Episode 26: From allergies to pain – why your dog needs P.E.A

00:00:32 Glenn:        Welcome back to Natural Health for People and Pets. I'm co-host of the show, Glen Cooke, and I'm going to introduce the host of the show, Narelle Cooke.  

00:00:40 Narelle:       Hello  

00:00:40 Glenn:        Everyone back again for another episode. 

00:10:47 Narelle:        So let's get into the nuts and bolts of what PEA is all about. So whenever I say PEA, it's not just the letter P, it's PEA as an abbreviation for Palmitoylethanolamide.  Who wants to say that? Mouthful a million times.  

00:11:00 Glenn:        Especially being you just say PEA, that's it.  

00:11:01 Narelle:        It's a natural health molecule and it's been studied for over 80 years now, so it's been around for a while. It's made naturally in the body, but it's also found in various foods. Things like eggs, milk, cheese, meats, peanuts, human breast milk, lecithin, and you know, quite a few other things. And the way PEA was discovered was really interesting. I love origin stories of health things  

00:11:25 Glenn:       Because that's what you do.  

00:11:26 Narelle:        Well it was like with SB, the Saccharomyces Boulardii, you know, it just happened that this switched on researcher actually tested what the people were drinking at the time and isolated SB and now that's a huge worldwide success for gut issues. And with PEA, again, a researcher back in the late 1930s, early 1940s, he noticed that the incidence of rheumatic fever was higher in undernourished children, whose diets were low in eggs, as compared to children who had more eggs or egg powder added to their diet. So that really baffled him. Why would this group of children getting rheumatic fever in this other group, not?. So he looked into it and ended up isolating PEA from the egg yolk. So the research took off from there. And other early research in the late 1960s, early 1970s highlighted the benefits of PEA against the influenza virus. So this is what ties back in with, you know, your experience with PEA. But the study showed even back then that PEA was able to significantly, and when I say significantly, that means statistically significantly reduced flu symptoms like fever, headaches, sore throat, muscle pain, cough, fatigue. They showed that it reduced the days lost to illness. And the best bit was that there were no side effects. And the studies that were done also found that it was an effective influenza prophylaxis. So it was a great preventative as well.  

00:12:46 Glenn:       Hang on, let's just circle back for a second. When you were saying eggs and powdered eggs, who eats powdered eggs?  

00:12:54 Narelle:        I'm not sure, but that's what they did. To test the theory, they gave certain children egg yolk powder and they didn't get sick as often.  

00:13:02 Glenn:        So that's the thing is it? Like an egg yolk powder? 

00:13:07 Glenn:        I was stuck on that point when you were talking about powdered eggs. 'cause I don't think I've ever heard of powdered eggs before.  

00:13:12 Narelle:       I'm sure you can. I'm sure you can get powdered eggs.  

00:13:15 Glenn:        There you go. I was unaware that you would actually fry or boil an egg and then dehydrate it and powder it.  

00:13:21 Narelle:        Well, anything goes doesn't it really? So coming back to PEA. 

00:13:25 Glenn:        Yes,  

00:13:26 Narelle:        It's what's referred to as an endocannabinoid light compound. So it falls under the umbrella of the endocannabinoid system in the body. And you know, most people are aware that the body has multiple systems that help to regulate and maintain normal homeostasis or balance in the body. So, things like the nervous system, the circulatory system, immune, endocrine, gastrointestinal system. Just like these other systems that we're more familiar with, the endocannabinoid system is a really important biological system that regulates imbalances, like a really wide range of different physiological functions in the body. And the way that PEA works with the endocannabinoid system is by regulating endocannabinoid signaling, but indirectly activating cannabinoid receptors. So it's those cannabinoid receptors that, like CBD oil for example, that we're using on Opie. It targets those receptors directly to get the benefits.  

00:14:17 Narelle:        Whereas, PEA comes at it from a different angle and affects something else, which then affects the receptors. But you end up with the same downstream benefits overall. So it's sort of working on that, those same pathways that CBD oil is working on, which is why as we go through, you'll see why it's so great for things like chronic pain. Any imbalances in the endocannabinoid system, whether it's in us or our dogs, has been shown to contribute to the development of lots of really different pathological conditions and disorders. And what makes PEA so unique is that it's naturally made by the body whenever the body feels threatened. So for example, PEA levels increase when us, or our dogs, are subject to stress. And that could be psychological stress or physical stress. If we suffer from infections, whether that's bacterial or viral, various forms of inflammation, trauma, allergies, pain, heart or kidney disease and even obesity. Because a lot of people don't realise, obesity is a very inflammatory state for the body to be in. And adipose tissue or fat tissue pretty much acts like an endocrine organ itself and it can release a lot of hormones, but also a lot of inflammatory compounds, pretty amazing. When our body feels threatened, literally it makes more PEA to deal with the threat.   

00:15:31 Glenn:       Did you say what part of the body makes PEA  

00:15:33 Narelle:       It's present all over the body. Pretty much in all parts of the body. PEA is our go-to molecule. It's our dog's go-to molecule to restore balance in the body and to maintain really good cellular health. Unfortunately, due to our current lifestyles, both for us and our dogs, you know, we’re just constantly bombarded with lots of different, you know, whether it's external or internal stresses on a daily basis. So external can be a lot of environmental toxins and all that sort of thing. And evidence suggests that when this happens, the body's natural production of PEA simply can't keep up with demand. So in these instances, what the research is now showing is that giving our dogs or giving ourselves a supplemental form of PEA has been shown to bridge that gap between what the body needs and what it can actually produce under those stressful conditions.  

00:16:22 Narelle:        To provide the health benefit, particularly in terms of the research, the benefits really revolve around inflammation, pain, joint pain, nerve pain and allergy symptoms. And I'm gonna sort of dig into each of those in a little bit more detail. But we really do, like even some of the papers, you know, that are out there about PEA, you know, some of them start off by saying the world we live in and our lifestyles are so toxic now, the ultra processed food, all the chemicals, whether it's coming from the air, the water, the food, all the stress in our lives. Because remember, stress has a significant effect on health as well. Our bodies are just constantly battling to stay in balance, but we've gotta remember our bodies. There is an onslaught into our bodies every day and anything that pulls the body outta balance puts a stress on the body to try and pull everything back.  

00:17:13 Narelle:       Into that homeostatic sort of balance. But let's look at the few of the main areas that PEA targets. And when I talk about these different areas, it's just as applicable to humans as it is to dogs. I mean probably lots of other species, but I don't know about those. Chronic pain management is a major challenge, whether it's in human medicine or veterinary medicine. I see this a lot in my clinic. It has a significant impact on quality of life for people when they're in chronic pain. People who have never experienced chronic pain, I'm one of them, but I just can't imagine how that feels day to day to sort of live in that state. And depending on its origin, you know, chronic pain can be classified as inflammatory, which we might see in the various musculoskeletal conditions like osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, hip and elbow dysplasia, things like that.  

00:18:00 Narelle:        Or it can be neuropathic, which relates to the nerves that can be any disease that arrives through injury to the central or the peripheral nervous systems. So when we are looking, let's start with neuropathic pain. It's actually really one of the most difficult chronic pain conditions to treat because any damage caused by long-term compression or inflammation of the nerves, it actually allows the nerves to continue to send that pain signal to the brain, even after the original cause of the pressure on the nerves has been removed. So it's called pain memory and it can lead to pain sensitisation where the threshold of pain receptors to stimuli is reduced. So even a really light touch on the affected area is gonna induce the sensation of pain long after the original insult. Dunno if I explained that well, but that's one of the reasons why nerve pain, and dealing with nerve pain is so complex because there's just this cascade of inflammatory compounds that get released.  

00:18:57 Narelle:        And one of the sort of main cells that does that, and we've spoken about this in relation to Mast cells. So Mast cells in the body are a type of immune cell, but when they degranulate or break down, they release histamine. But they also release a lot of other really inflammatory compounds that just exacerbate and sensitise the nerves even more. So when researchers have looked at all the different various pain conditions and the different models of pain, they've actually seen a significant decrease in plasma or blood PEA levels. And by increasing those blood PEA levels, it was shown to lessen the perception of pain and to increase that pain threshold, which is really good if that's what you're experiencing. But this is another little fun fact when I was looking into PEA. It's been recently discovered that certain families that have inherited pain insensitivity, so these are people that feel absolutely no physical pain, which might, you know go, oh, how awesome would that be to feel no pain. But it's a really dangerous state to live in.  

00:20:04 Glenn:       Absolutely, especially with infection. 

00:20:06 Narelle:        You could cut yourself really badly and bleed out, but if you didn't physically see, you wouldn't know it because you wouldn't feel it. So it's actually quite a serious condition or genetic condition to have. But what they found is that for those people, they've got a genetic variation in the enzyme that breaks down PEA and some of its relative. So basically all of the PEA that their body produces naturally, it doesn't get broken down. So they've always got super high levels of PEA, which is giving them all that absolute pain relief.  

00:20:40 Glenn:        So scores more than the average person.  

00:20:43 Narelle:        Yeah, so they're saying that's part of why these people feel no pain is because the PEA that would normally get broken down just isn't getting broken down. So, I don't know how it works, but whether it just keeps building up.  

00:20:53 Glenn:        Fascinating, can become almost superhuman by having a high gradient of PEA in your body.  

00:20:58 Narelle:        That's it. And the thing is the research demonstrates that PEA has a clear pain blocking effect, but because it works differently in the body as compared to say conventional steroidal or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, he can relieve pain without the common side effects that people might experience from, you know, taking pain medication. But the good thing is too, it can also be used in conjunction with other pain meds and there's no interactions, and I'll probably touch on that a little bit more as we go along. Another really great thing about PEA when it comes to treating chronic pain, and this is really important, is that it doesn't develop pharmacological tolerance. So it doesn't lose effectiveness over time as you might see with something like opioid medication. So you know, with opioids, the longer you take it, the more you have to take to get the same pain relief effect .  

00:21:48 Narelle:        And that can be hugely problematic for people and can lead to, you know, lots of nasty side effects and not a good place to be in. You don't develop tolerance to be so, you know, you don't need increasing levels to get the same effect. But it's also been shown to delay the development of tolerance of things like morphine. So like I said, you might develop a tolerance to it and need more and more for the same effect. But by combining it with PEA they've found that that delays that tolerance from developing. That's really important for people who are reliant on pain medication. And there was a study that showed with oxycodone that when they gave a level of a drug whereby below that level it doesn't have much effect and above it, it has an effect.  

00:22:33 Narelle:        So they gave people sort of a level that wasn't expected to have any pain relieving effects on its own, but when they combined it with PEA at that same low level, it did have a pain relieving effect. So PEA was sort of acting synergistically with the drug to get better benefits. To summarise the literature, some of the conditions for which PEA has been shown to be beneficial and provide pain relieving effects across both human and animal studies are things like spinal cord injury. And I've had our French Bulldog Ladybug on PEA ever since she hurt her spine a couple of years ago. And now that one of our older shepherds is getting on in years, I've got him on PEA now just to support his ageing body as well. Sciatic nerve injuries, diabetic neuropathic pain, carpal tunnel syndrome. So again, any of those nerve compression syndromes. Neuropathic pain that's associated with things like MS, lower back pain, chemotherapy induced pain, IBS pain, post-surgical pain, fibromyalgia, failed back surgery, osteoarthritic pain, migraine and headache pain. So many people get migraines and headaches. Vitamin D deficiency induced pain, pelvic pains, women who experience endometriosis or dysmenorrhea. It's been shown to relieve pain in interstitial cystitis and bladder pain, shingles, and a couple of more random studies show that it was beneficial for reducing the pain of burning mouth syndrome and myasthenia gravis.  

00:23:56 Glenn:        What's burning mouth syndrome?  

00:23:57 Narelle:        I have to look that up too. But it was in a few of the review papers on the beneficial effects of PEA, but it's literally an ongoing or recurrent burning in the mouth with no obvious cause. So there you go. If you have an unusual ongoing burning sensation in your mouth and you don't know why, maybe try some PEA. It's been shown to be effective just for that. Yeah, that blows me away. There's so many conditions that are covered in the research that show quite definitively that PEA can have a beneficial effect for people suffering pain from those states. Moving on to the next main area, and this is more relevant to my dog clients, although any humans experiencing allergies feel free to jump on board. But when we're talking about allergies, most people understand that antihistamines work by preventing histamine release from Mast cells.  

00:24:47 Narelle:        And you know, I've sort of already said this, but you know, when Mast cells get triggered, they release compounds such as histamine and prostaglandins and other inflammatory compounds. They also communicate with other key players in the inflammatory process, which sets off this whole inflammatory cascade. And because Mast cells are present pretty much all over the body, but they're mostly concentrated where the internal body meets the external. So sinus cavities, the mucus membranes of sort of the mouth and the nose, things like that. So that's why, you know, if you're exposed to allergens, let's say pollens a really easy example, people tend to get watery eyes and sneezing because those Mast cells that are in those mucus membranes of the sinus cavities release all the histamine. And we get all affected by that. A lot of Mast cells line the gastrointestinal tract, which is why dogs and people might experience diarrhoea and vomiting if they've got food intolerance, or allergies and things like that in connective tissue that's quite close to the skin surface.  

00:25:45 Narelle:       Which is why we get a lot of redness and itchiness and lesions, particularly in dogs when they have a histamine release due to allergens. Basically, due to its powerful ability to stabilise those Mast cells, PEA has really potent antihistamine properties and can be effective for all forms of allergies. Whether it's airborne, food, contact, without the side effects. So you know, a lot of the, particularly the first generation antihistamines are the ones that make you drowsy. PEA doesn't have those side effects, but if we focus even more on dogs, most people will be familiar with canine atopic dermatitis. So it's like ex-marine dogs. It's a genetically predisposed sort of inflammatory condition. Huge prevalence worldwide, and it's a primary reason why a lot of people take their dogs to the vet for the itchiness that comes with, let's abbreviate it to CAD.  

00:26:35 Narelle:       So CAD, canine atopic dermatitis. But there was a study done only back in 2015 that assessed the efficacy of PEA in CAD. So the main things that they were looking at in the study were the level of pruritus or itchiness, and then they're also looking at changes in skin lesions and quality of life after only eight weeks of treatment with PEA. In these dogs, 80% of dogs showed improvement by week four and 83% by week eight, which the authors reported was similar to what they would see with mainstream medications, and better than a lot of other mainstream medications. So that's really good. 96% of the dogs were classified as having moderate to severe pruritus at the beginning and that dropped to 39% of dogs by week eight. So that's huge. I mean if you've got a dog with severe itchiness, like anyone who's lived with an itchy dog knows just how it can send you crazy.  

00:27:34 Glenn:       And the dog.  

00:27:35 Narelle:       And the dog. So any reduction’s really good with that. 35% of dogs showed a 50% or greater reduction in itchiness at the end of the study, and 30% of the dogs reach what they considered a normal level of itchiness by week eight. So in other words, their level of itchiness was comparable to a dog without skin problems and certainly wouldn't be thinking of taking a dog to the vet. So pretty huge after only eight weeks on the PEA. So in terms of the skin lesions, they saw a significant improvement in skin lesions in 80% of the dogs. And those dogs that had the worst lesions saw the greatest benefits overall. They said 62% of dogs reached a lesion index score that put them in the pretty much normal category. And they also found significantly improved quality of life for the dogs in the study with around 45% of the dogs reaching a quality of life described for healthy animals. So again, really, really important when we, we all want our dogs and ourselves to have a good quality of life. Itching dogs that are breaking their skin and causing secondary infections and all of that is not, not nice  

00:28:38 Glenn:       On Instagram there's a vet called Tactical Veterinarian. They post, I dunno if it's a he or a she. I'll say they post posts from time to time of some pretty gruesome stuff, which they put up warnings on the videos and the photos, if people wanna have a look at what vets have to experience. And there was one a while ago, and I know it wasn't just related to just itchy skin, but it was a dog with an ear infection where the dog had almost lacerated its own ear off with its back foot due to scratching its ear. I think when people underestimate how determined a dog can be, humans do it too. I mean I remember when I was a kid and I used to get eczema and I've scratched myself so red raw on, on the inside of my arms. 

00:29:20 Glenn:       That I had welts and scabs from tearing the skin off my own arm. Sometimes when you're in that much pain and that much frustration is setting in, you don't realise how much damage you're doing to yourself. So that was pretty gruesome. The picture they showed of the dog, you know, almost taking its entire ear off from the base, of just scratching its ear. Poor thing. It's terrible. So interesting to hear about what the relief that PEA can bring from scratching incidents. Once again, you are not saying that it's a complete cure for things like that when there's other things going on and when you've got some pretty significant ear bugs going on that need to be treated. But nonetheless, I've still seen dogs scratch themselves absolutely red raw from fleas and dermatitis and so forth.  

00:30:03 Narelle:        Every dog is like every person, individual. And treatment, you know, needs to take that into account. But the other thing, just while we're on it, people need to remember there's never a magic cure. So it's not about just giving one new supplement and not changing anything else. If we talk about dogs in the dog's environment, so if you've got a super itchy dog with lots of redness and lesions and just hurting itself from itching. Just giving PEA, yes it's part of the solution and it will help, but you need to do a lot of other things in that dog's world just to get the best outcome.  

00:30:37 Glenn:        Supplements and pharmaceuticals are different for different species. Like even if they're, let's say we're talking about humans for argument's sake, you can have one drug or one natural supplement that you can take. That one person will give rave reviews to it and the next person will say, didn't really experience much change. So they are different. They're still different nonetheless. But when you're starting to get statistics into the high eighties with good results, that's pretty profound. 

00:31:03 Narelle:        Yeah and look, I love that paper on Canine Atopic Dermatitis I must say. They got amazing results in eight weeks. My clinical experience is that it often takes a little bit longer than that. Again that's because every dog's different and they have different diets and different environments, things like that. So we've spoken about chronic pain, we've spoken about allergies. Just to touch on a couple of other things that sort of pop up regularly in clinic is digestive disorder. So lots of dogs and people suffer from gut issues. So the gastrointestinal tract, it actually has a really dense concentration of those cannabinoid receptors that help to maintain homeostasis and to regulate gut motility and the secretion of digestive enzymes. So it's when these systems go wrong that you start to see intestinal inflammation and diseases like inflammatory bowel disease or irritable bowel syndrome.  

00:31:51 Narelle:        And studies have shown that PEA supplementation, it actually exerts an anti-inflammatory effect in the gut as well as having a positive influence on the gut microbiome, which is really good. And the way it works in the gut is primarily to improve intestinal permeability. So it's basically reducing leaky gut, which is really important. And the way it does that is by, so we've got these tight junctions sort of lining our gastric mucosa and our dogs have the same thing. So it sort of locks those tight junctions closer together so the gut's less porous. And then you can't get those large compounds, whether it's pathogenic bacteria or large undigested food particles or whatever toxic compound that shouldn't be in the bloodstream. It stops it from getting into the bloodstreams. And there was actually a study that showed that lower levels of PEA is seen in animals with acute intestinal disorders and that dogs affected with chronic diarrhoea,  

00:32:44 Narelle:        It was shown that by giving them PEA, it reduced what's called the canine IBD activity index score, and normalised the intestinal motility, which reduced the frequency in the severity of the diarrhoea. That's early information coming through, but it looks like PEA could also be good for helping dogs with diarrhoea. So that never hurts either. Another area that's not super strong with the research, as compared to say the chronic pain and the allergies and the gut health for PEA, but really interesting, and I know a lot of listeners have dogs with kidney disease. So PEA’s naturally found in the kidneys and the levels change in response to kidney damage. Studies have found that PEA supplementation decreases renal dysfunction and any injury to the kidneys that are triggered by ischemia or reperfusion. And it's also been found that PEA can protect the renal blood vessels due to its ability to reduce, let's just call them inflammatory compounds, which is really good.  

00:33:41 Narelle:        But what's even more fascinating is that it's been shown that you can use less PEA, so lower doses of PEA if you combine it with a natural antioxidant compound such as Siylmarin. Siylmarin is one of the key active constituents in Milk Thistle, otherwise known as St Mary's Thistle, which we also have under the CanineCeuticals range. But there's actually research that shows you can still get a really protective effect of PEA on the kidneys at a lower dose if you combine it with Milk Thistle. So keep that in mind. And if we look just more broadly now at the anti-inflammatory and the antioxidant benefits of PEA, as I've said, the main way that PEA reduces inflammation is by preventing the release of damaging pro-inflammatory molecules in the body. But the way it does this is, it neutralises free radicals by binding to them and preventing them from ping ponging around our body destroying cells and DNA, and this is really important when it comes to our neurons, 'cause our neurons in the brain are super sensitive and highly, highly prone to oxidative damage, which is why PEA is particularly effective in treating nervous system disorders.  

00:34:48 Narelle:       So if we think about how PEA accumulates in the brain tissue, it does this following injury of the brain, and early studies are showing that PEA has neuroprotective properties. So neuroinflammation is now regarded as a key aspect in the pathogenesis of pretty much all neurodegenerative disorders. So things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, traumatic brain injury, epilepsy, and just like a whole range of those cognitive sort of behavioural and mood disorders. So if we think about our dogs, this is particularly important for our senior dogs who are more likely to experience canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome,  just think of that like Alzheimer's disease in humans. But they're similar to the point where researchers are now saying that dogs could be a really good model for studying the pathological process of Alzheimer's disease and any new treatment approaches for Alzheimer's disease in humans. Now that's good in one way, bad in the other if they're doing animal experimentation, but that's how similar our dogs are with us when it comes to neurological functions.  

00:35:53 Narelle:       Out of everything that I've said, oils ain't oils. So not every PEA product is the same or of the same quality and this is what I'm really passionate about when it comes to clients in clinic, but you know dogs, and this is what I base CanineCeuticals around, like having quality ingredients that actually will do what they're designed to do. bioavailability matters a lot, particularly when it comes to PEA. So PEA is a lipid or a fat molecule, which means that it has poor solubility and bioavailability in the body because the body's over 60% water and in certain parts of the body you're up to 80% water. So to overcome this obstacle of really low bioavailability or poor absorption, special manufacturing processes are required to ensure that the PEA can actually get into the tissues and into the cells to do the good work.  

00:36:38 Narelle:       What's called ultra micronised PEA is a pharmaceutical grade formulation and this is what's in the CanineCeuticals PEA Plus. More than 99% of the PEA has particle sizes below six micron. Just think like really, really small. And this is what helps to improve its effectiveness in treating pain and all those other conditions that we've mentioned. So if anyone's looking to buy PEA, you really do need to make sure that it says ultra micronised on the container. And as I've mentioned because PEA is fat soluble, another way to ensure optimal uptake is by combining it with a healthy fat source such as sunflower, which further serves to enhance absorption into the body. And that's because sunflower Lecithin acts as a natural emulsifying agent. PEA’s a fat molecule, the body's mostly water, so you know, water and fat don't like to hang out together very well. The sunflower Lecithin, one of its arms loves fat and the other arm loves water. So it grabs onto both and pulls them together and they journey throughout the body together. And then the PEA can go where it wouldn't have gone before because it's got the Lecithin with it to get into certain cells.  

00:37:46 Glenn:        Interesting how symbiosis works with certain things, isn't it?  

00:37:50 Narelle:      It is. And I use sunflower Lecithin in the CanineCeuticals PEA Plus. Another reason why I love sunflower Lecithin is it's rich in the nutrient choline which supports nerve and cellular health. It's also really rich in phospholipids which promote the uptake of omega 3’s in the body. They're also really important for gut health and protecting the gut lining. Literally every cell in our body has what's called a phospholipid bilayer. So the phospholipids in the sunflower Lecithin help to promote cellular health in that regard as well. So that's bioavailability. Always look for ultra micronized PEA for anything that you're buying, and just to wrap it up and finish off talking about the safety of PEA. so PEA's had a really long track record of extremely safe use in human medicine and veterinary medicine and it's very well tolerated. So you don't expect to see side effects from PEA.  

00:38:41 Narelle:        It's not to say that a small percentage may not get some gastrointestinal upset, but it's the exception rather than the rule. And unlike other chronic pain medications, definitely no serious side effects. There's no adverse drug interaction. So that's huge for me as a practitioner. If I've got either dog clients or human clients that are on a heap of medications, I've gotta be so careful as to what supplements I prescribe in case they interact with the medication and they can cause either higher levels, or lower levels, than the person or the dog actually should be getting. So PEA has no interactions with medications. If you're on chronic pain meds, or if your dog's on pain meds or anything else you can safely give PEA. The other good safety aspect of PEA is that its metabolism in the body is independent of the kidney and the liver.  

00:39:32 Narelle:        So again, if someone or a dog has kidney or liver problems, that's not gonna be an issue in giving them PEA as well. I guess having said that, never ever change your medications or stop medications without consulting your doctor or your vet. Sounds like sage advice to me. It is never, oh wow PEA, let me just stop everything I'm taking and just take PEA. No, you don't do it. You've gotta be sensible about it. And to give a little bit of a case study just before we finish, PEA tends to work very slowly in the body, and human research indicates that it's best to give a loading dose. So you'd give like double the dose for the first say four weeks and then you'd reduce it to a maintenance dose. They haven't said that in the dog research literature, which is why I haven't put it on the CanineCeuticals label.  

00:40:15 Narelle:        But there's no reason if your dog has been suffering from chronic pain conditions, or allergy conditions, or skin issues that you couldn't give a loading dose for the first two weeks, which would just be double what the label dose recommends and then bring it back down to the label dose going forward from there. But PEA, because it's working at a cellular level, it is a slower acting compound. So in this day and age we expect instant relief, you know, we wanna take a drug and then within 24 hours we feel amazing. PEA’s not that compound. And if let's say you are in chronic pain, and I'll give a case study of a human that was on very high doses of opioids for chronic pain management. So the approach we took there was not to change his medication dose in the first instance, but to add in the PEA.  

00:41:00 Narelle:        And because PEA takes a little while to build up in the body, we had him on just the PEA for eight weeks, and then working in with his GP, we then started to taper down the opioids very slowly and that was the first time he could remember for years and years where he could manage his pain with lower doses of opioids. But it was a very slow process and done in conjunction with a medical professional. So again, everyone's situation is unique, but that's an example of how you might use it. That's the story of PEA, and if you are interested in reading more about it, you can jump onto the CanineCeuticals website and look for PEA Plus is the product that I sell. If you've got any questions about how PEA might benefit your dog, or even you, 'cause I'm a human naturopath, you can send me an email at info@canineceuticals.com au  

00:41:53 Glenn:       And before we do the sign off, tell people where they can find you on Instagram, Facebook, and any other social media platforms that you've got  

00:42:01 Narelle:      CanineCeuticals on Instagram and Facebook. Go and like my pages there and follow me there for lots of tips and updates on health and new products that are always coming out.  

00:42:13 Glenn:       I was gonna say new products that you're releasing.  

00:42:15 Narelle:       Yeah. Particularly for our fresh food feeders and raw food feeders out there. We're developing a nice range of organic freeze dried organ meats, which are a great addition to add variety and just to make sure your dog's getting everything they need in a home prepared diet. Particularly for people who might be vegetarian or vegan or just don't like cutting up squishy organ meats, I mean, it's freeze dried. It's the closest you can get to fresh organ meats nutritionally without dealing with fresh organ meats. So yeah, check it out. In addition to the canines website, you can find me at naturalhealthandnutrition.com au. If you are interested in making comments or asking questions about the podcast, you can jump onto the Natural Health for People and Pets Facebook page.  

00:42:55 Glenn:       Okay. So there you go, that's all your social media, all your website addresses and so forth. So if people need to contact you, they can do so through any one of those services, through CanineCeuticals itself, or through Natural Health and Nutrition. Or if they want podcast information, they can just go to Natural Health for People and Pets.  

00:43:14 Narelle:       That's it. Lots of ways to find me.  

00:43:16 Glenn:       Terrific. Okay, thanks.  

00:43:17 Narelle:        Thanks everyone.