How to Repair Your Dog or Cat’s Gut Naturally

Your dog or cat could have this condition called leaky gut which can cause so much just more than GIT health problems. It can cause skin disease, immune dysfunction, chronic fatigue. In today's video I'm going to show you exactly what this is, the underlying causes, how you can tell if your dog or cat has it, plus my top holistic options that can really help. Are you looking to learn more about natural pet health and wellness? You've come to the right place. Click the link to Another condition? Like another disease? Leaky gut? Like is that even a thing? Well when I was practicing as a veterinarian and someone said I think my dog or cat has leaky gut I would be like okay this is just another one of those like potential diseases. We might call them functional. There is no real diagnostic test for it. Like does it even exist? Even though most conventional veterinarians they're not even going to test for this. The research now is showing that yeah this really is a serious health concern. Something you should be aware of. To be more specific if you want to sound more technical let's call it intestinal permeability. So what is a leaky gut? Well think about your intestines, your cat or your dogs. So imagine this is the intestine. It's made up of all these cells, intestinal cells. The intestinal cells that are lining the inside of this intestinal tract as you can see here and their job is to number one they're going to absorb certain nutrients. We're going to allow certain things in, keep certain things out. All right so if you can imagine there's this tightly woven like millions of cells lining the inside of the tube and they're held quite close together. Think about like it as a type of glue. So in leaky gut or intestinal permeability what's happening is now your dog is eating or consuming certain amounts of food partly broken down in the stomach makes its way into the intestinal tract and what's happening is certain things such as large proteins maybe other toxins maybe your dog ate a bunch of garbage ate some compost maybe include a fungal toxin that should stay out of the blood system. But if there's a breakdown in that glue layer all of a sudden intestinal cells aren't tight together it's allowing some of that stuff in these large proteins right some of these potential toxins your animals consume are just things that they get through their food or just what's happening as they walk around the lawn and they're licking their paws consuming a roundup right. Some of that stuff can make its way within the blood system causing a whole host of reactions. Here's my little graphic example intestine a bit of fluid look it's staying there it's not leaking out that's what should be happening. Now imagine this is the intestines of a dog or cat with leaky gut so what happens they're consuming that food so maybe some of that compost and look what's coming out of the center of the intestinal tract yes fluid it's leaking. So then what's happening is toxins undigested food particles they're now getting into the blood system and they shouldn't be. So as those particles get absorbed as they leak through the gut then what goes on within your dog or cat well the immune system it's going to react right all of a sudden you see all these foreign things entering the blood system and the immune system is like recognizing it this is abnormal we got to deal with it these big protein particles from undigested food. Now some of the foodborne toxins allergens even bacteria that shouldn't be present now within your pet's bloodstream. So typically yes you'd expect some gastrointestinal signs diarrhea vomiting maybe bloating distention maybe just upset stomach your dog or cat might kind of walk after eating just a little bit tenderly you may even see acid reflux sometimes excessively loud stomach noises you might have a dog or cat that just kind of intermittent bouts of nausea and maybe just sort of poorly digested food maybe it's soft stools but the even bigger concern is yes we can recognize the gastrointestinal issues but not every dog or cat that is going to have leaky gut is going to have overt chronic gastrointestinal issues and all likelihood you've seen your veterinarian you probably got some form of treatment going on maybe you've got your dog or cat on a specific diet maybe you're using intermittent antidiarrheals just to manage this maybe they've been on a drug like metronidazole but what's happening is as some of those particles some of those allergens some of the bacteria they're entering the blood system they can trigger a whole host of chronic inflammatory diseases. Inflammatory skin disease i.e. are animals with allergies. Inflammatory arthritis right you've got these animals which are chronically or intermittently lame. Organ dysfunctions such as liver disease kidney disease now there's clear links in people with leaky gut and cardiovascular disease right there's direct correlations with leaky gut and diabetes right because all of a sudden we've got inflammation that could be targeting the pancreas pancreas can't produce enough insulin and or targeting the cells of the body making them less responsive to insulin hence our animals and many people with type 2 diabetes and believe it or not there's even a direct correlation with chronic fatigue syndrome and we're seeing this in some of our dogs and cats it's kind of an animal where in veterinary practice we would call them ADR which means ain't doing right in terms of they just they they're lethargic they don't have enough energy they're just you know they're just not a hundred percent but blood work might show like nothing remarkable maybe they've been worked up you can't explain why but they just are chronically weak unfortunately there isn't yet a gold standard test that you can run in veterinary practice and yeah a hundred percent my dog or cat has leaky and in fact because it's considered a functional disease not a real disease right many veterinarians aren't even considering it or testing for it fortunately now there are a few companies which are testing for this and there's a couple of specific markers and that these companies are using and trying to measure is this out of range or not the company that we're working with is and they actually have a couple of specific diagnostic tests focusing on leaky gut they're testing for one one of the markers they test with it's called zonulin so zonulin acts like the glue so this little hole that happened in my sample intestine wouldn't be there right it's sort of gluing the cells together so you don't have this intestinal permeability so they're able to test for zonulin second they can test for an antibody to gluten called anti-gliadin iga and this is another marker that is often elevated if we're going to have animals that have leaky gut or intestinal permeability now these aren't considered definitive diagnostic tests in terms of okay this marker here 100 confirms your dog or cat has leaky gut but it gives you a strong indication that that may be the case unfortunately now with innovative pet lab you don't need to order this through your veterinarian we're going to put a link in the description box you can get a specific home test kit and get these tests done yourself at home the big question comes to like what is causing leaky gut like why are we seeing so many animals that potentially have gastrointestinal disease secondary chronic inflammatory disease which in many cases be caused by leaky gut like what's going on but first and foremost it goes to diet right highly processed food like the kibble right highly highly processed exposed to high high heat it produces compound count ages or advanced glycation end products and we know that that can be directly toxic to intestinal cells right and that can be a direct trigger for leaky gut but there's more right nzads non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs they can damage the intestinal tract leading to leaky gut corticosteroids like prednisone they can damage the intestinal tract leading to leaky gut what else oh we have antibiotics right can alter the gut microflora can lead to serious inflammation within in the intestinal tract leading to leaky gut untreated intestinal parasites can damage the gut leading to leaky gut stress environmental toxins which we just talked about right our animals are exposed to so many more than us right they're down though they're walking in the grass they lick their paws right or even just what's within our house we have things like house dust contaminated with some of these forever chemicals right companies thought it was really wise if we make things like couches we infuse them with fire retardant chemicals seems great they won't burn but these are considered some of these pretty toxic forever chemicals they leach out into the house dust your dog and cat walks around they groom themselves they ingest these chemicals and that can damage the gut so aren't i the bear of unhappy news okay there are some good things first if you have a cat that's pretty healthy you may want to think about a diet change if your dog or cat is eating this the highly processed kibble you sure don't want to have an animal with leaky gut secondarily when i look at the number of animals that have chronic inflammatory disease i mean just think about the number of dogs that have allergies right or think about the incidence of the number of cats we're seeing with you know type 2 diabetes chronic vomiting chronic gastrointestinal disease many many many of our animals have had so much of their gut you know being exposed to all these different things the same environmental toxins we're exposed to and of course their intestines are going to get damaged which makes me think in many cases i probably should have put some more thought into you know some of these chronic inflammatory diseases we can't explain right we're using something like april quill to treat our dog's allergies and yeah maybe we've tried you know maybe just one specific hydrolyzed protein dog food but maybe we should have looked at also addressing you know the core issue like what's caught what's causing or cause that in the first place like healing their gut secondarily to maybe then get them off the april quill right but that is seldom discussed so here's some specific action steps you can take now whether or not your dog has a condition at the very least help preventing from ever happening to them so number one we're starting with diet less to none of this ideally right if you can if you can switch the partial partially of your dog your cat's diet to be like less processed right here's a gently cooked pre-packaged minimal process dog food so you're not exposing it to high heat you've got real ingredients that you can recognize where it's been thrown into a giant batch of everything and mixed up bazillion times exposed to high high high heat and pressure so it can form and be excreted in the shape of a kibble right because when you make food this way you have less ages you retain so many of the good positive nutrients it can have medicinal offer medicinal benefits it's going to include some of the good flavonoids some of the polyphenols things that can decrease gut inflammation decreasing the likelihood of leaky gut so like as much as it can fresh whole unprocessed food number two just consider adding things even if your dog is still on cable your cats help your cat should not be on any dry food but if your cat still eating conventional food adding in additional nutrients can help right so think about things that are whole minimal to unprocessed that can decrease gut inflammation things like squash canned pumpkin is great for our dogs and cats sweet potato here right is a really good option in terms of a slower releasing carbohydrate that's got some great um flavonoids in it that can potentially help decrease gut inflammation even as some of this is added you know partly once or twice a week a really inexpensive hack of all the ones i just talked about good for our dogs good for our cats this is liver really rich in protein really rich in iron rich in a number of different vitamins and minerals and it's rich in some of the medicinal nutrients which can not only offer health benefits your dogs and cat a bunch of different diseases specifically eating the gut decreasing gut inflammation and that's our goal here to provide nutrients that they're going to lower gut inflammation not further damage the intestinal lining making it more difficult for the intestines to work increasing the chance of leaky gut developing and fyi if you're going to use organ meat you know i typically say you're two to three times a week although with some people who are making their dog or cat food at home there are going to include organ meat daily but if you're sort of topping it up with a commercial diet two or three times a week and cassian over here he loves his liver and i just give him a tablespoon yeah two or three times a week number three consider a good probiotic supplement such as dr jones's ultimate probiotic formula regardless of the underlying cause the majority of time when there is inflammation within the gut there's leaky gut we have an altered my gut microbiome meaning the good bacteria are no longer present so you want to ensure that you have a good probiotic supplement includes a wide range of gut bacteria some of the lactobacillus species strep thermophilus along with a prebiotic which ours includes a fructooligosaccharide we need the prebiotic there so the good bacteria can grow saccharomyces velarde there is another probiotic it's actually a type of yeast called saccharomyces and for whatever reason many of animals with leaky gut seem to respond positively to it right so if you've tried some of the probiotic supplements without saccharomyces you haven't seen an improvement i would actually encourage you to try saccharomyces you know looking at minimum doses 1 billion cfus per 10 to 20 pounds of body weight daily there are some newer and emerging remedies specifically for leaky gut and some of our animals respond really well to them and some of them are surprisingly quite inexpensive so first and foremost if you have an animal that has like this chronic gi disease maybe they've got chronic diarrhea nothing has worked you've tried a bunch of different things now why don't you go and pick up some of this this is the soluble fiber psyllium husk many people know it as metamucil by being a soluble fiber when water is added to the psyllium husk it forms this thick gelatinous or jelly-like layer i'm going to show you actually typical psyllium husk dose about one teaspoon yay per 20 pounds of body weight i'm just going to mix it into this cup and show you what happens okay so after waiting a bit look at that really unappealing but that's what it does in the intestinal tract you give it to your cat to consume water and here it is right here like look at that gel that's what it turns into and it tastes healthy but it's all good but one study found that when they're giving to these shepherds these are working german shepherds had chronic diarrhea non-responsive dementia dinosaur steroids etc that's what they responded to but they responded to really high doses of four tablespoons a day of psyllium husk but on this within two weeks most of their diarrhea resolved after a month majority of these dogs were cured right all from psyllium husk so you have this soluble fiber coats the intestinal tract decreases inflammation probably helps repair some of the damaged cells right where there is intestinal permeability so don't scout psyllium husk good option one of my favorites here the slippery elm slippery elm it acts similar to that psyllium husk but it offer also offers medicinal value first and foremost it's super duper darn safe all right like there's virtually no side effects pretty convenient coming in a capsule you can be dosing in about one capsule for 20 pounds of body weight daily because it's one one capsule is 400 milligrams it does the same thing you add liquid open this powder up add liquid to it it forms this mucoid like gel as well acting very similar to the psyllium husk it also seems to be beneficial for coughing we see it beneficial for diarrhea we see it beneficial for constipation even helps for urinary tract disease right slippery elm mother's first milk colostrum the colostrum is wonderful at gut healing it is it's got a pile of studies and research behind it and so one of the real big big benefits is healing a dog or cat that has leaky gut and it's a relatively inexpensive supplement really really safe has been well well studied for our dogs and cats as well as people etc etc there's a bunch of different co-factors a number of different medicinal nutrients found within colostrum that directly decrease inflammation along with direct one directly decrease inflammation right it's maybe the underlying cause of the leaky gut secondarily it'll actually aid and speed tissue repair bringing in the right healing cells are actually going to be coordinated and actually rebind that gut together and one of its first research was looking at the use of colostrum that help repair intestinal cells have been damaged by NSAID your dog or cat's been on something like this the medicam cause like gastric irritation intestinal irritation maybe even an ulcer like one of the specific treatments well studied is this colostrum so doses of 100 milligrams for 10 pounds of body weight daily right and if you have an animal and you're not really sure there's been some GI stuff maybe not and you're like is there like one thing i could just just try that's pretty darn safe inexpensive colostrum is a good option because it's a capsule like this easy to give also really beneficial to help boost the immune system collagen like the most abundant protein i've found within the body majority of the intestinal tract what's it made collagen your dog or cat skin our skin so it's mostly made up of this collagen so one of the key things within collagen it provides some of the key amino acids that are essential for gut health and gut repair and there's a bunch of different amino acids there's a few in particular where i'm going to talk about those last two at the end because in some cases just providing them alone making for better benefit but especially for an animal we're not really sure you wanted to supplement your dog or cat with something else like you have the underlying suspicion they've got chronic GI disease it's just not quite right along with maybe some other chronic inflammatory disorder maybe you've got an animal with allergies you're like what else can i try collagen's not a bad idea as far as an approximate dose i would suggest about one gram or a thousand milligrams per 30 pounds of body weight daily the last two remedies were actually really specific for leaky gut and there's something you should be considering especially if you're going ahead you've done the testing and you're sort of leaning towards your dog or cat having leaky gut you really want to think about using these this one here L-glutamine L-glutamine it's an amino acid considered a conditionally essential amino acid in terms of other amino acids should be able to make it but you don't necessarily have enough of those and this may be the direct issue for animals that have leaky gut think about L-glutamine as the fuel that you know what supports those intestinal cells to work properly there's no fuel in your cells the mitochondria can't function normally no cell can't those cells can't work normally they can't break down digest food they can't properly you know decide what goes in what goes out that's why L-glutamine is so important and so widely used with people as well the other interesting fact i think somewhere between 70 to 80 percent of our immune system based within our intestinal tract so what many people are finding is when they supplement with L-glutamine they actually have less sort of chronic disease and especially say they've got kids that come home with colds every three or four weeks they're getting less of those colds because they have a much more robust intestinal health meaning they have a much more robust immune system all from L-glutamine and it's relatively inexpensive serves typical animal doses about a thousand milligrams these are 1000 milligram capsules for 30 to 40 pounds of body weight daily and this is something you definitely want to consider if we've got an animal that has leaky gut L-glutamine and you could just open up a capsule each one is a thousand milligrams right and just sprinkle it onto your pet's food and or giving the capsule capsule directly a last but not least there's a supplement called zinc carnosine so carnosine is a peptide meaning it's made up of two different amino acids and is bound to zinc which has some great tissue healing properties zinc is widely used for instance to increase skin repair i personally used it when i fractured my collarbone it's been shown to really increase the rate of bone healing right so it plays a big role in promoting the correct healing processes so here we have an animal that has leaky gut carnosine itself it plays a big role in the formation of the glue that goes between the lining of the gut cells and that's probably its biggest we're trying to think of a reason why you're using it is these two amino acids making up carnosine are really important in the lining of the gut and the layer between the enterocytes or the gut cells right to provide those building blocks decrease inflammation so the zinc some of the other nutrients we've been giving add in carnosine there's in the form of zinc carnosine then we can actually help rebuild that layer or we've lost you know the glue between the enterocytes of the cells right and that's what there has it has been widely used in veterinary medicine there are some specific veterinary supplements which include zinc carnosine and if you have an animal that has leaky gut you want to get them on it the reason i've got this bottle here i went to try to buy some locally i couldn't find any unfortunately but a standard carnosine carnosine dose about 30 milligrams for 50 pounds of body weight daily is a standard amount so you don't need very much and it's considered a relatively inexpensive supplement on top of that fact so you can just you know if you had to choose all the different things i talked about you know you could you know obviously start with diet but if you want to try you look at sort of two specific like really focused leaky gut nutrients number one the l-glutamine number two the zinc carnosine i actually don't have all the ones i've been researched like really key for leaky gut it's ensure you're using adequate doses you know a thousand milligrams per 30 pounds daily l-glutamine 30 milligrams per 50 pounds daily of zinc carnosine so if you have a dog or cat with chronic intestinal disease first and foremost i mean obviously you've probably seen your veterinarian if one of your concerns is like could it be leaky gut at the very least consider some form of diagnostic test look at the diagnostic tests offered through innovative pet labs consider something like the complete gut health check with a specific focus on leaky gut and then based on those results and whether you choose to do that or not then consider some of these remedies there's some pretty you know good common sense ones where you're starting with diet you're eliminating as much as you can some other processed food maybe adding in some anti-inflammatory toppers be it pumpkin maybe even blueberries which are another great source of antioxidants even a good source of prebiotics to help the good bacteria grow and then consider some of those specific remedies i discussed be it psyllium husk be it the probiotics right be it the slippery elm i'm looking at the l-glutamine maybe consider collagen considering zinc carnosine thanks so much for watching this edition of veterinary secrets of leaky gut in dogs and cats click up there to subscribe hit the bell to sign up for notifications then when you click that link directly in the box below i can send you a copy of my free book