Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlifradio dot com and.
Speaker 2: Welcome, welcome, welcome to all of you on this glorious
Sunday Sunday morning out here on the West Sunday, just
getting it that afternoon hour, just a minute or so
after noon in the East.
Speaker 3: I'm your host for the next half hour. I am
doctor Jeff Werber, host of Asked the Vets with Doctor Jeff,
and we're here for you, here to answer your questions,
help you with your pets. Any information that you either
couldn't get didn't understand from your veterinarian, you can just
call in, send me a text, send me a note.
Here live at pet Life Radio. You can give us
a call eight seven seven three eight five eight eight
eight two once again eight seven seven three eight five
eight eight eight two. You can also log in petlife
radio dot com go to ask the Vets tab and
you will join in the conversation. There's a huge box there,
just type away. Lastly, you can always send a quick
email to Dr Jeff. That's doctor Jeff at Petlifradio dot
com and we'll.
Speaker 4: Go ahead and help you out.
Speaker 3: And as an extra bonus other than free information, just
for calling, sending me a text joining us on the show.
Speaker 4: Don't be bashful.
Speaker 3: We will send you out a free pro Sense product
and a free Kong product, so you can't lose, you
get you can only win, and anything that we can
do to help you and your pets is great.
Speaker 4: I just heard.
Speaker 3: I was just telling Mark, our producer, that I'm gonna
be on next Sunday again on.
Speaker 4: Fox and Friends.
Speaker 3: I do a number of Fox and Friends episodes, so
I'll be heading to New York myself. I understand it's
getting a kind of cold there, huh.
Speaker 4: So anyway, any of you.
Speaker 3: There in the East, at least at lease come on
and tell me how I used to pack. So but
I'll be there doing a segment on holiday hazards next
Sunday on Fox and Friends.
Speaker 4: So that would be that should be fine. Anyway.
Speaker 3: We have been on a fairly detailed path over the
last several weeks, and we are talking about some of
the very common endocrine related diseases that we see in
our pets. We've spoken about the disease called Cushing's disease.
We then we talked about Addison's disease, and we are
going to then we started briefly talk about hyperthyroid hypothyroidism,
which we're going to really delve into today. Then we're
going to go into some of the diabetes conditions, the
diabetes melodis and the diabetes incipitous not related. One is
a pancreatic problem, and that's the diabetes melods that have
to sugar diabetes, and the other one is more of
a brain water balance sodium potassium type of condition. There's
a hormone called vasopress and which tells us and helps
us respond and our pets respond to signals from the
rest of the body how much we should be drinking,
and of what we drink, how much do the kidneys save,
and how much do they get to excret And that
disease is also a disease we have to deal with.
Just not to mix the two up anyway, So on
our discussion of the thyroid disorders. By the way, if
any of you have had animals that have had thyroid problems,
we definitely want to hear from you. There are so
many different things and so many nuances and different ways
to treat these conditions now that we'd really like to
hear from you. Let us know whether it were successful
or not. How your pets did on the treatment, how
your pets did after the treatment, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So don't be shy.
Speaker 3: Give us a call at eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight A two. Share your stories with us,
because it's interesting how much our other pet lovers can
learn from the experiences that others have had. Sometimes you
you don't always want to learn this stuff firsthand. You
want to have that preparedness and by hearing others faced
with a dilemma as far as treatment and maybe one
or two different methods or three different ways to go
when it comes to treatment, hearing other people's stories might
help you decide what might be the best way to go.
Because as is sometimes the case, I don't want to
say often the case, but it is sometimes the case,
we hear that I'm going to just take this phone away,
as is sometimes the case that if you put in
five veterinarians into a room, there's a good chance you'll
get six different opinions. So we always have to make
sure that medicine is not exact I wish it were.
And as I often joke, I said, we read the
books we learn. You may read the books you may know,
but unfortunately our pets haven't read the book, so they
don't know how they're supposed to respond. They don't know
how they're supposed to react, and they don't know how they're
supposed to act even with a disease. So that's what
makes what we do so difficult because our patients can't
tell us. We the veterinarian is relying on you to
give us the information and the right information, and sometimes
it's difficult for you as well. So thyroid, interestingly, it's
a gland. It's usually right by the neck. Unlike people,
the two glands are not attached. That is very important
when it comes to potential treatment. In people, there is
what's called an isthmus. It's like a little almost like
a piece of land attached to the two thyroids. So
frequently when a person has to deal with a thyroid
problem or have a thyroid removed, they have to take
the entire both lobes of the thyroid, where it's really
in humans it's more like a single gland that with
two lobes, where in animals are dogs and cats, they're
two separate.
Speaker 4: So the condition that we often see, let's talk.
Speaker 3: Dogs first, is hypothyroidism, and sadly, hypothyroidism is often overdiagnosed.
And when I say overdiagnosed, it's often diagnosed. A dog
is diagnosed with having a hypothyroid condition when in fact
they don't.
Speaker 4: I don't explain why.
Speaker 3: So it's very important that you need to be a
bit more proactive, especially and this is not a stab
at anyone, because I was there in the same place
years ago. But there are a number of tests that
need to be run before the diagnosis is made. And
the typical test that is run as part of a
blood screen is called the T four And the problem
is that that level, that T four value can be
very affected by other problems the dog may be having,
meaning it will often appear to be low. A doctor
might make a diagnosis therefore of hypo thyroidism low thyroid,
when in fact it's not low at all. And we
call this sick thyroid syndrome. So it's a puzzle because
you have a dog that presents ill. Dogs that often
present ill are adr ain't doing right, they are a
little sluggish, they may not be eating well, so well,
that could be low thyroid because the thyroid hormone is
what sort of keeps us active and adjusts our metabolism.
It gets our heart pumping. So dogs that are truly
hypothyroid low thyroid levels are often gaining weight. They are
really sluggish, they're moping around. They are more prone to illness,
for example, since the link between the R metabolism and
our immune system, our immune system doesn't function as well
in a hypo thyroid state, So these dogs, whereas that
a normal bacterium may not cause a problem, and a
healthy pet and a dog with hypothyroidism it may. So
that's the classic appearance, the classic presentation, if you will,
of what a truly hypothyroid dog is like, Well, if
you have a dog it's sick and let's say has
a severe intestinal problem. Well, god, they're MOPy, they may
not want to eat, they're sitting around, their skin might
look ugly and dry, and you know all these things.
And then you get your test back and it says,
oh my god, the T four is low.
Speaker 4: That must be hypothyroid. Let's start treating. And that's a
huge mistake, a huge mistake.
Speaker 3: So what really what needs to be done is to
separate out the different type of thyroid hormone to really
know for sure whether or not a dog is truly
hypo thyroid low thyroid function. Now I use a T
four as a screening test. I use that a long
with clinical presentation history, age, breed, all those things we
call signal mint and to determine whether or not your
dog is truly hypothyroid. And if we have a T
four that comes back low and we want to really
rule in or out true hypothyroid versus say sixth thyroid syndrome,
then there are some other tests that need to be run.
One is called a free T four by ed ED
stands for equilibrium dialysis. And if free T four by
ED is also low, then very likely that is confirmation
that the dog your pet is truly hypo thyroid and
could be starting needs to be treated accordingly. Now another
test is just like with as you've hope that if
you've been paying attention when we talked about cushions and
addisons and all these diseases and pregnosone, the body has.
Speaker 4: An amazing, amazing feedback type of system, or it could read.
Speaker 3: What is low and what is not low, how things
are doing, and then signal the appropriate gland to either
act or not act. And one of the things that
we have with the thyroid is the same thing. The
protutary gland in the brain can stimulate the thyroid via
a transmitter called TSH. It's a thyroid stimulating hormone. So
when TSH is released by the brain, it signals the
thyroids to start pumping out hormone. So when the body
is truly truly low on thyroid, not six thyroid syndrome,
but low on the thyroid hormones, you can imagine if
you figure this out, is tsh's going to be secreted
from the brain more or less. Well, it's going to
be more because the brain picks up, Oh my god,
we're low thyroid. We got to signal that thyroid gland
to get his button gear and start cooking. We need
more thyroid hormone out there. So it sends that signal
via TSH. So if you run a TSH level on
a dog that is low thyroid and TSH is normal,
what does that tell you. It tells you that the
dog's not really low thyroid, because if it were, the
body would have be throwing out more TSH from the
brain and we would have elevated TSH. Which then brings
me to the second way to really truly evaluate whether
or not the low thyroid T four in the blood
is real via TSA. So when TSH is high, meaning
it's picking up the fact that the dog truly is
low thyroid, the brain says, hey, we gotta do something
about this, quick, quick, getting the gear.
Speaker 4: Let's split out some TSAH.
Speaker 3: Let's stimulate that thyroid land, and the thyroid land is
not listening because the dog has a true thyroid disorder.
Then that's another way to confirm the hunts the diagnosis
that yes, in fact, the dog is truly hypothyroid. Now,
having said all this, and now hopefully you all get
a much better understanding. Even in this day and age,
and I'm talking this is you know, when I.
Speaker 4: Say new, it's not new, it's relatively new.
Speaker 3: It's for the last fifteen years, we've really learned more
about the thyroid land. When I started practicing many moons ago,
we look at T three TV if they were low,
we started supplementing with thyroid hormone. Now we're finding out
we were way over diagnosing true hypothyroid. As a matter
of fact, we don't see it as commonly as much,
but just it's so interesting. I had a case that
was referred to me, and the dog was on the
thyroid supplement, which we'll get to in a second, and
on a post treatment test about two months later, the
thyroid levels were high.
Speaker 4: So what does that tell you?
Speaker 3: It told me that I better look at this dog's
records to see what test was used to diagnose the
quote unquote hypothyroidism in the first place. And sure enough,
all this doctor used was a T four. Here we
are in twenty fourteen with all this amazing information, and
this doctor made a diagnosis and even worse than that.
The low normal, depending on what laboratory for normal thyroid
is either point nine or one whatever, and this.
Speaker 4: Dog was point eight. It wasn't even that low.
Speaker 3: And he didn't do another test, didn't do a TSA,
didn't do a T four by ed to truly confirm
whether this was true hyperthyroisms.
Speaker 4: So what happened?
Speaker 3: Of course, you start giving this dog thyroid hormone as
a supplement every day, twice a day, and his levels are.
Speaker 4: Gonna go up.
Speaker 3: You're making the dog hyper thyroid. So that's why you
really need to know that. Don't let and you could challenge,
you know, veterinarians, we're okay with being challenged ask questions,
especially if the veterinarians older. There's nothing wrong with it. Look,
I'm older, so it to make a difference. Do you
have to if you if there's any question, you know,
there's so much more that we learn, and you know,
it's one of the reasons I joke that I hire
young associates because I don't have to go to CE
continue education. I just get all from my young associates.
But it's very important to make that distinction. Treatment I
just alluded to actually fairly simple. Once it's determined that
the dog truly is hyper thyroid, treatment is pretty easy.
Speaker 4: It is a thyroid supplement.
Speaker 3: Personally, there are generics out there, and though I'm a
you know, a firm believer that generics are fine are antibotics.
I don't have to buy name brand of certain antibotics
if it's available now as a generic. And some of
these generic companies are great when it comes to replacement hormones.
I it's my own take. Obviously, check with the veterinarian.
It's fine, but I kind of like using some of
the name brands. There's a really good name brand there too.
One is called thyro Tabs. One is called seloxin. No,
I'm not getting paid by any of them. I'm just
saying that I don't like to buy Levo thyroxin tabs.
Surely generic the seloxin has been the industry standard. Thyrotabs
now have also hit the market and are very trustworthy,
but I personally stay away when it comes to hormone
replacements because how important they are using some generic company
that's just spitting out medication from wherever. So anyway, that's
our basics year all thyroid at least hypo thyroid experts now,
and given that, we are going to take our quick break,
be back in a few minutes, and we're going to
talk about the opposite of hypo thyratism, which is hyper thyratism,
which unless the doctor is giving your dog too much
thyroid medication, we don't usually see in dogs, but we
see it a lot in cats.
Speaker 5: Right back, we'll be right back right after these messages.
Speaker 4: Stay tuned. This is my tired of itching face.
Speaker 6: Does your dog suffer from persistent itching and scratching? Allergies
and skin irritations caused by environment, including pollens, insects, especially fleas,
food and common household allergens are common problems and dogs.
It's easy to alleviate your dog's is comfort at home
with pro Sense. Pro Sense itch and analogy products provide
fast relief from symptoms like it's irritated skin, skin infections
like hotspots and watery eyes. Pro Sense products are veteran
formulated and recommended to ensure the very best for your pet.
Try Prosens today. Your dog will thank you for best
love life, love them back with pro Sense.
Speaker 7: It's Designerpetsweaters dot com the latest fashion transfer our furry friends.
Handnited designer sweaters for your precious pop or cool cat.
Beautiful coutore patterns for your pets, including us to mood,
formal wear, casualwaar, yachting, and even sports theme. Many designer
pet sweaters include feathered tammy hats, top pats and a
lot of sparkle. Each sweater includes leg loops, front post
leaves and leash opening. Visit Designerpet Sweaters dot com to
order your four legged fashions today. Your pets will stay
warm for the winner and be runway ready. Larger small
we fit them all Designer Pet Sweaters dot Com.
Speaker 8: There's nothing more delicious and healthy than an old family
recipe and for over fifty years, our family's been creating
them especially for your pets. Nutris Source super premium pet foods,
dog and cat food that's all natural, ballistic and organic.
Nutri Source pet Foods contain our patented good for Life
system for your pet's optimum health and well being. So
order now, safe quality food made by our family for
your furry family. Members. Go to nutro Sourcepetfoods dot com for.
Speaker 4: Fr food jig El Emilybres.
Speaker 9: Pet Life Radio the number one pet radio network on
the planet, showing forces with iHeartRadio to put the power
of your pets in your pocket. Download the iHeartRadio app
and rock pet Life Radio on your phone and your tablet,
on your Xbox, in your car, Pet Talk, pet Tunes
and fun pet Times. Pet Life Radio and iHeartRadio positively possum.
Speaker 10: Thinking about buying a monkey, how about a fan or
a skunk? Then check out the show that will answer
the burning questions. Where do you get them, what do
you feed them, how do you take care of them?
And most of all, what were you thinking?
Speaker 5: With Exotic pet expert and author Bob Tart every week
on demand from Petlife Radio dot Com.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk Past, Let's Done pets on pet Life Radio Live.
Speaker 5: Radio, Live Radio dot Com.
Speaker 4: And welcome back. You're here with asked with doctor Jeff Bourbert.
Speaker 3: That's me, I asked beets with doctor Jeff here on
pet Life Radio, the only live.
Speaker 4: Call in radio show.
Speaker 3: Call in skype in, write in whatever in just do
it so we can talk about we can talk pets.
Before the break, we were discussing as part of our
series on the hormone diseases, what we call the endocrine
diseases affecting our pets. We were talking about hypothyroidism, that's
low thyroid hormone disorder, which we see in dogs and
again to recap, the typical symptom is that dog that's
got kind of mopey putting on weight, lack of energy.
Skin is sometimes very dull, sometimes greasy. We see this
a lot. If I see a dog like this, a
Golden Retriever like this, I'm thinking primary hypotheridism. But we
caution about making a diagnosis too quickly because of the
fact that other conditions will drop our t for the
thyroid hormone, the standard thyroid hormone that's often included in
most of the blood tests, and we can have what's
called a false decrease of thyroid doctor goes ahead, starts
supplementing without confirming, and that can lead to some problems,
actually creating a hyper thyroid state. Now, hyperthyroidism, that is
an over secretion of the gland.
Speaker 4: And there it's the opposite.
Speaker 3: Of course, we see it in cats, and it often
is seen in cats, older cats. And you know what's
so weird about it is, I mean, we're talking. This
could be diagnosed in a cat that's sixteen or seventeen
and perfect, and the only challenge is and by the way,
one of my older cats sixteen actually does or did
I could say, nicely happily have hyperthyroidism. He's a Maine
coon Norwegian forest cat cross. He's huge, twenty two pounds
and not fat, so I'm noticing him. He's getting older,
he's sixteen, everything's fined, eating up a storm, happy, all good.
But I noticed when I pick him up and I
brush him, he's losing another weight. So I bring him
in and he was down to fourteen pounds. That's eight pounds,
but he's so big and fluffy it's really hard to tell.
So it was due anyway for his annual physical So
I'm taking bloods and now what I do, and I
recommend this, and I've spoken to many veterinarian telling them
to do this as part of the routine that when
I do a blood test, an annual senior blood test
on a cat over seven, I always automatically include that
T flour by ed, that is the free T flour
by ed equilibrium intalysis. We talked about it in the
last of first fifteen minutes as far as dogs and
to really differentiate between true hypo or hyperthyroidism and the
actual T four level itself that can be effected by
many other things. And sure enough, with a high normal
free T four by ed from ten to fifty, good
old Oreo was over one hundred and greater than one
hundred means that they stop counting when you hit over
one hundred. So ahead of my diagnosis, I'm thinking that's it.
Of course, so interestingly and happily for Oreo and of
course me, his kidneys at sixteen are still.
Speaker 4: Doing amazingly well.
Speaker 3: And the reason why I mentioned that specifically is that cats,
as they get older, probably with each advancing year, especially
when they hit the late teens, they will probably one
hundred percent or pretty close to that, succumb to kidney failure.
So when you have a cat that is also concurrently
hyper thyroid, you have to think about this for a second.
Speaker 4: But when you have a.
Speaker 3: Hyperthyroid cat who also has kidney disease, believe it or not,
the kidney disease doesn't look as bad.
Speaker 4: And here's why. What do the kidneys do?
Speaker 3: The kidneys are filters, if you will, and they're filtering
all these bad things out from the blood, and blood
is pumping well, if you can imagine that, since dogs
that are hypo thyroid, everything is moving more slowly. The
heart is slowing down. What happens to a cat that's
hyper thyroid, Their blood is pumping faster. They're going through
the system more so every pass. If you have a filter,
for example, any kind of a coffee filter, and you
run it through twice, right, so it's going to keep
a lot of that bad stuff out better than had
you just done it once you get that second pass.
Speaker 4: Well, so here you have these kidneys and a cat.
Speaker 3: And an older cat that aren't working quite up to par,
and yet you are passing the blood through more than
once per cycle because the heart's racing much faster because
of the hyper thyroidism. So what you would normally use
to determine kidney function, the value is called bun creatinine.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that way later.
Speaker 7: Time.
Speaker 3: We talked about the kidney, but all of a sudden
it doesn't look so bad. But what happens you finally
successfully treat the thyroid problem. The heart normalizes, slows down,
you don't get that extra pass through the weekending kidney,
and all of a sudden, you can imagine your kidney
values shoot up. So it's difficult, you know, to tell
a client, oh my god, we got these minor second disease,
which we know in older cats becomes the major disease, and.
Speaker 4: We see it abruptly.
Speaker 3: When we fix the thyroid gland, it'll fix the hyperthyroidism,
but it's still when push comes to shove, you really
have to treat the hyperthidism because because these cats, I mean,
they can get so thin ultimately pretty weak, and then
as they get sicker because of the untreated hyper thyrotism
all right, where they've been pretty active and eating well
but still losing weight, then they start slowing down because
they're feeling lousy, and then they're still eating, but now
they start putting on weight, so you think, oh my god,
well maybe it's not hyperthyroidism. So it's very important and
I just advise, and there's nothing wrong with saying to
your veterinarian, oh you're treating my old cat. You're going
to doing some blood test and my old cat. Can
you make sure that we really do both thyroid tests.
I want to check for hyper thyroidism as well, So
that's very important to include that in the basic testing.
So as far as treatment with hyper thyroidism years ago,
when I in fact I remember my first case of hyperthyroidism,
another value that is often high. You know, we talked
about the masking the kidneys, but we often see elevated
liver enzymes with hyperthyroidism and cats. Then, of course, as
we discussed the heart's racing like crazy. You can have
a heart rate over to forty two hundred and forty.
I mean, it's insane how fast their hearts started pumping.
So remember when I first started working for my ex boss,
I had a cat, seventeen year old cat that he
had diagnosed. He had seen and wanted to diagnose or
treat the heart disease and the liver disease and gave
this client, obviously, with a seventeen year old cat with
heart disease and the concurrent liver disease, a very poor prognosis.
And here I come along, the young veterinarian and knowing
a little bit more about some thyroid issues. I first
of all, we did a test to evaluate thyroid. And
because I could feel the gland, and because they know
there's a tenet in medicine and this is for humans,
this is don't look for four different diseases going on
at once. I'm sure you guys watch House MD right
what you're looking for is the one disease that can
cause all of these symptoms. Well, I'm thinking old cat.
I could feel little knobs in the neck, fast heart rate,
liver disease.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's two different disease.
Speaker 3: I don't think if cat's got heart disease and liver disease,
I think it's got thyroid. We tested sure enough hyperthyroid. Well,
this was thirty years ago. We didn't have some of
the treatments and the treatment of choice then, and it
was all about surgery.
Speaker 4: And we have to end up our show.
Speaker 3: We're going to finish this discussion next week or the
week after, depending on whether I can join you live,
because I will be in New York. I may be
on a plane at noon Eastern time after doing my show.
Speaker 4: But the only choice of treatment was surgery.
Speaker 3: And here I am, young guy right out of school
taking the thyroid glands out of the seventeen year old
cat full anesthesia. Clearly well ps this cat made it
to nineteen and a half and it was just an
amazing case. But fortunately surgery now is not quite passe.
Speaker 4: It's still done. But we have many other options, and
one the way they treat humans.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to leave you into spent until next
week or hopefully next week, maybe the week after, if
you get a chance. Fox and Friends next week, if
you ever, if anyone, if you're in New York and
you want to come down to the studio Fox Studios
on sixth Avenue in the high forties. We usually shoot
our segments outside. Might be cool to walk by and
visit us, And that's Fox and Friends next Sunday. Otherwise
I'll be with you next Sunday or maybe in two weeks.
I want to once again thank our sponsors pro Sense
Pet Products, the barony quality pet products available at the
over the counter at the mass stores like like Walmart,
and also Calm Toys.
Speaker 4: So have a great week. I'll be back either next
week or the week after.
Speaker 3: But again, if you are happen to be in New
York and you're listening and you want to come down
Sunday morning and watch Box and Friends live, then come
on down, introduce yourselves, have a pleasant week.
Speaker 4: We'll be back. I'm doctor Jeff Warber. Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 5: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com.