 The more fresh whole foods we eat, the healthier we tend to be. You don't need to be any sort of scientist to understand that. And it is exactly the same thing for our dogs. Recently in Scotland a few weeks ago, I guess there was a big semi-annual meeting of golden retrievers. And they got 400 and some golden retrievers in a yard and took a picture of them and it's quite heartwarming. I saw some statistics that 50 years ago, the average lifespan of a golden retriever, was correct me if I'm wrong, somewhere around 17, 18 years. And now it's 12 years. And that's pretty disheartening for many, many reasons. Let's start there. What the heck is going wrong We know so much more about nutrition and care of pets and we're getting worse and worse at it just like we are with humans. Yeah, I mean, that's really true. And part of the reasons behind that are very similar with humans. I mean, part of it quite frankly is a, it's an overbreeding issue and it's a genetics issue. And that's one side of it, which, you know, I mean, that clearly that's a little bit different than it is with people. But I mean, I think it's interesting as you have seen in your line of work, medicine gets better and better and better but the human lifespan is not dramatically increasing. And why is that? I think a lot of that is because our medicine's getting better, our nutrition's getting worse, our lifestyle's getting worse, the toxic soup that we live in is getting worse. And at best it's a zero-sum game. Yeah, in fact, now for the last four years in a row, human life expectancy is actually going down rather up. And sadly, unless things change, the baby boomer generation, which I am, may unfortunately be the longest living American species. And if we don't do something, it's downhill, folks. Let's talk about genetics for a minute. And this is very interesting to me because my wife and I have owned four Cavalier King Charles Spaniels in our lifetime. And these dogs were profoundly overbred and to save their existence, quite frankly, and many of them, all four of our dogs had blew out their mitral valve at some point in their lives. The last two we were able to keep alive for well over a year and a half with blown mitral valves being our surgeon, I know how to manage that. But these dogs, unfortunately because of this, live very short lives. Are we overbreeding everybody in general or is it just certain dogs that we have to worry about their genetics? Well, I mean that's a great question and I think purebred dogs as a rule, overbreeding is a real issue because what winds up happening is, breeders are breeding for very specific characteristics, whether it's a physical trait, whether it's a behavioral trait. But of course, as you well know, I mean, genetics doesn't happen in a vacuum. You breed for one trait and you're breeding for a whole bunch of other things behind the curtain that you're not seeing. And that's unfortunately how we wound up with Cavaliers, something like 80% of them developing mitral valve disease, which is a shame because they are literally the nicest dog that has ever walked the face of the earth. In fact, whenever people ask me for advice on what's a good family or kid dog, I always say Cavalier because they are the best dogs ever. But that said, this whole concept of like purposely breeding dogs is in some ways it's asking for trouble. The good news now is there is some genetic testing available. It's not as extensive as it is, say, in human medicine right now, but you can run testing, looking for a whole host of genetic predispositions in dogs. And that's helpful both from a breeding perspective. So hopefully people can be a little bit more responsible when they are breeding purebred dogs. But on a boots on the ground perspective, more importantly, as for us as pet owners, so if I were to run a genetic test on your dog and I saw your dog was prone to mitral valve disease, that's something that we can monitor very closely, something that we can intervene before there's clinical disease and something that hopefully with the right nutrition and the right supplementation, we can delay the onset. Yeah, actually our last Cavalier shockingly made it to 15 and a half, which is an old Cavalier. Yeah, and we've learned through the years with Cavaliers that let's use every trick in the book. So you're absolutely right. Okay, the big question that always comes down to pet ownership is what are you gonna feed your dog? And I wanna spend a lot of time, despite the fact that probably most pet owners know better, you say, and I think you're right, that 94% of dogs are still eating dry Kibble. Yeah, that is unfortunate, the reality. And here's the interesting thing when it comes to both nutrition for our pets and longevity for our pets is the levers are actually easier to pull for our pets than they are for us because I don't have somebody handing me every single bite of food that I eat every day. But my dogs do, which means that if I make a little effort and I put them on the right food, I can make their nutrition perfect in a way that quite frankly, mine will never be. I haven't figured out how to employ Oprah's chef just yet. I'm still stuck figuring it out on my own on a day-to-day basis, but I think that we all intuitively know about nutrition and you don't need a PhD in nutrition to know this is that every animal on the planet evolved eating fresh whole foods. We all know that eating highly processed foods is problematic and yet that is what the vast, vast majority of people are feeding their pets. Kibble and canned food are by definition highly processed food. They carry with them all of the baggage and all of the problems that processed food does for us in many cases actually more so based on the content of things like advanced glycated end products, et cetera. There's even more in those foods than there are in the processed foods that we eat and we're asking our pets to eat that food every single day and then we scratch our heads and we wonder why there's problems down the road. And of course, one of the things that's the most troublesome to me is that my profession, unfortunately, is in many ways complicit in this because that's how veterinarians are educated. Put the dog on a high quality kibble and you're done. That's nutrition advice in a nutshell that we get in vet school. So that's what most pet owners are getting from their veterinarians. And again, as you know, I mean the entire medical paradigm is set up to address problems when they occur. There's very little preventative medicine that happens in the Western paradigm of medicine and nutrition just doesn't really get addressed until there's clinical disease. Right. Yeah, a while back researching one of my books, I usually head down rabbit holes and I was very interested and I was looking at veterinary medicine and where advice came from and I won't mention the veterinary school but it's in the Midwest and it's very famous and it is responsible for a lot of the nutrition advice that veterinarians get. And lo and behold, I said, gee, I wonder where and it was basically kibble advice. And I'm going, oh, why in the world? You know, this is a very prestigious veterinary school and looked after for, you know, good advice. And I wonder where the funding from this veterinary school comes from. You asked the right question. Physicians get the same stupid nutrition training even now, you know, you gotta have proteins, you gotta have carbohydrate, you gotta have fats, end of lecture. How did the whole concept that we ought to be feeding kibble to our dogs, was it? Was it convenience, was it stool size? Where did it come from? Oh gosh, this, you know, I mean, the whole concept of like commercially made kibble and whatnot goes back, goes back to the early part of the 20th century really, really when the large portions of the population in the United States were moving from agricultural communities into cities. So, you know, it used to be when people lived on farms, the dogs were eating whatever was there on the farm. And then that was that. And when people moved into cities, they didn't really have that availability so people had to feed something. And Pet Food Company saw an opportunity. Essentially what they did was is they told people that feeding your dog scraps off of your table is killing your dog. Feed them this instead. And what they were selling at the time was canned dog food. And that's how the whole concept of like highly processed shelf stable food started later on, you know, during World War I when metal became scarce and the cans were a problem, then it became dry food because they didn't have to put it in cans and that's how we got kibble. But at the end of the day, you know, I mean, it really was a combination of, you know, a marketing strategy combined with, quite frankly, a matter of convenience for people. You know, I mean, you can't argue with the fact that kibble is convenient. It's shelf stable, you pour in the bowl, you walk away. You know, it's just like, processed food is super convenient for us. It's not good for you. But I mean, if you're looking for a quick meal, it's as easy as can be. And that's really where this all comes from. Of course, the problem now is that, now the marketing and the PR is telling people this is the most healthy way to feed your pet when clearly it is not. Price obviously comes into this somewhere along the line. Sure. And is there a perfect diet for a dog or a cat if you had unlimited resources and if you don't have unlimited resources, is there a middle ground and what do you do if your resources are really quite limited? Help us through it. You know, I mean, time and money, no object, then what our pet should be eating is a freshly made, properly balanced whole food diet, meat, vegetables, perhaps some degree of carbohydrates, although there's a discussion about how much of that is actually necessary when it comes to dogs and cats. You know, and again, in the money, no object sense, that, you know, fresh, organic, you know, made at home, that's great. I think in the reality is, is very few of us have the time or the resources to do that sort of thing. You know, that said, you can make food at home for your pets. It's not that difficult. And if you have a reasonable amount of freezer space, you can make a bunch of food, portion it out, freeze it, and maybe make a couple of weeks worth of food all at once. It's not that expensive to do. In fact, it's cheaper to do it that way than it is to buy store-bought fresh food. You know, so it's kind of one of those, you know, so many times in our life, we're doing that equation of we're balancing our time and our money. And it's just a function of figuring out which is more valuable to you at any given moment. But you know, I mean, if you're looking to save some money but you wanna feed fresh food, making food from a balanced diet is a great way to do it. Alternatively, you can go out and you can buy fresh frozen raw food, fresh frozen cooked food and feed that. That is going to be more expensive on a per meal basis because you're paying somebody else to do the work for you. There's also freeze-dried foods, which are excellent. Freeze-dried foods work out great because they don't take up freezer space. They have many of the benefits of fresh whole food diets, but you get the convenience factor of kibble. So there's a huge benefit, you know, in freeze-dried diets. And then to your point of like, you know, how do you function in the real world here if those sorts of things are not doable? There are other options. There are dehydrated foods, which are a little bit less expensive than the fresh foods. There is air-dried kibble, which is a little bit less problematic than extruded kibble from the standpoint of the process food perspective. But you know, one of the things that I tell people all the time is whatever you choose to do as it pertains to the health and wellness of your pets, you need a plan that is sustainable in your life because, you know, if you're going to go home and say, I'm going to make fresh food for my dog and it's going to last two weeks and then you go back to kibble because you can't do it, you haven't really done them any favor. So, you know, sustainability is kind of everything. So, you know, this is not a, it's not a black and white all or nothing thing. Like you can feed your dog some fresh food and some kibble if that's what works in your life, if that's what needs to happen. I would say feed as much fresh food as you can and as little kibble as possible. But again, I mean, you know, there's both a time and a financial commitment involved here and you have to figure out what works for you. So, if you can get your dog or your cat eating as much properly balanced fresh food as possible, you are going to be doing them an enormous favor as it pertains to their health and longevity in the long run. What about the argument that if you're feeding kibble and there are potentially high quality kibble? Should you change it? Should you change from a chicken-based kibble to a beef-based kibble to a fish-based kibble to a venison-based kibble? Or should you just say, oh, now they're used to this and I don't want to rock the boat and maybe they'll get diarrhea if I change. My wife and I have this argument, which is why I bring it up. Well, at the risk of getting involved in a marital disagreement, I will answer that question. When I look at nutrition for animals, the place I always start is with answering the question of what did that animal evolve eating? What spectrum of nutrients did they evolve eating? And I mentioned earlier that no animal on the planet evolved to eat processed food. Well, also no animal on the planet evolved eating the same food every day long-term. It's just not available in the wild and that's not how their bodies or our bodies are really designed to thrive. We are designed to do the best on a variety of nutrients. So, again, in a sustainability sense, it's not practical for most people to feed their dog or their cat something different every single day. However, I am a big fan of rotating through different ingredients and different formulas over time. Depending on how sensitive your pet is from the standpoint of diet changes, that may be something that you can do every couple of weeks or maybe it's something that you do a few times a year. We do know from the research that when animals are eating the same protein sources for a very long period of time, you do actually potentially set them up for food sensitivities and inflammatory bowel issues down the road. So I think it is definitely advisable to rotate through different ingredients and that's true whether you're feeding fresh food or kibble or anything else. That's kind of a separate issue from the whole process versus fresh food thing. So do it as frequently as you think is, again, practical and sustainable for you and your pet. Great advice. Do you hear that, honey? I'm gonna be getting a call later. Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry. If this woman by the name of Penny calls, you know where it came from. You and I spend a lot of time trying to convince people that gut health not only applies to humans but applies to our pets as well. And that certainly there's been, I think sadly very little interest in pet gut health as something that we should be worried about. I mean, for goodness sakes, they're dogs and cats. They crud off the ground and they roll and stuff. They're different than us somehow. Help everybody understand that their gut health is critical to their long-term health. Sure. So I mean, to start with the basics, which are things that you're telling people all the time is that 80% of our immune system sits in our gut and our microbiome, the population of bacteria in our gut have everything to do with the health of our immune system and our overall body health and our brain health and everything else that happens in the body. And all you need to do is talk to somebody who has chronic gastrointestinal issues, IBS, Crohn's disease, what have you to look and see how debilitated those people are as a result of chronic gut disease. There is no difference when it comes to animals. I think while there are clearly physiologic differences between dogs and cats and people, et cetera, the reality is in broad strokes, mammals are mammals. We all kind of work the same. There are subtle changes, clearly an optimal nutritional profile from a cat is different than a dog is different than a person, but all of the same gut health rules apply. I think it is a true statement that your average dog or cat is actually far more resistant to foodborne illness than we are as people. They're just better able to deal with that. Your average dog or cat can have a little salmonella or a campylobacter and never look back. That would probably not work out so well for me. So that's an advantage that I guess that they have over us, but I mean, the bottom line is gut health is the cornerstone of health. So that clearly starts with nutrition because what you're putting in your gut is ultimately feeding those bacteria. So there's nutrition, there's prebiotics, there's probiotics, there's supplements, you can't discount things like lifestyle, stress, anxiety as it pertains to gut health. I don't think that there's a human walking on the planet that has not experienced the effect that stress and anxiety has on our own gut health. And again, this all translates. Just because your dog or your cat isn't saying, wow, my stomach feels a little weird today, doesn't mean that it doesn't. We're dealing with a population of nonverbal animals. And what that means is we have a responsibility to be a little bit more in tune and I'm a little bit more attentive than we may sort of intuitively want to be because frankly, their health and wellbeing is 100% in our lab. We took on this responsibility to care for them. So now it's our job to do the best that we can. Not a day goes by that you see, you see it all the time, a dog or a cat in the cone of shame because they have eczema or literally hair issues, skin issues. And it seems to be getting worse and worse. I don't remember 50 years ago, cones of shame on all the dogs. In my opinion, that is because of leaky gut. It's because of intestinal permeability. It's because of the food we're feeding our animals. What do you see as a veterinarian? Same thing? I think that's an enormous piece of it. Undoubtedly there are environmental allergens, et cetera. But that said, I can't tell you how many times in my office I've had people walk in with animals that have chronic, chronic skin issues. And the interesting thing is it's not always even about the specific ingredients. I have a lot of people tell me, oh, my dog can't eat chicken. He's sensitive to chicken. And they wind up eating a fresh food diet that has chicken in it and they do great. It's not even always like what the protein is. It's how that protein is processed that makes it more antigenic and makes their body more reactive to it. Yeah, same thing. We can go into some of the fun things I've done with my dogs after, well, we had a cavalier who was wasting away at literally wasting disease. And the vet said, well, his pancreas is shot and this is all from that. I mean, he had diarrhea every day. And I said, eh, he said, you know, he's gonna die soon. And he was a young dog. So I put him on literally a raw food diet. And I mean, two months later, he's gained his weight. Diarrhea's gone and stayed that way the rest of his life on a raw food diet and was basically sent home to die. Yeah, and you know, the probably the most tragic part about that is is your average veterinarian will find a way to write that off and not attribute that to the diet change. Yeah, no, don't get me started. Which doctors do all the time as well, MDs. You bring up a very interesting point. I think because it's summer and because of the heat wave, we tend to forget about, I think water needs in our pets and the various ways that maybe we're not getting enough water in our pets. Can you expound on that? I thought it was a very good point in your book. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, it's sort of one of these intuitive things. We all know that hydration is important. We don't necessarily think about it a whole lot. And clearly, I mean, I think your average person walking down the street probably isn't drinking enough water during the day. And like, for me, it's a thing that I have to consciously think about. I bring a large water jug to my office every day and I know that I need to get through that by the end of the day. But that's a conscious thing that I make an effort to do. I can't, I mean, you know, there's that old saying about, you know, leading horses to water, et cetera. But like, you can't make them drink out of their bowl. You can encourage them to drink out of their bowl by making sure that the water is fresh and clean and regularly changed. But at the end of the day, they're gonna drink when they wanna drink. And the problem is, and this is not only is this true for dogs, this is especially true when it comes to cats, is a lot of them are subclinically dehydrated on a regular basis. That puts a lot of strain on their bodies, especially when it comes to cats. It puts a lot of stress on their kidneys. And kitties, they have a real strong tendency to have kidney disease when they get older. So maintaining proper hydration is critically important. And that's yet another problem when we're talking about feeding dogs and cats kibble is there's almost no water there. So what I always tell people is, I don't really care whether your pet's water comes out of their water bowl or their food bowl. It just needs to get in them. So, you know, you're talking about, you know, feeding your pet kibble, which is, you know, maybe 6% moisture plus or minus, or feeding them fresh food, which is maybe about 70% moisture plus or minus. So every bite of fresh food they're taking, they're getting an enormous amount of water, and water is critical for digestion. It's critical for all manner of body processes. And rarely do our pets actually drink enough water out of the food bowl to sort of sustain their optimal needs. You know, they don't drink it out of their water bowl. They don't get enough out of the water bowl. And what they really need is they need to get it from somewhere else. You know, one of the common calls I'll get from people when they switch their pet to a fresh food diet is they'll call in a panic and they'll say, my dog's not drinking water anymore. To which my comment is that's actually a good thing. They're getting it out of their food bowl. It's fine. People just don't really think about it in that sense. But, you know, it's so critical that when we eat, we get enough water so that our food digest properly. Otherwise it sits there and then you wind up, you know, getting back to the whole gut flora thing. You wind up with dysbiosis. You wind up with gas. You wind up with inflammation because we can't digest our food because there's not enough water there to do it. So again, it all sort of wraps back around to that conversation of feed them that fresh diet that their bodies are evolutionarily designed to eat because that's how that biological machine was designed to thrive. You bring up an interesting point in your book and I mentioned earlier I was a cat owner during medical school. Cats like running water. Is this true? It is very true. I mean, if you look at cats in the wild, number one, wild cats are not particularly big water drinkers anyway. They tend to get most of their water from whatever they're eating. But when you do see cats drinking water more often than not, you will see them drinking moving water. You know, water from a stream or you know, some sort of water that's in motion. And the reason for that is because instinctually they know that moving water tends to be fresher and safer than stagnant water. And a lot of cats are not big fans of drinking water out of a water bowl for that reason. And that's sort of yet, you know, add that to the list of reasons why cats tend to lean towards dehydration because they don't really want to drink that water that's sitting in the bowl. Now there are sort of workarounds. They make like little bowls that are circulating water fountains. So there's like a little waterfall. So that makes cats happy. A lot of cats actually will enjoy drinking out of like a dripping faucet. That's the thing that they'll do. I used to have a cat that was very fond of coming up next to me when I had a glass of water and she would stick her paw in my glass of water and then lick her paw, which was great for her but not so great for me because I was not super keen on drinking that water after she did that. I knew where those feet had been. Well, yeah, that'll improve your microbiome as I argue. It'll do something to my microbiome, that's for sure. So yeah, that's a really good point. Now let's talk about mouth health and dental health. And the reason I bring that up is some people would argue, well, if you wet the kibble and it's mushy that they're not gonna get good brushing of their teeth and gums with this hard kibble and they'll get plaque and what say you? So where to begin? Yeah, where to begin? Yeah, I mean, clearly, you know, oral microflora is as important as gut microflora and it's no mystery to anybody how severely chronic periodontal disease will impact larger health. I mean, you see that in people all over the world particularly in third world countries where dental care is not paramount, you see all kinds of problems arise from that. And again, no different for our pets except that clearly you're not gonna talk your dog into brushing and flossing every day. And while I am a big proponent of people brushing their dog or their cat's teeth on a daily basis, I'm also going into this eyes open with the understanding that very few people are actually going to do it. So that said, I hear a lot of people say, and I've heard a lot of veterinarians say this is why you should feed dogs and cats kibble because it helps keep their teeth cleaner. There's so many problems with that statement. It's hard to even know where to begin. I mean, number one, I think when you look at, when you look at dogs and cats that are eating fresh food diets, you certainly don't see any greater amount of periodontal disease than you would see in an animal that's eating kibble. In fact, arguably, I think you see less. I think you're right. Because I think what you're doing is is you're improving the microflora in their mouth so you're just developing less plaque, tartar, gingivitis, periodontal disease, et cetera. And there are a thousand other ways to work on keeping your pets' teeth healthy that don't involve you feeding a highly processed, high carbohydrate food that's ultimately bad for them for every other conceivable reason. One of the things I often talk with people about doing which is a little bit controversial in the veterinary field is periodically feeding dogs and cats a raw bone. Give them a raw bone to chew on. It's great nutrition. It's going to help clean their teeth. It's gonna keep their gums toned and healthy. And as long as it's raw, it's something that they can chew up and digest. You don't really wanna feed them cooked bones because they're too hard and they'll break teeth on them and they'll splinter and cause problems and whatnot. But raw bones of an appropriate size to the animal are very digestible. And it's something that they will happily chew through and keep their teeth immaculately clean without you really having to do much else. We see lots of advertisements for dog treats in general. There are whole stores devoted to baked goods for dog treats. And your dog deserves treats just like you do. And finally, there are treats that are supposedly really good for cleaning your dog's teeth. What do you think? Well, I mean, I think the treat thing in general, I mean, so much of that is your marketing to the heartstrings of the pet owner. Food is love and we love to give our dogs treats. And that's fine and there's nothing wrong with that. I think when it comes to treats for the sake of treats, probably the best thing to do is either feed them fresh food like some dogs will actually quite happily eat carrots, broccoli. I've seen cats sit up and beg for mushrooms. So like in cases where you can get your dog or your cat to eat fresh food, that's great. Alternatively, I'm a real big fan of single ingredient treats. So like a piece of dehydrated or freeze-dried meat, they love it. You don't have to feed them like a baked good with all these various ingredients in it and a whole bunch of carbohydrates and colors and whatnot that they don't need. And they're just as happy with that little piece of freeze-dried meat. When it comes to dental health, there actually are some very good dental chews out there. There's one that I make called canine fresh, which I think works really, really well. It's got all natural ingredients, dogs do great with it, but I think you also have to be careful when it comes to looking at ingredients of these things. Some of these dental treats have chemical compounds in them like chlorhexidine, which is frankly used as a surgical scrub. So I'm not really sure if it's the greatest thing for our dogs to be ingesting on a regular basis. Some of these treats are literally made of plastic and your dog is supposed to chew up the plastic and swallow it. That doesn't make sense to me. Why would I want, I wouldn't eat and swallow plastic intentionally. Why would I want to do that with my dog? Again, it just comes back to, common sense is one of these things that is incredibly valuable when you employ it. And if something doesn't seem right or feel right, then before you do it, ask questions, do a little research and see if that's really the right thing to do. My upcoming book, Gut Check, I have a whole chapter devoted to microplastics and what they do to our gut microbiome. They literally dramatically change for the worse our gut microbiome. And you're right for years, these bones, and I won't mention the name, and they're still sold in lots of stores. Well, they most certainly are. And, oh, your dog will love them and it's true, my dogs love them. But looking back, it's like, what the heck, did I think I was doing here? Chew up some plastic, that's- Yeah, exactly. It's, yeah, I mean, I mean, you gotta tip your cap to the marketing people that make these products, but you really gotta scratch your head about the logic behind a lot of it. Before we leave the subject of food, and we could go on all day about this, fasting is really good for humans. Time-restricted eating is very good for humans. What do you think about dogs and cats? It's a great question, and we don't have an enormous amount of research when it comes specifically to dogs and cats. There is a really, really fascinating study out there that looked at longevity of dogs relative to whether they ate once versus twice a day. It will probably come as no surprise to you that the once a day fed dogs lived longer. Yeah. And for all of the reasons you full well know as it pertains to intermittent fasting. Again, going back to this whole evolutionary aspect of it, animals in the wild are not eating two meals a day. They're lucky if they're eating one meal a day. So, again, that's how our bodies evolved to thrive is eat now, don't eat for a long period of time, and then eat again. For all of the various reasons, cellular autophagy, cell turnover, what have you, all of the various hallmarks of longevity that you are intimately familiar with, intermittent fasting is incredibly valuable for that. This is advice I would give particularly to people who are getting, you know, bringing a dog into their house when you sort of have that opportunity to set the pattern, feed the dog once a day. You know, as long as they tolerate it fine, you'll probably will find that they will do better and live longer in the long run. You know, I think if your dog is patterned to eat twice a day at this point, it may be difficult to change. But, you know, next time around when you get that opportunity, think about going once a day. Great suggestion. We usually have two rescue dogs at any one time and changing their patterns of behavior are challenging. But yeah, if you get a new puppy, it's a great place to start. Yeah, agreed. Yeah, and the other thing we notice is the dogs go for a jog every morning and then when we get back, you know, they're looking at me or my wife saying, okay, you know, we just ran, we got our kill and now it's time to eat. And it's perfect programming because that's when they would eat. Yep. When they caught their food. That's exactly right. You know, what you do, you sort of take advantage of the way that their bodies are designed to function. All right, my listeners know I'm a huge fan of supplementation. It doesn't make expensive urine. So according to your new books, it seems they're equally as important for our pets. Yeah, they absolutely are. And you know, I mean, there's a thousand reasons for that. And you know, we'll start with the fact that, you know, A, a lot of animals are not eating optimal diets. So there's plenty of room there to round out their nutrition. And even for animals that are eating optimal diets, you know, what we're really talking about is we're really talking about how do we get that biological machine to function at its absolute peak performance? And frequently what that means is, is adding some things in, you know, to their body systems, whether or not we're talking about vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, things like various mushrooms, curcumin, Boswellia, what have you. There's so many things out there in the natural world. And you know, I've been practicing herbal medicine in the veterinary context for a really long time. And it's just, it's endlessly fascinating what mother nature provides for us. Or if you choose to look at it in a different way, what co-evolution of animals and plants has done as a benefit for us in the sense of we have all of these opportunities to help our bodies or our pets' bodies if we just know how to do that, if we know how to pull those levers and when to do it, you know. So I go through a long list of supplements in the book, both for dogs and for cats. And very explicitly not for the intent of, I want you to feed these 30 supplements to your dog every day. It's a function of, let's take a handful of these, give these now, let's rotate into different ones over time. It's just like food. You want to keep the body guessing a little bit. You want to add in different nutrients over time because that's what's gonna work best for us. So again, from a longevity perspective, there's so much opportunity here to really help them be as healthy as possible. If you had to name a big three that we really are neglecting, do you have any that come to mind? Sure. Well, I mean, I think the first two are easy. You know, the two things that I tell people you can almost never go wrong with are probiotics and an omega fatty acid. So when it comes to dog and cats, generally that means fish oil. So probiotics and a fish oil are absolute no-brainers. Beyond that, it depends a little bit on what's going on with your dog, but I am a big fan of curcumin as an herb from the perspective of, it's good for gut health, it's good for liver health. So I think that's a highly, highly beneficial supplement. I also find that a shocking number of patients in my office when we test them are deficient in vitamin D. One of the interesting things about vitamin D in dogs and cats is they do not convert sunlight to vitamin D like we do. So it's completely a nutritional thing with dogs and cats. And intuitively I would have thought that my patients that were eating really good quality fresh food diets would be fine. Turns out that even most of them are deficient. So we do supplement an awful lot of vitamin D in my office. As you know, vitamin D is not something that you wanna just sort of throw in their food and not really think much about it. You can overdo it and cause problems. So D can be added as part of a multi vitamin for animals so they're getting a little bit. But beyond that, I would say just test them, find out what their vitamin D levels are. So you know exactly how much to supplement them with. I mean, vitamin D is, it's so important. It's just one of those really, really easy things that we can do that will make a huge difference down the road. Speaking of easy things, one of the things that disturbs me a great deal is the number of particularly very active breeds that I see in baby carriages. And I see even now baby carriages designed for dogs. Yeah, that's true. Is this a good idea? That's a bit of a loaded question. I mean, certainly there are dogs out there that for various medical reasons, a lot of walking may be problematic. So yeah, let's forget about that. Forgetting about them. I mean, dogs like any other animal need exercise. And I think when it comes to the question of how much do you exercise your dog, a lot of it really depends on your dog. It depends on their breed. It depends on their age. It depends on their health conditions. So for example, you have Cavaliers. I mean, those dogs, that's a dog that would like to get out and run around and really spend some time exercising. On the more extreme end, you can say something like a Border Collie. And that's a dog that could literally go out and run around for five or six hours and say, are we going out for more? Yes. Or on the flip side, if you got a pug or a bulldog, that's a dog that's a slower pace of exercise for dogs like that. So you really have to, you have to tailor the exercise to the individual. I mean, you know, to take a human example, I know my physiology is not particularly well designed for running. If I run for more than, you know, on a regular basis for more than two weeks, my knees are gonna hurt like hell and I'm just not gonna do it. So running's not my jam. I get my cardio in other ways. So, but then I see people running down the street that look like a gazelle and they're like floating down the street for days and that's great for that person. So, you know, I think it all has to be custom tailored, but you know, exercise is so critically important to health and longevity from the perspective of muscle mass, bone density, mental health, gut health. You know, I mean, you name it, all the stuff that you already know as a heart surgeon. You know, fortunately, my patients don't get cardiovascular disease like yours do, but nonetheless, you can't discount the benefits that regular exercise do and the one thing that I just sort of would like to leave that topic with is you can absolutely over exercise a dog. Too much is problematic. Some of the most arthritic dogs I have ever seen, some of the worst back and spinal degeneration I've ever seen are dogs that were frisbee dogs or like ball chasers when they were younger. You know, we've all seen sort of those frisbee dog kind of go up in the air and do that whole twisting motion. It looks super cool. It's hell on their spine. Interesting. All those little tiny little ligaments that are holding their spine together, they're all sustaining micro trauma when that happens. I mean, it's no different than a person who was an extreme athlete when they were younger. They're gonna pay for that later and you see that a lot with dogs that were really, really high impact exercises when they were younger. So I don't want to take away frisbee from those dogs that love frisbee, but like everything else in moderation, do it a little bit and then go do something else. Take the dog out for a long walk or a hike or even a run, but try and limit the real high impact activities. Good advice. Actually, I want one more thing before we go because it's really important. Neutering spaying, there seems like, particularly among breeders, there's an epidemic of they won't even let these dogs go home before they're spayed or neutered and that may be at eight weeks. What say you about early spaying and neutering? Not a fan. That's the short answer. It used to be the sort of the standard veterinary plan was spay or neuter them around four months old. That way you sort of avoid any potential behavioral issues that may occur from them going into heat. You clearly would avoid any sort of unplanned pregnancies, what have you. I think what we know now from the research is that at least when we're looking at larger breeds of dogs, there are definitive health benefits to waiting until they are fully physically mature to spay or neuter them. So depending on how large the dog is, that could be anywhere from a year to two years old to wait. And then I think the other concern from a spay-neuter perspective is behavioral concerns. There's always been a concern about aggression with dogs if you don't spay or neuter them. Interestingly, when you look at the research, it doesn't really necessarily bear out. So for example, separation anxiety, which is a huge problem in dogs, is actually much more prevalent in dogs that were spayed or neutered early. That's less of a problem in dogs that are either not spayed or neutered or it was done later. None of this stuff is black and white, but I think we do know from the standpoint of onsets of certain rates of cancer, certain rates of orthopedic disease, waiting is generally a good idea. I think the one place where I would sort of diverge from that is with cats. I would still recommend spaying or neutering cats before they're six months of age. And I say that because number one, you do not want a cat in heat in your house. It is not a fun thing. And number two, with male cats, as they go through puberty, they tend to develop this habit of urine marking, like they will spray on everything. And once they have developed that pattern of behavior, sometimes even once you neuter them, it doesn't go away. And that is a quick trip to a surrendered pet if they're peeing on the walls. So for their own safety before six months, it's probably a good idea for cats. Good advice. My mother had a large male Persian cat who happened to have the name of Lovie, which is, but this cat was spayed late. And yeah, he actually would spray my wonderful stereo speakers and large amounts of furniture and could never break him up. Oh, that's a great time. Yeah. Oh, well. More amazing episodes just like this one. Watch now. Vitamin D promotes calcium absorption from your gut. It enables mineralization of the bone and it's also very essential to prevent low calcium in your bloodstream.