Dr. Judy Morgan 0:00
Hello pet parents. Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast where we empower and educate you to be the best advocate for your pets, giving them a happier, healthier life. Are you confused about all the overwhelming information out there about your pet's health, nutrition and overall wellness? Well, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan, an integrative veterinarian, author and speaker. Join me for an exciting show where you'll discover the healthy options for raising your pets in a more holistic manner. Find out the answers to your questions during the short and succinct episodes where I chat with experts in the industry and showcase the latest products that will help your pet stay naturally healthy. So let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:44
My guest today is Rita Hogan, and she is a clinical canine herbalist with over 20 years of experience specializing in holistic canine herbalism. And let me tell you, she's pretty brilliant. If you have herbal questions, this is where you need to be. She's an educator, speaker, writer, formulator and herbal medicine maker. She uses a combination of diet, flower essences, herbs and phyto embryonic therapies, addressing dogs' mind, body and spirit, because it's not just one thing we have to treat the whole dog. Rita, thank you so much for agreeing to be on today.
Rita Hogan
I'm super excited to be on your show, Dr. Judy!
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:23
Well, and our topic that Rita chose for today, I think is something that plagues so many dog owners in particular, this is pretty rare in kitty cats. Although I've seen one or two. And it's understanding lipomas. We get tons of questions about this. And there are some things that people can do to help prevent lipomas from forming to begin with. But first of all, tell us what a lipoma is for anybody who is not familiar with that term.
Rita Hogan
It's a fatty tumor. So I mean, it's it's pliable, you usually can reach underneath it.
Sometimes it's in the musculature. So, you know, those are a little more complicated, but most of them are on the neck, chest, sometimes in the back of the legs on the flanks, and they freak people out. You know, a lot of people will have them aspirated, and the vet ill say, you know, this is a lipoma. And there's not much you can do about it, which I disagree with. But yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of times you'll hear that they're common in geriatric dogs. But, you know, we're seeing them in. I've seen them in one to two year old dogs. Now. So it's not just a geriatric issue. It's not just a breed issue. Some breeds are more, you know, have a more of a prepotentcy to get lipomas, but that doesn't mean that will actually happen. There's lots we can do to kind of deter that process. And there's also lots we can do to get rid of lipomas. we just have to figure out you know, why they formed in the first place.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:03
Exactly. And interestingly, when before I had Cavaliers, I had Dobermans, so Dobermans, a larger breed of dog. We do see more of these definitely in larger breeds than we do in the smaller breeds. And at the time, I was feeding dry kibble to my dogs, and they would I remember one of our dogs, my kids were very little at the time. And he was a geriatric dog. And he was just the most lumpy bumpy dog and we sat there one day and we counted 80 lumps on this dog, most. I think all of them were lipomas, but literally, he had lumps everywhere. At the time, I didn't know anything about holistic medicine. So this is going way back. And he was being fed. Absolutely improperly, over vaccinated, over medicated, too many chemicals. And when I made changes to a holistic lifestyle, I've never had problems with lipomas since then. So we definitely can look at some of the causes that help dogs make lipomas but you have in your notes the lipoma/liver connection, I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on this because from a Chinese medicine perspective, I have some thoughts on this as well. So, so tell me about the lipoma liver connection.
Rita Hogan 4:33
Well, um, one of the thing so the way that I look at the dog is, you know, the dogs in general, is there an ecosystem and, you know, the liver is definitely at the kind of like sharing the space with the heart as far as being, you know, the processor of toxins you know, it's you know, a lot of people think liver is full of toxins. It's not It's bypass, it's a bypass organ you know, it's not full of toxins, it processes toxins. And one of my mentors had I would say it was about 18-19 years ago said to me, you know, lipomas are the liver's way of walling off toxins and fat cells were of course our dogs keep the toxins off when it can't when it when it can't do its job. And when it's stagnant when it's congested, when it has too much heat, it will throw off and form these lipomas and it's the same thing with you know, tumor based cancers. You know, cancer is toxicity so the body has an amazing way of protecting itself. And lipomas for me are kind of like little satellite livers. They're storing those toxins and that's why people say you know, the lipoma hasn't shrunk fast enough. Well, we don't want it to shrink super fast, because it will flood the body with everything that's in that lipoma if it if it you know, it's absorbed, and then also lipomas can exit they, you know, I've had, I have a basset hound who came to me kibble fed, over vaccinated, just a mess. She had a, an avocado avocado sized tumor or lipoma on the tip of her butt, right next to her tail. And then she had a huge one, right on the back of her body between her shoulder blades. And those are both gone. Now, they actually started draining, and I was able to, you know, kind of take them out externally just by draining them and giving her draining herbs to help the body or lymphatic system. And it was pretty gross.
It was really gross. And I have a great picture of what the inside of a big lipoma looks like. And it's not pretty, but it doesn't smell. And some people are afraid of that. But I have found that with lipoma like strategies, they can either go inside or outside, I do see that a lot of large ones tend to start draining outward. And then a lot of the you know, smaller ones that are less than I would say maybe like a half dollar size, will will be absorbed by the body.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:26
I would agree that an interesting thing that I saw in practice, because some of these lipomas can get huge, I mean, watermelon size, just absolutely huge. And so I had this was the first one of these that I experienced and then I saw it many more times later in practice. But I had this 16 year old Dalmatian and he wasn't very strong in the hind quarters, and he fell. And when he fell his one hind leg, he had a huge lipoma, inside that leg, kind of inside the thigh. And when he fell, he fell on that leg on top of that tumor, and then the whole leg swelled up. And that tumor did end up draining externally, which we don't see that often. But what happens on these really huge tumors is they get so big, they actually cut off their own blood supply in the interior, so they start to liquefy and die off in the center of the tumor. And that's what happened with this dog. It's it's not an infection. So it kind of drains out looking a little bit like pus, but it's not an infection. It's just dead tissue. And when he fell, he basically popped it. So I saw quite a few of those I really would prefer not to have the lipomas get so large that your dog when he falls down on it is going to have this sort of situation. But it was great because once it drained then it was gone and done. And that was a much better proposition for that dog because it he was able to walk better. But the interesting thing that I noted over 38 years of practice, and once I knew something about TCVM is and I love that you say the liver connection because I agree these are just toxins that are walled off, and they kind of had nowhere to go.
But we see them along the gallbladder meridian that is the most common area so coming down under the neck, under the armpits along the flanks inside the back legs. And so I started seeing them over and over and over and once I learned about meridians, I was like, Oh, son of a gun. Well, the liver and gallbladder are the organs of the wood elements. So it makes perfect sense because the liver and gallbladder are so closely intertwined. So I love that connection between and I love that there are little external livers.
Rita Hogan 9:54
and the interesting thing that you say that that it's on the gallbladder meridian. So, you know, the gallbladder releases bile. And bile helps the body break down fats and oils, and a lot of dogs, they with modern diet and you know, kind of what we're putting in them and on them. They have a hard time breaking down fats and oils, especially dogs that are way too damp. And dampness can be a huge issue in dogs right now with that, you know. Like some people will say to me, Well, my dog eats raw and he still got it, he still has all these lipomas. Well, I am a raw food advocate for sure raw and cooked in instances. But is your dog eating an energetically appropriate raw diet? And are they able to break down fats and oils? Do they have enough stomach acid, you know, is their microbiome healthy enough? You know, like, is there basically and also like their portal vein, you know, the portal vein is of how the liver and gallbladder talk to the small intestine, you know, a lot of times you can get stagnancy in that vein, and things aren't, you know, it's a two way thing. So it's not, it's not getting rid of toxins as well as it should. It's also not nourishing and feeding the cells, as well as it should. And then you have the lymphatic system, which carries your fats. And that's not working the way it should. And I was talking to a vet friend of mine the other day, and I said, you know, we never care about the lymphatic system, which I could talk about for hours. People should be actually shouting it from the rooftops, you know, like, we have to start stimulating our dog's lymphatic system, you know, dogs need more exercise.
They need lymphatic stimulation, and I and when the lymphatics are kind of addressed, then I really start seeing movement in these lipomas. And when you mentioned, you know, they can get bigger and bigger. I think that two things that help, like, even if you can't really figure out how to get to, like what strategy to use for the lipoma, and we can talk about different causes in a minute. But two things I found that work really well, at keeping the lipoma from getting larger, besides changing your diet is Maitake and Turkey Tail mushrooms. So those two, I really haven't had found a dog that in the right dosage, and you have to figure out your dosage. And usually it's a lot higher than you would think so, you know, in herbalism, there's low dosages which I love, but sometimes we need more of a material dose, which is a larger dose to keep these tumors from growing, you know, from expanding, and those two, those two mushrooms are very anti tumor. And they have a very good relationship to the liver and getting the phase two detoxification in the liver to increase. And that's what we really want to do, we want to slow down phase one. And we don't need to get into that. But like we, we want to slowly slow down phase one, and we want to increase phase two. So the liver can keep up with all of this stuff that we're throwing at, you know, naturally we have issues you know, just kind of breathing our dogs just kind of existing. And then there's all things that you know, we do we put on and in our dog that the liver has to deal with. So those two mushrooms are really good at keeping the lipomas from growing and I would say let's just take a Cavalier King Charles, as an example, you know, um, so what the average Cavalier probably weighs about 20 to 25 pounds, you think 20. We can go with 20. So it's kind of, you know, different for me, it would be a pug for you it's a Cavalier.
About the same weight. I would say, for Turkey Tail mushroom for specifically for preventing lipomas and keeping lipomas from getting larger. I would say the dosage is gonna be about a half a gram twice a day, which is a larger dose for a dog that size.
Dr. Judy Morgan
You're talking like a Turkey Tail powder?
Rita Hogan
Yes, a hot water extracted. Real Mushrooms has a good one. A hot water extracted powder that needs to be hot water extracted, and then it's usually dried. That's kind of a high dose for a dog that size and you may even need to go up to a gram. But there is no there is not a they're not known for toxicity even in really really large doses like a cancer dose for that size dog would be like three grams twice a day, which is a lot. But you know with cancer, you know, you kind of need a hammer, you need to force the body to react. And I'd say with lipomas, you're kind of, you're kind of just using a mallet instead of a hammer. And, and I think it's important to push instead of support. You know, by the time your dog starts forming lipomas, we're kind of out of the supportive role, we kind of kind of have to push a little and, and those two mushrooms are awesome.
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:31
Awesome. So, what this what other remedies do you recommend, like how we're so let's say the dog already has a bump? Let's say we have my Doberman with 80 bumps? What kind of remedies would you recommend? Obviously, mushrooms may be a part of that, but what other herbs can we add in that could be helpful and I also want you to address diet a little more like where you might recommend going diet wise for these dogs that are forming tons of lipomas.
Rita Hogan
Okay, so I'll I'll cover like kind of like why some like there's different reasons why dogs get lipomas. We'll just touch on that and then touch on diet and then we'll get into some herbs.
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Rita Hogan 17:18
There's a few things so quite a few pharmaceuticals can cause lipomas more than not. Levothyroxin is one of them. And not saying to take your dog off of their thyroid medicine. But if your dog is taking that medicine and forming consistently forming new lipomas, it definitely probably is that medicine. I've seen it in a lot of cases.
Gabapentin is another one that I see dogs get on Gabapentin. And then within like two to three months, they're forming lipomas all over the place. NSAIDs are another one that are really hard on the liver and tend to I definitely attribute them to, to lipomas. One surprising cause of lipomas, This is the same for humans as well, is tick borne disease. So dogs that test positive for Lyme as well as co-infections can form lipomas very easily and the interesting thing. In the last two years.
I started carrying these two products in my store, which were the Professional Formulas Lyme Nosode, and the Tick Pathogen Nosode. And I use those two formulas a lot for lyme and coinfections as a part of a protocol. But the interesting thing is when the dogs in my practice that we were I was working with started taking those two formulas. They're lipomas went away. Oh, and I you know, and it's definitely anecdotal. However, I would say definitely more than six cases consistently. Their lipomas went away, I would say in about three to four months. Wow. And then I started doing some research on tick borne disease related to lipomas and the research, of course, is on humans, but definitely their correlation between tickborne disease and the formation of multiple lipomas, it's usually not one it's where lipomas start to, you know, kind of like your Doberman had What do you say 60 lipomas?
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:45
80.
Rita Hogan 19:48
I was thinking on the bright side, but yeah, he was, you know, it's associated the research is associated with multiple lipomas and it's probably due to the fact of biofilm and the role that the congesting role that Lyme disease and co-infections has on the immune system and also the liver and hyperstimulating that immune system. So, in keeping the liver and the immune system pretty busy, and I can see where it would be an open door to cause more lipomas in the tissue. So I found that very interesting.
Rita Hogan 20:26
Dr. Judy, about about that. And so I just wanted to mention that to do tick check, do C6 antibody. And it and see where those numbers at. It doesn't necessarily mean that your dog has Lyme disease, but it does mean that they have an, you know, subjected to those types of antibodies. And it might be worth doing a homeopathic Nosode, so it's not going to hurt your dog. And see if it has any, any results in you know, bringing those lipomas down. So but generally, we're talking about liver congestion. And so as far as foods are concerned, I definitely would get off a kibble diet, I would love to have a fresh food diet. But that's, you know, you can't stop there.
Rita Hogan 21:29
You want to make sure that you're adding digestive enzymes, you want to make sure if you're doing a cooked diet, if your dog has moved from kibble to cooked or to raw, I find that adding digestive enzymes for three to six months is a very good, especially when you're switching over to raw is very good, because I find that that the digestive system isn't very, you know, not a lot of digestive fire as far as hydrochloric acid. And that histamine response, you know, calling for digestive enzymes. And things are a lot, you know, a lot of congestion in the body after you quit kibble. And some of those residues depending on the kibble like, you know, am I able to Can I mention a brand or not?
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:17
Sure.
Rita Hogan 22:24
Okay, so a brand that I was just speaking to a client this morning. Her dog was on Science Diet and Science Diet is extremely congesting not a lot of protein, very, very inflammatory ingredients. And those types of residues take a while to get out of the body and for the liver to process and you know, and start, you know, start those metabolic changes when there's not all of that kind of over hypersensitive sensitive immune response. And so adding those digestive enzymes for about three to six months after you switch over to raw is a good idea. And then we have you know, you know, you're a TCM practitioner, Western herbalism looks at it just a tiny bit differently, but it's about the same thing like dampening foods.
Rita Hogan 23:13
So lipomas are definitely dampness you know, they're not they don't come from dryness, they come from dampness, you kind of want to dry your dog out. And there's lots of herbs that can do that. But food is the most important thing that we do more than important than any herb... food is consistent. It's every day, sometimes twice a day, and we definitely have to look at the diet. And so like you want to avoid things like pork, you want to avoid fatty meats like lamb.
Rita Hogan 23:42
Lamb is very good for dogs that are very weak and deficient and cold. But it also is one of those meats that you want to avoid when you have lipomas. Another fatty meat is duck.
Rita Hogan 23:56
If you say well you know my dog, my dog is so sensitive he can only deal with duck then we add herbs that help the body deal with dampness and also help processed fats and oils like the best one out there is burdock root.
Rita Hogan 24:11
But like we want to avoid things that add dampness, you know greenlipped muscle is very popular and very, you know, it's it's a it's a healthy addition to dogs that need that type of support, but it's their muscles are also very dampening you know, and
Unknown Speaker 24:27
theory even if it's raw, dampening eggs, honey, you know spirulina, slippery elm, marshmallow root, any type of like big mucilage herb that has a lot of mucilage which is like that gooey texture, it's going to add some dampness. So we want to just kind of be mindful of that in the diet until the lipomas have subsided and then we can reconfigure that and add more of a balance. Drying foods and of course dogs are individuals, so this isn't going to work for everyone with lipomas you just got to keep tweaking, but celery, alfalfa, chamomile, if your dog's nice and cool Tumeric, parsley, pumpkin, ginger, kelp, seaweed
Rita Hogan 25:18
One thing that I learned from a vet was I found this so interesting but it makes so much sense when you look at the energetics of the end result of the food was baked sweet potatoes. so sweet potatoes are drying anyways however when you bake them, they're like superpower that sweet potato it you know kind of a very like kind of you said I never heard of that Lyme component. I never heard about dried sweet potatoes as a method for getting rid of lipomas. I thought that was super interesting. And, and definitely worth a try. Not boiled, only baked, like roasted.
Rita Hogan 26:03
And so I found it interesting, but the way that we do prepare our foods affects our dog constitution. Like for instance, one of the things that I tell people never ever do is feed cold food. Right. And so and you would not believe the amount of people that feed cold food and Oh, usually it's because like I don't have time. But like taking that food out of the refrigerator and dropping it. It that cold temperature does so much damage. And it does build dampness. Yep. And so we want to just be mindful of the temperature of the food, it doesn't need to be hot, but it needs to be room temperature. And for those dogs that are more on the cool side. It's nice to warm it up just a little bit. And you can do that with just a little bit of like infusion or water. Just warm it up a little bit so it's not cold.
Rita Hogan 26:55
So those are some diet strategies. And then herbs. I love talking about herbs. So the herbs that I use for lipomas are varied and vast, but the there's two of them that I start out with for almost every dog and I haven't seen a lot of dogs that are intolerant to these two herbs. But if your dog is cool, like if they love to be you know, just bake by the fire they love dry wood heat or they already sitting on the heat bent or want to be covered up there most likely more on the cool side. So and those dogs that like love to lay on the cold floor that seek out cool places. They're most likely on the warm side. Not always but most.
Rita Hogan 27:40
So if your dog is more cool, calendula. calendula tincture, you only need like, we're just going to use a King Charles again in the example King Charles Spaniel, two drops right in the mouth twice a day will help stimulate the lymphatics. you can go up to five drops, but I've never had to use that much. for a small dog, which I would do with King Charles Chihuahua is a much smaller dog would just be a single drop, like one little drop coming out of the dropper twice a day really helps stimulate those lymphatics. If you had like a Irish Wolf Hound the dose would be about five to six drops. And that's going to help warm the core. And so for a warm dog, you're going to help cool the core which is cleavers, and cleavers is a very good lymphatic. It's good for lipomas. The same dosages. So King Charles two drops, you know like Corgi, three to four, golden retriever four to five and Big Dog five to six like huge dog.
Rita Hogan 28:48
I like to look at kind of energetics and so like cool dog let's just talk about cool dogs and lipomas. So cool dogs, the herbs that I would try first Ashwagandha, especially if they have hypothyroid. tumeric and calendula and self heal and self heal is Prunella vulgaris it's the Latin name for for self heal. And those are the herbs that I would add.
Rita Hogan 29:21
I would probably add all of those you know and start to give seven days apart so you can see if your dog is okay with them. Give about three days in between at definitely three days because it takes about 72 hours for for an herb just to kind of sit in the body and for your dog to get used to it. Like the first day you know when you add an herb like cleavers, which has is a diuretic. It's going to make your dog pee a little more but it may give them a loose stool just like for the first 24 hours and then it will it will be fine. So just give about three days to get your dog to get used to it and that's just kind of a how to use herbs kind of guideline.
Rita Hogan 30:02
And then warm dogs, dogs that are you know, pant easily that you know, love cool spots. cleavers, burdock root, chickweed and violet. Those three are fed and, and Dr. Judy, I can definitely give you like a little PDF. With these like kind of dosages and stuff that you share with your peeps.
Dr. Judy Morgan
That would be amazing because we are at the end of our time and I'm sitting here writing notes as fast as I can, I can barely keep up with the oh my gosh, this is like such a wealth of it, you are brilliant. So, for those of you who want more information about herbs, and I do believe that Rita offers herbal consultations, as well. The website is canineherbalist.com. And Rita is also going to make available a free flea course that you can download from her website. And then if we can get a PDF with these herbs and doses get you that today for getting rid of lipomas because this is a huge problem for so many pet owners and actually, my husband has one on his side and I would love to make it go away.
Dr. Judy Morgan 31:22
So the man is gonna get some herbs.
Rita Hogan
Well, and in that PDF I will. There's also some Homeopathics that really work great for humans and some other strategies that I'll include.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So thank you so much. This has been amazing. Rita, I thank you so much for being a guest Keep up the good work and we'll talk again soon.
Rita Hogan
Okay, take care.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
Disclaimer
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
