The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #235 - Dr. Gary Richter, DVM

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. So it is about something obviously that I am obsessed with on this show, which is longevity. But for once, it's not longevity in humans, although we probably will talk a lot about longevity in humans in this.

Melanie Avalon:
It is about longevity for pets, specifically dogs and cats. So I was introduced to Dr. Richter through his agent, I believe, for his two new books, Longevity for Dogs and Longevity for Cats. And so I saw the titles of the book and I immediately was obviously very much down with the subject matter.

Melanie Avalon:
And then I listened to some podcasts that Dr. Richter had done and they were truly amazing. And then reading the books, oh my goodness, I was so excited because it was really, really a deep, deep dive into the science of aging.

Melanie Avalon:
Again, a lot of it in humans, because as I'm sure we'll talk about a lot of the science in pets is actually based on human science. There was just so much there that I love learning about. And then beyond that, it's a really practical approach to how to actually address the health span and lifespan of your dog or your cat.

Melanie Avalon:
I learned just so much that honestly blew my mind. So I have so many questions. Dr. Richter, thank you so much for being here.

Gary Richter:
Oh, you're so welcome. I'm thrilled to be here.

Melanie Avalon:
So I have so many questions for you to just start things off though. Could you tell listeners a little bit about your personal story and, and your transition, I guess, or your evolution in appreciating the role of longevity and pets?

Melanie Avalon:
I mean, you're really at the forefront of everything that you talk about in the book. So I'm super curious, even though you talk about in the book, but I'm super curious how you became so invested in this longevity science for pets.

Gary Richter:
As you've mentioned, I'm a veterinarian. I've been a veterinarian in the San Francisco Bay Area for a little over 25 years. And a few years after I got out of school and was practicing, I had practiced emergency medicine and general practice.

Gary Richter:
And at that point, I had owned a general practice. I was kind of getting to this point professionally where I was in a little bit of a... I was having a sort of a little bit of a professional personal crisis, if you will, in the sense of...

Gary Richter:
What I was seeing was I was seeing where the hard stops were in the medicine that I was practicing. So, I think what a lot of people don't realize if you're not in the medical field is that like many professions, practicing medicine is frequently about following an algorithm.

Gary Richter:
So, if your patient has these symptoms, then you do these tests. And based on those results, you offer these treatments, et cetera, et cetera. And somewhere along the line, you get to the end of the algorithm and there's nothing left to do.

Gary Richter:
And I really never liked having to have the conversation with people to the extent of what we've done, everything we can do, there's really nothing left. Take your dog or your cat home and let us know when it's time to say goodbye.

Gary Richter:
I hate having that conversation even now. And what that did was is it led me to start exploring other avenues of medicine. And that started for me with acupuncture and Chinese medicine and led to chiropractic and herbal therapy.

Gary Richter:
And before I knew it, I was practicing integrative medicine and really my professional mission had become to look for any legitimate therapeutic modality that I could use to treat my patients and help them live longer and live better.

Gary Richter:
And that turned into a whole other veterinary practice, holistic veterinary care here in Oakland, turned into hyperbaric oxygen and ozone therapy and regenerative medicine and laser therapy and all kinds of things that are frequently done sort of in the longevity space in humans and the functional medicine space.

Gary Richter:
So that kind of led me down the path to, both from a professional perspective as a veterinarian, but also personally from my own health to really get interested in this burgeoning science of longevity medicine.

Gary Richter:
Quite a number of years ago, I discovered Ray Kurzweil by reading some of his books and that led me to Peter Diamandis and Dave Asprey and these sorts of people. And I've become very involved in the longevity space in general.

Gary Richter:
And I've really gotten into that both from the perspective of both my own health and my family's health, but also really the question of how can I use this science to treat my patients and help them live longer and live better?

Gary Richter:
Because the interesting thing about when you look at what's being done in humans, longevity science -wise right now, I mean, quite frankly, very little of that is based on human clinical trials. Most of it's based on animal research.

Gary Richter:
There's every reason to kind of pursue that from a veterinary perspective as there is from a human medical perspective. And thus far, I've been very, very pleased with the results that we're having. It's probably a little soon to definitively say we're helping animals live longer, but I'm certainly confident in saying we're helping animals live better.

Melanie Avalon:
I interviewed Dr. Karen Becker for her book, Forever Dog on this show as well. I think the first thing we talked about in that show, and it's because she kind of opened it the same way you did, which was, I think there are really high suicide rates in veterinarians because of the whole euthanasia thing that they go through, which is something that I think a lot of people don't think about.

Melanie Avalon:
Like it's like the one profession where you actually potentially, I mean, kill your patient, I guess. So, I mean, it's just something I think people don't really appreciate at all. So hearing you talk about that is pretty intense.

Melanie Avalon:
Another comment was the science, the pet longevity science, because I had a huge question about how much of the science automatically applies to pets or not. And then I was just thinking how interesting it is, that's true about the rodent.

Melanie Avalon:
And calling it human science, but then we're applying it back to animals. How directly or appropriately does like rodent science, for example, apply to humans versus pets or human science to pets? Like, can you just make those transfers automatically?

Gary Richter:
No, you can't. But I mean, you also can't automatically transfer what is true in a rodent to a human. Frankly, if what you could do in mice, you could do in humans, we would have cured cancer decades ago.

Gary Richter:
But the reality is, this just doesn't work that way. There's a correlation, but it is not a direct correlation. As it happens, I mean, physiology of a dog or a cat is probably a lot closer to that of a person than it is to a rodent.

Gary Richter:
But nonetheless, I mean, whenever you're talking about new therapeutics, new medical treatments, you always have to kind of look at these individually and certainly look at them with first and foremost, with an above all, do no harm perspective.

Gary Richter:
So it's not just a, oh, well, it works in this species, so we'll do it in that species. And that's the same thing that's going on in human medicine as well.

Melanie Avalon:
Is there any aspect that, cause you just mentioned how dogs and cats may be more similar to humans anyways than rodents. So is there any particular aspect of health that does transfer better than others?

Melanie Avalon:
Like I know on the flip side in the book you talk about how like cholesterol and heart disease isn't really an issue in pets. So like that's something where there's like not that, you know, that transfer.

Melanie Avalon:
Are there some health issues that are more applicable like cancer?

Gary Richter:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, for sure. I mean, I think cancer is, you know, cancer is certainly a good one. You know, arthritis is another excellent one. Any kind of orthopedic joint disease, autoimmune conditions, we certainly see heart disease in animals, but frequently it's not the same underpinnings that cause it as it happens in people.

Gary Richter:
So, you know, so dogs and cats, as a rule, do not get coronary artery disease. They do not have heart attacks in the same way that people do. So, you know, that's one of those, you know, call that a blessing on a dog or a cat perspective that at least that's one thing that they don't have to deal with.

Gary Richter:
But, you know, there's an enormous amount of overlap the way these things work. I mean, certainly, you know, you know, I used to have a professor at school who was very fond of saying that, physiologically speaking, cats are not small dogs.

Gary Richter:
And this is a true statement. And it's also a true statement that dogs are not small people. So you can't just, you can't just track one to the next. But there is a lot of overlap. I mean, that Venn diagram, you know, there's quite a lot of similarity there.

Melanie Avalon:
I was wondering about that as well, because you talk in the book about the history of domesticating cats versus dogs, which I thought was really, really interesting. If you want to tell listeners a little bit about that, I was wondering if there were different implications in that evolution as to their lifespan today.

Melanie Avalon:
And I guess that's also another, and I'm throwing a lot at you, but that's another good question, which is what historically was the lifespan of cats and dogs compared to what it is today?

Gary Richter:
Yeah, that's a real interesting question. And it's an interesting way that you asked it because I think that there is a lot of correlation there. Cats, some people would question whether or not cats are domesticated at all.

Gary Richter:
But I think they are, but certainly not to the extent that dogs are. And while maybe their behavior and their personality has sort of been domesticated, their physiology is largely the same as a wild cat.

Gary Richter:
They're still an obligate carnivore. Like biomechanically, they still largely work the same. Whereas if you look at a dog, like a domestic dog, and you compare that dog to its wild ancestor, the wolf, you're looking at a fairly different animal.

Gary Richter:
I mean, clearly there's a lot of similarities between a dog and a wolf. But undoubtedly the single biggest physiologic change is their nutritional requirements. So wolves are carnivores. They are not as dedicated a carnivore as say a cat would be because wolves will sometimes eat non -meat things, grasses, berries, that sort of thing.

Gary Richter:
But dogs over somewhere between 10 and 30 ,000 years, depending on what study you read, dogs have been adapted over all of these eons to survive on a more omnivorous diet. So they are sort of a very different animal in the literal sense than their wolf ancestors.

Gary Richter:
And then furthermore, you take that domesticated dog and then you start branching it off further into all of the various breeds that we have turned dogs into. I was recently in Africa with a group called International Veterinary Outreach Treating Dogs.

Gary Richter:
And one of the fascinating things when you go to a place like Africa, all the dogs kind of look the same. They all look like sort of this generic 30 -ish pound brown dog because if you let their genetics do what they want to do, that's exactly what a dog wants to be.

Gary Richter:
But of course, here in the Western world, we've turned them into golden retrievers and German shepherds and French bulldogs and all of these various things. And along with that, we have without question put a lot of strain on their physiology and the way that their bodies are supposed to work.

Gary Richter:
And I think it's unquestionable that we have shortened their lifespan while doing it. I mean, you look at the research and in the 1960s, most dogs were living into their mid teens, if not longer. These days, your average golden retriever might be living to 10, 11, if you're lucky, 12 years old, because so many of them get cancer.

Gary Richter:
And there's a lot of reasons for the elevated rates of cancer and disease in animals. And certainly genetics plays a big part of it. We can't rule out things like diet, environment, medications, these sorts of things.

Gary Richter:
But certainly we've done an awful lot of things to these animals, dogs more than cats, that have changed them in ways that in some ways perhaps have benefited them, although in many ways have not.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, this is so fascinating. So with these different breeds is selecting for these different traits, often traits that we just aesthetically appreciated. And so it came at the expense of like health and longevity pathways.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, you know,

Gary Richter:
So, yes, with a caveat, I mean, some of its aesthetics without a doubt, some of it is behavioral characteristics. So, for example, retrievers were bred as hunting dogs. So, they were bred for a purpose to do a particular activity, if you will.

Gary Richter:
And many dogs were, I mean, spaniels, terriers, what have you, they all were sort of originally developed for a purpose, but you're right. I mean, a lot of it's based on aesthetics. And the bottom line is, is when you're breeding animals for specific traits, be they behavioral traits or physical traits, you are invariably also going to be selectively breeding for traits that you don't see.

Gary Richter:
Genetics is an incredibly complicated thing, and that is an awful lot that goes on behind the curtain. So, that's how come all of a sudden you have, you know, you have golden retrievers in German shepherds that have widespread hip dysplasia.

Gary Richter:
Well, nobody intentionally bred these dogs to have hip dysplasia. It just sort of came along with the package when they were breeding them for other characteristics. But perhaps, you know, even worse than that is what you brought up is the aesthetics end of it.

Gary Richter:
You know, dogs that were bred purely for aesthetics and the one that comes to mind and my apologies to anybody out there who has a French bulldog at home. French bulldogs are just genetically speaking a bit of a mess.

Gary Richter:
One of the things that we do at my practice is we do physical therapy. And I cannot tell you how many French bulldogs we have on our practice in the physical therapy department because they have terrible backs.

Gary Richter:
Because if you take an x -ray of any French bulldog, the one characteristic you will see in every French bulldog is none of them have a normal spine because we've bred them that way. And now they're prone to back problems.

Gary Richter:
Nobody did that on purpose, but it just came with when you're going to make a dog that looks like that you've screwed up their back. So there's a term in veterinary medicine called hybrid vigor. And basically what that means is the, you know, the less sort of genetically specific a breed of an animal is the more mixed breed they are, the healthier they tend to be.

Gary Richter:
Because they tend not to have these genetic predispositions that we get when we sort of force genetics in a way that it doesn't want to go.

Melanie Avalon:
So if there was like a zombie apocalypse, which breeds would die out first and which ones would probably be surviving the longest?

Gary Richter:
It's really funny you say that because after that whole rant I just went on about hybrid vigor. I have two shih tzu's at home and I frequently tell my two little shih tzu's Sammy and Marty that in the zombie apocalypse I would give them about seven minutes to live until something swooped down from the sky and carried them away.

Gary Richter:
My little dogs are wonderful, wonderful creatures. I love them to the end of the earth but they are not equipped to survive on their own. But yeah, I mean, but I'll tell you what, those 30 pound brown dogs in Africa would do just fine.

Gary Richter:
And in fact they do on a day to day basis because mostly that's exactly what they do is they live on their own. So you know some dogs are certainly more physiologically capable of surviving and it's the ones that are not too big but they're not too small, they're orthopedically sturdy and they're able to move and they're able to hunt just like a dog is supposed to be able to do.

Melanie Avalon:
My mom has, she had a shitsue, now she has another shitsue. That was something I learned in the book, something I never thought about before, but you were talking about exercise tolerance for pets and how the squish -faced dogs, or yeah, what is the role of the squish -faced dogs in exercise?

Melanie Avalon:
Well, I mean, you know, I'm not going to say that I'm going to be a little bit more

Gary Richter:
And you know, the thing is, the medical term for the Squishface dog is called breaky cephalic. She twos bulldogs, pugs, what have you. I mean, those dogs classically don't breathe great, some of them better than others, depending on the dog.

Gary Richter:
But I mean, you can't generally take a dog like that out on like a five mile run. They're not going to make it. You know, you have to exercise is incredibly important for health and longevity. But as is the case with us as humans, that, you know, you have to exercise appropriately.

Gary Richter:
You know, you have to exercise appropriately for your body type. So for example, I mean, clearly we're on audio here and not on video. You know, I'm a person that very much enjoys exercise and I used to love to rub.

Gary Richter:
The thing that I always wanted to achieve as a runner would be like, I would see these people running down the street that seemed like they were just floating. They were just like floating like a gazelle down the street.

Gary Richter:
No effort whatsoever. And I always told myself, wow, if I just do this long enough, maybe I can get to that point. And somewhere along the line, a good friend of mine looked at me and he said, you know, those people run because they're built that way and not the other way around.

Gary Richter:
You're never going to be that guy. And like, I'm like, oh, right. Because I'm not built like the guy that floats down the street like a gazelle. I can walk and hike for days on end with no problem. If I run for more than three or four days in a row, my knees explode because I am not built to do that.

Gary Richter:
And the bottom line is, is my sheaths who's not built to go out and run for five miles either, but they love going out for a walk. But that said, if you have a border collar, you better take that dog out for runs and and get him exercise or they're going to go nuts.

Melanie Avalon:
We know in humans, and I believe you mentioned this in your book as well, but basically, centenarians and particularly super centenarians seem to have something magically, some genetic combination that makes them resilient to a lot of the factors of aging.

Melanie Avalon:
So even if they have not the best lifestyle, they just seem to be good. Do we see that in pets? Are there not super centenarians, but are there super something pets?

Gary Richter:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, without a doubt, there is a genetic gift that some animals and some people get. You know, there's a reason why some people can like smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and still live to be 90 years old.

Gary Richter:
You know, in spite of them doing everything they possibly can to kill themselves, somehow their physiology won't let it happen. And you see that with animals as well. Some of them, you know, in spite of like eating the wrong food and not exercising and seemingly doing all the wrong things, you still wind up with a 17, 18 year old dog.

Gary Richter:
How does that happen? They're blessed with genetics. Not all of us are so blessed. And really, the whole concept behind longevity science, and you're very well aware of this, it is what it's really about is it's about leveraging the genetics that you have.

Gary Richter:
Some of us are perhaps dealt a better hand than others. But that doesn't mean, you know, that, that, you know, you just say, well, you know, I'm destined to die at 50. Oh, well, you know, there's so much that you can do to move that needle, especially now with what we understand about both the hallmarks of aging and about diagnostic testing that we can do to monitor and measure some of these factors.

Gary Richter:
So we know what we're doing. It's a little down the road, but not that much down the road. When you start talking about things like gene therapy and gene editing, now all of a sudden you may actually be able to change the hand that you're dealt.

Gary Richter:
So clearly part of this is about doing everything we can to live longer and live better. And part of this, and this is, you know, perhaps more true on the human side than it is the animal side is you better keep your, your, your self healthy long enough until the science gets to a point where we can figure out how to fix those little genetic quirks that you might have been born with.

Melanie Avalon:
Because I don't think we actually answered this. So the actual lifespan of dogs and cats historically and now, and then also what is the longest -lived dog and cat?

Gary Richter:
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, so historically, you know, and dogs is a little bit of a, well, I mean, dogs and cats are a little bit of a tricky question to answer there, partially because dogs, there's quite a range in lifespan variability based on the size of the dog.

Gary Richter:
But I think without question, we are seeing the lifespan of dogs get shorter. You know, so for example, and I think I mentioned this before, there is some research to show that, you know, in the 60s, your average golden retriever was living in their mid teens.

Gary Richter:
Now they're living, you know, probably five years younger, plus or minus cats, I'm not sure if we have that research on. I think cats have been a little bit less affected because there's been less genetic manipulation of cats without question.

Gary Richter:
There are breeds of cats, of course. But I mean, for the most part, you know, most cats running around out there, most cats that people have are what we would call domestic short hairs, which is just, you know, your generic house cat.

Gary Richter:
So, so their genetics are a little bit less mucked with, if you will. So, you know, your average cat, I would say probably, probably mid teens would be a good solid average. I have personally seen cats, you know, into their mid 20s, which is pretty damn old.

Gary Richter:
The oldest dog I've ever personally seen was 23. The oldest dog I am aware of that lived that long was a dog that just recently passed away in Portugal. I believe the dog was 32 years old.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. Okay. That's always perplexed me because the age formula for pets is always, even when I was like really little, I remember thinking about this because I was like, it doesn't make sense because you know, they'll say like a human year is like a seven years and dogs or something.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm like, well, that can't really work because then you add like a year. This is literally me like in middle school, elementary school thinking about this. I was like, if you add like one year, then at the end of one of these really old ones, now you're putting it like way past human potential.

Melanie Avalon:
So it doesn't seem to quite add up that way.

Gary Richter:
No, it's not a linear thing. I mean, it perhaps it's roughly true that if you sort of figure it out in the aggregate, maybe it's that, but I mean, certainly in their early years, I mean, you think about it like, a dog goes from being a puppy to being a fully mature animal in about a year.

Gary Richter:
Whereas in a human, you know, that takes about 20 years. So, you know, probably their first year or two, like if you equilibrate it to humans, it's a, you know, it may be 15, 20 years in their first year, but then certainly as they get older, that number goes way, way, way down.

Gary Richter:
So it's a curve. There's no way to just sort of assign that, that seven year number was, you know, just, I don't know where that came from, but it's clearly not accurate.

Melanie Avalon:
And speaking of that period of time when the dog or cat is maturing, I recently had Loretta Bruning on the show. She writes a lot about animal science and what we can learn about it for humans. It's kind of like the reverse.

Melanie Avalon:
More like social relationships and things like that. But something she'd point out that I thought was so fascinating was that we base our assumptions about how the animal kingdom works, how they interact and everything based on our pets, and how that's not a good model.

Melanie Avalon:
I mean, she doesn't even talk about it like diet -wise. She's talking about social things. Walking your dog, your little puppy barking at a big dog in the real world, in the human kingdom, that would not happen because the animals, they know their place and they don't try to fight unless one thinks they can win.

Melanie Avalon:
The point of all that, the question I'm getting to you, is so that maturation period, has there been a lot of changes on the health and behavioral patterns and everything of dogs and cats because of the human involvement there compared to the way it would be without the human involvement?

Gary Richter:
I mean, it's a really mixed bag from the standpoint of, you know, unquestionably, when you look at animals that are cared for by people, you know, they're getting medical care, which is a huge thing, depending on what they're eating.

Gary Richter:
They may or may not be getting better nutrition than they would be in the wild. What they're not getting, you know, being sort of human kept animals is they're not necessarily getting that same social interaction.

Gary Richter:
I think it's a very different experience for them sociologically, if you will. I think at the end of the day, you know, purely physically speaking, they're better off with us in part because at this point, you know, domestic animals, I mean, you know, most of them are not, they're not particularly equipped to kind of be feral, if you will, physiologically or even mentally, cognitively speaking.

Gary Richter:
I mean, there was an interesting study that came out a few years ago saying that one of the things that happened when wolves were domesticated into dogs is we unintentionally also made them not as intelligent, which kind of makes sense to me.

Gary Richter:
Smarter dogs do have a tendency to be a little bit mischievous and get into trouble. And you know, if you think about it, like a wolf that is out in the wild surviving on its own, I mean, it needs to be thinking like this is not purely an instinctual thing.

Gary Richter:
Like they need to like make a plan and, and, and, you know, figure out how to survive or again, like my little dog, Sammy and Marty. Yeah, that's never going to happen. God love them. But anyway, yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting that you bring up sort of the social aspect of all of this, because, you know, one of the things that I talk about in the book is really sort of the three, the three most impactful things that you can do to help your dog live longer, long before you ever get to supplements and pharmaceuticals and regenerative medicine and all that fun stuff.

Gary Richter:
Our diet, exercise and lifestyle is like, how do you, how do you set up your pets day to day living in such a way that it promotes longevity? And that's a, you know, that's a thing that, that I mean, we all really need to think about for ourselves as well, because not all of us are sort of living that plan either.

Gary Richter:
But, you know, the difference between us and our dogs is, is that our dogs don't really have any control over any of that stuff. They're completely relying on us for it.

Melanie Avalon:
something I thought was really interesting because you, especially on the show and things we talk about with diet and health and fitness, you know, we're often talking about lifestyle and there's this vague general idea that we should mimic our ancestors and, you know, do everything diet and exercise wise that mimics that.

Melanie Avalon:
I found it really interesting. The question of like cats, for example, an indoor versus outdoor as an indoor versus outdoor pet because you would think just approaching it casually that being an outdoor cat is the thing that would be most, you know, like their evolution, but you make a pretty strong argument for indoor cats.

Melanie Avalon:
So, so what is the role on environment indoor versus outdoors?

Gary Richter:
Well, I mean, certainly as it pertains to cats, I think the evidence is unquestionable that outdoor cats are going to die. And I'd say that in a very blunt way on purpose because it's true. The average lifespan of a strictly outdoor cat is quite short.

Gary Richter:
I think it's like three years plus or minus between cars and other animals and disease and potential environmental or toxin exposure. It is not safe out there for strictly outdoor cats. And as a side note, and this is not strictly a longevity issue for pets, but it is a longevity issue for other things.

Gary Richter:
Outdoor cats are absolutely decimating the wild bird population in urban areas, like decimating songbirds and wild birds that live outside, which is clearly not a good thing either. So, keeping cats indoors, so instead of a lifespan of three years, you're going to hopefully get to around 20 if you do things right and genetically speaking, things work out.

Gary Richter:
There are certainly things that one needs to do to provide some environmental enrichment for a cat that's living strictly indoors. But those things are not necessarily particularly difficult to do. It just requires some forethought to do it.

Gary Richter:
And again, this comes back to the having a pet is a responsibility for us as humans. We are 100% responsible for every aspect of that animal's life. You know, if you have a child, at some point that child is going to grow up and they're going to leave the house and they're going to go do their own thing.

Gary Richter:
And it's not necessarily going to be your responsibility anymore. When it comes to pets, from the first day to the last day, it's all on us. That's a big responsibility.

Melanie Avalon:
responsibility. And question about the indoor versus outdoor, do those stats vary based on where you live, like city versus country or different states?

Gary Richter:
Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, for example, like if you live in Manhattan, I mean, you literally have to be insane to let your cat outside. You know, if you live out in, you know, in a rural area, I mean, that's going to be less of an issue from the standpoint of cars and people and that sort of thing.

Gary Richter:
But, you know, that's not to say there aren't dangers out there, you know, you know, wild animals, dogs, you know, what have you. I mean, there's still, there's still dangers. But yeah, I mean, you make a good point that depending on where you live, I mean, those numbers are going to shift one way or the other.

Gary Richter:
And you know what? I mean, people have, there's philosophical issues here as well. You know, and I think there are people out there that, you know, they're sort of philosophy as well. It's an animal.

Gary Richter:
It's going to sort of live and die on its own terms versus I'm going to care for this animal and help it live as long as possible. And you know what? I mean, this is probably not the forum to have that philosophical discussion.

Gary Richter:
But you know, people do have different, different approaches to these things.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, no, it was just interesting, my visceral experience of reading the book and reading that chapter and because I hadn't really thought about it much before the Endo vs. Outdoor thing, but I even, in me, felt like it was tying into some emotional reaction I was having.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm not sure what that reaction was, but it's just interesting about, like you just said, the broader philosophical implications there. It could be an entire book on its own, honestly. Agreed. This is a super random, quick tangent question and naive.

Melanie Avalon:
Coyotes, are they dogs or wolves? I've heard they're the only animal that's in, like, every city, every major city, which I thought was really interesting.

Gary Richter:
So, I mean, they're all sort of in the genus Canada, so they're all sort of related. Coyotes are clearly non -domesticated, so I would say that genetically, they're closer to a wolf than they are to a dog.

Gary Richter:
Every time I see a coyote, and we certainly have plenty of them here in the Bay Area, the first thought that goes through my mind is, oh, look at that malnourished German shepherd. And then I realize I'm like, oh, yeah, it's a coyote.

Gary Richter:
They're just skinny dogs. I mean,

Melanie Avalon:
I don't know why they have such a scary factor to them. I'm like really scared of them.

Gary Richter:
You know what, as a human, you really don't have much to be afraid of. If you're a six -pound dog, yeah, you better hide.

Melanie Avalon:
I grew up in Memphis. The reason I was thinking about it was that was the issue for outdoor cats primarily. Oh, for sure. Yeah. They're great snacks for coyotes. Yeah. They actually got one of our cats, which was really sad.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. Back to the practical things we can do for our pets. So you mentioned the different... Oh, and I'll just let listeners know. So in the book at the beginning, Gary goes through the hallmarks of aging, which is really wonderful and a deep dive into all of that.

Melanie Avalon:
And so literally, even if you don't have cats or dogs, if you know somebody with a cat or dog, you'll learn so much about longevity science for yourself and then for people that have cats and dogs. So going back to what we can actually do.

Melanie Avalon:
So we were talking about diet earlier. A big question I have, so you're mentioning how cats are carnivores, but you do also mention in the book some of the benefits of fiber for cats. So I'm wondering, are they more suited to a 100% carnivore diet?

Melanie Avalon:
Should they have a little bit of plants and fiber? If so, why? What is the ideal diet look like for a cat?

Gary Richter:
Well, I mean, the ideal diet for a cat, certainly evolutionarily speaking, is animal -based. If you look at, for example, if you look at wild cats, it's pretty rare for them to eat something that's not animal -based.

Gary Richter:
I mean, sometimes you might see them nibbling on a little grass or something like that. But generally speaking, the fiber that they're getting is probably within the little creature that they just ate.

Gary Richter:
Remember, the mouse, the rat, whatever it may be. I mean, that's an herbivore. They're filled with fiber because that's what they're eating. And then, you know, food chain being what it is, they get ingested by something larger.

Gary Richter:
And like I say, I mean, sort of biologically speaking, domesticated cats are much closer to wild cats than, say, dogs are to wolves. So as a rule, you know, cats do need a, you know, would best thrive on a largely meat -based diet if you look at sort of like your average kibble out there for cats.

Gary Richter:
Not all of them are, you know, completely meat -based. And that's a whole other conversation about whether that's a good thing or not. But generally speaking, you know, I mean, to me, when you talk about optimal nutrition, I think the way that you look at it is, you know, I look at anybody, whether it's a dog, a cat, a human, what have you, as a biological machine.

Gary Richter:
And that machine was designed or slash evolved, if you will, to thrive on a certain spectrum of nutrients. And I think that when you're talking about optimal nutrition, the question is, is what are those nutrients that that biological machine was designed to thrive on?

Gary Richter:
But in the same way that my car was designed to run on a certain type of fuel and a certain type of oil and various other fluids, I could put the wrong fluids in my car and it might still run, but it's not going to run well.

Gary Richter:
And that's exactly what happens with the body is if you put the wrong food in it, it'll find a way to make it work, but it probably won't work as well as it otherwise would.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it's really interesting because I think it's so much more obvious to us as humans when we're eating processed food that, you know, how different that is from normal, real whole food. And yet with our dogs and cats, I just think so many people don't even think about it that we're so many people are feeding them basically the equivalent of a processed food diet their entire life from, you know, birth until death.

Melanie Avalon:
What do you suggest? Because I know there can be a time cost barrier for a lot of people and there's just an overwhelming now. There is now an evolution in all of the options like, you know, freeze dried and raw food and dehydrated, rehydrated.

Melanie Avalon:
Like there's so many different options now. What do you recommend for your patients as far as what to ideally feed their pet, their dog or cat and then realistically, if they say they don't have time or money to do the, you know, the best of the best.

Gary Richter:
Sure. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, it's no surprise to me that there's a lot of confusion out there amongst people about what is the best thing to feed their pets because there's an enormous amount of disinformation out there, a lot of it coming from, you know, the pet food companies themselves.

Gary Richter:
And unfortunately, a lot of it coming from the veterinary profession. I love my profession and I love other veterinarians, but I do think that this is one place where my profession has really dropped the ball as far as what optimal nutrition looks like.

Gary Richter:
So, you know, we just had this whole conversation about, you know, feed them the nutrients that they're biologically evolved to eat. Well, the reality is, is nobody evolved eating processed food out of a bag or a can.

Gary Richter:
You know, that's just, that's just reality. And we all know from our own health that the more processed food we eat and the less whole food we eat, you know, the worst off we tend to be physically speaking.

Gary Richter:
But what a lot of people don't really think about is the fact that that bag of kibble or those cans of food you're feeding your dog or your cat are by definition ultra processed food. And it brings with it all of the baggage that processed food brings with it with people.

Gary Richter:
And then you think about the fact that not only are they eating processed food, but they're eating that ultra processed food every single day of their life. And then we sort of scratch our heads when all of a sudden there's higher rates of inflammation and arthritis and cancer and all kinds of other problems down the road.

Gary Richter:
So, you know, to your question of what is ideal to feed, in a perfect world, you know, all animals should be eating a fresh whole food balanced diet. So, fresh whole foods can look like a number of things.

Gary Richter:
It can look like it can look like lightly cooked food. It can look like raw food. You can buy these things ready made, you can make them yourself there's also other options like freeze dried food, which is very, very close to to fresh food, but with a lot more convenience built in.

Gary Richter:
But then and I think you brought this up in your question, then there's the sort of the reality of what people can actually make happen in their life, whether that's a matter of time, convenience, finance, whatever it may be.

Gary Richter:
You know, one of the things that I always tell people, whether I'm talking to them about what they should feed their pet or treatments or supplement regimens or medications or whatnot, anything that I recommend that people do for their animals, it has to be sustainable for them.

Gary Richter:
So, in other words, if it's too hard for you to do either logistically or financially or for whatever reason, and you're not going to be able to maintain it, then I haven't really done you any favors by telling you to do something if you're not going to be able to keep it up.

Gary Richter:
You know, it's like, you know, given the fact that it's January 2nd, for all those people out there that made a New Year's resolution that they're going to exercise and get healthy, statistically speaking, most people that make that resolution will not maintain it for very long.

Gary Richter:
And at the end of the day, they haven't really done themselves any favors by doing it. So, it's important that we, you know, that we live in the real world and, you know, and make a plan for our pets that actually is sustainable.

Gary Richter:
So, you know, what I tell people is, feed as much fresh food as you can. If financially speaking, it's not possible for you to feed your pet all fresh food, then feed them as much fresh food as you can, and feed them the highest quality canned or dry food to round it out.

Gary Richter:
I think you do, you do what you have to do in the real world sense. You know, I'd love to sit here and tell you that every single bite of food that I eat is perfectly balanced fresh whole food, but it's not.

Gary Richter:
I would love to have a private chef that is feeding me every meal that I eat all day, but that ain't happening in my life. So, I do the best that I can. You know, the one thing that I will say when it comes to pets, it is, it is a little bit easier with our pets in the sense that every bite of food that they take is coming from us.

Gary Richter:
So, we do get that opportunity to really have that kind of control, but it does become a function of both finance and logistics, and you just have to do what works best for you.

Melanie Avalon:
up I had cats and then now my parents have cats and dogs. But there was a point in time where I was like an adult and I was taking care of our cats from childhood again. And I was like, I'm going to revolutionize their health.

Melanie Avalon:
And so I was like doing all the research. This was probably like seven or eight years ago. And so I ordered the, I ordered freeze dried raw food. Two comments about that. And I've shared this story before.

Melanie Avalon:
One comment is that I was, I was reading the ingredients on the back of it. And I was like, oh, these are like all really good ingredients. And they're probably things I would benefit from eating. So I would literally like taste their food to see.

Melanie Avalon:
I was like, I can like get some organs in me. I actually didn't taste that bad. I didn't think it tasted that bad, but they apparently did. So like it was a little bit of a struggle to get them to actually eat it.

Melanie Avalon:
And then on the flip side, I would try these, like what I thought were as good as, as good ingredients as I could find in dry food. Cause I was like, maybe I'll do like a hybrid approach. And then my cat, Misty, she had, she was our fat cat.

Melanie Avalon:
Then she would just like gorge herself and then she start, start vomiting. And I was like, what, like, what is your problem? So actually getting the animal to adapt to this. And, and it was frustrating cause I was like, you're a carnivore.

Melanie Avalon:
You should just like want to eat this. How common is that for the actual animals themselves to not be open to this non -processed food?

Gary Richter:
Yeah, so much to unpack there. So here's the thing, and this is true for both dogs and cats, but it is very, very true for cats, is that animals are very much creatures of habit. So if you have a pet that was raised from a puppy or a kitten on dry food, then to them, that's food.

Gary Richter:
And if you put something in front of them, like fresh whole foods, they literally don't know what it is, which is kind of sad when you think about it, but that's actually quite common. And particularly as it pertains to cats, cats are like, they're like really OCD people.

Gary Richter:
Like everything has to be the same every day. I mean, if you don't believe that, rearrange the furniture in your living room and see what your cat has to say about it. They just need to know what's going on at every moment of the day.

Gary Richter:
So when you switch something like their food, it's they don't like it. So the solution to this, I mean, in a perfect world, you would start these animals out on day one on fresh food, so that's food to them.

Gary Richter:
But since you can't turn back the clock, the way that you sort of work this out is you do a very, very gradual transition. And what I mean by that is you get whatever food you're gonna feed, whether it's freeze dried or fresh food or whatever, and add just a tiny little bit to their regular food.

Gary Richter:
Mix it in. And just so little that they're not even really gonna notice it. And each day you're gonna add a tiny, tiny little bit more and do a very, very gradual transition over a period, depending on how finicky your creature is.

Gary Richter:
It could be a week, it could be several weeks, it could be a month. The goal here is to make the transition so gradual that it's not shocking to them. And you know, I mean, you just kind of have to take it super slow, most animals will eventually adjust.

Gary Richter:
I used to have a cat that had been raised on kibble. And what I found was is that she wasn't really super overjoyed with fresh food, but if I bought the freeze dried and fed it to her dry, and I say this with the full knowledge that you're supposed to add water to it and rehydrate it, she preferred it dry.

Gary Richter:
That cat lived to be somewhere north of 20 years old. So, I mean, something worked. But again, going back to that whole sustainability thing, you have to do what works in your world. I mean, if your cat says, oh, hell no to raw food, then, you know, I mean, here's the other thing that I tell people is like, you can wait out a dog when it comes to food related stuff.

Gary Richter:
Like a dog, when they get hungry enough, they'll eat no matter what it is. A cat will starve themselves just to spite you. You cannot wait out a cat. Like they'll literally starve. So like you have to do this gradually, it has to be a negotiation with a cat.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. This would have been really helpful information back then. I was probably much too impatient. I also, and you talked about this in the book, I also did all the research on the water bowl and the eating bowl, because it was like, Oh, it needs to be this certain angle so that they, there's something about the angle.

Melanie Avalon:
I got some special water bowl. So two questions there. Is there something about the bowl level and angle? And then also you talk about actually the water. This is something I dropped the ball on. I did not get a recirculating water system thing.

Melanie Avalon:
Bowls and water.

Gary Richter:
Yeah, bowls and water. So let's start with the water. So water -wise, you know, I think it's important to realize that depending on where you live, your municipal water may or may not be okay from a drinking perspective.

Gary Richter:
There's all kinds of studies out there that show that there's some pretty horrific things in drinking water depending on where you live, ranging anywhere from plastics to hormones to pharmaceuticals, pesticides, what have you.

Gary Richter:
So needless to say, that's true for animals as well as people. What water you feed them is important. And if you feel like your water is questionable, then you can either get like, you know, you can feed bottled water to be clear, not distilled water.

Gary Richter:
Distilled water is not really for drinking, but bottled water, or you can get something like a reverse osmosis water system with minerals added back to it. And that will clean up a lot of what's going on in drinking water.

Gary Richter:
And then, you know, moving beyond the water itself, then the water bowl is particularly true for cats. If the water bowl is too small and the cats whiskers touch the sides of the bowl, they don't like it, and a lot of times they won't drink out of it.

Gary Richter:
So you need kind of a wide sort of flat water bowl. And cats also instinctively prefer to drink moving water because in the wild, stagnant water is frequently contaminated. You know, this is why if you have a cat, you may have seen them like, like they'll drink out of like a dripping faucet.

Gary Richter:
My cat used to love to come up and dip her paw into my glass of water that I was drinking, which was cute for her and really disgusting for me because I know where those feet have been. You know, so they make these little recirculating water fountain bowls.

Gary Richter:
So the water's moving and it's filtered and it's, and it stays cleaner so the kitties are more likely to drink out of it. And then the last thing I'll say about water is, you know, as it pertains to both the water and the bowl, it's really important that you change that every day.

Gary Richter:
You know, just because there's water in the bowl doesn't mean that the water tastes good or is good. So every day you should be cleaning that bowl, you know, wipe it out, soap and water, rinse it out real well, fill it back up with clean water and go again.

Gary Richter:
You wouldn't necessarily want to drink water that's just been sitting in a glass or a bowl for a few days. I don't know why we would think that our dogs and cats would be any more interested in doing the same.

Gary Richter:
But again, when it comes to, you know, if we want them to live their longest best lives, then they need to have access to basic stuff like fresh food and clean water.

Melanie Avalon:
really quick last food questions that I remembered. One is how intuitive can we be, actually, I guess with both cats and dogs. So like a cat, for example, can we just feed them meat and they'll be okay?

Melanie Avalon:
Or because of their history or evolution or just normal situation, are there deficiencies that we have to worry about like toering, for example?

Gary Richter:
Sure. So it's an interesting, the way you ask that question is interesting. Can we just feed them meat? Well, I think it really depends on what you mean by you say meat. So if we're talking about purely muscle meat, then no, you cannot do that.

Gary Richter:
Because again, you know, that wild cat ancestor, when they eat things, they don't eat just muscle meat. They eat most of the animals. So they're eating the bones, the organs, they're eating everything.

Gary Richter:
And that's where all the nutrition comes from. You know, if you look at animals in the wild, like, you know, lions or whatnot, when they take down an animal, the first thing that they go for is not the muscle meat, it's the organs.

Gary Richter:
They eat the liver, they eat the heart, they, you know, instinctively, they know where the nutrition is. The muscle meat is frequently the last to go that gets picked apart by the scavengers, because that in some ways is the least nutritious.

Gary Richter:
So you brought up toring. So toring is an amino acid that cats are not able to make on their own. So they have to have it in their diet. Well, the highest source of toring in an animal's body is in the heart.

Gary Richter:
So that's one of the reasons why cats instinctively eat the heart, because they know they need that toring.

Melanie Avalon:
Do you know were they ever able to make it? Like was that a loss or is that an adaptation one way or the other?

Gary Richter:
To my knowledge, all cats are, toriene is an essential amino acid, meaning they need to eat it.

Melanie Avalon:
I'm just wondering what happened, like why they evolved to not make that.

Gary Richter:
I don't actually know the answer. It's a good question. I'm not sure. Okay, I wonder.

Melanie Avalon:
I wonder if you would think, I mean, just like the easy answer is you would think that they were historically having a diet that was abundant in taurine.

Gary Richter:
Well, I mean, and again, like, you don't see touring deficiencies in wild cats.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, you don't? Okay. I was going to ask that. No, you absolutely don't because they know what to eat. Okay. That's so interesting. Okay. It's kind of like the vitamin C question with humans. And like, what are the broader implications of our evolution surrounding that?

Melanie Avalon:
And should we eat carbs or not? That's a whole tangent. Okay. That's interesting. Similarly related is, okay. So my mom, like I said, she has a shih tzu. This shih tzu and the last maybe this relates to what we're talking about earlier with breeds and health issues, but they have both had diet related or health issues where they have to be on prescription, quote, prescription pet food.

Melanie Avalon:
Cause I would like historically talk to my mom and be like, maybe we should look at what we're feeding, you know, Roxy or Mia. My mom's response was always, I have to feed her the prescription pet food.

Melanie Avalon:
And then I would like look at the ingredients on the prescription pet food and I was like, uh,

Gary Richter:
That was your first mistake.

Melanie Avalon:
Who is running it? Is it a commercial thing or is it actually a medical thing?

Gary Richter:
Well, I mean, it's big pet food at its core. You know, we're talking about Hills, Mars, Purina, talking about some of the biggest companies in the world that are making these foods. So there's so much to talk about here.

Gary Richter:
For starters, and I mentioned this earlier, you know, the nutrition thing is one of these places where I do honestly think veterinary medicine drops the ball a bit. And the reality is, is that most veterinarians, myself included, do not get a whole lot of nutrition education in school.

Gary Richter:
And what nutrition education we do get is more on this sort of like critical care nutrition end of things like, how do you feed a critical animal intravenously in an ICU? Which is all interesting information, but not useful to most people on a day to day basis.

Gary Richter:
And most of what we get on how to feed the average dog and cat is put them on a kibble that they do well on and leave them on that for the rest of their life until they need a prescription diet. And that is unfortunate.

Gary Richter:
And while, you know, on the one hand, there's no conspiracy within the veterinary profession that makes this happen. And the reality is, is that, you know, the research into animal nutrition is very clearly driven by these big pet food companies.

Gary Richter:
You know, what that sets up for is that sets up for research bias, because they're researching what they want to research, and they're proving the points that they want to prove. And you know, I mean, the interesting thing about prescription diets is, if you look at the research into like how these prescription diets are created.

Gary Richter:
So for example, you take a diet made for like cats with kidney disease. The research is solid. There is no question in my mind that the research is good. And there's been a lot of, lot of great information that has come out of those studies of like optimal nutrient profiles for animals with various medical conditions.

Gary Richter:
What happens is, is when that research then gets put in the hands of the people who then have to commercially manufacture food with the goal of, let me match this nutritional profile that came up in the research and do it in such a way that we can maximize profits.

Gary Richter:
That's when it all goes to hell in a hand basket. And that's, that's ultimately the problem because it's a for -profit industry. I don't hold that against them. That's how capitalism and commerce works.

Gary Richter:
But the problem is, is that your average veterinarian is getting all of their information on how to feed dogs and cats either directly or indirectly from these big pet food companies. And they're not getting any impartial information about, wow, maybe if you took that same nutrient profile for a cat with kidney disease and formulated it as a fresh food diet, maybe that cat would do even better.

Gary Richter:
But nobody's looked at that because there's no money in that research.

Melanie Avalon:
That was my thoughts exactly with my mom i was like well even if it is prescription like we should be able to figure out what it's trying to accomplish and accomplish that.

Gary Richter:
And yeah, and you know, the risk of a little bit of shameless self promotion. My first book, 0 has 50 recipes in the back of it, 25 for dogs and 25 for cats, covering many of those same medical issues that you could buy a prescription diet for.

Gary Richter:
GI stuff, pancreatitis, kidney disease, heart disease, cancer, what have you, but in fresh food formats.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Well, we'll definitely put links to that in the show notes. And how about the the grain -free controversy? Oh boy

Gary Richter:
You want to set up a whole nother three hour podcast for that one? So grain free foods. Boy, that is a mess.

Melanie Avalon:
Casually dropped that in there.

Gary Richter:
So, here's what happened. There are veterinarians out there who for years have been tilting at windmills saying that making kibble using a bunch of high carbohydrate ingredients like wheat and corn and rice as fillers is a terrible idea.

Gary Richter:
So somewhere along the line, some enterprising soul in a pet food company said, ooh, I got an idea for a marketing angle. Let's make grain -free pet foods and say that we're not using these grains as fillers anymore.

Gary Richter:
So suddenly, grain -free pet foods became a buzzword and it gained some traction and then everybody got in on the grain -free pet food angle. But the reality is, is if you're going to make a dry food like kibble, you are effectively making a baked good.

Gary Richter:
Try and make a cake or a cookie without a carbohydrate. You can't do it. So they took out the grains, but they had to put something else in. So what they did was, is they turned around and they put in other types of carbohydrates.

Gary Richter:
So they put in beans, other kinds of legumes, just things that were not grains. And there was an assumption made that you could swap one carbohydrate out for another. The nutrient profile looked exactly the same as far as like macronutrients went and they called it good.

Gary Richter:
Well lo and behold, it wasn't good. And you know, this is one of these situations where clearly not every animal that was eating grain -free food got sick. And when I say sick, for those of you that aren't aware, there was an uptick in a particular type of heart disease called dilated cardiomyopathy or DCM.

Gary Richter:
That is a known disease in dogs, but we saw more of it after this whole grain -free diet thing happened. So this is one of these situations where it's not that every dog eating grain -free got DCM, but I think when you had like a combination of a dog that was genetically predisposed with the grain -free diet, then you started to run into trouble.

Gary Richter:
And that's kind of what happened. And now there's all this confusion out there. You hear people saying that, oh, you have to feed grain -free diets. You hear other people saying, oh no, if you feed grain -free diets, your dog can get heart disease.

Gary Richter:
None of it is true strictly across the board. And the reality is, is when you look at fresh whole food diets, particularly raw food diets, well I'll tell you what, those raw food diets have been naturally grain -free forever because that's just how they were formulated.

Gary Richter:
And there has not been a problem with DCM with those foods because they never put those other odd unusual carbohydrates in there. They were just formulated without carbohydrates. So it's not that dogs either need grains or don't need grains.

Gary Richter:
You can feed a dog grains or you cannot feed a dog grains, but you do need to feed a dog a diet that's formulated properly.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so it wasn't the grain free that was the issue, it was the addition of the things they added.

Gary Richter:
That's the best of our understanding at this point. I mean, it's not a hundred percent crystal clear, but it certainly does seem that way.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, very interesting. I remember the first time I came across that because it was when I was neurotically Try I think it was probably So when did you say that happened what year?

Gary Richter:
years. Oh god, that's got to be probably four or five years ago now.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, yeah, right probably at the beginning of that, because I was adamantly looking for grain -free stuff. And then I remember the first time I saw somebody marketing it as like not grain -free, and I was like, not grain -free.

Melanie Avalon:
Why is that a marketing selling point? So the rabbit hole entered on the flip side of the food, so fasting. So I'm also the co -host of the Intermittent Fasting podcast. So talk about intermittent fasting a lot.

Melanie Avalon:
And going back to when I was taking care of my family's cats, I did a lot of research, because my first thought was like, oh, I'm gonna put them on an intermittent fasting protocol. But then I was reading that you shouldn't do that for cats because they are accustomed to eating small meals and that they, it just wasn't good for them, that they could get sick or not get the food they needed.

Melanie Avalon:
So I was really confused, and again, this was like years ago. So it was really interesting to read in your book about applying intermittent fasting to both dogs and cats, and also the suitability of one meal a day.

Melanie Avalon:
Like I think you talk about dogs doing well with an evening meal because of not going to sleep on an empty stomach, is that correct? That's like me, that sounds like me. So intermittent fasting, can we apply it to our pets?

Melanie Avalon:
And if so, how is it appropriate to do so?

Gary Richter:
Yeah, you absolutely can. And again, kind of getting back to that whole biological machine conversation, dogs and cats in the wild, they don't eat two meals a day. They're not snacking all day long. In fact, they're lucky if they eat every day, period.

Gary Richter:
So that's kind of how they're biologically designed to function. And in fact, dogs and cats are remarkably better able to maintain their blood sugar than we are as people. It's fascinating. Like your average dog or cat, and I'm not suggesting anybody do this, but could easily go for a week or more without a bite of food and do just fine.

Gary Richter:
That's not a medical recommendation, but that is a physiologic fact that they are very well equipped for starvation. So I do quote a study in the book that looked at the difference in longevity between dogs that ate once a day and twice a day, and the once a day dogs live longer, which I think is very consistent with what we know about intermittent fasting in people.

Gary Richter:
That study to my knowledge has not been done in cats, but I don't see any reason why it's not true in cats as well. To your point, there is sometimes some discussion about making sure that cats eat at what you're sort of skirting around, whether you're aware of it or not, is a condition that cats can get called hepatic lipidosis or fatty liver disease.

Gary Richter:
So long story short, if you have an overweight cat and they stop eating, whether because they're sick or upset or whatever reason, if they go for a few days without eating, they can actually go into liver failure and it can be quite serious.

Gary Richter:
But that is kind of strictly a thing with heavy cats that suddenly stop eating. It's not a, I have a healthy cat that eats once a day. That's not a problem in the slightest. I think the one thing that people do need to be aware of is, if you have a dog or a cat at home that's accustomed to eating twice a day, it may or may not be a practical thing for you to convert them to once a day eating.

Gary Richter:
They may not be happy about it, but it might be something to think about for your future pets. But if you can make that conversion, then it's certainly something that you can try. So at the end of the day, you're feeding them the same amount per day.

Gary Richter:
You're just feeding it in one meal instead of two.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And then I will definitely refer listeners to your books for the massive list of supplements. I was blown away by this list, especially learning for humans as well, the potential longevity benefits of all these different supplements.

Melanie Avalon:
But then you do talk about the supplements that are important for daily versus more fringe longevity supplements that you can rotate as far as the super, you know, like rapamycin or sperminine or all these different things.

Melanie Avalon:
How casual can we be when we experiment with them? Because it kind of felt like there are all these different options. And how do you even know what to try if anything?

Gary Richter:
So it depends. I mean, when we're talking about the supplements, so spermidine, since you brought it up, I think that that is, I think that's a perfectly legitimate supplement for people to try. Rapamycin is a bit of a different animal.

Gary Richter:
I mean, rapamycin, it's a pharmaceutical, it's a prescription item, this is not something that you can just go online and buy, or I hope not, God knows, on the internet these days. But rapamycin is not a benign substance.

Gary Richter:
It's not something that you're, you know, that you should be giving every day. It's not something that you give in the long term. You know, this is the kind of thing that needs to be done with medical supervision.

Gary Richter:
The supplements for the most part are things that are pretty safe to give at home. And most of the supplements in the book, I do offer dose ranges for people, you know, for dogs and cats. I very specifically do not put dosing information for pharmaceuticals because I don't want people trying that stuff at home, because there can be negative effects of that.

Gary Richter:
And you did bring up another good point is, you know, I think there's something in the neighborhood of like 30 supplements listed in these books. I am by no means advocating that you turn around and you give your dog or your cat 30 supplements a day.

Gary Richter:
Not only is it not helpful, it's just not really practical. It's a question of like strategizing, rotating through different things over time to touch on all of the various aspects of the hallmarks of longevity.

Gary Richter:
So you get the biggest benefit in the long run.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Yeah, I probably shouldn't have loved to wrap a mycinine with spermedine, but I'm so fascinated by wrap a mycinine. Quick question about one of them, actually, because I'm a big fan of berberine, and you were talking earlier about the blood sugar control of cats and dogs.

Melanie Avalon:
Is there a concern with berberine lowering their blood sugar too much? Do cats and dogs get hypoglycemic?

Gary Richter:
Not generally, no. It doesn't seem like it's really a problem for them. So I'm not really super concerned about that. And the nice thing about berberine in the hallmark of longevity perspective is it's one of those herbs that really, really has an impact on AMPK.

Gary Richter:
And in the sort of the whole, we're trying to balance AMPK and MTOR to our greatest benefit. You know, that's, there is something to be said for that. But to your point, no, I don't think hypoglycemia is generally an issue with these guys.

Gary Richter:
You

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. And again, listeners, get the books because there's a lot of information in there. So these are just my random nuance questions. I'm really curious about vitamin D because you talk about the role of vitamin D deficiency in our pets and we know that's a huge issue in humans.

Melanie Avalon:
What I'm really curious about, and again, this goes back to the evolution of them. So they have fur. So do they make vitamin D at all? And if not, or if only a little bit, evolutionarily, how do they survive?

Melanie Avalon:
So like, while non -domesticated cats and dogs, do they have vitamin D deficiency?

Gary Richter:
know for certain if there is really an incidence of vitamin D deficiency in wild dogs and cats. I'm not sure that that's been looked at. But to your other question, no, they do not convert sunlight into vitamin D like we do, hence the whole fur thing.

Gary Richter:
So vitamin D is a dietary issue with dogs and cats. So vitamin D, probably the biggest sources of vitamin D are animal sources, bone, fur, skin, these sorts of things contain loads of vitamin D that your average carnivore would be consuming.

Gary Richter:
You know, one of the things that I bring up in the book is I love a good diagnostic test. I love it when I can measure a parameter that has an impact on longevity and vitamin D is one of these things we can measure.

Gary Richter:
And it's fascinating to me how many animals, even ones that I thought were eating really solid diets are actually deficient in vitamin D. But the great news is, is it's a thing we can measure and it's a thing we can fix.

Gary Richter:
You can very easily supplement vitamin D. It's not a hard thing to do. And because we can measure it, we can quantify exactly how much we need to give them. And to be clear, vitamin D is one of these vitamins you absolutely can over supplement.

Gary Richter:
So while certainly like somebody could give a multivitamin with a conservative amount of vitamin D in it and be safe, if you're sort of definitively trying to optimize vitamin D levels, that is something that you want to keep tabs on their vitamin D level and their blood on, because over supplementing with vitamin D can cause some pretty serious problems.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, okay. I'm glad you brought up the testing because that is an overwhelmingly eye -opening part of your book. I was blown away by all of these different tests, a lot of them in humans, but also a lot of them for cats and or dogs as well.

Melanie Avalon:
So there's so many to go into in depth, but when it comes to testing, longevity testing, I guess what are some of the ones that you are most excited about?

Gary Richter:
Testing wise, I mean, like I say, I mean, you know, vitamin D testing makes me super happy. Omega fatty acid tested, I love to do because again, it's a really easy thing to fix. And a lot of animals are deficient.

Gary Richter:
There's a company that I'm working with now in Southern California that is doing epigenetic age testing in animals, which I like a lot. Epigenetic age testing, to me, what it really is useful for is it's a measuring stick for how well my treatments are working.

Gary Richter:
You know, it's not, I'm not as concerned about like what the number is from the standpoint of like, if my patient is chronologically 10 years old, if the epigenetic age testing comes back as nine or 11 on the first test, I mean, it's, it's interesting information, but it's less important than what happens when I get the next test back six months or a year later after we've been treating the animal to see if that number has gone up, down, or is the same.

Gary Richter:
Because that's a measure of how well we've been doing treatment once.

Melanie Avalon:
And also speaking of the future of all of this, it was perfect timing. I was reading your book and I don't know why, but the main health editor for Fox Digital who publishes all the like Fox health stories, she really likes quoting me now.

Melanie Avalon:
So she had me in, I think eight stories last year. And one of the stories was about the future of healthcare. And she wanted my predictions about healthcare. And so I included, cause I was reading your book and you talk about the future of wearables in pets.

Melanie Avalon:
So I was able to share that with her. So I'm so interested in this. What are we seeing with wearables and pets and where do you think that's going? I mean, personally for humans, like I love my O -ring and I wear CGMs and so what do you think will happen there?

Gary Richter:
It's fascinating that you asked that question and I sort of intentionally did not, I didn't put it in the book because I didn't want to give people the wrong impression, but this is actually something that I have personally been working on.

Gary Richter:
I have a company that I've started, it's called Petmetrics and we are in the process of creating a wearable for animals that would be useful both from the standpoint of monitoring your pets parameters at home just in the same way that your o -ring does, but also as like an inpatient veterinary tool to monitor vital signs and whatnot in a sort of non -contact way like lay an animal on a mat and you'll get their vital signs without connecting them to any cables or connections or anything to that effect.

Gary Richter:
That is actually something that I am actively working on. Hopefully we're going to start to have products launched late this year or early next.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, that's like Star Trek with the laying on the mat. I know, right?

Gary Richter:
Right, it's super exciting. And the company that we're partnering with, I mean, they have some absolutely groundbreaking technology that is going to be coming out on the human sector as well. It's just a quicker pathway to get it done in animals because of the FDA regulations and whatnot.

Gary Richter:
It's a great proving ground.

Melanie Avalon:
Something you point out in the book that I hadn't really thought about before was our pets can't really communicate to us out there health situation, like how they're feeling. And then on the flip side, not only do they not communicate to us, you make the case that they sort of lie to us.

Melanie Avalon:
They might try to make it seem like they are not feeling a certain way. So those wearables, and maybe I understand that it's not out yet, so maybe it's a secret. But is it something that you can put, you mentioned the ones where they go on the map, or like at home, something they wear on the outside?

Gary Richter:
Yeah, so I mean, I think there'll be a couple of potential formats. Certainly there will be a pet bed, but there'll also be something that the animal can wear like a collar or a harness that would monitor vital signs, activity, a number of other parameters as well, and then all sort of be reported to you through an app in much the same way like your Oro Ring does.

Melanie Avalon:
That is so cool. Ooh, definitely keep us updated on that.

Gary Richter:
Yeah, I certainly will. And if people are interested, there's not much on the website now, but Petmetrics .com, you can sign up to get on our list to get more information as that comes out.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Okay. I will be eagerly following that. Well, there's so many other topics in the book. I will definitely again refer listeners. Like we didn't even, I don't know if you want to touch on it now or we can just let listeners read it, like whether or not you should spay or neuter.

Melanie Avalon:
You talk about vaccines, which is huge. And now I've gotten this podcast on the radar because I said that word. And then we've got again, more about exercise and there's just so much. So they're really, really valuable resources.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, this actually is one question. This was an interesting experience prepping for this show because it was the first time, it wasn't the first time reading multiple books by an author, but it was the first time reading two books that are very similar.

Melanie Avalon:
So I actually would like read one chapter of one book and then I would read the other chapter of the other book and see what I missed. So if people have cats and dogs, do they definitely need to get both versions of the book?

Gary Richter:
Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll preface this by saying that it was originally my intent to write one book for dogs and cats as a single book. The publisher wanted it in two separate volumes. So that was how that happened.

Gary Richter:
I would say the books are probably about 75% the same. But there are very definitive differences in physiologic necessities, nutrition, certain supplements as it pertains to cats. So, I mean, if you want to get the overview, I think you could just get one of them.

Gary Richter:
If you really want the deep dive into what to do for your dog versus your cat, you might wind up with both. They do exist as audiobooks as well, if that's easier.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. And are you writing your next book or are you focusing on your products?

Gary Richter:
I am not yet, I'm kind of really focusing on pet metrics to get that launched. That's kind of the next big thing for me.

Melanie Avalon:
Completely makes sense. Awesome. So well speaking of your product line, so your ultimate pet nutrition product line What products do you make with that? Sure?

Gary Richter:
So, ultimate pet nutrition is really about whole food, both food and supplements for dogs and cats. So, we have freeze -dried raw foods for dogs and cats. We've got general health supplements as well as supplements that are designed for specific medical conditions such as inflammation, skin -related issues, these sorts of things.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Do you have a best seller with a supplement? It's like something that everybody just loves.

Gary Richter:
From a supplement perspective, I mean, clearly the like the cornerstone supplement is called Nutrithrive. It's, it's a really, it's sort of a, just a really broad based health supportive immune system supportive supplement.

Gary Richter:
You can, you can add it to any food, whether it's kibble or whether it's a fresh whole food diet, you're still going to be adding an enormous amount of beneficial nutrition to your pet. You know, and like I say, regardless of what you're feeding them, it's going to be helpful.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Okay. So for listeners, if you would like to get that or anything else at the ultimate pet nutrition store, you can use the coupon code healthy pet 40 to get 40% off, which is amazing. And what is the website for that, the link?

Gary Richter:
The website is ultimatepetnutrition .com. Oh, wow. You said it.

Melanie Avalon:
snagged it. You got the domain. And then we also, Dr. Richter is so nice. We're actually going to do a giveaway for his books. So there will be details about that on my Instagram, Melanie Avalon. So check that out the week this airs and we will be doing a giveaway.

Melanie Avalon:
So thank you so much for that. So the last question that I ask every single guest on this show, and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. Oh, and that is something by the way, friends, there's a lot in the books about your pets, if they have anxiety and how to deal with stress and trauma and all of that.

Melanie Avalon:
So definitely check out the books for that. But my question for you is what is something that you're grateful for?

Gary Richter:
What is something that I am grateful for? Wow, it's such a timely question on January 2nd. I am incredibly grateful for the support that I get in my life from my family, my friends, my professional colleagues.

Gary Richter:
I mean, I really feel like I'm on a mission to create a better world for animals and animal health care. And I am very much not doing this alone. And there's enormous amount of people out there doing the same thing and with the same mission and we're all helping one another.

Gary Richter:
And I am incredibly grateful for that.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, thank you so much. I am so incredibly grateful for your work. Reading your books, I was like, oh, thank goodness somebody is talking about this and doing this. And we didn't even talk about stem cells, but you mentioned in the book, were you one of the first vets to do stem cells?

Melanie Avalon:
Is that controversial?

Gary Richter:
Well, not stem cells writ large, but there is a particular type of stem cell therapy that we're doing that really is cutting edge and new in veterinary medicine. It's called V cell therapy. So yeah, there is some new and very exciting stuff coming.

Melanie Avalon:
Well, so amazing. Again, thank you so much for your work. People's pets are just so important for their lives, for their health, their happiness. And it's just so important, I think, that we pay attention to all of this.

Melanie Avalon:
And so few people are actually spreading awareness about this. So thank you so much. I so enjoy this conversation. I look forward to your wearables and all the testing and the products that you're creating.

Melanie Avalon:
So hopefully we can talk again in the future.

Gary Richter:
I love it. Thank you so much for having me. I can't wait. Thanks. Bye.