Joint Health

Bill Bookout: Let me talk about a big category, and that's joint health. Talk to us about some of the important ingredients in joint health, and how they support normal, healthy, joint function. And you know, as we touched on it earlier in the life stages thing as animals, age, they typically like. I wake up. I got more, you know, aches and pains that

Dr. Pachel, we'll start with you.

Dr. Chris Pachel (he/him): I would say that where I tend to focus my attention here is what are we seeing in terms of its manifestation on behavior? So, if I have an animal that is experiencing some degree of degree of discomfort, but for whatever reason they're handling it and it's not manifesting as behavior change, I'm not likely to see them in. That doesn't mean it's not important, doesn't mean it's not relevant for their individual health, but it's going to be less evident for me. I think in my lens, I'm looking typically at those ingredients that are more likely to be anti-inflammatory or reducing inflammation and the actual physical discomfort as opposed to looking at things that are promoting health, if you will, versus when I was in general practice, and I was looking at those animals across an entire sort of holistic perspective and advising clients on all of those different elements I saw a much wider component.

Bill Bookout: Joint discomfort, I imagine, can influence behavior, you know, over the life of the animal.

Dr. Chris Pachel (he/him): It absolutely does. And it's something that when I'm working with patients, I often start seeing individual patients during adolescence. It's one of the time periods where it's the life stage of big feelings and poor regulation skills. And so most of my patients I get to know as adolescents. And then we transition on the dog side, and the cat side, too, between 3 and 7, 3 and 8 [years]. Unless something is going off the rails, things are pretty stable, developmentally speaking, and so I often tell my clients as we're getting to that 6 and 7 year annual visit. I'm often saying, “I'm not looking to make major changes until your animal tells us that they're needed. And here are the things that I'm watching for. I'm watching mobility. I'm watching for tolerance within handling, whether it's being picked up or groomed or manipulated in a variety of ways, looking for changes in hair coat and energy levels, and all of those different things. So yeah, joint health and comfort specifically, is huge in that population.

Bill Bookout: For sure. Dr. Morgan. Talk about some other ingredients important in joint products, Sara, I'm going to save you for last, because I know FoodScience has been a leader in this particular area for probably 30, 40 years.

Dr. Judy Morgan: Well, because I am a traditional Chinese veterinary medicine practitioner. I look at this a little bit differently. And so joint health actually goes right along with gut health, because the nutrients that are digested are what help make good muscle, but also help make good joints. And in so many of our seniors, because they're starting to get pain, they're also losing muscle. And a lot of that has to do with not getting good nutrition. So, we have to make sure that they're getting good nutrition that they're utilizing so that they are building and maintaining muscles. So, we also have to be making sure that they are still getting enough mobility or passive range of motion, or whatever we can do, some sort of rehab, to keep that muscle to support those sore joints. So, I look at it from that TCM perspective of I've got to make sure that I'm building that good muscle to support those joints.

Some of my favorite things, and remember that I love to do things more from a whole food perspective, and you know natural supplements, so I am a huge proponent of deer antler velvet. I'm a huge proponent of green lip mussels. I like curcumin, because those are some natural omega-3s. Huge on omega-3s. And so you know the things that I've mentioned, those are natural sources of glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid. I love that as well. And then, when we look at something like curcumin or turmeric from a Chinese medicine perspective, it resolves stagnation, stagnation is pain. And so, when we get the blood flowing and we get the nerves more calmed down, then we're relieving that pain, we're increasing the mobility. I kind of look at things from a different perspective. I'm not looking for an ingredient label that just says, it has chondroitin, or it has glucosamine. I'm looking for what is the source of that? Is it coming from something that's a natural source?

Bill Bookout: What about Herbals?

Dr. Judy Morgan: When I was in practice I used a lot of the TCM herbs, and I use some traditional herbs as well, but I like it to be targeted to that individual patient. So, for instance, when we look at TCM herbal formulas, there are thousands. So, we might want a specific formula made specifically for that individual pet. And there are a lot of things like. Anybody can source good green lipped muscles. Anybody can source good deer antler velvet. So, you're not going to hurt your animal with those supplements. But if you have an animal that is having a lot of trouble, you might need to look at something that's more targeted. And then, of course, I'm always a proponent of, let's add, in some some physical therapy, some chiropractic, some acupuncture, some, PEMF, whatever to help. It's something where I tend to like layer things on. We'll start down here, and if things are progressing we'll see what we need to add on.

Bill Bookout: Yeah, for incremental improvement. Sara, FoodScience, especially Vetri Science, has been a leader in joint health joint health products for years. Comment on joint health and your approach to that, and key points of importance.

Sara Phillips: It's a great segue from Dr. Morgan. So Vetri Science was definitely one of the 1st companies to employ the use of green lipped muscle, and this is an interesting ingredient, which in the last even 5 to 8 years, is way more ubiquitous throughout supplements. But what's really curious about green lipped muscle in particular is, there are two different kinds. There's the whole food, like we heard Dr. Morgan say, so that's what FoodScience uses. This is a freeze dried, the entire little green lipped muscle, like the one you would eat. It's flash frozen, and then we take it in a powder form, because that's what works in the soft chews that we manufacture, etc. It's very stable, and that does contain all those whole food nutrients. I really feel like everyone should just be taking this whole food green lipped muscle all the time. It has so many benefits. It has the classes of GAGs, it has all of the amino acids. It has the Omega family.

Bill Bookout: GAGs means glycosaminoglycans. Right?

Sara Phillips: Yes, it does. What's interesting is now you can buy on the market what is known as defatted green lipped muscle. And right now, there's no discernible way in labeling for a consumer to know. The difference is that defatted means that muscle basically has had all the oil wrung out of it. Now you're probably left with something with little nutritive value. We haven't done testing, so I can't say for sure. But really the oil, that's where a lot of the good stuff is. So, as these ingredients become popular, we just see this sort of thing. So that's just a very interesting.

I really also loved to hear Dr. Morgan talk about muscle. So, we have actually just launched in our own brand, and we're using this with other people's brand. We have launched an ingredient we don't manufacture, but we source it. We refer to as HMB. And I believe it is beta-hydroxymethylbutyrate. So, this is a nutrient that you have in your body, but this has some great science in dogs, specifically, that is, showing good muscle, retention, and even rebuilding. This is an area that I think we're going to see more and more on.

How many of us go to physical therapy on a regular basis? What do they talk about? “You're having a knee problem, Sara we need to work the muscles around your knee and make sure you have good muscle tone,” and then doing it like we heard Dr. Morgan talk about. You know, we're not just taking a pill, we're going to work our muscles, we're going to work our range of motion, we're going to look at our diet, etc. So there's some really exciting things, I think, coming in joint health.