Latest / Back In The Closet - Two Crazy Cat Ladies / Dental Health & Longevity with Dr. Zoolittle

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Dental Health & Longevity with Dr. Zoolittle · Back In The Closet - Two Crazy Cat Ladies

0:01
I'm Jay, I'm Adrian, and together we are crazy.
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Ladies, I'm going to cut you. I think I just peed.
0:10
Buckle up. We're back in the closet.
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Welcome to another episode of Back in the Closet with the 2
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Crazy Cat Ladies. We are super excited because
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back by popular demand, everyone was just absolutely in love with
0:26
this lady here at Pennywood AKA Doctor Zulittle, longevity
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junkie, longevity zoologist back this month, February to discuss
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dental health in in both big and small cats.
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So our our our little tiny tigers here.
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Thank you so much, Penny for joining us again.
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Thank you so much for the welcome.
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I love to talk about cats, so the fact that you've given me
0:55
the microphone again is amazing. You can have the microphone
0:59
anytime. I and I have to say, you know,
1:01
the very first time that you were on, we had a bit of a, a
1:03
technical, we had some technical challenges.
1:06
We ended up jumping. It was fun.
1:08
We ended up jumping on a zoom. So for anyone that jumped on
1:12
that technical difficulty, could you give a short intro for
1:16
anyone that doesn't already know you and love you?
1:19
Thank you. OK, sure.
1:20
Sure. So all right, short intro.
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That's the hard bit. So I'm a longevity zoologist,
1:25
which just means that from a understanding of animals, I'm
1:29
looking at how can we help them to live longer?
1:31
And this isn't to hit a benchmark.
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This is because, like, length of life is a measure of animal
1:37
welfare. And if you asked me five years
1:39
ago what I was, I tell you I'm an animal welfare zoologist
1:42
because that's always been the guiding thing.
1:44
But now it's like niching down to help like focus on one thing
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that doesn't get a lot of airplay.
1:48
And, and particularly in the health world, we've seen a
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massive reduction in long lifespan.
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So 50 years ago we were seeing pets, dogs living sort of 18 to
2:00
25 depending on breed size and cats living to their mid 20s and
2:04
sometimes and now that's half right.
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The average age of a dog is 10 1/2 years old, 10 1/2 years old,
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and the average age of a cat is 15.
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We know that the oldest cat got to 38, so 15 and 38 doesn't
2:16
compute. In my head, I'm like, let me
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bring my cognitive ethology, my behavioural neuroscience, my
2:21
animal welfare, zoology and everything I've done in
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functional and regenerative medicine to kind of pack it
2:26
together and go, how can we get a bit smarter and start copying
2:30
nature a bit better to give our ones at home that we love and
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chose, and I mean everything to us, the full quality of life
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that that they deserve. I love that and, and I'll just
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say from the top here that Penny has a course that she offers to
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to educate us in in longevity for our kitties.
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She's identified 7. Pillars.
2:53
Yes. Of longevity.
2:54
And she is so generous enough to give away a membership tonight.
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So for those who are joining us live, all you have to do is
3:01
comment in the in the comments hashtag membership.
3:06
And at the end of the podcast, we are going to do a draw ring
3:09
and we are going to pick a pick a winner to get a free.
3:14
I mean, this is this is an awesome.
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Penny, can you share a little bit about what this is because
3:18
this isn't this is I mean I'm sure that are in this, but can
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you share just a little overview of what this is and because this
3:26
is something that's super valuable.
3:28
So really quickly then you've just alluded to the course.
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So we're the course itself is animal anti ageing and it's 8
3:34
weeks live in the classroom with me.
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We're through a session at the moment we're up to week 6.
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It's amazing. We take one pillar at a time and
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dive into everything you need to know from a really general
3:45
knowledge and practical point of view.
3:47
So it's not a science course, right?
3:48
And so that's taking you through how to build a longevity
3:52
lifestyle for your pet. So you can take all the amazing
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sciences sitting up there in the universe that you don't know how
3:57
to read or find or comfortable they're looking for.
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I get it. Like I do that for you and then
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distill it down into, hey, just do this and you'll get three
4:05
extra years out of your pet kind of thing.
4:06
Like that's where we go with that.
4:08
So then membership is a year long access to the longevity
4:12
library. So it's got all the video, not
4:14
the course videos, that's something separate, but all the
4:17
videos of trainings and interviews and workshops and
4:19
master classes and stuff that I've taught that refer to these
4:22
places. Plus the guides are in there to
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give you the links of what to find and where to find it.
4:27
Plus there's a whole bunch of stuff that I can't go into now
4:29
because it will take too long. But it's a year long membership
4:32
where you can have on call access to anything and
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everything to do with the seven pillars of animal longevity.
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Wow, a year long access that is. You are just so generous.
4:40
Thank. You so it's on the ticker down
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here if you guys are interested in this, I know everyone is just
4:45
comment hashtag membership we've already got. 10.
4:48
We will. We will do the draw ring.
4:50
Yes, but today is all things teeth because it is national
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dental health. Pets.
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Awareness Month. It's a big long word, but it's
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all about dental health in February.
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And so we asked Penny to come back and speak with us about
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about dental health. So let's just jump right in with
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a, with a, a top question, right?
5:15
So you work with so many big cats.
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We see the statistics are right now with with our house cats
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that I think it's 70% of cats by the age of 3 will have some form
5:29
of dental disease and 90% of cats by the age of seven will in
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fact have dental disease, like bad dental disease.
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So we want to prevent this obviously.
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What do you see in the big cat world?
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Yes. Let me, let me start with your
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numbers for one second, because do you know what's really mad
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about this, like crazy wild about this, is that not one
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single animal, cats included, whether they're our ones or the
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wild ones, has DNA that codes for disease.
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They don't. DNA doesn't code for disease.
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DNA codes for health, DNA have codes for life, for building an
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animal's body in the 1st place and all the amazing things that
6:12
need to connect and, and integrate and build and whatever
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for that. And then how to maintain that.
6:17
That's the instruction manual that every living creature has,
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right? It doesn't code for getting
6:22
diseases. So when I hear statistics like
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that and I know those numbers and I know what they are for
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cancer and all these other things as well, because it's
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ridiculous, right? I know that that's not normal,
6:31
that's not natural. It might be common, right?
6:33
And it is common, way too common, but it is not normal.
6:36
It's not natural. It's not how it's supposed to
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be. So as soon as we know that, the
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whole world opens up in terms of hope because you're like that's
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this is a broken system. And unfortunately, usually it's
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us that are to blame for the brokenness because we go, oh,
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I'll just do it this way without bothering to learn really how to
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do it. So that means you can undo it.
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You can undo that. And so when I look at like I
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came into like the dental space through working alongside vets
7:01
in the zoo and seeing all these animals come in for their
7:04
annual, you know, scale and Polish and whatever else.
7:06
I was looking at all sides like the most amazing different
7:09
mouths out there in the animal Kingdom.
7:10
But anyway, so, and they were like, Oh yeah, we always have to
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do this. This one's got and I'm like, but
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why the the ones that I used to work with when I did field
7:18
ecology and wildlife work out in the field, like they haven't got
7:21
wrecked up teeth. Like we'd be catching animals to
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measure them and see how many there were and put a little
7:26
tracker on them and stuff like that for conservation.
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If we always check everything to make sure that they're OK before
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we, because if they need that care, obviously, then we'll may
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as well do it while we've got them kind of thing.
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But they're, they're, they're pristine.
7:37
They're lovely and occasionally you'll see one that's got like a
7:40
jaggedy tooth and you're like, oh, poor baby.
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That one's, you know, had a tooth injury, like it broke off
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on a, on a fight or he's just really, really old.
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And so the teeth are starting to get a bit brittle now, something
7:50
like, but you don't see plaque and tartar.
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You don't see abscesses, you don't get that red line on the
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gums. You don't see wobbly teeth.
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You don't have punky breath like it, none of it.
7:58
It's not out there. Why?
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Because they're doing nature's way of looking after health,
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right? And so you do nature behaviour
8:06
plus proper like normal natural animal DNA, cat DNA, put them
8:11
together no problem. So we're it's us.
8:15
So go ahead. Yeah, no, I was going to say
8:18
that. What, what would you say is
8:19
nature's way? Like what?
8:20
What is the like the main difference between our house
8:23
cats and their dental health and and big cats with these pristine
8:27
teeth their whole lives? Right.
8:29
So when we think about dental health, there's layers to this,
8:32
right? This is really actually, it's a
8:33
small space, but it's a really complex environment.
8:36
It is the gateway into the whole body, right?
8:38
It's the starting point of you got to think of the body as a
8:41
doughnut. All right, this is a funny
8:42
analogy, but you got to think about bodies as doughnuts,
8:45
right? So you've got the inside of the
8:47
doughnut, which is actually a hole.
8:48
Like if I like that and you put a piece of string all the way
8:51
through me, it's a hole. It's not actually in my body,
8:54
right? It's it's inside, but it's not
8:57
me. The dough part of the doughnut
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is where the flesh button bones are.
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This is just a great big long hole, right.
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So you've got to think about it in that sense that what you're
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putting into here is staying sort of semi protected from the
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rest of the thing. But anyway, what you put in here
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does then influence what goes into the into the into health,
9:15
right. So anyway, the gateway that so
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it's layered, it's complicated. It's not complicated.
9:20
It's laid, it's complex. So anyway, you've got teeth,
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you've got gums, you've got all the microbiome in here, you've
9:27
got the saliva and the pH. So we want to dress each one of
9:30
those 4 main components when we're thinking about how, what
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is it that the animals are doing.
9:35
So the wild animals, to finally answer your question, they are
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using something in nature to scrub their teeth, something in
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nature to keep the microbiome in good balance, diversified,
9:48
protected. They're using something to
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maintain pH in the healthy range so it's not going to acidic and
9:54
they're doing things that protect their gums.
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So what are the things that they're doing?
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They're eating carcasses. Like, who knew that it was that
10:04
simple Every time they punch their teeth, right?
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I'm using the canine teeth as the illustration because that's,
10:10
those are the punching teeth. These ones, nothing good for
10:12
nothing. These ones are a pair of
10:14
scissors. OK, so they're punching through
10:17
skin. Well, anytime you punch through
10:20
skin, you're, you're scrubbing all of the plaque off the tooth.
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It's like a little rubbery toothbrush.
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And then you're crunching down on those bones and those bones
10:30
are going behind the teeth, around the teeth, the back of
10:32
the teeth, the front of the teeth in between the, you're
10:35
crunching that down and all the ligaments and tendons that hold
10:39
the bones together so that the animal, you know, that used to
10:41
be alive could do its life, right.
10:43
All of that. That's like floss get in between
10:46
those teeth like so that's rubbery and soft.
10:50
The bones are hard. We're we're scrunching off all
10:53
the stuff that's on the teeth. It shouldn't be there.
10:55
So now they've toothbrushed, they've got clean teeth and then
10:59
they go along and they go and eat the, the, the intestines of
11:03
the animal, right. So that animal, let's say in the
11:05
case of the big cats is usually quite a, you know, a, a
11:08
wildebeesty type of Impala, you know, something eating grass and
11:12
leaves. And for our Kitty cats, it's,
11:14
it's often rabbits or mice or things and they're eating seeds
11:16
and grass and things. So that goes into the digestive
11:19
tract that ferments. That's green tribe.
11:21
When they eat the animal, they eat that too.
11:23
That's their microbiome inoculation.
11:25
Poof, all of a sudden you've got reseeded the microbiome in the
11:29
gut because it's going there. But this is all this is still a
11:31
tube, right? It's going to they migrate,
11:33
right. This is also the one of the most
11:36
innovative in terms of nerves going into it and rich blood
11:41
supplied place of the body. So what's in the mouth here goes
11:46
everywhere else in the body. It's not just what you swallow,
11:49
right? So that that whatever's in the
11:51
mouth is now going into and This is why it's such a disease
11:53
oriented problem. So a, a, a dental health issue
11:58
is a whole Body Issue. And that's why it's so dangerous
12:02
because it's not like, oh, well, we'll just take your tooth out.
12:05
It has to be clean here to be clean here.
12:10
So eating carcasses, in fact, cats, because of the nature of
12:14
the way they kill dogs are dogs are actually a bit mean when
12:17
they kill because they go after the legs and they typically hand
12:21
string the animal or they pull the belly open while the other
12:24
animals still running. It's pretty, it's pretty brutal
12:26
stuff when you go and look at hunting technique.
12:29
Cats have laser precision. They're like the sniper, one
12:32
shot and they're done. So they come out of nowhere,
12:35
ambush thing, they crack the back of the neck, they go for
12:38
that, and they instantly slide their teeth between the
12:42
vertebrae. The vertebrae all connected like
12:44
this in the neck. They slide their teeth between
12:46
the vertebrae. There's a little gap.
12:47
Cat's canine teeth are actually a little bit flattened.
12:50
They're not round like a dog's one.
12:52
They're flattened so they can slide in perfectly between those
12:56
vertebrae. Cut that cord so the animal
12:58
doesn't feel any pain. And in the process of doing
13:01
that, they've just cleaned their teeth again because it's a
13:03
perfect lock and key fit to go in there, clean the teeth and
13:07
the, and the, and it means that it's humane for the animal, but
13:10
it also cleans the cat's teeth. So nature works cooperatively
13:12
together even when there's a winner and a loser.
13:15
So you often get winner, winner situations.
13:17
This is a winner, loser one, but it's still blesses in a way the
13:22
prey, because now they're, they're paralysed, they're not
13:25
feeling anything and, and death is pretty much instantaneous.
13:28
So it's these kinds of adaptations, which a bit brutal
13:31
to talk about, I know, but just like, forget the actual mental
13:34
images. But this is how their teeth stay
13:37
clean. And then they're going to have
13:38
to open that up and they eat all those things and it cleans their
13:40
mouth. Wow, OK.
13:43
So let's just jump into the fact that like this little this
13:47
little love loaf on my lap is not going to be.
13:50
Doing but. And right, like how do we, how
13:55
do we kind of translate nature into a domesticated?
13:59
Into our home. Situation.
14:00
Well, you, you can. So if if anyone's own Kitty is
14:04
is a natural hunter, then they are going to be doing that.
14:07
They just are. That's how they do it.
14:10
If they're not a natural hunter, if they're not allowed outside,
14:12
not a problem. All we do is go and buy them
14:15
prey items for their bowl or we give them things that are
14:20
requiring them to punch their teeth through.
14:23
So that can be cloth, right? If you do it with a, you know,
14:26
if you've got a, a cotton toy. And This is why we have, This is
14:29
why it's so important for cats to have natural fibre toys
14:32
because they're going to do a lot of stuff in their mouth with
14:34
that. We don't want plastic and
14:35
polyester and ganky stuff like that.
14:37
We want to have rope and sizal and, and wool and right.
14:42
But biting into wool and soft woolen toys, it's going to do
14:46
the same thing. Yeah, wow.
14:49
And you can buy them skin, you can buy them dried bits of skin
14:52
from the pet shop and and then they can eat, they can punch
14:55
their teeth. I mean, they're going to chew it
14:56
somehow. So their teeth are going to
14:57
work. They don't sit there and just
14:59
swallow a piece like this hole. So give them something that's
15:01
bigger than what they can swallow whole.
15:03
They're going to have to work at it.
15:04
And and so doing, they're brushing their teeth.
15:07
Wow, that's awesome you have. Like Zorro, that is.
15:10
He's, he's our little stapler. Every time there's a box that
15:13
comes in, he's got to well. He's doing that too.
15:18
But here's the thing, when you eat the bones, you then get the
15:20
minerals because you've got to keep re mineralizing teeth
15:24
because they're in, they can get into an acidic environment.
15:27
Meat is acidic. So this is an acidic
15:29
environment. The microbiome wants to go back
15:31
to, oh, sorry, the pH wants to go back to something around
15:34
about 8.6, right? Which is actually a little bit
15:37
more. So 7 is neutral.
15:38
So we want to push them into the alkaline 8.6 is healthy pH
15:43
saliva. So we can do that with things
15:46
like chlorella and the green algaes and all sorts of other
15:49
supplements and things that we can add into their food to help
15:52
maintain that. So we're going to support them
15:54
to do it. They're good.
15:55
Their body wants to do it anyway.
15:57
But if we don't help with that because they can't just roam off
16:00
to a pond and go and eat some algae, right?
16:02
So we have to provide that for them and then we're resetting
16:06
that that pH for them. But I don't, I ask me questions
16:11
otherwise I'll talk too much. Well.
16:13
Are you familiar with with the product T for life, right?
16:17
Yeah. No, it's amazing.
16:19
Right, like that same concept of helping to.
16:22
And it has the algae in it the. Algae.
16:24
I know it's algae. I like algae.
16:27
I like algae. I'm going with algae, yeah.
16:30
We also have. Downstairs So there are there
16:32
are things that you can get for your cats that are the same, the
16:36
same thing that you're talking about, right?
16:37
So we have like a a rabbit leg or a rabbit, the piece of a
16:43
rabbit. I don't even know what part of
16:46
the body it is, but the rabbit that's kind of just been like
16:51
freeze dried still has the ferns on it, but it's been like freeze
16:54
dried downstairs. Our cats love to play with it.
16:56
They the 2 on it. They love to to bite it.
16:59
Like these are the silver vine sticks.
17:01
I know a lot of people talk about silver vine sticks.
17:03
As you know, it has like the silver vine and the Sizal or in
17:08
the Sizal on the on the like on the stick itself.
17:13
And a lot of cats will take that and chew on that.
17:15
And that all of this you're saying is like these are things
17:19
that we can do in our home to so that we don't have to let our
17:22
cats outside to go hunt necessarily if it's not safe for
17:26
them, Correct. Then yeah.
17:28
OK. So question all, have you seen
17:31
in your experience, you know, I, I like that there's people are
17:34
starting to identify the difference between health span
17:37
and lifespan, right. And you did such a on that first
17:42
interview with you talking about how we want to, you know, not
17:45
have this very long dragged out decline degeneration, you know,
17:50
where your where your quality of life, you know, peaks very
17:53
early. And then it's just all, you
17:55
know, how have you seen how dental health impacts health
18:00
span, Right. It's instead of it just being,
18:03
you know, oh, it's cosmetic or it's, you know, like bad breath.
18:07
How do you see how it impacts overall health span?
18:11
Yeah, great question. For for many of the seven
18:14
pillars that I talk about, there's a, there's a this
18:17
research that attaches to that particular thing and says so for
18:21
example, in the nutrition space, if we were feeding a species
18:24
appropriate diet as opposed to a highly processed artificial
18:27
diet, then you're looking on average of about three years
18:31
additional health span in the animal.
18:33
And if you drop their calorific intake by around about 15%, not
18:38
every day, but over time, if you can keep them just under what's
18:41
required, you're actually looking at adding another sort
18:44
of two years lifespan as well. So these things start to
18:48
accumulate. You can't necessarily glue them
18:51
together and go, well, you're definitely now going to get five
18:53
years because it's, they're a little bit more integrated than
18:55
that. But there's a oftentimes A
18:57
measurable difference that that you can look at.
19:00
Same with hormones. Hormones, if you can keep their
19:02
hormones in harmony together, you've got huge amount of time
19:06
on the table. With cats, it's up to 10 years
19:09
more from balancing their hormones correctly, getting that
19:13
working properly and taking away the threats that they face.
19:16
But when it comes to dental, I haven't seen a direct number.
19:19
I haven't seen research that does that.
19:21
But what I can tell you is the number of diseases that are
19:25
brought on by poor oral health and hygiene would then be
19:30
prevented, right? Because if you're not getting
19:32
the, if you're not getting the gateway drug, if you like to
19:35
those diseases because you're stopping it at the very
19:38
beginning, then all of those threats to health, welfare,
19:44
happiness, freedom and lifespan are going to be eliminated or
19:48
largely eliminated, which means that you are the, the cat is
19:52
going to be much less likely to what's the word I'm looking for?
19:56
Their mortality risk. That's the word.
19:58
Their mortality risk is going to diminish significantly.
20:01
Then if they have a dirty mouth, you know, imbalanced microbiome
20:08
like you know, cardiologists in humans do, do necropsies.
20:11
On patients after they've died and they fought, they were
20:14
astonished to find that the bacteria infections that they
20:19
that these patients had in their hearts, which was ultimately a
20:24
big part of the cause of why that patient died.
20:26
It wasn't to do with the blood flowing.
20:28
It was the infection in the, in the tissues.
20:30
It's a dead match for the, the for periodontal plaques and, and
20:35
right. Why?
20:36
Because blood's coming up from the heart that's been oxygenated
20:39
by going through the system here and getting pumped around.
20:41
It comes up here. There's a whole lot of stuff in
20:43
the mouth. You know that you can put
20:46
something under your tongue and it's your bloodstream within a
20:48
couple of seconds and around your entire body in less than
20:50
10, right? It's in, it's so quick.
20:53
So all of the imbalance in the mouth is going into the blood
20:58
and the blood is taking it straight back to the heart and
21:00
to other places in the body. So of course these things
21:03
accumulate. So when we get this right, I
21:05
don't know how much time we gain, but I know for sure that
21:08
we push off most of those diseases.
21:10
Yeah, I mean, and you think about the statistics when it
21:12
comes to our cats, right? And that the rising epidemics
21:15
that that we're having. And then and then you look at
21:18
these statistics when it comes to dental disease and cats.
21:21
And if you can correlate them, like if we can actually put it
21:24
in our heads and say, OK, I actually need to do something
21:28
about their dental health because that's the problem.
21:31
We might learn it. We're like, oh, that's really
21:32
important. Oh, is there something I can put
21:34
in their water? Cool.
21:36
You know, But as far as like taking that actual step to
21:40
correcting this, we will, we'll think about it, we'll end up
21:43
thinking about it again. This is just for everyone,
21:45
right? We'll end up thinking about it
21:47
again later on when they're diagnosed with kidney disease
21:49
and be like, oh, is, is there a correlation when they have heart
21:52
disease? Oh, I did hear that there was a
21:54
correlation, a direct correlation.
21:57
We, we interviewed Dr. Emily Stein, the the maker of teeth
22:01
month as well. And she said that the, that she
22:05
said the same thing that the dental health is a direct,
22:08
directly correlated to the heart and to the brain.
22:11
And then and of course goes throughout the entire body.
22:13
But they see like immediate, they can see immediate changes
22:17
in humans like her grandmother. The reason she started the
22:19
product was because her grandmother had to have some
22:23
dental work done and ended up with a stroke within like a week
22:26
or something, right. And and then, and it was
22:29
correlated directly to that dental disease that she was,
22:33
that she was dealing with Doctor Randy we had on last week.
22:36
And he said that the same thing that he tested bacteria in the
22:42
mouth and of cats and bacteria in the poop of cats.
22:47
No, in the urinalysis. Oh, it was in the urine.
22:50
Yes, in the in the urine, in the urinalysis.
22:52
He found bacteria in the urine and tested the mouth and it was
22:57
the exact same bacteria in the urine.
22:59
Then it was the mouth for a urinary tract infection and the
23:03
same thing was in the mouth. So, so there's like there's
23:06
enough evidence here to realize that everything what you're
23:10
saying is true. What is going on in the mouth is
23:13
going on in the entire body. So it's really important as the
23:16
gateway to health, as, you know, that it really is.
23:20
You know, the what do we say? They always say health begins in
23:24
the gut, right? And you always hear the health
23:26
begins in the gut, which you know, is true, but it actually
23:30
begins in the mouth because it doesn't get to the gut without
23:32
going through the mouth. So.
23:34
So it's, yeah. So this is this is fascinating
23:37
and wonderful information. Talk to us a little bit about
23:40
your mindset when it comes to preventative care versus
23:44
reactive care. I'm so wedded to protection.
23:49
That's unreal, right? As, as you know, as a welfare
23:52
scientist, the, the main objective is to prevent animal
23:56
suffering. Like that's why you do animal
23:57
welfare. You're stopping whether you're
23:59
doing it through legislation or through content, whatever it is,
24:02
but you're stopping animal suffering.
24:03
So if we can prevent these diseases, and we absolutely can,
24:07
because I said a minute ago, DNA doesn't code like occasionally
24:11
you get a faulty gene that'll give a predisposition to a
24:13
disease or if you're unlucky, you'll get 2 alleles that match
24:16
and they're for a weakness and you'll get a recessive disease
24:18
disorder, right? But that's the exception to the
24:21
norm. The standard way that that we
24:24
and our pets and our specifically our cats, because
24:26
they're more sensitive than other animals will acquire those
24:29
diseases is through accumulated lifestyle choices.
24:33
It is through behavioral options that we've invariably selected
24:37
for them. So I've got new question already
24:40
because I get carried away. Remind me?
24:44
Yeah, just you're more insight into your preventative.
24:49
Yeah. So 100% about the prevention and
24:52
you can, there are foundations to health that when you set
24:56
those in place, you equip the body with what it needs to
25:00
remain here. So I'd often talk about this
25:01
thing like homeostasis is balanced, right?
25:03
It's biological balance, and that's where health exists.
25:07
You can go in two directions outside of homeostasis, OK, You
25:10
can go into excess, you can go into deficiency, and you go
25:14
through grades. So you sort of get small signs
25:17
and symptoms. That's your warning light to
25:20
say, hey, take action right now. This is not just a oh, it
25:24
happened for no reason, nothing happens for no reason, right?
25:27
So signs and symptoms here. And then we start to progress
25:29
and we get a cluster of those and, and traditional medicine
25:33
likes to call a cluster of symptoms a disease.
25:35
And now we've got a label for it.
25:36
And it's like, this is what this looks like.
25:38
And then what happens is you don't address that.
25:41
Well, everything is connected, right, as we just talked about.
25:44
So that then feeds into another disease.
25:46
And you'll see people go, Oh my gosh, I've got like 7 different
25:49
medications cause I've got all these diagnosis and all these
25:52
disease right now. They've got what's called
25:54
comorbidities, right? And what happens when
25:56
comorbidity is right, then you've got death.
25:58
So there's a progression in both ways.
26:00
We don't want any of that. We want to stay here in a
26:02
homeostasis. The body wants to stay here.
26:05
The mind, the will and the emotions of the pet wants to
26:08
stay here. It's our job as their pet parent
26:11
to just furnish them with the with the materials and resources
26:15
that they need to stay there. And in this particular case with
26:18
cat dental, right, it's about giving them some carcass feeding
26:22
abilities to give them some pieces of rabbit or skin.
26:26
And the more further, better, because now they're getting the
26:28
fiber, the prebiotics that the, that the body requires.
26:32
If you give them bones, now they're going to get the
26:34
minerals that they require to rebuild the teeth, the collagen.
26:39
Cats need to have about 30% of their bowl as collagen tissue.
26:42
So they're eating the connective tissues and the skin itself is
26:45
collagen. So it's fascia, so is cartilage,
26:47
right? All of that that they're going
26:49
to get from that is going to be nourishing their body as well as
26:52
you always get a win win when you do it nature's way, you get
26:55
leverage, you get a multiplication effect of good
26:58
health across the body when you copy nature.
27:01
So I don't believe that any cat deserves or should or need to
27:05
get a disease like they don't deserve it.
27:08
They don't need to get it. If you're super unlucky and you
27:11
have that combination of genetics and epigenetics that
27:13
then flicks on that switch, OK, that was unfortunate, but
27:17
there's still things you can do there.
27:19
But for the vast majority of these things, it's in our hands.
27:23
We hold 90% of control over their health destiny.
27:28
We talked about that last time. So it's just a case of getting
27:31
empowered, getting smart, knowing a couple of things like,
27:34
Oh my gosh, let's bring in some carcass feeding.
27:35
Like it's not hard. You don't have to do something
27:37
awkward and uncomfortable if you don't want to.
27:40
There are all kinds of cleaner, sanitized, you know, less
27:43
confronting ways of doing it. But let's be real.
27:45
If you're going to have a cat, please acknowledge that you have
27:47
a cat. Why you don't have you don't
27:50
have one that eats biscuit like, you know, toast, right?
27:54
If you want an animal that eats toast, go get a different pet,
27:57
right? Like, so be real, be realistic.
27:58
You can't expect them to change hell of a long of years of
28:02
evolutionary biology just because you're squeamish about a
28:04
thing. So let's get a little bit more
28:07
honorable to our cats and say this is what you need.
28:10
This is who you are. This is your biology, this is
28:12
your natural behavior. I love you and I'm going to
28:15
provide that for you. And now you get to have all the
28:18
benefits of being super healthy. And let's be real as well, when
28:21
they're healthier, it's much healthier on our pocket.
28:24
So if you don't do it for the for their sake and you're a
28:27
little bit more selfishly inclined, well, you're going to
28:29
save a lot of money, like a lot of money because you're not,
28:32
they're not needing the, the interventions, the medicines,
28:35
the, the, the therapies, the car rides, the, the right, so.
28:39
Right. And one of the things I remember
28:41
thinking about that, I wish someone would have told me, oh,
28:43
your cats are obligate carnivores.
28:44
Like, I didn't even know what that was until many, many years
28:48
after my first cat. And when we were going through
28:50
the transition of getting our cats on a healthier diet, it's
28:53
like, wow, you know, rough. Getting them a raw balanced diet
28:57
is a little more expensive than a bag of meow mix and kind of
29:01
that mentality because Jay was all in.
29:03
She was like, we're going to pay for it now or we're going to pay
29:05
for it later. And, and, and paying for it now
29:09
is, is so much bigger than you think about the suffering that
29:13
we will hopefully be avoiding that that whole thing.
29:15
And dental disease is one of those things that it is such a
29:18
silent thing. Our cats are so stoic.
29:20
It's so hard for us to know. It's like, you know, are they
29:23
turning their head a little bit when they're eating?
29:25
Do they pop their mouth? Are they eating as much as
29:28
normal? You know, it's like we don't
29:31
necessarily know that there is, that there are dental issues
29:35
going on. Do you have some telltale signs,
29:38
things that we should be looking for?
29:40
Yeah, sure. So anything that is preferential
29:43
in the mouth. So if we're chewing on one side
29:45
and I say chewing, but like using one side and not the other
29:48
side, if there is drooling, if there is bad breath, is there
29:53
pouring at the mouth? Have you got your cats on the,
29:57
you know, have you trained them with the ability for you to open
29:59
up their mouth or ask them to open their mouth?
30:01
I was literally talking today about how we train the animals
30:04
in the zoo to respond to this cue here, which means open your
30:07
mouth. And now I can put my hands
30:08
inside a sea lion's mouth, inside a snow leopard's mouth
30:11
and I can have a feel and make sure that there's it's all good
30:14
in there because they're voluntarily holding their mouth
30:17
open, right? So, you know, it's great if we
30:19
can have some kind of space relationship where we can make
30:22
these requests and do cooperative care with them,
30:25
right? Just the, the training that we
30:27
do in zoos, cooperative care for animal health and welfare so
30:30
that they can participate in a way that gives them a reward, a
30:34
treat as something pleasant that they want at the end of doing
30:36
the thing. But I can do a check on them and
30:38
make sure they're OK. So if you can look and see, is
30:41
there a red line on the gums? Is the gum tissue soft?
30:44
Is the gum tissue like the, the, the pink that it wants to be?
30:47
Or is it red, inflamed and horrible looking like so
30:51
visually looking is a big deal and you should be doing that
30:54
fairly regularly. But also they're going to yawn.
30:58
So just have a good old, you know, look when they yawn, film
31:01
them when they're yawning and then watch it back onto the
31:03
notion, you know, things like that.
31:05
You know, it's, it's so simple, but but they will hide, it's a
31:11
great point that you raise. They will hide their pain and
31:14
they will take on a lot of pain and it really hurts.
31:17
I don't know if anyone's ever had their own teeth hurt for
31:19
whatever reason. Like, Oh my gosh, you just can't
31:22
get to the dentist fast enough. So really this is such an
31:27
important issue from the suffering side, aside from the
31:30
where else it can go with other diseases and and and other bits,
31:33
right? But from a suffering point of
31:34
view, and that's always the worst part of any kind of
31:37
disease, whatever is how much of A emotional burden of, oh,
31:42
they're going through, which breaks then the trust they have
31:44
in you because they're like, I'm trying to tell you, I'm trying
31:47
to tell you, look, I'm touching my mouth because you just, and
31:50
I, if I was out in the wild, I'd go fix it myself.
31:53
I'd go and eat something to clean it or I would whatever.
31:57
But they're not, they're not getting it in a sterile home
32:00
environment. So again, it's our
32:02
responsibility to be a little bit smart and say, let me care,
32:06
Let me put on the calendar every three months.
32:08
I'm going to open up and have a look inside your mouth every six
32:11
months. We're going to go for a a
32:14
checkup or whatever happens. Like you work out your own
32:16
schedule, but like, it has to be part of like, you know, you feed
32:19
them every day. You've got to also think on that
32:21
mindset. You're going to look after
32:22
dental health on a regular system.
32:25
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I know we're running out of time
32:28
here. We have a question from YouTube
32:29
though I I love this question. Can we give them for example raw
32:33
chicken wings? What say you?
32:35
Yes, the chicken wings are actually fantastic for cats
32:39
because chicken, OK, so when you're a bird, you've got to
32:41
have what's called a hollow matrix bone.
32:43
So the bone is not a solid dense piece of like concrete the way
32:47
like a cow leg bone is going to take an enormous amount of load
32:50
bearing weight to hold up that big bodied cow, right?
32:53
As a solid hard bone. We're not cats aren't going to
32:56
do anything with that, right. But a a bird has got to have
32:59
hollow matrix, a really light bone so they can fly and get off
33:02
the ground, right? That was too heavy to to fly.
33:04
So they've got hollow matrix bone and then things like wing
33:07
tips and necks, right? They're the kind of the softer
33:12
and bendier of the bones, lots of collagen around those.
33:16
Perfect way to do the intro to bones if your cats have never
33:19
done that before. And there's lots of gnarly bits
33:22
inside, but there's lots of like corners and tricky bits, right?
33:24
So the more complex the bone is, like if you have a rib bone,
33:27
it's just like, well, it's just, you know, it's super smooth.
33:30
But if you have one of these cons, then it's going to be
33:32
doing more cleaning work in the mouth.
33:34
Yeah, let's let's clarify that it always needs to be raw.
33:39
Never. Yes.
33:40
Yes, always, always raw. Never cooked.
33:44
They're very. Brittle and they'll break off
33:46
and they'll do terrible, terrible.
33:47
They can do, yeah, they can do damage when cooked.
33:49
So if you're eating chicken. Because it's a football game.
33:54
They don't share that with your cat.
33:56
When you cook a bone, bone is protein.
33:58
When when with proteins are heated, they denature and we see
34:02
that a steak goes from pink to brown and egg goes from clear to
34:05
white. Right When you cook a bone, it
34:07
denatures the bone protein and what used to be able to be
34:11
broken down to some kind of rubbery mush by the stomach acid
34:14
of the cat is now in such a is such a matrix and format that it
34:19
can't be so it stays a rigid solid piece of bone.
34:23
So a cooked bone will always be solid, rigid and then impossible
34:26
to get safely through the digestive corners.
34:29
A raw bone will go into the acid, be demineralised and
34:33
turned into like a wet noodle and be able to go anywhere
34:36
through the digestive system, plus give all the benefits of
34:39
that additional mineral complex that that can then be fed to the
34:43
rest of the body. So it has to be a raw bone
34:46
because as soon as you cook it, you've just ruined the whole
34:48
thing. Yeah, well, you are so well
34:51
spoken. I freaking love your doughnut.
34:53
Explain it like everything is just like you're you're you're
34:56
you always know how to bring it real so we all can understand
35:00
what you know. The bigger the bigger
35:01
perspective here. OK, so I 11 more question that
35:06
I'm never. Going to do the giveaway and you
35:07
have a free gift for everybody so.
35:09
Don't go anywhere so everybody gets a free gift and one person
35:12
gets a a giveaway to a year a year long membership which is
35:15
absolutely amazing. Learn how to keep your cat
35:18
living forever. We still here to this day.
35:22
And I know for you and I and Adrian, this is all like old
35:26
news and kind of funny and it's been debunked for a long time.
35:29
But literally even veterinarians are still telling our cat
35:33
community that kibble cleans the teeth.
35:38
Do you? Can you give us your like why?
35:42
Why do they think that and why is it was not true?
35:47
Can you imagine that? I'm your dentist?
35:49
Yeah, just for one second. I'm going to be your dentist.
35:51
And you come in and you're like, Oh my gosh, I've got all this
35:53
bad stuff here and this one really hurts.
35:56
And I say, hey, don't worry, I've got a massive bag of
35:59
Toffees here. Just go and chew on those
36:01
Toffees. Get those in your mouth, chomp
36:03
on them. It'll be great.
36:04
And you'll be like, did you really go to dental school?
36:10
Right. At what point ever is sticky
36:13
sugar the thing that you want to cover a tooth with?
36:16
Right. Like, I mean, where did logic go
36:18
in that equation? So the reason they say that is
36:21
because they don't learn nutrition at dental school, They
36:23
don't learn nutrition at vet school, right?
36:25
Because medicine as it, as we kind of know it in the
36:28
conventional sense, likes to keep compartmentalize.
36:31
All right? So you study dentistry here and
36:32
as if it's separate from the rest of the body and you study
36:34
the heart like it's in another box over here, right?
36:36
It doesn't work like that. So if you're a kibble, by
36:40
definition, for it to become a kibble needs to be approximately
36:43
50% carbohydrate and sometimes as high as 65%, right?
36:47
So it's jam, full sugar. That's what carbs are.
36:49
They get broken down in the system of sugar, but there's
36:51
sticky molecules that hold onto your teeth just like toffee
36:54
does. So if you're going to cover your
36:57
teeth with that, what you, you're going to expect the
36:59
plaque's going to have an absolute field day with that is
37:02
like Christmas on drugs. And so they're in there
37:04
multiplying like crazy, right? But what are you using to wash
37:07
it off? Nothing.
37:08
So it sits in and it's going to get worse and worse and worse.
37:11
They say that because the kibble manufacturers and the people who
37:14
make dental sticks and treats and things, right?
37:17
Other ones that sponsor vet schools, right?
37:19
There's a, there's a hand in glove relationship, right?
37:22
And whenever you, whenever you have a weird question like why
37:24
on earth is that the case? That doesn't make sense.
37:26
Just follow the money. Just follow the money.
37:27
You'll find out why it's that way.
37:29
Now they probably are not intentionally trying to give you
37:32
bad advice, but that's the toolkit that they've learned and
37:35
that's all they know because they're busy being learning that
37:39
stuff. And they didn't come over here
37:40
and hang out with me in zoology school and learn what real
37:42
animals do. So they are limited in their
37:46
advice, but also sometimes they get kickbacks from the company
37:50
if they push particular products.
37:52
So there's a vested interest as well.
37:54
So again, follow the money, but use your common sense as a pet
37:58
parent to say you can't possibly clean teeth with sticky sugar.
38:03
Right. Yeah, I like that sticky sugar.
38:05
We did have one other question that we asked everybody.
38:08
Oh, well, we asked you this, but it was off camera.
38:10
So we're going to ask you on camera because we have asked
38:14
everyone this month about tooth resorption.
38:18
So, so in in our kitties, for whatever reason, they get these
38:24
resorptive lesions and there's no science behind it.
38:27
We have asked veterinarians. We have asked lots of
38:31
veterinarians. Terribly painful, usually ends
38:33
in a full. Mouth extract it's total.
38:35
Extraction, right? And what do you think?
38:40
Because we don't, we know because there is no science.
38:42
It's fine like but what is your theory as to why our cats are so
38:48
prone to getting these tooth tooth resorption TRS as they
38:53
call them? So I have been looking at this
38:58
more recently, tooth resorption. So when you have your milk teeth
39:02
grow like your baby teeth grow, they need to then kind of
39:05
dissolve down to use those raw materials to then grow the adult
39:10
teeth. There's a chemical process
39:13
that's going on, a signalling thing within the biology that
39:15
says, Hey, you need to, you need to start dissolving that tooth
39:19
down. So this is what happens.
39:21
So it's completely natural and normal behaviour biology and the
39:24
whole thing when their babies and that in that development
39:27
stage of, of changing their teeth from deciduous to
39:29
permanent, what tends to happen is that that singling molecule
39:33
comes back online and it's like, oh, well, I'm back now.
39:38
I'm just going to dissolve away your grown up teeth.
39:40
And that's like, that's a disease condition.
39:42
That's the disaster, the situation.
39:44
So we need to do some stuff that changes the chemistry of the
39:48
signalling so that we can block that thing.
39:51
It's got some. I even wrote it down because I
39:53
thought, I bet you, you're going to ask me this question.
39:55
So I'm so glad that I wrote this down.
39:58
So where is the word OK? Osteoproteogenin, OK,
40:05
osteoproteogen. So that's why I had to write it
40:07
down. Osteoproteogenin.
40:08
So it's known as OPG. So this is the thing that has to
40:11
be changed in the so. So there are supplements that
40:14
you can take. In fact, estrogen, a type of
40:18
estrogen like HRT kind of thing will actually help to change
40:23
that chemistry. Magnesium and vitamin D will
40:26
also help to do that. And then to repair it, you can
40:30
bring in stem cell therapy. So inside the baby teeth, inside
40:33
any tooth is tooth pulp. And that's really young tissue
40:38
rich with stem cells. And you can harvest from baby
40:41
teeth that have been lost in humans that you typically don't
40:44
find baby teeth in, in cats when they drop them, although I do
40:47
have one from one of my cats. But you can also get stem cells
40:50
from other things, or you can use stem cell nutrition, stem
40:53
cell activation. There's lots of other therapies.
40:55
You don't have to spend big bucks on this kind of thing.
40:57
Everyone can do this. And then that will help to
41:00
regrow the teeth that have been been started to be eaten away as
41:06
if there were a baby tooth that needed to, you know, be broken
41:10
down to grow another one. Thing is you never grow another
41:12
one like, and you don't get a third one.
41:13
Not like sharks, like sharks and elephants have this constant
41:16
conveyor bout of teeth that just keep coming out of their mouth
41:19
until until they don't. And that's why they die, right?
41:22
They don't die because they're sick and old.
41:23
They die because they run out of teeth because they get so many
41:25
teeth cycles and then they're all over Red Rover.
41:27
So we're not like that. We have two.
41:30
Your faces are hilarious. Let's do another get.
41:36
Old they die because they went out.
41:37
Of the tube. What?
41:39
Yeah, well, that's a there's there's a rescue elephant called
41:43
Anne. She lives in one of the zoos in
41:45
the UK. She's the oldest elephant we
41:47
know about in captivity. She used to be a circus
41:49
elephant. She was rescued.
41:51
We. We've got a documented birthday.
41:52
Like we know how old she is. She's ancient.
41:54
This elephant has one tooth left and we're trying to really help
41:57
preserve her tooth using things like pulse electromagnetic field
42:01
therapy and another, another work and, and right to because
42:05
we know that when the tooth goes, it's right.
42:07
But she's had so much love and care, even though she had a
42:10
rough start in life with some things right that that she's
42:13
running out of teeth so. I'm coming back for the elephant
42:17
episode. But with our cats, like they're
42:21
not supposed to have a third wave of teeth, right?
42:24
So we don't want the grown up tooth to get dissolved down.
42:28
And it also dissolves bone. This stuff goes to goes to town
42:31
in ways that we don't want to. It was great when they were
42:33
little and we needed that to happen.
42:34
Somehow or other that switch got turned back on and it's doing it
42:37
again. So we need to stop that
42:40
chemistry signature with some of those therapies I talked about.
42:43
And then we need to rebuild the matrix of the bone, the tissue,
42:46
the gum tissue, the gingiva, and the tooth itself, including the
42:49
enamel, and all of it can be regrown with stem cell therapy.
42:52
Wow, that is so phenomenal. That is, that is so much like
42:56
that is. This is great.
42:58
This is fantastic. Do you think that possibly the
43:03
reason that we're seeing so many of these could have anything to
43:07
do with the spay and neuters that we that we do early on
43:12
then? I'm still digging into it.
43:15
I don't want to be too premature on these things, OK?
43:18
However, the list of things that happens when we do an early, and
43:23
I stress early, right Spain in and of itself isn't necessarily
43:27
a bad thing. It might not be the right
43:28
choice. It might be the right choice,
43:29
but an early one is categorically the wrong choice,
43:32
right? Six weeks of age, right?
43:36
And then you tell their biology through a fairly invasive
43:39
operation, which is never pleasant for anybody, that
43:42
they're now effectively 60 years old.
43:45
You change their biology so that they are decades in their own
43:49
time scale, not our decades. They are decades in their own
43:52
time scale. Older. 5 minutes after they
43:56
what? An hour after they, right?
43:57
So this is horrific on the body. It it accelerates the aging
44:04
process, it opens the door to countless different disease
44:07
conditions in the body. So why would it not also be on
44:12
this? It's mucking up all kinds of
44:14
chemistry. I did this whole discussion
44:17
about how the hormones in the body are like a Symphony
44:20
Orchestra. You have a conductor who's
44:22
coordinating everything to work in harmony, and you have this
44:26
section and this section and this section and this section,
44:28
all the instruments playing their part.
44:29
Each individual hormone is playing its part.
44:32
If one of them gets taken off stage, we've taken the ovaries
44:36
out. We no longer don't have a gland
44:38
that is pushing out progesterone and estrogen.
44:41
That's gone. That Symphony Orchestra doesn't
44:43
have that component anymore. So what happens?
44:46
Luteinizing hormone comes in and goes, I'm going to play bigger
44:49
and louder to make up for the fact that you don't have
44:51
estrogen progesterone anymore. And so luteinizing hormone is
44:54
now 30% bigger and more intense, which then mucks up all the
44:57
other ones, right. So you now don't have a Symphony
45:01
Orchestra, You have a cacophony where one's trying to fill the
45:04
gap of another one and it doesn't work properly.
45:07
So you can imagine how many downstream issues there are when
45:11
this starts to muck up. And if you've got a cat who
45:13
happens to also be overweight and has diabetes, problems with
45:17
with insulin and glycagon, or you have, you know, some other
45:22
issue with the thyroid, whatever.
45:24
I mean, these are all endocrine disorders.
45:26
So now you've got all kinds of ridiculous crazy stuff happening
45:30
on the chemical side of the body, which every cell in the
45:35
body has hormone receptors to receive that and then activate
45:38
and do stuff according. Like it's phenomenally complex,
45:40
but it's really elegant in what it does.
45:43
But if you mess it around because you took some living
45:45
tissue out of a cat that was functioning just fine before
45:48
they had a chance to put to use what it's supposed to do, which
45:51
is to grow their body correctly, grow their bones correctly, grow
45:55
their brain correctly. Give them a sense of confidence
45:58
in who they are as a cat when they, I mean, who knows when
46:00
they are when they're six weeks old, they don't know anything.
46:02
They're just open their eyes and started, you know, walking
46:04
around and all of a sudden you now made them be a 60 year old
46:07
with not a clue on how to be a cat.
46:09
And their bones are all going to go like this now.
46:11
Of course, it's probably going to have some kind of effect
46:14
here. Can I draw a direct correlation?
46:16
Not yet, but I'm looking at it. Oh my God, Penny, we love you.
46:21
Doctor Zulittle, you are the best.
46:24
Absolutely the best. Thank you so much for I mean,
46:27
we, we've got it. I, I feel like we should have
46:29
you back every month and we should just, you know, because
46:32
every, everyone loves you all. Right, we're wrapping up.
46:35
What's one thing that you hope every cat parent understands
46:38
about dental health from tonight or.
46:41
Buy your cat. Buy your cat raw bones.
46:44
Buy your cat raw meaty bones. They will get about 57 benefits
46:48
from this. It costs about $0.10 to get
46:51
ahold of these things and it will save you thousands in
46:55
dental work and care and, and problems down the line and be a
46:59
joy for your pets to be able to do what is nature intended.
47:03
Like it's, it's so easy. You can buy a tray of wing tips.
47:06
You can go to the chicken necks are my favorite thing because of
47:09
all of the, because of that, that thing I was talking about
47:11
the shape of the tooth and all the extra collagen and stuff
47:14
that's in there as well. So and they're $0.10 at my
47:16
butcher's so. Yeah, super cheap.
47:19
All right, Where people? Find you and follow you and be
47:23
as obsessed with you as we are. You can just go onto Instagram
47:27
at Doctor Zulitol and you'll find that you can DM me there.
47:30
You can find stuff there and that'll have in the link, link
47:33
in biobeat. It'll take you through to
47:35
websites and offers and free gifts and stuff that I've got.
47:37
So that's usually the best landing.
47:39
I mean there's a website toodoctorzulu.co that will tell
47:43
you a little bit more about maybe the science and and other
47:45
things, but if you are looking for goodies then go across to
47:48
Instagram.