Intro 00:00
If you have ever thought of using herbal therapies for your animals or for yourself, today you are going to learn so much from the most brilliant herbal mind I think I've ever talked to. David Winston is amazing. Stay tuned.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello, and welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan. My guest today is David Winston, who's a registered herbalist, and he also is the founding member of the American Herbalists Guild. And he has a school. He's the dean of the Center for Herbal Studies, which is a two-year training program in clinical herbal medicine, and I just learned that you started training herbalists for human medicine, and now you're seeing more and more veterinarians enrolled. And why do why do you think that is?
Dr. David Winston 01:04
I would say actually, veterinarians, and obviously not every veterinarian, but veterinarians are even in many cases more than physicians interested in other approaches simply because they see how many of their patients, being dogs, cats, horses, you know whatever the orthodox medicines simply aren't working. and so they are looking for other options, and there has been you know a significant number of we'll call them alternative veterinarians for a long time.
Dr. David Winston 01:38
and so you know, throughout my you know my career as an herbalist, I've worked with humans. Although you know, there's always been I've had students who are always you know either wanted to become herbal vet you know herbal veterinary herbalists, Or I've always trained veterinarians in herbal medicine, and because the majority of what we are doing for humans works for animals as well. It does. It's really transferable. Now, I will admit, having students that are veterinarians, I've had to learn a thing or two as well. You know, it's like I had never heard of a stiffle joint, but that you know, veterinarians is one of the great things is that I may be educating them, but in many ways they're educating me as well. Because they'll say, you know, they ask me a question about something. I'll say, okay, we have nothing like that for humans. So explain it to me, and then I'll give you an idea what we can actually try to do.
Dr. Judy Morgan 02:35
Yeah absolutely. And you know, one of the things that I really like is the Zoopharmacognosy, where it's basically we let the animals choose. And so I have a farm, and it's a regenerative farm, and we have a lot of different animals. And what's really cool, I have a lot of herb gardens because I just think they're fun, and it's really cool to watch the animals self-select what they want and what they need. Watching my dogs go through the herb garden, sniff everything, and they might taste a little bit of something, and then they'll find that one where they just dive in headfirst, and they're noshing down on everything they can get. And then I'm not a clinical herbalist. I use a lot of herbs, but then I'm I'm kind of going, well, let me go see what it is. Why is this animal suddenly diving into that? And so that begs the question. From a Western medicine perspective, we tend to assign things like, "Oh, that's kidney disease. Oh, that's heart failure. And then we have this sort of one size Fits all like oh well all kidney disease and this is what I really hate about corporate medicine because they literally have a notebook that says well if it comes in with these symptoms these are the tests you have to do this is the treatment you have to do and there's there's no deviating off that path otherwise you're in trouble with the higher ups and so I you know, my understanding is that you really focus on what is that patient telling you. Not all kidney failure cases get X. So, what is your approach to you know an individual case? Like, you know, do you have sort of this umbrella of oh well, if it's got kidney failure, I'm always going to grab for this, or is it a different approach?
Dr David Winston 04:28
In general, it's a very different approach. And so, one of the things I'll do, like for instance, in the beginning of my two-year program, I'll say to my students, "How many of you want to be good herbalists? And everybody raises their hand, and then I respond wrong answer. So if you're going to be an herbalist, but the truth is, if you're going to be a veterinarian, if you're going to be a teacher, if you're going probably even if you're going to be a car mechanic, don't be content to be good. I tell people do your best to be great. Not that you think you're great, but you're constantly striving to learn to grow. To know more, so that you can help your patients. So, in order for somebody to be "quote unquote" great, in my opinion, there are certain things that you need to know. Number one, you need to understand herbal energetics. So, we can have a whole group of plants that are all, let's say, adaptogens. That doesn't mean they're a one size fits all phenomenon. And when I used to teach before COVID, almost every year I was over in the UK teaching. I didn't go this year, but I'll be probably over next year. And they used to give some of the schools over there. They have a number of herbal degree programs, and they would kind of give the students a list. Here's the adaptogens. Here's the diuretics. Here's the diaphoretics. Here's the you know carminatives, like they're all the same. And what I would say is every plant has a personality, and I don't mean individual plants, but species. And so therefore, once you understand the personality, you understand whether that herb actually fits the person you're treating. So number one, we need to understand herbal energetics. Number two, we need to understand human energetics, i.e. differential diagnosis. And this allows us to match the herb, or in most cases, actually herbs, because traditionally herbs are always used in complex formulas specific to the patient. This allows us to match the herbs to the specific person, and so if you want to be great, and I would also point out that there are some other skills like understanding deep understanding your materia medica and understanding herbal synergy, but if you really want to do this well, you have to stop treating diseases, and you start treating people or your companion animals,
Dr David Winston 06:44
and in doing that, I'll give you an example. So, for instance, orthodox medicine treats depression for the most part as a single entity. No, yeah, they talk about several different types of depression. There's postpartum depression and there's seasonal affective disorder, but the treatment SSRIs, SNRIs, atypical antidepressants, maybe some of the new MAOIs, or talk therapy. Studies clearly show that talk therapy by itself is not as effective as the pharmaceuticals, but the two together work better than either one by itself, and the results based on human clinical trials, the most effective antidepressants work about 40% of the time. Okay, that's better than placebo, which is about a third of the time, but it's not that impressive. So if we understand that depression has many underlying causes, and we look at the pathophysiology of the depression and the person who is depressed. Then we recognize that there are different types of depression. There's GI-based depression, hepatic depression, cardiac-induced depression, thyroid-induced depression, old age-induced depression, blood sugar dysregulation-induced depression, neuroinflammation-induced depression, and the herbs we use to treat each of those things are different.
Dr. Judy Morgan 08:04
Exactly.
Dr David Winston 08:05
So when and I'm you know I I wish I could actually say that I get better results than I do, but when I treat my patients using that model, my results aren't 40% I basically say 65 to 70% of my patients have really significant improvements.
Dr. Judy Morgan 08:22
Nice.
Dr David Winston 08:23
Again, would I like 80? Sure. Sure. 90. Yeah. Absolutely. But you know that's more a limitation of perhaps there's things going on that are not obvious,
Dr David Winston 08:32
And you know nothing works 100% of the time. But I'll take 70% or even 65% over 40% any day of the week, so that is what is entailed, in my opinion, to be a great herbalist. Is again, you are treating the person who is depressed, or the animal who is depressed, not the depression.
Dr. judy Morgan 08:56
I love it. I love it. And you know, we and I'm trained in TCVM, so you know when we look at traditional Chinese medicine, we're always looking at the energetics, and we're looking again: is it coming from the liver? Is it coming from the gut? Is it coming from the heart? Is it coming? You know, the the brain is upset, but where is that coming from? Do we have a fire that's you know burning somewhere else that's affecting that? Do we have a deficiency somewhere else that's affecting that? And we know so much now about the gut-brain axis. And oh my gosh, we totally, especially in human medicine, in veterinary medicine, the microbiome has become like the big buzz. Everybody's been talking so much about it. We never heard about it before about 10 years ago, and now that it seems like that's all we talk about in human medicine. If I bring up the microbiome to a human doctor, their head spins. Like they literally look like they've come out of The Exorcist, and it's like you're not allowed to talk about that. We don't talk about. I don't. You know, I I I asked one GI doctor something about it, and like he literally was like. I think there's some research studies out there in the journals, and I'm like, oh my gosh, okay. When are you guys going to catch up? And I mean, they really they kind of get this tunnel vision of this is how we treat this disease. So I really really like that approach of yeah, no, that there's there's an individual patient in front of us, whether it's human, whether it's animal, and you don't treat that many animals. But I I can tell you, it is so often that somebody would come in with their dog, and I would diagnose or their cat, and you diagnose it with something, and they're like, "Well, of course he's got that. My kids have that. I have that, and you know, it's just like okay. Well, obviously, the the diet and the energetics and the environment that you're all living in, there's there's a disconnect there somewhere, and that's why it's affecting everybody in the family. And I I think that you know I love this because you're looking at herbs in a holism way, not in the one size fits all. So you talked about adaptogens. Give us kind of a down and dirty. What is an adaptogen? How does it work, and why do we care about them?
Dr. David Winston 11:22
Okay. Well, if we think about Americans, and not just people, but their animals, and you know, as a veterinarian, you know that when people bring in their animals, and their animals are just stressed out, the first thing you really want to look at isn't the animal; it's the owner.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:42
Exactly, exactly.
Dr. David Winston 11:44
You know, half the time I think it's if you could treat the owner, we could solve a lot of problems. Well, I mean, you know, they they live with us; they're very sensitive, and they're going to reflect what they are getting, you know, in their environment and their their pack. So, adaptogens, you know, the simplest answer is adaptogens are herbs that help us adapt more effectively to stress. Originally, the research starts in 1947 in the Soviet Union. They were trying to find a way to make better soldiers, better cosmonauts, better workers, so they could do what Khrushchev said, and that was to bury the West, because coming out of World War II, the Russians, the Germans, the Americans-we're giving our soldiers tons of amphetamines so that they could fight, not have to worry about sleeping and things like that. But of course, there's a little downside to that. In addition to being addictive, they are really damaging to the body, so they were trying to find something that was natural or less harmful. Initially, they were looking at pharmaceuticals. They then switched over to plants, and the first plant that they looked at was Asian ginseng. But in that time frame, of course, you had the Soviet Socialist Republic, and you had the Chinese Socialist Republic, and you think they were buddies, but they were not. The two largest standing armies in the world were on each other's borders. So the last thing that the Russians wanted to do was have to pay the Chinese for their ginseng, because the Chinese wouldn't take rubles; they would only take dollars because rubles were worthless, so they start looking around the Soviet Union for something else that's native to the country that's common, and they find this plant called Eleutherococcus senticosis, which then was eventually brought to the United States as "quote unquote" Siberian ginseng. Now it's called eleuthero, and that's where the research really starts. So the first monograph on Eleutheroes published in 1961, and the first definition of adaptogens is published in 1969 by Dr. Breckman, who's considered the father of adaptogenic research, and Dr. Dardemoff, and they define an adaptogen initially as having three qualities. Number one, it's non-toxic in a normal therapeutic dose. Number two, it helps create a non-specific state of resistance, meaning it helps you to resist stressors, whether they are psychological, physiological, noise, whatever. It doesn't matter where the stressor is coming from. It helps the organism respond more appropriately, more effectively, and reduces the negative effects of stress. The third thing is it has a systemic amphoteric effect, meaning it has a normalizing effect on the organism as a whole. So that was the original definition in 1969, and the only problem is a lot of people are still using that definition, and here we are 56 years later, but in the intervening 56 years, there's been a lot of research, and in the late, maybe mid to late 1990s, Doctor Panosian, who's probably the world's greatest researcher on adaptogens, who's still alive today, he discovered. That adaptogens were primarily working through two master control systems of the body. That's the HPA axis, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and/or the SAS, the sympatho-adrenal system, your fight or flight mechanism. The reality is that anything's affecting the HPA axis is probably also affecting the SAS. So now the definition of adaptogen includes it has to work through one of these control systems, and the HPA axis is not just the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands. This is the interface between all endocrine function, nervous system function, significant amount of immune function, digestive function, especially the enteric brain in the gut, male and female reproductive system, and then of course in the intervening maybe last 30 years, we've discovered that other tissues have endocrine function too, like the heart and the bones and skin. So basically, it is a control system that controls a lot of what's going on in the body.
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:03
Right.
Dr. David Winston 16:05
Then, around 2008 through 2012, Dr. Pinosian and Doctor Wagner, who is sadly passed away, but was also one of the top researchers, discovered that adaptogens also work on a cellular level, and what they're doing is upregulating molecular chaperones, and these are compounds that the body produces when it is under stress, and to help reduce the effects of stress. And so we have four heat shock proteins, a forkhead protein known as Foxo, nitric oxide, and neuropeptide Y, and so for an herb to be an adaptogen, it has to upregulate these molecular chaperones, which also inhibit stress-induced cortisol production and help prevent cortisol-induced mitochondrial dysfunction, which is one of the reasons adaptogens are so useful for not only a whole range of stress-induced conditions, but things like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome, which are at their basis HPA axis dysfunction diseases.
Dr. David Winston 17:14
So that's the that's the quick answers to to what is an adaptogen.
Dr. Judy Morgan 17:20
Well, you know, and and so critically important. And we, you know, basically we're all under stress all the time. Different stressors. I mean, we can have the most idyllic life in the world and still be completely stressed out. And with our animals, we don't even understand all the stresses because they're really good at internalizing. I think cats are one of the great examples of that. So in studies where they've really looked at indoor cats, and we all want to keep our cats inside because oh my gosh, if they go outside, their life expectancy is short. They're going to get run over by a car, eaten by a dog, a fox, whatever, and so we keep them inside, and then we just think that they're doing their thing. Studies show that over 80% of indoor cats are highly, highly stressed, and it's because they don't get to do normal cat things. They're not climbing, they're not hunting, they're not pouncing, and so we look at them and we think, oh, life is just very good. They're just hanging out. They're they're sitting in the windowsill and you know sucking up the sun. Life is really good. So adaptogens could be something that could be really important for all of us, and really for all of our animals, because even if we don't see that stress, it is there. We need to take a break to hear from our sponsors. We'll be back. Stay tuned for this fascinating conversation.
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Dr. Judy Morgan 19:19
Welcome back to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I am having a fascinating conversation with Dr. David Winston, registered herbalist and teacher, and he has what is the name of your Center for Herbal Studies, and I can see why people would. I'm sitting here going, "Gee, maybe I should go to the Center for Herbal Studies. I mean, just your wealth of information. So we're talking about adaptogens and what and the the effects that they have on stress, the HPA axis, the adrenal glands. Which, I mean, we see so much Cushing's disease. We're seeing more and more Addison's disease. That when I started in practice 40 years ago, those were kind of like a one-off. Every once in a while, you would get a case, and it would be very hard to diagnose because it was so rare. Now, I think the statistics are for Cushing's disease. We see over 100,000 cases diagnosed per year. So that means we are treating a lot of animals every year for basically adrenal stress, and I think there's a lot of them that are undiagnosed, a lot that we don't see. So, how can we use adaptogens? I think more people probably need to be on them. But how can we use adaptogens, and what kind of specific disease syndromes? And again, I hate to lump it as a disease because we want to treat individuals, but when do you find them to be useful?
Dr. David Winston 20:48
Well, first off, let me let me just backtrack for one second and just say that as I was talking about earlier, you know, adaptogens are not a one size fits all category. No herb is, and so based on that, we have to understand that different adaptogens do different things. So yes, the different definition I gave you before: all adaptogens do those things. But there are adaptogens that are stimulating. There are adaptogens that are calming. There are adaptogens that are heating. There are adaptogens that are cooling. There are adaptogens that are moistening, drying, nourishing, and so first off, we have to figure out which adaptogen makes sense for this person, this patient, this animal, and you know it's not like we're ignoring the fact that they have a disease, be it you know Addison's or whatever, but so we're we're looking at that first, and then of course we're looking at the whole patient and trying to figure out what else is happening here because it's very rare that we see any of these things in isolation, meaning they just don't show up by themselves. You know, again, disordered gut, whether it's loss of intestinal epithelial barrier function, i.e. quote unquote leaky gut, whether it's you know intestinal microbiome and loss of you know intestinal in normal healthy gut flora, I mean that's another thing you're talking about. You know, cats not going outside. Well, if a cat doesn't go outside, where is it getting a lot of its gut flora from? Because when it's outside and it's catching mice and voles and all this other stuff and eating grass, and that's where a lot of that healthy gut flora comes from. And so, when we isolate our animals in artificial environments, that's missing without a doubt.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:32
Absolutely.
Dr. David Winston 22:33
But you know, and then we talk about stress is another phenomenon, and of course, what they are eating is another phenomenon. You know, because we control their diets much, possibly more than we control our own diets. So, all of those are factors, and we want to make sure that we take into account all of those things. So, talking on a human level, for instance, because again, that's where I'm really most familiar with. But I think a lot of this is very transferable. So if we have a person who, for instance, is stressed out and highly anxious, then we're probably going to want to use a calming adaptogen, maybe something like ashwaganda, or you're changing TCM, so Shizandra, Uitz, or maybe cordyceps, something like that, which are calming adaptogens, or jiaogulan. So we have our calming adaptogens. On the other hand, you have somebody who is stressed out and they're depleted and deficient and depressed. Maybe they're also feeling cold easily. That's when we go things like red Asian ginseng, which are much more stimulating, and so again, we want to match the adaptogen or adaptogens because sometimes we use them in formulas, and even when we use only one adaptogen, we're always combining it with other what I would call companion herbs, things that work well with adaptogens. We have things like nervenes, things like fresh oat and chamomile and lavender and lemon balm, which work really well with adaptogens. We have nootropics, which are cerebral stimulants and neuro anti-inflammatories, which work really well with adaptogens. And then we have a third category of herbs that I use with adaptogens, what I call restorative tonics. I created that term because there's all these amazing herbs that are just wonderful, and a lot of people think they're adaptogens, but they don't meet the definition of an adaptogen. So things like Huangxia, stragalus, or Shudi Huang, processed Romania, or things like nettle seed, or you know, there's a whole goji berry, amla fruit-none of them are adaptogens, but they're really good herbs. And by the way, we are talking before about like you know chronic kidney disease, and you're asking you know do I have a a go to or do I I do treat everybody individually, but there is one thing that. Anybody with chronic kidney disease gets, and the herb I just mentioned-that's nettle seed. It is the single greatest kidney tropho restorative we have. A tropho restorative is basically think of it as a food for a tissue or an organ, and it's something that I came across. I guess I would say I discovered it without going to details exactly how it didn't come out of a book. Let's put it that way. But about 35 years ago, I got the information. I had a patient who had glomerular nephritis, which is a autoimmune disease of the kidneys. And when she came to see me, her eGFR. Now, a lot of people in the veterinary world they they don't use EGFR estimated glomerular filtration rate they don't do that for animals but in humans they do and her EGFR a healthy EGFR at her age would have been about 70 to 80 and her EGFR was 18 so we're talking about at a point where maybe six months from now you're talking about dialysis, and the problem with dialysis is that you feel really bad most of the time. It's very expensive, and the average lifespan once you go on dialysis is about five years.
Dr. David Winston 26:11
So she had come to see me. She'd been everywhere. You know, she'd been to all sorts of. You know, she had nephrologists. She's had many nephrologists. She's been to all sorts of practitioners, alternatives. She comes to me, and I put her on the Lu Wei Di Huang Wan formula, the Mania Six formula, which is a good formula. It's kind of plateau people. It'll kind of keep people from getting worse for a bit. It works for a year, maybe a year and a half, and if you're really lucky, two years. So she'd been on this formula for about a year and three, maybe four months, and all of a sudden, her latest, you know, EGFR boom, you know, it's dropped. It's it it had dropped significantly, you know, and they'll fluctuate a little bit, but this was a significant drop, and I thought, all right, it stopped working.
Dr. David Winston 26:53
so I'm like, kind of, you know, as a clinician, you want to help people. That's why we do this, And you know, it doesn't feel good when you have nothing, and it's even worse when you have nothing and you have nowhere to refer to. Yeah, it's like I don't know what to tell you.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:07
Yeah, I was sort of the last stop, and there is there's not another stop after me. It's the end of the train.
Dr. David Winston 27:13
I have nothing left to give, and anyway, I come up this idea of the nettle seed, and so again, I'm not even going to go into how that that happened, but I make up the nettle seed, and I had never used nettle seed. I'd never heard of nettle seed being used as medicine at all. The only thing I knew about it was that in Europe it was used as an emergency survival food during famine. So I knew it wasn't toxic.
Dr. David Winston 27:33
That's all I knew about it. So anyway, it's I make the medicine, and a couple weeks later it's ready, and I said to her, "Listen, I've got this thing. It's experimental, but if you want to try it, I'm happy to give it to you. And she says, "Look, you've helped me more than anybody else has helped me. I trust you. I'll give it a try. So I give her the nettle seed, and there is an understand a rationale as to how I came to this, but it's that's for a different show. So I give her the nettle seed, and at six weeks, her eGFR is back up to 20, and it's a significant jump. At six months, her eGFR is at like 24. At a year, her eGFR is at 28. Her nephrologist says to her, "What are you doing? And she says to him, "Oh, I'm seeing this herbalist, and he's giving me this herbal. He goes, "No, no, no, no, no. I don't want to know what you're doing. Just keep doing it. Which to me is the most bizarre. I mean, why wouldn't you want to know? Well, yeah, but didn't want to know. Just keep doing it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:36
Oh that's something I can put in my toolbox to use for other patients. Never mind. I don't want to know.
Dr. David Winston 28:40
That nettle seed kept her eGFR between 26 and 28 for 12 years.
Dr. David Winston 28:50
And when she died 12 years later, it had nothing to do with her kidneys.
Dr. David Winston 28:54
That was the first case. The second case came six months later. At this point, I don't have a count exactly because I don't go back and look at my past records, so I have no idea exactly how many patients this is. I've done this with more than 50, probably less than 100.
Dr. David Winston 29:11
humans with glomerular nephritis, IgA nephritis. It does not work for polycystic kidney disease, and
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:22
Because that's going to be a question because we see a lot of that.
Dr. David Winston 29:24
It will work for diabetic nephropathy if you get the diabetes under control, and but at this point, not so you know somewhere again 60,70, 80, whatever case human cases, and then there are innumerable cases with dogs and cats. We have cases where the dog or cat has not only stopped eating, they've stopped drinking. They're laying there waiting to die, and the owner just takes the tincture, mix it up with a little tuna fish juice, squirt it in their mouth, and the next thing you know, they're up. They're walking. They're eating, and they'll live for several years.
Dr. David Winston 30:04
And we have case after case after case. I at this conference, I've had at least four veterinarians come over to me and say, "You're the nettle seed guy. I said, "Yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan
everybody has a claim to fame. That's yours now. Wow!
Dr. David Winston
And they'll come over to me and say, "Yeah, I've used that, and it's incredible. Why doesn't everybody know about this? It's like I'm talking about as much as I can.
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:28
So is the nettle seed tincture commercially available at this point?
Dr. David Winston 30:32
Yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:33
is. Is that through your?
Dr. David Winston 30:36
Yeah, but I mean, there's probably other people make it too. But
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:38
a nettle seed tincture, interesting.
Dr. David Winston 30:40
And and I also though now of course combine it, so I'll use nettle seed with cordyceps or astragalus or danshen, salvia milcherize or shu dihuang, all of which are traditional Chinese herbs that are also nephro protective, and I'd have to say the two most important herbs in that formula are the nettle seed by far, and then cordyceps number two, and the other ones are supportive. And again, the results are phenomenal. And so, you know, it's there's an ancient story, and in the story, the insects brought disease into the world, and they went to and they tried to kill off all the humans, because humans we were we're just making a mess of things, and we weren't we weren't we weren't treating them right. And and the the insects, the leader of the insects goes to the plants and says, "Look, if you help us, we can wipe people off the face of the earth. And the the plants think about it and they decide that actually, if people will come to the plants in a sacred way, in a good way, they'd give them the cure for every disease that the insect people had made, and people think of this as a story, but it's it's actually a real phenomenon, and it's still in effect. In a sense, they made a deal with us, so I believe without a shadow of a doubt that within the plant kingdom there is probably the cure for just about every disease out there. Have we discovered it? Absolutely not.
Dr. Judy Morgan 32:07
Well, and the problem with discovering it is the pharmaceutical company sees a plant that works, and then they're like, "Let me extract and then synthesize that one chemical that we think is having an effect, and then we lose that whole synchronicity of the entire plant medicine, and that I think is one of our downfalls when we start relying on the synthetic pharmaceutical that is a single ingredient versus that that whole medicine or the synergistic medicine that you do with multiple herbs that play together, and so now I'm thinking that everybody who's listening to this who has an older dog or an older cat, because you know chronic kidney disease for the old cats. If you have a cat who lives long enough, you're pretty much going to be seeing chronic kidney disease, particularly since most of them are fed incorrectly and they live in a very high stress environment, and you know so many things that go into that. And at one of the AHVMA meetings a few years ago, somebody actually spoke and was talking about how the vaccinations that we're giving cats are contributing to chronic kidney disease, and they have great evidence for that. It doesn't stop us from vaccinating our poor kitty cats against a million things every year. Well, most of us holistic people it stops us, but unfortunately, in traditional medicine, it's a huge problem. That is a great story, and I'm now thinking I need to go get some nettle seed extract. Need some nettle seed extract in the store. So let's talk autoimmune disease. So you know the kidney disease, the glomerulonephritis that you were seeing in humans. A lot of that is autoimmune. Why do you think we have so much autoimmune disease in human and pet world?
Dr. David Winston 33:57
Well, you know it's interesting because if we look at statistics, the amount of both allergy and autoimmune disease has skyrocketed in the last 40 to 50 years, and as to why, well, there are numerous potential explanations, and one of the explanations is the fact that you know there was a theory that came out in the 1990s called the hygiene hypothesis, and it talked about how you know there was an imbalance between the Th1 and Th2 T lymphocytes, and it was a great theory because it was really simple and easy to grasp. Unfortunately, it turns out that it is not really accurate, except it's not that simple. Except with allergies, there's still validity to the hygiene hypothesis, not so much for autoimmune diseases. But what the hygiene hypothesis, the second hygiene hypothesis, tells us that it is a balance between a healthy gut flora and exposure to pathogens at a young. Age that helps to create basically what's called a tolerogenic state, and so there are multiple things. Number one, at least with humans, so many people are born by C-section, and the normal seeding of your gut flora comes from vaginal delivery. So anybody who's born with a C-section now, the good news is now what they're doing often, or at least in more enlightened hospitals, babies born by C-section they'll swab the mother and then orally use that to swab the babies' mouth
Dr. David Winston 35:33
Which makes a ton of sense.
Dr. Judy Morgan 35:35
You know, we need we need to take heed on that because you know when you started talking about this, I'm thinking French bulldogs. Actually, most of the bulldogs, their head and shoulders are too big, so they're almost always, and their butts are real tiny, so they're almost always born by C-section. And that particular breed and set of dogs are the most highly allergic breeds that we see. I got to the point in my practice where I was like, "Do not bring a French bulldog in my front door. It's going to be allergic to everything. They're a nightmare. They're impossible to treat. So here's your takeaway, folks: If you're breeding these dogs, you get those vaginal swabs and you stick it in the puppy's mouth. We we need to do better by our pets, but we have great studies now showing that you know that vaginal delivery has such an effect on the microbiome, and it's interesting because now we have all these. We're about to take a break, but when we come back, we're going to continue this. We and I interrupted you. I'm sorry, but we have all these studies of children who live, and especially during COVID, it got so much worse because everybody was bleaching everything, and everything has to be white and clean. And you know, God forbid, there's a germ. And I look at my kids, and I'm like, okay, they grew up in a barn. They pretty much had manure sandwiches for lunch every day while they were grooming their horses. And you know, my kids don't have allergies. They don't have problems. And I see their friends who grew up with no animals in the house, you know. God forbid you would go outside and eat dirt and play in the mud. I remember I ate a lot of mud as a child, and I think that that is so valid. But we see it in the human world, and we also see it in the animal world. And so sometimes, if we will just-that's why it's so important for veterinarians to look at the human studies, and I think I, you know, for the doctors to look at the animal studies too, because there is so much crossover, and we just we don't really look at it or think about it. We're going to take a break to hear from our sponsor. When we come back, we're going to talk more about this hygiene theory and what you're seeing in your world, stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #2 37:42
Don't you agree that our dogs should be living longer? Dr. Judy Morgan shares the top six ways to help your dog live longer in her informative mini course, Dog Longevity Made Easy. This 1.5 hour course covers nutrition, vaccinations, veterinary exams, internal parasites, external parasites, and exercise. Podcast listeners can get 20% off using the code PODCAST86 when ordering on drjudyu.com. This easy to understand education can translate into years of vibrant living for your dog.
Dr. Judy Morgan 38:16
Welcome back to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am, the David is just a wealth of information and just so easy to listen to. And so we were talking about the hygiene theory, C sections, vaginal swabs. It's so cool and so simple. Like, oh, why didn't we think of this years ago? All right, so continue.
Dr. David Winston 38:39
One of the reasons they didn't think about it because they didn't know about it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Well, that's true. Like I said, you know, the human doctors with the microbiome, their head spins. So,
Dr. David Winston 38:47
So secondarily, they used to think that breast milk was a prebiotic. Now we know it's a prebiotic and a probiotic. So, lots of babies are not breastfed. We know for a fact that babies who are given cow's milk have a way higher incidence of type one diabetes because of basically the pancreatic compounds found in cow's milk stimulate an autoimmune response. So there are multiple things like that. Then you talked about about you know your kids who grew up in a farm. Kids who grow up in farms have way fewer allergies than kids who grow up in the suburbs or the cities. Children who have pets in the house have lower rates of allergies than kids who don't. So again, you're being exposed to that. So years ago, probably 20 years ago, at least, there was this this film made called Babies, and it showed how babies were reared in like four or five or six countries, and one was the U.S. one was Japan, one was like Nepal or Bhutan, and one was an African country. I don't remember which one, and in the African country. The mom has this plastic bucket with maybe this much water in it, and she's washing the baby, and is old enough to stand up, but you know, still very young. And a goat walks by, and the baby takes the goat's tail and sticks it in the mouth. And the mother's not concerned; she's like she's not taking it out of the baby's mouth. She doesn't care. If this happened in the United States, the next thing would happen is they'd be calling poison control, freaking out like, "Is my baby going to die from like goat tail and mouth disease? So we are, as you said, we are so afraid of bacteria. 90% of the DNA in our bodies isn't us; it's bacteria living in us and on us. So we coexist. We have this co-dependent relationship on all these bacteria, and in our attempt to create cleanliness, we have basically enhanced the survivability of pathogenic bacteria and decreased our bacterial microbiome. You know, every time you take antibiotics, and this is true for humans and cats and dogs, every time you take antibiotics, you have about a three-month period where it takes for the number of bacteria to get back to baseline. But one thing that happens that doesn't come back to baseline is the diversity of the gut flora is diminished, and while we don't fully understand what that means, we do know that in an ecosystem like a forest, diversity equals strength.
Dr. David Winston 41:36
I can't imagine it's anything different than us, and so there have always been bacterial species in our gut flora that are minority species. There's just a few of them, and we don't know what they do, but they invariably do something, and probably something very positive. They may inhibit, you know, growth of C. diff or who knows what, and so that plays a significant role. In addition, with autoimmune diseases, there are some pretty good research showing that chronic low-grade infections triggers an autoimmune response. And so, anybody with and here's one that you see a lot in dogs, cats too, but dogs are worse. Chronic gum disease, chronic ear infections, chronic sinus infections, chronic urinary tract infections stimulate autoimmunity. And interestingly enough, what a lot of people don't realize is think people think autoimmune diseases are a hyper response of the immune system, but with most autoimmune diseases, what we find out, the research shows us is you actually you have a prematurely aged immune system, so it is hypofunctioning, and that means that the immune system no longer has its normal self-regulatory capacity, and then you have this hyper immune response. So what we have is a hypo hyper immune system. Both things are happening at once, and unfortunately, in orthodox medicine, there's nothing that addresses that. You can give an immunosuppressant, but it doesn't deal with the underlying fact that the immune system is basically prematurely aged. And one of the remarkable things is that in herbal medicine, one of the categories of herbs we have are what are called immune amphoterics, and an amphoteric is something that normalizes function, whether it's hyperactive, hypoactive, or both. So immune amphoterics, things like stragalus and cat's claw, and Asian ginseng, and American ginseng, and shizandra, and ashwaganda, and licorice. These are all. There's more. These are all immune amphoterics that basically help to re-regulate, nourish, and strengthen a disordered immune system.
Dr. Judy Morgan 43:51
Wow, very cool. And I mean, there's so much dysregulation. I, I, I, I would posit that that we could, and nobody knows what normal is, but I would posit that we cannot find one normal human or one normal animal if we could even define what that is. I mean, everybody's got things that are over functioning, under functioning, and you know, as as we're aging and as our animals are aging, things just don't work as well as they used to. We don't make a lot of the good compounds that are, you know, our CoQ 10 decreases, our PEA decreases, all these things that our bodies, you know, makes that are good for us. And so many of us and so many of our animals have just burned out their adrenals to the point where they're like, yeah, I'm done. I can't. I can't anymore. And and we know that all of those endocrine organs function together. So the adrenals burn out. Oh, not there goes the thyroid. Oh, there goes the pancreas. It's they all just say kind of done, kind of done. So what are your what are some of your favorite herbs? Obviously, nettle seed extract. I'm loving that one.
Dr. David Winston 45:00
Well, that's a hard question because usually what I would respond to that is for who and for what.
Dr. Judy Morgan 45:04
There you go. I love it.
Dr. David Winston 45:05
So you know, sometimes at herbal conferences, they'll ask all the presenters to get up and say, "Tell us what is your favorite herb, and it's like, "Oh my god, what is my favorite herb? But I will say that there are certain plants that I am just enamored with, and mostly they're weeds, and the reasons. Well, here's the thing.
Dr. Judy Morgan 45:25
I'm a huge fan of dandelions. I'm like, please stop killing your dandelions.
Dr. David Winston 45:29
Well, dandelion is one of them. So, like dandelion, first off, if you're a gardener, you know you're growing all this stuff in your garden. Dandelions are more nutritious than anything you're growing in your garden. So, dandelion. You have three different medicines from the plant, several edible parts. So the leaf is a medicine. It's an aqua retic. It's a non-irritating, potassium sparing diuretic, which is phenomenal. It works, in my opinion, as good as Lasix or hydrochlorothiazide. You have the root, which is my favorite liver tonic. What do I mean by that? It's not for somebody with overt liver damage, like a milk thistle or licorice or a turmeric. It's used for people, in this case, potentially animals who are just eating a really high-fat diet, and they've got you know maybe they're constipated, clay-colored stools. They eat fats and they get bilious. You know, you just want to sort of give them an oil change. That's where I like to use dandelion root. And then the flowers are incredibly rich source of lutein, so they help prevent things like age-related macular degeneration. And so, and then the flowers can be made into dandelion wine, and you can take the individual florets and sprinkle them in a salad and get a great source of carotenoids in your diet. And the young leaves are edible, and the root can be roasted, made into a quote-unquote coffee substitute. Doesn't they thing like coffee? But but nevertheless, it's healthful beverage. And the roots are really rich in fructo oligosaccharides, so it's a inulin source of fructooligosaccharides, which is kind of like miracle growth for your intestinal flora. So, I mean, what is not to love? And people spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year trying to eradicate dandelions, and yet they are a gift of creation.
Dr. Judy Morgan 47:15
Yeah. Meanwhile, we're putting glyphosate on them and poisoning our lawn, poisoning our pets, poisoning ourselves. Instead, just eat them, folks.
Dr. David Winston 47:24
Yeah, and so dandelions one example. Nettles is another example. You have the nettle seed, then you have nettle root, which is used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia in men, and also there is some pretty good evidence suggesting that it would at least inhibit prostatic cancer because the same underlying pathway of you know aromatase converting testosterone into DHT, which promotes you know swelling of the prostate, and then we have nettle leaf, which is a you know incredibly nutrient dense food herb. It can be cooked and eaten. You can dry nettle leaf and sprinkle it over foods or in salads or whatever, and you know people talk about superfoods. Nettle's a superfood. Everybody thinks it's rich in iron, and while it contains some iron, it's way higher in calcium and magnesium. And of course, 60% of Americans are magnesium deficient, and so you've got this nutrient dense leaf that also basically is again an aqua retic, a non irritating potassium sparing diuretic. It helps stop hematuria, so blood in the urine. Now, of course, you know there's different reasons why you might have blood in the urine, but for passive bleeding, it works very nicely. Nettle also has anti-inflammatory activity and it's used for osteoarthritis, and the list goes on and on. And that's that's literally the oh, dare I forget to say that nettle leaf combined with things like dandelion leaf, a little bit of horsetail. incredible for enhancing bone, and so we use I use a combination of those herbs and a couple other ones for not only preventing osteoporosis but treating osteoporosis. And I have in my case files back from way back when, before and after X-rays, now before and after DEXA scans, where you have women whose bone looks like lace. Now, if the bone's gone, it's gone.
Dr. David Winston 49:29
But if you have bone that's demineralized and looks like lace, two years later, it's remineralized.
Dr. Judy Morgan 49:35
Okay, I'm running out and getting that.
Dr. David Winston 49:38
And as a little side effect, when you take this stuff, your skin gets stronger, your hair gets stronger, your teeth get stronger, your fingernails get stronger,
Dr. Judy Morgan 49:48
which is interesting. So what I'm hearing there is this is helping the water constitution, the water element, because that's bones, teeth, and lung goes very closely with kidney, and so. Goes our hair? Yeah, we just treated that constitution. Love that one, man! Oh, I, I, I have to take notes. I'm going to go back and listen to this and take a lot of notes. Do you have a book?
Dr. David Winston 50:11
I have multiple books.
Dr. Judy Morgan 50:12
You have multiple books. Tell us about a couple of your books.
Dr. David Winston 50:14
Well, the probably the best-selling one is my book, Adaptogen Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief. It's the first book in English covering the topic of adaptogens. The first edition came out in 2007. The second edition came out in 2019, and it basically explains adaptogens, but it goes into tremendous detail about all the different adaptogens and the different groups of them. They're what I call well-researched adaptogens. There's only eight or nine of them, and then there's what I call probable adaptogens. There's herbs that the evidence suggests they're adaptogens, but we just need more evidence. And then there's this large group of herbs that I call possible adaptogens that everybody thinks are adaptogens, but there's actually very little evidence that they are. And then it talks about the companion herbs again, all the different nerveines, and if we were in the UK, nervines, the the nootropics, the restorative tonics, and it talks about how to use them. And there's a whole chapter on using them with your pets. There's a whole chapter on using them in cooking and food and how to make them and how to use them appropriately and what they work well with, and so that's probably the my best known book. But then I also have a book called Herbal Therapeutics, which is a book about herbal formulas. I also have another book called Herb Therapy and Supplements, although that book is pretty outdated now, I think that was published 2008. It was the second edition, and it was.
Dr. Judy Moran 51:49
It's amazing how something that is not that old can be outdated because the new research and you know we just keep. Even though herbs have been around forever,
Dr. David Winston 51:55
well, the good thing is actually most of the information there is still perfectly valid. It's just there's more stuff been added, and then I think my first book, which is now out of print, was called Saw Palmetto for Men and Women. I don't have time to tell you the story how that happened. I used to think I couldn't write, so I had to be tricked into writing a book, and then also I'm on the expert advisory committees of the people who basically write the Botanical Safety Handbook, which is the single best reference work on safety and you know herb-drug interactions in the world. I'm part of that team. I'm also part of the Herbs of Commerce committee that puts together the herbs of commerce, which is really more used for industry, and then I've contributed to numerous other books, and I've published hundreds of articles and proceedings in journals.
Dr. Judy Morgan 52:52
So you just brought up something with one of those is the safety of herbs when used with drugs, and I think that most people, just in their minds, think, "Oh, well, herbs are never going to cause a problem. You know, it does. I don't. It doesn't matter if my animal's on drugs or I'm on drugs. I can use herbs along with that. But we can have interactions where they're kind of fighting against each other, or it can enhance a drug to the point where now it's a toxic effect. Correct, and I think that a lot of times we don't keep that in mind. And one of the problems with that is, so for instance, I I have Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. They all have mitral valve disease. It's a heart disease, and so many of them are on medications for that. And if you ask the cardiologist, well, I want to use this herb or I want to use this supplement. The traditionalists do not have any training in that, and they can't give any guidance.
Dr. David Winston 53:58
Well, usually the guidance is don't take it, don't take herbs. But that's coming out of ignorance.
Dr. Judy Morgan 54:03
Yeah, yeah, because they just don't know, right? Exactly. So we get a lot of questions through through our site. You know, can I use this herb with this? So it's good to know. And and a lot of times, I'll just you know, you know, with the advent of the internet, you can pretty much look up anything, and there are places where you can look up, and you know, can I take this herb with this?
Dr. David Winston 54:25
I would give a caveat in that a lot of the larger sites, the sort of medical sites talking about herb drug interactions, are not very good,
Dr. Judy Morgan 54:34
or not very good, and are not accurate. And so, yeah, but that is something to keep in mind. So, if you're listening to this, and you're thinking, I'm going to run out and get that herb. I'm going to start that. If you or your pet are on medications, keep in mind there could be interactions, and so you've got to do some good research and make sure that you're not going to be causing problems.
Dr. David Winston 54:53
True but let me let me explain that a little bit. And so the first thing is herb drug. Interactions are they real? Yes. Okay. Can they can clinically significant herb drug interactions occur? The answer is yes. But you also need to know they are rare. All right. So and there was a study that came out, and it's not a new study. It's 2004, but it was a really well done study by Butterweek et al. And they looked at this, and what they came to the conclusion of is virtually all the clinically significant herb drug interactions only happen with seven drugs.
Dr. David Winston 55:29
Digoxin, methotrexate, cyclosporin, protease inhibitors. I'm trying to think of lithium, and I'm blanking on the last one. But it's it's a group of
Dr. Judy Morgan 55:50
Most of those we don't have to worry about too much. But there are a lot of animals on cyclosporin, right?
Dr. David Winston 55:54
So you know, if you have an animal on something, I don't know if there's an animal equivalent to like Plavix or something like that. If you have something, you know, an animal on a blood thinning medication or a platelet inhibitor, there, you know, you want to be somewhat careful with what you add in. But you know, the one herb that's really well known for herb drug interactions is St. John's Wort. It's sort of the poster child for herb-drug interactions, and the reason is, is it not only upregulates one of the cytochrome p4 150 system, that's the CIP three A four system, which 50% of all drugs are metabolized via that system, but it also upregulates intestinal PGP, the P glycoprotein system, and that's why it's a problem because it's not affecting one thing; it's affecting two different, you know, drug metabolism pathways. But very few herbs have been shown to be able to do that, and so. And then the other thing is, is that most herb drug interactions are looking at people taking a single herb with a medication. But as an herbalist, I don't use single herbs ever. So yes, I might have St. John's Wort in a formula, but it's a small part of a larger formula which reduces the risk simply because there's less of it there to interact. I would also point out that 50% of all reported herbal drug interactions are positive interactions. Nobody seems to know that now. One of them you actually refer to, and that you can get an additive effect. Right now, if the physician, the practitioner understands that, so for instance, adding licorice to corticosteroids, licorice enhances the efficacy of corticosteroids dramatically, but it also increases their blood life, so they're there longer. So if you understand that and you reduce the corticosteroid dose, you're perfectly good. You can use less corticosteroids, get the same effect, and have protection against a lot of the adverse effects. But if you don't know that and you're doing both, then all of a sudden your corticosteroid levels get really high, and then it can be really damaging. And so sometimes it's just simply understanding it and how to manage it, but again, you don't want to just sit there and say, "Oh no, herbs are natural, so they're all safe. Well, you know, henbane's natural, but it'll kill you. So is arsenic, but you know, you know exactly. So it's not that they're all safe, and you want to know how to use them. My aunt Edna used to say that herbs affect humans or animals in one of three ways: they're food, medicine, or poison. And you know, I mean, it's a real simplistic, but there's a certain truth there. You know, we have a lot of these what we call food herbs, and food herbs aren't just things we think of as food, like garlic and ginger and cinnamon and blueberries. It also includes the really mild herbs like chamomile and lemon balm and hawthorn, which for the most part can be taken in you know normal therapeutic doses, and they are absolutely non-toxic. Now that doesn't mean that somebody couldn't have an idiosyncratic reaction to something. There is an herb, burdock root. It is mild, non-toxic, safe, and every time I take it, I vomit. And I've tried it multiple times just to see if is this real. The first time it happened, I thought it was just a fluke.
Dr. David Winston 59:10
Second time was like, whoa, this isn't a fluke. Third time, like
Dr. Judy Morgan 59:14
I'm never taking that again.
Dr. David Winston 59:16
No, no actually, I it was more several more times before I finally said that. Okay, enough of that. I was absolutely convinced that this was Yeah, slow learner. Absolutely, I was convinced that it was a real phenomenon. That's an idiosyncratic effect, and then of course allergy. Anybody can be allergic to anything. So there's like one reported case of somebody drinking chamomile tea who had severe ragweed allergies, and the pollen in chamomile is similar enough to ragweed that it caused caused a cross reactivity and an anaphylactic reaction, and they died. Millions of cups of chamomile tea are drunk throughout the world, probably 10s of millions a day. Yeah, and you know, every once in a while, you hear somebody saying their throat got a little tickly, or they felt like a throat closing a little bit. That's for somebody. With a severe ragweed allergy, and if you have a crazy severe ragweed allergy, that's the clinical term. Probably should not crazy severe. Yes, stay away from chamomile But the the food herbs are generally going to be you know what we'd call generally recognized as safe. Now the medicines, on the other hand, are stronger acting, right? And those should be used with a bit more knowledge, and they're generally used for a specific reason for a specific period of time. You don't just take them endlessly because they're good for you. And so herbs like golden seal and black cohosh and things like that, you want to you know use them appropriately. And because again, they can create some issues if they are overused or you don't really need them, and then lastly, the poisons. If you're not trained to use them, leave them alone. Yeah, let's don't use them.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:00:47
Let's not drink hemlock tea.
chamomile 1:00:49
Exactly.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:00:49
This has been fascinating. You are such a wealth of information. I wish I had gone to your lectures. Center for Herbal Studies. He's got books out. It's David Winston. We are thrilled to have you here. Thank you so much for sharing with everyone today. I think this is going to generate a lot of questions, which I probably won't be able to answer, but I know where to point them now. At least we have books and we have the Center for Herbal Studies, which sounds fascinating. So if you have an interest in herbal medicine, maybe this is a new career. Thanks for listening.
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.
