Probiotic Overuse In Pet Care (0:01)

• Dr. Ian Billinghurst Introduces the Renowned "Poop Doctor," Dr. Odette Souter, and Recognized Her Commitment to Pet Health
• Dr. Suter Discusses the Common Question of Dogs Eating Poop, Addressing the Importance of Underlying Root Causes Over Behavior Suppression
• Experts Discuss the Vast Discrepancy Between the 302,000 Microbes in Humans and the Limited 10-14 Species in Probiotics Supplements
• Dr. Odette Suter: Human’s Reliance on Supplement is Misguided Due to Limited Understanding of How They Impact the Body’s Complex Ecosystem

Microbiome, Healing Earth, And Traditional Diets (7:50)

• Dr. Billinghurst and Dr. Suter Discuss Natural Forces' Role in Healing the Earth and Microbiome, Focusing on Microbial Diversity in the Gut and its Surroundings
• Dr. Odette Suter Discuss the Adaptability of Microbes in Environmental Changes and Produce Biochemical Compound Helping Human to Heal and Thrive
• Rob Ryan and Dr. Billinghurst Discuss the Hodza Lifestyle: A Stress and Technology as a Model for Human Health and Well-being

Gut Health And The Importance Of Understanding Underlying Causes (13:19)

• Dr. Odette Suter Notes That Many Animals Are Sick and Have Health Problems Due to a Lack of Understanding of the Root Causes of Their Issues, Leading To Knee-Jerk Reactions and Band-Aid Solutions Rather Than Addressing The Underlying Problems
• Dr. Ian Billinghurst Agrees That This is a Problem in the Animal Health Industry, Citing the Lack of Proper Training and Understanding of the Body's Physiology
• Dr. Ian Billinghurst and Dr. Odette Suter Discuss the Importance of Understanding the Root Cause of Pathologies Rather Than Just Treating Symptoms With Medication or Supplements
• They Highlight the Need to Ask Questions Like "What Is The Origin of this Pathology?" and "How is it Helping the Body?" Better to Understand the Body's Ecosystem and Address Imbalances

The Role Of Parasites In The Body And The Importance Of A Healthy Diet (19:04)

• Dr. Ian Billinghurst Questions The Effectiveness Of Deworming Dogs Every Three Months, Suggesting It May Be Doing More Harm Than Good
• Dr. Odette Suter Advocates for Recognizing Parasites' Benefits, Including Heavy Metal Removal and Immune System Interaction. Calls for a Holistic Health Perspective
• Dr. Ian Billinghurst Noticed that His Cats No Longer Had Worm Burdens or Shed Eggs in Their Stools After Switching to a Natural Food Diet
• He Believes that a Healthy Diet Based on Evolutionary Principles Can Reduce Parasites and other Health Issues in Animals
• Dr. Ian Billinghurst and Dr. Odette Suter Discuss the Importance of Common Sense in Nutrition and the Overcomplication of Scientific Studies

The Importance Of Microbiomes In Human And Animal Health (27:16)

• Expert Discusses Coexisting with Microbes, Even in Places like Airports and During Vacations
• Expert Suggests Disease Can Help the Immune System Evolve and Reset Rather Than Being Seen as Harmful
• Rob Ryan's Personal Experience Reveals the Impact of Bleach on Dog's Microbiome and Highlights Its Significance in their Development
• Dr. Odette Suter Discusses the Crucial 8-16 Week Phase for developing a Diverse Microbiome in Dogs for Healthy Growth

Fecal Transplants For Dog Health (34:12)

• Dr. Ian Billinghurst Emphasizes Early Microbial Exposure's Role in Brain and Gut Development through an English Horse Study
• Dr. Margo Roman Introduces Dr. Billinghurst to Fecal Transplants, Demonstrating their Benefits in Cases like a German Shepherd with Chronic Diarrhea
• Dr. Odette Suter Details the Fecal Transplant Procedure for IBD Treatment and its Administration Techniques
• Discussions between Dr. Billinghurst and Dr. Suter Explore Fecal Transplant Efficacy, with Mention of Successful C. difficile Treatments Lasting 892 Days Using Even Sterile Poop
• Dr. Suter Expounds on Fecal Transplants for Dogs, Addressing Both Oral and Rectal Delivery and Post-Treatment Monitoring
• Dr. Billinghurst Recognizes Fecal Transplants' Potential, Though Points Out Flaws in Certain Human Efficacy Studies

Gut Microbiome And Its Impact On Behavior And Health (44:03)

• Odette Suter Explanation: Probiotics During Antibiotic Use May Obstruct Microbiome Recovery
• Ian Billinghurst Speculates on Probiotics' Space Occupancy Delaying Normal Microbiome Restoration
• Dietary Observations by Dr. Suter: High-Carb Diets Increase Bacteroides; High-Protein Boosts Firmicutes in Dogs
• Microbiome Compositions Correlate with Dog Aggression Levels, according to Dr. Suter
• Dr. Ian Billinghurst Emphasizes the Complexity and Individual Variances in Probiotic Research Outcomes
• Dr. Odette Suter Questions the Current Relevance of Probiotics, Citing Microbiome's Natural Healing Complexity

Microbiome Impact On Health And Wellness (53:02)

• Factors Harmful to Microbiome: Stress, C-Sections, Vaccines, Medications, and EMFs
• Living in a Natural Environment, Away From Electromagnetic Waves, Can Help Maintain a Healthy Microbiome
• Rob Ryan Recommends Nightly WiFi Timeouts for Better Sleep Quality
• Dr. Odette Suter Details Gut Microbes' Role: Converting Food to Essential Compounds like B Vitamins and Taurine

Diagnosing And Treating Gastrointestinal Issues In Dogs (59:25)

• Dr. Odette Suter Discusses Gut Microbes' Role in Taurine Synthesis
• Dr. Suter Highlights the Intricacies of Nutrient Absorption and the Significance of Microbiome and Parasite Assessments in Dog Health
• Dr. Karen Becker Advocates for Comprehensive Testing: Microbiome, Adrenal, and Vitamin D for Canine Gastrointestinal Issues
• The Emphasis is on Diagnostic Tests that Lead to Actionable Treatment Solutions

Dog Microbiome Health And Nutrition With A Veterinarian (1:06:08)

• Darren Hilton Explores Goat Milk Kefir Benefits for Gut Microbiome Diversity
• Dr. Odette Suter Stresses Personalized Animal Diet and Natural Dietary Choices for Optimal Microbiome Health
• Dr. B Highlights the Dangers of Processed Foods and Advocates Raw Feeding for Animal Microbiome Wellness
• Dr. Odette Suter's Program: Empowering Pet Owners with Tailored Support for Animal Gut Health and Well-being
• Dr. Ian Billinghurst Advocates for Educating Vets and Discusses a Study Linking Proper Horse Grooming to Health

Probiotic Overuse In Pet Care (0:01)

Rob Ryan  00:01

Everybody, good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening, wherever you are in the world. We're so happy to have you here today. We're excited to talk to a knowledgeable vet about the microbiome, gut health, and poop. All things microbiome. So, let's get to it. Let's bring on my co-host and co-pilot at Gussy's Gut, Dr. Ian Billinghurst.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  00:33

Good morning, Rob. And we're excited today because we have the poop doctor.

Rob Ryan  00:45

That's right. That's Suter anyway

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  00:47

Dr. Odette Suter, the poop doctor with a brilliant mind and a wonderful, caring vet, is doing much for our furry family members. So, let's introduce.

Rob Ryan  01:02

Let's do it. Okay.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  01:07

Dr. Suter. Welcome. I've done it.

Rob Ryan  01:09

Hello. How are you?

Dr. Odette Suter  01:15

Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. How are you? It's good to be here with fellow microbe lovers and appreciators.

Rob Ryan  01:25

Yes, we're all rolling. Good company. I think it's probably because of the poop doctor. The moniker is amusing and cute. But we need to do something more upstream because you're helping people before it becomes poop. GI Joe has to come up with something cuter and funnier. That has to do with the GI tract.

Dr. Odette Suter  01:54

Well, I mean, you want to add cute. Funny. I can't talk about it never works.

Rob Ryan  02:03

Oh my gosh. Well, then that. Forget what I said.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  02:07

I would love one of those, by the way. Yeah, you can buy them on Amazon.

Dr. Odette Suter  02:13

Or whatever. Your Sterling. Well, yeah, you have Amazon on us and in Australia.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  02:19

I will look for that.

Dr. Odette Suter  02:21

Yeah, they make all sorts of things with poop. I have, like, I don't know, probably about 10 T-shirts with some excellent, cute poop thing on it. Because when we talk about poop, everybody gets disgusted. Because one of the most common questions I get is, My dog is eating poop. How can you make him stop it? And I'm like, Well, why would you? I have to create cute attire to make it a little more fun because an ick factor comes with that.

Rob Ryan  02:58

Thank you to everybody joining; let's get right into it. Because I'm excited, this will be one of those shows where more than an hour is needed. So, let's march right into this. So, the first question, let's start with this. I last saw you on Dr. Karen Becker and Ronnie Habib's Private Eye. It's like a membership service on Facebook. And I saw you talking about animal guardians and pet owners who may overdo it with probiotic therapies. And this is a fascinating topic to me. Can you get us started on that conversation? What are you seeing in the world?

Dr. Odette Suter  03:48

Yeah, definitely. We must start by looking at some numbers because that will make sense. Why? We should or shouldn't use a ton of probiotics so we have a microbiome. For those who don't know what that is, it's the assortment of all the microbes that live in and around our bodies, including ourselves, obviously, and the animals. So, there are microbes everywhere. For humans, they found that there are about the same amount of microbes per cell of the body, depending a little bit on whether we just went to the bathroom or not. So if we were still full of "shit," we would still have more microbes and fewer cells. So that's one thing, and from a genetic perspective, they outnumber us by a factor of 150. They also code for about 90% of all metabolic processes in the body, with 200 microbes per immune cell. They are running the show. They are creating this chemical loop inside our GI tract,  where we have most of those, and they make all these chemical substances necessary for the body to survive. So we have about 302,000 different microbes, whereas probiotics have 10, or, if you're lucky, 14 to 15. But that's about it. So if you look at what's happening in the world of the microbiome, we have a vast diversity of microbes, we have a ton of them, they are making a lot of things; they keep the body running optimally; they help all these chemical reactions to happen in the body every second. I don't remember that; the body has a billion chemical reactions every second. Here we come with this bottle of probiotics that only has ten species in it, and we put it into a very, very, very complex system that works well. If you think about it, considering what we've done to this world, our bodies are still like healing machines. It's amazing how complex the body is and how little goes wrong with it. Of course, that has now changed a bit. And things are getting a bit worse that way. But even so, given that we're exposed to 80,000 new chemicals, that we're just living in this chemical soup and stress, and whatever else is affecting all of us, we're still our animals and are still functioning well. It's ridiculous to think that humans have the answers to things and can make such a huge difference. Because the system that we live with is our ecosystem on this planet. Primarily, if we work to continue to maintain it and improve on it, we're going the other way. But if we can keep that, improve that ecosystem, and help it heal, that's really what is needed. So basically, most of what we do with supplements, nutrients, and everything is ridiculous because we don't know much. We have yet to determine precisely how things will affect anything. And that's where we're at, which is fantastic. We need that innate ability to heal and that nature to make a difference.

Microbiome, Healing Earth, And Traditional Diets (7:50)

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  07:50

That is important because you've just said so much in such a short period of time. And it's not only our bodies; it's our whole Earth that needs healing. And we are. One of the big things Rob and I've been talking about recently, and which I'm becoming increasingly passionate about, is healing our Earth, regenerative farming and everything that goes on there, and the importance of our soil and the microbiome in our soil. And so there is so much we don't know, but we can leave it to nature. Also, natural forces—what's been going on for so long? And so yeah, I very much appreciate what you're saying that we are shooting in the dark so much when we throw in a lot of these supplements, and that includes the microbiome, then when we tried to add probiotics and do something to our microbiome, which is almost when you're saying you know ten into how many microbes do or different sorts of other generally in say human or canine.

Dr. Odette Suter  09:08

Well, in the gut, they found somewhere between 300 and 1000. But I believe if I got the numbers right, the Hadza people in Tanzania, still tribe Hunter, hunter-gatherer tribes, found 40,000 species. And 30% of those have yet to be classified, or no names exist. Something along those lines. So yeah.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  09:36

That suggests they are getting that, obviously, from their environment very much from the food they're eating, which is not destroyed by human intervention. It's just that they're eating their very natural evolutionary diet covered and filled with probiotics, which the authorities today are trying to steer us away from having; they want to make everything sterile that we're living with, they're so wrong.

Dr. Odette Suter  10:08

One of the worst things we've done on this planet is sterilize everything and be afraid of microbes. They were here way before we came, and they've created this ecosystem that we have. And they continue to adapt. So they help us adapt to things. So the less species diversity we have in and around us, the less we can adapt to the changes, and they are capable of adapting within minutes; bacteria reproduce what, like 15 to 20 minutes, you have on a whole new batch of microbes that grew out of the initial ones, they are allowing us to adapt, and they make all these biochemical compounds that are helping us to heal, to thrive, and to function correctly. Whereas the adaptation of a human or an animal takes centuries, Yeah, years, because it took so long for us humans to become what we are and for the dogs to become what they are. Microbes do that in the blink of an eye and adapt to antibiotics, antiparasitics, and everything.

Rob Ryan  11:25

Hadza is for people interested in their lives and what they eat; you can do a few Google searches and find out what you want to know. But the Doctor pays, right? How do you spell it wrong?

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  11:38

What group of people are dead? It's been forever since I

Rob Ryan  11:42

read the ha de za or HA de sa.

Dr. Odette Suter  11:47

Now H A D Z A? I think hadza

Rob Ryan  11:52

It's been a minute since I've searched for them, but they eat a carnivore diet. And they need honey and occasional fruits. Is that right?

Dr. Odette Suter  12:05

They mainly eat tubers. Do the reverse. Yeah. So they have times of the year when they eat more meat. And then, once in a while, they get a little honey, but they have to climb up a tree and get stung by a bunch to get it, so it's not that easy. But they have none.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  12:25

local, I'm hearing.

Dr. Odette Suter  12:26

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Rob Ryan  12:29

And very local, like hyper-local. And they have no Amazon, which indicates

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  12:33

soil.

Dr. Odette Suter  12:36

Right. And fiber.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  12:38

Yes. Absolutely. Biotics.

Dr. Odette Suter  12:41

Prebiotics. Exactly. Yep.

Rob Ryan  12:45

But one of the critical things you want to make sure you look at about the Hadza is that they have very low stress, they don't have cell phones, they're not on Facebook and Instagram, and all these other things, which is super important. We'll talk about that with the biome as well.

Dr. Odette Suter  12:59

Yeah, and they live in a social community. And it's just a completely different lifestyle.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  13:07

We're on our devices, talking over millions of kilometers apart.

Dr. Odette Suter  13:13

Right, the signal goes to the moon or somewhere, and then they return.

Gut Health And The Importance Of Understanding Underlying Causes (13:19)

Rob Ryan  13:19

Well,

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  13:21

A little bit of irony is there. We are so far removed from our evolutionary roots, aren't we?

Dr. Odette Suter  13:32

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the biggest problem that we are facing. And, when I read your book, Dr. Ian,  a couple of decades ago, it's like, of course, it makes sense. We must go back to what the body's physiology dictates: what we eat and how we live. And that's really how we can be healthy, and we cannot be healthy on junk food; we cannot be healthy. If we don't exercise, we can't be healthy if we're constantly stressed. So we've created an environment and a lifestyle that is not health-promoting, aside from killing whatever's still alive.

Rob Ryan  14:18

Well, so we have got that, and that's great. We've covered the numbers. We talked about the hodza a bit, so now that we are at this place of beginning, how about we move into what you see on the ground? You work with many people via console on their dog's gut health. What can you tell us about what people are doing and what you see on the ground?

Dr. Odette Suter  14:47

Well, one of the things that I see is that because so many animals are now sick and have health problems, I know a lot of knee-jerk reactions. Something shows up in the animal, and the first thing is, how can I fix it? So what's missing is the well, what is happening, and what is causing it. And then, once we know what causes it, we try to figure out how to heal it and change it. We use this kind of logic everywhere in our lives: the car engine light comes on, we bring it to the mechanic, they do some diagnostics, and then they fix it. We don't put a piece of duct tape on the light, right? But that's what we do in the animal and health worlds. I mean, it's not just for the animals but also humans. We just put band-aids on it. And it used to be a pill for every ill now, and it's just moved on to a supplement for every sick or an herb for every ill, which is also marginally better than using a pill because, again, you still haven't figured out the problem. So that's a problem.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  16:03

That's a problem without training. And, well, in your opinion, we are not taught to ask that question. Which approach is probably Medicare's to asking the question, What's the origin of this pathology? There's an origin, say, in terms of a bacteria or more inflammation here, but we don't ask why that bacteria Is there a reason for this to be real? Why is this inflammation going on? Well, can you comment on that?

Dr. Odette Suter  16:38

Yeah. The pharmacological industry they are training us to believe in this false way and has lost its logic.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  16:56

which is an infection, and we're deficient in an antibiotic. Right, right. Exactly. Oh, we have inflammation. So we need an NSAID.

Rob Ryan  17:09

But we'll also say,

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  17:11

What's going on to cause the inflammation? What's going on with the bacteria? Our immune system hasn't worked properly to live in harmony with these bacteria because that's the other problem; we will think of the immune system as there to fight them; the environment of our bacteria, the bacteria, the viruses, and so on, have run in our environment. In contrast, it's there to live in harmony with them because that's how we've evolved.

Dr. Odette Suter  17:46

Right, exactly. And they play such a massive role in our ability to be healthy. Yeast, for example, can bioaccumulate heavy metals in the body. So, many people have found that they resist, which is a different story. Most of the time, it needs to be diagnosed correctly. But everybody has yeast, so they are going on a yeast-killing diet and yeast elimination, whatever supplement, whereas the question would be, why is there a yeast overgrowth? And what is that yeast doing? How is it helping the body? It's helping the body pull out heavy metals, such as mercury. And so we have to figure out what these things do. Like parasites, they also bioaccumulate heavy metals and other toxins. So what happens when we remove all the parasites that are there? For some reason? I'm not saying that there's, and if there's an overgrowth of parasites that is damaging the body, we need to lighten the load, but we have to ask first,  what is the goal? What's the reason it's there before we start fighting something?

The Role Of Parasites In The Body And The Importance Of A Healthy Diet (19:04)

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  19:04

So you're saying there's an optimal level of parasites in our bodies?

Dr. Odette Suter  19:12

Yeah, I mean, everybody has parasites. That's something that happens. People don't even know, but they're parasites everywhere. And even if in our animals we do the parent, parasite, and stool tests, most of the time they come back negative, but so many times I've seen dogs poop out worms or throw up worms the next day, and I'm like, Okay, well, that test was accurate.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  19:38

Well, yeah. If the worm wasn't in that part of its lifecycle where it was producing eggs, or which we do the fecal flotation test for, so when you say these parasites, are you talking about things like hookworms, roundworms, worms, as actually, they're too old? Will they function and have beneficial effects at a certain level? Because they remove heavy metals? Is that what you're saying?

Dr. Odette Suter  20:08

Yeah, and they also have an interaction with the immune system itself. For example, if we look at people in third-world countries, they have a lot of parasites, but how much cancer do they have? How many autoimmune diseases do they have? Few. Not like here. So, one has to wonder.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  20:28

So, my idea to worm our dogs every three months and ensure that the stool sample never shows a single parasite egg is doing us a disservice.

Dr. Odette Suter  20:42

Yeah, because what do antiparasitics do? They also kill other microbes that may be beneficial. So, it's a challenge. It's a challenge to know when we should intervene and when we should let the body do what it needs. But I think,  more importantly, we should strengthen the terrain, which is basically how well the body works, rather than trying to go to war with things; we have the war on cancer. We have a war on coronaviruses. We have a battle over everything. We need to wave a white flag, put down the war, stop fighting, and start listening and looking at what's happening and returning to nature to reimburse ourselves because somebody told me somewhere that we used to live in the heart and now go out into the wilderness. Yes, you're so removed from anything natural. I mean, we're inside all the time. We wear rubber shoes with rubber soles, so we have no connection to the Earth.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  22:02

We're proficient, and I have not wormed my dog. Probably for ten years, all my cats. Now, I don't know whether that's laziness or what, but one of the first things I did when I started was understand that real food was healthy, and this goes back 30 years. They're now close to 40 years old. The first thing I noticed was that their worm burden had dropped off. They didn't need worming. They weren't constantly shedding worms or shedding eggs in their stools. And their faces were so regular, but this was one of the first things I noticed. So, my thoughts here with my animals, because we never think it doesn't occur to us when they don't ever have that wormy look that you get with animals that are stricken with roundworms, hookworms, whipworms, whatever, tapeworms. They never shed tapeworms, mind you, I don't think that, but they don't attract fleas. And this is just by feeding them real food. 

Rob Ryan  23:21

and ticks.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  23:23

And ticks. Ticks aren't a different thing. But I've never lived for a long time in a tech area. We have moved into one year. So bad, we. But that's it. I thought about another question, but I can't comment on that. But what you're saying is so absolutely right that we don't need to do that. And I haven't personally because there hasn't been, as I can see the need. And that's what it is; one of the first things I noticed was that they didn't attract, in other words, healthy animals. And that stems from a healthy diet; don't attract an overburden of these things, as they may be there. And they may be doing all those beautiful things, like removing toxic metals and anti-cancer drugs, because it's another thing that disappears. So it's so lovely to hear a fellow vet reinforce that idea. Still, with far more evidence than my anecdotal and surmising, and because I have, I've just lived by this giant hypothesis that if we live on our animals in the evolutionary style of diet now that we tried or lifestyle in every way to the diet, the more, the closer we can adhere to that. The more healthy we would have to be because that's the way we evolved. That's my hypothesis. And I'm working on A Popper, who said we'd never prove anything but failed to disprove it. And from my point of view, I'm dying to disprove it.

Dr. Odette Suter  25:11

I wouldn't even take the hypothesis out of it because we have lost logic and common sense. Common sense says that we do better in nature. We know that. Do we need to have a study for it? I mean, sure. We want to explore, but it's nice to know things. But as complicated as nature is, let's return to how it used to be.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  25:42

That's the title of my first book down the bottom here. The practical common sense. Yeah. Why the feature dog?

Dr. Odette Suter  25:52

Because I had somebody ask me, I posted something about raw food. She publishes and asks me, Well, do you have studies to show that raw food is better than the altar process? Crap, I'm like, I don't need to study for that. It's like another study they did with horses, where they wanted to see if horses felt pain, so they beat them. And then they measured cortisol levels. I'm like, Okay, I could have told you they are feeling pain. So, we make it so complicated, having to improve everything. And, if it's not scientifically proven, God knows who's paying for that to create the results they are looking for. But anyway, it's just that we need to gain common sense. Let's simplify things: eat well, sleep, don't stress, do much exercise, and breathe. Rollin dirt, I don't know, give somebody a hug, whatever, like, simple things that everybody knows, because studies that show that all this crappy food that we're feeding is making the animals sick, we don't need to have studies showing that glyphosate is unhealthy.

The Importance Of Microbiomes In Human And Animal Health (27:16)

Rob Ryan  27:16

So, back to what we were talking about with getting back to nature, I think that the other way that I think most people might appreciate it is because getting back to nature sometimes feels a little too crunchy for people, or they believe it's not going to be as strong as the other methods. They equate pharmaceuticals with strength and getting jobs done. And they usually do, but unfortunately, they rep them, wreak havoc later on, and get a particular third that that's what they're designed for. They're going to get rid of headaches, and they get rid of bacteria with antibiotics. But it's returning to harmony, philosophy, living with, and What you said about living with parasites and all our bacteria, viruses, and protozoa living in connection with them is so interesting. And that's 100% true—everything I've read. And so, Dr. Souter, I think you would agree that if you're adapting to your environment all the time, when you go on vacation for a couple of weeks, somewhere, you're going to take up that biome that you're in if you're in that water and that dirt, it's in that air, isn't that right? You're going to adapt your system.

Dr. Odette Suter  28:49

Yeah, and that's why, when I have to fly, I go into an airport bathroom when I take a picture of it because it's the perfect place to get a bunch of microbes because every time somebody flushes, it goes everywhere. And then, they use these hand-blown things to dry their hands. So bacteria float around. And sure, I mean, on some level, it's like, Oh, my God, this is gross. Yeah, but that's really what we need. We need more diversity, and where do we better define diversity than in a bathroom somewhere?

Rob Ryan  29:27

Yeah, right. And yeah, and Dr. Zack Bush, you're probably familiar with Zack because you love Ion. He talks a lot about being part of your biome and your viral, and your virome is your; he calls it your system's software. It's yours, so you're upgrading your environment whenever you get flu, cold, or other virus. You're upgrading to your environment and staying in a relationship with your environment. Do you agree with him on that?

Dr. Odette Suter  30:02

Yeah, I think so. We also know that in children, we can observe that if they get measles or some other disease, there is a jump in their ability to process things afterward. So it's like a part of their growth process. It helps them evolve as humans. And it would be similar for dogs, too. And some doctors say you should get sick at least every two years, get a good fever, get some virus, or something. To clean up your immune system and reset it. So, the disease is not destructive; it helps. And there are some viruses. I think I heard somebody talk the other day about chickenpox and how that helps with decreasing the likelihood of getting cancer and autoimmune diseases. Suppose you've had chickenpox as a child. So now everybody's getting vaccinated for it, and then they get something else later. But yeah, we interfere too much. Yeah.

Rob Ryan  31:21

Well, it's just the pharmaceutical approach, but it's also this approach of over-sterilizing our environment, where we're constantly over-cleaning and bleaching everything. And I got a puppy at eight weeks. My first dog is an adult. And he came with all kinds of issues. He came home with me with all sorts of problems. I found out that day that she was scrubbing everything with bleach. She was making people step into bleach that day, and I picked him up, and I had to step in a towel with bleach. And everything was pristine and clean. And I thought it was great. When I picked him up, I thought that was phenomenal. When I took him back home, he had all these issues. I didn't relate it to that. Over time, when I started working with holistic vets, I thought back to that experience. That had a part to play in his illness—his dysbiosis.

Dr. Odette Suter  32:22

Yeah, because their microbiome is developing when they're puppies. So, if you don't give them the necessary diversity, they will not create a proper or diverse microbiome. As a result, they also need to develop more physically and mentally. A study was done on humans, and they found that if children didn't have a good microbiome by the age of five, they were mentally and emotionally behind. They would only catch up if they missed that critical developmental phase where their brain was wiring itself so that they would be able to behave normally. So anyway, if they didn't have that microbiome during that critical developmental time, they could never catch up. And to help our animals, we have dogs and cats. That is probably when they're between eight and 16 weeks old. So if we don't give them a microbiome during that time, they can't help develop themselves and their bodies as well as they should. And what do we do when these puppies or kittens are a little weedy? Worm them, they get Giardia, and we give them metronidazole, which wipes out the microbiome. We give them the next guard and other anti-flea and tick preventatives. So they're already being exposed to so much destruction that it's tough to develop healthily.

Fecal Transplants For Dog Health (34:12)

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  34:12

Years ago, I did. And Rob, I was aware of a situation in England where this staple of horses was turning out animals that had acute and chronic, or, sorry, chronic diarrhea, which was uncontrollable. They were, for one of the better words, dummies. They were undeveloped in the head, though, for one, not another. But it was they were stupid horses. And they discovered that they had a groom there, a young fellow who was assiduously cleaning up mom's droppings, so the foals never got to eat them. And these files, because they didn't get the microbiome from their mum, were developing very poorly in the brain. And developing very poorly in the gut speaks to precisely what you've just said. So, it's pretty clear it's across species, but people should be aware that this is what's happening. An old story from England is that you must eat about a pound of dirt as a youngster to become healthy. So, there is so much in this. And we know, too, that if you are not involved in eating dirt, if you like, or eating poop, or getting bacteria into your body from your environment, you're more likely to suffer from an autoimmune disease. Because your body has to have something to attack you, that's what takes itself. So it speaks volumes to what you do, the work you're doing. It is so important. Dr. Poop, thank you.

Dr. Odette Suter  35:57

Oh, it's good. Because we have a lot of people now who are getting smarter, including you on that, you both of you,  there's a lot of research coming out. And so we're all reading furiously, as much as we can, to learn about it. And it's fascinating because what turned me on to poop was to see how much my patients were improving with a fecal transplant. It was like a miracle. And I started about, well, maybe eight years ago, it was Markel, Dr. Margo Roman, who turned me on to that. It was just incredible. I'm like, well, poop is the medicine of the future. Why waste all that money on probiotics and other stuff when we can go for the real thing that gives us hundreds of species of microbes, hundreds of post-biotics, all the metabolites these microbes are creating for the body to work? So why waste time and money on other stuff when we can return to what nature provided and get a hefty old dose of nature? That way?

Rob Ryan  37:07

Yeah. So, can you talk to

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  37:09

us a moment about fecal transplants as some of the success stories you've seen?

Rob Ryan  37:14

Bingo? Yeah.

Dr. Odette Suter  37:16

one of my very first ones was a German Shepherd. He had been diagnosed with IBD two years before I met him. And they had already switched him to a broad diet. They had done food sensitivity testing and all sorts of other things. And he was on herbs, probiotics, enzymes, and other things. But he was still having diarrhea, and he was still having a lot of anxiety. So, I did one fecal transplant on him. And within two days, his poop was normal. And his anxiety level had come way down. I mean, do you

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  37:49

own the actual process of a fecal transplant? What goes on? Yeah.

Dr. Odette Suter  37:54

So, in his case, I did it rectally. So I made a slurry out of poop from a healthy donor doc who wanted to Doctor Romans Docs. So, I made a slurry with saline. And then I put it through a little tube that's about this long and very thin, so they don't feel it. It's like sticking a thermometer in there, but it's not a big deal. So that's how I did it. But it can also be done orally. Animal biome has capsules, and Margot Roman has capsules as well. So, if you don't have a veterinarian who can do it for you via an enema, you can do it on your own through an oral-fecal transplant.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  38:35

So it's just a matter of putting it in a gelatin capsule to try and bypass the stomach. Is that what you're saying?

Dr. Odette Suter  38:45

Yeah, yeah. And I know that animal biome is not allowed to ship to Australia. But we can order from animal biomes in the US and most other countries. And their poop is freeze-dried and put in little capsules that are resistant to stomach acids so that they go into the small intestine, where these microbes are then released. So that's how we do it.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  39:14

Because a dog's been copra fargy, being feces eaters when they eat a fair bit of somebody else's poop, some of that escapes the digestive juices of the stomach and get through.

Dr. Odette Suter  39:32

Well, what they found in some studies with C. difficile, people who have an infection with C diff, basically found that even giving them sterile poop, meaning they removed all the microbes, they still had good results with backups for 892 days. Okay.

Rob Ryan  39:55

That's that. Is it? Is that your computer, Dr. B.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  39:58

That's why compute. Here's a challenge. She goes mad at me occasionally because I haven't gotten any backups. And oh, she's right, of course. In my life, I am correct, but I'm naughty.

Rob Ryan  40:17

What would you what would you say is the difference? And do you have an opinion about the oral versus the rectal for dogs? Therapy?

Dr. Odette Suter  40:30

Well, we don't know. But there's one study I read about in the human field where they checked the difference between oral and rectal. However, the problem with that study was that everybody got a rectal transplant first, and then they continued with oral for one group and rectal for the other. And it's interesting in the human field, and they do multiple fecal transplants. So there's one where they did, I think, 41 fecal transplants within, I guess, it was just five days a week for however many weeks to get to 41. I usually do one fecal transplant, then recheck and see if we need to continue. So I don't know, in that study, if they checked how the microbiome was for all of them after they did the rectal transplant and then compared that rectal transplant microbiome results to the result that they had after the 41 days or how I don't think they went for 41 transplants, but how, how did it look? They found it was similar to the efficacy. Still, I don't know that the study was set up well to show personally I've had good results with both oral and rectal. If an animal has a poor microbiome and has a lot of digestive issues, I will often do a fecal transplant rectally first and then send them home with oral capsules to flood the system. More.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  42:06

When you spoke of the oral capsules, that commercial is the commercial. Yes. Transplant? Yeah.

Dr. Odette Suter  42:17

Yeah, yeah. And then for rectal poop. I get it from Dr. Roman because she has donor dogs. I used to have a donor dog and myself, who had excellent poop. Unfortunately, he passed away. How dare he be unfortunate because His food was delicious. Oh, well. Well,

Rob Ryan  42:41

It sounds like he contributed to society, so we'll miss him. Yeah. So do you. I ask you for the consumer. I've never done any fecal transplants on my dogs. How long is this therapy generally? It depends on the dog and the condition. But it's not a forever thing. It's a therapeutic, right?

Dr. Odette Suter  43:05

Yeah, it depends a little bit. Generally, most dogs get 30 days of fecal capsules, and then we recheck. If I do a rectal transplant, it's just one transplant, and then I recheck. But there are some dogs, and I don't have a client or a patient like that. But I've heard from other veterinarians and animal biome because while they get a lot of testing, they find that without regularly supporting the microbiome by providing them with more fecal capsules, their microbiome tends to return to where it was. So some dogs require a poop capsule daily or two or three times a week to maintain. But I don't know more. I need more information on these animals. So, there might be another issue that's contributing to that. Yeah, I can't speak to that.

Gut Microbiome And Its Impact On Behavior And Health (44:03)

Rob Ryan  44:03

Yeah. Do you? Can you elaborate on a few things on Dr. Becker and Rania Beeps show you're on that you guys talked about? You specifically talked about this idea of making space. That was the those are the words you use in the gut, and sometimes even the best of intentions, good probiotics, even maybe possibly the fecal transplants, if the terrain and you also on this show, you said landscape, so it's kind of the I think it's the same thing. They will take hold if you don't have a suitable terrain. Are you talking about the same thing in the making space? And can you talk about that from more of a layman's perspective and the landscape?

Dr. Odette Suter  44:52

Sure. Making space In the microbe, an existing microbiome, usually means destroying a part of it. So antibiotics will do that, and metronidazole will do that. So, they create space by killing off certain microbes. And so if you're then giving probiotics, for example, these probiotics, which are not generally native to the gut microbiome, are usually transient microbes, so they go in. They do their job, and they leave. But when they can take up space,  they can start populating it. And then it becomes more difficult for the original microbiome to restore itself because now somebody's sitting there, it's like having a settler, and you can't get it out. So, I wonder if that's what you were referring to. But

Rob Ryan  45:51

Yeah, that's great. Yeah, though, this is very interesting. And it does relate to terrain, but in a different way. So. So, if we have an antibiotic situation, you're giving antibiotics, it's creating space in the gut, that space, somebody then puts in a bunch of probiotics. I've been told we've been told to triple the dose of probiotics after antibiotic treatment; that used to be how vets handled it. Brilliant, fantastic, natural Vettes, But that could be a downside.

Dr. Odette Suter  46:35

Some studies show that if you give probiotics while they're on antibiotics, the risk of having diarrhea is diminished. On the other hand, another study showed that it took the microbiome longer to recover to what it was before for people who had been on probiotics versus those who didn't or got a fecal transplant.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  47:02

So, was it because of the space-occupying situation where they took longer to recover because they're occupying space that the average floor should have taken up?

Dr. Odette Suter  47:15

Yeah, that's what the study implied.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  47:21

Have you noticed any difference between the stick of the concept of a fecal transplant taking and staying? Have you seen any difference between animals being fed a raw diet instead of a commercial carbohydrate-based diet? Is there a difference in the fecal or the microbiome being stable? Have you had a fecal transplant? Or? I don't know whether you could comment on that.

Dr. Odette Suter  47:49

Well, what I know is that we can tell, based on the microbiome, if a dog is on a raw diet or a commercial, highly Ultra-processed diet, whether

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  48:07

the number of species or the type of species,

Dr. Odette Suter  48:10

I think both because high-carb diets will have more Bacteroides and fewer fruits of bacteria if I'm correct—the same with aloe, Prevotella, and Prevotella. So there are some chain differences because if a dog is getting high or a cat is getting a high-carb diet, they will have microbes in the gut that are more capable of dealing with and handling carbs; I'm breaking those now. Whereas if you don't feed them a lot of carbs, then you'd have a different type of population, which means that the diet influences the gut microbiome; just changing the diet one day can already change the microbiome. So it's very adaptable. It's like, in an instant, almost it can change.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  49:05

Do you think those different species have a different impact on behavior, such as the immune system or even digestion? Let's go with behavior. In your experience?

Dr. Odette Suter  49:24

For example, if we have more pathogenic species, we'd have a more leaky gut, which causes inflammation everywhere else in the body. Depending on what microbes we have in the gut, we'll have different levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and other types of neurotransmitters that will affect the brain. So, the microbes play a significant role in anxiety and aggression. And there have been some studies done with dogs. A rescue group did the study, or it was rescued animals. In any case, people from a fighting background looked at their microbes and compared them to their level of aggression. They did find a difference in the microbiome composition, and these animals were more aggressive than the others.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  50:26

Okay, so that was that related to diet? Or did it just happen that the microbiome was different? Or you don't know? It's a fascinating area.

Dr. Odette Suter  50:34

Yeah, well, multiple factors always play a role because who knows how one dog responds to being in fights all the time? It may be traumatic for one dog, whereas the other dog may thrive on it, like, Oh, yeah, I get to fight. It's like in humans, and I won't punch anyone. At the same time, somebody else would be more than happy to go in, like, I'm going to hit you. So, there are too many components. And that's what makes it so challenging to do all these studies that we're doing because there are so many components that play a role, especially when we're trying to do studies on the efficacy of probiotics. Well, it's tough because you have multiple different individuals.

Each of these individuals has a microbiome. So it's like a fingerprint. And then you're giving each of them one particular probiotic—the same. But they have very different microbiomes. So, how is that probiotic affecting you? Can it be? Can it even do anything? Because there's another bunch of microbes there? How is it going to affect it? So it's challenging to do any studies with probiotics, for example, because we just don't; it's just too complex, and the body and everything are too difficult to make reasonable assessments. But overall, probiotic research is not shown to be all that effective, and it can be effective for certain things, but in general, it could be more effective. I've listened to many podcasts from microbiologists studying microbiomes, and there's always a question at the end. What about probiotics? And most of them barely say anything about it, except that studies aren't showing it to be that effective. It's like an afterthought. Because once you've discovered the microbiome, all the things it does, and the complexity and ability to heal that comes with it, It's like, why do you ever bother with probiotics? It's like, that's not interesting. Right? It's not interesting anymore. The last probiotic I sold was in 2090.

Microbiome Impact On Health And Wellness (53:02)

Rob Ryan  53:02

Do some other things that can. Let's break it down, and tell me if I know what I'm missing. I'm sure I'll miss a few. So, some of the insults dogs have to their guts can include stress. Maybe not being born, a cesarean being taken, or being cut out of the mother—there are some of those cases. There are reasons for that, which we don't need to go into but are very important at birth. There's a lot of epigenetics, there's food, there's medication, there's vaccines. What am I missing? These are some of the insults that can affect the microbiome, possibly negatively.

Dr. Odette Suter  53:50

Mental health is essential as well. And it's always a question about the chicken or the egg because the biome affects mental and emotional health, and vice versa. But you've covered it. Yeah. Oh, EMFs. That's one thing. Yeah, electromagnetic frequencies and radiation. Because the microbes communicate through electricity, they transmit through electricity. So, adding frequencies to the body that interfere with the communication that microbes have with each other and the body's cells can also cause havoc. And that's been shown as well.

Rob Ryan  54:32

Right? Electromagnetic frequencies could be your Wi-Fi, cell phone, and cell towers outside of your home; what other areas are we if you have devices that talk to each other, a smart refrigerator, all of these things, right?

Dr. Odette Suter  54:48

Yeah, so we have electric fields, we have magnetic fields, and we have microwave frequencies. And so, we also have to look at the wiring of electric coal systems in the house because a lot of them, at least in the US, have faulty wiring, which then causes a lot of dirty electricity. Regular electricity will have sine waves that are very regular and dirty, which annoys the system. I don't feel it consciously, but my microbiome, brain, and other body cells are like, Okay, can we stop that, please?

Rob Ryan  55:32

Yeah. Well,

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  55:34

outdoors and enjoy the fresh air in the sunshine, touch the Earth, and be away from electromagnetic waves.

Dr. Odette Suter  55:43

Yeah, exactly. We need to live naturally. Yeah. Yeah,

Rob Ryan  55:48

Several years ago, I had a console; some guy walked around my house measuring those dirty power waves. And it's relatively inexpensive to have your home where your room, sorry, where you sleep, to have that circuited to put a little switch by your bed, flip that off, and turn off all of your rooms. Electricity so that overnight, where you spend much of your life, maybe close to half of your life. If you're lucky and sleep well, you pay close to half your life. But have it free from dirty electricity, giving you a huge break. You can also do things to paint your walls, and you can see I've been involved in this. And your walls with, oh my gosh, I lost the particular paint.

Dr. Odette Suter  56:49

Paint. It's like paint that blocks, like block creation.

Rob Ryan  56:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then some people go full bore, sleeping in Faraday cages and all this other stuff. And that teaches him that whatever you want to do, have an electrician come to your house or sleep in a Faraday cage. But will that keep you free from giving your body a rest? And indeed, you can; I used to put a timer on my Wi-Fi. So, at night, it just shuts off. I don't need it. I shut my phone off. It's never by me. And so, at least, I have that rest. I don't have a constant bombardment of signals, you know?

Dr. Odette Suter  57:28

I'm wired; that's my Ethernet cable, like 25 feet. So I can drag it over to my sofa. Computer, so I don't even have Wi-Fi. I don't use my modem, and it doesn't do Wi-Fi. Oh, yeah. The critical part is that when you remediate electromagnetic radiation in the house, you want to ensure you measure beforehand. Then you do the remediation, and then you measure again because, for example, if you're painting all of your walls black, but you have an antenna right in front of your window, the electromagnetic radiation will come in and bounce off the walls, which will then make it worse because you cannot escape it's kind of like in the car to or in the airplane. You have much higher exposure because it bounces off the walls, like a billiard table, right? Like a ball.

Rob Ryan  58:26

So, let's return to the code for metabolic pathways and processes. Can you break that down? It is just a tiny bit of how our microbiome makes these essential chemicals and drives these processes and ways.

Dr. Odette Suter  58:47

We eat food, or animals eat it; most of it is digested. There's some pre-digestion in the stomach, and then it goes into the small intestine, where we have enzymes that also break it down. But some microbes help with that whole process. And they eat whatever you know and transform it into something useful for the body, including B vitamins, taurine, and minerals; the whole DCM thing goes right out the window because microbes make taurine.

Diagnosing And Treating Gastrointestinal Issues In Dogs (59:25)

Dr. Odette Suter  59:25

So, anyway, we have all these compounds due to butyrate, which helps provide energy to the anti-parasites, the little cells that line the gut. So, there are so many compounds that have not been explored. Some help with the detoxification of the system. A lot of them will help with training the immune system, especially in a young animal when,  after birth, there's a lot of communication between the microbes and the immune system that's happening so that the immune system can learn what's harmful, when we have allergies and autoimmune diseases, the body has, or the immune system has lost the ability to know what's good and what's not good. So, it just attacks anything that comes along. So there's a lot of that going on in the gastrointestinal tract. So, every system in the body is affected by what they make. Wow, fantastic

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  1:00:29

to know that I have a question for you. Taurine, are there particular microbes or groups of microbes? Or under what circumstances does the body make its own Torian in the gut, or what do the microbes make? Is it a specific diet or specific microbes?

Dr. Odette Suter  1:00:55

Well, they need to have the raw material to make it. I'd have to look it up. It's been a while since I read it. But two amino acids are being combined to produce taurine, and I'm not sure if these microbes are creating that combination or what exactly they're doing. But I know that taurine is being manufactured in the gut.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  1:01:18

Does the diet need to be improved with taurine? The microbes could be there to make it happen. I don't know, you know? Who would know?

Dr. Odette Suter  1:01:31

Why? Well, that's a good question. Because we talked so much about balanced diets, right? Yes. But what do we know about what an animal needs and what in the body determines that something is being taken up and absorbed into the circulation to do something and whatnot? So there's so much that we don't know. And there's so much individuality because I suspect or believe that if the body needs a particular nutrient, it will try to get it somehow.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  1:02:10

Somewhere. And if there's only a tiny amount of it, it'll take up every last bit of it too much, but it'll just leave it there.

Dr. Odette Suter  1:02:18

Exactly. So there's a lot of intelligence in the body, and we need to let it do its thing and not interfere so much.

Rob Ryan  1:02:28

How are you diagnosing when you do a lot of consulting for people? How are you? What are you using for diagnostics? To understand how to treat these dogs, I know other animals, but we'll focus on the dogs.

Dr. Odette Suter  1:02:46

Do you mean, specifically, that we've got issues now or in general? I will always start by doing a parasite test to see what's going on. Because if there's a Giardia overgrowth that's keeping the inflammation going, I want to know if I can eliminate that a little bit. Even though we talked about microbes having an effect, we want to balance it out again. We don't want to have overgrowth. So, I will start with that. If I suspect they have food sensitivities, I will do a food sensitivity test. And then most of them have some microbiome imbalance. Even young, healthy dogs can potentially have a microbial imbalance. I've seen some patients who just wanted to check; the client just wanted to check on what we did, and there was a significant imbalance. So we fix that to prevent disease down the road. Looking at the microbiome is certainly something that I highly recommend. And I'm biome, which is usually the company I know of. I'm not sure if some others have come up, but so far, they're one of the only ones that take samples from all over the world. Some Border Patrol places in certain countries do not like shipping fecal material. Yeah, customers. Australia. Yeah, exactly. That may be more challenging, but I usually run those tests. I will also check their adrenal function because many dogs have adrenal insufficiency, and as a result, they have GI issues, which would be Addison's disease. And it may not be full-blown, but it may be on that spectrum of insufficient adrenal hormone. As a result, they will have more issues with the GI tract. So that's something I will test as well. And then, obviously, a regular CBC chemistry panel. If I suspect a thyroid issue, I will look for that. I also checked vitamin D levels because that's also important for the immune system. And yeah, those are the most common tests I run; I usually go for the ones that give me information on how to treat. I'm not a big fan; I don't do a lot of functional testing, especially when it comes to leaky gut and other types of issues, or dysbiosis, because I already know there's dysbiosis; I want to know what kind of dysbiosis I don't want an index; I want to know what's going on. I don't do a lot of B12 and folate testing because if the microbiome is off, I fix the microbiome, and usually, that will resolve it as well. So I spend people's money on tests that give me information on how to treat and not so much on what's present. Because if a dog has diarrhea or reflux, I know they have inflammation. I know they have leaky guts and probably have a microbial imbalance; I want to know their imbalance. So I can fix it.

Dog Microbiome Health And Nutrition With A Veterinarian (1:06:08)

Rob Ryan  1:06:08

Wow, beautiful. That is great. That's great. So we have a quick question. So we'll round out the show with a question on possible treatments; we won't call them treatments; we'll call them helpful tips for the gut. So Darren Hilton asks, What do you think about supplementing with goat milk kefir? And so, if I can interject, you can list off the top list of things that are good for getting that all of us regular folks can do semi-regularly.

Dr. Odette Suter  1:06:50

Well, variety is the most important. So please don't repeat the same thing repeatedly; have a type, have them play out in the dirt, go to different places, go to the beach, the mountains, the desert, and other areas. Exposure is essential; additional diversity is the most important thing. All these things can be helpful for goat milk, kefir, fermented goat milk, and yogurts. But it depends on what the microbiome is like.

To begin with, I have dogs and cats who do great on these foods, and others don't; they have a big reaction. And that shows that they have an imbalance and that we must look at it. So I always suggest trying it. If you see the benefit, great. If it gets worse, stop it and figure out what the cause is. Again, there's no one size fits all because the microbiome is so different for every animal that you can't generalize; you have to look at it individually and allow your animals to dictate a little bit what they like because they're very good at knowing what's good for them. If you put a bowl of cookies in front of them, they'll eat; that's like a kid, right? You offer them a bowl of ice cream, and they will take that over your salad. But if you're feeding them a good diet, allow them to choose healthy things and see what they want because they aren't very good at knowing what they need.

Rob Ryan  1:08:23

Yeah, that's great. That's great. We also know we've done enough shows; Dr. B knows these dogs had been on these highly processed meals their whole life, and their microbiome adapts to start processing that junk. And so the minute they're given, they're adopted by a family who tries to feed some of those dogs raw. They get diarrhea and sometimes even vomit. And it's their microbiome. Excuse me, what are you trying to get me to digest? Do you see that?

Dr. Odette Suter  1:08:58

Yeah, definitely. Those are typical cases that tell me there's a microbiome imbalance because a body with a healthy microbiome should adapt quickly to a diet change. So if I have an animal who does well on the rabbit, and then you switch it to beef from the same brand, and it has a problem, there's a microbial imbalance. So then you have to look at it because animals eat all sorts of things in nature. They don't eat the same rabbit repeatedly; they eat a little bit of that, whatever they can find, right? So, if their microbiome is not flexible enough to eat whatever they see, that's a sign that it needs some help.

Rob Ryan  1:09:47

That's great. Well, I didn't. We'll end on that note, but I want to let people know. Tell us a little bit about your site. What do you offer to folks who have questions about their dogs or their pets, microbiome?

Dr. Odette Suter  1:10:06

I have a free webinar on gut health, where I dive into everything that affects the gut, how to turn health around, etc. And then I know that many people have challenges with gut health with their animals. And then that can extend to having skin allergies, cognitive dysfunction, and other things. Because what happens in the gut does not stay in the gut. So, it affects all other organ systems. I have a program where I support people in their journey with their animals to get the help they need. Because in this world, we don't have quite enough. Ian Billinghurst and other holistic vets. And so I offer this program where I give them knowledge, support them with their animals, and help them figure out what to do and what's going on.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  1:11:02

That's great. I don't have enough of you. That's right. You need to be training more, which you do.

Dr. Odette Suter  1:11:10

Yeah, and it is also training people; we're training people because they will then train the vets.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  1:11:19

I've been telling people to do that for a long time. That's

Dr. Odette Suter  1:11:25

Yeah, because I know, you know that as well. But because change comes from the people, it comes from their wallet,  their money. So

Rob Ryan  1:11:34

well, it's a take on that wasn't it wasn't Gandhi who almost said very similarly, let your dog Be the change you want to see in the world. Right. Has your dog inspired your vet?

Dr. Odette Suter  1:11:47

Right. Exactly. Exactly. That's important.

Rob Ryan  1:11:51

Right? Yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure, Dr. Suter. We could have. We could have gone another hour. I do have more questions. So that will have to be part two. Where did you come from?

Dr. Odette Suter  1:12:02

Yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that horse story. Doctor, yeah. And that was really, so you said it was a study they had.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst  1:12:12

It was a single observation of one. Just this one stable where they were turning out these horses with terrible diarrhea and dummies, it all came back to this fastidious groom. Yeah, yeah. It didn't want those falls eating mom's poop.

Rob Ryan  1:12:34

Well, Dr. Seuss, stay with us. And we'll end this broadcast. Stay with us. And thank you, everybody, for being with us this hour. Have a great day. We'll see you next time. Thank you.