 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Get a dog. You know, it's my favorite prescription to give patients, in fact, just this week I wrote another prescription to get a dog. Dogs are wonderful companions, offer unconditional love, and most importantly, they keep you active. But just like we humans, dogs and cats, for that matter, I've had a cat too, are facing a major health crisis. Obesity and disease are rampant in our four-legged friends. And sadly, they're developing these issues younger and younger. But it doesn't have to be like this. Just like I say that certain lifestyle and food choices can prevent and reverse ailments in ourselves and our family members, you can do the same for your beloved pet according to my guest today. They are Dr. Karen Shaw Becker, one of America's most respected veterinarians and breed-specific nutrition expert and Rodney Habee, founder of Planet Paws, the world's largest pet health community on Facebook. Their new book, Forever Dog, surprising new science to help your canine companion live longer, healthier, younger, and longer reveals simple changes you can make in your dog's life to help them thrive and live to a healthy ripe old age. And who doesn't want that for their pops? Myself included. Welcome to the program, Dr. Becker and Rodney. It's good to see you both again. We had a great time talking about dog food in a way a while back. And as the owner of Four Dogs myself, I'm excited to have you on to discuss canine longevity. Let's jump right in. What motivated you two to write Forever Young? And can you talk about each of your contributions? Well, first of all, thanks for having us. It's a treat to be on your podcast. And yes, I think it was about four years that you were on our podcast and of course made a great impression. We were discussing the DCM saga then, but it was actually then, Dr. Gundry, that we started about 2018, that we started our passion about investigating these oldest dogs in the world. And we had heard about them for several years. We knew that there were some 29, 30-year-old dogs out there. And I'll just speak for myself. Rodney's obsession with the oldest dogs in the world allowed him to interview the owners of those amazing dogs. But for me, I am obsessed with longevity science. And because the top tier human longevity scientists are doing some pretty amazing research, my obsession and my drive for writing this book was going to those scientists to reverse engineer the oldest dogs in the world. So you can talk a little bit about your obsession with ancient dogs. Yeah, and my obsession, of course, comes from the wanting of my dogs wanting to live forever. I mean, who doesn't want that, right? I mean, the travesty of them only being with us for like one seventh of our life is the most heartbreaking statistic in the entire world. And Dr. Gundry, when we would start following the statistics, I mean, every decade, one of the biggest surveys to come out on dog health was showing a decline by 10% every decade. I mean, it's that in itself, if it doesn't, it's not a wake up call for the world that, hey, we really need to start looking here at what's going on, was the ultimate driver for myself to sit down with these pet parents with these extraordinarily long-lived dogs. I'm talking dogs like not just 21, 22, 25, 26 from these owners we interviewed, but 30. As we know, the oldest long-lived dog, Maggie, which was a Kelpie from Australia. So what were these pet owners doing, either knowingly or unknowingly, that we could take to the, as Dr. Becker alluded to, some of the top longevity researchers in the world and say, hey, decode this for us and let's break it all down into words and put it into a book so all of us as pet parents can use some of these tools to help extend the lifespan and houseband of our pets? All right, so what did dogs' lives and lifespan look like in ancient times compared to today? Do we have any idea? Well, we definitely have clues. I mean, Odysseus, if you look back into the Odyssey, I think one of the second oldest pieces of literature written, if you remember, in the battle, Odysseus would get, and I think it was on his boat and he would travel, and I'm probably gonna mutilate this, but he traveled across the ocean, I believe, for 10 years, came back, got lost another 10 years, 20 years, he came back and he met his dog, Argos, after 20 years, which was the first clue to a 20-year-old lived dog. As we started to dig deeper and you would talk to veterinarians of the 70s, they would tell you, Dr. Michael Lappin who's part of one of the, it's called the Canine Longevity Project, the Golden Retriever Project that the Morris Foundation put together, he would tell you that veterinarians of the 70s would tell you that the average golden retriever would live to be around 18 years old. 17, 18. Yeah. That's not happening today. In fact, research today will show you that the average golden retriever, eight or nine, if you're lucky. So that was the first aha moment for me, for you. Well, and for me, it's being in practice for 20 years and seeing dogs degenerate when they're still young. Seeing animals, watching animals go through a degenerative process is a miserable thing, especially two, three, four years of age. So I knew that there was an issue, not just from the time that I graduated from veterinary school, but I knew there was an issue in clinical practice. So both of us came together recognizing that pet owners will do anything to help their dogs live as long as possible, but they didn't have the tools. They don't have their research, they don't know what to turn. I don't know about you, but in veterinary school, we were not told, in my preventive medicine class, we weren't told how to prevent diabetes and how to prevent cancer and how to prevent heart disease and liver disease from occurring. We weren't taught anything about preventive medicine. So my clients wanted that. And I looked at Rodney several years ago and said, listen, we have to write this down in a book to be able to give people a blueprint or a resource guide to be able to get the job done. Yeah, so it's interesting not to change the subject, but I have third year family medicine residents rotate through my clinic and just finished a rotation yesterday. And this individual had never been taught that any preventive medicine did not, we were looking at a kidney function or heart function or bone health. And she said, well, everybody knows that as you get older, your kidneys deteriorate and everybody knows as you get older, your bones deteriorate. And everybody knows that as you get older, your heart deteriorates. I said, well, gee, that's funny, that's not true. And she said, well, of course it's true. And I said, well, you're gonna see in the next month that that's not true. And she walked away going, holy cow, why wasn't I taught this? And I'm sure veterinary school is exactly the same way. And part of the frustration because I practice just as you do, I practice proactive medicine. I know one wants to watch the patients get sick and then try and reverse the process. It's common sense, but also incredibly worthwhile to prevent the body from breaking. And yet we at medicine as a whole, we're still functioning off of a disease model, a reactive disease model. So we wait for the body to break and then we try and patch it back together. What we know in veterinary medicine is that dogs are breaking cellularly very, very young. Two, three years of age, they already are showing signs of cellular degeneration. And that was pretty eye-opening to us. Some of these amazing longevity researchers are actually doing some genetic testing. They've swapped some of these ancient dogs and they're trying to determine is there a genetic subset that is allowing these dogs to live an extraordinary long period of time? Are there environmental variables, which of course there are. Is it related to food or environment or nutrition? All those things play a part. But probably the biggest frustration is that we aren't taught as doctors and then in turn teaching our clients who then will be able to advocate for their patients in this situation dogs, we're not teaching them strategies to prevent the body from breaking. And that was something that with all of the oldest live dogs, their owners all had that piece of common sense in recognizing that they would do everything they can to prevent that from occurring. It's a big difference in a mindset towards preventing disease. And it's equally frustrating for the pet parent because of course logically when we, if you're sitting on the other side of the screen and you're listening to proactive doctor Gundry or proactive doctor Karen Becker, it's frustrating as a pet parent when you go into the world looking for a proactive doctor. It's almost impossible. It's, I'm sure substantially harder in the vet space than it is in the human space. And so it's very frustrating at times when you go in and you wanna talk about food and you wanna talk about, hey, I've been doing some research, I see a lot of these packaged food products, processed foods, maybe these aren't the best things for my pet. Sadly, you're met on the other end with not much advice in return. You're usually sent home and told to either look up a manufacturer and read what maybe the process manufacturer is posting online and that's where you're gonna get your information. And sometimes that's not always the best information. You know, that's a really important point. Dr. Gundry, the big difference I think between veterinary medicine and human medicine is that veterinarians are still sadly the last remaining group of health and wellness professionals that advocate eating an entirely ultra-processed diet from birth to death. Veterinarians still advocate only eating ultra-refined foods. That's I think a core basic foundational problem when it comes to longevity is we're feeding dogs fast food and expecting them to thrive and they're not. So that's kind of the conversation starter right there. Well yeah, and you have the fear of God put in you as a pet parent because you're told that processed food is science. It's scientifically formulated. It's put together every single nutrient, every single chemical composition is put together to meet all the needs of your dog and venturing into your refrigerator, pulling out a carrot, pulling out an apple and offering it to your pet will cause diarrhea, could potentially cause pancreatitis. All of these fears. There's arsenic in the seeds of apples and potentially could harm your dog. So stay away from those scary fresh foods. They're very dangerous and just stick to processed food. It's science and it's safe. And man, my grandmother will tell you that maybe he's not the best advice in the world. So let's talk about food. It's interesting, the commercial dog food industry has kept a lot of useful information from us like you're implying. And yet commercial dog food, I've looked back in the history of commercial dog food and really the main thing was to make nice form poops that are easy to pick up and aren't very messy. And a scientist years ago figured out if you grind up a bunch of soybeans, that'll actually make a nicely formed poop and everybody will be happy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's where the first kibble came from. So I want a nice form poop out of my dog. And yet I want my dog to live a very long time. So help me out here. So first of all, you are absolutely correct. We feed little brown crunchy balls, the vast majority. In fact, we just read a stat this morning that still about 96% of, 94%. 94% of dogs in North America still eating kibble. Which is super convenient. No one's knocking that you open the pantry, dump the kibble in the bowl and you're done. Super convenient, no doubt. The question is, how is that making gut biome diversity? How are we nourishing an animal's gut? What exact nutrients are in that bag that are feeding cognitive well-being? What, how many amino acids coming from meat? Dogs are scavenging carnivores and cats are obligate carnivores. They need meat. When you do the carb equation on the average bag of dog food, they're eating anywhere between 30 and 60% starch. So the vast majority of calories are coming from refined carbs. So we have a biological appropriateness issue with the food that we're feeding. We have, certainly it's convenient, but other than sustaining life and meeting minimum vitamin mineral requirements from synthetic vitamins and minerals, we're not doing much besides sustaining life. And so when we open the conversation to, okay, well, what can we do? We have to start with, of course, the conversation about the gut. And if you've only ever fed your dog one food for two and a half years, it's really important. Your dog's microbiome is incredibly narrow and incredibly unhealthy. And I will venture to go out on a limb and say that dogs only eating one food their entire life, they all have dysbiosis. They all have a very undiversified unhealthy gut and not suspiciously one of the number one reasons we see dogs in veterinary medicine is GI problems. Everything from gastritis, aneuritis, chronic, colitis, IBS, IBD, puke dogs, farty dogs, belchy dogs, it's just what we see. Out of that then we see a lot of skin conditions, a lot of chronic allergies, a lot of too many carbs are causing diabetes and of course excessive weight problems. All of these things are wrapped up in the fact that we're feeding this one monotonous diet all along. So there is a stepwise process and that's one of the things that we work really hard in the book in terms of dispelling these myths. You don't just up and decide to change foods tomorrow but you can begin diversifying your dog's gut with fresh foods from your fridge and very small amounts. And of course you use poop as the barometer of how fast or slow you should begin introducing these new goodies to help diversify the microbiome. The ultimate question is, and what everyone will ask whether human world or in dog world, what is the best food to eat? What is the best diet to eat, right? And I mean, we're finding out more and more, especially when it comes to nutrition that there's sort of tailored packages for the individual. Yes, everybody wants to see a great poop and for us, when we started to travel out, we started to ask these hard questions, Dr. Gunnry, to some of these experts. First, when you look at the oldest live dogs in the world, that's the first place that one should probably start. You got a 30 year old dog, you have a 27 year old dog, Bushki from Hungary, you have a 25 year old dog in the United Kingdom named Bramble, and you have a whole bunch of 20 year old dogs in the United States. What were these owners feeding? And straight across the board, it was very evident that these owners were feeding a lot of fresh whole live foods. There may have been some processed food in those diets, but there was at least a 50-50 blend of fresh whole live food. So in a black and white version, you have your fresh and you have your processed. But that's not gonna hold very well with the scientists. So then we went to talk to the top microbiologists. We went to San Diego where we saw it with Dr. Holly Gantz, who's a PhD microbial ecologist. And they will tell you those microbiologists, without the shadow of a doubt, if you look inside the GI system of a pet, and a lot of people are aware today that diversity in the gut biome is very important, that hands down, these microbiologists can look inside the gut and they can tell you exactly which dogs have been eating fresh whole live foods and which dogs have been eating processed foods. It's very evident that the ones that are eating fresh foods have a more diverse, healthier GI system, according to these. And then when we sat with, yeah, yeah, for sure. Then when we sat with Dr. Tim Spector of Kings College, one of this most cited microbiologist does a lot of work with the microbiome. Yeah, he's a colleague of mine. He's amazing and what he said to us was I can't think of a worse decision for any mammal on the planet than feeding the exact same diet over and over for weeks to months. And he said, that's what we do for dogs and cats. He said, of course you'll have gut issues, but the gut issues are just the tip of the iceberg. That in turn is going to set them up for rapid aging. He said, then let's look at the quality of that monotonous diet coming in to the dogs and cats. It's full of glyphosate. It's full of mycotoxins. The feed versus food issue, animal feeds are not approved for human consumption. So unless your dog food is labeled made with human grade ingredients, and it's gonna be at least 120 bucks a bag, the most expensive foods on the market because they are human grade, you're feeding feed grade materials, which means we have a heavy metal issue, we have a glyphosate issue, we have a advanced glycation and product issue and advanced lipoxidation in product issues. So I don't know if you talk about this a lot in your podcast, but I'm assuming you have, Dr. Gundry, when you high heat process food once some bad things happen, kibble has been high heat processed four times. So on top of the vitamins and minerals being, especially the vitamins being knocked down, the amino acids being compromised, the fats being rancid, we also have these tag, these unwanted tag alongs in every bag of highly refined kibble and canned food that creates damage in the body. And so Dr. Tim Spector said to us, I don't know how you would ever expect to intentionally create health, feeding these diets, he said it's not compatible. So part of what we took a lot of time in the book is in doing is how to rebuild the microbiome, how to fortify a resilient gut, how to slowly improve your dog's GI defenses by switching from ultra processed food to processed food to minimally processed food to fresher food to fresh food. And that doesn't mean you have to feed raw food, but we do want to think about how many times the foods that we're feeding our dogs have been high heat processed. We wanna think about the quality of the raw materials in that food and we wanna think about where the nutrients are coming from. Are they coming from synthetic feed, grade vitamins and minerals? Are they coming from real, live, whole, beautiful food that has nutrients that can be passed up the food chain? So I could tell you so many stories about my dogs turning around a health issue with raw food and I've actually written about them in my books and I maybe won't bore you now, but raw is probably best, but what if you don't have the time or money to feed your dog raw? Because quite frankly, raw food costs a lot of money. So what do you do? What's the second best option or can we meet in the middle somewhere? You bet. That's a great question. And so it was very important for us to be able to address that question. I mean, data came out for 2021 showing that the average pet owner in America is spending a little under $23 a month on pet food. And as you know, as you feed your dogs raw food, it's virtually almost impossible to feed a pack of dogs or however many dogs you may have for that budget. So we took on the challenging task of, all right, how do we start this pyramid of good, better, best, if you may? Now, processing techniques is important. So one of the things that we wanted to break down for the pet parent was, let's say that you're going into your local pet specialty shop and you're looking at a vast array of all of these foods and you have no idea where to start, let's just start by educating you on processing techniques. The more heat that's gonna be applied to those foods, the more synthetic vitamins and minerals you're going to need in there. Now that may not seem like a big deal, but take into effect that every decade, thousands upon thousands of dogs in America will lose their lives to some sort of recall because either a machine went off kilter and sprayed too much of a synthetic in food. We know that in, I believe in 2019, science diet, one of the biggest food formulators in America had too much vitamin D injected into the foods which hurt a lot of animals. So it's very important that when you know that synthetics potentially can go off kilter in food, maybe steering up higher up the food chain with less synthetics in the food might be a great way to go. So we'll show you and guide you along the ways of different types of subcategories of foods that have less heat, of course, raw being the least. And as you start to go down that chain, of course price starts to eventually drop. But let's just say for a second that you have no money. What can you do? Let's say that you're stuck feeding processed food, kibbles and pellets and you're just on a budget. Well, one of the most fascinating things that we fell in love with was a study that came out of Purdue University that showed if you went to your refrigerator and let's say that you were chopping up a salad for your family and you had the ends of your carrots that you were not gonna eat, the ends of your celery that you were not gonna eat, a little bit of kale that might not look, let's say it's a little soggy, right? Idented blueberry. Idented blueberry. Who like squishy blueberries? No one. Purdue. But your dog does. Absolutely. And you funded a study to show on Scottish terriers that dogs who are also prone to bladder cancer by the way, dogs that were fed these vegetables, green leafy vegetables, orange vegetables, three times a week, saw anywhere between a 70 to 90% reduction in the development of bladder cancer. So if you have no money, you can still use some of these odds and ends in your refrigerator that you could add if you can't afford raw food that could help substantially. Well, and it's a lot like the healthy food crisis we have in North America. It is way cheaper to feed your kids to the dollar menu, which is appalling. You go to Whole Foods and buy organic fruits and vegetables. It is no joke expensive. It's way cheaper to buy terrible food that your kids aren't gonna fight about eating because it tastes amazing. No one's gonna argue that. Here's the difference. If we do feed our kids or our bodies, the average person in North America, about 50% of their daily calories are taken in the form of processed foods. 85% of dogs in North America only consume 100% of their calories coming from processed foods. They never get any fresh living Whole Foods. So even if we're occasionally eating crappy foods ourselves, we don't do it every day, all day for every meal, but we do do it for our dogs. So yes, share all the fresh foods from your fridge that you possibly can. That's going to put into your dog's body fresh living Whole Foods. But if you can move from, let's say, extruded dry kibble to an air-dried kibble, that is less heat to maybe a dehydrated dog food or a freeze-dried food where it's just cold, that is a whole lot better. I mean, homemade diets are actually the cheapest way to feed your dogs, but it takes a ton of work. It's like cooking for yourself. And you gotta follow a recipe to make sure you're doing it right. So you can offset perfection, like the foods that you wish you could feed. Everyone probably wants to feed an all-raw organic, species-appropriate, free-range, ethically-sourced diet. But if you can't do that, there's a lot you can add in with goodies from your own fridge to offset the amount of processing in the dog food. But to talk about the power of the teaspoon, Dr. Gundry, so to go back to your original question is what if you can't afford to feed maybe all-raw? Well, what if you can do a couple teaspoons of raw? This is where we traveled to Finland where we sat down with Dr. Inaheel Bjorgman, veterinary scientist who were doing studies on, well, what if you took raw food? What if you took 20% of your bowl out of your ultra-processed diet, kibble, and you were to put raw food in there, just 20%, would there be effect? They measured disease markers like homocysteine and methionine and they saw a drop in disease markers just starting at 20%. A massive drop, like 300% drop in inflammatory markers by putting 20% fresh food into a bowl of kibble. Which I think at the end of the day would maybe up your food budget by let's say 25 to 50 cents a day. So maybe you might sacrifice on that extra large coffee, maybe bring it down to a large for your dog. You'll see benefits. A large coffee for your dog? A large coffee for yourself. Bring down to a large, sorry. Yes, don't give coffee to your dogs, although I'm sure Dave Asprey would argue that. There has been, it's funny, off topic, Jake Perry who set the Guinness World Book of Records twice for the two oldest lived cats in the world, knew that there was something to coffee. We're not recommending it. This is not a very- And he didn't know about mentor suppression, but he set the Guinness World Book of Records twice with a 38 and a 34 year old cat eye dropping coffee. Not recommended, but there is something to it. But every day he gave a little eye dropper, he gave coffee in the morning, Dr. Gundry, and a little dropper of wine at night. I do not recommend this. However, it is interesting that he had two ancient cats drinking coffee and wine. Not recommended, but just throw it out there. Now's a chance we could talk about resveratrol. Yeah, well in my upcoming book, Unlocking the Keto Code, you're actually gonna find out why coffee and red wine are such a life extending things. So there you go. Okay, speaking of life extension, one of the things that I really liked seeing in your book that I've been preaching now for over 20 years is intermittent fasting. But I think you guys are the first to say we ought to intermittent fast our dogs. That really goes against most common sense and veterinary advice. And so teach us about that. People were going, are you kidding how cruel it is to make my dog time-restrict eating, my dog has to eat two meals a day, and everybody knows that's what dogs do. So teach us about this. Well, let me start by saying that before I was a veterinarian, I was a wildlife biologist. And as a wildlife biologist, I was trained to recognize that wolves, wild dogs, dingos, jackals, hyenas, they're all evolutionarily adapted for fasting. Wolves and coyotes, they don't catch a rabbit at exactly 7.30 in the morning and 5.30 at night every day. They just don't. So their physiology has built in very natural mechanisms to adapt for not catching food that day, no problem. We have to remember that dogs and wolves are so close, they are not the same. But they're so close genetically that they actually can interbreed. And that dogs, up until 100 years ago, when the very first bag of dog food hit the market, dogs living on farms were hunting some. They were eating whatever farm or Joe threw to them. They were scavenging. They were probably eating a lot of garbage. They're doing some hunting, but there again, they didn't have a schedule of food. Dogs have thrived for thousands of years on cyclical eating patterns that didn't have an exact clock associated with them. So when we interviewed Dr. Sachin Panda at the Salk Institute about circadian rhythm in dogs, his statement was, no dog would ever eat when they're not going to be hunting at two o'clock in the morning. They're going to eat, if they're successful in a hunt, they're going to eat, they're going to gorge, eat a large amount of calories, and then they're going to fast. They're not going to continue eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner repeatedly. They're going to be a period of rest and digest and then gorge and then eat a large meal and then fast. What we have seen metabolically on the researchers we've talked to, but also when we interviewed the great folks at Cutiput Sanctuary is that there's some real magic that happens in the body during this fasting period that you of course know all about, but that's the only time that a dog's body can rest, repair, restore is in between meals. The problem is well-loved dogs around the world eat like well-loved owners feed them, which means they have breakfast, then they have brunch, then they have a bunch of snacks before lunch, then they have lunch, then they have a 130 snack, and then they have a 330 snack, and then they have dinner, then they have after-dinner dessert, and then they have a bedtime snack. They're literally consuming calories 10 to 12 hours a day, and that means they are secreting insulin 10 to 12 hours a day. And therein lies part of the issue with the chronic decline of animals' health is that we're overfeeding them, they're being undernourished, but they're in a constant cycle of cortisol release and insulin release. And here's what's interesting, whether a pet parent realizes or not, their veterinarian technically does tell them to fast their pet when their pet is sick. You'll always get a call, when you make that call to your vet, that emergency call, oh my gosh, my dog's got diarrhea. Typically the vet on the other end will be like, hey, fast them for 24 hours. Water, when we say fast, always fresh clean water available. And typically magic happens within those 24 hours. All of a sudden miraculously, that dog seems to get better. Now this is real interesting too, because when we sat down with Dr. Jason Fung, here from Toronto, nephrologist, he was telling us, the average human is putting food in their mouth 10 times a day. Not three times, we think about three meals a day, but they're putting around 10 different types of foods. They go to the refrigerator, they're snacking. Oh, and by the way, they're sharing those treats with their pets. So as Dr. Karen Becker alluded to, you're also eating almost 10 times a day. And every single time you're getting glucose spike, you're getting insulin release. And things are happening in the body that I believe that not a lot of pet parents are aware of. Now fasting is challenging, because I can, in my retrospect, speaking on behalf of a pet parent, yeah, you do kind of feel awful looking at those adorable eyes and saying, oh gosh, I'm not gonna give you any food today, because I love you. It's not an easy thing to do. So we try to break it down into stages. There is a ton of research out there that shows the magic of autophagy and what happens when there's not food in the belly. And believe it or not, if you've got a dog in a cancer situation, Dr. Becker mentioned, we went to keto pets, we sat with Dr. Dominic D'Agostino and the whole team down there where they were able to, if not halt, reverse or slow down these cancers, of course, putting these animals into a ketogenic diet. I'm very excited for your book that's on the way. But the benefits as well of what happens when food's not going into the body and how they're able to slow down the cancer process. So this is something that if a piano's not falling from the sky and you're not in an emergency situation as a pet parent, you're not really listening to fasting your pet. But one thing that was really impactful for us was one of the well-known longevity studies in the dog world that they use in the human space today, by the way. This was a controlled study over 12 years on golden retrievers, where they were like, well, what would happen if we didn't put, if we fed dogs at Lebanon, meaning how most pet parents feed their pets, you pour a bowl of kibble out for the dog and you leave it out for the whole day and whatever Rover wants to eat, he's gonna eat. But what would happen if we were to take 25% of that bowl and reduce it over a dog's lifetime? Would there be some sort of impact? You said it to me yourself years ago when you were on my podcast, which was so impactful to me, you said, I remember, and I'm gonna paraphrase here, but I believe if I'm not mistaken, either it was your father or cardiologists would say that you have only so many heartbeats until your heart stops. And you took it and reversed it and said, you only have so many calories you can use up until you reach that maximum threshold. So if you only have like, let's say, hypothetically a million calories in your lifetime, you can get there fast, eat them all at once, or you can slow roll it and live as long as possible. Well, this holds true for these dogs. These dogs, Dr. Gundry, that got 25% less calories a day over that 12-year study, on average, live anywhere between a year and a half to two years longer just because they reduced 25% of those calories from the bowl. So what we advocate is not that you skip a day of feeding, although dogs do fine. And if your dog is under five pounds, feed them every day. But dogs over five pounds, I have a 10-pound doxy. I fed him once a day his whole life. He lived to be ancient and zero health problems. But that being said, we do advocate feeding your dog every day because who wants to fast their dogs, who wants to fast themselves, no one. But what we do advocate is that you create an eating window. And by you creating an eating window for your animal, let's just say that you work all day, your dog's not going, you're not gonna be around your dog who's constantly saying, hey, hey, you're kind of by the fridge. What do you, you know, you're, yeah, exactly. So that is a built-in fast. So if you are working from home and if your dog is a breakfast eater, get up and feed him breakfast. But the time that you start that first meal that goes in, try and get all your dog's calories in an eight-hour window. And by doing that, you're giving the body the remaining time in a 24-hour period for rest repair and restoration, for autophagy to occur, to all of the magic to occur in the body that needs to happen to reduce cellular aging. So let's just say that your dog is not a breakfast eater and many dogs aren't. I have to say as a veterinarian, one of the biggest questions I get from clients are saying, I get up in the morning and I wanna eat breakfast, but my dog isn't hungry. So I add mozzarella cheese on the top of my dog's food. They start doctoring up their dog's whole bacon. They want their dogs to eat a big breakfast. Well, if you think about it, dogs, typically, dogs being Canis lupus familiaris, they would hunt once later in the day. They're not big breakfast eaters. So if your dog says, hey, I don't wanna eat breakfast, awesome, honor your dog's physiology. If your dog comes to you at noon and says I'd like my first meal at noon, great. Then that's the beginning of your dog's eating window. And then if you can get that second meal, if you're gonna feed twice a day, then get that second meal in within eight hours so that you can provide this other opportunity for your dog's body to restead itself metabolically. That's a good point. And again, we have four dogs and three labradoodles and a rescue miniature poodle. We always have one rescue dog and that's another story. But we have one of the labradoodles, the mid-size. She is totally uninterested in breakfast. Everybody else thinks breakfast is a great idea. And she says, no, not interested. And we just, you know, and she never eats it. So, you know, but we still put it out because she likes to growl at everybody else. But she won't eat it. And, you know, and she's pretty smart. We'll see how long she lives. Our last rescue dog, we actually had to put down at 19, but he lived most of his life on the streets in LA. And he came to us about six years ago and kind of on his last legs, but really skinny. And one of the things that's interesting, I think he actually had some good, you know, long-term tactics because, you know, he made it 19 years and we really thought, you know, well, we're just gonna nurse him through his last year of life and he lived another six years with us. Anyhow, so yeah, dogs are pretty smart if we'd let them do what they wanna do rather than. Right. And rather than, so what do you, I mean, what do you think about all these dog treats and dog cookies and all these, you know, yummy little things and where we're pampering our pet by doing that? So that is the perfect opportunity to ditch those high carb, totally unnecessary. They're full of dyes and preservatives. They're full of synthetics that are just unnecessary, flavored answers. They literally do nothing for your dog nutritionally and they take your dog metabolically back a step. So even Dr. Gundry, and they're super expensive, treats are some of the most expensive food products on the market. So even, let's just say that you can only feed ultra-processed kibble because of a financial reason. Don't spend money on crappy dog treats, nothing from the supermarket. That's the opportunity to save some money and then feed your dog from the fridge, feed fresh whole living, low glycemic veggies, blueberries, the only foods you can't feed dogs, no members of the onion family, no grapes or raisins, no macadamia nuts because they're high in fat and they can cause some GI upset, no chocolate. But otherwise, from your fridge, if your dog will eat celery, feed it. If your dog will eat green beans, feed it. If your dog will eat lettuce, feed it. And that's a great way to save a ton of money from expensive treats that do nothing metabolically for your dog. In fact, if anything, they create a burden, a metabolic burden for your dog, get those treats out of the house and start using real fresh foods as a treat. I can say, Dr. Gundry, when, you know, the first thing, it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction for me when you say to me, hey, like what do you think about these treats? That being because I'm a pet parent whose pet was severely injured and hurt from consuming treats. If the treat world is a very finicky unregulated space, we had, it was very important to us because of my dog, Sam, and I had her kidneys damaged in 2008, I was feeding her those chicken jerky strips that were making waves and hitting the media all, like in the early part and the later part of the 2000s. Everybody wanted to feed chicken jerky strips at that time. And sourcing was a huge issue because you could bring in things from foreign countries and package them into your home country where you live and say that they were made or packaged in that country. And a lot of things were coming in from China at the time. I know that still today, the FDA with like a 15-year investigation still hasn't been able to figure out what's going on with some of these treats. But that being said, it was very important to us to put into our book a guide of some of the things that you need to look for that can be potentially very harmful to your pet that are currently put in treats. A lot of whitening products, for instance, the environmental working group just posted that titanium dioxide is maybe not the greatest thing in the world that humans should be putting in their body. I know in children's food like packaged candies and so on and so forth, this whitener is used and new research is showing that it can actually mutate DNA. Well, these whiteners like titanium dioxide are in almost every single pet treat. In everything, it's in rawhide, dental gels, veterinary prescription diets. It's in everything. Remember, these treats are made to appeal to you. Not so much your pet because you're buying it. So if it looks delicious to you, if you buy a treat that looks like bacon, it's bacon flavored, but there's no indication of bacon in the treat, you've got to be careful and ask questions because these treat companies will work with a lot of chemical companies and use things like cadaverin and putrescene, these scent-enhanced products that when your pet smells it. They're addictive. They're in, right? Like you could try making yourself and not use these chemicals and your dog will be like, are you crazy? Do you actually think I'm going to eat that? But you start using flavor enhancers in scent enhancers. You're going to change your dog's mind and reading some of these dyes and artificial flavors. So that is really important to us that pet parents to be aware of what they're looking at when they're looking on the back of packaging. And they power, as Dr. Karen Becker alluded to, they're just pulling a blueberry out of a refrigerator. There's dog studies that show that blueberries, what they can do, the free radicals, how they can, the antioxidants can clean up the free radicals in the body. They've done multiple studies on blueberries. And we know today that blueberries are a longevity food. You talk to almost any longevity expert and they're like on the top of the list to be adding. So what better way to pull out like a blueberry, freeze it in the refrigerator, excuse me, the freezer. Now you have a crunchy treat for your dog versus using something with a whole bunch of additives until it's $10. Or things like sardines packed in water. Like you can give, how about some boiled eggs? Like eggs are the best treat. They're cheap, they're amazing, they're clean. There's no added dyes, there's nothing. Dogs love eggs. So there's some easy, simple things right in your fridge that can completely replace those ultra-processed treats that do nothing for your dog and they're incredibly expensive. And you end up paying to give your dog health conditions that you have to then pay your veterinarian to try and fix. So you're better off just feeding clean food, clean treats to the best of your food. And one last thing that we'll add, Dr. Gundry, is there's some incredible pet parents, small farmers who have like small farms or people at the farmer's market that are actually doing some incredible things because they want to avoid these type of synthetics and dyes. If you have a local farmer's market and they're making homemade chicken jerky or you can buy chicken breast and chop it up and you can just give cube chicken, fantastic. So there are some amazing treats made with human-grade ingredients that are single-ingredient. You flip over the back and it just says rabbit meat or lamb lung or venison liver. Those are excellent single-ingredient, high protein. As long as you can pronounce everything on the label, you know what it does or what it means and you know source of origin in terms of where it came from. You're okay in feeding those treats. They're just really expensive. Yeah. Another thing that you guys haven't mentioned that I'm a monster fan of, I actually give my dogs olive oil on their food. High polyphenol olive oil and they love it, so. I will say this, first of all, as a Mediterranean, it's a staple in my household. I mean, what an incredible way for polyphenols. I mean, unbelievable. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, is there not melatonin as well that can be found in olive oil? I'm glad you mentioned that. Actually, there is, and I talk about this in The Energy Paradox and also in the upcoming book, it turns out that probably the true benefit of the Mediterranean diet has nothing to do with polyphenols or resveratrol in red wine, but olive oil and red wine have very high amounts of melatonin, and melatonin is actually one of only two antioxidants in mitochondria. There are only two mitochondrial antioxidants, melatonin and glutathione, and none of the other ones, believe it or not, are antioxidants in mitochondria. So yeah. So Dr. Gundry, are you a proponent of mushrooms for glutathione or what is your? Believe it or not, mushrooms are one of the second highest sources of melatonin. I did not know that. So we're big fans of medicinal, culinary and medicinal mushrooms for dogs. They're fantastic. They build the microbiome, prebiotic fiber, a bunch of really great things come out of mushrooms. People don't like to feed them. They're weirded out. People are weirded out by mushrooms. It's a big problem, but to go back very quickly to olive oil, so of course, we have so many references in this book, Dr. Gundry. I mean, well over, I'm gonna say probably at this point, 400 studies, we couldn't fit them on the book because the book would've cost $7 million, so we had to remove it and bring them into a website. But I was dying to get some data on olive oil. Would you believe there's not a single study done in the dog world with olive oil? I scoured the journals dying to, because I know that there's gonna have to be a ton of benefit there, so hopefully some young scientist is listening to this today and says, I have a great idea. But I do believe that olive oil is magical and I'm sure studies will show the same thing. And I'm a huge fan of olive leaf. As a proactive wellness doctor, I use olive leaf daily. So we're big fans of all things olive oil, olive leaf. But we have to remember too that, and excellent ads, we know clinically that it does a bunch of amazing things, but there's not studies to back it up yet. We're working on that. Yeah. And interestingly enough, there are far more polyphenols in the leaves of fruits than there are in the fruits. So you're right, olive leaf extract has far more polyphenols than olive oil and so on down the line. In fact, there's far more polyphenols in apple leaves than there are in apples. And there's far more polyphenols in blueberry leaves than there are in blueberries. So if you wanna grind up some blueberry leaves, give those to your dog. But I digress. Okay, it's interesting, you mentioned that you probably killed one of your dog's kidneys with these chicken jerky treats. And I did the same thing with one of my Yorkies a number of years ago. And she was dying of kidney failure and took her to the vet and the vet said, well, take her home to die. And it was these chicken treats from China. And the good news is, and I wrote about this, I put her on the raw pancetta diet. I went and just bought raw pancetta. And literally, that's all she ate. Her kidneys reversed, her edema went away, she had a sighties in her belly and she rejoined the pack and lived another three years after being sent home to die. But yeah, I did a good job of killing her kidneys inadvertently, of course. Well, let me say this because first of all, you're unbelievable for taking the nutrition into your own hands. That's the scariest thing as a pet parent in the world. You know, I unfortunately at that point in my career, I didn't know enough. And when you're a pet parent and you don't know what to do, it is the scariest feeling in the world because when somebody tells you kidney disease or your dogs and kidney failure, in fact, my dog, over 25% of her kidney was damaged because of those treats. I didn't know what to do, Dr. Gundry. And so kudos to you for taking the diet into your own hands. Once I learned that I could take the diet into my own hands, I reversed the prognosis of my dog that was given six months. In fact, I had her scheduled for a euthanization because they told me it was the humane thing to do. That was enough to light a fire under my butt to get me to start researching and say, hey man, I can actually take this diet into my own hands and control the creatinine levels of phosphorus levels and the things that are happening inside my dog's kidneys. And that's kind of- That was the beginning of you home preparing food. Yeah, that was the exact beginning for me to home preparing food, right? And that's kind of like, that's always been the biggest driver for us, wanting to sit down with scientists and then relay that information back to pet parents, just to empower them. Because when you have that ability, nothing is better when you need to pull the emergency cord one day if something happens to your pet and you say, I got a plan. Yeah, I think that the biggest frustration for dog owners worldwide is they want to do intentional things to help extend lifespan and to keep health span really excellent. They want to do these things, they just don't know what to do. Where's the information? Where's the research? That is exactly why we wrote this book, is people want to know what to do, they just don't have a blueprint. So I think the feeling of converting confusion to clarity is the most peaceful and important thing that can happen to a pet parent is that you're able to get clarity on what to do, the decisions you're gonna make and the path you're gonna take because you have a plan. And the only time you can make a plan is when you have resources to know what's going on. Yeah, we could go on and on and unfortunately for today, we can't go on much longer. But I think the important part of your book and what you guys have been doing really as a life work is so important for people to realize that just like in human health, what we've assumed is just kind of an inevitable process of kind of slowly dying and bad things happening to us is actually fixable and reversible. And the same thing that can happen with our dog and so many of us and so many of our vets have not been properly trained to help us in these areas and it's not the vets fault, it's how they've been educated just like my residents. And so I think the great thing about your book is I think in one spot, you've got some tremendous resources in Forever Dog to guide people who, oh my gosh, my dog has this problem, what do I do? Oh, look Paige, whatever. Or I don't want my dog to get into the shape of it has this problem. And kudos to you guys for making this available and you disrupt a lot of thought processes in here which need to be disrupted. And I mean, we could go on and on about breed specific food and we could go on and on about toxins which you and I have both experienced with our dog. And you mentioned glyphosate and those of you who don't understand the word glyphosate, that's roundup and roundup is in everything. And it's probably one of the best gut microbiome disruptors, best leaky gut causes and changes how mitochondria make energy. And you're right, it's in almost all commercial dog food, whether you know it or not. And it's actually in almost all of our commercial food. So we could have a whole story on that. Anyhow, where can people find it? Where they can find out more about both of you? I follow you on the web, et cetera. I get your emails, blah, blah, blah. How do you do it? So the quickest way Dr. Gundry would be foreverdog.com. You'll be able to find the links to all our pages and all our social handles will be. And there'll also be a great interview where we sat down with you a few years back and smashed it out to like 25 million people. We had an awesome discussion about lectins and dog food. And I believe we also talked about glyphosates and things like that in the food. So foreverdog.com is where everyone can find us. That's easy. Very easy. All right, it's great seeing you both again and great success with the book. Everybody needs this. I believe it or not, I've learned some things that I didn't know and thank you for that. So boy, if I can learn some things, good for you. So nice work. Thanks, Dr. Gundry. All right, take care. And now it's time for our audience question from Agambe19 on Apple. I hope I fractured that. I'd love to know your thoughts on supplementing resveratrol and NMN, Dr. David Sinclair on my mind and also your thoughts on spermidine supplementation. I'm 26 and to quote Dr. Hyman, looking to die young at a ripe old age. Thanks in advance and keep it up. Well, let me start with the last. Believe it or not, the quote die young at a ripe old age is actually the subtitle of my longevity paradox. So, and I guess I appreciate Dr. Hyman passing that quote along, but yeah, that's from me and that's what we wanna do. As many of you know, I'm considered a good friend of Dr. David Sinclair and I am a big fan of resveratrol and various compounds in the nicotinamide family. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat with these compounds and I think they're useful. I think they're a part of a program of increasing your odds of dying young at a ripe old age. But I think, as I tell anyone, really if you are gonna implement one thing and one thing only to extend health span and lifespan, intermittent fasting, which you just heard about in dogs, is probably the number one effective method and you'll soon see in my next book unlocking the keto code how profoundly effective time-restricted eating, intermittent fasting is in hitting the same genes that resveratrol and MNN hit. So, hope that answers your question. Now it's time for the review of the week. Oh, and she just wrote the same review, Gombre 19. Every episode is worth a listen. It may just save your life. I've been a big fan of Dr. Gundry for a while and I can say without a doubt every episode of this podcast is worth your time. Whether you're trying to improve your health, stay healthy or stay ahead of the curve on the most current health conversations and breakthroughs, there is something here for you with Dr. G, a trusted source and brilliant guy. Thank you, Dr. Gundry, for bringing the science that us armchair health nuts and bio-hackers need to know out in the open so that we can take control of our health. Five stars all day long. Wow! Well, thank you very much, Gombre 19. And for those of you who are watching or listening for the first time, please send us a review on iTunes and maybe you're going to get read and, again, thank you for these comments. This is why I do this. This is why I get up every day and see patients six days a week to bring you the important information you need to know to take control of your health because nobody else is going to do it for you and you know why I do this because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you. We'll see you next week. Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. Thank you very much.