Episode 41 Dr. Rob Silver, Medicinal Mushrooms

Intro: If you want a wildly healthy, naturally disease resistant pet who turns heads and starts conversations with awestruck onlookers, you're right where you belong. This is the Vital Animal Podcast with your host homeopathic veterinarian. Dr. Will Falconer

Will Falconer, DVM: [00:00:00] Welcome to our latest episode of the Vital Animal Podcast. So glad you've joined us. I have a very special guest on board today, a colleague of mine from way back when we both struck out into the holistic field back in the eighties. I have Dr. Rob Silver, who is in Colorado and has taken an interest in all things holistic for a lot of years, and now is on to talk about medicinal mushrooms with us.

Welcome, Rob!.

Rob Silver, DVM: Thanks for having me.

Will Falconer, DVM: So tell us a little bit about your background, Rob. I know you and I have parallel stories, but when did you just make the leap into holistic medicine and how has that led you to where you are now?

Rob Silver, DVM: I graduated vet school in 1982 and I thought that I knew everything that I would ever need to do battle with the diseases of the world of our pets and our animals and and the first year or two I was busy remembering everything I had learned and putting it to good use. But [00:01:00] four or five years into it, I started finding myself frustrated, frustrated with the inadequacy of the tools I had been given in vet school to deal with some of these very challenging chronic diseases. Things like diabetes and cancer and autoimmune disease, and Cushing's disease, and all these. Complicated diseases. So that's when I started looking for other answers and I began looking at diet, nutrition.

I found Dr. Pitcairn's book and copied his recipes and shared them with my clients and did nothing else but that. And even the and now we look at some of those recipes as being very carbohydrate laden, much too high in carbohydrates, but my patients did really well, which was great for me.

Cause it gave me that kinda motivation that if diet is that advantageous to help my patients heal, what else is out there? And I'm a big backpacker. Big backpacker and survivalist. So the, and so I was really, I'd already had learned quite a bit about [00:02:00] identifying herbs that are edible for survivalism.

So I started looking at herbs and in vet school we had a poisonous plants class for large animals. And so everything kinda meshed together. When you realize that the difference between a poison and a drug is dosage and for a homeopath, I'm sure you certainly appreciate that as well.

So then things just started adding up. I started making enough money in my practice I could afford to take the acupuncture training and some other trainings and added those on and here we are 40 years later. It's crazy that so much time has passed. It just seems like just flashing by.

Will Falconer, DVM: And the parallel with Pitcairn's book and I and you are, is striking. I had the same experience. I didn't know what I was gonna offer, but I knew I wanted to go down a holistic path. And like you, those recipes were a God send. Exactly. Even boiling the oats and all that stuff and mixing it with raw meat and adding the healthy powder, I saw [00:03:00] great responses and I went, okay, I'm inspired.

There's gotta be a lot we can do that's non-drug oriented and still get great results in our animals.

Rob Silver, DVM: Absolutely. I still use his model for a diet. When I'm teaching people to do diets, I just use different nutrient profiles depending on what we need to do with that given patient. So yeah, and he's, his legacy lives on. He's still thriving. I think he just had his, I don't know how many years of homeopathy courses he's been teaching, but I know Cindy Lankenau just went to the most recent one like last month or so. So he's still vi he's still vibrant himself, isn't he?

Will Falconer, DVM: Let's talk mushrooms. What an interesting subject. I know you, you are also an expert in C B D and the the derivatives of the plants from that whole realm. But what got you specifically interested in mushrooms? I. [00:04:00] Years and years ago, we probably sat in on the same lecture at some point at the AHVMA and heard people talking about muco polysaccharides and how the Chinese were curing cancer and all these diseases with mushroom related products.

What's your path that got you down there?

Rob Silver, DVM: In my practice of integrative medicine, I found myself with a lot of cancer cases, which I'm sure probably a lot of integrative practitioners do, and as I'm looking for more and more tools to deal with cancer, it seems every road leads to mushrooms when it comes to cancer.

So I started using mushrooms for cancer. I started getting some decent results. I was working with a company that hired me to develop products for them that were supplements, that were herbs, that were nutraceuticals. And so that in part, sparked my interest because every, cause I had to come up with three or four new products every year with exciting new ingredients.

And so every time I'd make a new product, [00:05:00] I would become an expert on the ingredients that were in that product. It was crazy, but it was really almost like a residency in this stuff, cause I really, I, I really did learn a lot. And when CBD became, when cannabis became more legal and CBD became very popular, I started working in that realm with this company and learned quite a bit.

So I started getting some what appeared to be clinical successes using mushrooms and that's what really got my interest. But most of my interest for the last eight years has been on CBD.

There's been just so much to learn about it and so much to teach and it's is such a very effective remedy. But it was three years ago that I started to get interested in mushrooms, as it seemed like the rest of the world was also waking up to the value of mushrooms.

And since then I've really become totally enamored of them because what I thought was just a one trick [00:06:00] pony with mushrooms that they would be good for cancer. That's great. Alright.

So CBDs gotten to be old hat these days, and I was, I've been looking for a new area of interest and mushrooms have really gained a lot of interest with the public all the way from the the, mycelial beds that underlay our forests that are worldwide what they call them, wood wide webs of communication and transferring nutrients, to the whole mushroom cultivation industry, to this fascination with mushroom images and mushroom furniture, and mushroom socks and mushroom coffee, as you and I discussed earlier.

So what I found about in my study with mushrooms is that they have so many properties that it, and the properties are based on not just their beta glucan compounds, which are the muco polysaccharides that you're [00:07:00] referring to. But mushrooms, just like so many plants, and mushrooms aren't plants by the way, but mushrooms, just like plants, ah, have these terpenes in them.

And we're used to the aromatic terpenes that you might find in lemon or in mint or lavender which are, they're called monoterpenes. They're small molecules. They're very volatile. If you heat that plant too much, you're gonna drive it off. Mushroom terpenes are much larger.

They're like five isoprene units. They're called triterpenes and di terpenes and sesquiterpenes, and these larger terpenes aren't volatile. So when you do a hot water extract Of your dried mushroom powder in order to break down the cell wall to deliver the goods, the beta glucans, ah, you don't remove the terpenes with the heat.

So it's these terpenes that will mate with membrane receptors in your brain to create a sense of calmness. There's a mushroom called Reishi or Ganoderma [00:08:00] lingzhi,, and Reishi is used as a meditation. By Zen Masters because it creates this settling and grounding effect. Many people take Reishi at night to help with sleep.

Reishi has has some of the strongest terpenes of any mushroom. They have the highest percentage of terpenes, and that's what makes Reishi as bitter as it is. But these terpenes have different expressions in different mushrooms. There's another mushroom called Lion's Mane, and if you believe in the doctrine of signatures, which is that, you know when a natural substance looks like something, it may actually be able to treat that, Lion's Mane looks like a brain.

And what we've learned is that the terpenes that are found in Lion's Mane have a beneficial effect on on nervous tissue. If there's injury or trauma, it helps them to repair and rebuild. It helps with. It's the most popular mushroom in the [00:09:00] in North America these days because it also has had a beneficial impact on memory.

They're actually publishing some studies with Lions Mane and Alzheimer's showing mild Alzheimer's showing some benefits to its use. And with our patients, with our dogs and our cats, we're seeing a lot of senile. geriatric senility in our older dogs and to a lesser extent in our older cats, they call this canine cognitive disorder in the dogs.

And we've been anecdotally cuz there's no studies yet, but we've been hearing just glowing reports from veterinarians who are using our mushrooms in some of their patients that are these elderly patients that get so confused, uhhuh, they can't find the dog door and aren't sure what time. Time they're being fed and they're starting to actually become better members of the family because of these terpenes that are found in the Lion's Mane mushroom.

So yeah, there the study of mu, I thought the cannabis was [00:10:00] fascinating because this one plant would have a hundred different molecules that are called cannabinoids, like THC and C, B, D, and it would also over 200 terpenes have been measured in cannabis as well as flavonoids. I thought, whoa, this plant a polypharmacy in and of itself.

Turns out mushrooms, each mushroom is like a cannabis in and unto in unto itself. Cause each mushroom has that same polypharmacy complexity, but is a little bit different. So I'm having so much learning more about all these individual compounds that are in these mushrooms or in these plants, and how they interface with our biological systems that we have as humans or as animals or as other species on this spot.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, it is. And I think now, how many of the the younger generations have depression and autoimmune disease? I'm talking about humans. Not only our animal world, but [00:11:00] how many are suffering depression. Kids are on drugs from an early age, ADHD, all that stuff.

Think of the potential in our own species for all these mushrooms. That's amazing.

Rob Silver, DVM: Absolutely. And I'm happy to see that they're becoming very popular. Even my 18 year old daughter is told to put some lion's man in her mache tea. Oh, cool. To help her with her studies. So it's very cool seeing that stuff happening. Yeah. Especially right close to home.

Yeah. And there's a lot of mushrooms. There's Cordyceps mushroom you've heard of, perhaps you've heard of the Cordyceps mushroom. You're, you said you're gonna be traveling up towards Tibet and that's where the Cordyceps mushroom is grows wild. It's the caterpillar mushroom, the spore. From the Cordyceps fungus will infect a caterpillar as it goes into the pupa state where it buries into the ground, and then it basically kills the caterpillar by growing.

[00:12:00] The mycelium grows through the caterpillar, and then when it's springtime and they're ready to send up their little mushroom sprouts so they can release their spores to detect more caterpillars, that's when the wild crafters, crawling on their hands and knees up in Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan looking for these little mushrooms coming up because it's reputed to be an aphrodisiac.

So it's very, it's very expensive to buy the wildcrafted caterpillar Cordyceps goes for 15 to $20,000 a kilogram. Yeah. Crazy. Now we can cultivate it on rice and separate it from the rice when we harvest it. And so we don't have to sacrifice any caterpillar lives or eat caterpillar, eat mycelium growing caterpillars.

It's interesting because the cultivated strain of this Cordyceps actually has, is stronger in many of these active ingredients. They have [00:13:00] something in the Cordyceps mushroom called cordyceptin, which is an analog of a what's called a nucleoside, which is something that's found in DNA. And when the body breaks down the dna, these nucleosides signal certain receptors. Well, the Cordyceps looks just like at the adenosine nucleoside but it's just one molecule different. So what happens is it binds to the adenosine receptor, which is responsible for lowering the level of ATP or energy in the body and inhibits it. And guess what else, does the same thing on the adenosine receptor. Caffeine. So Cordyceps works like caffeine in terms of creating energy in the body, but like all mushrooms, it has a grounding and separate effect instead of a jittery effect.

So I took, I take my Cordyceps in my tea in the morning because it's a great morning drink like that. It's good for energy and Cordyceps is probably the tastiest of all mushrooms. [00:14:00] Cordyceps is related to tr, to truffles and morels and of all the dried mushrooms out there, I think Cordyceps is most likely to be accepted by a cat just as it is, because it is, it tastes, to me, it tastes a little bit like toast.

Seriously. But what's really cool about it, other than being tasty for cats, is that it also supports the health of the kidney. And we know that cats have that as a big fault in their DNA. And so to get a cat on Cordyceps early on would be supportive.

All mushrooms are adaptogens. Yes. They help our bodies adapt to stress. They're very safe to use. They're basically superfoods, they're functional foods generally recognized safe by the FDA. So giving a kitty cat Cordyceps from the very beginning can help to protect and provide them with good, healthy kidney function so that later in life they aren't doomed to die from chronic kidney [00:15:00] disease.

So it's fascinating. The, these, the differences in these mushrooms is just it's really bringing out the nerd in me.,

Will Falconer, DVM: I remember Cordyceps also getting high praise for immune strengthening. I remember it being mixed into transfer factor products. So I think we might even have it in ours, I can't remember, but it got high praise as a, as an immune booster.

So lots of applications.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yes. It's, all mushrooms contain these beta glucans because beta glucans are part of the structure of the fungal cell wall and the reason why the beta glucans are so good for immune problems is that early on, animals and fungi both evolve from the same single celled organism.

Fungi and animals contain a, this 30% similar DNA. We actually shared DNA with [00:16:00] fungi and I know it's crazy. And some of the worst pathogens in the world, right? Disease-causing agents are fungi. They're the hardest diseases to treat, and I think one reason is because we share DNA.

At the same time, mushrooms and certain fungi are incredible as far as their ability to provide us with healing properties. Even many drugs that we use today are derived right from fungi. Penicillin, streptomycin, cyclo, cyclosporine, and look at our foods. What would we do without yeast, which are fungi as well. Where would we get our bread, our cheese, our wine, our beer?

Yeah. Yeah. Our kombucha. We it would be a pretty dead world. Yeah. Without our friends, the fungi. So the immune system of animals learned very early on in the evolutionary process to detect the shape of the cell wall, of the fungus, which shape is a beta glucan. That's why [00:17:00] beta glucans are so good at stimulating the immune system because they're signaling our ancestral immune system that a fungus is among us, and it poses a pathogenic challenge.

So all mushrooms has the same quality.

Will Falconer, DVM: Let me, lemme just make sure I'm understanding this. The immune function is boosted because the organism, the mammal, is seeing the mushroom as potentially a threat? Interesting.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yes, exactly. Yeah. There's almost a little bit of homeopathy in that, isn't there when you think about some hor, some hormesis.

Yeah. And so that's, and so not only that, what we've also learned is that you can actually, just like you train a muscle Yes. You can train the immune system, and by taking the beta glucans daily for a long period of time, your immune system becomes stronger. Even if you stop using the mushroom for a week or two or a month, your immune system still has that memory.

Now it's best to keep at it, of course[00:18:00] depending know, cuz life is full of many challenges, especially immune challenges. But it's, yeah. This, these are some of the fascinating facts that have just really turned me on about mushrooms that I like to share with people because they are they're, it's more than just a shroom it's more than just a good meal.

It's more than just a medicine. It's really an integral part of our planet.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah. I was mentioning in my email to you that Paul Stamets, who I'm sure you've run into, is this stomper around the woods, mycologist in the northwest, and he's brought to light the fact that forests, entire forest communicate by the mycelium that are running through the soil for miles between these trees. How fascinating is that?

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah. I have, we have to credit Paul really, he's a visionary and he really has brought the value of mushrooms to the entire planet. I don't know if you've, I think I saw his [00:19:00] film on there. Yeah, it's a, where you are in India. Yes. Did you see? Yeah. "Fantastic Fungi." Terrific. He's really a mover shaker.

I look forward someday to actually meet him in person. He's truly one of those people that you'd like. I'd like to have that experience.

Will Falconer, DVM: So how interesting that we've got, like you say, the parallels with homeopathy are there. We've got poisons that are some of our greatest homeopathic remedies, mercury, and the toxins from a the bushmaster snake called Lachesis, that cure deep-seated diseases.

And the fungi also have these bad actors who will kill you one bite. If you don't, if you don't know your mushroom picking and you pick something that's wrong you're gonna be in trouble.

Rob Silver, DVM: One of the questions you asked me in your email was about foraging wild mushrooms and I have to say and feeding them to your pet. [00:20:00] I have to say I, I strongly recommend against that. I think unless really know what you're doing.

And there's a whole movement now, at least here in North America there's, it's like a hobby. People get together and they do mushroom foraging. They meet on a weekend at some park somewhere, and they go with an expert who identifies the mushrooms and they gather and they collect the edible mushrooms and take them home and have a big meal with them. So it's a whole thing, mushroom foraging and you really need to know what you're picking before you ingest it.

That's why I think for daily use, not for culinary use but for daily use to improve your immune system function, improve other functions within the body as a standardized superfood, I think you're really better off using mushrooms that have been, ide have been commercially identified and processed to extract their good qualities and have been packaged in a way that makes it consistent, dose to [00:21:00] dose. Every day you're taking a similar amount, which would be an effective amount.

Will Falconer, DVM: That makes perfect sense.

Rob Silver, DVM: If you're gonna find wild mushrooms, remember, mushrooms are 90% water. So just imagine how many mushrooms you have to eat to get a therapeutic amount of beta glucans.

And cause you're you, you can't, you really shouldn't eat mushrooms raw. Some mushrooms have mildly toxic principles that once they're cooked, the toxic principle is gone. Plus, unless you cook the mushroom at least 15 minutes and more likely an hour and. Putting 'em in soups and stews is the better way to do it and cutting them down into smaller pieces so they're more digestible.

But you really need to cook the mushroom and get it to break down that cell wall so you can access all the good that's in it, and I think eating mushrooms is great. If you know what you're doing, recommend it. mushrooms, If you know what [00:22:00] you're doing.

The fiber in mushrooms is really healthy for the microbiome, which everyone's talking about these days is being the center of our soul, the center of our health and that's because the beta glucans, which are non-digestible, turn out to be food for the microbiome.

As well as another fiber source in mushrooms that's called chitin. We're familiar with chitin cuz that makes the hard exoskeleton in crustaceans like crabs and lobsters, uhhuh, and it's a source of glucosamine. But if you've ever chew if you ever eaten a mushroom, a real mushroom, I'm sure you have.

They get a little slimy when you chew on 'em, and some people hate that. I understand that. But the sliminess is actually your saliva and you're chewing bringing out the chitin, because chitin is a precursor to glucosamine and glucosamine is slippery, and so it's the chitin actually that when you eat it, it gets digested by your bowel bacteria, [00:23:00] which convert it to a form of glucosamine called N- acetyl D glucosamine, which is one nutraceutical we look at using for things like colitis, Crohn's, I B D, ulcerative colitis. There's some studies showing it's very supportive of the inflamed connective tissue in the bowel, so it helps to restore integrity, helps to reduce leaky gut. And it's there, right there in mushrooms, so that's a good reason to eat an edible mushroom.

Once it's been properly identified, because it does have good benefit for the microbiome.

Will Falconer, DVM: It reminds me, I'm gonna grab some button mushrooms here. We've got 'em available to us, and just add 'em back into my diet. It's been a while and gut issues have been a challenge for me. The wrong side of mycology has been candida for a lot of people, myself included overgrowth of candida in the gut.

So that, that reminds me to go get back on some mushrooms.

Rob Silver, DVM: Okay. That brings up two things. [00:24:00] First of all, at first I kind laughed at button mushrooms, right? I'm learning about these really exotic mushrooms like Maitake and Reishi and Cordyceps, God, it grows in caterpillars. Turns out, button mushrooms are just as healing and healthy and medicinal as any other mushroom.

In some cases, maybe even better. They're known to have a special antioxidant that's unique to mushrooms, similar to glutathione called Ergothioneine and then and so yeah. So I definitely encourage you to eat those button mushrooms. And when the button mushrooms get bigger, they crimini when they get even bigger, they call 'em portobello.

All that species of Agraricus bisporus yeah, that's something. Yeah. And there's probably about five or six different species of the Agaricus, all of which are very similar, all of which are very healthy.

But you also asked me a question on your email that I thought would be fun to answer because it also speaks to homeopathy and the microdose. Like cures [00:25:00] like, right?

Yep. That's in homeopathy. If you have a fungal infection or a candida overgrowth,

Will Falconer, DVM: Ah, I know where you're going…, what would you treat with? Mushrooms are gonna be a big help for that, aren't they?

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah they are cuz they're gonna support the microbiome, which is crucial in terms of reversing candida.

They're going to stimulate all the dendritic and immune cells in the bowel to get activated to deal with pathogens. I don't, I'm not saying a mushroom alone is gonna solve your problem because there's probably some intrinsic issues with your own system that are part of this, plus the environment you're in may keep feeding it for all I know.

But it's certainly a good place to start. Yeah, cool. I think looking at those things.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah it's it makes perfect sense to me. And I know people have done various is it mushrooms or is it. , there's some beneficial that are common in people. [00:26:00] There's whole hosts of places like on Reddit that people are fighting candida, lifelong candida.

Luckily I've got it pretty well in control. Yeah. But it hasn't helped in India, I'll get periodically Giardia and that just throws everything off kilter. And then the bowel population changes and I get an overgrowth of candida, probably secondary to that sometimes. So that's very prevalent here. So I have to watch myself.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah, I'm sorry. There's nothing worse than those kinds of GI issues. I have my own sensitive stomach and I'm in a fairly a different kind of place, but I still, there still are certain foods that just set me off, yeah. I think it's more digestive function and maybe enzymes versus pathogen.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, that makes sense as well.

Rob, one of the, one of the things that I think people need to hear about is that, How have you pursued getting these things into [00:27:00] animals and getting them into a titered dose and I think you've associated with a Canadian company that I want to hear about.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah let me tell you what I've been doing about that. Thank you for asking that question. Yeah, so I'm working as Chief Veterinary Officer for a Canadian company called Real Mushrooms, and they are cultivators of U S D A certified organic mushrooms. They grow them in China, but under those standards. They extract them and they purify them.

And then they package them into into capsules and bulk pouches. And they've been selling them for humans for the last eight years. About a year and a half ago, two years ago, I approached them and suggested they hire me and let me create a pet product line with mushrooms and they agreed they've, my reputation preceded me.

Cool. And they were really excited about that. So it's slow going. [00:28:00] What I've done initially was take their products, they had encapsulated for human use in 500 milligram capsules and reduce them to 300 milligram capsules and label them for pets, dosing for pets.

I've made two different soft chews. One that uses the calming properties of mushrooms, blended with tryptophan and calming herbs. We call it Relaxed Mushroom Chews. They work really well to help settle the animal work even better when you combine them with CBD. And then we made another one called Mushroom Immune Juice that has five different mushrooms.

But I'm on I'm in the process of developing more products. I've got one coming out soon that's gonna be like a daily topper for dogs, food that has a little bit of everything including probiotics and prebiotics and postbiotics.

What I think I really brought to this company was an algorithm for dosing their mushrooms. And this was derived from some work I had done early on with beta glucans. I worked with the [00:29:00] beta-Glucan chemist when I originally worked with the company RX Vitamins, with their Beta Glucan product. He let me know that when you dose for beta glucans, that there's basically three different dosing tiers that you use.

You use a very low dosing tier if it's just everyday superfood wellness type of a dosage. You use a moderate level when you're dealing with more moderate conditions, let's say we wanna use Lion's Mane for memory. Let's say we wanna take Cordyceps for energy. Let's say we wanna take Reishi to kinda settle and ground us to meditate. We'd use this moderate level.

And then when you get to the bigger need like cancer, then it's the severe level.

So those numbers using kilograms would be 2.5 mgs per kg per day of beta glucans for wellness. Five mgs per kg per day of beta glucans for moderate need, and then basically for cancer, 10 to 30 [00:30:00] mgs per kg per day of beta .

What's unique though about Real Mushrooms,, this company, is that every single product they standardize and they put on the label what their beta glucan content is, and they standardize them. So the bottles they're producing this year have the same potency as the bottles are gonna produce next year.

So it's like the perfect product for a practitioner to use if he's trying to dose it in patients. And it's also the perfect product for a person to use for their pet or for themselves because it's consistent. That's so consistent from one bottle. Next.

Will Falconer, DVM: The CBD world was the opposite of that. It is probably still is.

You were close to that. There was the Wild West in terms of what you got in the bottle. It could say one thing and have something completely different. No standards, yada. Yeah, so I love this approach.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah. Yeah. the CBD world is still pretty squirrely. It's, the FDA just refuses to [00:31:00] regulate it, and without regulation, it is the wild west.

Absolutely. And I'm not keen on regulation, but I think, yeah, they need some boundaries out there.

So mushrooms, they're legal, unless we're talking about psilocybin and psilocybin, we're starting to see actually legalized in certain municipalities. I'm in Colorado, it's actually decriminalized in Colorado. It's been decriminalized in Oregon and Washington state.

So we're starting to see a lot of initiatives towards looking at how we can use the psilocybin medicinally, cuz they found this really seems to be good for generalized anxiety for severe depression, for PTSD, for conditions like that.

We have no idea what effect it would have on our animals.

Yeah. I'm a little nervous about trying it. My own dog Ollie has, he's a rescue dog. He's got bad ptsd. I considered trying it on him. I'm just, I don't know. I'm right. Above all, do no harm so I'm wait to hear someone else.

Will Falconer, DVM: You're, it's gonna be the researcher on that one, I think.

I know [00:32:00] the little bit I've read about it, they're using micro doses in these people, that they're trying to help humans with PTSD, et cetera, et cetera. Just tiny doses. So I wonder if it's even lower than the scale that you mentioned for this particular mushroom,

Rob Silver, DVM: I'm sure it's is. I'm actually cultivating it myself here in the house, but I'm having problems with the cultivation and keep getting contamination and I don't have a kinda a standardized grow that I can feel comfortable with. So I'm working on that first, try to create know, something that's standardized, but yeah, Ollie will probably experience it.

And we'll try a low dose daily, see what that does. See if he wags his tail more. He's a Labrador, so they're so needy. At the same time, he has PTSD, so he to be…(lost).

We'll see. He, if I ask him to get up on my bed, he won't get up on my bed, but when I leave the room, he gets up on the bed, yeah. [00:33:00] He's a dog. He's a dog.

Will Falconer, DVM: Where do you think his PTSD came from? Do you know the history?

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah, I do. He was found in Alvin, Texas, which is about 30 miles south of Houston as a stray at three months of age with a dislocated hip and broken leg.

So I don't know what happened, whether it was a big man that kicked him or he went, ran out in the road and got hit by a truck or what the deal is. But whatever it is, indelible mark on his psyche and sweet, sweet. Sweet dog. Yeah. Labs. I'm a lab aholic. He's a great dog, but and with time I'm giving him, I'm treating him with love and lots of love and lots of physical love as well.

Just touching him, rubbing him. He's, he likes the rubs. He's got an FHO in one hip and that's kind sore. That muscle gets sore after a while. So I massage him and he enjoys that and he likes his mushrooms. The Lion's Ma ne and Reishi seem to be a good combo for him, and I've got him on my CBD formula.

[00:34:00] Cool. So he's a happy camper even though he's, even though he's got some stress in him.

Will Falconer, DVM: Holler If I can help him with homeopathy. There, there comes a remedy to mind just talking about him. Is he a real sensitive guy? Does he know when a thunderstorm is coming way before you do? Yeah. You might read up on phosphorus. Ah-huh. Ah-huh. He doesn't even like the wind. Yeah. Read. Read phosphorus. Oh, okay. Is that also for. Yeah thunder, phobia. Car rides are difficult for 'em. They sometimes get nauseous in the car. There's just the most sensitive of the animals, they know our emotions. The phosphorous cats in my clinic my clinic was just a more of a visiting office, and then I had remedies in the back. And I'd be taking the history of the cat and I'd finally go, "Ah, I know the remedy I'm gonna give this cat." And the cat was out and about and as soon as I had that thought, this cat would go behind the bookcase in the furthest corner that it could [00:35:00] get into and hide before I even got up outta my chair to get the remedy.

And I went, ah, that's confirmation. This guy, this is a phosphorus kitty. He knew my intention before I even executed.

Rob Silver, DVM: What potency would you use, 30C,?

No, he's probably, he's a fairly hale and healthy guy. How old is he? He's 10. Okay. I probably give a 200 C single dose. Yeah. See where you go. Okay.

Yeah. And let me know. I'm always happy to hear outcomes and moderate things if I need to.

Now that we've connected, you're stuck with me.

Will Falconer, DVM: That's great.

Rob Silver, DVM: You'll be hearing more from me.

Will Falconer, DVM: How do people find you, Dr. Rob, on, on online and et cetera? Yeah. Tell us how to locate you.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah, I forgot to mention all that. Yeah. [00:36:00] I have a website where I sell stuff like Real Mushrooms and my CBD products.

It's called WellPetDispensary.com. Just like it sounds, Well Pet Dispensary, all one word. If people are interested in going to real mushrooms directly, and we have a lot. There, there's so much. We're very education strong as a company and so we have a whole bunch of information on the website free, just available for people to learn.

And if they sign up and we also have all these educational emails we send out with information about, cause there's so many mushrooms, there's so little time. So that website is RealMushrooms.com. So the two websites people would need to know if you want, if someone wants to reach out to me personally, they can go to the Well Pet Dispensary website and use a contact form.

And I, I do customer service, not for orders, but for questions about their pet's problems and whether a product might be appropriate for that pet or whether it might interact with something else they're on. [00:37:00] So I'm pretty good with getting back to people if someone to reach out to

Will Falconer, DVM: Great, Rob, it's a big service.

I appreciate that. It's been a really interesting discussion and glad we'll have contacts in the show notes for the, for this episode certainly where people can just click on link and get to you, but really good to know what you're up to.

Again, thanks very much Dr. Rob Silver for joining us today. And we will be in touch and we know how people now can find you. If you have questions for Dr. Rob, you can contact him via his site. WellPetDispensary.com

Rob Silver, DVM: RealMushrooms.com ,so those are the two websites where you can find me one way or the other.

All right, that's a wrap and until next time we're gonna say goodbye for now. Yeah. And do keep touch. We've got show notes for you, we've got links for you, and we'll look for you next time. Thanks for attending.

Thank you.[00:38:00]