Episode 29: The health benefits of organ meats

00:00:33 Glenn:      Welcome back to Natural Health for People and Pets. I'm co-host of the show, Glen Cooke, and I'm gonna introduce the host of the show, Narelle Cooke.  

00:00:40 Narelle:       Hi everyone. Been a while, I know. I seriously can't believe that we're almost halfway through the year already. Time just flies and it flies even more quickly when you're trying to build an empire.  

00:00:52 Glenn:       So when I'm travelling around, I'm meeting people at different events and seminars and so forth. People are saying to me, when's Narelle gonna put another podcast out? So tell people why it's taken this long.  

00:01:02 Narelle:       I'm busy.  

00:01:03 Glenn:       <laugh>.  

00:01:04 Narelle:       I have every intention of putting one out once a month. That's always my intention, and then next thing I know, I blink and five months has gone by.  

00:01:14 Glenn:       So what you really mean to say is that CanineCeuticals has become more successful than what you imagined in a shorter time,and you have been literally running ragged trying to organise staff to help you with picking orders, and or packing orders, and so forth, and picking orders, I guess. But, it's been very popular and that is great thanks to the people out there in the community who have gotten behind it, supported it, but more importantly, the fact that they're coming back in droves, and I mean droves. Of talking about how successful it's been for their dogs and how much genuine relief they're finding when people are giving them bleak outcomes, or no outcomes, or no answers. People are actually coming back to you and saying, “Narelle, thank you. You're a godsend. This is working. It's restored my faith in the fact that my dog can actually feel some relief”.  

00:02:02 Narelle:       Now CanineCeuticals really turned a corner this year in terms of growth, which has been amazing, but it does make it all consuming for me. And it is still a seven day a week job, trying to make everything work and happen. I do now have a small team around me, which is really exciting. I'm now able to offer consults again because of what Michelle…  

00:02:21 Glenn:       Oh yeah, tell us about Michelle. That's a new asset to the CanineCeuticals group. We should get Michelle on the show and do an episode with Michelle.  

00:02:28 Narelle:       That's what I'm thinking too, like we'll do an actual whole show to introduce Michelle to everyone. But Michelle specialises in herbal medicine, so she's a human herbalist as well, and has been doing that for many years. So she's got her own clinical practice, and is supporting me with emails. If you email us, you might get a response from Michelle. That's been a huge weight lifted, having that extra support, like customer support and consult support.  

00:02:52 Glenn:       Yeah, absolutely.  

00:02:54 Narelle:     Michelle's lovely, and we'll do a show where you can meet Michelle.  

00:02:57 Glenn:       So speaking about shows, let's get on with the show 'cause you've got a topic in mind.  

 00:07:00 Narelle:      We're gonna talk all about organ meats. I wanna talk about their health benefits. I want to delve into why I think we should all be incorporating organ meats into our dog's diets. I wanna discuss the specific and nutrient profiles. Of different organs and why you might at times choose one organ over the other. And in relation to that, I wanna also look at how organ meats can provide targeted support to different areas of the body, such as, you know, the immune system, kidney, pancreatic function, and just overall health and wellbeing. There's actually a lot that I wanna get through today.  

00:07:31 Glenn:       Interestingly enough, when you look at how wild animals, actually like predators, they usually go for the organ meats first. That's the first thing that they start looking for when they actually take down prey is they start to remove and digest the organ meats first.  

00:07:47 Narelle:       But we should probably start with a definition so everyone's on the same page of what we're talking about.  

00:07:52 Glenn:       The other point that I quickly want to talk about too, is that you just importantly flagged something in Bell and Bone, how she actually uses real meat in her product. As you are an advocate for making sure that dogs are actually having proper meat in their diets. You know, like not just fillers and all sorts of rubbish that people are putting into making a product cheaply. I think the thing, and the scorn that I have there is that when some of the bigger name companies get involved in it, it's more about bottom line, and shareholder profits rather than it is for health and wellbeing for dogs. I guess what people really need to do, is when they're looking at a product, is not so much look at the expense of it because the expense doesn't indicate the actual effect of it. What they really need to do is have someone like you and other people in the industry point out to them what are the real nutritional benefits of some of the products on the market.  

00:08:45 Glenn:       Whether they be a form of kibble, or whether they be a dried meat version of kibble and whether they be the bone product that Bell and Bone do.  I think the difficult and suffocating thing for so many people is they're just marketed away from the truth. And that's very disheartening and very dishonest. But people just don't know. They don't know what they're buying. They're impressed by very flash packaging. They're impressed by a lot of word salad that's put on product information without really knowing what it is that they're putting into their dog's digestive system.  

00:09:18 Narelle:       Yeah, and that reminds me, you know, I did a little mini course on how to interpret commercial pet food labels and you know, within that, I talk about all the marketing hype and I sort of flag what has meaning and what doesn't have meaning. Most of what's on a bag doesn't have any standing or regulatory stance or meaning. That's still available on the natural health and nutrition website. People can download that and watch that. It's only like a two hour short course. But it's really informative if you wanna understand what you are giving your dog.  

00:09:46 Glenn:       One of the areas that really still surprises me to this day is how poorly people feed pregnant females or, or females that they want to actually, you know, start doing a breeding program with or anything like that. That's always been a concern. I know I'm sort of leaping away from the topic at hand, so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna hijack it any further, but it's just been conversations that I've been having with friends and colleagues in the industry when they go into breeding, they have no idea, and yet I just don't understand it. They're so overwhelmed about making sure that they produce these amazing puppies and put very, very little thought into the chemical bombardment that the female is going through and the lack of nutrition and the lack of support they're actually giving her during that time. And the reason I say that is 'cause it's Mother's Day today we're actually recording on Mother's Day.  

00:10:33 Glenn:       Yes, we are. And I was thinking about lactating females and females that are actually giving birth and creating life and creating puppies. Uh, and how poorly done it is at that point in time, they're still eating very cheap foods. They're eating very cereal dense foods and there's just a lot going on that people don't put enough thought into. So being Mother's Day and given the topic at hand that you are talking about organ meats, it just made me think about all these things. Anyway, I'm gonna shut up, because it's your podcast. You go ahead and people want to hear about your information.  

00:11:04 Narelle:      So  I do wanna start with a quick definition of what we mean when we say organ meats. Often referred to as offal, or byproducts. They include parts of an animal such as the liver, the kidney, spleen, pancreas, heart, brain, like they're the main ones that people will be familiar with. And then, while I know in the fresh food feeding world, we also break it down further into secreting and non-secreting organs. So secreting organs are those that, as the name suggests, produce and secrete a specific substance such as enzymes or hormones into the body or the external environment. And the non-secreting organs on the other hand don't. So to give some examples of secreting organs, liver for example, it produces bile. The pancreas produces pancreatic enzymes, the kidneys produce urine, the adrenal glands, you know, produce cortisol, et cetera, et cetera. You know, the testis, the ovaries produce testosterone, oestrogen, progesterone. And then examples of non-secreting organs are, the heart, the brain, the lungs, the intestine. So they're not actually producing something and secreting it. So that's just a little tip for the different types of organs. 

00:12:07 Glenn:       Yeah.  

00:12:08 Narelle:       But look, all organ meats are really highly nutritious. Rich in vitamins, minerals, fats, amino acids, other bioactive compounds, I guess in Western diets now, most people find organ meats really unappetising. Once upon a time our grandparents wouldn't hesitate to eat fried brains or liver or kidney. Like that was just a really common part of the daily diet.   

00:12:28 Glenn:       I remember it as a kid, anytime I used to go over to my nan's, you could bank on the fact that you were gonna get lamb's fry and bacon, which was lamb, kidneys, bacon. There were brains on toast. So lamb's brains fried up with breadcrumbs on toast and stuff like that to disguise what they really were because we didn't know. I mean, liver's always got a livery taste. But anyway, back to you.  

00:12:48 Narelle:       It's unfortunate that they are now overlooked as a valuable food source because they are so, just nutrient dense. And you know, if we look back at traditional societies, it was customary to consume the whole animal, that nose to tail eating. And not only did that maximise nutrition, but you know, minimise waste as well. I mean, traditional medicine recognizes the therapeutic value of consuming organ meats. And there's a concept of, like supports like, or glandular therapy it's sometimes referred to. And that suggests that consuming a particular organ will actually support the function of that corresponding organ in our own bodies or in our dog's bodies, which makes sense. So, you know, the brain is really rich in DHA, so that omega 3 fat DHA, which supports brain health,  like our brains need, like during pregnancy and lactation. And for puppies, they've shown that supplementing with DHA during those stages of life has significant benefits for cognition and learning and neurological development.  

00:13:50 Narelle:       So feed brain, actually feeds the brain. You know, heart is rich in COQ10 and we know the importance of COQ10 for not only cardiovascular health, but all areas of health. And I know all about COQ10. I guess what I find strange is, that people understand this when it comes to say, joint health. A lot of dog owners might give their dogs a chondroitin or a collagen supplement to support joint health, and chondroitin is a component of cartilage and that's why it's beneficial. You know, to give it a supplement for joints. We sort of get it in that regard. But I just find people don't think about, okay, my dog's got pancreatitis, I better give it some pancreas. Or my dog's got kidney disease, I better give it some kidney. 

00:14:30 Glenn:       Like we haven't  figured it out.  

00:14:31 Narelle:     Which makes no sense when we understand that chondroitin, which comes from cartilage, supports the health of cartilage.  

00:14:38 Glenn:       Makes sense. Yeah. It doesn't make sense if nobody guides you to it. That's the thing, is that you need a guide or a mentor to actually say to you, this is the resounding reason why you need to do that.  

00:14:51 Narelle:       Which is what today is all about. So I guess a question people might have is, why do I even need to feed my dog organs? And I always like to start by taking a step back and you know, we need to remember that from a nutritional perspective, the food that we're consuming today is very different from what we were eating, or our family were eating a hundred years ago. And this is highlighted in the USDA nutrient database. They've tracked over whatever period of time, 70 years, a hundred years, the decline in vitamins and minerals across fruit meats and vegetables. 

00:15:23 Glenn:         In meats as well.  

00:15:26 Narelle:       Yeah. Fruits, veggies, meats. And it's scary. Like when you see the percentage reduction in vitamins and minerals in the foods that we're consuming, it's just really scary. I mean, and there's lots of reasons for why our food is so depleted these days, which I'm not gonna go into.  

00:15:40 Glenn:         Go into it briefly. Don't go into it intensely, but just go into it briefly.  

00:15:45 Narelle:       Okay. So you've got modern agricultural practices that prioritise high yields and fast growth over nutrient density. The use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides that disrupt the soil health, even the transportation and storage of produce, 'cause things can sit in cold storage for 12 months and beyond. So that's gonna degrade or deplete nutrient levels. They're the key things that have impacted the quality of our food. But it's mostly around that intense farming practices and disruption of soil health.  

00:16:13 Glenn:       It's terrifying. Really terrifying what speed and profits are doing to health.  

00:16:19 Narelle:       And even not just like fruit and veg, but you know, even intensively farmed animals, the way they just try and get them as pumped up as quickly as possible.  To move them on and make a dollar. Yeah. It's just not good. The other thing is, most dogs are consuming a highly processed kibble diet. And the majority of kibble, you know, it's just aiming to meet the minimum standards of nutrition. And unfortunately many are even falling short of that. So these diets will help to keep our dogs alive, but I absolutely don't believe that they're providing optimal levels of nutrients that our dogs need to thrive. And particularly, and I'll talk more about this as we go through the podcast, particularly if you've got high level sporting dog or a working dog. It's like an athlete, you need a higher level of nutrition for optimal performance when you're working at that level of intensity.  

00:17:07 Glenn:       It's great to see people like you and Sasha Parker, and Brittany Young, and many of the others who are actually blowing a whistle on this and you know, exposing it to people and saying, this is what's happening. 'cause as I said before, I wouldn't have known. I consider myself reasonably well informed. I like to read, I like to be involved. I mean, for a long, long time, since the introduction of these super premium dog foods, there has been a lot of misguided truths about what people are actually putting into their dogs stomachs.  

00:17:37 Narelle:       That’s the other reason why I wanted to talk about organ meats today and their nutritional profile. Because it can be kibble, it can be raw food, it can be cooked food options on the market. But most of them rely on synthetic vitamins and mineral premixes to make the food nutritionally complete and balanced. And synthetic nutrients, you know, they're artificially created, they're not completely identical to the equivalent nutrient found in whole foods. So while they might have a similar chemical structure, they lack that complex combination of, you know, all the other vitamins and minerals and phytochemicals and other bioactive compounds that are present in whole food and which work together synergistically to really allow for optimal absorption and, and bioavailability and utilisation by the body. So you just don't get that same effect with synthetic nutrients, which is why I always come back to food first.  

00:18:26 Narelle:       I do have to say organs aren't essential. I'm gonna tell you why you should be feeding organs, but you can still feed your dog a nutritionally complete imbalanced meal without organs. And there are certain breeds of dogs that genetically need to avoid organ meat. So dalmatians for example, their genetic variation means that they need to avoid hyper purine foods and organs are high in purines, but it's hard. So the average pet owner I think would struggle to make their own home prepared meals, whether raw or cooked without organ meat and get it right.  

00:19:00 Glenn:        So what happens to dalmatians, for example, if they eat too much organ meats. 

00:19:03 Narelle:       It predisposes them to bladder stones. The purines get metabolised and broken down and the variation is, it doesn't get broken down to the extent that it should. I think it's the same with humans. So there's a step missing in that process, which causes a buildup, and I haven't read about this for a long time, so I feel a bit on the spot, but bottom line is too high purines in the diet will likely trigger bladder stones in dalmatians.  

00:19:30 Glenn:         So what's the alternative for them then?  

00:19:31 Narelle:       Well, I guess a lot of the time they will have to rely on synthetic vitamins and minerals to sort of cover all bases. I mean you can get vitamins and minerals from other whole food sources, but you do need to know what you're doing and often you need to feed a higher volume of food to get the right levels in. Because, you know, organ meats are so nutrient dense in such a small amount that it makes it really easy. Which is why organ meats are referred to as the multivitamin of the animal world. So let's have a look at some of my favourite organs. We'll start with liver. So liver is one of the easiest organ meats for people to access and buy. It's actually one of the most nutritionally dense foods on the planet and it's far more nutrient dense than the same amount of, let's say, red muscle meat.  

00:20:14 Narelle:        So what I'll do, I'll touch on the nutrients that the liver is rich in like the top ones and the health benefits that come with that. I won't do that for every organ, but I'll spend a bit more time doing that with liver, and then we can just skim through the other ones a bit more quickly. Because the benefits will be the same for the various vitamins and minerals. Beef liver is really rich in vitamin A. So that's essential for normal vision, immune function, reproduction, skin health. And when we look at immune function, it plays a really fundamental role in the production of a compound called Immunoglobulin G or IgG is the abbreviation. And that's an antibody that plays a key role in the body's defence against external pathogens. It's the same with us, it's the same with our dogs.  

00:20:59 Narelle:       So if you've got a dog that's prone to recurrent infections of any kind, adding in a source of liver to boost their vitamin A might just be enough to sort of help with that. Beef liver, it's rich in all of the B vitamins but particularly folate. So B9 and vitamin B12. B vitamins, you know, they're important for the nervous system for brain function, red blood cell production, DNA synthesis. But they're particularly important if you've got a dog prone to stress and anxiety. And I know I've spoken about this probably in the behaviour podcast talking about diets. The impact of diet on behaviour. So the more stressed we are, or the more stressed out and anxious our dogs are, there's certain biochemical pathways in the body that get up-regulated that are produced in those stress hormones. The thing is, there's a lot of nutrient co-factors that are needed to fuel those biochemical pathways. And when they're operating a lot more quickly, you're burning up, you're using up those nutrients that are part of that process. And the B vitamins are a big part of those biochemical pathways that get activated when we're stressed or anxious. So we need to consume higher amounts to bring things back into balance. And that makes sense because if you pick up any human stress supplement off the shelf, what is always in it? B Vitamins. 

00:22:13 Glenn:         Yeah.  

00:22:14 Narelle:       So Blackmores Executive B Stress Formula. So anything for stress, it's full of B vitamins because that's what our bodies need more of during those times. So if you've got a stressed or anxious dog, liver, beef liver is gonna be helpful for covering those B vitamin bases. And vitamin B12 is really important for dogs with chronic gut issues such as inflammatory bowel disease, beef liver is super rich in zinc, which is a powerful antioxidant. I don't think dogs get enough zinc, I can't justify it, but I've just, it's a gut feeling from everything I've done over the years with humans and dogs, but I think our dogs aren't getting enough to think in their, like their average diet.  

00:22:52 Glenn:         And that's very important for male dogs especially. Right? Yes.  

00:22:54 Narelle:       Male humans. Male dogs.   

00:22:56 Glenn:        I know you're always on to me about making sure I've got enough zinc in my diet.  

00:22:59 Narelle:       Yep. So zinc, it's needed to support immune health, skin health, the nervous system. I love it for dogs with allergies. Again, it's great for dogs with any anxiety or behavioural issues. So you know, there's a lot of research around zinc and behaviour. I assess a lot of diets. Unfortunately a lot of home prepared diets often contain suboptimal levels of zinc. And if you've got a dog that's also got a lot of grain in its diet, some of the antinutrients, such as phytate in grains will bind to minerals such as zinc and make them less available to the body. And that's why most world health organisations in their standards will say that vegetarians and vegans need to consume higher amounts of minerals such as iron and zinc because there's so much plant matter in their diet. That less of those minerals are available to the body.  

00:23:47 Narelle:       So they need to eat more to compensate for that. Beef liver is rich in iron, and the great thing is that the iron found in beef liver is in the form of heme iron. Which is the most easily absorbed form of iron by the body compared to non-heme iron, which is found in plant-based foods. And our dogs need adequate iron. Like we don't often think about anaemia with dogs, but it is the thing, you know we need adequate iron for attention, concentration, memory. So I think it's really important for dogs, for obedience, for sporting, for working dogs and just you know, I was thinking about this the other day but…..

00:24:18 Glenn:         And for general intelligence. Yeah.  

00:24:19 Narelle:       And just to feel energised, we need it to feel good. I haven't looked into this yet, but I'm really curious, because we know with endurance athletes in particular, they can be prone to anaemia for several reasons. And one of them is hemolysis of the red blood cells. So that's like a mechanical rupturing. So how do I explain this? During intense exercise, the red blood cells pass through capillaries in the contracting muscles, but the force of the contractions during exercise can actually rupture the red blood cells. So it sort of destroys them. And red blood cells can get compressed as you're running, like the soles of the feet. You know the capillaries in your feet as they're pounding the footpath, is compressing red blood cells and can be damaging them and rupturing them. That can decrease the total number of red blood cells in the body.  

00:25:06 Narelle:       And also during intense exercise, blood is diverted away from the gastrointestinal tract and pumped out to the extremities, 'cause we need our muscles to be operating. But they believe that over time that reduced blood flow to the digestive organs can actually cause some injury and some very low level bleeding. It's not to a level that you'd notice but it can contribute to anaemia. That's all in the human space. But I would love to know if that's also the case for dogs and I can't imagine that it would be much different. Like the mechanisms I think, you know, they've gotta be similar, in which case if you do have a really high intensity sporting dog or working dog, is there a potential for that low grade anaemia to come into play? In which case adding in a source like a really highly bioavailable source of whole food iron, such as beef liver, I think would just be like a no brainer. Like why wouldn't you do that? But I dunno, I've gotta look into the animal side of it.  

00:26:07 Glenn:         Well, if anyone has the sciences on it, bring it forward.  

00:26:11 Narelle:       Let me know. Another mineral that beef liver is really rich in is copper. We don't often think about copper, but it's key in activating, you know, certain enzymes in the body, regulating energy production, eye metabolism, brain function. Again, most home prepared diets would probably contain suboptimal levels of copper, particularly if owners are just relying on chicken liver for example. So even between beef liver, lamb liver, chicken liver, different animal livers, they do contain different nutrient profiles. So it's quite extreme with chicken. So beef liver has 9.8 milligrams of copper per hundred grams. So that's 9.8 versus 0.5 milligrams from chicken liver.  

00:26:54 Glenn:         Oh, That's really quite low. Yeah.  

00:26:56 Narelle:       So you can see where people might get into trouble with that. But suboptimal copper intake over time can cause skin and coat problems. Dry skin, hair loss, dull coat depigmentation. You can see neurological symptoms like seizures or ataxia, immune system dysfunction. Copper's really important for connective tissues such as cartilage. So suboptimal copper deficiency over time can also contribute to joint problems and joint pain.  

00:27:22 Glenn:       I know in the Rottweiler world that some of the rottweilers used to get like a reddish tinge on them from time to time, and just a shabby looking reddish coat, and the ones that were doing that were coming back with low copper concentration in their blood work. And that was years ago. Like I'm talking 25 years ago when my great vet that I used to have then Dr. Murray Clark. You remember Murray? Murray was very big on, because he was a very old school country type of vet, but he was very good on health and wellbeing, eating raw foods. He was actually one of the first people who actually promoted raw eating to me back in the day when I was looking after the kennel dogs. He used to say, make sure that you're actually giving the dogs raw meats and bones and offal, and things that you are talking about. But Murray was the one who really pointed out copper deficiencies in dogs. It was him that was doing the read on these dogs 'cause he was the Rotty man in the area. And he said make sure that if you do start seeing this look in your breed, he said copper is one of the first ones. But you know it still needs to be diagnosed. Yeah.  

00:28:24 Narelle:       Yeah, so interesting. It  

00:28:25 Glenn:         It is fascinating. 

00:28:27 Narelle:       Yeah, I'll just touch on one more nutrient for liver, then we'll move on. So beef liver, it's one of the most concentrated sources of vitamin K2. So K2 has been shown to activate the protein, osteocalcin and other complexes in the body and they work to support both bone and dental health. And this can help to reduce age-related bone mineral density loss. This is another little bugbear of mine. We tend to accept that disease in general, but also joint disease, is just a normal part of ageing. But there's so much that we can do to reduce the risk of that developing. And a classic example is with the, oh I'll probably get the name wrong. The acronym is NHANES. So it's an Americans nutrition survey where they survey like just tens of thousands of people every few years just to pick on calcium,  'cause we're talking about bones. They found that 80% of teenage girls aren't hitting the minimum requirement for calcium in their diet each day. But I bet you if you spoke to those parents, or that girl, they'd be like, oh yeah, we have a wide variety of different foods and yeah, you know, there's no way that she wouldn't be getting enough calcium. But 80% of teenage girls weren't hitting the minimum calcium. And then we think it's normal to have osteoporosis when we're 70 or 80. But who's looking at the diet of the teenage teenage girl that's lacking. We can avoid osteoporosis when we're 80. But  

00:29:45 Glenn:        But Look at the diets that people are actually having. Like look at what they're eating. It's well, exactly, fast food, fried food sugars and it's just an abundance of all the wrong things.  

 00:29:55 Narelle:       But there's so much we can do for ourselves and our dogs from a dietary perspective to avoid a lot of that chronic degeneration and disease that we accept as normal. Because everyone wants to eat what they wanna eat, and drink what they wanna drink, and all right we'll get off that one. Yes, sorry. Liver's become really big in the bodybuilding arena, and just generally taking off in the last few years in the human spaces as a supplement, and it's believed to have stamina boosting properties. There was an experiment done quite a few years ago now. It's probably one of the first studies looking at why liver actually does have stamina boosting properties. They got three groups of rats and there were 12 rats per group, and they were trying to figure out if it was just the B vitamins in the liver that was providing the energy source with the first group of rats.  

00:30:43 Narelle:       And they subjected the rats to what's called a stress test with rodents. And this is quite common. The stress test involves putting them in a barrel of water that they can't escape from and they just have to swim. So that's the stress test with the first group of rats. They weren't given anything. The second group of rats was just given isolated B vitamins. And the third group was fed powdered liver. The group that wasn't fed anything, they swam for an average of 13.3 minutes. The group fed the B vitamins swam for an average of 13.4 minutes. Same. Same. But of the 12 rats that were fed the powdered liver, one swam for 63 minutes, one for 83 minutes, one for 87 minutes. And then the other remaining nine rats were still swimming after two hours and they stopped it there. So one to two hours versus 13 minutes. And the only difference was they got liver. So if you're feeling rundown, grab yourself some liver and definitely give you dogs.  

00:31:42 Glenn:       It's funny you say that when you talk about those types of studies and the correlation between synthetics, or isolated, versus the real food, the real product. Do you remember Dean Mather? So Dean Mather, for the people who don't know him, he was an old friend of ours, and he was probably one of the first naturopaths, he was a security guy. He used to work with me in a security company, but Narelle and I used to go and see Dean. And Dean was a very well-informed person in natural health back then. And he was talking about the same sort of study, and I remember that it was was to do with apples, and there was a process where there was a removal of us, or a synthetic that science was trying to introduce by taking it out of apples and then giving it to people and then realising, they're not getting the the nutritional uptake they need and therefore they said just, eat the apple.  

00:32:36 Glenn:       And that's, you know, effectively where a lot of the saying was, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So what they realised was, the skin and the actual flesh of the apple was far more concentrated in what they were trying to do. But it wasn't just that it had a cumulative effect of what it was trying to do. And I dunno the actual study, so I'm just babbling along. I remember Dean and I having this conversation, but he said when they tried to isolate it, it didn't work. It basically just didn't function because the apple, what nature intended it to be, was where the source of the energy or the health requirement actually came from. Even though I don't recall the actual study or the intense detail of what Dean went through, I remember him saying that because they tried to pull it outta the apple, it just had no effect. And I guess the reason why I'm bringing this up is it reminded me of the story you just told me about the rats or told us about the rats. It's very, very similar to that story that Dean told us.  

00:33:33 Narelle:       Yeah. And I alluded to earlier, like whole foods, we don't know how all of those components in the foods are working synergistically together. So we think we can just pull something out and isolate it and it's gonna have the same benefit. But you know, in a lot of cases it's just…  

00:33:47 Glenn:         It doesn't work.   

00:33:48 Narelle:       It doesn't work that way. It's not that simple. So whole foods, the challenge for me as a human naturopath, I would love for everyone to eat whole food versions to get their nutrition in. But people have certain taste preferences and you know, if I said to someone you need to eat liver every day. Well I guess it's different with liver 'cause you can get liver capsules so you could take it that way. But I often have to rely on synthetics  like isolated synthetic supplements because people aren't prepared to change their diet and eat the foods they need to eat. It can be challenging. Luckily working with dogs now more. More so, you know, most dogs just eat what they're given  

00:34:25 Glenn:       Interestingly enough, Opie, our french bulldog, our old male one. He prefers to have liver. Lamb liver is it that he prefers to have?  

00:34:34 Narelle:       Oh, I rotate through them so he can be a little bit fussy with his food, but if I sprinkle one of the freeze dried organ powders over the top of his food.

00:34:41 Glenn:         He starts snapping into it. Yeah.  

00:34:43 Narelle:       He hows into it.  So while we're on liver, and I know I am talking a lot about liver, but it's because most people feed liver, and some of the other organs not so much. Is to talk about the safety of it. So liver has so many amazing health benefits, but there are two main concerns or cautions that tend to be raised when it comes to consuming liver, and they are that it can contain toxins, and it can contain very high levels of vitamin A that can then produce a toxicity. If we have a look at the toxin side of it first. Yes, the liver is an organ of detoxification and it works to break down toxins. And the way it does this is through phase 1 and phase 2 detoxification pathways. But the whole point of those two pathways is to break a toxic compound down, transform it into something that's safer and then excrete it from the body.  

00:35:31 Narelle:       So, the liver, it's not holding onto a lot of toxins generally. If it's working well, those toxins should be passing out. And the way that it removes those toxins from the body is through the bile, which is through the faeces or the urine. But the other thing that happens, rather than things get installed in the liver, the body sequesters toxins and puts them in other organs and tissues. So the bone particularly, and the fat tissue. We know that now and they're actually, uh, there was something I was reading a little while ago that some of the symptoms related to menopause, might actually be when women get to that stage and bone density starts to break down, that's releasing lead into the circulation and that may be contributing to some menopause symptoms, which is scary and fascinating all at the same time. And it's why you shouldn't lose if you've got a lot of weight to lose, don't lose it quickly because the fat tissue is a key storage area for all sorts of toxins and pollutants.  

00:36:30 Narelle:       So when you lose a lot of fat very quickly, those toxins get released from the fat cells back into circulation and that's when the liver's gotta deal with that again. So people can feel just blah, like they feel tired, they get headaches, they might get skin breakouts. So you know, that's one reason to go slow with weight loss. But having said all of that, there are studies that show that the liver can accumulate heavy metals. So there was a study that assessed liver, kidney and muscle meat from cattle, sheep and chickens from various farms. The study was done in Pakistan and they found that all three tissues accumulated significant amounts of certain metals, and particularly arsenic, cadmium, mercury, nickel and lead. But remember it's not just they looked at those organs, but heavy metals can be in any part of the body like the fat and the bone as well.  

Narelle:    00:37:18    But my point is this, why it was so important to me in sourcing the organs for CanineCeuticals that they were organic, and they were grass fed and finished. That they're free of hormones, they're free of pesticides, they're non GMO, just to ensure that our dogs are receiving the absolute best possible nutrition, while avoiding potentially harmful toxins and contaminants. The problem is, there's no avoiding paying a premium price for that sort of quality. What I also love is that the manufacturer that I source the CC organic freeze rate organs from, he tests every batch for both microbial contamination and also heavy metal contamination. So I know without a doubt the purity of the CanineCeuticals freeze dried organs is second to none.   

00:38:07 Glenn:        And he's a great source of information for you too, isn't he? Like whenever you've got a question.. He provides the science or  the backup for it.  

00:38:13 Narelle:       Yeah. I mean it's his passion, it's what he does in creating the freeze dried product. So if I've ever got any questions or if I wanna study something, he'll just shoot it my way, which is great. Fantastic. So that's the toxicity side. Heavy metals can be a problem if you are sourcing cheap organs from somewhere random. And then the second main concern when it comes to beef liver is vitamin A toxicity. But you know, when I looked into this, most of the toxicity issues come from synthetic vitamin A, because they've shown taking too much synthetic vitamin A can contribute to birth defects. So pregnant women are advised to avoid consuming supplemental vitamin A in particular. But natural vitamin A, such as found in liver, tends to only cause problems when consumed in extremely large amounts. For example, they found that in children after taking a single dose of a synthetic vitamin A of 300,000 international units, or a daily dose of 60,000 international units for a few weeks, that caused problems.  

00:39:13 Narelle:       But then once they stopped, the reaction, the adverse reactions went away. In adults, vitamin toxicity is really mostly reported in arctic explorers after they binge on polar bear or seal liver. In that case, that's several million international units of vitamin A that was reported to have been consumed. Once they stopped, everything went back to normal, back to fine. So the main concern, you know, when we're talking about dog nutrition is synthetic vitamin A in dog food, because mistakes can be made during manufacturing. We've seen it multiple times with vitamin D toxicity in dogs. There's no reason why that couldn't also happen with vitamin A. But actual hypervitaminosis A, which is vitamin A toxicity. It is rare in dogs. So the upper limit of vitamin A for dogs is 62,500 international units per day.

00:40:01 Narelle:       So let's say we've got someone who follows the BARF ratios of raw food feeding and they're feeding 2.5% body weight and 5% liver. A 20 kilo dog would only need around 25 grams of liver per day, which is around 4 to 6,000 international units of vitamin A depending on which source of data you're looking at. So that's 4 to 6,000, whereas the upper limit is 62,000. So a lot of wriggle room. That's why I say, you know, even if you're feeding your dog a nutritionally complete imbalanced food, there's no reason like that you can't add supplemental liver on top of that and still stay well within that safe range. Had enough of liver?  

00:40:39 Glenn:         Yeah, let's move on to some of the other items.  

00:40:42 Narelle:       Kidney. Also very popular. Easy to find. It's rich in many of the same vitamins and minerals as beef liver. So I'm not gonna talk about those. What I will highlight is that it's an exceptionally high source of selenium so much higher than any of the other organs. Selenium, it's a really potent antioxidant. It helps to protect cells from damage caused by free radicals. It's critical for immune system function. It can help to protect the body against infection and disease. It's needed for the thyroid gland. So a lot of dogs are prone to hypothyroidism or an underactive thyroid. So selenium is really important in the diet to support thyroid function, essential for normal reproductive health in dogs. And a deficiency of selenium can lead to problems such as infertility and low sperm count. And it's needed for maintaining healthy muscles. So again, a deficiency over time can lead to muscle weakness and atrophy.  

00:41:39 Glenn:       So something very good for males.  

00:41:41 Narelle:       Yes. So most prenatal pregnancy vitamins or preconception vitamins for men will absolutely be…..  

00:41:48 Glenn:         Selenium and zinc,  

00:41:49 Narelle:       Selenium, zinc and co-enzyme Q10. Get those swimmers going. Kidney also contain several bioactive compounds such as enzymes and other co-factors that have been shown to support kidney and urinary tract health, and one of those that I particularly like is called diamine oxidase, or DAO is the acronym. So it's an enzyme that breaks down histamine in the body. So histamine is a compound, it's naturally found in food. It's also produced by the body's immune system. But in some dogs, excessive amounts of histamine can contribute to allergic reactions like itching, and scratching, and redness and you know, all of those skin symptoms with allergies. It can contribute to diarrhoea as well now that I'm thinking about it. So I love kidney for allergy dogs. Love it. If your dog's itchy, scratchy, grab some kidney.  

00:42:40 Glenn:         That's good to know. 'cause you get a hell of a lot of those people on your. Q and A times.  

00:42:45 Narelle:       There's other things that need to be done around that. But kidney's part of the picture that I would be recommending. Spleen, let's talk about beef spleen. Again, it's rich in a lot of the same vitamins and minerals as beef liver, but it's actually even higher in heme iron. So it contains five times as much total iron and nearly 30 times as much heme iron, which is that really bioavailable form of iron, compared to beef liver. And beef liver's already really high. For dogs lacking iron, I guess we've already touched on this lethargy weakness, more prone to disease and illness. But the thing I absolutely love about spleen, is its immune enhancing properties and this is because it secretes two specific compounds called, I always struggle to say them Tuftsin and Splenopentin. Tuftsin, it stimulates macrophages. So macrophages are a type of white blood cell and they act as a first line of defence against invading pathogens and it also helps to mobilise other white blood cells to fight against infection and cancer.  

00:43:50 Narelle:       A deficiency of Tuftsin has been associated with more frequent infection. So if you've got a dog again that's always getting sick in some way or other, grab some beef spleen and the Splenopentin, like Tuftsin, it has significant immune enhancing effects by not only promoting the production of white blood cells, but it's also been shown to enhance the activity of what's called natural killer cells. And these natural killer cells destroy cells that have become cancerous or infected with viruses. So I had a customer just this week, her dog had a splenectomy if I've said that right. Had the spleen removed. And she bought organic beef spleen to help support her dog's immune system during the recovery and probably beyond.  

00:44:37 Glenn:         Can people take all these as well?  

00:44:39 Narelle:       So technically, it says animal consumption only, but that's a regulatory requirement. But they're all 100% human grade organs. So we'll just leave it at that.  

00:44:49 Glenn:         So you are not recommending them for people, you are saying these are dog products, but you're saying that they have been ethically sourced for human consumption.  

00:44:58 Narelle:        I'm just not allowed to promote an animal product. 

00:45:00 Glenn:           Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know we are. We're not saying yeah, you should pop the lid and chow down on it. We're saying this is, this is a canine product. But it's human quality. Yeah. All of your material is through CanineCeuticals. 

00:45:12 Narelle:         If you took the same powder that's in my tubs and put them in a tub with a human label on it you could consume them. 

00:45:20 Glenn:           But we're not saying you can do that.  

00:45:21 Narelle:         No. Not while they're in my tub with animal consumption only. Oh, regulatory stuff. And look, the last organ I wanna touch on is pancreas. Traditionally beef pancreas was taken to support people experiencing pancreatic insufficiencies. So that's often characterised by impaired digestion, malabsorption, nutrient deficiencies, any abdominal discomfort. And the reason why pancreas is so good for those states is that it's really rich in enzymes. So you've got enzymes to break down fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Some people have taken pancreas because it's so rich in pancreatic enzymes to also help with allergy symptoms because, you know, one of the drivers of allergies is large undigested food particles getting into the bloodstream. The better that you can break those food particles down into smaller particles, that can be one part of supporting allergy symptoms. But I will always recommend the organic freeze dried pancreas for dogs that have had pancreatitis, and I've actually had two vets now purchase it to use with their clients whose dogs have pancreatitis.  

00:46:31 Glenn:         Fantastic. Good on you. Well done.  

00:46:33 Narelle:       Yeah. So I just love that. So if your dogs ever had pancreatitis, again like for like support, grab some organic freeze dried pancreas. The spleen and the pancreas are a little bit harder to find in butchers and you know, shops and things. So having the freeze dried option just takes away all that hassle of trying to drive around and find it somewhere. Okay. So we've sort of covered the organs in general, but I guess the next step is, well what's the benefit of having a freeze dried product versus, you know, the raw organ? So firstly freeze drying, it's a low temperature dehydration process. It involves freezing the product, lowering the pressure, and then removing the ice by what's called sublimation. I always struggle with that word, but sublimation is the transition of a substance directly from the solid state to the gas state.  

00:47:22 Narelle:       So it doesn't actually go through a liquid phase. So this is quite different to standard dehydration, that evaporates water using heat. So the great thing about this is, that since the water's removed from the product in a frozen state at very low temperature, the cell structure remains intact and the finished product pretty much looks like the fresh counterpart, before it's powdered obviously. But if you've seen a freeze-dried strawberry, it looks like a strawberry. The other great thing about freeze drying, and it's an expensive process, which is again, if you're sourcing organic meat, which is expensive in itself and then that's going through a freeze drying process, which is probably one of the most expensive processing methods, or preserving methods. That's why things cost what they cost. But it also preserves nutrient content, the flavour and the texture.  

00:48:07 Narelle:       And in one resource that I was reading, it says freeze drying maintains around 97% of the food's nutritional value. So that's really important to me. The great thing about freeze drying, we can store the product at room temperature for, you know, years and years. The freeze dried organs that I sell, the expiry date is actually a couple years longer than I put on the tub. You know, I just have a buffer in there, but it's already a long like, I think it's like  three years, most of 'em are like two or three years, but I would say that would be good for another year or two beyond that. The freeze drying process eliminates the need for artificial preservatives or additives. Again making it a really healthy option for our pets. But I guess for me, one of the most significant benefits, I am busy and I don't have time to be making up my bulk raw meals for five dogs in batches.  

00:48:56 Narelle:       You know, that's why I love big dogs. It's just so convenient. But it's why I love the organs, because it means I don't have to go to the butcher and source raw organs and cut up organs to sort of act as a nutritional boost to my dog's foods. You know, I open a big dog patty, which are nutritional and complete and balanced, but our dogs absolutely love the addition of the freeze dried organs on top of that and so they love the taste. I love the nutrients they're getting for people who are vegan or vegetarian who don't wanna touch organ meats or anything, you know, super easy for them to just sprinkle some freeze dried powder. We can add in more variety of organs instead of just, you know, the liver and kidney that you can get from the butcher. You can add in the pancreas and the spleen and the different types of liver.  

00:49:36 Narelle:       But the final point I'd like to make is that using freeze dried organ powders, it's not just for people who prepare their own raw cooked meals at home. So as I mentioned earlier, even dogs on a standard kibble diet, I believe, would benefit enormously from rotating through the various freeze dried organs and using them as a healthy meal topper, they wouldn't need to use as much as if someone was adding them in as a replacement for organ meat. For all of the reasons that I've mentioned throughout the podcast, if your dog is on kibble, remember that most kibble are meeting, just meeting, the minimum standards and the longer that bag of food is open in your cupboard, the more those nutrients are degrading. I think the freeze rate organs are just amazing. Think of them as the multivitamin for your dog. You might take a multivitamin every day just to make sure that you're covering all your bases, based on you know, if you've got a busy, stressful lifestyle. It's the same with our dogs. If you've got a busy stressful dog, or if you've got a very active dog, they have a higher nutrient requirement. If you've got a sick dog, they have a higher nutrient requirement for recovery. Absolutely. Freeze dried organs.  

00:50:38 Glenn:       That's a great wealth of information. I think a lot of times when people think about organs and hear the word organs, they get a little bit squeamish about it. But as you pointed out, there's so many health benefits for it that it's surprising that people are avoiding doing it. Considering, and I mentioned this at the start of the show, considering that in the wild when predators take down prey, that's the first thing that they usually do. They open the belly and they eat the intestines, they eat the organs, and then they eat the meat and the sinews, and the ligaments and all those sort of things afterwards. But usually when you're watching, you know, lions or hyenas or foxes or whatever it is, they usually start eating the organ meats first.  

00:51:20 Narelle:       Obviously I'm a huge fan. I have seen an increase in the availability of organ meats more broadly.  

00:51:25 Glenn:         Yeah, that's good.

00:51:25 Narelle:       Which I think is really good. So I think people are becoming aware of their value now, and I think that's just gonna increase over time. So, you can grab your organic freeze dried organs from canineeuticals.com.au. And if you do have any questions, please just email info@caninesceuticals.com au and either myself or Michelle, will be happy to help you out with any questions you might have.  

00:51:48 Glenn:         And you've got dose rates and everything on there, haven't you? 

00:51:50 Narelle:       Yeah, so there's dosing on the labels, so follow those.  

00:51:53 Glenn:         Yep. And you've got QR codes on there and all sorts of things that people can scan? 

00:51:57 Narelle:       And get more information.  

00:51:58 Glenn:         Get more information. You’ve made it very easy for them that once they get on there, there's an ingredients panel, there is information about it and then they can QR it and it takes them to the website and they can learn a lot more information about it right there.  

00:52:11 Narelle:        Absolutely. Okay, so I think we'll leave it there. 

00:52:13 Glenn:          Before you go tell everybody all your details, how they'll find you, what your contact information is, everything…  

00:52:19 Narelle:       canineceuticals.com.au. Email info@canineceuticals.com.au. Facebook and Instagram CanineCeuticals. for both of those.  

00:52:30 Glenn:          I think that's probably about it.  

00:52:32 Narelle:        Well thanks for listening, I hope you learnt something new about organs. 

00:52:36 Glenn:          Get some organ meats in your dog.  

00:52:37 Narelle:        Do it. Take care. Bye.