Dr. Judy Morgan 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:05
Well, welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets Podcast. I'm so glad that you decided to join us this week. Today, my guest is going to be talking to us about five things you don't know about canine and feline kidney disease, which is a great topic because kidney disease is a huge issue for our pets. So my guest today is Alex Roberts. As an animal lover her entire life Her mission is to help every pet live their happiest, longest lives. That sounds familiar. She's been using holistic remedies on wildlife and pets since she was a young child, and now has 18 years of professional experience in the pet industry. After receiving her clinical pet nutritionist certification, she started Healing Bay Pet Nutrition LLC, to dive deeper into helping more pets benefit from the world of holistic modalities, especially those suffering from chronic disease. Alex, I'm so glad that you agreed to join me today because for those who know me, know that nutrition is my passion. And helping pet owners navigate some scary waters definitely is at the top of that list. So welcome.
Alex Roberts
Thank you, Dr. Judy, I am over the moon excited to be here right now. thank you so much.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:25
Well, Alright, and I am going to give away a secret that you told me before we started taping, you are actually in veterinary school at Michigan State University. So yay.
Alex Roberts 1:43
It's a really scary secret. I don't like telling but it's out now.
Dr. Judy Morgan
It's out. It's out of the box now, and I think everybody knows. But, you know, it is so important that we have veterinarians who you know, have those initials behind their name, because that does give us credibility, but who also have an understanding of nutrition and really what our pets, horses, our animals need. Instead of falling for basically false advertising from the pet food industry and even the veterinary industry. I mean, the veterinary industry is so brainwashed. So let's talk about feline and canine kidney disease, and we're going to talk about it you know, kind of how things happen, why they happen, and then some of the things that we can do about that. So, we have a statement in here, which I had a holistic veterinarian just lay me low on this. And the first statement is that kidney failure is an irreversible process. Now, we say that because when a kidney cell dies, it does not regenerate. Liver will regenerate other things, you know, skin regenerates, you get a big wound, skin will regenerate. But kidneys don't. Yeah, kidneys, don't we kill off kidney cells, and they're like see ya, I'm out of here.
Dr. Judy Morgan 3:10
But what we can do is we can reverse the illness that occurs around those dead kidney cells. So the toxins that we get in the bloodstream, the dehydration, the feeling horrible, we can reverse lab values, we can reverse how the animals feel, by using nutrition and our supplements and, and treatments. But we cannot regenerate those kidney cells. So that's where that's why we make this statement of hey, you know what, when they're gone, they're gone. The good news is, dogs and cats can live with about 10% kidney function, and can do Okay, so, but we don't want to say oh, my gosh, we didn't catch this until they were down to that 10%. And now we're trying to reverse everything. Yeah. So studies show that one in 10 dogs suffer from kidney disease. And I would bet like if we broke that down by age, particularly in our older cats, we would see Very high numbers.
Alex Roberts
I mean, I, yeah, I my, like, just total anecdotal observation is that I swear, it's probably like 80% of cats end up that ends up being their cause of death, basically, is chronic kidney disease, and it's,
Dr. Judy Morgan
and a lot of it has to do with nutrition. So we're gonna get into that. So early diagnosis is huge. That's that, and we do have better testing than we used to have. So that is good. And I'm going to put a little plug in I have a lab values course where people can learn what the lab values mean, and you know how to interpret that because a lot of times your veterinarian gives you little snippets of bits and pieces.
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:00
But one of the problems that I see very commonly is the veterinarian will get one high number or the owner will see one high number like, oh, look, the BUN is high. And it's like, one. Right? And they take that one number, and we have a diagnosis of oh my gosh, they're in kidney failure. Well, a high V1 can be caused by a lot of different things, we have to combine that we have to have a urinalysis we have to see are the kidneys working to concentrate the urine? Are we losing a bunch of protein in the urine? What's our creatinine looking at? There's so many things that go into it. So this is, this is a plug for pet parents do not ever make a diagnosis based on one number, we have to look at the whole picture. So we're going to do that. Alright. So chronic kidney disease. We used to call it kidney failure. And I think a lot of veterinarians still do. Yeah, I know that Michele Allen from Monkeys House, Senior Dog Hospice and Sanctuary. She's like, why do we call things failure? Failure, let's not focus on the failure. It sets us up for failure sets us up for the mindset of failure. So I do like, chronic kidney disease. Better.
Alex Roberts
I think it's an improvement. It seems to be just the I mean, as you know, you know, there are a million different names for this thing. And it's there's no like universal. There's no universally accepted. Correct. But yeah, it seems like we, generally speaking, you know, it used to be correctly called renal failure. And now it's a little bit more correct to call it chronic kidney disease. And yeah, exactly. I agree. It's like, well, I guess that's an improvement, I'll take it. But it does mean the same thing. And your vet could call it 100. Other things too. And it all means the same thing.
Alex Roberts 6:54
Really, the only differentiation is if you have some kind of chronic kidney problem where it is this slow, insidious disease process. Or you can have an acute kidney problem where you know, you've got some nasty chemical, your pet has ingested and you're in the emergency room. But beyond having the acute and the chronic process.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So acute problems we can see from things like antifreeze ingestion, so definitely, if you've got a car that's leaking from the radiator, and you're it's it tastes good to the animals, sadly, very. So you know, it doesn't take much particularly for our kitty cats to ingest things. We see kidney failure from grapes, we see kidney failure from xylitol, we also see liver failure with that. we see kidney failure from a lot of different medications, over the counter medications, please don't use over counter medications, unless your veterinarian has specifically said I want you to give a specific dose of something. I worked in emergency medicine for 10 years. And let me tell you that the things that people gave their animals and don't ever give your 10 pound cat, the same thing you would give an adult person like, how does that even make sense? But yeah, don't. So that's what we get, you know, acute kidney failure is when they ingested something, or they have an overwhelming infection that it's attacking the kidneys, or a cancer, I had a kitty cat with lymphoma that attacked his kidneys. So you know, that's when we get into the acute kidney failure. That is an emergency situation, get them in, let's try to get them flushed, let's get things going in the right direction. So when you're getting requests from, cuz I'm assuming you you do consultations for people for nutrition?
Alex Roberts
Yeah, we're that's what I have done up until now.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:42
So your company is called Healing Bay Pet Nutrition.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:51
So in the past with with this company, before things got a little overwhelming. People would go to your website and say, oh, I need a nutritional consultation to talk about a specific disease problem, or just basic nutrition. How does that work?
Alex Roberts
Yeah. So so the reason that this is the topic we're talking about today is because unfortunately, like, over half, almost two thirds of the clients I was seeing, were bringing pets with chronic kidney disease. To me, it just became like, hands down the number one thing I saw, and it was like, oh, man, and what's crazy is, you know, my whole life, it was just sort of always accepted that like, senior cats get chronic kidney disease. But doing this with my own business. It's like, I think I see even more dogs now than I see cats. So it's like man, like, what, like, what's, what is happening and like, we got to do better. What can we do about this? So, you know, like, if so, is there anything I could do to just help prevent.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:00
Why do you why do you think you're seeing an increase in the number of dogs with chronic kidney disease?
Alex Roberts 10:12
So, you know, I think it's a lot of things. And I don't know if you agree with me or not, but I do think that pretty much everything out there, like, is there a genetic component to it? Probably. And I think in some things, you can have really huge genetic components. And in some things, it's a tiny component. But I think that it's fair to say that in just about everything, genetics are a factor, maybe small. But once your animal exists, we cannot change their genetic makeup, we can change how certain genes are expressed.
Alex Roberts 10:45
And through food primarily, and through avoiding toxic things in their environment that then cause gene expression that we don't want happening. So But beyond that, we can't go retroactively change their genetic makeup, so kinda is what it is. And we just have to focus on the things we can change, and it's never gonna be perfect. But the major one is feeding heavily processed foods.
Alex Roberts 11:13
Lots of environmental toxins as well. But and I don't want to spend half an hour bashing kibble here, because I'm sure everyone you have on your podcast...
Dr. Judy Morgan
You know, first of all, beside the fact that it's over processed, we're talking extruded kibble here, baked kibbles. But we still have the problem of it's dry, it has four to 6% moisture, and the body needs a lot of moisture to survive, because what's the number one component in our bodies? Besides carbon? Is water, water?
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:52
Yeah, a lot of it. So for our pets, it's the same way. So when we're feeding them, these over processed kibbles. They have a lot of synthetic additives in them, may have rancid fats in them. That's just all these toxins. What is the kidney do?
Alex Roberts
eliminates toxins, yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan
The liver filters them, and then the kidneys filter, all that stuff. And then the kidneys are supposed to spit all that stuff out. And, you know, it's sort of like having any machine that you don't put oil in the engine or you don't clean the engine or so in my case, I have a lawn mower, a riding lawnmower, I'm really mean to my riding lawnmower, I use it in grass and fields that is way too high. I hit big rocks with it all the time and destroy the blades. I don't think it's had the oil changed or even looked at in the three years that we've owned it, it it goes through a lot of dust and dirt, it lives in a dusty barn. And I go through high grass that just totally clogs it up for a while it wouldn't go in reverse. And what I discovered is it couldn't go in reverse because it had so much gunk caked up underneath. So if we did the same thing, yeah. So we do the same thing to our pets' bodies. And it's like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm only feeding you dry, dusty stuff. And I'm putting all these toxins in and those toxins. So environmental toxins can include, you know, things that we spray on our lawn, cleaning chemicals that we're using in the house,
Alex Roberts 13:36
Flea and tick, heatworm
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:39
All this pesticides that we put on them and in them every month. Too many vaccines with a lot of synthetic preservatives and things. So you know, it's sort of like me with my lawnmower. If I were to keep throwing all this at my pet, I would get the same problem. The blades don't cut any more. You know, it's not eliminating the toxins from under the deck anymore. It's all caked up under there. So, you know, I I've never used my lawnmower as as an example of kidney disease.
Alex Roberts
I love it. I dig the analogy.
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:17
It's a little bit of a crazy analogy. But But think about any machine that you use that you don't maintain. Yeah. And that includes your your own body. But if we don't maintain what, what we're providing as something positive, beneficial, and we're going to talk about some of those things when we come back because we need to take a break. But we need to take care of the machines that run our pets' bodies. Absolutely.
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:47
All right. We'll be back in just a couple minutes we're going to talk about holistic approaches to preventing and treating chronic kidney disease.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT 14:57
When your pet gets lab work at the veterinarian Do you understand the results? Renowned holistic veterinarian Dr. Judy Morgan explains how to get the most out of the results IN her course Understanding and Interpreting Lab Values. This course will help you crack the code and figure out the puzzling language of common diagnostics such as a CBC, chemistry screen, urinalysis and endocrine testing. This course is perfect for the veterinary professional looking to learn from a true expert to better serve their patients or the dedicated pet parent wanting to have more tools in their toolbox to better advocate for their pet. Podcast listeners get to take advantage of a 20% discount using the promo code PODCAST10 at checkout on DrJudyU.com.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back. I'm here with my guest today, Alex Roberts, who is a clinical pet nutritionist. And we also found out she's in veterinary school. So very, very cool. Which means she's an incredibly busy person. She's a mom, she's in school, she's still trying to run her business. Yeah. It's a crazy lifestyle.
Alex Roberts 16:02
it probably won't ever get any less crazy. So
Dr. Judy Morgan
you know what it does? And it's like, I'm retired.
Alex Roberts
Yeah. How's that going for you?
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:13
You know, it's funny when my mother retired from teaching, Gosh, 20 years ago, or whatever. I had small children at the time. So she would help with babysitting. And then my dad got ill and took care of him and was running their business. And she said, How did I ever have time to work? And I say this, like, how did I ever have time to work?
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:34
It's just we find it, you just find a different passion. So it just sort of keeps moving. So what are some holistic approaches to treating chronic kidney disease? And how do you help clients when they call you would say I'm in a dilemma.
Alex Roberts 16:57
Yeah, I mean, number one, as with pretty much everything is food. Um, we talked a little bit about kibble and you know, it's so dry and processed. And I mean, the list goes on, we could talk for hours about that. But I do think it's really important to meet people where they are, that is just part of my philosophy. And like, I think it's really important to feed yourself. You know, like, yes, you have pet, you're obligated take care of it because it can't take care of itself, you got to take care of yourself, too. So if you're someone that's like, you know, look, I really want to do the absolute best because maybe I do know better. You know, maybe I've worked really hard, I've educated myself. But I can only afford so much here. There are options there are really good, kind of like intermediate options. But what I say your absolute best option. And again, this really applies to just about anything is homemade, fresh food. So raw to lightly cooked, depending on the individual and lots of factors. But that's time consuming.
Alex Roberts 17:56
It can actually be extremely cost effective. Like To be honest, I say that homemade is the most economic way to feed your pet. Because if you're wise about shopping, you can get stuff really cheap, but then on top of that, like I can pretty much guarantee you're gonna save a lot in vet bills down the road. So it really can save you tons of tons of money up front and down the road. But it is time consuming I totally understand it's just not for everyone, especially with dogs. Honestly in some ways cats can be simpler because a lot of them thrive with like almost no vegetable matter whereas most dogs do better with some kind of produce in their diet. So it's kind of an extra step you have to take but there are lots of compromises so there are commercial foods you can buy which will be a little bit more pricey
Alex Roberts 18:51
there is one generic go to of mine as far as a commercial food but that I think of as as close to ideal as you're gonna get. I really liked using Steve's Real Food
Alex Roberts 19:05
so it's a frozen raw food.
Alex Roberts 19:10
But as far as a you know, if we're in kind of moderate per there bloodwork, kidney, kidney disease, it's just a really good compromise. It's really high quality protein. I trust the company, they use good ingredients. And it's just really nicely balanced. It's not going to be extremely high protein but it's going to be it's going to be a nice moderate protein level but really high quality protein, nice moderate fat.
Alex Roberts 19:41
There are still other options.
Alex Roberts 19:43
A good go to that I find a lot of people find is a good compromise is using like a dehydrated food. Like you had said something about the baked kibbles earlier like I know a ton of companies make the baked kibbles now but a dehydrated is normally a lot cheaper.
Alex Roberts 20:00
Little bit of baked kibble. But it's similar process to a baked kibble. And it's kind of different companies make slightly different, you know, formulas, but some kind of powdery chunky thing that you add water to. So therefore, you're getting your, you're getting your moisture in and you're getting more nutrition versus heavily processed food because it's only cooked at a couple 100 degrees versus 600 plus degrees. And that really is a big difference as far as actually retaining those nutrients that are in there. Because otherwise, you know, I say you can pick up a bag of kibble and it's like, oh, that's so nice. Look at all these lovely, you know, meat products, and blueberries, and all these other lovely things in here, but they are cooked to literal death. And all the nutrients that we know make those things good for us. A lot of them just aren't there anymore.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:50
They're in very small quantities. So you'll see all these lovely fruits and vegetables on the on the label, you know, in beautiful, bright colors. But then when you actually read the label, it's like, oh, there's probably one blueberry in there, so if you're lucky, the label's even telling you.
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:05
I do like what we call the base mixes the dehydrated. So you can you can buy a whole protein, you can buy a complete diet that you add, just add water. Or you can buy a Base Mix and add your own protein, add your own oils. So you have a lot of control over that, particularly for pets with sensitivities and that sort of thing. We actually carry the Steve's Freeze Dried Yeah, so basically, same, same product, just add water. And we actually have quite a few companies that are very similar that are very high end that don't have synthetic additives in them. So for anybody who wants the list of foods that I'm willing to feed my own pets, if you sign up for our newsletter on DrJudyMorgan.com, you'll get an email that says this is what's in Dr. Judy's freezer and in Dr. Judy's cabinet for her own animals.
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:58
So moisture is is really critical. But you You also mentioned protein. And so this has been a myth in the veterinary industry, literally since I was in vet school in the early 1980s. We're going back 40 yrs.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:14
And I remember as a new graduate those first few years in practice, before I learned anything about nutrition and holistic pet health, I used to say the same thing. Oh my gosh, have you seen your pet, we've got to reduce their protein. We've got some early or late kidney disease, they can't have all this protein. And it is such a myth. Would you like to talk about protein and kidney disease? Yes, I'm gonna get your take. I think it's the same as mine. But
Alex Roberts 22:49
yeah, I would love to. And you know, as you pointed out, it's this myth in the veterinary industry. It's still a myth in human medicine too. And like, we're omnivores, we're not carnivores, like dogs and cats. Sure. But to me when even the the studies in humans show that humans actually, in chronic kidney disease do better with high quality and relatively high quantity of protein in their diet. Humans put on restricted protein quantity, that are in late stage chronic kidney disease or failure have increased risk of death, compared to those given lots of protein. And again, we're omnivores. So like, just logical conclusion, we can at least say for our carnivores, it's probably that much more important. And there, there really, there is no good data showing that there's any reason to restrict protein levels.
Alex Roberts 23:59
Phosphorus, I think in some cases, pets tend to do better with a little bit less phosphorus, which does come from protein. So what I like to do, and this is where just one of the many reasons homemade is best, because you can really make these changes. Whereas when you're feeding a commercial food, the phosphorus is, in a lot of ways kind of is what it is, there's not much you can do about it. But if a homemade diet normally for a healthy animal, I'm all about adding raw bones or at least a bone meal to the diet. We use that as a calcium and phosphorus source. But that can very easily be swapped out for just eggshell. egg shells are great, and they're an amazing source of calcium, but they don't have all the phosphorus.
Alex Roberts 24:43
So that's, that's that's my go to solution to that problem.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah. And it is a myth that needs to be busted because what I saw in practice for so many years because the first 10 years of practice, I was very traditional. We sold a lot of prescription diets which now I'm just Like, Oh my Lord, I'm so Sorry.
Alex Roberts
but you learn so much from that experience, you know.
Dr. Judy Morgan
thank God. But what we would see we would put these animals on these really restricted and talk about an oxymoron here you have an animal in kidney failure. Here's a dry kibble with 4% moisture and very low protein. I mean, some of these diets are 7, 8, 9 percent protein, we know that our dogs an adult dog needs 18% And an adult cat needs 20. And that's the bear minimum. literally to say, that is AAFCO's bare minimum to survive.
Alex Roberts
An animal can die in 12 weeks on this amount of protein.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Exactly. So but we're telling these clients with these senior pets who are already muscle wasted, they're already having mobility issues, because they don't have any muscle or fat to support their bony frame. And then we're restricting protein. And so what does the body do? It breaks down even more muscle to get the protein that it needs to make the heart pump and the kidneys function and the brain function. It takes the fats out of the body, most of these animals are just don't have enough fat on their on their bones anyway, so we have problems with fat soluble vitamin absorption. We have vitamin D deficiencies, we have so many problems by restricting protein. And I really do feel like we shorten their lifespan, I know we do we shorten their lifespan by putting them on a dry kibble with low protein, it is just absolutely the opposite of what we should be supplying, we need to be having high moisture, we need to have good high quality protein. And interestingly, IRIS, the International Renal Society.
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:47
But they actually have come out and said, Yeah, protein restriction is not that great an idea. But we do need to watch the phosphorus. And this is where the lab work comes in. And we say oh, look, his phosphorus is under five. That's great. We don't have to do anything. Oh, whose phosphorus is now up to seven or eight. Okay, wait, let's restrict the diet. Yeah. And that makes a bigger difference. I mean, if we, if we're really getting into deep doo doo, we can do phosphate binders, but a lot of times we can just manipulate the diet to make that be where we need it to be. So we only have a couple minutes left, what supplements do you feel, you know, just as a general category, what supplements do you feel are helpful for these animals with chronic kidney disease?
Alex Roberts
Yeah, and this is very generic indeed. Because you know, as you know, like everyone really does need a tailored individualized approach. But there are a handful things that pretty much they're not going to hurt anyone and they're going to help everyone at least a little bit. So one is putting them on a high quality probiotic with prebiotics so that hopefully that probiotic is actually accomplishing something and then along with a digestive enzyme,
Alex Roberts 28:03
it helps pretty much everything but it's just it's one step we can take to help take some of the load off of those kidneys.
Alex Roberts 28:12
Another one that I have become a fan of over the years I wasn't always sold on this but I do really like using like a desiccated kidney or like a kidney extract. The whole like nourishes like concept I was like I don't know it sounds good but doesn't really do anything. But over the years, I've just my observation is that I've really seen it make a difference. So it's something I recommend to everyone now
Alex Roberts 28:41
and also in my own body, I can vouch for it too with things that I've done for myself.
Alex Roberts 28:47
And then another one is a high quality fish oil so get those good omega threes in there. And yes, there are tons of sources of Omega threes but I do specifically recommend krill oil or even like canned sardines in packed in water with no salt added. You don't want it packed in olive oil, but those are really awesome sources of Omega threes versus using like a salmon oil because salmon are big predatory fish. So then they get called biomagnification but it's the process of the higher the predator is in the food chain the more toxins are built up in its body. So trying to avoid adding toxins to our poor struggling kidneys here. So we like small critters low on the food chain so the krill oil, sardines, those are those are awesome.
Alex Roberts 29:39
Those are my my like good for everyone like would always recommend those. There are a couple herbs that are really gentle and yet effective. And I don't know of any cases in which they would be contra indicated. So dandelion, especially dandelion leaf versus dandelion root. dandelion roots are helpful too though, but so a lot of companies make like a blend that's totally fine.
Alex Roberts 30:05
Super helpful helps with circulation, helping to the liver and the kidneys to essentially work together get those toxins out of the body. And then Hawthorne Hawthorne Berry. That's another one, gentle, safe for everyone. And that is circulation. And a lot of patients when they're in end stage, you you see you end up with congestive heart failure and the kidney failure simultaneously along with a lot of other problems. But those two like almost always go hand in hand, it seems when you're in the end stages of this disease. So the Hawthorne is particularly good for the heart as well as the kidneys.
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:51
Exactly. So yeah, I mean, those are all things that we recommend as well, those prebiotic probiotic are going to help in the large intestine to help with the detoxification, help lower those nitrogen waste products, supply short chain fatty acids, so many things that they're doing there. So it is something that we absolutely don't want to overlook. Alex, I cannot believe it, but we are out of time. So where can people get more information about Healing Bay Pet Nutrition?
Alex Roberts
Yeah, well, my website is just HealingBayPet.com You can email me. It's [email protected]. I'm, unfortunately, I'm really not taking new clients right now. So I'm really just here to hopefully, you know, hopefully, we helped someone by being here. But yeah.
Dr. Judy Morgan
awesome. Well, you know, when when you get your book written, or get a course written, you let us know, and we'll be happy to promote those. But in the meantime, thank you so very much for the tips that you've given our listeners today. And hopefully we have supplied some help for people. Because this is a big problem with our pets, unfortunately. Thank you very much, Alex. It's been a great pleasure.
Alex Roberts
Thank you so much, Dr. Morgan's been awesome.
Outro
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.
