Intro 0:00
Today, my guest, Dr Rob is one of those old guard, holistic and integrative veterinarians. He's been a powerful influence on the pet parent 2.0 community and all pet parents for a lot of years. He is very active in formulating herbal and mushroom products. He's been just a great asset to the holistic pet community over the years and today, Rob is going to fill your brain with so much information on mushroom therapy, how they can be used, which ones can help, depending on what condition your pet is having. So stay tuned. This is amazing information.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:42
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host Dr, Judy Morgan, my guest today Dr. Rob Silver is a pioneer. I hate to say that we're getting old, Rob, but we've been around the block a couple of times. But you know what? I heard somebody say this the other day at the bank. The bank teller asked the guy how he was doing, and he said, I'm on the right side of the dirt. It's a great day.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:12
Isn't that awesome? I said, I think I'm going to use that so and those of us, and he was a young guy, so I thought, well, you know, for us old folks, that's really good,
Dr. Rob Silver
absolutely, yeah, I was thinking back, I think it was 2017 I think was when you first interviewed me. It was one of the AHVMA meetings, Facebook Live, or something
Dr. Judy Morgan
That would be right? We did a ton of interviews and that, and that was when people actually figured out who I was, because I was walking around. I had my son and my husband and we had a big boom and some microphones and some cameras, and everybody thought we were a TV station. It was really funny. So everybody was running up, can we get interviewed? What TV station is this? I'm like, eh!
Dr. Rob Silver 1:51
And for me, that was sort of my first introduction to this whole online thing.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've come a long way, and we have years.
Dr. Rob Silver
We have come a long way, baby
Dr. Judy Morgan
technology. And I'm not a technology fan, but I guess I should say thank you for technology, because we are. So you have, over the years, become known as an expert in a couple of different little niche areas. I mean, you're an expert in so many things in holistic and integrative medicine, because you've been doing this for a long time, but you're really a pioneer in a couple of areas. So one of them happens to be in the realm of CBD, cannabis, and those treatments that are still in that gray zone in veterinary medicine. So unfortunately, that's not what we're here to talk about. And I know a lot of people want more information on that, so we'll hit that one in the future. But you also happen to be kind of the mushroom guru.
Dr. Rob Silver 2:53
I have become that, yes, I like to say that I'm really fond of these emerging therapies, I like that term
Dr. Judy Morgan
well. And you know, mushrooms are really I mean, they've been around. Let's face it, in Chinese medicine, they've been using them for 1000s of years, but for us in this holistic, integrative space, I would say, just in probably the last five or six years, it really is like in your face at the forefront has really become an emerging, emerging therapy that we're just hearing more and more and more about.
Dr. Rob Silver
Yes, I think there were some, a few factors that really contributed to the rise of interest in mushrooms, both by people and, of course, by their four legged family members.
Dr. Rob Silver 3:41
The COVID epidemic pandemic certainly was one very strong motivating force people were looking for ways to avoid vaccinations or to enhance the effectiveness of vaccinations, or reduce their side effects, or not use vaccinations as a way of protecting their health and with as people were were homebound, and their pets became such an important part of their life, their daily life, because we've also seen changes in the veterinary profession, secondary to,
Dr. Rob Silver 4:08
Yeah, absolutely, I agree with you. But um, and so people were focusing much more on their pets. And so it was like, you know, one for me and you know, one, one for Fido, so to speak. I think that's one. I think that's one very strong motivating reason. Another is I think that we're having more products emerging on the marketplace that are available, and there's been some changes with some segments of the mushroom or the fungal product industry that has made manufacturing or cultivating the products much easier, and that's something that is actually important, I think, to talk about, because there are different types of products on the marketplace, some which actually contain authentic mushrooms, others which contain the mycelium, but the mycelium has been grown on grain. Mycelium is great stuff,
Dr. Rob Silver 5:00
But when You dilute it by growing it on grain. It's not the same in terms of potency and clinical effectiveness as the actual authentic mushrooms.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Absolutely. Yeah, so there's a lot that goes into, you know? So I keep saying I use mushrooms a lot when I'm designing diets, yes, but eating whole mushrooms is very different from a mushroom tincture or a mushroom extract or a mushroom that's been processed, which allows us to get so much more benefit from the mushrooms after they go through some of those processes.
Dr. Rob Silver
Well, I think there's benefits to both actually and And originally, I used to get the dried mushrooms from the Chinese herbal supply houses, and I would grind them down, or I'd put them into a soup and decock them up and use that as a way of administering to myself or to my my my patients. But now it is nice we have them in convenient formats, whether it's a capsule or a powder or soft chew, or even tinctures, which make it so much easier. And we know with our our wonderful pets, that compliance with the ability to actually get the medication into the pet is probably as important as the potency and effectiveness of the medication for whatever reason you're giving it to them,
Dr. Judy Morgan
sure, if it's sitting on the shelf and your pet runs the other way. It's not doing a whole lot of good. Yeah, I actually I give mushrooms to my pets in a lot of different ways. So a lot of the recipes that they're eating have mushrooms in them. So whether they're gently cooked or raw, however they're going in, they're also getting tinctures specific ones based on what I'm trying to accomplish with a specific animal. And then I also use a mushroom chew. It's a hard chew, not a soft chew as a treat. So it's like, you know, I don't think I can kill them with too many mushrooms. So I'm like, here, you can have it this way, this way, this way. But it feels really good to know that I'm giving them something that's so good for them and so beneficial, and they think they're just getting a treat. This is amazing.
Dr. Rob Silver
Well, mushrooms are like the, you know, the true superfood, and they were, we call them a they were a readily harvestable forest edible that was available to early humans, even to primates, and so they've been a part of of our culture, you know, the human culture and pre human culture since, you know, reap the pre dating of history.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So you just brought up an interesting point, which made my mind go in a totally different direction. But are, and I'm sure there have been, Are there studies watching
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:42
animals in the wild forage and picking and choosing different mushrooms
Dr Rob Silver
in terms of looking at the zoo, pharmacognosy aspect of it, like and where, you know, they the some of the ancients wrote that we learn how to use herbs, you know, by watching what the animals use. Similarly, you wonder, if that's true, we know that animals will will graze on mushrooms, but they don't necessarily select the ones that are not toxic to humans. For instance, I've seen deer foraging on Amanita mushrooms that are highly toxic, you know, the deaths Angel. So, so I don't know that we could use the animal metabolism as guidance for which mushrooms would be most acceptable.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So I should not follow the deer around my field and pick what they're eating. Got it
Dr Rob Silver
No, but I do want to add something to what you were saying about you're giving mushrooms in a variety of different formats to your pets, which I totally respect, and is great, but raw mushrooms can be a problem simply because they're so they're so fibrous that it's hard to get the goodies inside the mushrooms to come out. So So I recommend that they be cooked even lightly, maybe for 10 or 15 minutes of sauteing them, or something like that. Probably their best application in terms of a food format would be in a stew or a sauce or a soup, because that way they get to be cooked for a sufficient period of time. Real mushrooms. Who is who does this commercially, they will heat the mushrooms up in a water bath at 90 degrees centigrade for two hours as their way of releasing all of these bound up, except, you know, secondary metabolites and nutrients, and you know, the real, the real mojo of the mushrooms,
Dr. Judy Morgan
yeah, absolutely, it's interesting. So I started, I started in practice in 1984 Okay, and I sold my practices in 2020, so 36, years, and didn't get into doing integrated medicine until about 10 years in. But I remember when I was first starting to get into doing some alternative things, acupuncture, doing some herbal medicine,
Dr Judy Morgan 9:57
university, at University of Pennsylvania. A the study was done on hemangiosarcoma dogs using a Turkey Tail, mushroom capsule, I guess, and looking at the benefits for hemangiosarcomas. But that was a really good study that came out that said, hey, look, we had a better outcome with these animals with just by using Turkey Tail with nothing else. So I, I think that we are actually seeing more studies coming out and more information coming our way. And I today, we want to talk about some of the different mushrooms, kind of like your top five, maybe. And you know what we've seen because very and just like all herbs have different properties, whether it's energetics or,
you know, using them from a TCVM standpoint, but what we're finding is that different mushrooms sort of target different areas of the body,
Dr. Rob Silver
they do much, and they very much do and, and I think that that 2012 study that on hemangiosarcoma and Turkey Tail was another factor that also brought mushrooms more to the forefront in the, at least in the minds of the veterinarians and, and in, you know, in the citizen scientist, pet parent, you know, who's who is aware of those studies, and they did a follow up study on that. I don't know if you know of that.
Dr. Judy Morgan
I probably read it at the time, but
Dr. Rob Silver
that was a pilot. The first one was a pilot study. They were just trying to establish a dosage, an effective dosage, and they got very surprising results, because they found that the highest dosage tier in that one group of only five dogs actually had superior survival times over historical survival times for dogs that had that were also splenectomized but had chemotherapy. So that got everybody interested. The oncologist at the time said, Hang on, only five dogs in a study group. Let's not get too excited. So it took them 10 years to to gather 100 dogs, you know, and we'll follow them for their lifespan on this with this terrible disease. And they had one group that was just the Turkey Tail mushroom, 50 dogs, that's a good sized group. And then they had the two other cohorts. One was chemotherapy with a Turkey Tail mushroom placebo. And then they had Turkey Tail or they had chemotherapy with the Turkey Tail mushroom itself. And then they measured lifespan. They went through the the, you know, the survival of each of these 100 dogs. They found some interesting things there. I don't know if that's if you'd like me to go absolutely.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Well, I know that there are so many people out there with dogs with hemangiosarcoma, or they've had dogs with hemangio so. I mean, we had a client who had a dog with hemangioso, her other three dogs were subjected to an abdominal ultrasound every six months for the rest of their lives because she was scared to death and so many people who are her in that bone. So, yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Rob Silver
But you know, I think some of these new tests they have for cancer markers might be a little easier than ultrasound.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, I'm thinking now we have better testing for that, but yeah, that's what she did.
Dr. Rob Silver
But they had some very interesting results. For one, they found out that males did better than females across the board, no matter what their staging was, of the disease. And when you go back to the 2012 study, and I hate to bust some balloons, most of the dogs in that study, in that one cohort that had the 100 MiGs per k per day dosage were males. Then that was one thing too. When they presented, when they presented a time of diagnosis, their hematocrit was also a prognosticator. If their hematocrit was greater than 30% they did better than if was less than 30% so you got a male dog with a higher hematocrit. It it may be a reason to promote splenectomy and pursuing the whole course. There's other times when it doesn't, you know, the animal may not survive more than a month or two. It's a real. It's a real. It's a realistic question to ask if it's worthwhile to take that spleen out and have the animal deal with the the aftermath of surgery and recovery and, you know, and everything else that's involved with it. So those were two things. Then, of course, the third was the stage itself, which means how far the cancer has progressed from the original spleen. And of course, when it's stage one, just on the spleen, they did the best, and they nearly and they had, like, I think, eight months of survival on just the the Turkey Tail alone, if you were a male with a greater 30% hematocrit in stage one. Okay, so that at least gives you, you know, kind of a certain time. I mean, there are, you know, 50 dogs in that group, so that's good. And then if you had chemotherapy with the with the placebo, it did. They did like, I think, 340 days, a little better than a year, little like 12 or 13 months. But then the group that had the the the Turkey Tail mushroom and the chemotherapy did about 450 days, but they weren't able to get statistical significance. And so that's what everybody dislikes about studies, is that they're so tight sphinctered without saying that something worked or not because it doesn't hew to that numerical line.
Dr. Rob Silver 15:00
But for a veterinarian like you and myself that we were in practice, or for all the veterinarians out there who are listening to this, it gives us good guidance, really. And you know, certainly I would much if if, if chemotherapy was in was in the mind of the pet parent that they were okay with it, because many pet parents have been turned off by the effects of chemotherapy in their own family members or other animals, then that would really be the best way to go use the mushroom with the chemotherapy. And so many studies show that mushrooms do not interfere with the effects of chemotherapy. If anything, mushrooms really help chemotherapy, both in terms of the outcome, in terms of the cancer kill, but also in terms of things like the depletion of the bone marrow by the chemotherapy agent. Mushrooms contain beta glucans, which are one of their powerhouse polysaccharides that actually go to the bone marrow and work on the stem cells there to promote the regeneration of more of the red and white cell lines. So yeah, so using mushrooms with cancer is a great idea,
Dr. Judy Morgan
absolutely. But you know, what's so difficult in that conversation is so many oncologists who are only trained in western medicine, we've got the client who's standing there saying, hey, I want to use mushrooms. I want to use this supplement, this supplement, and they may have a whole list, and many times, the oncologist says, I'm really not familiar with any of that. I recommend you don't use any of it. I don't think we can go wrong with mushrooms.
Dr. Rob Silver
You can't. No, there's so few, there's like, almost no side effects, period, nothing. Nothing about the liver, nothing about, you know, anticoagulant properties, no real interference, you know, with any of the other pharmaceuticals or herbs we might be using, because they don't really adversely affect liver detoxification, which is what is really the thing we measure when it comes to those kinds of interactions. But, yeah, it's, you know, the oncology
Dr. Rob Silver 16:55
segment of our profession is growing, and they're expanding, and we now have, I think, five integrative oncologists in this country, you know, veterinarians who are who are promoting that they do integrative work, and they are just, I think they're a seed that's going to grow because, because as good as many of the oncology therapies can be good, you know, in terms of survival statistics, it needs to be tempered by the value of complementary medicine, both in terms of side effects, but also in terms of outcome,
Dr. Judy Morgan
I think so absolutely. It's interesting. I only had one dog ever to go through chemotherapy, and I'm one of those people now saying, Yeah, I would not do that again, just based on the side effects from that. But I went to a kind of a newly minted integrative oncologist. She was just starting out in the integrative part of it, and so she was very into adding acupuncture on some herbal medicine. She had not taken food therapy yet, so it was kind of fun working with her in that she's like, Okay, tell me what you got food wise. And I'm like, okay, good. Now I'll let you do the acupuncture, because it's my own dog. And yeah, so it was, it was an interesting combination, and I think if we can get more of that going on,
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:09
it would be really, really good for our pets. We need to take a break to hear from our sponsor. When we come back, we're going to talk about the different mushrooms and the ways that they can help and what their specialties are. Stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #1
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Dr. Judy Morgan 20:46
welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan, and I am discussing mushrooms with my guest Dr Rob Silver, he's kind of the mushroom guru, and so we said we were going to talk about some of your favorite mushrooms and what they do. And you happen to work very closely with a company called Real Mushrooms, which is a company that we really like. You've also written this wonderful book, There's a Mushroom For That. So anybody who has not seen Dr Rob's book on mushrooms. You need to get this book. He's got case studies in there, talking about how some of his his patients were treated, and how mushrooms can be helpful. So, very, very good resource, highly recommended. So we're going to talk about individual mushrooms. But there is a product that Real Mushrooms makes called Five Defenders. So why is it called Five defenders? And what's in it?
Dr. Rob Silver
Well, it contains five different mushrooms. That's where we get the five part, and that would be Reishi and Turkey Tail and shiitake and maitake and Chaga. And we call it defenders because one of the main functions that people recognize, and science recognizes that mushrooms have, is they help our body to defend against immune system challenges, whether it be infection, whether it be, you know, crazy cell growth, or, you know, different types of inflammation, like an autoimmune disease, things like that. So, and there's a lot of good evidence, you know, hundreds of years of use for that. So that's why it gets the name five defenders. And it was put together by the company's founders, because they chose the five mushrooms for which there's the best evidence of effectiveness, and because they're the strongest. And we also know, and there's some studies that support this, that when you put mushrooms together, you get synergy. And so it is. It's the most popular formula this company sells, and it's because it's so effective, and it is good for many different types of issues that our pets or people you know, will encounter, you know, in their in their lives.
Dr. Judy Morgan
And so Real Mushrooms, did they start as a human supplement company?
Dr. Rob Silver
They are a human supplement company. I came to them. I left one company when they were sold back in the middle of the pandemic, and wasn't quite done with my career dealing with emerging therapies. I saw the value of this emerging therapy of mushrooms. So I went to them and I said, Let me design a pet line for you. And the rest is history. That was in 2021 we've been working hard getting getting the line out. It takes time to really do it, right, yeah, to get a good product out there.
Dr. Judy Morgan
And the reason I asked that is because I know there are people listening who are saying, Oh, this is so good for my pets. It must be good for me too.
Dr. Rob Silver
Well, it is. And many people were, you are already using that line for themselves. And Come COVID, come, whatever their animal was suffering from. It was just automatic, you know, because animals have become part of our household, they become our little children. I mean, the name fur baby kind of, it's not quite but, yeah, so they become our children, and we treat them like our children, and we give we want them to experience the same health benefits that we experience from the things that we're doing. So so that also allowed the pet line to become almost immediately popular, because so many people were familiar with it for their for themselves.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:14
okay, so, so basically, five defenders, if somebody just wanted a daily supplement to just kind of ward off some of the evil spirits.
Dr. Rob Silver
It's a great place to start, you know, and I've actually used the five defenders to formulate a couple of other wellness products that are palaters that you know, that are more palatable because I've used some krill meal to palletize them. We got one for dogs called the daily dog, and we've got one for cats called functional feline that uses that as a core mushroom formula. I added a few more mushrooms and a few more, you know, herbs and other types of nutraceuticals to those two to make them.
Dr. Judy Morgan
It's just sort of an overall immune boost,
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:00
Like Let's keep Our immune system working the way it's supposed to
Dr. Rob Silver
definitely immune boost and can help with many of the problems that our immune system needs to deal with. But it does have a few other interesting properties to it that we've been sleuthing out over these years and and it's because mushrooms, you know, mushrooms are I call them. I'm fond of calling them the Swiss Army knife of supplements, because they have so many different, you know, blades that you can use for different applications. And it's not just about immune system. I mean, they are the true superfoods, the original superfoods. So for instance, the they, and we think about the beta glucans as the active polysaccharide that stimulates the immune system, but they have these hydrocarbons called terpenes in them. Now, cannabis also has terpenes. Terpenes are what give the odor to fruits and vegetables. You squeeze a lemon, you're smelling a terpene called limonene, you know, and and it has it had. And terpenes all go across the blood brain barrier and actually have effects on brain chemistry and behavior and things like that, even epilepsy, those kinds of diseases. But these terpenes in in the reishi mushroom and in the chaga fungus, because Chaga's technically not a mushroom. It's a fungus that grows into the bark of the birch tree, and then the birch the birch tree, kind of reacts, and you get this big old canker that looks like cancer on the tree. And that's the doctrine of signatures, right there. But these terpenes actually stabilize mast cell membranes, so they help to reduce the ability of the mast cell when when activated by an allergic challenge, let's say it stimulates them to or to not release their vesicles that contain histamine. So in a way, they are like anti histamines, but they are not. They actually work in a very proactive way, a very healthy way, by keeping the keeping it all inside the cell, by reducing, reducing the activity of the mast cells, which are the allergy cells in the body. To put it simply, yeah, which is, is pretty critical. It's cool.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, we've got, you know, mast cell cancers. We have autoimmune disease. We have a lot of places where the mast cells are not behaving.
Dr. Rob Silver
And we hear this from the people. I mean, this is kind of what clued us in to begin with, because, you know, our pets don't talk, you know, atleast with words. And you know, we hear from people, oh, my seasonal allergies, you know, five you know, with the five defenders, it's so much better. Now, you know, it's not perfect. It's not, I mean, you know, people have to realize that these supplements aren't really, they're not drugs, they're not really drug like, they have a different kind of a proactive, you know, biological enhancement effect, as compared to, you know, kind of
Dr. Rob Silver 27:35
interfering with things.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, it's sort of like with medication. We're more reactive as All right, the histamine already left, so now I need to take the antihistamine to calm that down, whereas, you know, so if you know your pet has an allergy season, it's sort of like, let's be proactive. Let's start this kind of stuff ahead of time, so that we sort of cut it off at the path before it starts to have this huge reaction.
Dr. Rob Silver
Very true, and, you know, they're best used in in, I like this term, in a multimodal fashion. You know, we talk about approaches to pain being multimodal. There's not one thing that's going to deal with pain. Likewise, with complicated issues like allergies or other immune immune related issues, you really need a whole, you know, protocol, a bunch of different things that work together, you know, to make
Dr. Judy Morgan
so much, so much goes into it. I mean, first we have to start with the diet, and then we have to fix everything else that goes into it. but yeah, being a little more proactive and getting ahead of the season, sort of like when we talk about the energetics of food, like, all right, lamb and chicken are really hot. It's going to be 100 degrees. 100 degrees all next week. Probably don't want to feed those. Maybe we should look for something a little cooler. So it's kind of being that proactive in the same way. And again, mushrooms are just so amazing.
Dr. Rob Silver
Have you looked into the food therapy properties of mushrooms, though, in terms of their energetic
Dr. Judy Morgan
I have in the past, and I know they can be a little bit different,
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:02
and I can't spit them out at you on your book
Dr. Rob Silver 29:07
But what I wanted to say is they're very compatible with almost any energetic diet, because they're pretty most of them are pretty bland. Yeah, they might have a little barely neutral, like Reishi has got a little bit of cooling. If you ever tasted it's very bitter. With bitters are cooling, kind of a taste, you know, on Cordyceps, you know, which is also neutrals, a little bit warming. If we ever tasted it tastes a little bit like butter or something that's, you know, kind of warm and toasty. But you can almost use them with with without really worrying about it's going to mess up your energetics if you're done.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, exactly. And so now that you brought up Cordyceps, we're gonna talk about that next. Okay, and it's really interesting that you say it's mildly warming, because Cordyceps has a reputation for being really good for our pets with kidney disease, and a lot of them are cold, and they need that warming effect. So just you know little light bulb.
Dr. Rob Silver 30:00
warming also means increase in circulation. So you get, you know, an increase in circulation to the glomerulus, the filtration aspect of the of the kidney. And so there's been a lot of studies that show, unfortunately, we don't have any clinical studies in animals yet. I'm trying to get that going
Dr. Rob Silver 30:18
that show that the Cordyceps is actually protective of the kidney, and especially if you're on like a toxic chemical like cisplatin, is a chemotherapy agent which is toxic to the kidneys, but very effective at killing cancer and healthy cells too. But Cordyceps can help protect against some of that that renal damage. Cordyceps has a lot of different traits, including the kidney thing. But because our cats are so delicately susceptible to kidney problems, I wanted to promote the Cordyceps specifically for cats, especially because the mushroom itself is not that bad tasting, and it's something that cats can accept. If you're just giving the pure mushroom itself. It's very acceptable, you know, starting with a powder and starting with a small amount, which is my way of introducing things to cats, to get them used to the odor. I have a theory, and maybe, and this is probably a good, good forum to do that, that cats, because their livers don't detoxify as well as as as humans and dogs and horses, let's say, have had to be very cautious about whatever they eat in the future, eat period, just to preserve their lives. And so they they're olfactory apparatus. Their smellers are so precise that they can smell the difference between yesterday's meal and today's meal. That's why every time you feed your dog, they don't even they just they they scoop in and it's gone. They inhale it. Cats, even though it's the same food every day in the same location at the same time, they're going to take a little time to kind of sniff it first. And so that's why starting with a tiny pinch and putting it in food that they like a lot is the way to get them in a subliminal way more used to that aroma, which then you can start to build up the amount you're giving them till, hopefully, you get to an effective dosage in your cat.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, cats are so much fun. Just I actually hate doing consultations for cats, because I'm like, Okay, here's the 17 things I want you to get in your cat. Good luck getting one in. Yeah, they make it a challenge. They take a different approach. Yeah, yeah, they definitely do. They tell you what they're gonna do, and it's really interesting. We're talking about Cordyceps and, of course, my love the Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, who like to all have mitral valve disease at some point in their life, and they end up on diuretics. And a lot of them end up on torsomide in their you know, when they hit stage D, protecting those kids with Cordyceps seems like it would be a no brainer.
Dr. Rob Silver
Cordyceps is also very beneficial to the lungs. There's good evidence that it could be helpful with asthma, which is not an uncommon problem in cats and Chinese medicine, we see asthma as actually being a an imbalance between the kidneys and the lungs, you know so and they also have a benefit to the cardiovascular system as well and circulation. They're also adaptogens, which means that the true adaptogen is a herb or a mushroom that has a beneficial influence on the HPA axis, the Pituitary and the thyroid, hypothalamic, adrenal axis, so it can be very helpful for stress. I did a study in horses with Cordyceps that have a something called PPID, which is basically equine Cushings. And it's seasonal. And I did it with two holistic equine vets in two different stables in two different locations, and we measured ACTH and insulin, and we found improvements in both. And oftentimes they'll have bad hair coats and and PPID could be a precursor to laminitis, which is basically a disabling and oftentimes fatal ailment. And so we had very good results with that,
Dr. Judy Morgan
boy, you just taught me something. I'm going home and giving Cordyceps to I've got two minis and a donkey that are all in that boat.
Dr. Rob Silver
Are they? Yeah, because they oftentimes have this big shaggy hair coat, and that's oftentimes the first time that you notice they say about 20 to 30% of horses actually are afflicted with it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Is incredibly high, unfortunately. And a lot of it has to do with the feed? Yeah, we are feeding them very wrong. I mean, at our farm, we have to buy all low starch hay and their, their, their grain supplement is not a grain, it's basically a vitamin pellets that they get. They just, they can't tolerate much. And it's funny, but I feel guilty because the paddocks that these animals are in are very weedy and not good pasture. And I'm like, You know what? If you had good pasture, you would all be rolling up dead with your laminitis and problems.
Dr. Judy Morgan 34:55
So it's probably good that hemp has shown itself to be a very good horse feed as well. Good got.
Dr. Rob Silver 35:00
that hemp has shown itself to be a very good horse feed as well. It's got Good protein in it. And the CBD level that's in hemp, which is pretty low, has been really beneficial. Even that low level for horses,
Dr Judy Morgan
we've got everybody on CBD.
Dr. Judy Morgan 35:10
So anyway, different conversation, conversation. So Turkey Tail is our next mushroom. We talked about that one, a little bit
Dr. Rob Silver
Turkey Tail as a mushroom in all in terms of all the other mushrooms has a higher percentage of beta glucans and has a wider variety. Like a mushroom doesn't just have one type of one type of beta glucan. Oftentimes it has multiple ones with multiple branching so anyway, don't need to go into details, but if the large number of beta glucans that have also helped to promote its value, it also has a high number of these terpenes that I'm mentioning that it's second only to reishi, which has the highest terpene content of any of any mushroom. But mushrooms, because of their fiber and because of their immune modulating benefits, are incredible aids to improve microbiome function. And microbiome really rules it all. They rule the roost as far as everything. I mean, we even have microbiome on our skin and in our mouth, all of which, when we promote the health of those regional or global microbiomes, improves the health of those areas. So So Turkey Tail is really big in that regards as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I'm so into mushrooms for gut health. I think that
Dr. Judy Morgan 36:21
all all, all of us and all of our pets could really benefit from that microbiome support.
Dr. Rob Silver
I will say that because of the fiber content that many mushrooms have, that for some animals and humans, that if you start with too much of it, the fiber can precipitate soft stools or diarrhea. And we do get some of those complaints, you know, with people that are eager to get their animals started, and maybe they've got a big problem that they think, if they just all throw a bunch of stuff at it right away, it's going to do well,
Dr. Judy Morgan
we get that a lot with supplements. If this much is good, then this much must be better, right? Not true,
Dr. Rob Silver
not true. But, well, this might I mean higher dosages are better for more severe problems. And when we talk about how you actually dose mushrooms, that's one the parameters we use is, how serious is the problem? You know? Is it terminal cancer, you know, or is it something that's more of a wellness complaint, and that also
Dr. Rob Silver 37:16
dictates, you know how much of it we're going to be using, but you always need to start with a small amount first, because if you wind up getting that diarrhea side effect, it's really hard to get back up on that horse and ride again. To use our equine metaphor,
Dr. Judy Morgan
yeah, a lot, a lot of people are gonna say, oh, that didn't go well, yeah, never doing that again.
Dr. Rob Silver
Yeah. So I've learned over the years, and I'm sure you have to always, have, always start low, go slow, and work your way up.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, absolutely okay. We're going to take a break to hear from our sponsor. We've got a couple more mushrooms we want to talk about, and then we're going to talk about, you know, potential side effects, problems that you could have dosing your animals. We'll see where this goes. Stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #3
Thanks to Solutions Pet Products for sponsoring this podcast Episode. Solutions Pet Products is the number one producer of fermented raw goat milk, fermented gelatin broths and fermented complete diets for dogs and cats. Using traditional regenerative, honest farming and unbiased, transparent, well documented science, they craft simple solutions to complex problems. Nutrition is the foundation of our pet's health, with recipes specialized for gut and metabolic health, Solutions paves the way forward for true well being. Ask your local pet food retailer about purchasing options, or reach out to Solutions directly at nurture@solutionspetproducts.com.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #4 38:42
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Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan, Dr Rob Silver, the mushroom guy who wrote a book called There's a Mushroom For That. So, you know, he's the mushroom guy.
Dr. Judy Morgan 40:03
We've been talking about the different kinds of mushrooms and some of their benefits. And so being a little more focused, I mean, obviously five defenders, it's like, if you're not sure what mushroom to give your pets, just it's a great place to start. Hit five defenders, and you'll, you'll cover a lot of bases, but each mushroom is kind of known for its own little thing. So the next one I want to discuss is lion's mane.
Dr. Rob Silver
Lion's Mane the most popular mushroom in North America, I can't remember one of the coolest looking mushrooms. Like it really does look like a lion's mane. Well, actually, I think Shaggy. I think it looks more like a brain and getting into the doctrine of sick well, especially once it's dried. And we have some dried mushroom specimens down there, you might want to take a look, and I will show you what I mean, but, but, and it does fit into the doctrine of signatures in that regards, in the same way that Chaga does, as far as cancer for those cankers on the tree. But lion's mane is the most popular mushroom in North America, trying to remember why? Oh, I know it's because of memory.
Dr. Rob Silver 41:03
It's been, it's been. It's a great boon to memory. We're seeing actually studies coming out with early Alzheimer's where it's helping to slow those things down. It has some remarkable properties. But you spoke earlier about mushrooms for the GI and originally, lion's mane was a GI mushroom. That's where it was originally found its its historical benefits, traditional benefit, and, and, and, there's actually a study from Japan using a powder, dried lion's mane on top of kibble that showed very good improvements to microbiome.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Interesting. So if people are you know, stuck in that I have to feed kibble. They've tried other things, and it hasn't gone well, maybe just putting some lion's mane on top is gonna
Dr. Rob Silver
Lion's Mane could, I mean, I'm sure there's some other, you know, microbiome enhancements that could be added to kibble that might also help, because not everybody can has the time or the motivation or the budget to afford some of the higher end foods and so and so the kibble provides at least a baseline for them. And so adding things to the kibble could also be a good strategy for them. But the interesting thing is, is that lion's mane really works on the brain and on the gut. With this brain gut axis, that's really why it does what it does. And because we now we're looking at things like Parkinson's disease, they think actually comes from the gut, originally from that same brain gut axis.Yeah. And so they're also seeing if with early Alzheimer's, they're seeing some improvement with the lion's mane Mushroom. Lion's Mane has three other than the beta glucans that it contains, which are the polysaccharides that help improve immune system, function of food for the microbiome. Lion's Mane has three active ingredients in it. One of the active ingredients is only found in the lion's mane mycelium. And those are it's a terpene, a diterpene called arinocene. And there's good studies with these mycelial extract. And this is mycelium grown in liquid culture, not mycelium, grown on grain that show improvements of cognition, improvements with memory, even some improvements with lifespan. Yeah, and my last talk here on Tuesday, when nobody will attend, probably is on cognition and longevity, because the two are really connected. But it also has these harisinones. And harisinones are like the Arinocenes. Another it's a triterpene versus diterpene like that. You know, too technical. Maybe
Dr. Judy Morgan 43:29
it's sciency or science,
Dr. Rob Silver
but, but the harisinones are actually in the Lion's Mane mushroom itself. And so they are, you know, they, that's where they the mushroom itself gets its benefits, but it also contains an antioxidant, advanced antioxidant, called ergothioneine. And right now, there's a huge amount of interest in ergothione It's like the, it's like the, the most amazing fad nutrient. But it's not a fad because it has such incredible benefits. And all mushrooms contain the ergothionine. That's why, even with the button mushrooms, they've shown that in in cultures that eat maybe one serving of button mushrooms a week, have improvements in cognitive function. all mushrooms have this in it and it and that's one reason why mushrooms have such a wide benefit and such a bet why people eating mushrooms go on feels pretty good. It's the Ergo, the ergothionine, that's in it. And Ergo has interesting properties. It crosses the blood blood brain barrier, and it also acts as an antioxidant, which we know that really helps to reduce aging and also helps to improve some of the mental processes, because there's a lot of
Dr. Rob Silver 44:38
oxidative stress in the brain, right? But it also has an impact on the mitochondrion, so it also provides, it has, like this dual effect, depending on which which state it's in, depending on the micro environment that it's in, where it actually improves the micro the the mitochondrion to kick out ATP energy, which helps to feed those neurons, which Helps to improve their functioning as well. And the ergothionine does just work in the brain. It works throughout the body. So we really believe the Ergo to be a true longevity vitamin, because mammals don't create it, so there's but they need it. They have transporters for it, and they've got receptors for it, but they don't make it. So it really does fit in, although we don't see deficiency diseases per se like would be the necessary for the definition of a vitamin, it really does fit that definition. They get it from their food. And ergothione is found in soil fungi and soil bacteria, and the plants absorb it, and so when you eat the plants, you get a little bit of ergothioneine every day. And ergothioneine just isn't eliminated quickly from the body, so it builds up over time. So little bits every day just eating a nice, healthy, fresh vegetable type of diet can also supply the ergothioneine. You get a lot more from the mushrooms, and then our herbivores that also forage and eat the grasses and plants also get the ergothioneine, which goes into their meat. And so when you eat the meat, you're also getting much smaller amounts of ergothioneine, but you're getting it there as well. And there's been some studies that show that industrial agriculture, with their aggressive tilling properties in terms of disrupt, disturbing the soil so they can throw more
Dr. Rob Silver 46:27
fertilizer on it and kind of bump up their crops with their GMOs and all that crap actually destroys the the content of ergothioneine in foods. Another good reason to look at organically grown permaculture, you know,
Dr. Judy Morgan
organically grown, grown, regenerative farming, like all those things. And you know what that regenerative farming thing we're trying to do it with our farm. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but when you, when you stop tilling the soil, and you get the animals back on it, and they're walking on it, and they're passing manure on it, and then you get, you know, all of a sudden, the earthworms come back, and the soil organisms come back. And so, yeah, yeah, chicken tractors, for everyone there, they're amazing. And that's a whole nother topic. That's another whole topic. We're going to talk about that a lot more on other topics. All right, so another one, and I this one I'm not even familiar with, the golden oyster mushroom. I've seen oyster mushrooms. Is the golden oyster different? Or is that same thing?
Dr. Rob Silver
There's a lot of different colors of the oyster mushroom. Just pink. There's a pink oyster, there's the Blue Oyster, and there's the gray oyster, there's the king oyster. I mean, there's a lot of different oyster mushrooms and the Pleurotus species, and it's, it's an amazing species in terms of the number of ingredients it has in it. That's where they discovered statin drugs. The oyster mushrooms produce something that has an anti cholesterol property to it, that pharma went into and wound up patenting, of course. And so you can't really, you can't really sell mushrooms for cholesterol because of those kinds of regulations, but they are good for cholesterol, and the golden oyster is second only to the porcini mushroom. The porcini mushroom is what we think gives the Mediterranean diet its real punch, its real longevity aspect, because the porcini mushroom is a major part of Italian and Mediterranean foods. Porcini mushroom has like seven to nine MiGs per gram of ergothione, the golden oyster, what's published has about four grams per four milligrams per gram. But the golden oyster that we're growing to, to use the ergothion has now about seven or eight and so we don't process it all. We just use the the dried, the dried and water, hot water, processed golden oyster to source our ergothionine
Dr. Rob Silver 48:50
in our we have a pure ergothionine product called Ergo plus. But I've also put the golden oyster into a lot of my pet products. It's in the daily dog and the functional feline. I've got it in my mobility chews because it is because it has so many benefits that ergothionine not just because of the benefit to cognition and memory, but also because of its benefit to the mitochondrial function. So which is big, especially with mobility and things like that.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Well, yeah, mitochondrial function is big for so many ways. It's interesting. Ian Billinghurst's book, Pointing the Bone at Cancer. It's a great book. But really, the whole point is mitochondria you know, mitochondrial function and having healthy mitochondria
Dr. Rob Silver
and, you know, and his tracing the roots of cancer to to the the early, you know, inclusion of bacteria into cells as mitochondria. This is a sidebar, but Ian and Dr Marty and I all spoke together at a conference in Saskatoon, Canada, about
Dr. Rob Silver 49:52
four or five years before pandemic,
Dr. Judy Morgan
It was 2019 because that was the last time Ian was over on this side of the world.
Dr. Rob Silver 50:00
It was like The whole thing was on cancer. And, you know, Ian did his diet, and Marty did his thing, and, you know, and I did CBD.
Dr. Judy Morgan
yeah, all those things that are that, you know, we know can be so helpful, but we're not always allowed to talk about,
Dr. Judy Morgan 50:18
so, any adverse so we're gonna talk about actually giving these products, giving mushrooms, to our pets. So we talked about five, five defenders be just a great way to start. And it comes as a powder or a capsule,
Dr. Rob Silver
and we have it in our immune chews, and we have it in the daily dog, and we have it in the functional feline. It's such a those are powders. Those are powders. Yes, get sprinkled in the food, yeah. And so we're sensitive to a lot of the pet parents needs. As far as the allergies and soft chews are great, but to make the matrix, oftentimes you have to put things that some animals are allergic exactly, and we like the capsules. But there's some issues out there about the excipients and the fillers, which really are, I think, a bit overblown, but I understand the concerns. So coming out with powders is a way to bypass those concerns. with powders, I like to use what I call functional palatinates, like I use a lot of krill meal, for instance, which is, which has, which is so beneficial anyway, yeah? And you know, it's got good phospholipids. It's got good marine lipids. It has astaxanthin, which is a great antioxidant as well. I like a lot, I think nutritional yeast quite a bit. You know, I used to use more kelp powder, but I'm sensitive to the iodine issues. You know, seaweed's Great stuff though.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So somebody wants to start with this. We talked about, if we overdo it too much. We might see some soft stools. Yeah, I think we mentioned that any other issues that people would watch for? I mean, obviously, if they turn over ability,
Dr. Rob Silver
palatability, yeah. But really, none and, and, you know, there's a lot of a lot of, we have a lot of customers at Real Mushrooms. We have a very vibrant customer service department. That is, you know, around 20, 24/7 365
Dr. Rob Silver 52:01
So I get to see a lot of those comments, a lot of those issues in terms of side effects. And we just don't see very much, but we do, I mean, we do get some adverse event reports. Most of them are, you know, some kind of an idiosyncratic reaction of that animal to that mushroom. Maybe it caused vom. I mean, it's, it's, you know, you sell 1000s and 1000s of these. And one person says, First time I gave it to my dog, they vomited, you know, you know that it's between the the product and that and that dog. I mean, nonetheless, we treat everything as being serious, and we, you know, and we take care of however they need. They feel like they need to be taken care of, but, but no, basically, they're, they're very, they're very bulletproof. You know, maybe that's one way they got that name bulletproof coffee.
Dr. Judy Morgan
There you go. Well, and that's a mushroom based coffee. Yeah, it is. So one of the cool things that we now have at Naturally Healthy Pets, which comes from Real Mushrooms, is their coffee creamers.
Dr. Rob Silver
Yes, the coffee creamers
Dr. Judy Morgan
for humans, but we're going to talk about it, because they're pretty cool. My daughter is addicted to them.
Dr. Rob Silver
Well, you know, and depending on the nutritional constraints of the animal, they could also be good palatability enhancers and and you should note that those creamers contain the five defenders in them. Now we also sell the the hot chocolate with the five defenders, but that's not for the not for the critters.
Dr. Judy Morgan 53:18
So the one it has, coconut
Dr. Rob Silver
one's dairy and one's non dairy, and so we use one has the coconut milk and has something called lacuna, which is a, you know, a vegetarian type of sweetener in it. And those are safe for the animals. Yeah, they are. They are safe.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Very cool. Yeah, my daughter walks around the warehouse all day with her coffee.
Dr. Judy Morgan 53:38
Yeah, she's, she's pretty addicted to it. So guidance for administration,
Dr. Rob Silver
this is the big one of the biggest questions we get, is dosage. And I try to tell people, it's not really dosage, because it's not really a drug, you know, it's food, you know, maybe portion, you know, or serving size, I like, that might be more appropriate. But there's, there's things we look at, we look at the weight of the animal to begin with, you know, if we have like a little chihui, you know, we're not going to use as much, and we're not going to be able to get as much to that tiny stomach anyway, you know, as compared to a big old Mastiff. So that's a consideration. We also look at the potency of the actual product itself, whether it's a Real Mushrooms product or another product, you know, how potent is it? Numbers, how much, how much, you know,
Dr. Rob Silver 54:27
how much energy does it have per unit volume or unit weight? Because that would be a consideration as well. With the Real Mushrooms products, it's easier for me, because they're all standardized to their Beta Glucan content, and it's all measured through third party analysis. And we have, we're very big on that stuff. But then the third, the third factor that you go in when you're trying to decide how much to give is the severity of the condition. If you're doing wellness a little bit every day, that's great, you know, but when you start to get, you know, kind of a more moderate problem, maybe you're trying to get that stabilization in the
Dr. Rob Silver 55:00
Mast Cell membranes, you know, or maybe you're using a lion's mane because you've got an old dog, we didn't get to that part, an old dog that, or an old cat that has this cognitive disorder, this cognitive function disorder, sundowners, that sort of a thing, you know, you don't need to use a lot of it, but you probably don't want to use a little bit of it. So you kind of want to use a moderate amount to get that benefit, titrate your way up to see how they will always start, always start low, go slow, and work your way up gradually to what your optimal dosage is, and hope you'll reach that before the animal gets tired of it. And some do, some some don't care. And then the third would be, you know, a nasty type of an infection, like maybe coccidioidomycosis, you know, some sort of a fungal infection, and using a fungus to fight a fungus, it's like fighting fire with fire. It's a good, good idea, you know, and like, truth, like, exactly, actually, good point. Or, you know, or cancer, those types of things, you would want to use a pretty high dosage. And one interesting fact that I got out of that hemangiosarcoma study that we mentioned earlier was the first study they did. That 2012 study, that's the only one people seem to know about. Was actually a dosing study. They had three different groups of five dogs each, and they used like a 25 MIG per k, 50 MIG per k and 100 MIG Per K. And so what they found from that study was that the more you used, the better the response. So what that says is, with mushrooms, you do get a dose response effect. So if you have a serious problem, give more my thinking is that with the second study, what was clinical on that hemangiosarcoma product, if they had used a higher dosage, I bet they'd have gotten better numbers that the oncologist might have looked at, but the company, and when you do these studies, you also think about what's the cost going to be to the consumer? The product is already quite expensive, if you imagine dosing it at twice the amount, which is probably what you need to do. Yeah. So that's, that's where, using a Turkey Tail fruiting body extract, like what Real Mushrooms has, which is, you know, which has our also our highest Beta Glucan content of all our products, and dosing it as high as that as your cancer patient can tolerate, I think, is the way to go, and that's what I do when I'm when I'm helping patients or clients who have pets that have hemangiosarcomas, I try to get them to Push that dosage as high as they can. And really, if you can afford it, and I have had a few clients that could, I'd use both. I'd use the mycelial product in combination with the fruiting body product, and try to get those dosages as high as you can for better effectiveness.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you're dealing with a nasty cancer like that, you got to push everything you can at it, Rob, I can't believe we're out of time. You I know, like, I just, you have one of those brains that I just want to open up and walk inside for a little while and grab a bunch of information. But thank you so much for sharing some of that information. And you know, this is great. And so again, there's a mushroom for that by Dr Rob Silver. If you don't have that book, get it. You see this? You got a little sneak peek into the amount of knowledge that's in there. Today, there's a ton more in that book. Thank you very much, Rob.
Dr. Rob Silver
Thank you. Judy
OUTRO/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.
