somewhere between August and October. And I'm super excited about it. But I was writing about healing according to energetics and just kind of working on the flow of my book and talking a lot about excess and deficiency. And when you're writing a book, you have to be really careful about what you're gonna put into it because I could write a Book, probably that was, you know, 2,000 pages. So I have to, like, scale it down. And explaining everything I'm talking about can be hard when you're limited to about like 80 to 100,000 words. So I want to talk about excess and deficiency here on the podcast so that you can understand it and I can refer to it and, hey, you wanted to know about excess and deficiency. Check out my podcast episode. Blah, blah, blah. Right? So when we're looking, when we're talking about healing, you have to look to see if your dog has excess issues or issues that stem from deficiency. Okay? Now I can say for myself, my issues that I have in my life do not stem from deficiency. They're more from excess. You know, eating too much of this, drinking too much of that, doing too much, working too much. You know, I'm definitely not like your sit on the couch and zone out on Netflix all day type of girl. I mean, sometimes I wish I was, but I'm not. So I have to figure out, okay, so when I'm dealing with a problem, where is this coming from? And the same thing goes for our animals. We have to figure out, do we have a dog with excess or do we have a dog that's rooted in deficiency? So let's talk about it. I can say that when we look at humans, I'm in America. So when we look at the United States of America, we look at the majority of diseases that happen here. I definitely can say that a lot of it rises from excess, you know, like overeating, like the standard American diet, which is the SAD diet, which is a lot of, like, really rich, excessive, greasy, like, totally glopped and glooped food. Okay? And a lot of food that isn't food, it's processed. It doesn't even begin to look like the original product that it was sourced from. So, you know, like chili cheese Fritos. Okay? A Frito does not look anything like the corn that it comes from. And there's so many, so many ingredients in that Frito. And we could talk about. I like to rhyme. So Frito equals Dorito. And you know, Doritos are one of the top selling chips in the country, and they're completely and utterly toxic. So that would definitely be an example of something excess. But excess in the body causes heat. It causes too much dampness. Okay? And from, like, dogs in general, when we're, you know, I've worked with thousands of people, and I can definitely say that a lot of people over feed their dogs, which is another thing that is Rooted in excess. You know, excess meat, excess eggs, excess. The cheese. Cheese is a thing that a lot of people give their dogs. And I tell them, you know, don't give processed, homogenized dairy. It's very inflammatory. You can give things, you know, randomly and not very much of it, you know, maybe once a week or once a month. But you don't want to give things consistently that are excessive, that are dampening, that are too heating to the body. And I'm talking about refined things right now. I'm not talking about your, like, your basic diet or anything like that. But there are a lot of rancid ingredients, like in kibble, and they use a lot of antioxidants and preservatives to bring down that rancid. Well, the rancid component in kibble. I'm not saying all kibble has rancid ingredients, but a lot of it does. They do a lot of flavorings and trying to cover up some of that rancidness in the food. And chemical ingredients are very excessive. Things that are really high in the sweet flavor, things that are really high in salt. Fried foods in general, never, ever give your dog fried foods. They're not good for you, and they're definitely not good for your dog. When we give ourselves or our dogs too many processed food items, things start to cascade in the body. Organ functions start to decline. We have a buildup of toxicity, and toxicity can lead to things like cancer and autoimmune disease and food sensitivities and not digesting the food correctly. And these are things that are really important to vitality and health. So excessiveness needs to be. Definitely needs to be monitored before it begins to basically malfunction in the body and you get a disease state, okay? So we don't want the organ systems to, like, basically deteriorate and cause things like, you know, arthritis. It's a huge problem in dogs. Inflammation, systemic inflammation, is the root of so many of our modern diseases, including our dogs, because our dogs are really starting to share a lot of our human diseases, like autoimmune disease again, cancer, osteoarthritis, pancreatic disease, spleen, spleen weakness. There's a lot of hemangiosarcoma and spleen splenectomies that are happening in dogs over the last 10 to 15 years. Tons of autoimmune disease, tons of chronic arthritis. I don't even want to get into the amount of CCL tears that are happening. We have a deterioration of the functions of the body, and we have to Figure out how we go about supporting that and working with those imbalances so that we can get some of our dogs vitality back. And this goes for us as well. So we look at excess, we look at what are we giving our dogs and where is it coming from. And are we overfeeding our dogs? Are we over treating our dogs? Do we let our dog's organs rest? I know that when my mom and I are in a room together with any of my dogs who are treated exceptionally well, my mom cannot look at any of my dogs without wanting to feed them. She has to be feeding them at all times. So I give her the smallest treat that I can think of to give to them because I know she's going to give more than one. And this happens a lot. And we have to stop overfeeding our dogs because it does produce that excessiveness in many of our dogs, especially dogs that are more warm to hot and they definitely suffer from excess. And again, if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out my energetics course@canine herbalism.com so let's talk about what happens in an excessive condition. You know, because the root word that's associated with excess is hyper, hyper functioning. And what happens is, is that excessive conditions cause hyper function in a lot of our dog's organs. It causes blockages, like for instance, in arteries and different systems. And if you know about acupuncture, you're gonna see stagnancy in a lot of the acupuncture meridians. And that can be an issue because we don't want stagnancy in the body. We want energy flowing. We want vitality flowing. Okay. And when we get stressed out dogs, Check out my stressed out dog episode to learn more about dogs and stress. And I'll be talking a lot about dogs and stress in future episodes. But stress is excessive, stress is stagnating. And we, you know, we have diet issues in our dogs. And then comes kind of combined with stress. We get excessive conditions developing in the body and we get blockages of energy and we get too much heat. Too much heat. Energy that rises up and outward and that develops conditions like constipation or diarrhea. Dogs that don't know how to shut off, dogs that are in what's called sympathetic excess, which is fight or flight, that the body heat can generate that and causes hyperexcitability in the nervous system. We also get dogs with high blood pressure and dogs that are overweight and can't seem to lose weight. Definitely is A dampness problem. And it has to do with excess. And when you think of excess, just think of too much, too much in the body, too much stagnating the body, a backing up of things, you know, so what we need to do is we need to calm the source down. We need to make sure our dogs are eating the proper diet. We need to make sure they're eating a clean diet, that they're getting enough digestive enzymes, that they're getting enough microbiome support. And then we work with the elimination systems. So we're going to look at herbs that are bitter. Burdock root, turmeric, burdock roots, good for dogs that are warm, turmeric, much better for dogs that are cool. But things that open up the elimination channels and start getting rid of waste and toxicity. That is how you work with things that are excessive, excessive conditions, things that are blocking it, of course is much more difficult than that. And I tend to, you know, I will explain that in my book and, and I hope you guys really love it and can have a reference to understand these things on a continuous basis. But we need, you know, life and vitality all comes down to assimilation of nutrients and elimination of wastes. Supporting the lymphatic, supporting the liver, supporting, supporting the kidneys, supporting the digestive system. And that usually kind of goes out into the body and supports the heart and it supports the brain and cognition. And things are starting to work, right because the body really is a well oiled machine. It's just when we give, just think of it as sticky substances, right? Things that clog, things that stagnate. When we do that, even in the moment when our dog is totally happy eating any of those things. You know, my dogs love cheese. My dogs love, they love milk, they love yogurt. It doesn't mean it's good for them. I love chocolate chip cookies. I'll be honest with you, who doesn't love a chocolate chip cookie? I'm gluten free. But you know, there's a bakery down the road called the Left bank and they make these amazing gluten free chocolate chip cookies every now and then. And they also make these little almond cakes. They're to die for. But if I eat them every day, I'm going to be as fat as a house and I'm not going to think clearly. I'm going to probably get diabetes and high blood sugar, which is diabetes, but high blood sugar first and then comes diabetes. So no, I can't have those things every day. I can only have them every now and then. Otherwise they lead to excess and excessive conditions. And definitely diabetes is mostly stemmed like rooted in an excessive condition. Another thing that I forgot to tell you is you want to watch the oils that you're giving your dog and yourself. So we don't want oils that aren't healthy entering the body. And I see a lot of canola oil out there in things. Even canola oil that says it's not genetically modified. Well, you know, non GMO is not healthy. I'm glad that it's non GMO. I'm not into GMOs for, for nothing, but it doesn't equal organic and a lot of people get that confused. Non GMO is a new construct because we're having to deal with genetically modified organisms, which is another episode of the podcast. But you want, you know, if you're going to use canola, make sure it's organic. Don't use things that have regular canola oil in them. It's just crap and toxic and clogging and excessive. You know, safflower oil, sunflower oil. God, there's just so many peanut oil. And we're not talking about the peanut oil that ends up on the top of like natural peanut butter. We're talking about refined peanut oil. Refined oils in general are very clogging, they're very anti inflammatory. And I'm not talking about external use. You know, I like to rub sesame oil on my body. It's not bad to cook with, but I don't give a lot of sesame oil to my dogs. I'm not saying sesame oil is a toxic oil. It's not, but I don't give a lot. I mean, I don't give any to my dogs. I like hemp seed oil for certain dogs. I like walnut oil for certain dogs. Just in very small amounts, very small specific. I like camelina oil. But be careful of the oils. Make sure they're not rancid, make sure they're not cooked. Make sure to avoid things like canola, like safflower, like sunflower, or limit them extremely. Like just don't give them hardly at all. So that when your Aunt Betty comes over and gives your dog a treat that if it adds one of those oils in the liver will take care of it. But if they're getting that treat every single day, then the liver is going to have problems. What you do want to emphasize is cleansing greens and things that support cellular health, things that support the liver. Milk thistle, moringa, phytoplankton, chlorella, good Cholera. Good spirulina. Make sure that you're talking to your companies there and making sure that these are very high quality forms of chlorella and spirulina. I like Dr. Tobias Green Men for a spirulina source. Spirulina. I like to use spirulina for more for cool dogs, as a green, as a superfood, and chlorella more for warm dogs. So you want to have things that help the body reduce. Broccoli sprouts, green veggies, organic kale, organic broccoli, organic alfalfa sprouts. Different. Any type of sprouts are really, really good for the body. I'm just thinking of other things here. If you have a warm dog or a hot dog, organic cucumbers, organic celery, things that cleanse the body, things that are filled with chlorophyll, what are filled with, you know, sun's energy. Those things bring down excess. In traditional Chinese medicine, excess is what is referred to as yang. And I think deficiency is more on the yin side. But I'm not gonna get into TCM right now. But if you are know of tcm, I'm talking about yang symptoms, you know, in your face behaviors. Dogs that are very hyperactive, energetic, you know, those extroverted dogs that are all over the place. Again, we have dogs that are stuck in sympathetic excess. Dogs that a lot of them will have pain, that is better with movement and they breathe heavy, they do a lot of panting. And that's not. There's a lot of gray area. A lot of gray area. So don't, you know, take me at my actual word to the point where, you know, there's no wiggle room. Okay? There's gray area in everything. Dogs are individuals, but for the most part, you know, we have those things that, you know, again, rich expanding foods that stagnate. It's too much. Little bit is okay, but a lot not. So. So greens are really good things. Fruits, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries. Those are very good for excess conditions. Sea vegetables, kelp, seaweeds. They're also good for excessive conditions. Again, want to look at energetics there? And I do not give my dogs legumes and I do not give them grains very much at all. But if specifically your dog is well indicated for something like that, then you can look into that. And I would work with a nutritionist for those types of things. Bitter foods in general are good. You know, arugula is a good green. I love watercress. Watercress is Bitter, it's nice to add. Asparagus is another bitter food that's good to add to the food for excess conditions. Dandelion, burdock, little tiny, small amounts of yellow Doc, Tincture can help. If a dog has, you know, heat in the gastrointestinal tract, that's another one. But yeah, I would definitely call all these excess reducers. Mushrooms, Mushrooms are excellent at that. Turkey tail, maitake mushroom, reishi, shiitake mushroom. Carrots are also good. So those are a few things that can help bring down excessiveness in the body and also excessive heat in the body. We can have excessive damp, we can have excessive cold, we can have excessive heat. But I would definitely look at dampness and heat when it comes to excessive conditions in general. Let's talk about deficiency now. We talked a little bit about excess and now the opposite of excess is deficiency in tcm. Like I said, I think we're talking about yin here. Deficiency, like symptoms are more on weakness, lethargy, coolness. Dogs that are cool tend to be more deficient and, or can be deficient, not that they are deficient. You get dogs that are withdrawn dog, dogs that don't want to play, dogs that are scared, quiet a lot of times. And more on shallow breathing instead of panting all the time. Some dogs that have, are real deficient may have an aversion to being touched. And there can be that, that issue with deficiency and deficiency in general. You know, you lose that balance between vitality and weakness. This is where you wanna avoid a lot of bitter foods. You know, bitter's good for excessiveness. And this is where you're gonna give more nourishing foods because there's weakness if your dog is okay with it. Lamb is a very good protein for weakness, for deficiency warming foods. Chicken, pastured chicken is very important here. Venison, goat, salmon. Salmon is also good. Wild caught salmon for deficiency. If a dog is very deficient and is kind of waning, you could add something like organic oatmeal if they're okay with it. And it is also very nourishing. Or parsnips, winter squashes. Those help nourish the blood. They help nourish the weak constitution. And there are a lot of things to give dogs that are weak and deficient, but you want to be careful that you're not giving them things to deal with the excessive side because you're going to add too much cooling to their bodies and that's going to make things worse. And one of the best, I would say one of the best herbs to start out with can be an herb called calendula. I love how calendula warms the core of the body and it kind of radiates its energy outward. So calendula is a good place to start. You want to avoid too much cleansing when a dog is very deficient and weak. If your dog is cool, which they most likely will be in these really, like, highly deficient states. One of the best things that I have found to give a dog like this is raw goat's milk. Goat's milk is a really good product for dealing with a lot of mucus in the body and pathogens in the body and congealed fluids and not enough and, you know, a different type, more of a cold stagnation. Green Juju is a company that makes excellent raw goat's milk. And you can trace their ingredients right back to the farm and the animal that produced it, which I love. And those animals are also treated ethically and humanely. So that's greenjuju.com and you can also look locally for raw goat's milk. But a really great addition to the diet when you're dealing with deficiency. Turkey, chicken, as I mentioned before, eggs, pastured eggs are another good thing. Warming fish, like clam, wild salmon, as I mentioned, mackerel can be a little warming, in my opinion, in my experience. So you could do that as well. There are many herbal remedies for deficiency, and I don't have enough time to go into a lot of those because I would need to know, like, what the deficiency was and like, how, what state they're in, what kind of place on the spectrum they're on for that deficiency. So I'm trying to just go with things that you can readily find. But one of the things that I love if your dog is not allergic to bees is propolis and royal jelly. If you have a source of ethical beekeeping that can get royal jelly or propolis, it's a really good addition as a supplement to the diet when you're dealing with deficiency because it's for those types of weakened conditions, you know, malnutrition, you know, not assimilating nutrients. When the core is really cold, you know, mix it with calendula, rosemary. It can be mixed with rosemary, which is another really great warming herb that's good for circulation and the liver and the nervous system as well. I love rosemary. But you can mix royal jelly, propolis, calendula and rosemary together to help dogs that are very deficient in dogs that are traumatized because Reishi is very nourishing. It can be used for excessive and deficient conditions. Reishi mushroom, that's a good one to use. I'll talk about that next on our podcast. When I talk about real mushrooms, I'll go over reishi on the next podcast. Another thing just to consider, and this is a dog by dog case, is when you have sophisticated beer deficiency, I would probably do a home cooked diet with digestive enzymes added and forgo raw feeding. I definitely would forego kibble feeding. Cooked food is much more warming in the core. It's much more nourishing while we're getting our dogs through this deficiency and adding vitality. But just remember, always, always, always add digestive enzymes and don't cook the food too much. But you want to limit the amount of raw foods that are given. When, again, when we're dealing with severe deficiency. Okay? Severe deficiency, you know, a serious situation. You know, there's definitely going to be lethargy. There's going to be like chronic disease in the body, possibly some dementia, cognitive issues, really low assimilation. So a slightly cooked diet with enzymes is real important here. If you want something already prepared, there's a company called All Provide that does gently cook diets that you can purchase. You can do that. You can Also check out Dr. Judy Morgan's website for more cooked diet recipes. And then there's also planet pause with Dr. Karen and Rodney Habib. That is a subscription. It's very inexpensive. I think it's like $10 a month. But they have some really good recipe resources on that site as well. Another thing to consider when you're dealing with extreme deficiency is you don't want to shock your dog. Like you don't want to do things that are completely opposite of what you were doing. You want. I think the key word here is gradual. You know, their vitality is already low and they don't have a lot of, well, ability to adjust really quickly. So you want to go slow, slow and steady and build and nourish the body. I do want to make one more comment about oils. Safflower oil has been, you know, it has gotten good reviews in the past, but research has shown that it really isn't a very desirable oil. It has a lot of rancidity problems, like I said, and it definitely does not increase health. I think that it should be limited. I don't think it should be consumed especially by dogs. Another oil is cottonseed oil. Cottonseed oil should never be consumed by you or dogs. It has this fatty acid called cyclopropin. I believe it's called. And it's toxic to the liver and it inhibits the absorption of essential fatty acids. And we don't wanna do that. You wanna give your dog a healthy source of essential fatty acids. And peanut oil is. Is kind of along this same line. Peanut oil needs to be. I would definitely wouldn't give it to my dog. It does. A lot of peanuts have this mold. It's called an aflatoxin. It's Aspergillus flabilis. And it can cause. It can be a contributing factor to liver cancer. And so you wanna be careful of that. Last but not least, be considerate of flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil oxidizes pretty quickly and you. It's in everything, it seems like. And it drives me nuts because flaxseed oil needs a lot of antioxidants to keep it from oxidizing. And when you, you know, talk to any nutritionist, they're going to tell you for sure to only use freshly ground flaxseed seeds for nutrition. And flaxseed oil needs to be refrigerated. There is a company, I think it's called Bartonells or something like Bartonelle or something, they make a flaxseed oil that's refrigerated. I have used that before and it is a pretty good oil. But putting flaxseeds in treats, in dog food and things like that. If your dog is consuming flaxseed oil that or flaxseed that has been already ground, make sure they're taking a good antioxidant or giving. Getting a good antioxidant in their diet to help offset any oxidation that might be happening with the flaxseed. You can give like whole food sources of antioxidants like blueberries, blackberries. You know, the berries are really good. Four Leaf Rover has a product called Red Rover and that's a blend of berries. That's a good one. Phytoplankton. A lot of the squashes are high in antioxidants. You can do sweet potatoes and carrots and kale and spinach and green beans and broccoli. Those are all high in antioxidants. If your dog is cool, colostrum has antioxidants. Green lip muscles. You can do like the. If you feed your dog's eggs, you can take out the eggshell membrane, which is high in antioxidants. It's also really good, like, for sources of like hydrolonic acid and glucosamine. Decaffeinated green tea. Again, I only usually use green tea with dogs that are cool because green tea is quite warming but it's a good anti inflammatory. It's high in really high in polyphenols which are antioxidant. Maritime pine bark is another really high antioxidant. A lot of the mushrooms are high in antioxidants. So there's, you know, there's things to choose from if your dog is eating flaxseed that is not freshly ground. All right, so that's a little convo about excess and deficiency. It may be a little complicated for you. I'm not sure, but I hope I did a okay job at explaining it. If you have a question, write into the podcast, go to k9herbalist.com Click podcast in the dropdown menu and ask your question and I'll answer it here on the podcast or in one of my shorts which are the tiny bite sized podcast that I do every other week. Before I go, I would like to thank Adored Beast Apothecary for sponsoring my podcast along with real mushrooms. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Adored Beast Apothecary. They have come out with their new roots line which is soil and sea which is soil based probiotics mixed with chlorella and also their wolf probiotic which is a wolf strain probiotic mixed with turkey tail mushrooms. And I'm really excited about these two products. I'm excited to try them. I am going to try them and get back to you on that. I do carry them in my store. They have also come out with a colloidal silver hydrosol which I'm loving because I am not a fan of colloidal silver per se, but I don't mind the hydrosol which is the water of colloidal silver. Straight up silver colloids I think are very damaging to the environment and I only recommend using the silver hydrosol. I do think that colloidal silver in its basic form is, you know, there's two schools of thought on colloidal silver, but I'm not a big fan of straight silver colloids. So I do like the hydrosol. I use it, you know, in cases of like eye infections, ear infections, I tend to use it externally. I am going to report back on all three of these new products from Adored Beast but looking forward to letting you know how those work out with the wolf strain probiotic. Definitely. Adored Beast has some of the most, I would say varied probiotics in the all natural dog world in their lineup@adoredbeast.com I think that it's important to rotate, rotate, rotate these probiotics. You know, don't use them all at once. Gut diversity is very important and we definitely can have Julianne, the owner of Adored Beast on the podcast sometime this year to talk about gut diversity. And she is a definitely a front runner in gut biome research for the all natural dog in this country and Canada. And she just is an amazing woman who is making just such strides in helping our animals get better and helping the microbiome get fortified in the body after the ravages of antibiotics that are so plentiful. Plentiful in veterinary medicine these days and human medicine. Okay, that's all I have for you. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. 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 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 health care 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 about potential interactions or other possible complications before using any product.