Angie (00:00)
Welcome back to Tails of Truth, where we tell the truth about veterinary medicine. I'm Dr. Angie, and today I am joined by a friend of mine, Dr. Rob Silver. And we have known each other my entire career. He has taught me so much about holistic veterinary medicine. And I have depended on him, I don't know, I mean what the last 20 years, Rob? I think we've known each other for at least 20 years.

Doc Rob Silver (00:27)
I think longer than both of us care to admit, actually.

Angie (00:30)
Yeah, probably so. And I actually work at Boulder's Natural Animal at the practice he started in Boulder. veterinarians all over the United States and the world have really depended on you to educate us about herbal medicine, CBD.

mushrooms and now you're really getting into gut health which I'm so excited about. But I would like you to tell everyone what you've been up to.

Doc Rob Silver (01:00)
Okay, well it's gonna take a little time, but hi everybody.

Angie (01:03)
We got it.

Doc Rob Silver (01:04)
I'm Rob Silver. And originally addition to having Boulder's Natural Animal, where Angie's now working, having founded that back in the nineties, I also was the founder of the RX Vitamins line of products. I formulated all forty of those products and was with them until they sold in twenty twenty one. And after that I

developed interest in medicinal mushrooms. And so from Rx Vitamins I went to a Canadian company called Real Mushrooms that is a global leader in organically grown mushroom extracts. and they've been around doing this for 40 years. And so I was tasked to develop a line of pet products for them using mushrooms. And although you know we might eat mushrooms every day in our meals,

They're much more complicated than we think. You know, they're very tasty foods, but what's in them is is really very complicated as far as their biological potency. And so I've also been spending a lot of time teaching vets, wrote a book, there's a mushroom for that on the topic, and have been teaching pet parents as well, about the value of mushrooms, what's in them and how to use them best.

now I've taken a big interest because when I d like discovered that mushrooms actually have a huge benefit to gut health and to digestive issues, as well as many, many other health issues, in our critters and in ourselves, I've also found that mushrooms have a very strong influence on the microbiome. And so that's really where I'm focusing a lot of my interest now. I'm I'm working with a company developing a testing platform that will deliver through AI to pet parents'

cell phone through an app that can help guide you through the test results so you can improve diet, improve other lifestyle issues to improve gut health. And gosh, I guess that's it. In my spare time, I'm a coffee addict. But that's

Angie (02:51)
Nice. Nice.

Doc Rob Silver (02:53)
in a nutshell, yeah.

Angie (02:54)
Well, I'm really excited to talk to you first of all about everything. You are such a great resource. And one thing I want to say for everyone listening is that Rob was in general practice. So he has done everything. He's been a surgeon, he's done wellness visits, he's done everything. I think some holistic veterinarians, they kind of veer off into their lane.

Of just doing the holistic side. But he's a very proficient and experienced practitioner. And I think that really matters, especially for someone like me that's in the trenches dealing with everyday cases. Like you're such a great resource. And so I'm really excited to talk to you today about gut health. it's something I've thought about my entire career. And, you know, when I was a baby vet learning herbs with Steve Marsden.

And he would tell me, like, yeah, you can cure most things with skin with herbs. And I got out into practice and I couldn't do it. And then I realized, well, yeah, I can't cure everything with an herb because we're still eating our allergen, like we have undiagnosed food allergies. So then I really tried to get to the bottom of everyone's food allergy. And then, you do all the things that you're trying to do to manage allergic conditions.

But I never could get to that piece where I felt like I could heal their gut. And we all know that most disease comes from the gut. And everyone comes into my office and was like, okay, well, I read that my dog's itchy because he has a yeast overgrowth whatever Instagram is is, feeding to them. And it it's not that I disagree, but I also know from a lot of years of practice that that probiotic they're selling you.

Isn't gonna make your dog stop itching. like yesterday, I saw a six-year-old Frenchie who's been one of my worst allergic cases of my career. So, what how do I take this Frenchie and say, Okay, we're gonna heal your gut? Tell me what, tell me what to do, Rob.

Doc Rob Silver (04:56)
Well

it it's it it's not just a simple answer. And and I think that a lot of especially with the you know the rise in in social media, the rise in in all of these, online kind of experts out there that aren't really experts, it's complicated the issue because you know just a probiotic is not enough to fix the problem. The reality is, that the gut is the center of our health.

but it's also very individual, from animal to animal. There's genetic things that weigh upon that, like let's say with the Frenchies. there's also environmental issues, and the biggest issue is what they're eating. And especially if they're eating an ultra processed food, there's a lot of information out there that shows that ultra processed foods in the long run, really

Create inflammation, they create more reactivity in the immune system, which helps to promote allergies. And so when I address gut health, I usually always do a diet history. I want to find out what what have you been eating, what are you eating now, and was this something that happened at birth, or when was the first onset of symptoms?

And what were things that were going on at that time that you saw the symptoms in terms of diet, in terms of environment, because everything, it's a huge picture. Allergies are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is causing them. so this is one reason why I was one of the first vets to teach homemade diets. And they don't have to be raw, they just have to not be ultra processed. I think that's really the point. And

in those days I actually had a freezer in my clinic there where you're now where we kept

Angie (06:32)
Mm.

Doc Rob Silver (06:33)
frozen where where there was just the beginnings of the frozen raw meat diets that were commercially available and we kept them there and I lectured so much on it that the owners of Instinct actually came and hired me because I was one of the few vets to do this. and almost every appointment that I had I would

share with people if they were interested in how they could do home preparation of food that would be specific for their pets' needs. and so fresh food is there's nothing like fresh food in terms of improving gut health. And there's nothing worse than processed food to to continue to perpetuate the problems that you see in the gut. It takes work and it takes time and it may not be cheaper than feeding kibble but then

So are the vet bills kind of expensive, So you kind of have to look at at the big picture. And fortunately these days, because there has been so much recognized interest in the value of fresh foods, that we're seeing so many commercially available fresh foods that it takes the burden off of the veterinarian to teach you how to do it or to make sure you're doing it right, as long as you're choosing diets that, are reputable and have good quality to them and have

have good analyses in terms of where their ingredients are sourced. So that kind of simplifies things. It may not be cheaper, but I'll bet you it's a lot cheaper than Apoquel and Cytopoint injections and

and

Angie (07:55)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (07:55)
the vet visits. I mean vets aren't that cheap anymore, right?

so diet is the first place to begin. and changing over from what you're feeding to something that's fresher and more wholesome is a good choice. And it doesn't have to be seven days a week, twenty-four-seven. You can feed a really good diet five days out of the week and on the weekend take the weekend off and feed some crappy kibble. into every life a little vice must fall.

I think especially once you reestablish gut health, a little kibble here, a little kibble there, you it's convenient, you're going out for dinner with your with your spouse, who's got time, you know. Of course there's also ways if you're doing home preparation, to batch prepare and freeze individual servings, and home preparation isn't necessarily cheaper, but probably is a lot cheaper than buying them commercially. So that's where you start. And there are things like

Probiotics, and there's some probiotics that are better than others in terms of improving the health of the bowel, but there's not one probiotic that's better than every other because it's very individual. Each animal is their own universe. and that universe might need one kind of probiotic versus another. So this is one reason why I've gotten so interested in the microbiome. And for those that don't know what the microbiome is, and there's been a lot of

talk about on the media and every place else. It's really the community of organisms. There's thousands of them, different organisms in your in your gut, in my gut, and Angie's gut, and your dog's gut. And these organisms, because they can live together in a very positive way, can promote health. But if you've got organisms in there that aren't living together in a positive way, let's say they're a little juvenile delinquent in the neighborhood, that's where they start creating problems. They may be creating problems in terms of your digestive function.

in terms of diarrhea, soft stools or constipation, those sorts of things. Or they may f spread to other parts of the body, like allergies, or even neurologic problems like epilepsy and even arthritis may have, a relationship to all of this. Well the microbiome, by measuring the microbiome, we can tell from the distribution of organisms and which ones they are, because there's so much science that has been done for the microbiome for

So many years now, and in dogs as well, we can tell what things we need to do to change that environment, to get rid of those juvenile delinquents, bring in a little law enforcement, you know, and and get that community to be a happy, healthy community. And everything else from that will follow. Certainly, there's good quality herbs we can use. Mushrooms is one thing that got me into the microbiome. I found there's so much research that shows that mushrooms are one of the best foods.

for the microbiome, not just because they're fiber, prebiotic fiber, which is probably the best thing we could do for the microbiome. And none of us eats enough fiber. And one of the things I do with my own dog and that I recommend for people that I do consultations with, which isn't that much these days, is I love flaxseed meal. I find flaxseed meal is a great source of fiber. It's a great source of balanced omega-3s and omega-6s.

And even has some detoxification aspects because of the lignans that are in it that can bind up toxins. So you know just something simple like that, adding to the food can be good. but by measuring the microbiome and analyzing it, we can then take steps to match a diet to what that microbiome analysis needs. And we can also add supplements and herbs. We can look at water quality. Exercise itself plays a really big role on gut health.

I mean, so it's a whole lifestyle thing. It's not just, the probiotic or the digestive enzyme, fish oil and and omega threes are also very, very valuable for gut health. So it's it's a big picture. It's not a simple answer. sorry. Yeah. But but that's yeah, yeah.

Angie (11:43)
Yeah. I mean I I get that. Yeah.

They're complicated. And I think the the hard cases are the the dogs that come in and they already are are on the raw diet or the home cooked diet and you know, maybe and

Doc Rob Silver (11:57)
Yeah, and they're still having problems.

Angie (12:00)
they're still having problems. at this point in my career what I found if I wanna get to the root cause, I found immunotherapy to be the most helpful.

But that also is the long game, like when we're teaching

Doc Rob Silver (12:12)
What is immunotherapy

in terms of the allergies? You mean the per inhalant allergies?

Angie (12:17)
yeah, so for the environmental allergies, so Darren Dell is my the dermatologist I refer to down at Wheat Ridge and he does immunotherapy and I have really great results with him, but for these dogs, it takes six months to a year to, of of

Doc Rob Silver (12:32)
and and

and not all allergies are from environment upon environmental. You can have, food allergies as well, which immunotherapy does not work.

Angie (12:42)
That's correct. And so for those food allergies, like we have to to parse those apart. but the dogs that are just really, really allergic. And I don't know if the way we're breeding dogs were they're becoming more allergic, or if just like in people, we've damaged the microbiome from generation to generation, and now we're really suffering the consequences for that. Both of my daughters were severely food allergic.

And

my pediatric gastroenterologist said this is from antibiotic use in the seventies. And so they felt really confident that the reason why our kids are becoming increasingly more allergic was as we pass down the this just kind of altered microbiome. It's unhealthy.

Doc Rob Silver (13:30)
you know, the microbiome is passed from mother to child.

Angie (13:35)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (13:36)
in humans, as the birthing happens, there's what they call the vaginal gulp. And this is where the infant takes in some of the vaginal secretions from the mother, which contain the microbiome in it. And that's how it gets initially seeded. and the same thing with dogs, although they don't because they're born in placentas, they don't get that vaginal gulp.

But the mother licks them. She licks the placenta open and you know licks all the all the amniotic fluid off of them and that in that way also transfers her microbiome to the children, to the to the puppies. Well that means if the mother's put on antibiotics, which are so very commonly used in veterinary medicine, then she's probably transmitting some of her unbalanced microbiome

To puppies, So this is one place where I think we can really intervene is when we have, and you can do this, when you get those new puppy exams, this is really the time to teach the pet parent how we can start to create a healthy microbiome and a healthy immune system from the very beginning. And it can be it can be just something as easy as adding a mushroom supplement, looking at what they're feeding, we we have some very invasive ways of helping the

microbiome, we have what's called a fecal microbiome transplantation. And this is where they actually take the feces of a healthy dog and they administer it to the dog's microbiome through retention enemas. They also have it in freeze-dried capsules that can be taken orally. but we don't really need to go that way for most cases. usually we can start with starting the puppy off and also being cautious about vaccinating too early.

And being cautious about using antibiotics. For instance, there are studies that show that metronidazole, which is like one of the most commonly used antibiotics for gut health or for gut diseases,

Angie (15:22)
Mm.

Doc Rob Silver (15:23)
almost totally destroys the microbiome. And it's not just a casual destruction. It's something that persists for quite a while. Things like omeprazole, I mean there's things we use as drugs that maybe we could use herbs instead that wouldn't have such a bad impact on the microbiome.

Being smart about what we do with our patients can help to promote a healthier microbiome. And it just really needs to start at day one if we have that option of of actually getting them that early to do that. I don't recommend vaccinating until and although you know obviously there's if there's risks and things in the environment we have to do that, but I don't recommend vaccinating until at least twelve weeks of age or fourteen fourteen or sixteen weeks of age because

the n if they nurse on their mom, they get the antibodies that protect them from these diseases they're vaccinating for, if the mom's been vaccinated, and that protection from nursing on the mom lasts for about twelve weeks. So if you're vaccinating them and they're getting all this vaccine antigen, well the immune system of the puppy, because it's gotten that maternal nursing, destroys those antigens anyway. So it's not so the vaccine doesn't really work that well.

So I mean there's all these things. It's a huge, I mean it's a huge picture what you're asking, but it's something that we have to do if we're going to intervene with this allergy epidemic that we're seeing, in our patients.

Angie (16:47)
Yes, absolutely. And I mean, moving away from metronidazole is difficult to do. There are some cases where I just feel like especially with hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. But there are a lot of times where people will come and they'll bring a stool sample and they're they're used to getting metronidazole. And so we're trying to train them. What is your go to? Like let's say a healthy dog, middle aged dogs had

a few bouts of diarrhea, maybe they woke you up a few times. What is your protocol? What's your favorite protocol?

Doc Rob Silver (17:21)
Well, I I think that treating them symptomatically, versus with antibiotics is a good place to get started. If that doesn't work, then you can reach for the antibiotics. I think there are other antibiotics other than metronidazole which can be used. There's one product that I developed for Rx vitamins called Rx Clay. I don't know if you carry that or not in your pharmacy or not, but the Rx clay is is just clay. It's a special type of clay,

it has no sodium in it, it's it has no heavy metals in it. it's a very fine grind so it can disperse widely in the bowel and it absorbs toxins and it absorbs bacteria and it also helps to improve the bowel gut barrier and improve the immune system in the gut. And so we I I know that oncologists are like sending home

Dogs that are on chemotherapy with the Rx clay as a way of preventing diarrhea. So I would look at things like that. the World Health Organization recommends something called rice water. And rice water is basically where you take rice, a little bit of rice, and you and you boil it in a lot of water. You create this water from the rice, it's even beyond a porridge, but it contains certain peptides in it that open up the chloride channel in the colon.

which allow the colon to reabsorb water. So so there's symptomatic ways, I think, of addressing it. The problem is to everybody's in such a rush today. And veterinarians

are too. We had how

Angie (18:45)
Yes. Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (18:47)
many minutes between patients, in our busy day, not even

Angie (18:49)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (18:50)
that, you know, and so it's so much easier to send home a bottle and this and that versus taking the time to instruct them about all the little details that are necessary. And, I think this is a symptom of our culture, and

One reason

Angie (19:02)
Mm-hmm.

Doc Rob Silver (19:03)
why we're seeing so many endemic things in our culture that aren't all that good. I would really try to avoid the use of metronidazole except when it is in, dire straits and maybe the only thing on the shelf that you think would work, but there are better antibiotics. There was a study recently published in the journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association where they took parvovirus puppies.

That were hospitalized and we and receiving all the standard IVs and treatments for parvovirus. And they gave them, and this is almost counterintuitive, they gave them fecal microbiome transplants. they created slurry from some healthy

Angie (19:40)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (19:41)
stool and they gave them rectal enemas. These are dogs that have beautiful explosive diarrhea. To me, it like blows my mind. And they had a placebo group too that didn't get the stool, but they got the rectal enemas. And

The results were so good on the dogs that were getting those fecal transplants that had parvo that they stopped the study. They would they stopped the parvo the the placebo group because they felt it wasn't ethical to not treat them when this treatment of the fecal microbiome transplant was working so well, and they all recovered so much quicker, it cost them so much less in terms of the ICU charges. so this is why I'm saying I think the microbiome, in the many ways that we can support it.

really does hold the key to gut health. And we just

Angie (20:25)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (20:26)
and we're j we're we're just at at the beginning of this area. And that's one reason why I'm getting involved in this new platform with this company. The company's called Super Dog. And they haven't launched

Angie (20:34)
Okay.

Doc Rob Silver (20:35)
yet. We're still in the the development of they've got a website. they're taking like a waiting list for people, but we're still proving and and calibrating. We're working with a

colony of sled dogs in Montana that are fed raw to develop some baselines. I mean it's it's really a cool a cool thing we're doing there. And I and I think

Angie (20:52)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (20:52)
and I think it's gonna be a great tool for veterinarians because it's less they don't have to be as hands-on with it and yet they can be confident that their patients are being well treated because they're it's so interactive. for instance if the microbiome says that more fiber might help promote one of the better bacterial strains.

then it suggests that on the cell phone app and then in two weeks it says, So how's it going given that fiber, And so it

Angie (21:17)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (21:18)
it so it's like it does the things that the vet would want to do in terms of follow up that oftentimes we just don't have the time to do all that detail management,

Angie (21:26)
Yeah.

About I think maybe it was twelve years ago, thirteen years ago, I started getting into fecal transplants 'cause there was like this rise. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (21:33)
cool. wow. Yeah.

Angie (21:35)
Yeah. And w the problem I had at that time is I didn't know what a healthy donor was. So I couldn't

Doc Rob Silver (21:42)
Yes.

Angie (21:43)
I couldn't ascertain if I was getting good results or if I wasn't getting good results because I didn't know and I tried with some cats and some dogs and I I didn't know if I had a healthy donor. And and now I'm seeing

Texas A and they have a microbiome test. What do you think of that test? Are you using that? Are you what

Doc Rob Silver (22:02)
Well,

well there's act there's actually three tests available now in in the veterinary realm. One is through Texas A and and they've developed a dysbiosis index, which is very helpful.

Angie (22:10)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (22:13)
there's also Animal Biome, which is like the first company to really stress this, and they've got a great test as well. And the owner of of Animal Biome is a PhD microbiologist, and they've been doing some studies. I think they were using the animal biome freeze dry because now they're also freeze drying the poop.

So you can actually

Angie (22:32)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (22:33)
buy you can actually buy it for your clinic, put it on the shelf, and just reconstitute it and give it. Now the fresh stuff is the best, And then there's VDI labs. They've got a test too. And all three of these tests are good. This platform I'm working with is going to be bringing a fourth test to the mix. So there's a lot of good

Angie (22:52)
Okay. Okay.

Doc Rob Silver (22:54)
choices out there. And I think sometimes the choice may not be the quality of the test, because I think all the tests

are going to do a good job, because we use this DNA PCR testing. and there's a lot of quality control with that. But I think a lot of it will have to do with the interpretation and then the enacting

Angie (23:08)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (23:10)
what that interpretation means. And some veterinarians they're very detail oriented. They're going to want to do this themselves. They love all those little details. Others, really busy like yourself, you maybe smart enough to figure it out, but don't have the bandwidth to do it.

that it would

Angie (23:24)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (23:25)
be great if yeah and you do get some some sheets of interpretations from these three testing things. But when but then you have to interpret that and tell that to the pet parent. That's why this fourth platform that I'm working on now not only has a high quality test, but delivers the results both to the vet and to the pet parent. And so it saves the vet that time, but they could be comfortable that the information is good.

And so because we're doing doing a lot of testing and we're going to be developing a huge database of information because all this stuff is being collected online through these phone apps. I remember I was lecturing on gut health years and years ago before we even heard about fecal transplants. And a vet in the audience raised her hand. She was a cat vet. She goes, you know, in my practice, when we have these cats with these GI problems, we go in the back.

We go into the c into our clinic cat's cat box and we pull a fresh stool out. We make like a little ball out of it and we pill the cat with it in that

Angie (24:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (24:23)
and and it they get better. so I mean we've known this for a long time, that this can really work and we had the science to back it up. and it doesn't always have to be so aggressive that you do these fecal transplants. But there's several companies now that are providing freeze dried material that

are even being sold directly to pet parents. And many pet parents are bypassing their vets because many vets

Angie (24:45)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (24:45)
don't know about this. They're going right to these companies 'cause every dog has poop. There's no w no lacking for that test material. They collect it themselves.

Angie (24:53)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (24:53)
They send it in. The company gives them advice and they're not even getting engaging with their veterinarian. And I think that's a problem. So I mean I think it's great they're getting that kind of care.

But I really believe strongly in the value of the veterinary client patient relationship and how valuable that really is for the health of the pet, And you can only do so much through apps, you can only do so much online, through Doctor

Angie (25:16)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (25:16)
Google. You know, ultimately I think it's that live visit, that live interaction that really speaks to the essence of medicine,

Angie (25:23)
Yeah, I've had a lot of people bring me those test results from Animal Biome. And there have been some times where I look at it and I'm like, I don't really know what to do with this. And so I think sometimes it's kind of like reading tea leaves, especially when you have the proactive people that seem to have clinically healthy dogs. And they're like, Well,

Doc Rob Silver (25:45)
Yeah.

Angie (25:46)
I just want to check this. I mean, and rightfully so. they want to be on top of it.

Because you can have dysbiosis without GI symptoms. and so then I'll get these test results back. And I have to be honest, Rob, I don't know what to do with them. 'Cause I don't know if I want to upset the apple cart. So should I use mushrooms then? What am I doing? Tell me what to do.

Doc Rob Silver (26:04)
Well mush

mushrooms certainly can be very helpful. And one mushroom that I think has gotten a lot of attention these days because of its value for cognitive health is lion's mane. and as our dogs and cats age and they start to get a little bit of geriatric senility like everyone seems to once you get to a certain age point. we're finding that the lion's mane can be very helpful.

in helping them to find that dog door again, remembering where their food bowl is, or not barking at night. Not every dog, and we don't have really good studies yet, but anecdotally that's what we're finding. And the research in humans and the research in laboratory animals is astounding as far as its value for cognitive health. But what's interesting, and this is where we have that gut brain connection, is that Lion's mane was originally known not for cognitive health, but for gut health.

And the only study that shows the value of a mushroom for the microbiome is a Korean study that used lion's mane for dogs for older dogs that were being fed kibble and found improvements in the microbiome for all of them. So a simple place to begin might just be to supplement with a mushroom extract. And I created a product that contains the lion's mane powder blended with krill meal. And krill meal is

Yeah, krill meal is well f whale food, you know, and this is the

Angie (27:26)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (27:26)
most sustainably collected krill meal in the world, and it's really high in omega-3s, like from from marine lipids, which are very anti-inflammatory, but it also has phospholipids in it. And phosphatidylcholine contains choline, which is good for the brain, good for the liver, good for the gut, good for behavior, and it has a great antioxidant called astozanthin, and it's very tasty. So something like that.

would be one of the things I would say if you see a puppy, you want the first thing you might want to do is start them on a lion's main product or on any mushroom product. I have another product I created with which also has probiotics in it. And the one probiotic that I am happiest with is a yeast-based probiotic. It's called Saccharomyces boulardii And it's actually a relative to the same yeast that we brew beer with and and and make bread. But the thing about it, it's a yeast.

Yeasts are not susceptible to antibiotics. So you can give this probiotic while you're giving the animal antibiotics to help keep the microbiome in better shape than if you weren't giving the antibiotics. It's stable at room temperature. And giving something like

Angie (28:33)
Okay.

Doc Rob Silver (28:36)
that to a kitten or a puppy first time, one's called daily dog, the other one's called

functional feline, would be would yeah, that is the old packaging.

Angie (28:41)
Yeah. have it right here. I mean this is the old packaging. It's the old

packaging, but my I keep it on my desk because when my cats get up here when I am zooming, I give a little bit. They love this stuff. It's

Doc Rob Silver (28:57)
It has the krill.

Angie (28:59)
is that why? Like they're it's like crack. It's kitty crack in here. They love it.

Doc Rob Silver (29:01)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cr

yeah, it it the krill is is really is yeah, is a really strong palatin. As a as a formulator, I'm always looking for that palatability factor that also has function. And krill

Angie (29:15)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (29:16)
really fills the bill there so

those are those are some easy easy places to start, in creating gut health.

from the very beginning. But what do you do if you've got an older animal, they've been through all these different vets, all these different antibiotics, they're coming in, and their their gut is really messed up. Well, in that case, that's where we want to do microbiome testing and maybe do some fecal transplants or even just some oral capsules. I mean there's all sorts of things that we would want to do interactively then, including many of the herbal I think many of these herbal

approaches that you've learned that you use that aren't as successful will be more successful when we change diet and we can modify the microbiome as well. I think everything everything goes better with a healthy gut for sure, with with a healthy microbiome.

Angie (30:03)
Okay, so for people that are listening, like a an

Doc Rob Silver (30:05)
Yeah.

Angie (30:06)
easy thing, the functional feline, and I I bet your cat's gonna like it. So that's an easy win, right? And then the daily dog, just to to give people really actionable.

Doc Rob Silver (30:13)
Yes. Yes, exactly. But those are

yeah, and a little less and if people are budget minded, and if you have a pet probably being budget minded is is something that would be important to be, but maybe difficult to find. The other krill pet products, like the lion's mane and krill, doesn't have the probiotics, it doesn't have the detoxicants and the crack cell chlorello like the

fel like the functional feline daily dog do, but even but it's less expensive because it has to have all those things would also be equally helpful for a developing microbiome, developing immune system. well it's

Angie (30:50)
And what product is that? What what does that look like?

Doc Rob Silver (30:53)
it's called lion's mane with krill temp. Period. Yeah, I've got I've got an example here's some Yeah, I do. I've got a bunch here. Where'd it go?

Angie (30:56)
okay. Okay. Yeah, do you have a bottle? Yeah. Show us the bottle if you can. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (31:03)
you know so it's

It's the same seventy-five gram sized container. this

Angie (31:08)
Okay.

Doc Rob Silver (31:09)
is this is the new branding that real mushrooms is using. And

Angie (31:12)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (31:13)
and so it it's also a good place to begin. And

Angie (31:17)
Mm-hmm.

Doc Rob Silver (31:17)
one other point is that when we talk about vaccination, so many people have become vaccine hesitant. And with good reason. I think we need to look at vaccines as strong medicine and you know use them appropriately when there's risk and need for protection.

I think we probably give too many multiple vaccinations, but I think there's some vaccinations that are really important. And many people are going to titering, doing blood to see if they've got protection so they don't have to vaccinate. Well, what do you do if the titer comes back not protective? You just vaccinate again? That's kind of idiotic, personally. Well there are several really good studies in dogs that show that when you don't have good

protection from vaccinations, you can condition them with mushrooms and re-vaccinate and they develop protection, long-lasting protection. So this also gives veterinarians and pet parents something that they can remedy so they can improve the duration of immunity that vaccines produce and make sure that it's protective immunity as well without having to revaccinate. And so you get all these benefits from using mushrooms.

for the youngster and for the oldster, in terms of vaccination, immune system, gut health, and it all visits to the skin, visits to the nervous system. this is really why I've gotten so passionate about this is because after forty years in practice, tired of putting out fires, it's

Angie (32:41)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (32:42)
time to start planting some trees, planting some trees

Angie (32:44)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (32:44)
in that, planting some good things in that garden.

So a garden that is our gut,

Angie (32:48)
Yes. Yes. Okay. That's that's really good advice. and that's it's actionable because sometimes when you're

Doc Rob Silver (32:54)
It is.

Angie (32:55)
into holistic health, it gets really overwhelming. And I have

Doc Rob Silver (32:59)
Well yeah.

Angie (33:00)
people come in and when I was making house calls, Jojo and I would always say, Well, we have the bucket of supplements and so I really try to cut down on the bucket of supplements, but I find that most supplements that people are buying over the counter

don't

really have therapeutic doses of what they're trying to

Doc Rob Silver (33:16)
well no, be because what you want

to put on a label, the the pet parent's gonna look at that and kind of compute what's gonna cost them a month. And so

because the FDA doesn't want us to make medical claims and supplements aren't medicines, even though we use them as medicines, it behooves the manufacturer, and I create labels, to use the lowest effective dosage and that kind of a real wellness level, so that one

it looks more cost effective to the consumer. And two, it doesn't disturb the FDA to think that we're trying to treat something. But the reality is oftentimes the label on the bottle is not sufficient to treat an individual, especially if you're trying to do something that's therapeutic. And talking about cannabis as compared to mushrooms, because I still am really into the health benefits of cannabis and CBD and everything else.

And I was fascinated by the cannabis plant that had so many ingredients in it that all had bioactivity and benefits to health. Mushrooms have even more. mushrooms are food. They're a super food. And so, in terms of looking at all the different supplements you can give, sometimes just giving a mushroom with everything it has in it is almost like giving a handful of pills because it has such a wide ranging different types of

ingredients in it that all benefit different parts of health, not just gut health. we know about beta glucans and their influence on the immune system, but just like cannabis, mushrooms also have terpenes. And the terpenes cross

Angie (34:44)
Right.

Doc Rob Silver (34:45)
the blood-brain barrier and have an effect on mentation and nervous function, they go to liver. there's a myth that mushrooms are bad for the liver, but the reality is there's a lot of studies that show mushrooms actually are protective of liver function. Cordyceps

as a mushroom protects kidney function. and we've got studies in experimental chronic kidney disease that shows that cordyceps actually lowers creatinine so lowers B U N and it's one of the tastiest mushrooms out there. in the functional feline I added even more cordyceps than in the Daily Dog because I wanted that to address the feline. basically those two formulas are identical

except more cordyceps in the functional feline and I took the seaweed out of the feline, not because seaweed's not good for cats, but because if we put seaweed in the functional feline, then the FDA requires that we put a warning on the label that cautions people with hyperthyroid cats about that. and so we believe that it's better not to have those warnings on the label in terms of consumer

purchasing it and so rather

Angie (35:49)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (35:50)
than not have the warning and being against the statutes, we just took the seaweed out. I think seaweed's really good for cats, except for those that have, some thyroid issues, actually. Yeah.

Angie (36:00)
Right. Okay.

Well, and I think a lot of people come into my exam room and they show me all these mushroom supplements and they're like, which mushroom do I get? And I it's been really nice to point them to the to the mushrooms you've formulated because I know you've given it great thought and used all your experience. And so thank you for making those because there's

Doc Rob Silver (36:20)
Yeah.

Angie (36:21)
so many supplements on the market.

Doc Rob Silver (36:23)
Let me say something if I may about that, because I think this is important information. I'm just publishing a study, a peer-reviewed study about this topic. But there are many products out there that claim to be mushrooms that have no mushroom in them. They're just mycelium, a little bit of mycelium that's been grown on cereal grain. And even some of the more well-known brands are those kinds of mushrooms. That's why

company I'm with calls themselves real mushrooms because that's really what we have. And so I did a study where I measured beta glucan content in these products and compared that to digestible starch content. If it was a mushroom, it would have high beta glucan and low starch. If it was mycelium grown on grain, there's just a little bit of mycelium in these, then it would be high digestive starch and low beta glucan. So it was very easy to sort out where they came from.

We blinded them all so there's no bias. And then when we unblinded them we went, yeah, that's true. And then you could read many of them will tell you on the label. And they'll say something like, mycelial biomass they'll tell you what kind of grain they have in there, but some don't. And one very popular brand that a lot of veterinarians use for cancer has almost no mushrooms in it at all. And that's and that's

Angie (37:38)
no.

Doc Rob Silver (37:39)
what got me that's what pissed me off. And that's what got me going with this study is

it delays effective treatment to be giving grain to an animal who has cancer. And it was formulated by one of my best friends, but when his company got sold, similarly to how RX Vitamins got sold, they dumbed it down. They made it more made it less less expensive to manufacture fewer mushrooms in it so they could make better profits. So yeah, so I'll I'll have that paper, hopefully that paper will be published soon in Animals and it'll be open source so anybody can

can download it and read it and and see. I don't to reveal the names of the companies 'cause I don't think that's kosher, but but you know who I'm talking about. Yeah. Mm.

Angie (38:17)
I know who you're talking about. I know yeah.

that's good information. I wouldn't have I wouldn't have known that. Okay. Well this has been so

Doc Rob Silver (38:23)
Yeah. Mhm. There there are some other there

are some other companies other than real mushrooms which do produce good quality products, but that's because they buy their raw materials from real mushrooms parent company that has been growing the mushrooms for forty years under organic standards in China. And and

Angie (38:43)
Okay.

Doc Rob Silver (38:43)
China China is the best place for mushrooms. They've been growing them for a thousand years. They know how to do it. And

Angie (38:50)
Right.

Doc Rob Silver (38:51)
And now and they're all grown in areas that aren't polluted, they're triple tested. I mean, I know people have kind of Chinophobia, you know, these days. But China's

Angie (38:58)
You're right. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (38:59)
a great place and it has a lot of good stuff, if you know what to look for.

Angie (39:01)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Okay, great. my gosh, this has been so helpful. Can I can I ask you one more question? Just integrative vet to integrative vet. One more. What

Doc Rob Silver (39:11)
didn't have I'll get sure. Sure, you can ask me two.

Angie (39:15)
is the one thing or maybe a couple things that other integrative vets say that that give you the ick or make you cringe?

Doc Rob Silver (39:27)
Well, I think you probably mean holistic bits, the integrative bits. And just for the for for the followers, the integrative means that you take the best of holistic medicine and you blend it with the best of conventional medicine. Whereas holistic medicine is more you're rejecting or not using any conventional medicine. And to speak to something you said earlier, when I would talk at at you know holistic clubs at various vet schools

There were so many vet students that just wanted to go right into holistic medicine. You know, and my advice to them has always been: you really need to know, conventional medicine to know what an alternative to it is. And, I'm not sure I know what the answer is to the question you're asking me. I'm not sure off the top of my head. Why don't you share with me what you have in mind?

Angie (40:14)
I just wonder, you know, I think of you as another integrative veterinarian that's grounded. And I think, there are holistic veterinarians out there and or integrative or, whatever we're gonna say and I sometimes I feel like they they ruin it for the rest of us because they give they give it a bad name. And so sometimes like when people say like, vaccines last for longer than

a year and you're like, Yeah, but what vaccine are you talking about? You know, like they'll they'll make these really blanket statements that, I feel like make it really hard for people that have integrative leanings or holistic leanings or want to use those types of medicines. It makes them makes it hard for them to trust us. And so I think there's some damage that gets done to veterinary medicine when, there's a lot of conspiracy theorists out there. And I mean there's probably some

Doc Rob Silver (41:07)
I I agree with you. I

Angie (41:07)
You know, truth to that.

Doc Rob Silver (41:08)
mean, I think some of the things I hear, about some pharmaceuticals, for instance, which I think, pharmaceuticals have side effects. That's the downside to pharmaceuticals. And there are

Angie (41:16)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (41:16)
going to be some very nasty side effects with pharmaceuticals that, are are needed to be given. You know, the Apoquels cytopoints even this Librela which I think, has had some really awful side effects, but it there's also a lot of dogs that have benefited from it.

So I think

Angie (41:32)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (41:33)
you really have to be more balanced in how you look at things and and

Angie (41:37)
Mm.

Doc Rob Silver (41:37)
maybe and I don't really think the pharmaceutical companies are in a conspiracy. They just want to make money. I mean working with a corporation now I understand how, the most important thing to a corporation is the bottom line, and sometimes they kind of overstep the bounds when they g when they go there. But I'm kind of nerdly and I always go to the evidence and

Years ago, there was a veterinarian who who started talking about how we needed to be more evidence based. And that was kind of the first we had heard of that as holistic vets. And the first we reject I rejected, got but now I realize and especially with our access to so much literature, online, that there's information out there that can help you decide if something is good or bad for that individual patient. And

I think there's very few things that are universally not good, although maybe metronidazole is when you're talking about the the microbiome. but I think it's I think, medicine really is very individual. vaccinations

Angie (42:29)
Yes. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (42:36)
are more of a population medicine than an individual medicine. And there's gonna be some fallout in individuals who are very s even with the mushrooms. I do a lot of customer service with people who have taken the mushroom

product and their dog had a reaction. And I'm not a

Angie (42:52)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (42:52)
lot. I mean it does happen. I mean we sell thousands and thousands. I get maybe one or two a month. But, I mean they'll be giving a dog a teeny, just one three hundred milligram capsule to a a a seventy pound German shepherd and one capsule and the dog's vomiting and has diarrhea. Now that rarely happens, but it happens, and

Angie (43:09)
Yeah. Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (43:10)
it's not dangerous to the dog. We just say, okay, maybe it's not suited to take mushrooms. There's you know

We can't give everything to everybody, And

Angie (43:18)
Yes.

Doc Rob Silver (43:19)
so, I think we have to take everything for what it is, and we have to look at the evidence and we have to be balanced in how how we look at stuff. And that's what I try to bring to my educational practice processes and everything else. I'm teaching a course on CIVT, I don't know if you know that, called The Essentials of Veterinary and Medicinal Mushrooms. And it's been very popular

just trying to get the word out. I think, the more

Angie (43:40)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (43:40)
we learn the more we know about this stuff.

the better we can use it.

Angie (43:45)
that's amazing. Can I sign up is it race approved?

Doc Rob Silver (43:48)
It is race approved. It's like for ten race credits and we're starting a new one this fall. So check it out. Yeah. And I it's it's it's pre recorded,

Angie (43:55)
Yeah, I definitely would love to do that.

Doc Rob Silver (43:57)
but then we do some live sessions as well. And with the live sessions, I bring in all the new stuff from the prior year. Like there's stuff on the microbiome I wanna bring in. There's an antioxidant in mushrooms called ergothionine that we believe is the longevity vitamins. that we haven't even gotten there, to talk

Angie (44:13)
Okay.

Doc Rob Silver (44:14)
about that, and

and so there's a lot more inform and then Real Mushrooms has created a pure mycelial product from lion's mane that looks to be incredible. And it's it's a new way of cultivating the mycelium. It's the same way that we get the PSP, which is the mycelial extract that was used in the hemangiosarcoma studies, which got everybody interested in mushrooms. And so we're doing the same thing. That was turkey tail's mycelial extract for hemangiosarcoma.

We're doing a lion's mane, mycelium extract, for cognitive and neurologic function. And so some some adding on in this course information that keeps coming up each year in the live sessions, which are two one hour webinars and then it's also a Q and A type of deal. So yeah, I think you'll you should, yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Angie (44:59)
I'll sign up. Yeah, do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amazing. Thank you so much. what would you like

Doc Rob Silver (45:06)
You're welcome.

Angie (45:07)
to leave everyone with today?

Doc Rob Silver (45:09)
love your pets. Love your

Angie (45:10)
Yeah, yes.

Doc Rob Silver (45:12)
pets. Yeah, I I think we've I've left them already with a lot of information. I hope it's of interest to them. I am

Angie (45:18)
Yeah, yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (45:19)
available. I do have a website and I do a once-a-month live event, which is about two hours long. We have a very loyal following. We get about 40 people live or maybe a hundred people sign up. I do a little teachy thing and then we have a QA.

And we don't finish till all the questions are answered. And usually I

Angie (45:36)
Wow.

Doc Rob Silver (45:36)
I can answer them all. It's about two hours. And yeah, and then we talk a little bit about the products, do a little salesy thing, because you know that's kind of what we do these days.

Angie (45:45)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (45:45)
so that might be something. People could go to my website, which you can, maybe put in the comments or something. It's called Wellpet Dispensary. And we sell stuff there too. I don't want to compete with what Angie does. But the live event I think is is worth coming and all you have to do is sign up for our

weekly newsletters to to be informed. It's the fourth Thursday of each month,

Angie (46:05)
Amazing on a week I don't have my kids. I'm gonna try to catch one of those. What time are they?

Doc Rob Silver (46:10)
it's at six o'clock mountain time, five o'clock

Angie (46:13)
Okay.

Doc Rob Silver (46:14)
Pacific time, eight o'clock Eastern time.

Angie (46:16)
Nice. Yeah. I can learn more. I always learn from you. So I I appreciate I appreciate

Doc Rob Silver (46:22)
Well thank you. Yeah.

Angie (46:24)
hanging out and w

Doc Rob Silver (46:25)
Well and if if

you join I I just may tap you to to to join in on some things there

Angie (46:31)
Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (46:31)
too, if you do, which is great. We had Margot Roman on a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you know Margot or not.

Angie (46:36)
yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (46:36)
she's in Massachusetts and she also is a source of freeze dried and fresh stools for FMT as well.

Angie (46:44)
Yeah, she's the one that got me into fecal transplants like over a decade ago. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (46:46)
Okay. Yeah, she's great. And she claims

she claims I'm the person who who got her into microbiome, actually, because

when I was teaching about leaky gut, and leaky gut definitely fits into microbiome, I found a study out of Australia where they had humans that had chronic C. diff Clostridium difficile infections that were being treated with lots of drugs and weren't getting much better. They did fecal transplants on these humans.

And this was the first I'd ever heard of this. And so I started presenting this in my lectures and I said, maybe this is why dogs like to eat their own poop And maybe it is, actually,

Angie (47:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Doc Rob Silver (47:23)
and so she was in that lecture and that's what got her brain going. And now she and I are working together again, and I'm trying to get her to get involved in this platform with me because I think she'd be a great resource for pet parents and veterinarians to to understand what's going on with the microbiome. But she also has her own product

Angie (47:39)
Absolutely.

Doc Rob Silver (47:40)
line.

Angie (47:41)
Yeah. Okay, great. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for being on. Thanks for listening.

Doc Rob Silver (47:45)
Anyway. It's been great, yeah. Sure.

Angie (47:48)
We'd love to hear from you listening. leave a comment, leave a review. Let us know if you have any questions about the microbiome and mushrooms, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.