Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello and welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr Judy Morgan. Today, my guest is Dr Emily Stein, and we're going to talk about how rebalancing the oral microbiome can help dental and systemic health in dogs and cats. And we all know how important dental health is, but I think it gets overlooked so often. Emily Dr, Emily Stein, has been focused on addressing challenges in hypertension, infectious diseases, exosome biology and cancer diagnostics, pulmonary fibrosis and periodontal disease. Only a few different topics,
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:43
she has delivered over 23 professional lectures on the global stage. Has 18 patents and has earned numerous awards and accolades, making her a respected authority in the oral microbiome and soft tissue inflammation. The microbiome modulatory technology that she has developed holds promise in addressing an array of diseases that range from periodontal disease to downstream infections, cancers and diabetes. Emily, thank you very much for agreeing to be my guest today.
Dr. Emily Stein
Oh, it's a pleasure.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So you know, I think that for the majority of people,
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:20
we don't even look at our dogs' and cats' teeth. It's sort of like, Oh, they're chewing. They're fine. And a lot of times, no one even recognizes that there's a problem until the odor is really bad or they're they're not chewing. They're holding their head to the side. They're they're dropping food
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:41
so and that's not a good place to be, and we don't really want to wait until it gets that bad. And I remember my first years in practice, so I've been out for 40 years, so it's, I'm a dinosaur,
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:56
but the first 10 years I was in practice, we really didn't talk about dental hygiene and dental care for our pets. And we used to have a saying, and it was about Yorkies, but we could insert any small breed dog, if they had any teeth left by the age seven, then they were like amazing wonder dogs. And that's that's not, certainly not the way we see it at this point we want them to maintain teeth for as long as I've had dogs with no teeth, it does make it a little tricky for them to eat. They can eat, but it, you know, things fall out of their mouth. Their tongue falls out of their mouth. It's just not where we want them to be. So let's talk about the oral microbiome in dogs and cats.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:44
Is there such a thing as an ideal microbiome versus what we normally see, and how does that microbiome change for the worse?
Dr. Emily Stein
Yeah, we've been researching dogs for over six years now, and cats for three, humans for 13. So the trends are the same, younger, younger mammals tend to have a more diverse microbiome.
Dr. Emily Stein 3:22
They're first born, they inherit their mom's maternal microbiome. And then that seems to fix itself
Dr. Emily Stein 3:30
for dogs and cats around the age of one, for humans around the age of three. And there, it's a really diverse population that if you look at it, it's actually they're kind of keeping one another in check. So no one is growing too far out of bounds and doing and behaving badly enough, and the others are kind of keeping it in check. And what happens over time, particularly with dietary influences or exposure to a lot of antibiotics or antiseptics, you see a shift, and that shift is a reduction in the diversity, and it tends to correlate strongly with one or several species of microbes really starting to take over the mouth cavity.
Dr. Emily Stein 4:13
And in animals, and particular dogs and cats, we're seeing a very high percentage of them with gum disease pathogens by the age of three. And so that shift is very obvious, and it's significant, and some dogs we're seeing about 60% of their oral cavities taken over by one or two species that are strongly linked to gum disease. Wow.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:39
So when we're using so a lot of the veterinary recommended dental products have chlorhexidine and other chemicals in them that have got to be really changing that microbiome. And I'm thinking, not for the better.
Dr. Emily Stein
Correct, correct. That's one of the worst things you can
Dr. Emily Stein 5:00
use is chlorhexidine, because it also not just cause oral dysbiosis. They swallow it, right? So it causes gut dysbiosis too, and you're going to get malabsorption and all of that, just because the microbes are shifted. And you're getting more and more resistant microbes that can handle exposure on a regular basis to to these antiseptics.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah. So, you know, I think, unfortunately, in the veterinary field and probably the human field as well, we spend so much time treating symptoms and treating and putting out fires, and so I we've, I think we've been going the wrong direction for so long, where we're we just keep trying to kill off things. So we kill off the good stuff on the skin microbiome, we kill off the good stuff in the oral microbiome, we kill off the good stuff in the gut microbiome. And then we wonder why everybody has chronic disease and all these other problems.
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:55
so it let's, let's talk just dogs right now. What other conditions are we seeing? You know, as far as chronic disease or inflammatory problems that that we have research directly linking that to the oral microbiome.
Dr. Emily Stein 6:20
Yeah, so, believe it or not, cardiovascular diseases are a significant link, as well diabetes and then liver for dogs. There's some anecdotal evidence that suggests arthritis
Dr. Emily Stein 6:33
that's very established in the human, but it's, it's that threat is emerging. Also interesting in dogs is the association between gum disease and dementia or cognitive decline, and that's very, very similar to this story in human biology as well.
Dr. judy Morgan
Interesting. So is it different for our cats? Do they get different problems associated with oral disease?
Dr. Emily Stein
yeah, chronic kidney disease is probably the number one associated comorbidity with gum disease.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Interesting. And so the kidney disease in dogs, we don't have that same link?
Dr. Emily Stein
not really yet. That storyline has not been
Dr. Emily Stein 7:18
I hope folks are researching it, but I have yet to really see a strong study showing a link. Definitely interesting.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Interesting. That is very cool. And so, I mean, you would think, because part of the reason that that is my understanding, that we see the cardiovascular disease, the liver disease is just the blood filtration going it's the mouth is highly vascular, and so, of course, you know, going through the heart, lodging on the heart valve, leaflets, the livers, the detoxifier, all the blood goes through there. I would kind of think that the kidneys would, would be kind of across the board. Is there a link with kidney disease in humans?
Dr. Emily Stein
Yes in perio, yep.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Okay, so we have it in humans and cats. We just don't have enough research on the dogs
Dr. Emily Stein
yes. So I bet any researcher out there please start researching that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:12
I bet there's a strong link there too. I mean, you would think any any organ that is filtering so much blood, you know, basically the entire blood supply is going through the liver, it's going through the heart, it's going through the kidneys. So you would think that that would be significant. Do you know if there's any research on oral cancers? So I used to see so many oral cancers in in practice, associated, you know, rotting teeth and the jaws falling apart and all that stuff
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:46
you want to with this terrible periodontal disease. It so is, is there a link there that we know of?
Dr. Emily Stein
Yes, there's a lot of data emerging for head and neck cancers and
Dr. Emily Stein 8:59
solid tumors in the lungs, and then colon cancer with species of fusobacterium in the mouth. And so in cats, there's, right now, an association that we're just we're working very diligently on with Fuso keto bacterium acnes, which is causes acne in cats and perio, and cats and acne in humans and perio in humans, but fungus, and there's something that the fungus is doing, which we're trying to figure out, that's activating tissue growth and overgrowth, and that's why stomatitis is prevalent In cats. A subset of cats with perio is, is that overgrowth and then that can turn into cancer easily.
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:48
Wow. Okay, so you brought up stomatitis in cats, because when you when you have a cat with stomatitis, it is so painful and you know veterinarians have tried so many different ways to treat that,
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:05
usually extracting all the teeth, which I never did that for it. I thought that was just a ridiculous way to treat stomatitis. But I think the thinking is, oh, they're having an autoimmune reaction, and it's related to their their teeth. I usually treated them more naturally. I loved cold laser for it worked really well. You know, you've got to have a cat who will cooperate with you, lasering inside their mouth,
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:30
and then, you know, using naturally anti inflammatories and that sort of thing.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:38
So as a treatment for they're almost always put on antibiotics, or they're almost always put on clindamycin. So are we doing the wrong thing when we do that? Are we killing off the fusobacterium and all the good stuff. I mean, is there a better way to treat it? Should we be using a different probiotic or something in there instead?
Dr. Emily Stein
Yeah, so I would actually think about an anti fungal over an antibiotic. because fuso by itself, if you, if you knock out a lot of the good guys,
Dr Emily Stein 11:13
then they, then they just take off, right because they're no longer held in check. You just took away their competition. And so fungal in cat seems to be much more highly associated. There's a lot of fungus, in dogs mouths too, and humans do with candidas and same.
Dr. Emily Stein 11:32
But it's it's something about what they're doing that really is aggravating, and you're getting this massive overgrowth and over stimulation of the neuronal nervous system in the mouth too, in cats and so calming that down anti inflammatories is great. Antifungals, I think, is a good way to think about it, and then trying to build back a better, more diverse ecosystem in the mouth. A lot can be done also through use of diet to influence the microbial composition
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:04
absolutely so we have. We're getting stuck on cats here for a minute so, and that's I have never, ever, ever read an article about treating stomatitis in cats with anti fungals. I think that, you know, we're obviously missing the boat, and instead, we're extracting teeth on these poor cats. That really Stinks.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:25
Oh, shoot. I forgot what I was going to ask you about. It'll come back. It'll come back.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:33
Okay, so, oh, man, poor kitties, I feel bad for all these cats that are being treated wrong.
Dr. Emily Stein
Yeah, yeah. Every time you pull a tooth, you shorten lifespan. Because what we now know is you pull a tooth, there's an increased risk of cardiovascular events, because microbes just go right in through that wound, and they set up shop someplace in a filtering organ, usually, and can cause a lot of problems, low grade inflammation that's chronic and just exacerbates over time.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:06
Wow. So, I mean, in our in the pet population, we pull a lot of teeth, usually because they're so rotten. By the time we get to them, they're not attached anymore. I mean, it's just yeah, there's wiggly,
Dr. Emily Stein
yeah. And the key is early, early, early in prevention, that's really because you really want to keep teeth in the mouths of animals for as long as possible for their to allow them to live a little bit longer and live a little bit better quality of life. Interesting.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, it's kind of funny. My I have a dog who's just turning 17, and after I did his, he had his last dental about a year and a half ago, and he had a lot of extractions, and he hasn't been the same since. And I mean, and he needed it, he had dental disease, but it's just, I feel, I feel really bad like he has, he has trouble. He has facial paralysis on one side of his face, so his tongue doesn't work very well, and now he's missing a bunch of teeth to help his tongue stay where it needs to be so but that's really interesting, and the link to the cognitive dysfunction just blows me away.
Dr. Emily Stein
Beagles are the natural, you know, natural manifestation of dementia. Beagles get it, and now more and more research, they're realizing, wow, a lot more dogs are actually suffering from cognitive decline now that they're using these measurement tools for cognitive impairment on all breeds, and the microbes that are really driving aggressive inflammation below the gum line are the ones actually linked now you can see they make these little things called exosomes that bleb off, and they have all these enzymes inside these little sacs, and they just penetrate through our bloodstream. They go up through our blood brain barrier and cause inflammation, and they're associated with like atherosclerosis plaques and
Dr. Emily Stein 15:02
Alzheimer and dementia plaques as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Wow. this is amazing. We need to take a break to hear from our sponsors. Stay tuned, because we've got more to talk about, and this is you're blowing my mind. We'll be right back.
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Dr. Judy Morgan 16:43
Welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan and my guest today, Dr Emily Stein, has been working with all kinds of things, but today we're discussing the oral microbiome and how it affects so many other organ systems in the body, and if this, if this isn't enough, to the things we're talking about, if this isn't enough to scare you into doing something about your pets' dental health, I don't know what else we can do. You know we, we so many cats get chronic kidney disease. It's so I know what I wanted to ask you that I couldn't remember. Diet with cats are obligate carnivores, and we're feeding them the wrong thing most of the time. They're eating these high carbohydrate diets. If they're eating kibble, even a lot of the canned foods have a ton of carbohydrates in them. So does that change? And I guess we'll include dogs in here as well. Does that change the oral microbiome in the in a bad direction when we're feeding them all those carbs?
Dr. Emily Stein 17:55
Fundamentally, fundamentally, it really grows the fungus. It grows it. I mean, it leads to the growth and enhancement of all these acid producing microbes that really should not be present in the mouth in dogs and cats, and they're driving a lot of that inflammation, because acid causes inflammation and immune system activation.
Dr. Emily Stein 18:17
So that's one thing, and then two is that it keeps on creating this bad cycle. So just like antiseptics are driving massive change and shift in the microbiome and behavior of the of the microbes, carbohydrates are doing just as much, if not more, we're seeing very strong shifts very quickly, like within two days, two to three days, you're completely shifting that ecosystem. Acid levels go way up, inflammation goes up, the growth of harmful microbes go way up.
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:53
Wow. So you know this is, this is where I get a little crazy, because we need to change the the veterinary thinking, because dry kibble diets are pushed all the time, and oral products with chlorhexidine are pushed all the time. So it's sort of like we're we're literally doing everything wrong to keep a healthy microbiome. I maybe it keeps us in business, because we get to keep doing dental procedures and pulling teeth, which, oh my gosh,
Dr. Emily Stein
yeah, I know you and I are very aligned in our thinking, but it's, there's a there's a mistake that people on the on the human dental side, there's so much research now that shows mechanical cleaning of teeth is great. It just makes the teeth clean. But below the gum line, there's no toothbrush. There's no dental you can't even go down far enough to get to where these microbes are living that are secreting enzymes that are chewing away at the periodontal ligament. There's nothing that you can reach except for you can you can feed them differently. And so what we've learned is how to really shield them from being able to see the carbohydrates that the dogs and cats are eating, and that's the only way we're able to do it, because I can't go out and say, you know, don't, don't give your dog kibble, because, boy, the industry.
Dr. Emily Stein 20:30
But you know, you know you're gonna make real, big enemies.
Dr. Judy Morgan
I say it every day. So you know,
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:37
we have, we have the camps of people. So you developed this product called TEEF, T, E, E, F, which I think is a cool name, because I always talk about animals toofers. So if I was making it, I would have made it roofers. But it's okay. Teef is good.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:54
So what is this product? We sell it here. It's a very tiny, little amount of powder that goes in the water bowl, but explain to us what it's actually doing, how it works, why it works, like, what are we doing differently here?
Dr. Emily Stein
Yeah, yeah. So, so it's, it's simply a nutritional carrot and a nutritional stick in powder form that you add to the drinking water. Or, you know, if dogs are on a raw fed diet, you can cut it with goat's milk or bone broth or something like that, and it goes immediately into solution. And then the only thing that those nutritional carrot and stick see are bacteria, and they reel it in, and then they literally think it's we fool them into thinking it's carbohydrate, and they latch on and attach, and then they're permanently shielded and blocked, so they're unable to then take up any sugar or carbohydrate that is in that dog's diet or cat's diet, and then simultaneously, we're giving A keto signal to those microbes, saying you must eat and break down protein instead, because that's the ancestral diet, right of a dog and a cat. And so we're trying to shift the microbial population in a more ancestral way by forcing them to go keto.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Now, if somebody is used giving their dog a probiotic, can can they give this as well as a probiotic?
Dr. Emily Stein
Absolutely, yep, we found that in a lot of cases with established disease, those microbes, those pathogens we call them, which are disease causing microbes, are secreting things that are really hostile, and probiotics will not grow in the presence of those hostile molecules, which is why you, in some cases, you might not see a significant change when giving a probiotic to your pet. But what we found is that when you give them TEEF before, let's say, two weeks before, and then you start putting them on that probiotic. The the the hostile environment is significantly lowered, so that the probiotic can actually start to grow and do what it's supposed to do,
Dr. Judy Morgan
cool. And so, so you're talking about putting it in drinking water or bone broth, which is a great idea, because they're more likely to readily consume it.
Dr. judy Morgan 23:26
If the product were put in like a frozen treat made with bone broth, will the product still work?
Dr. Emily Stein
Yes, yes, it is stable. It doesn't have any preservatives on it in it, so and you have to throw it away at the end of the day and clean out the water bowl, right,
Dr. Judy Morgan
which we should be doing anyway, because the biofilm in that water bowl is disgusting at the end of the day, by the way,
Dr. Emily Stein
disgusting, disgusting. And if you have filters in your bubblers, because I know a lot of cats like moving water, throw the filter away. That is the biggest reservoir of really scary microbes and fungus.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:02
I had a fountain for my cats, and that thing was the nastiest thing in the world. I couldn't throw it away fast enough. I hated it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:10
But I see now, now I'm intrigued. I make frozen treats for my dogs, and they get them every day, and I'm like, okay, I can do this. I'm just gonna put it in the bone broth. This is, this is, this is great.
Dr. Emily Stein
Put it in the bone broth. It does have vitamin b6 in it, which is the cofactor required for the microbes to be able to break down protein. So it does turn a little yellow. So just don't put it on white carpet.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:35
I made some treats the other day that had turmeric in them. My kitchen floor was bright orange. The next morning I went up poo.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:44
So okay, well, that's good to know. Yeah, the b6 is a beautiful yellow color. That's fine. We can eat these outside. Okay, so we actually carry the TEEF Protectant 42 Plus K in at Naturally Healthy Pets but you have some other formulations on TeefHealth.com What's the difference between them?
Dr. Emily Stein
Yeah, so fundamentally, there's only a slight difference between AllPet which is what you carry, and then the dog formula, we just removed sodium bicarbonate for, particularly for patients with kidney conditions. Because, you know, a lot of animals with perio have kidney conditions, and so there was just some, you know, even though it's less than 2% of dogs recommended intake of sodium, we still just removed it, just to make everything easy, and then we sell a cat specific formula. And again, that's a lot of our research. So in addition to the all pet formula that that you've got, we added chlorella, the cell wall of chlorella, which is
Dr. Emily Stein 25:58
kind of chelates these neurotoxins and immune stimulation molecules that the fungus in their mouths are secreting to quiet it down, and also acts as an antioxidant, which is good for calming down that tissue at the same time that we're delivering those nutritional carrot and stick. So that's the difference. And we're also coming out with TEEF treats, which are raw, dehydrated,
Dr. Emily Stein 26:29
freeze dried, I guess it's called salmon with the protectant in it, and then vitamin E. And then we're coming out with duck as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Oh cool. So that'll make it easy to give this is, this is cool. You know? It's funny. I've kind of gone back and forth with it. I put it in the water bowl, and then I forget about it, and then I put it in the water bowl, and then I forget about it. I like the idea that I can, I thought that they had to drink it. I love the idea that I can put it in a treat or and that you're coming out with treats would just make it so much easier. So if somebody is using the TEEF, which is helping to rebalance the microbiome, should they still be if their pets will let them, should they still be brushing? And I love having them brush with coconut oil or, you know, just something really natural, so the two can be done together.
Dr. Emily Stein
Yes, yes, they are complimentary, absolutely.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So the big thing is we, we don't want to be using the chemicals that are really destroying that balance and making everything worse.
Dr. Emily Stein
Yeah, it's, it's, it's so much worse. And in our zoo studies, well, we just finished a study in in seals and sea lions with gingivitis, and they're actually physically put putting the TEEF powder on toothbrushes and then brushing their teeth.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:45
Well, if I, if I ever get a sea lion
Dr. Emily Stein 27:50
You've have one heck of a yard,
Dr. Judy Morgan
yeah, yeah, I don't think so. So we don't see as much periodontal disease in farm animals, but I'm going to ask you this anyway. Would something like this be beneficial? I mean, maybe we just don't screw up their mouths as much because they're eating a species appropriate diet more more than our dogs and cats are.
Dr. Emily Stein
We have a horse program, and it's mainly the the performance horses really need help. They get a lot of abscesses,
Dr. Emily Stein 28:23
and they don't perform well. They're in pain a lot. So we definitely have a program there, and that's because they're fed all sorts of different diet and performance enhancing
Dr. Emily Stein 28:34
feeds and stuff, and that really is screwed up there. They do not look like your average horse from a microbiome standpoint.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So Would you, could you use the same all pets product in horse drinking water?
Dr. Emily Stein
Theoretically, yeah, yeah, we, we're going to actually come out with
Dr. Emily Stein 28:52
That in a different kind of a treat for the horses. Obviously, yeah, horses don't need to eat duck salmon.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Oh, cool. I can't wait.
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:02
My equines might get a little bit, little bit of love. That would be great. Yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you so much. This has been really kind of mind blowing and just amazing. And I appreciate people like you who love to do research, because that's not my thing.
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:19
I just like reading the research and getting, you know, picking your brain. So thank you very much. And for anybody who's interested in more information, TEEFhealth.com, and they're also on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all over the place. They have human products as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:39
Congratulations on what you've developed, what you're continuing to develop, and can't wait to see what's what's next.
Dr. Emily Stein
Thank you Dr Morgan, it's a pleasure, pleasure to be on your show. Thank you.
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.
