Welcome to the Natural Health for People in Pets podcast, a show that aims to empower you with the knowledge and tools needed to take control of your own health and wellbeing, as well as providing health promoting strategies for the dogs in your life. The world of health and nutrition can be overwhelming, so what better way to understand what works and what doesn't, what's evidence-based and what's not, then to hear it from someone in the know.
So please welcome your host of the show, accredited naturopath and nutritionist Nelle Cook. Welcome back to Natural Health for People and Pets. I'm co-host of the show, Glenn Cook, but I'm gonna introduce the host of the show, Narelle Cook, who's going to also introduce our special guest. Hello everyone.
We have a really exciting show for you today and we are very excited and privileged and fortunate to be able to speak to Dr. Christopher Lee, who is the veterinary director of C B D Vets Australia. C B D Vets is literally Australia's first veterinary service where pet owners can legally access medicinal cannabis under the care of an Australian registered veterinary practitioner. To give you a quick background on Dr. Lee, he has been a small animal veterinarian for over 30 years.
He's certified as a veterinary acupuncturist, which we just love and we've spoken about the huge benefits of acupuncture on the show before. He has a keen interest in small animal surgery orthopedics. He's recently been to the University of Tennessee to gain his canine rehabilitation practitioner certification. And Dr. Lee runs his own veterinary practices in South Australia where he and his amazing team specialize in pet rehabilitation regenerative medicines,
including the advanced pain care techniques. So I'm guessing Dr. Lee, that's where your interest in the clinical application of C B D for pets came about with your pain care techniques. But welcome, there's so much we've got to talk about today. I know this is a really big topic for a lot of pet owners. I get a lot of emails every week from pet owners asking me about options for not only chronic pain but stress, anxiety, epilepsy, you know, all things that C B D comes to mind for.
So there's lots of things that we can cover today, but I dunno if there's anything else you wanna say as an introduction. Maybe we can just begin by outlining what is C B D, and one of the main questions I get asked is, what's the difference between C B D and something like hemp seed oil? Thank you very much for having me on your show today, Narelle. Very excited to be here. Yes, that's, uh, very good questions. I guess, uh, just a bit more about what I'm about.
I've been a vet for a long time now and you know, animals give so much to us as, uh, as human beings, as as owners and, uh, pet parents. And when you think of what they can do for us and what they've done for us, really pain control becomes something that's very close to most veterinarians focus and heart because we know that pain causes so much issues. And as a result through my career, I've always been very interested in trying to, you know, look after our pets the best possible way.
And their quality of life translates to a lot more joy that we see from them. And of course it brings so much benefits to our health and our joy as well, and they become part of our family. And that's why it's so absolutely important that we look after furry friends. My journey's gone through a long, a long way. I guess it's 30 years of a long way and being a surgeon as well,
like my passion is in surgery. We do cause a lot of pain in surgery, so I'm always looking at advanced techniques of, uh, pain relief to look after our patients post-surgery and for their whole life, even just for chronic pain for arthritis and things like that. So obviously straight away when I graduated back in 91, I qualified pretty much immediately with the International Vet Acupuncture
Society with acupuncture in 92. And then, uh, my journey went on to, uh, surgical, uh, learning episode for five years in the uk and then I came back to Australia. We probably got into stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine. So that's another form of painkiller and healing that's super
important. And then of course, uh, rehabilitation has, let me down a big rabbit hole of different technologies including electrical stimulation, tens, ultrasound, shockwave therapy, and, and of course C V D came along straightaway my years picked up and, uh, went and explored it. So C B D is actually stands for cannabinoids and they are extracts or active ingredients of the cannabis part. Cannabis, of course, is the most well known for its marijuana, which is cannabis sva.
And that is, uh, has a very high level of T H C in it, which is the psychoactive component of cannabis. But then C B D, which is cannabidiol and these names are just crazy because there's a lot of different names that are very similar sounding.
C B D itself is actually also a cannabinoid part of the marijuana plant, but it does not have the psychoactive components and it also has a lot of the health components of the cannabis plant, which on looking into it, and I'm sure your listeners and uh, readers know it probably has a hell of a lot of benefits that, uh, makes it sound as if, as the of all illnesses in the world and in many ways it can be. So yeah, so that's my journey down into why I'm here now talking about A C B D oil.
It is an extract of the, uh, cannabis plant. We do not have to be worried about C B D being addictive. It is not, it does not give us the high that marijuana does either. And it is, uh, extract of the leaves and the stalk and the flowers of the cannabis plant, but not the seed. And this is where the other confusion is when we have cannabis seed oil that actually has no C B D or T H C in cannabis seed oil that is actually just a nutritional supplement. Like olive oil would be high in omega three,
omega six fatty acids and vitamins and minerals. But, uh, none of the medicinal benefits of the cannabis plant itself. And I think that's a big point of confusion for a lot of people in pet owners is hemp seed oil is heavily promoted and there's a lot of misinformation and mismarketing around hemp seed oil versus C B D. So, uh, it's great to clarify the difference between the two and it's good for pet
owners to know. I mean, hemp seed oil has enormous nutritive and health benefits as you mentioned. And I guess because they are different, if a pet owner does have their pet on hemp seed oil for general health and wellbeing, they can still incorporate C B D under the care of a vets. That's right. And C B D itself is a fascinating, uh, compound. Certainly. Uh, I've been ordering my C B D from C B D Vets Australia and the reason
I've done so is that it's pretty much pure. Hmm. And that is, uh, something that's really, really important. That means I get predictable results when I use it. And C B D itself has been shown to have painkiller activity in some cases similar to codeine, which is, uh, opioid. So that's a,
a phenomenal, uh, result. It's got antioxidants in it, it it's neuroprotective, it's been used in epilepsy treatment and has been shown in several clinical trials to be beneficial for epilepsy and also registered in the human field for
it. C B D has also been neuroprotective, so we do know that it has benefits and there is, uh, studies done with dogs with degenerative myelopathy, which uh, unfortunately some dogs will suffer from where the nerves degenerate in the spine has been used for intervertebral disc disease. So neurologically it's uh, it's a, it's a wonderful drug for pain and neuroprotection. Um, it's got other benefits such as it's found to be anti-cancer.
And recently this year, this research done as an antibiotic as well. It's potential benefits are pretty much limitless really, um, from what I can tell. But ultimately the other small benefit that comes with C B D oil is that it actually makes our pets feel more settled because it does have a mood balancing effect. So C B D is interesting because it's really, uh, the science behind it's not really well understood.
It's got to do with the endocannabinoid system, which is a neural hormonal pathway system that's not very well known in at all. And it's really important that this system regulates our balance in our body. So it balances our mood and uh, hormones and uh, abilities to control inflammatory responses. And certainly in humans they're investigating it in many autoimmune diseases including I B D. It's a fascinating compound, but to be fair, a lot of it is unknown.
And while it's been proven to have benefits, how effective are these benefits that's yet to be discovered and what dose rates we need to get the effects is still completely unknown. It is pretty much venturing into a little bit of unknown territory when we start talking about C B D oils. But there's plenty of proven benefits about how it actually works, what dose rate we need. Most of that is still, uh, under investigation.
We do know a couple things though we do know that it's a great painkiller. We do know that it's good for epilepsy and we do know that it is a good mood balancing product as well. And being neuroprotective is also good for any nerve degeneration issues. Sounds like CBDs the new turmeric, 'cause turmeric in the past has been touted as the elixir to every sort of
health condition. We actually started, Glen and I started on the journey of C B D because of one of our French bulldogs, you know, with spinal issues, which is certainly not uncommon in the breed. So we've touched base with C B D Vets Australia, which has been wonderful and I'll talk a little bit more about how people can get in touch at the end of the show.
But one of the other benefits I've read that people may not think of, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, Dr. Lee, is for allergies because a lot, you know, so many dogs suffer from varying degrees of atopic dermatitis or just, you know, food allergies, environmental allergies, and it makes sense to me that C B D may potentially play a role in providing relief for those dogs being such a potent anti-inflammatory agent, you know,
helping to calm the nervous system or the immune system helping to just reduce that angry inflammation and sort of redness topically and even the disruption that chronic, quite severe allergies can have in terms of quality of life. But you know, disrupting sleep, creating anxiety, creating more compulsive behaviors in dogs. Is that something that you've used it for or had any case studies that you've come across in the use of C B D for allergies in dogs?
I must admit I haven't used it for allergies and dogs because there are so much more other products that are so effective and proven with allergies in the veterinary world. We tend to use what we know has been proven and successful and safe. And when we run out of ideas and we do not have any other options, then we start reaching out to more experimental or more unknown products such as
uh, C B D, which are still being investigated thoroughly. So with allergies, I haven't specifically gone to C B D as a treatment for allergies basically because we've got so many other super effective treatments for it that can be very effective. There is a very strong anti-inflammatory component, uh, because that's the second component after the neurology, the nervous system that C B D works on and that's why there's investigations into inflammatory bowel disease and allergies at the moment.
It's certainly a benefit, certainly a help, but exactly how great that help once again is question is a big question at the moment and certainly a lot more investigations need to go into it. And the beauty about C B D, which I probably haven't mentioned yet, is that it's extremely safe.
So there's very little harm that can be done with C B D by adding it onto other allergy forms of treatment and certainly can reduce uh, use of uh, medicines if you're using C B D as well at the same time for allergic conditions. You raise a good point. You're saying that C B D is very safe,
but there still are a lot of unknowns as you indicated. Which brings me to, you know, a concern that I have for pet owners who do have dogs in chronic pain states and they go online and they just start Googling C B D oil and they might buy something that comes in from overseas, for example, because not as tightly regulated in countries like the us. So what are your concerns about people who are just buying a product marketed as C B D from the internet? Yeah.
Look, there's a lot of stuff out there. I've even seen things in super markets with C B D on it. And I think that even what, uh, about three years ago there was a massive study done in America about nutraceuticals. I think they investigated over 200 nutraceuticals for human use. And these were things that omega three fatty acids, uh, chondroitin, glucosamine, you know, just your normal supplements that are in the human field.
And unfortunately they found most of those compounds did not have what they or most of those products on the shelves did not have what they claimed was in it. Some of them had zero active ingredients, and others actually had 20 times too much, which is actually toxic. And that's on products that are well-recognized brands and it was independent of price or branding what they found in these nutraceuticals. So it could have been your big brands that were selling these, uh,
products that we are all aware of. So when it comes to C B D oil, a lot of it, there's no guarantees that you're getting what you're asking for. And certainly what we as veterinarians would use would be to try to get the pure ingredients. So, and that's really important because there's no point buying something which may or may not have any active ingredients in it. And the second problem with it is how is this product made? What toxins are in it or what impurities are in it and how was it even
manufactured? So C B D oil cannabinoid extractions, there are about three or four different ways and people can, you know, extract it using solvents and petroleum type products, uh, like alcohol or various solvents like, like that. And when they do that, we have found petroleum toxins in the end of the distillate section. The cheaper ways of doing it is to extract it with olive oil for example.
But once again, you know, pesticides and poisons that might be on the plant or in the process that's not been purified. The cleanest and most accurate, safest way of extracting it is with a carbon dioxide extraction system, which is also the most expensive, but it is the cleanest and purest C B D oil that you can get. And then they need to be analyzed to make sure that the product has no surety and no toxins in it.
And most of these products out in the market because it's in the over the counter products, just like your supplements in America, they're not regulated. So there's no requirement for them to prove that what is in it is really what they say is in it, is what really is in it. So I have a lot of clients that's come to me and guiltily, you look at me and say, oh yeah, but I, I've got some C B D and I've used it on my dog said it doesn't work.
And I'll go, well, it's probably not pharmaceutical grade and we do need to use pharmaceutical grade products to be safe and effective. And when I tell them about the price of C B D, the eyes bogle and they go, well that's not how much I paid for mine. I said, well why don't you try these for a couple of weeks and come back to me? And invariably they all come back and say, oh my God, it's amazing my dog's different now. It's so much more happier,
it's less painful. Obviously what I was giving before was, was rubbish. And it's like, yeah, well that's, that's usually the case. So it's really important that we get our drugs from a reputable source that is pure and that has active ingredients that it claims it has. And also while it is extremely safe, there are side effects and every animal can have side effects to different
products. And if you do not know the concentration of what you're giving, then the risk of getting into an adverse reaction as well becomes much greater. And it may not be the C B D itself that's poisonous. It may be that it could be interacting with other medications your pets are getting or the toxins may be and that could cause some serious side effects. It's quite sad that in trying to do the right thing by their pets, you know, a lot of pet owners can be inevitably doing harm to them.
I mean we're quite lucky to have quite strict regulations in Australia through the T G A, which as you mentioned is a lot more lax in the US with supplement side of things.
So I guess one of the risk is not just whether their C B D that someone buys offline is contaminated or you know, they may not know the accurate dose or the dosage given is for humans and people may not know how to accurately dose that down appropriately for the dog or how to introduce it to the dog in a way that you know, is titrated up in a safe and effective manner.
So there's a lot of things that I guess people don't realize need to be taken into account, you know, the health status of the dog, like you said, any medications that they're on, any other health conditions that they're suffering from. So really people do need to be under the care of a vet who understands C B D to do it in the most safest way possible for their dog. That's right, Narelle. And the thing about medications that we have to remember is that a lot of
medications are actually sourced from nature. Paracetamol, aspirin, a lot of medications that we use for heart disease and so forth, they are all naturally occurring compounds that has been purified, experimented on thoroughly and then market it as a medication for you know, whatever heart disease or or whatever it may be. And because they've been thoroughly experimented, we know exactly their side effects and their uh, benefits and their risks of using it.
Products that are fairly new onto the market that's going through all this research. For example, like C B D, A lot of experimentations going through it. It has been registered as safe levels for certain usage. But certainly for us in uh, the veterinary field, because it's not been licensed specifically, there isn't any real published materials saying that you can use C B D oil but you can't use it with X, Y or Z or you can't use it. You know,
because the experimental studies haven't been there yet. Hmm. So because of that, using pharmaceutical grade products, which we know are pure means that we can carefully titrate our doses up, as you mentioned, to make sure it doesn't act to anything else that your pet might be getting. And as a result of that, we can use it extremely safely with all the wonderful effects and none of the side effects 'cause we're always watching out for those.
We don't really know what the uh, long-term, uh, usage of C B D oil is in with is going to produ, you know, is going to result in with animals. But certainly the toxicity trials are very, very safe and people that are using it are understanding that it is a,
is a non-licensed product. In other words, it hasn't been regulated to be said that it is definitely safe in animals and we do have to use it at our own risks because of that and we have to use it cautiously and report anything that may be abnormal back to your vets if, uh, if, if you see anything at all. But from my experience of it, and I've been using a fair bit of C B D now for over a year, I've got quite a few animals on it for quite a while, I've not seen a serious side effect at all.
The benefits is brought to pets that are on it, especially older pets or pets that are in pain is tremendous because unlike a lot of painkillers that we have in the veterinary field that are toxic today, uh, kidneys, C B D oil is completely safe in kidney disease. So it gives us an opportunity to use painkillers that are non-addictive because C B D is not addictive, it doesn't develop tolerance either.
So it doesn't mean that you need to keep increasing a dose over time like you would with narcotics. So there's a lot of benefits in C B D oil bearing in mind it's still a non-registered, non-licensed product and it is you at your own risk, but under careful supervision it's very, very safe and very, very beneficial. I guess there's a lot of medications used in the veterinary world that are off-label and you know, there is still a lot of those unknowns hanging over them, for example.
But a question I often get asked from pet owners is their pet has a chronic pain condition, their vet has told them that they need to go on something, whether it's meloxicam or gabapentin, you know, for the rest of the dog's life. So how would a pet owner make that decision about, you know, what's more indicated, whether you know, C B D is right for their dog or whether something like gabapentin is the better approach. Is there a thought process that you go through in a situation like that?
Well, it's a, it's a complicated one and once again, gabapentin is also a product that's not licensed for use in dogs or cats either. So uh, it falls under the same sort of category and it really does depend on coexisting diseases in the pet though it could be cognitive dysfunction syndrome whereby, you know, you might have a a a pet, it doesn't have to be old.
I mean scientifically if scientists or veterinarians are looking specifically at cognitive dysfunction syndrome, we find it as young as dogs of seven year or eight years of age. Whereas clients or as um, pet owners, we don't tend to see them till they're 12 or 13 years of age before we start recognizing cognitive dysfunction syndrome. So there are a lot of other factors, PET based, disease based factors as well as concurrent medications that would determine
which medication we would then tend to lean towards. For me, I tend to look at whether there's other issues as well. If it's just for pain, well you know, there are lots of variety of medications available and once again as a veterinarian I guess I would lean towards the registered known products that we know have been thoroughly experimented and safe for long-term use and if those are not available to me or they're not giving me a sufficient response, then certainly C B D oil, gabapentin,
those products come into fold and we would probably choose one based on whatever the most benefit it would give to that particular patient. So if the doc's suffering from anxiety, if it's suffering from cognitive dysfunction, I'll probably tend to choose C B D because it does have neuroprotective
function, it can slow the uh, cognitive dysfunction syndrome down. You know, if it's just acute pain and anxiety and it's a cat, well there's a lot less information known about cats and and C B D, so I would tend to reach for gabapentin in that situation. So it is something that needs to be assessed by your veterinarian depending on which product suits your pet best. You mentioned acute presentations there.
I guess in my mind I've always just thought of C B D as sort of a long-term use product for chronic conditions, but can, can it be used effectively acutely, like for short-term acute presentations and then discontinued and then reintroduced as needed if there's any flareups for example? Or is that sort of not its best use?
Well I've started using that in short-term conditions as well. For example, post-surgical in some cases and look, I'm getting really good results, no side effects and I do ramp it up quite quickly in those acute
phases. But when you're talking about chronic cases, certainly there's the opportunity to go slow, which is the recommended way of approaching any non-registered, non-licensed product and slowly build it up watching for side effects or adverse events acutely, I've used it a couple of times where my routine drugs are of no good, you know, the the kidney, the dog, the dog or the cat's got kidney disease and I need something else different that I can use and it's anxious for example.
So I do tend to reach for C B D in those situations and I've had pretty good results with it. I do find that I do get a response within a day or two, but it is fair to say starting slow and going up slowly. It might, it might take longer for you to get a response as well, but I've also found that a response at a much lower dose rate can occur as well.
So there is a fair bit of individual variants and that's, that's also something that we have to be a little bit careful about because uh, different animals, individual animals will absorb it at different rates as well. Yeah, it just highlights again the importance of using C B D under the care of a licensed veterinarian to mitigate any of those risks and to get the dosing right for the individual animal.
Would you think that C B D would be a good approach, a first approach if someone, their dog was in the early stages of a degenerative disease and they didn't really wanna go for any of the heavier medications at that point, could they potentially use C B D initially and see how that goes and then over time progress to something heavier if need be? Is that an approach that people could take with their dogs?
Like I guess I'm just thinking with our french bulldog, like his acts a bit of a mess but he's not so far that we need to put him on medication, but I'm, you know, in the back of my mind I'm thinking well maybe just a low dose of C B D might just give him a little bit of peace and comfort for the next couple years until things degenerate further and then we might need to go on to something like gabapentin longer term.
Yeah, that's a very good point Elle, and I think you, you're very correct in that because it's a natural compound, there is a a perception that it's safer, it is uh, certainly got a very high safety profile but we do know that it does affect the liver so we do have to be a little bit careful about that aspect of it as well with respect to uh, using it for say your dog's uh, back problem. I think it's a brilliant application for that.
This comes back to the original uh, statement I made just now, uh, about what is actually therapeutic levels because there's no point treating something if you are not getting a therapeutic effect. So we do know that we can give C B D for pain alone and we do know roughly the uh, correct dose to achieve that. And of course I'm talking about the pure pharmaceutical grade C B D that because we do have accurate control of what we're doing.
And the next question is what level do I need to use to achieve a neuroprotective effect of C B D? For example, if your dog's got a back issue, if I want to not just suppress pain but I want to protect the nerve, nerve function and preserve nerves, what dose rate do I need to get to before I get that effect? And that's, a lot of these questions are still under research at the moment.
So I guess in that situation I would tend to look at it saying, look, if your dog's got muscle spasms on its back, if it's got pain and discomfort, if it looks a bit stiff in getting up, we would titrate our C B D dosage up to the level whereby we can control most of that or until we see some adverse events happening. And that could be excessive drinking, it could be vomiting diarrhea, it could be excessive licking or some sort of abnormal behavior.
And then what I might do then is back it off a little bit and hopefully getting to a point whereby I have a happy healthy dog with no pain and probably some neuroprotection there would be where I would go to but exactly what dose I need to achieve for neuroprotection, I do not know, but hopefully we can at least at the very least control the pain and get the benefit of perhaps doing neuroprotection as well. Yeah. And I guess it doesn't have to be all or nothing, one or the other.
It doesn't have to be C B D or another medication. From what I've heard that C B D can be used quite safely alongside standard veterinary medications. So if someone's combining the two, the beauty of that might be that a lower dose of a medication can be used to minimize potential long-term side effects of that drug while still supporting the dog and getting a therapeutic benefit over time. Yeah.
That's right Noelle, the thing about it is that I guess I look at C B D as another drug, I treat it like a drug, it's, I've gotta respect it, it has known side effects even though they're very mild, is very low in toxicity because the toxic dose rates are thousands of times higher than therapeutic dose rates. So we know that uh, generally we're not gonna cause a lot of harm with C B D, that's the good thing.
But I still look at it as it is another drug in my armament of pain care I guess in, I don't tend to separate natural remedies from drugs in so much as I respect natural remedies as much as I would respect registered drugs. In both, I'm trying to understand your side effects, the benefits and the dose rates. Hi Dr. Chris, it's Glenn here. I'm the untalented passenger on this show .
So I'm sitting back and listening to the conversation between Narelle and yourself in regards to this, but something that I is sparking a little interest in myself, I would probably say as a consumer level when you're talking about side effects, what would be some of the most common scene side effects that you would see with C B D? The most common side effect I see really is uh, sedation.
We do see good side effects as well, which some of it is actually really beneficial such as increased appetite, especially in your older dogs or your animals with kidney disease. Once again, increased appetite is a great thing to have. We do see a mood balancing effect whereby the lytic as well as the antidepressant effects and so dogs are getting older, they might be getting a little bit, you know, confused, might be barking more.
I found that those dogs have benefited a lot from C B D as well because once again it's low toxicity, it doesn't affect the kidneys, which we are always very worried about with older animals. Dry mouth syndrome is described in people and we do find that some animals drink more water with C B D but I do not see any changes in renal parameters that would make me concerned that it's actually affecting the kidneys
at all. So I do think that that's a dry mouth syndrome in animals as well, essentially causing the increase in drinking, vomiting and diarrhea. But you know, the thing about it is that could be as much the carrier oil as it is the C B D drug itself because most CBDs are uh, mixed in with some form of carrier oil. Generally the side effects are low, but we do have issues when we start mixing C B D or any psychotropic type drugs, potentially psychotropic drugs with antidepressants.
So if you mix it with other antidepressants we could potentially get an Gabapentin and all these other painkiller drugs. With antidepressants you could get a serotonin syndrome which can cause seizures and potentially death.
So I guess that's where we want to stay well clear of that even though the C B D product by itself in a healthy animal is super safe when you mix it in with drug interactions, perhaps liver failure as your pet's getting older and you can metabolize these drugs and you eliminate it as well as it should, then you get a relative overdose of all these drugs building up in the system
and that's where we get in trouble. So adequate monitoring is really, really important and safe usage of any drug and as I said to you, I treat C B D like I would any other drug. Yeah.
It's a really good point and as the qualified herbalist as well, I'm always telling people just because it's natural, just because it's plant-based doesn't mean it's automatically safe and herbs have such powerful effects in the body that people aren't aware of and brush aside and but, but something like St. John's Ward, I mean that's one of the most contraindicated herbs out there with in terms of other medications and things like that that people may not think about.
So I dunno why today I've been sort of separating the C B D as a natural alternative from you know, the other sort of standard veterinary medications when they out or drugs and do have powerful effects in the body that people definitely need to be aware of.
I guess it's really my point of view. I mean, uh, it's just the way I think you're completely correct all your natural remedies, they all have side effects and toxicities when used inappropriately and that's why it needs to be guided by somebody like yourself or somebody that's educated in it's, it goes no different for C B D. Fortunately though, C B D is much safer than a lot of our therapeutic drugs in Australia. It's actually been de licensed from a SS four to SS three drug.
So in other words it's a pharmacy drug potentially. Now that's not gonna happen for a few more years because it's gonna pass some regulatory hurdles, but as a class of drug it has been dropped from S four to SS three. So that shows the level of safety that and the benefits of C B D at low dose away from toxic levels are fantastic and that's why I guess we had this conversation really because it is an exciting product that is both natural, it's organic as well.
It's got a lot of new therapeutic applications that we're not even fully aware of yet. For example, I think there is a study, uh, describing C B D as a new therapy in pain because it's using a glycine pain pathway that no, none of our current pain drugs are using. That's why it's so safe to add to other painkillers as well to give us that cumulative or synergistic effect where, you know,
one plus one doesn't necessarily even equal to it could equal three. Um, so C B D because it's completely in a different system to our pain pathways in many cases its side effects are also on a different pathway so it becomes something that we can add to a lot of other drugs very, very safely as well. So we talk about a lot about side effects. I think that's just because as a medical professional always cautious about causing harm and that's a lot of the focus of medical professionals.
You know, we want to get the best result but with the least harm. And of course to achieve that we are always thinking about, you know, the harm aspect and how how we can minimize that to maximize the benefits. But certainly the, the safety and effectiveness of C B D is something that, uh, is well worth looking into and, and using on your pets.
But find somebody that's familiar with C B D medications as well as you know, all the other routine therapeutics and balance it because the trick is if you get a good balance you can have the maximum lifespan with the least amount of discomfort and least amount of damage to organ systems which leads to better health. I think it's really exciting that pharmaceutical grade prescribed C B D is available to our pets in Australia.
Now that was a big point of wanting to do the show with you today is because of my journey with my French bulldog and wanting to source a pure source of C B D and not some random product from the internet that I dunno what it's contaminated with, I dunno what dose to use, I dunno how to titrate up or to manage the frequency. And I really wanted to highlight to people in Australia, pet owners in Australia, CBD Vets Australia is an option and it is really straightforward.
So go to their website, cbd vets australia.com au. It's full of amazing information and resources. Their blog page has lots of really interesting articles that people can read. And the actual process to speak to someone at CBD Vets Australia is really straightforward. You can give them a call or you can just fill out their online form and then they will give you a call back to get the ball rolling.
And so the way it worked with us, I contacted CB D Vets Australia, I had a call back and then they just put me in touch with the closest vet, uh, vet to me who prescribed C B D. And it was a really straightforward process. I took my dog there, my dog had a full vet check and we had a great conversation about, you know, what was going on and what my goals were for the dog. And we are still in that process, but I just wanna let people know, do the right thing by your dog.
Don't risk some adulterated product that either has too high or toxic levels of compounds in it or on the other end of the spectrum may have nothing medicinal or therapeutic in it at all and it's just an oil that's been marketed for therapeutic benefit. I know we're really conscious of your time Dr. Lee, is there anything else you wanted to let the listeners know today about C B D Vets Australia or C B D itself? I've only dealt with uh, C B D Vets Australia.
My confidence in them is that the, uh, products that they are selling are of extremely high quality. They supply a certificate of analysis for every product that I get from them. So I do know that I'm getting pure products and that that's important to me because for me, I'm not here to waste people's money on things that may not work. I do want things that work and work well. So, uh, I do find that good quality C B D products are not cheap. It's not necessarily, uh, something that I guess is,
is necessarily affordable for everybody. But uh, certainly with for small dogs and cats, it's extremely affordable for your really large dogs, especially if you're using uh, using it for epilepsy and things like that. But we tend to use higher doses. It can be quite expensive, but it's certainly well worth investigating. It is a bit of a pen here in that it's low toxicity, great benefits, multiple benefits throughout the whole body.
It's involved in making your pets feel a lot better. And for me, we started off dipping a toe in it, uh, with a couple of hundred mils and now we are ordering it by the liters every month because there are so many pets that we are using it on that are benefiting from C B D now. And people are finding that the pharmaceutical grades are so much more effective and safer than just a random product of the shelves, which has no compliance to it. In other words,
they don't have to be truthful of what they say is on the label. On that note, please talk to people that, uh, use C B D oil, uh, try to get the pharmaceutical great stuff, try it on your pets. It's fair to say that it doesn't work for every single pet, but um, for most pets that we've used it on, you know, a good 80% of people continue on with it and some even with very large dogs because they've seen the benefits of it and it's well worth the effort to, uh,
to access it. So look, it's a, it's a completely new sort of a group of therapy that we haven't had before in the medical field. So definitely look into it and especially if your dog's, uh, suffering from comorbidities and you need something that's low toxic, then certainly talk to uh, to CB Vets Australia. Yeah, and I just wanna point out too, there's provision on the CBD Vets Australia website for vets to become a prescriber.
I guess for those people who are in areas where there isn't a current prescribing vet close by to them, they may be able to gently convince their current vet to look into using that service with C B D Vets Australia. I know that I'm gently encouraging our own personal vet to uh, jump on board with the process. So it's just an option for people if, you know, they might just highlight their vet may not be aware that C B D Vets Australia
is a service available to them. So you know, you could always highlight that to your vet in a really nice way. It's been wonderful having you on the show today, Dr. Lee, and to highlight what C B D is, what conditions it can be effectively used for some of the things people need to be aware of in terms of the risks and the side effects and the importance of accurate dosing and having a pure pharmaceutical grade product. Once again, thank you very much. We appreciate your time. Absolutely.
Okay, thanks very much guys. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Dr. Lee. That was an interesting conversation with Dr. Lee. It was, it's so great to get experts in the field talking about something that a lot of people are interested in but just dunno where to go to get accurate information
and resources about it. So C B D, because it's not available legally for say natural healthcare practitioners to prescribe mm-hmm , it's not something that I've spent much time looking into because it's not available for me to give to clients. Mm-hmm So when our French Bulldog op started to have a few mobility issues and I'm like, ah, I'd love to explore C B D, I didn't know what to do or where to go, there's a lot of well-meaning people that will give you recommendations for what
to buy online. But because of my background and you know, I am so particular about quality and knowing exactly what my human clients are getting and my dog clients as well, I don't differentiate and say dogs, we don't need to know exactly what the excipients are and things like that. So I loved when I came across C B D Vets Australia's website and was able to talk to the people who actually know about it. And you're not getting a kickback from it either. Oh, I wish I was somehow . Yeah, I. Know.
That would be nice to get some cheaper C B D, but you know, like Dr. Lee said, you do get what you pay for and if you've tried C B D from an online source and you haven't seen the results or you've had negative effects that you've noticed in your dog, then it might be worth trying. It doesn't have to, you know, be a lifetime commitment. You can go through CCB d, vets Australia, get a quote, try it out for a short period of time and just make an assessment based on that.
I know Nelle came in and when she started researching all about C B D, she was like, we . And I said, all right, well let's do a podcast on it. And that was that. Yeah. And speaking of acts of quality, let's wrap up by talking about our wonderful sponsors, which we normally do at the start of the show, however, because we had Dr. Leon, we wanted to get straight into that interview. So tell us about our wonderful sponsors.
Our first sponsor is Big Dog Pet Foods Big Dog are an Australian company that have been manufacturing raw pet foods for 20 years now, so long before raw food feeding became a fad. So they really are the leaders and the experts in their field. Some of the key points of difference with Big Dog as compared to many other pet food companies is that big dog only use human grade ingredients in their raw patties and there's absolutely nothing synthetic or artificial added in.
And as a natural healthcare practitioner, I just love that they also offer complete transparency in everything they do. And something that we both love is the fact that they often post behind the scenes videos of their product manufacturing process. And the reason they can do that is because Big Dog believe in the quality of their products and the quality of the ingredients that they use in their
products. And so like they have nothing to hide from the consumer, which that's not something you typically see from any of the big pet food manufacturers. A lot of people may also not realize that the big dog patties are nutritional and complete and balanced according to official guidelines. So in this case, they can form with the Afco nutritional standards. Big Dog offer a great variety of different protein types, which means there's something to suit the taste buds of nearly every dog.
They also offer a great variety when it comes to treating various health conditions. For example, this is one that I've used a lot, like their kangaroo formula is only 4% fat as fed, which makes it a suitable option for dogs with mild cases of pancreatitis.
Their goat formula has very low phosphorus levels at only 0.2% as Fed, which makes it a great option for dogs with mild stages of kidney disease and where owners still would prefer to feed a little bit of raw food in the dog's diet Patties like their lamb formula, uh, super high in calories. So even just 1 250 gram patty contains nearly 600 calories, which is really great for dogs that need to gain weight or for very active in sporting dogs.
And then they also have their single protein formula for dogs with suspected food intolerances or allergies. I highly recommend that everyone visit their website, big dog petfood.com, check out their resource center, which is full of articles and guides and frequently asked questions all about raw food, feeding natural diets, and just general health and nutrition for both dogs and cats. I know I always tend to focus on dogs, but Big Dog also have raw food formulas for cats as well.
So definitely check that out. If you're a cat owner, jump into their social media pages, like their Facebook page, like their Instagram page full of amazing tips and resources there as well. So that's Big Dog Pet Foods. Our other sponsor, like Big Dog is Ballen Bone and they are also an Australian company and they make a range of dental sticks, collagen sticks,
superfood treats and freeze dried treats. Again, like Big Dog Ballen Bone believing, using quality ingredients and providing complete transparency when it comes to what they put in all of their products. All of the ingredients in the bowel and bone range are natural and healthy, which is so great to see, especially when it comes to dental sticks and dog treats.
And each of the dental and collagen sticks have real meat as the number one ingredient where commonly on the market you'll see grains as the number one ingredient. The dental sticks are great because they contain active ingredients that have been proven to not only freshen your dog's breath, but more importantly to fight plaque and tartar.
So a really good way to think about it in terms of if you give your dog a dental stick that doesn't contain active ingredients is like us cleaning our teeth with just a toothbrush and not using any toothpaste so it just doesn't make sense. Their collagen sticks are great to boost mobility and just to promote better health and wellbeing overall. So you can find Bell and Bone online or Instore at your favorite pet specialty store Australia wide. So that's bell and bone.com au.
And as an ongoing special for listeners of the show, you can get 20% off Bell and Bone products using the coupon code Ladybug, definitely jump on their website, bell and bone.com au into the coupon code ladybug, all one word. So thank you to our wonderful sponsors for the show. As always, great products, great service, great care for the pet community at large. And before we finish up, why don't you tell the listeners all about the range that you're offering?
I'm super excited to be stocking the Vet Activate Rain. A lot of the listeners will already be familiar with the joint health and the joint care products that the Vet Activate brands sell. So that's their products based on turmeric and curcumin and you know, rose Hips. So they're amazing products for joint health and joint care. But what I'm really excited about now is that I'm also stocking their brain fuel.
The Brain Fuel product is based on M C T oil and one of my favorite uses for M C T Oil is for senior dogs or dogs that are aging because there's a lot of research around the use of M C T oil for things such as canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome and just improved quality of life for our older dogs. So definitely get onto that. And then there's also their dental health products.
So the dental health is based on the active ingredient ASCO Phylum Nodosum, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it has been clinically shown to reduce plaque and tartar in dogs. So the beautiful thing about that is for pet owners who are not comfortable in feeding their dogs whole raw bones, this is a great alternative to still keep their teeth nice and clean. And last but not least, your liquid herbs.
Yes, I've got the Vet activate range, which is just going off the shelf and I, I should have mentioned with the joint health and the joint care, they have actually sold out unfortunately, and I'm expecting new stock to arrive towards the end of November. So for those of you who are currently using those products, you'll just have to wait a few more weeks to restock your shelves. Goes to show how popular they are. They're amazing.
And we've spoken on previous shows about the benefits we've seen from both of those products, particularly with Ladybug mm with her spinal. Injuries and also that little video of that dog that was limping up the stairs and after a couple of weeks of being on that product,
was running up the stairs on its own with a much better gait. If. You haven't seen that, jump onto my Instagram, Paige Natural Health and Nutrition and you'll see that video of the dog before and after the vet activate Joint health. And if you are a listener and you're using the joint health or joint care on your dog and you're seeing enormous benefits, please video it and send it into me. We would love to see it.
I know Vet Activate would love to get testimonials, so please make contact with me if that's something you'd love to share with everyone else. Moving on to my liquid herbs, I've got a great range of liquid herbal options. The top two sellers are always the milk thistle and the mushroom elixir. So they're great super safe tonics for dogs to use every day long term.
And you can read about why you might choose one of those for your dogs and the benefits on my website, natural health and nutrition.com au. And I guess one more thing before we go is my short course. Yeah, we better talk about that because that's been getting some traction lately as well. Yeah, so I've done a short course. It's all about understanding commercial pet food labels. So it goes for about two hours, it's only $39 Australian and it's broken down into great little chunks of information.
So you can do a little bit at a time if you don't have a full two hour spare in one go. But it takes you through everything you need to know about how to understand what you're actually feeding your dog. So what the different words on a pet food packet mean, what the guaranteed analysis means, what the ingredients list means, and the different foods in the ingredients list means.
So really fundamental information for every pet owner to understand what their dog's eating, because that's a big part of their health and their longevity. How about. Since Spell and Bone have just given a nice generous offer to have a discount off that you do one for your short course as well? Absolutely. I can do that. So what I can do for all the listeners today, let's do a 50% off. That's very generous. Yeah. So. I will on my Facebook page, natural Health for People and Pets.
So what we could do for a coupon code, since Bell and Bone using Ladybug, we better not leave out some of our other dogs. So let's do Pixel. Mm-hmm Pixel 50. Pixel 50 P I X E L five zero. Yep. I will make that happen. And you can jump onto my website, select the course, make sure you enter the coupon code and happy learning. And even if you don't use it for yourself like many other people do, is if you can recommend it to other people who may benefit from it.
Because I'm telling you now, there's a lot of people out there, like I'm talking hundreds of thousands of people who autonomously go into supermarkets and they just simply buy anything off the shelf without doing any research whatsoever in it because they've been commercially conditioned to do so. Many of us have, I've done it, you've done it. Most of us do it. It's not an insult to anybody, it's just a a way of life. So it's. Just, we don't know what we don't know. It's, we.
Dunno. That's right. Exactly. So it'll be beneficial to anybody who's got a domestic pet, even people who've got any type of pet whatsoever, but specifically in this case for dogs and cats. Mm-hmm. They could read exactly what it is that they're putting into their bowls every day for the rest of that pet's life. Absolutely. It is truly fundamental information that pet owners really need to be educated around.
And it's interesting because I get a lot of dog trainers listening to the show and when they do the course, like these are industry experienced people and even they're learning things that they didn't know before about what they're feeding their dogs and how.
Well, I was gonna say that it's probably not a bad idea that a lot of other industry professionals are doing it because unfortunately we get a little bit into a mantra of just selling whatever's in the front office or the front room or anything like that without really knowing what is it that I'm giving or recommending to my clients, my patients, my staff, my customers, whatever. Yeah.
And it's sad and, and this comes back to why we're so passionate in our support of companies such as Big Dog and Ballen Bone, because there are a lot of unscrupulous companies out there selling dog food. Mm-hmm. . And it really does fall back on the buyer to do their due diligence in assessing that food before they feed it to their pets. Absolutely. So don't believe the marketing hype. Do the course, learn the information for yourself and both you and your pet will be better off for it.
Last thing before we do, go tell everyone where they can find you all the dates. I've already mentioned, my website, natural health and nutrition.com au. That's where all the information about me and my products can be found. That's where you can purchase the Herbal Tonics, the Vet Activate Range, and the Understanding Commercial Pet Foods course. If you wanna email me, you can do that at [email protected] au.
If you've got any questions about the show, you can either email me or jump onto the Facebook page, natural Health for People and Pets and just pop a post there and I'll see that and we can have a chat that. Way. And don't forget to like your Instagram, you keep forgetting that every show. Yes. I'm slowly learning to use Instagram, so please support me by liking my page. Mm-hmm. and I will put more content on there. That. Sounds good. Okay. Thanks everyone. Bye. Bye.