Intro Dr. Judy Morgan 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it. Hello and welcome. You're listening to Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets podcast and I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan. My guest today is Dr. Matthew Muir from way across the pond from Down Under in Australia. And he's an integrative veterinarian and has co founded a whole food company called Lyka which we can talk some more about. He's the Clinical Director of All Natural Vet
Care. He lectures around the world and his main areas of focus, are functional veterinary medicine, preventative medicine, herbal medicine, integrative oncology, and the gut-brain microbiota access. And today we are going to discuss bacteria and brains exploring the intriguing world of your pets gut-brain microbiota access. Matthew, thank you for agreeing to be my guest today.
Dr. Matthew Muir 0:59
My absolute pleasure, thanks for having me.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:05
So you're in clinical practice still, right?
Dr. Matthew Muir 1:09
Sure. Yeah, I spend half my time in clinical practice and half my time at Lyka.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:19
Okay, so pet food company, you've got an e book. You're you're practicing. You're kind of like most people in the pet space. Like no, no, nobody says one job is enough.
Dr. Matthew Muir 1:31
Yeah, I also have an 11 month old baby.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:36
Oh, my Lord. You're a little nuts.
Dr. Matthew Muir 1:41
Yeah, well, I'd love if I'm more people, like, particularly the vet professional kind of jumped on board. And they I guess they are to really to amplify the message. But I just feel like there's there's big changes that need to happen. And and I've just sort of thriving, that the challenge of changing things that I don't think are right, and how we look after our pets, so sort of had to go for it out of necessity, I think, for my conscience.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:18
Exactly, exactly. You know, we get so passionate about what we're doing. So you're really passionate, obviously, about food and what is going into our pets' guts. So can you just give us a brief rundown on what the heck is the gut-brain access? And why does it matter?
Dr. Matthew Muir 2:39
Well, yeah, so it's, um, we can make it really complicated. Or we can just sort of describe it. More simplistically, essentially, it's a network or a highway, that communicates the head and the gut. So the gut, brain access is a two way street or highway, because there's a lot of information going on there between the brain and the gut. So it's how the gut, which is often called the second brain talks to the head. And a lot of people would think from a computer or the control tower in an airport, that the brain actually controls everything and tells the gut what to do. But increasingly, we're understanding that most of the information is coming from the gut. And it's going to the brain, particularly the vagus nerve, which is a big part, one of one of the main communication pathways of this of this network. And think of it kind of like an internet, this network, that the gut actually 90% of the signals in this main are coming from the gut to the brain. So when we think about and there's certainly clues of the gut-brain access in everyday language, like I've got a gut feeling, I've got butterflies in my stomach, all those sorts of things that sort of give us clues that the brain's been receiving a lot of information from the gut. And it's, it makes sense when a lot of the, the exposure to the outside world for the brain, which is like nicely housed in our skull. A lot of the information is getting obviously it's getting it through the eyes and all of the senses, but it's also the biggest organ that that talks to the outside world is the skin and the gut, so the guts like the skin on the inside, so we're getting a lot of information to the brain. And then that information is really the puppet the master puppeteers behind that is the bacteria and other members of the microbiome that the trillions of cells that live in our gut that are not, not our dogs, or our cells are actually a symbiotic relationship with this whole ecosystem of of little creatures that are helping to explain things, and CO evolved with our brain.
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:01
So is is that communication through chemical transmitters? Is how's that going up vagus nerve?
Dr. Matthew Muir 5:09
Yeah, sure. Um, so there's the there's neurotransmitters involved. There's hormones and there's immune cells are the main sort of chemical, and also messengers called cytokines that we'll talk more maybe come back to because I think they're important when we talk about brain health. But we've got, we've got direct communication through the vagus nerve. We've got neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, we've got the HPA access, which a lot of people were familiar with things like adrenal fatigue, et cetera, and cortisol stress, all of that sort of being move between the government of brain through this this network. And then with respect to why is that important? In my clinical opinion, or my opinion in general? I think it's important because it because it involves the gut microbiota first, and certainly from the naturopathic approach to medicine being that all disease starts in the gut. And also the modern science exposing how an imbalance or of the microbiome or dysbiosis is being linked to correlated at least with most diseases that we're seeing in our pets. Why I think it's mostly important is the two big pandemics that we're seeing, the twin pandemics that we're seeing in our pets, which is the anxiety, neuro inflammation, neurological behavioral disorders that we're seeing in our pets or challenges, and all of the gut challenges. And all of the inflammatory bowel disease, the IBS or IBS like syndromes, and then all the ramifications of gut, which includes like skin. And then we've also got things like epilepsy, potentially even cancer from a dysbiosis. But certainly some of the big, even heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, autoimmune disease, all of the main diseases, degenerative joint disease probably also has elements of problems with the gut microbiome. So we've got pretty much all of the diseases are now being sort of looked at through the lens of saying, Okay, how much is the the the gut and the gut-brain access involved here? So it's, that's to me why it's really important to be thinking about this access and knowing how we can try to manipulate it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:36
Absolutely. So how does diet affect the microbiome? So if we had, let's take two littermates, two large breed, male, canine littermates raised in the same home, same environment, same stressors, but one is fed a highly processed, high carbohydrate diet, and the other one is fed a gently cooked or a raw, whole food diet? What would some of the differences in their microbiome look like?
Dr. Matthew Muir 8:12
Yeah, so it would have to be an educated guess, because we don't fully understand how each individual is going to respond to a diet, but we do know that they need different microbial layout. So different sort of composition or population and also the bacteria performing certain duties within that microbiome certain jobs to deal with and degrade the nutrients from those those two different types of foods. But where the evidence, the scientific evidence, and certainly my experience in practice is sort of showing, because I do do a lot of microbiome testing, is that the ultra processed diets tend to we tend to lose a diversity of the of the richness and evenness of species that are there. Now this is and what we tend to find is with the raw, or gently cooked, we tend to get more bacteria that are associated with protein digestion. So it because certainly the hype if we've got a high refined carb, ultra processed diet, one of the big differences, many differences, but one of the big differences is one's a low protein, high carb diet, so the ultra processed diet, and then when we look at most whole food, generally speaking, most Whole Foods, the macronutrient profile is like high protein, low carb, moderate fiber. And what we find is also that the Aquila miser and the advanced glycation end products from the kibbling process. Whilst it's not really been shown in dogs, there's there's a lot of evidence in other species that that impacts how the microbiome, the microbiome layout. So to me normally what I find is they have more diversity. They also have more bacteria that can produce neurotransmitters like GABA, so sort of relaxing. Sedationary type neurotransmitters when they're on raw feeding, whereas the dogs and people who have less of that they sometimes have more bacteria. One of them's called containing bacteria that has been correlated in some other studies which find that now when we look at the layout, excuse me, the the layout of the microbiome, dogs that have phobia, anxiety, or even aggression, they actually have different patterns of of composition of their microbiome and continue bacterium, which is one of the ones that has been shown in kibble has is one of the bacteria that tends to be elevated in some of the dogs that have these layouts associated with different behavioral challenges. But it's very early, very early days when it when it comes to looking at the science to predict what's going to happen. Some studies contradict one another. And really, in the end, it comes down to like, what, what is the microbiome producing. And certainly diversity seems to be consistently something that is mostly considered good. And we see that on the whole food diet. Within Whole Food, It also depends if they're on a whole food diet that has phytonutrients, poly phenols, the right prebiotics, etc. And to be fair to the ultra processed foods, some of it does contain better fiber profiles. And some some of the diets really try to improve the microbiome. And certainly there's some some science around that. But generally, what I would find with those two dogs, and certainly, the microbiome of the dog on the high, highly processed diet would start to become more obesogenic. So that actually the microbiome would actually shift and that dog would end up being likely to be more overweight or overweight relative to the naturally fed dog. It's what my guess would be. My other guess would be that that and this is sort of not really the exact direct diet response. But my expectation would be the dog on the kibble would probably end up getting metronidazole antibiotics for gut problems, and then they would lose their Pepto acetic. Back to her Ronsis, which is a keystone species, that that's really important in metabolism, and then it would probably their health to me, would just diverge to paths through about three years of age unless we we sort of healed that microbiome. That's what I see in practice, often.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:57
Well, yeah, I saw it in practice too. And I think, I think it's amazing. I think we need a lot more studies where we do exactly that sort of thing where we can really compare apples to apples, but those studies take a long time to do. We need to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor when we come back? When we come back, we're going to talk some more about how we're treating these diarrheas and things to stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
Thanks to Solutions Pet Products for sponsoring this podcast episode. Solutions is a raw fermented pet food producer that specializes in high organ percentage complete diets, raw cultured goat milk, gelatin based supplements, and herbal remedies. Using traditional farming and modern science, they work to provide simple solutions to complex problems. Modern agricultural practices have failed us, pesticides, GMOs over vaccination, monocultural industrial farming, a flagrant abuse of soil and ecosystems. Solutions Pet Products works with small family farms to regenerate the land. And in so doing revitalizes pets everywhere with clean, healing, ideally formulated raw, fermented pet food. Ask your local pet food retailer about purchasing options, or reach out to Solutions directly at [email protected].
Defending your pet from glyphosate injury can seem impossible. Thanks to well, It's well everywhere. But you can support what's most responsible for your pets natural defenses against toxins, their gut. Let me tell you about ION Gut Support for pets. It works by strengthening the gut lining and maintaining tight junction integrity at the cellular level. This means their gut is supported so it can do what it needs to do to keep your pet healthy, and their gut does a lot. It's crucial for nutrient absorption, kidney function, a strong immune system and the ability to defend against environmental toxins including glyphosate. Simply by making ION part of your pet's daily routine. You're doing all of that, in a sense Single wellness solution. Glyphosate exposure is inevitable, but the potential for harm doesn't have to be. Order now at IntelligenceOfNature.com and save 15% off your first order of ION with the code DRJUDY Please note that Naturally Healthy Pets may receive a commission on any orders placed with our code.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back. You're listening to Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan and my guest today, Dr. Matthew Muir is an integrative veterinarian from Australia and co founder of a whole food company called Luka up pet food. So you just brought up an interesting point that when I gave you my little case scenario, what do you think would happen with these dogs? And you said, Well, the one on the ultra processed food at some point is going to end up on some metronidazole for diarrhea. There was just a great study that came out in the American Veterinary Medical Association Journal that I just read, where they actually polled a large number of practicing veterinarians and asked them how they treat acute diarrhea. And it scanned the gamut from benign neglect, doing nothing and just you know, seeing if it goes away. Giving probiotics, putting them on a bland diet or a higher fiber diet, or supplying anti microbials. And amazingly, the majority of veterinarians still run for metronidazole for acute diarrhea, when we have great studies that have come out in the last year in that same journal that say that when they took dogs, and just provided them with a probiotic, and a little more fiber in the diet, versus giving the metronidazole, the dogs that just had a diet change and a probiotic got better much more quickly than the ones on metronidazole and 30 days out their microbiome was in great shape versus the metronidazole dogs whose microbiome was still a train wreck. So I we have so much work to do to even get veterinarians and pet owners because a lot of pet owners, I saw it when I was in practice, people will call up I need more of that metronidazole, my dog's got diarrhea again. And everybody wants a pill to fix something. And I don't think that metronidazole is doing us any favors.
Dr. Matthew Muir 17:34
No, I mean, look, the only time that I think it's doing us favors if it generally can't stop, like, we just genuinely can't stop the diarrhea. And that's when I'd say okay, maybe it's it's appropriate, although I'd probably reach for other antibiotics, if that was the case, but most of the time, and yeah, what I find is that, and also if it's chronic diarrhea and people sort of are reaching for more, the relapse rate for metronidazole, for chronic got problems that go on for more than three weeks is something like 100% relapse rate in six months, like there will, it will just happen again. So it becomes a definition of crazy to do it. And then with this, the bacteria that that it wipes out and there's some good articles on it, a lot of them that you don't, you can try to fix them and try and I think of it like an endangered animal where you can try to detect critically endangered, you can try to sort of build up their populations in the wild in the gut by supporting them with prebiotics and the appropriate diet, which to me would be a whole food diet to try and get particularly that back up her answers, which was previously termed Clostridium, but I think they changed it because costumes are in a bad word in medicine. And, but if it's, it's kind of extinct, that's when we're, that's when it's a problem. And if we're giving metronidazole once it might go endangered, then the second round of metronidazole critically endangered. And then third metronidazole that's extinct from the microbiome of the dog, which will affect the dog's ability to trans to metabolize bile acids and the digestion and the risk of IBD probably goes up and going back to your two dog thing want to raise the dog risk study that found that feeding Ultra processed diet in the first six months of life, which is something that's modifiable and that you can change increases the odds ratio or the risk of getting inflammatory bowel disease over their whole lifetime. So what you do in puppyhood, so that's when I'm concerned about this is young dogs ending up on metronidazole is that to me, they set a course for progressing through to quite serious diseases. So and often they need a fecal microbiome transplant if it's extinct if the keystone species are extinct and you can't sort of build up numbers again, using a diet, herbs, prebiotics, probiotics, that's when you have to think about okay. And stress management, definitely stress management because we're talking about the gut-brain axis, then sometimes they need a fecal microbiome transplant.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:19
So do you find that these? So you're in clinical practice, you have this dog comes in that's been on an ultra processed diet. He's got dysbiosis, inflammatory bowel disease, anxiety, all these different things going on? How are you fixing? I mean, if you just change them to a fresh food diet, does that fix it? Or how far do you have to go with these to get them fixed to get rid of all that anxiety and distress and stuff that's going on?
Dr. Matthew Muir 20:44
Yeah. It depends how young they are. depends exactly how long they're kind of medical history is, but I generally find they need more support than just the diet change, then it sort of normally it depends how, where they're at, like if they're on a hydrolyzed diet, like hydrolyzed kibble, prescription kibble and they can't even like add a teaspoon of Turkey mince, without causing the dog to have like diarrhea, then you're like, Well, okay, this dog will probably won't actually instigate a major diet change for a couple of months, we need to heal this gut lining. But it depends because you should do multiple food trials before calling a dog inflammatory, like true inflammatory bowel disease, ie, they need immunosuppressive drugs or even antibiotics to deal with their gut problems. They should be, they should try multiple diets. So one of those diets should should be like a probably a low fiber, natural diet, one should be a high fiber natural diet. But often what I do is that where I meet, meet them where they're at, it's always different. But normally, I do a lot of gut support, supportive and brain supportive strategies, which are generally the same herbs and nutraceuticals that I use very regularly, just to calm things down and get that gut lining, sealed, because the from the sort of increased gut permeability or the kind of leaky gut syndrome. And now what we know is the leaky brain syndrome, which those two things are connected. What I'm trying to do is seal that gut lining calm things down and get their stress cortisol levels down because the treatment, particularly if they've been hospitalized or had a lot of diagnostics, and so they're all very traumatized. By the time that like a post diagnosis, a lot of them are really traumatized. And even if the gut, sorry, the brain didn't play a role early on in the disease process. It probably is by the by the time I meet a lot of these pets, and so I'd be thinking about using some of my favorites. Ashwagandha Withania I use it a lot because it's not only is it a prebiotic, but it certainly calms down the cortisone and cortisol in the body and it's an adaptogenic so they can adapt to their their stress levels. I use a lot of Lion's Mane mushroom which in dogs are that's evidence is actually as a prebiotic, but it also is known as a nootropic. And helping with the brain through brain derived neurotrophic factor which is decreased in stress, depression, anxiety, gut problems. I use a lot of PEA, I think you're a fan of PEA as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:25
I'm a huge fan of PEA
Dr. Matthew Muir 23:28
PEA is my kind of gut brain skin pain access, treatment of choice. I use a lot of colostrum because a lot I find when you think about you go do the timeline medicine and sort of read from diagnosis back to puppyhood. Some of the dogs that have the worst gut problems like something went wrong during around birth and they didn't get colostrum or the mother was on antibiotics or the mother was only eating Ultra processed food during the lactation which is shown to increase the lifetime risk of that puppy getting HOV skin disease which is another big pandemic that we see and certainly dog risk from Helsinki have found that most most skin disease starts as the gut disease and then marches into through this atopic march into skin disease. So I use a lot of those things I use a lot of gut lining support like marshmallow root powder or a lot of probiotics including psycho biotics use a lot of B0999 or PS129 a probiotic strains for gut brain axis support. cannabis medicinal cannabis I use, I generally start with PEA more than CBD oil. I do a lot of acupuncture for gut brain access things and certainly I mentioned fecal microbiome transplant and and obviously diet, but I don't generally start with a fecal microbiome transplant. Even though now that I've done a lot more microbiome testing, I kind of know which patients who would need to probably move to FMT faster than other patients that we can sort of restore the microbiome because as Margo Roman Dr. Margo Roman sort of says, it's really microbiome restoration therapy, not just FMT. And I find that over the years without protocols, you don't need to get to FMT very often anymore. But I'm really excited about using FMT for more of the behavior and neuro psychiatric disorders. And that's an area that really, to me, I think, for today's talk to to understand that fecal microbiome transplant in humans, and some of the studies that have happened in rodents, is showing that it has efficacy and trading or supporting a wide range of disorders and health challenges, including Parkinson's, spinal injury, Alzheimer's, Autism Spectrum issues. There's the OCD, schizophrenia, they're using fecal microbiome transplant, as a way to to help support a lot of these, these disorders. So to me the future of FMT, in pets, we'll be using it for behavioral challenges by manipulating the gut brain axis.
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:27
Amazing, I actually, I had some really crazy behavior, patients that, you know, trying to get close enough to get acupuncture needles in is just not a lot of fun. I think I think sedation and a fecal transplant would be a lot easier.
Dr. Matthew Muir 26:47
And it potentially has a potential to be a one off therapy, if you do the pre work to get the gut and the right prebiotics that are going to support that fecal microbiome transplant. Yeah, we've come turned around dogs that have like had very intense, high activity IBD. So severe IBD that are losing weight that are like non responsive to medications anymore, that we've done. Fecal microbiome transplant in our practice for probably over 15 years, is obviously very, like non routine and experimental if 15 years ago, and those patients that were sort of run out of options, but now, as we've learned more, we now to start to go okay, well, still not routine in that we're doing them every day. But we're certainly know when they're appropriate, and how to discuss with the client when it's to give them all of the pros and cons.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:44
Amazing, man, we could talk about this all day, but we are out of time. So your website is https://lyka.com.au/ Because he's in Australia. He also has a Facebook page, @Lyka Pet Food. He's also on LinkedIn. We will put all the links in the show notes. And I believe that Dr. Matt is going to have some goodies for everyone. We will put those in the show notes as well. Thank you very much for the work that you're doing. It is I mean, you clearly are well versed on what's going on in guts. It's a big part of practice, but I think it needs to be because I think we've ignored it for way too long.
Dr. Matthew Muir 28:25
Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thanks for thanks for asking me on. Happy to always happy to chat about this could chat for hours as well. But yeah, thanks so much for having me.
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.
