iPet’s Ally Weekly Q&A Round-up 12-07-20: Does consuming less acidic foods better for reflux?

1. When are CBD and THC considered toxic? And what is the appropriate dosing?

Here’s what I want you to get really crystal clear. For a product to be considered CBD and non – psychoactive, it must have less than 0.3% of THC present in the product. The dose I was speaking of for THC was not 1 milligram but 0.5 or ½ milligram per day. Now, to be fair, what I would suggest doing is looking at your CBD product and using that as recommended.

Interestingly, I have been working with a company called CBD Dog Health and the lady that runs this company is Angela Ardolino. She is very well – versed in CBD as medicine and the cannabinoid system in general, so if you’re not having success with your current CBD product, I would encourage you to check that out. To be absolutely clear, that’s an affiliate link so if you buy something from them, I do make a percentage of it.

Now, for THC, the deal again is 0.5 or ½ milligram per day. What I would suggest is that if you are not getting good results with the CBD products you are using or you’ve tried everything and it just doesn’t work, then this is what I would start with. So, I was listening to many of the lecture in the AHVMA the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association this weekend and Dr. Trina, who is a veterinary oncologist uses the THC and CBD in her practice. What she said is that for many pets, adding that small amount of THC is night and day from where they’ve been. You do have to approach it with toxicity because dogs and cats have a lot more endocannabinoid receptors in their brain, the dose is much smaller so go with caution but do consider it. If you kind of got your back up against a wall, your goal is to make your pet feel better for whatever time they have left with you or to get them through something like chemotherapy or some acute crisis, this may be just the trick for you. I hope that is helpful.

2. What are the possible alternatives to treating bacterial infections?

Suppose your pup unfortunately, has all sorts of lesions all over his body due to the extreme itching which is a result of a nasty bacterial infection, what I would consider doing is if you’ve got 3 types of bacteria and your pup’s on to some antibiotics, definitely go whole hog on the topicals. So, things like the shampoo that you’re using and then there’s stuff like new piercing ointment which you may or may not have used already that you can use on everything else except for right around his eyes, just anything that you can to kill the bugs. You can use olive leaf powder, grapefruit seed extract, and all of these things to really knock it out.

3. What is/are the possible issue(s) in fecal transplant?

Now, Dr. Lisa’s going to talk with Dr. Roman about doing a fecal transplant. The interesting thing too is that the Animal Biome actually has an enema protocol to use their poop pills if you will as a fecal transplant so you might consider that. I spoke with them about that at length for another patient. I hope that it would be of help.

The deal with fecal transplant in dogs is that it is difficult to find really clean donors and that’s really the issue here. So, check that out. There’s another option for you, do check out Mupirocin because it’s going to help kill some of this stuff off so that you’re not having to come from the outside in. Getting your pup biopsied is absolutely a good idea just to make sure there’s nothing kind of fiercer underneath there. If Dr. Lisa does not feel comfortable with a full–on fecal transplant and finding a dog that’s 100% healthy. So, there’s a company called Microbiome Labs that focuses more on the human side but they have a protocol that I’ve been using myself and with a couple of other patients and I’m starting to see that really make a big difference. I’ll have a protocol up on that here shortly.

4. Does fermenting meat and veggies with vinegar make the CrockPet more digestible?

Probably, No. Because you are cooking for so long that you’re breaking down the cell wall so that probably won’t be a big deal. For medicinal mushrooms, there’s a ton of them out there. I think Paul Stamets has a line of products, so if you don’t know who he is, he is the mushroom dude. He wrote the book called Mycelial Running that’s where I would start. But khan has been consistently good.

5. Does consuming less acidic foods better for reflux?

Here’s what I need you to know; more acidic foods will close the lower esophageal sphincter because of the acid production and so when you add more alkaline foods to balance it out thinking that’s going to help, it actually may make things worse because you’re actually decreasing this acid in the stomach itself so it can’t do its job. What happens with reflux is the acid production gets turned on once the food actually leaves the stomach.

6. What are the possible things to consider when your pup has food sensitivities?

Assuming your pup has leaky gut syndrome, this is where you need to look at the diet. Ideally, what you would do is set up a rotation and elimination diet. You can also consider doing a glacier peaks food test. Again, it’s as good as any I’ve come across and a whole lot cheaper. That glacier peaks holistic life stress can help sort of what and where her sensitivities are with the diet. I think that’ll help you quite a bit designing it. The other thing I suggest is Phyto Spore. Again, I really have switched to this probiotic because I’ve just seen such better results, so definitely look into that.

There are several other products I would recommend of microbiome labs to help rebuild the gut to depending where the symptoms are. One is the MegaMucosa which add both immunoglobulins to help rebuild the immune system and then several amino acids that help to rebuild the mucosal layer in the gut, so I would look at that as well. I am happy to walk you through that.

We’ve got a couple of changes coming up that I think will be good for you. I’m trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. What we’re going to do is give everybody access to full script. For those of you that are consult clients and Ipet’s Ally ultimate members, you’ll have 10% off and everybody else has 5% off. These are professional quality supplements that we’ve been carrying. So, we’ll have that set – up by the end of the week.

The other thing I’m excited about is Covetrus. It is a drug company and what they’re doing is set – up a platform for me and so if you need things that you can’t seem to get where you are or your veterinarian’s not just hip to it, like if you’ve got a pet with a kidney failure and you need fluids on a regular basis or you need a specialty compounding like sevelamer for advanced kidney failure or elevated phosphorus or mupirocin or whatever. I’m able to actually help you with that. The point is not to get you heartworm and flea stuff which most of you are really not interested in, but to get you access to prescription products that you can use for your pets with the direction either from me or from your veterinarian. And then we’ll also be setting – up patient access, patient direct, through microbiome labs. Also, we should have standard process products available on the store pretty shortly too.

So that is what I got. Anyway, we’ll hit that next week but until next week, take good care. I’m Dr. Ruth Roberts, your pet’s ally. Thanks!