May 11, 2023 • 27 mins
Dietary Choline for Lactating Dams
In this episode, Jane is joined by Magda Chiarella to review dietary supplements and food sources that can help prevent mastitis in lactating dams. Although sunflower lecithin is often recommended, sunflower lecithin has some potentially serious side effects and there are many far superior dietary sources of the active ingredient in sunflower lecithin, which is choline – phosphatidylcholine, to be exact.
Visit our website, madcapradio.com for further reading and studies referenced in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm JaneMessineo Lindquist and this is Madcap
Radio.
Today, I'm joined by my good friend,
fellow dog breeder and nutritionguru Magda Chiarella.
(00:22):
We're going to be discussing the prosand cons of giving sunflower
lecithin to your lactating bitchesto help prevent mastitis.
This is a fabulous episode,
but it is a bit of a deep dive.
So before we jumpin, I'm going to give you
our conclusionsand recommendations up front.
(00:44):
And then if you're interestedin the science behind our reasoning,
listen on.
So here we go.
Although it's possiblethat sunflower lecithin
might help prevent some kinds of mastitis,
we do not give it to our bitches,
nor do we recommend its use.
(01:07):
The reason for this is twofold.
First of all, lecithin
has some potentially severegastrointestinal side effects.
Things like nausea,diarrhea and general stomach upset.
And you know, you'reintroducing these side effects at a time
when it's often a challengeto get bitches to eat at all.
(01:31):
And then that can snowball and cause
your bitch to become hypoglycemic,meaning to say
she can get low blood sugar,she can become dehydrated,
she can become nutritionally deficientin certain really important things
that can cause disordersthat are as bad or worse than mastitis.
(01:52):
So again, yes, while
sunflower lecithin potentiallycould help prevent some kinds of mastitis,
in this case,the cure might be worse than the disease.
Second, the good news
is you have much better dietary sources
(02:13):
of the active ingredient in sunflowerlecithin.
It's not lecithin
per say that helps prevent mastitis.
It's choline.
And choline is just onecomponent of lecithin.
There are much betterand more bioavailable
food sources of cholinethan sunflower lecithin,
(02:37):
and they don't have those bad sideeffects.
The standard recommendationfor a medium size
bitch is to give 1200 milligramsof sunflower lecithin per day.
You could get the same amount of cholinethat you're getting
from that 1200 milligrams of sunflower
lecithin from any of the following:
(02:59):
one egg yolk or
one and a half ounces of beef liver
or three ounces of beef muscle meat,
or onefifth of one batch of mother's pudding.
What you can begin to see isif you're already feeding your dog
a whole food diet.
They are getting tons of choline,
(03:21):
much more than you could ever hopeto give them through sunflower lecithin.
And it's coming in a formthat's nutritious, comforting,
and actually contributingto the well-being of your bitches
rather than making them feel terrible.
So our recommendation isif you are feeding a whole food diet,
(03:41):
continue doing so, maybe adding
an extra egg yolk or an extraserving of mother's pudding.
just to turbo boost that choline intake.
Now, if
you're not feeding a whole food diet,
then our recommendation is to supplement
with the small amountof these kinds of whole foods:
(04:02):
an egg yolk, some mother’s pudding,a little bit of cooked beef liver,
any of these will have a choline punch
equivalent or far exceedingsunflower lecithin.
So that's it
in a nutshell.
If you want to hear more about mastitis,what causes it and why, we think
(04:26):
scientifically choline may be ableto prevent certain kinds of mastitis,
listen on.
Welcome to Madcap Radio.
Today I'm joined by MagdaChiarella of Dig-N-Pop Norwich Terriers.
(04:51):
Magda, welcome and thank you for coming.
Hi, Jane. I'm very happy to be here.
I think it's safe to say, Magda,that mastitis has been on our radar
as dog breedersand as educators for a long time.
It has.
When you think of the worst casescenarios,
(05:11):
you know, you can lose the dam.
You can lose the dam.
Speaking of people losing their dams,
there was somebody on the Puppy CultureDiscussion Group recently
who very
unfortunately did lose her damto mastitis.
And the conversation
(05:33):
rose up around itabout things that you can do.
And somebody said, well,I give 1200 milligrams
a day of lecithin.
This is something that's borrowedfrom the human
body of knowledge on breastfeeding.
The human breastfeeding advocacy groups
(05:54):
talk about using lecithin as a supplement,
and the argument is that it makes milkless sticky.
And lesssticky milk would prevent blockages
that might lead to mastitis.
Okay.
So before we go any further,I think we need to talk a little bit
(06:15):
about what mastitis iswhen we're on the topic of the
lecithin supplementation,we're speaking about
a very specific sequence of eventsthat we're trying to address.
Exactly.
So one of my co-owners is a OBGYN
and her brother actuallyis a lactation M.D.
(06:37):
so he was a great resource for this.
And the way he described it is, well,first of all, the actual milk is up
in the body, like in those ducts up there,like close to the body
and then coming down from therehe said, it's like crape myrtle.
It's just it's not like a clean four lanehighway.
It's like all these interlaced branches of
(06:59):
of delicate ducts just coming down.
Right. So
what happens is
it's very easyand they do expand and contract a lot.
So it's very easy for one to get just
a little bit too
expandedand then sort of get caught or hooked.
(07:23):
Oh, or his,he put it to embarrass another one
so that it prevents it from
emptying.
And when that happens,then the milk starts backing up in there.
And if you're lucky, you can feel itand you can do compresses and work it out.
If you're not lucky or you don'tfeel for it and you don't find it,
(07:48):
it can now start harboringinfection, right?
And infection can come from, it'sin the air., it's on the puppies toenails.
It's everywhere.
I mean, it's naturally occurringin the environment that the animal is in.
But the point is, the more you can keepthe milk flowing through
and not have any of those back ups, your,
(08:11):
you know, gaming the system in your favor.
Right.
You're you're lowering the chances.
It's not the only waythat they can get mastitis.
It's not a guarantee that she won't.
But by keeping that milk flowing,
you are
improving your chancesof avoiding that kind of mastitis.
(08:31):
Is that a fair way of describing it?
I think it is.
And we should maybe
clarify that mastitis
can have other underlying reasons,
but one of them is blocked milk duct.
Right.
And we're only addressing that with thisand also that mastitis, you know,
(08:53):
there's a I think they call it milk
stiasus or something in humanswhere it's actually just,
okay, there's a blocked ductand it's inflammation, right?
Then it gets blocked.
It gets inflamed and then it getsmore inflamed because it's blocked.
It gets more blocked.
More inflamed, and that's a problem.
(09:13):
Then there's actually having an infection.
Mm hmm. Which is a separate issue.
And then it can go septic,it can go into gangrenous,
like the tissue can actually die.
And that's where you seethose really dramatic, you know,
bitches losing half a breast,all turning black and everything.
So what we're talking aboutis can we avoid this dramatic
(09:37):
insult, you know,
where we have this resultfrom a blocked milk duct?
And will lecithin help?
Reduce the possibility of that happening?
My question is, should I begiving lecithin to my my bitches?
I mean, am I missing out on something?
(09:58):
And so to back intowhether I should be or shouldn't be,
what would the function of giving it be?
And the function of givingit would be purportedly to thin down
the milk, make it less sticky,and make it flow easier
so it's less likely to cause a back up,
which would cause a blocked duct,
(10:20):
which then would be more likelyto be like a petri dish for infection.
Is that fair to say?
As far as what they say,how they say it works,
right?
I just want to talk aboutwhether we feel lecithin
(10:43):
actually can help
prevent mastitisbased on the research. And
we could actually find
a lot of well,we found no human citations,
nothing in the human or in dogs, really,
other than anecdotal.
(11:05):
The National Institute of Health, I think
does like a yearly survey of lecithin.
I did find that and and it's use
in this context and they said, no,there's no evidence that it works.
It doesn't mean it doesn't,but nobody's proven it.
So there's in some no evidence that
(11:27):
lecithin actually
does have this effect on milk,or at least no, I should say
studied in, studies that prove it.
That doesn't mean it's not true.
There's just no studies that prove it,which is a very different thing.
And it's one of those thingswhere it seems to make sense,
but we really couldn'tfind any studies on it.
(11:51):
But this is interesting.
In the course of
looking for studiesor cross-referencing all these websites,
I did find one breastfeeding advocacycoach
(12:13):
that said, you know, it's not lecithin
that you need, it's choline.
And that's exactly right, because ...
What is choline?
Choline is something that is withinlecithin.
It's one of its components,but lecithin and choline
are not exactly the same.
(12:35):
Choline, is what you were describingeverything you said
that lecithin might be doing, that,you know, emulsifying effect of making.
Yeah, exactly.
Perhaps choline that's one of thesecomponents of lecithin.
And actually there are studies that
show choline specifically cholineto be effective for prevent
(12:58):
not for reducing incidences of mastitis.
In cows. In cows.
And we had to go to the money animals.
We had to go to cows.
There's nothing in humans, right?
Nothing in dogs, right. Anecdotal right.
And Magda has an anecdotalthat I'll share in a little while, but
(13:18):
so choline
we did find this one retrospective studythat talked about it
and they did find that choline reduced,among other things, they were.
Giving dietary choline to cows.
And those cowsthat, you know, upped their,
intake of choline had much less
(13:41):
often mastitis.
And they did say in the study thatthey don't know for sure why it works.
They know it works.They don't know for sure why.
Well, they had a couple of guesses,the hypothesis.
So one of them was that choline is known
(14:01):
to bind with cytokines.
Cytokinesare these messengers of infection.
So cytokines. Inflammation or.
Cytokineskind of tell the body to inflame.
Interesting.
Basically tell cytokines are messengers.
So cytokines are these proteinsignaling proteins.
(14:22):
That's what they are andthey tell the body there is an infection.
You know, in aisle five herethere is an infection in the rest ...
left breast and the body rushes to createinflammatory response.
Okay.
So now just walking it backto remember our description
(14:43):
of what we were talking aboutwith how mastitis happens.
You can block the ductby putting pressure, it blows.
Inflammation causes the it can causeembarrassment of one of the other ducts.
Right.
One can just swell right over and so.
Mechanically. Mechanically close it.
(15:04):
So that's one of the possible.
Cytokinestakes those pro-inflammatory things out.
Exactly.
So those screaming proteins sayinginflame, inflame,
which is not a good thing for a lactating
individual.
Interesting. Okay, so that's one way.
And then what what else did they and.
(15:24):
Another way is that basic
chemical binding
of choline with lipids, lipids are fats.
So fats within milk will be transported
along smoothly out. Right.
So in other words, in some,
(15:47):
reduces inflammationand makes the milk thinner and slippery.
Exactly. Yeah, basically.
So they don't it hasn't been proven.
They don't know for sure that that'swhere they then test the milk to know
if that's but that's their hypothesisand it's a pretty good one.
I thought it was interestingthat they also use choline
for gallbladder disease,because that's something in dogs
(16:08):
that sticky, Auggie had that,they can get a sludgy bile duct.
And so I guess it helps thin it out.
I think we just have to talka little bit about the
just in lay terms about the mechanics of
(16:29):
of what lecithin and choline
more specifically do, which which is thatthey're what we call emulsifiers.
Right.
And that means they can bind both to waterand to fats.
Well,there are different kinds of choline.
Okay.
So the body produces
(16:49):
phosphatidylcholine, and acetylcholine.
And one binds to lipids,
fats, and the other one to watersoluble is water soluble.
So acetylcholine is something
that actually affects even brainand some other tissues.
(17:11):
Okay.
While Phosphatidylcholine
binds with fatsand helps to transport them.
So like when you get your salad dressing
and you know you're preparedsalad dressing has lecithin in it.
Is it having both types of cholinethat allows it to?
It does.
It does.
But what we are interested in that PC,phosphatidylcholine,
(17:37):
that's the choline that binds to fat.
And as a fun, fun fact, it's also what's
injected in cosmetic proceduresthat melts the fat.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. So.
So there really could be something to itas far as making the milk thinner,
less sticky, right flow easier, right.
(17:59):
So, Magda that that brings us
to the $20,000 questionand the $20,000 question is,
should I
be giving and recommendingthat people give lecithin
to their lactating bitches.
Lecithin has a potentialof being beneficial.
(18:23):
However,it has some undesirable side effects. Oh.
Some severe cramps, digestive issues,
nausea, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.
So it's not a benign supplement.
In fact, this unfortunate breederthat lost her bitch that wrote in
(18:47):
said she had tried lecithinand it made her bitch throw up.
And I think it's worthjust mentioning here that especially in
the first few days, you can have anorexiain your bitches anyway.
I mean, they cannot want to eat.
So adding lecithin.
Yeah, right. You know.
Well, so what do we do?
(19:10):
We should consider
going straight to the source,going to sources of choline.
Okay.
Choline is a natural compound,
and there are natural foodsthat are very high in choline.
Right?
I mean, is that as good, though,as, you know, getting that 1200
(19:31):
milligrams of lecithin?
I mean, can you really get it from food?
In my opinion, it's much better.
Choline.
in natural form existsin high concentrations
in foods that dogs easily absorb
(19:54):
like eggs, interesting, liver, beef,
fish, everything that dogs readily eat.
Choline is very
bioavailable from those sourcesand obviously
there is no stomach upset with eating what
the stomach is designed to eat.
(20:25):
Okay.
So I'm going to kind of like closethe circle here a little bit
on this particular thingbecause I, I found the same thing as you,
which is that, in fact,and we're going to talk about the numbers
- eggs, liver, beef, have has
much more potentially benefit in terms of
just the amount of cholineand the bioavailability of choline.
(20:49):
So why then are
women told to take sunflower lecithin?
And the answer iswhat they say is modern lifestyles.
I mean, women are afraid of eating
fatty foods who were on thesethis whole low fat thing.
They won't eat egg yolks
(21:10):
because they're worried aboutthe calorie content and the cholesterol.
And I'm just going to throwit out there, unless you have
a specific
sensitivity to dietary cholesterol,the cholesterol in eggs
are not going to raiseyour cholesterol. But
the point is there was so much resistance
(21:30):
and just unwillingness of,
I was going to say breeding females,
you know,women of childbearing age to eat a diet
that was sufficient in in cholinethat the medical
and national health establishmentjust sort of threw up its hands
and says, here, just take a pill.
(21:51):
I mean, please just take a pill.
But, you know, it's dog breeders.
Our dogs aren't worried about their bodyimage, are they?
If I think of an obstetrician telling
a lactating mother,please eat some beef liver.
Right? Right.
And if I think, you know, as a contrastingto that as me offering beef liver
(22:15):
to my girls lactating you know bitches
that's a very different response.
We're going to talk aboutsome different sources.
Well, you mentioned thatthe whole discussion started with somebody
(22:38):
posting online that they are giving 1200
milligrams of lecithin to their Labrador.
I believe it was a lab. Right.
So a medium sized dog gets1200 milligrams of lecithin.
So let's back up a little bit.
Lecithin has a few components,
(23:00):
choline being only 13% of.
Oh interesting. What lecithin is.
So not not that much in there.
Not that much.
Probably cheap and easy to manufacture,though.
Right? Right.
So let's compare it to an egg yolk.
Okay?
An egg yolk has on average 115
(23:21):
to 120 milligrams of choline.
So just to put it in context,
1200 milligrams a day, 13% of that
of the lecithin is 100.
That would equal 156milligrams of choline.
So you got 156 milligrams of choline
(23:42):
versus 115 and one egg yolk.
Wow. That brings us right back to mother'spudding, doesn't it?
It sure does. Right.
So we are typically feeding
at least two egg yolks
in our mother’s pudding a day to two hourmedium sized batches.
Plus she's getting egg yolks. Right.
(24:04):
So that's a big hit of of truly.
Bioavailable. Choline.
functional functioning.Choline functional.
Choline.
Yeah.
I would like to sharemy personal experience with that.
The only time that I in ten years ofbreeding, had a case of a blocked
(24:31):
milk duct, not mastitis, but you.
Caught it early on. But it's. Early.
It was in a mother in a dam
who would absolutely refuseany drop of mother's pudding.
Oh, that's so interesting.
Study of one, but.
Study of one.
However, out of.
(24:51):
A lot of litters, she was the only one.
She was the only one.
So it fits.
Yeah.
So I just want to recap in closing becausemy question here is very specific was A.
Should I be giving lecithinto my lactating bitches and B.
(25:14):
Should I be recommendingthat people do it?
And I think me personally,we've established
that the diet that we givewith the amount of egg yolks
and mother's pudding and meat and liverand everything, there's no way.
I mean,we are already giving so much choline.
It's crazy. Now,
(25:36):
as far as recommendations,
our first recommendation isif you aren't giving those kinds of food,
you know, add a couple egg yolks,you'll be okay.
In the form of mother's pudding or in
whatever other form you're comfortablewith adding eggs. Yes.
You’re, if you're not familiar
with mother's pudding,we have it on the Puppy Culture website.
(26:00):
I mean, on the discussion group, there's athere's a recipe card there.
We're not going to go deep into it,but it's a it's a postnatal
energy boost food for for dams.
But so okay.
So if you are feeding a natural raw diet
or cooked dietas Magda does, you know, you're good.
(26:20):
You're you're getting of it.
If you're feeding not that kind of diet,but you add, you know, do some add ons.
You're good. Right?
If for any reason you're not going to doeither one of those two things.
I mean, maybe it's a rescue organization.
You know, there could beany number of reasons why this could be.
I mean.
You were lecithinGoing through chemotherapy.
(26:42):
You weren't you were feeding kibble.
And, you know, so we're not judgingwe're not judgy here.
But if you're in that position,definitely adding lecithin,
if your bitch toleratesit, well, could help.
It could help.
It would probably havethose side effects at,
so if you could substitute itwith an egg, do it.
(27:05):
We recommend it. Yeah. Okay.
Thank you, Magda. Thank you, Jane.
It was great.
It was.
I'm JaneMessineo Lindquist and this is Madcap
Radio.
Today, I'm joined by my good friend,
fellow dog breeder and nutritionguru Magda Chiarella.
(00:22):
We're going to be discussing the prosand cons of giving sunflower
lecithin to your lactating bitchesto help prevent mastitis.
This is a fabulous episode,
but it is a bit of a deep dive.
So before we jumpin, I'm going to give you
our conclusionsand recommendations up front.
(00:44):
And then if you're interestedin the science behind our reasoning,
listen on.
So here we go.
Although it's possiblethat sunflower lecithin
might help prevent some kinds of mastitis,
we do not give it to our bitches,
nor do we recommend its use.
(01:07):
The reason for this is twofold.
First of all, lecithin
has some potentially severegastrointestinal side effects.
Things like nausea,diarrhea and general stomach upset.
And you know, you'reintroducing these side effects at a time
when it's often a challengeto get bitches to eat at all.
(01:31):
And then that can snowball and cause
your bitch to become hypoglycemic,meaning to say
she can get low blood sugar,she can become dehydrated,
she can become nutritionally deficientin certain really important things
that can cause disordersthat are as bad or worse than mastitis.
(01:52):
So again, yes, while
sunflower lecithin potentiallycould help prevent some kinds of mastitis,
in this case,the cure might be worse than the disease.
Second, the good news
is you have much better dietary sources
(02:13):
of the active ingredient in sunflowerlecithin.
It's not lecithin
per say that helps prevent mastitis.
It's choline.
And choline is just onecomponent of lecithin.
There are much betterand more bioavailable
food sources of cholinethan sunflower lecithin,
(02:37):
and they don't have those bad sideeffects.
The standard recommendationfor a medium size
bitch is to give 1200 milligramsof sunflower lecithin per day.
You could get the same amount of cholinethat you're getting
from that 1200 milligrams of sunflower
lecithin from any of the following:
(02:59):
one egg yolk or
one and a half ounces of beef liver
or three ounces of beef muscle meat,
or onefifth of one batch of mother's pudding.
What you can begin to see isif you're already feeding your dog
a whole food diet.
They are getting tons of choline,
(03:21):
much more than you could ever hopeto give them through sunflower lecithin.
And it's coming in a formthat's nutritious, comforting,
and actually contributingto the well-being of your bitches
rather than making them feel terrible.
So our recommendation isif you are feeding a whole food diet,
(03:41):
continue doing so, maybe adding
an extra egg yolk or an extraserving of mother's pudding.
just to turbo boost that choline intake.
Now, if
you're not feeding a whole food diet,
then our recommendation is to supplement
with the small amountof these kinds of whole foods:
(04:02):
an egg yolk, some mother’s pudding,a little bit of cooked beef liver,
any of these will have a choline punch
equivalent or far exceedingsunflower lecithin.
So that's it
in a nutshell.
If you want to hear more about mastitis,what causes it and why, we think
(04:26):
scientifically choline may be ableto prevent certain kinds of mastitis,
listen on.
Welcome to Madcap Radio.
Today I'm joined by MagdaChiarella of Dig-N-Pop Norwich Terriers.
(04:51):
Magda, welcome and thank you for coming.
Hi, Jane. I'm very happy to be here.
I think it's safe to say, Magda,that mastitis has been on our radar
as dog breedersand as educators for a long time.
It has.
When you think of the worst casescenarios,
(05:11):
you know, you can lose the dam.
You can lose the dam.
Speaking of people losing their dams,
there was somebody on the Puppy CultureDiscussion Group recently
who very
unfortunately did lose her damto mastitis.
And the conversation
(05:33):
rose up around itabout things that you can do.
And somebody said, well,I give 1200 milligrams
a day of lecithin.
This is something that's borrowedfrom the human
body of knowledge on breastfeeding.
The human breastfeeding advocacy groups
(05:54):
talk about using lecithin as a supplement,
and the argument is that it makes milkless sticky.
And lesssticky milk would prevent blockages
that might lead to mastitis.
Okay.
So before we go any further,I think we need to talk a little bit
(06:15):
about what mastitis iswhen we're on the topic of the
lecithin supplementation,we're speaking about
a very specific sequence of eventsthat we're trying to address.
Exactly.
So one of my co-owners is a OBGYN
and her brother actuallyis a lactation M.D.
(06:37):
so he was a great resource for this.
And the way he described it is, well,first of all, the actual milk is up
in the body, like in those ducts up there,like close to the body
and then coming down from therehe said, it's like crape myrtle.
It's just it's not like a clean four lanehighway.
It's like all these interlaced branches of
(06:59):
of delicate ducts just coming down.
Right. So
what happens is
it's very easyand they do expand and contract a lot.
So it's very easy for one to get just
a little bit too
expandedand then sort of get caught or hooked.
(07:23):
Oh, or his,he put it to embarrass another one
so that it prevents it from
emptying.
And when that happens,then the milk starts backing up in there.
And if you're lucky, you can feel itand you can do compresses and work it out.
If you're not lucky or you don'tfeel for it and you don't find it,
(07:48):
it can now start harboringinfection, right?
And infection can come from, it'sin the air., it's on the puppies toenails.
It's everywhere.
I mean, it's naturally occurringin the environment that the animal is in.
But the point is, the more you can keepthe milk flowing through
and not have any of those back ups, your,
(08:11):
you know, gaming the system in your favor.
Right.
You're you're lowering the chances.
It's not the only waythat they can get mastitis.
It's not a guarantee that she won't.
But by keeping that milk flowing,
you are
improving your chancesof avoiding that kind of mastitis.
(08:31):
Is that a fair way of describing it?
I think it is.
And we should maybe
clarify that mastitis
can have other underlying reasons,
but one of them is blocked milk duct.
Right.
And we're only addressing that with thisand also that mastitis, you know,
(08:53):
there's a I think they call it milk
stiasus or something in humanswhere it's actually just,
okay, there's a blocked ductand it's inflammation, right?
Then it gets blocked.
It gets inflamed and then it getsmore inflamed because it's blocked.
It gets more blocked.
More inflamed, and that's a problem.
(09:13):
Then there's actually having an infection.
Mm hmm. Which is a separate issue.
And then it can go septic,it can go into gangrenous,
like the tissue can actually die.
And that's where you seethose really dramatic, you know,
bitches losing half a breast,all turning black and everything.
So what we're talking aboutis can we avoid this dramatic
(09:37):
insult, you know,
where we have this resultfrom a blocked milk duct?
And will lecithin help?
Reduce the possibility of that happening?
My question is, should I begiving lecithin to my my bitches?
I mean, am I missing out on something?
(09:58):
And so to back intowhether I should be or shouldn't be,
what would the function of giving it be?
And the function of givingit would be purportedly to thin down
the milk, make it less sticky,and make it flow easier
so it's less likely to cause a back up,
which would cause a blocked duct,
(10:20):
which then would be more likelyto be like a petri dish for infection.
Is that fair to say?
As far as what they say,how they say it works,
right?
I just want to talk aboutwhether we feel lecithin
(10:43):
actually can help
prevent mastitisbased on the research. And
we could actually find
a lot of well,we found no human citations,
nothing in the human or in dogs, really,
other than anecdotal.
(11:05):
The National Institute of Health, I think
does like a yearly survey of lecithin.
I did find that and and it's use
in this context and they said, no,there's no evidence that it works.
It doesn't mean it doesn't,but nobody's proven it.
So there's in some no evidence that
(11:27):
lecithin actually
does have this effect on milk,or at least no, I should say
studied in, studies that prove it.
That doesn't mean it's not true.
There's just no studies that prove it,which is a very different thing.
And it's one of those thingswhere it seems to make sense,
but we really couldn'tfind any studies on it.
(11:51):
But this is interesting.
In the course of
looking for studiesor cross-referencing all these websites,
I did find one breastfeeding advocacycoach
(12:13):
that said, you know, it's not lecithin
that you need, it's choline.
And that's exactly right, because ...
What is choline?
Choline is something that is withinlecithin.
It's one of its components,but lecithin and choline
are not exactly the same.
(12:35):
Choline, is what you were describingeverything you said
that lecithin might be doing, that,you know, emulsifying effect of making.
Yeah, exactly.
Perhaps choline that's one of thesecomponents of lecithin.
And actually there are studies that
show choline specifically cholineto be effective for prevent
(12:58):
not for reducing incidences of mastitis.
In cows. In cows.
And we had to go to the money animals.
We had to go to cows.
There's nothing in humans, right?
Nothing in dogs, right. Anecdotal right.
And Magda has an anecdotalthat I'll share in a little while, but
(13:18):
so choline
we did find this one retrospective studythat talked about it
and they did find that choline reduced,among other things, they were.
Giving dietary choline to cows.
And those cowsthat, you know, upped their,
intake of choline had much less
(13:41):
often mastitis.
And they did say in the study thatthey don't know for sure why it works.
They know it works.They don't know for sure why.
Well, they had a couple of guesses,the hypothesis.
So one of them was that choline is known
(14:01):
to bind with cytokines.
Cytokinesare these messengers of infection.
So cytokines. Inflammation or.
Cytokineskind of tell the body to inflame.
Interesting.
Basically tell cytokines are messengers.
So cytokines are these proteinsignaling proteins.
(14:22):
That's what they are andthey tell the body there is an infection.
You know, in aisle five herethere is an infection in the rest ...
left breast and the body rushes to createinflammatory response.
Okay.
So now just walking it backto remember our description
(14:43):
of what we were talking aboutwith how mastitis happens.
You can block the ductby putting pressure, it blows.
Inflammation causes the it can causeembarrassment of one of the other ducts.
Right.
One can just swell right over and so.
Mechanically. Mechanically close it.
(15:04):
So that's one of the possible.
Cytokinestakes those pro-inflammatory things out.
Exactly.
So those screaming proteins sayinginflame, inflame,
which is not a good thing for a lactating
individual.
Interesting. Okay, so that's one way.
And then what what else did they and.
(15:24):
Another way is that basic
chemical binding
of choline with lipids, lipids are fats.
So fats within milk will be transported
along smoothly out. Right.
So in other words, in some,
(15:47):
reduces inflammationand makes the milk thinner and slippery.
Exactly. Yeah, basically.
So they don't it hasn't been proven.
They don't know for sure that that'swhere they then test the milk to know
if that's but that's their hypothesisand it's a pretty good one.
I thought it was interestingthat they also use choline
for gallbladder disease,because that's something in dogs
(16:08):
that sticky, Auggie had that,they can get a sludgy bile duct.
And so I guess it helps thin it out.
I think we just have to talka little bit about the
just in lay terms about the mechanics of
(16:29):
of what lecithin and choline
more specifically do, which which is thatthey're what we call emulsifiers.
Right.
And that means they can bind both to waterand to fats.
Well,there are different kinds of choline.
Okay.
So the body produces
(16:49):
phosphatidylcholine, and acetylcholine.
And one binds to lipids,
fats, and the other one to watersoluble is water soluble.
So acetylcholine is something
that actually affects even brainand some other tissues.
(17:11):
Okay.
While Phosphatidylcholine
binds with fatsand helps to transport them.
So like when you get your salad dressing
and you know you're preparedsalad dressing has lecithin in it.
Is it having both types of cholinethat allows it to?
It does.
It does.
But what we are interested in that PC,phosphatidylcholine,
(17:37):
that's the choline that binds to fat.
And as a fun, fun fact, it's also what's
injected in cosmetic proceduresthat melts the fat.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. So.
So there really could be something to itas far as making the milk thinner,
less sticky, right flow easier, right.
(17:59):
So, Magda that that brings us
to the $20,000 questionand the $20,000 question is,
should I
be giving and recommendingthat people give lecithin
to their lactating bitches.
Lecithin has a potentialof being beneficial.
(18:23):
However,it has some undesirable side effects. Oh.
Some severe cramps, digestive issues,
nausea, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.
So it's not a benign supplement.
In fact, this unfortunate breederthat lost her bitch that wrote in
(18:47):
said she had tried lecithinand it made her bitch throw up.
And I think it's worthjust mentioning here that especially in
the first few days, you can have anorexiain your bitches anyway.
I mean, they cannot want to eat.
So adding lecithin.
Yeah, right. You know.
Well, so what do we do?
(19:10):
We should consider
going straight to the source,going to sources of choline.
Okay.
Choline is a natural compound,
and there are natural foodsthat are very high in choline.
Right?
I mean, is that as good, though,as, you know, getting that 1200
(19:31):
milligrams of lecithin?
I mean, can you really get it from food?
In my opinion, it's much better.
Choline.
in natural form existsin high concentrations
in foods that dogs easily absorb
(19:54):
like eggs, interesting, liver, beef,
fish, everything that dogs readily eat.
Choline is very
bioavailable from those sourcesand obviously
there is no stomach upset with eating what
the stomach is designed to eat.
(20:25):
Okay.
So I'm going to kind of like closethe circle here a little bit
on this particular thingbecause I, I found the same thing as you,
which is that, in fact,and we're going to talk about the numbers
- eggs, liver, beef, have has
much more potentially benefit in terms of
just the amount of cholineand the bioavailability of choline.
(20:49):
So why then are
women told to take sunflower lecithin?
And the answer iswhat they say is modern lifestyles.
I mean, women are afraid of eating
fatty foods who were on thesethis whole low fat thing.
They won't eat egg yolks
(21:10):
because they're worried aboutthe calorie content and the cholesterol.
And I'm just going to throwit out there, unless you have
a specific
sensitivity to dietary cholesterol,the cholesterol in eggs
are not going to raiseyour cholesterol. But
the point is there was so much resistance
(21:30):
and just unwillingness of,
I was going to say breeding females,
you know,women of childbearing age to eat a diet
that was sufficient in in cholinethat the medical
and national health establishmentjust sort of threw up its hands
and says, here, just take a pill.
(21:51):
I mean, please just take a pill.
But, you know, it's dog breeders.
Our dogs aren't worried about their bodyimage, are they?
If I think of an obstetrician telling
a lactating mother,please eat some beef liver.
Right? Right.
And if I think, you know, as a contrastingto that as me offering beef liver
(22:15):
to my girls lactating you know bitches
that's a very different response.
We're going to talk aboutsome different sources.
Well, you mentioned thatthe whole discussion started with somebody
(22:38):
posting online that they are giving 1200
milligrams of lecithin to their Labrador.
I believe it was a lab. Right.
So a medium sized dog gets1200 milligrams of lecithin.
So let's back up a little bit.
Lecithin has a few components,
(23:00):
choline being only 13% of.
Oh interesting. What lecithin is.
So not not that much in there.
Not that much.
Probably cheap and easy to manufacture,though.
Right? Right.
So let's compare it to an egg yolk.
Okay?
An egg yolk has on average 115
(23:21):
to 120 milligrams of choline.
So just to put it in context,
1200 milligrams a day, 13% of that
of the lecithin is 100.
That would equal 156milligrams of choline.
So you got 156 milligrams of choline
(23:42):
versus 115 and one egg yolk.
Wow. That brings us right back to mother'spudding, doesn't it?
It sure does. Right.
So we are typically feeding
at least two egg yolks
in our mother’s pudding a day to two hourmedium sized batches.
Plus she's getting egg yolks. Right.
(24:04):
So that's a big hit of of truly.
Bioavailable. Choline.
functional functioning.Choline functional.
Choline.
Yeah.
I would like to sharemy personal experience with that.
The only time that I in ten years ofbreeding, had a case of a blocked
(24:31):
milk duct, not mastitis, but you.
Caught it early on. But it's. Early.
It was in a mother in a dam
who would absolutely refuseany drop of mother's pudding.
Oh, that's so interesting.
Study of one, but.
Study of one.
However, out of.
(24:51):
A lot of litters, she was the only one.
She was the only one.
So it fits.
Yeah.
So I just want to recap in closing becausemy question here is very specific was A.
Should I be giving lecithinto my lactating bitches and B.
(25:14):
Should I be recommendingthat people do it?
And I think me personally,we've established
that the diet that we givewith the amount of egg yolks
and mother's pudding and meat and liverand everything, there's no way.
I mean,we are already giving so much choline.
It's crazy. Now,
(25:36):
as far as recommendations,
our first recommendation isif you aren't giving those kinds of food,
you know, add a couple egg yolks,you'll be okay.
In the form of mother's pudding or in
whatever other form you're comfortablewith adding eggs. Yes.
You’re, if you're not familiar
with mother's pudding,we have it on the Puppy Culture website.
(26:00):
I mean, on the discussion group, there's athere's a recipe card there.
We're not going to go deep into it,but it's a it's a postnatal
energy boost food for for dams.
But so okay.
So if you are feeding a natural raw diet
or cooked dietas Magda does, you know, you're good.
(26:20):
You're you're getting of it.
If you're feeding not that kind of diet,but you add, you know, do some add ons.
You're good. Right?
If for any reason you're not going to doeither one of those two things.
I mean, maybe it's a rescue organization.
You know, there could beany number of reasons why this could be.
I mean.
You were lecithinGoing through chemotherapy.
(26:42):
You weren't you were feeding kibble.
And, you know, so we're not judgingwe're not judgy here.
But if you're in that position,definitely adding lecithin,
if your bitch toleratesit, well, could help.
It could help.
It would probably havethose side effects at,
so if you could substitute itwith an egg, do it.
(27:05):
We recommend it. Yeah. Okay.
Thank you, Magda. Thank you, Jane.
It was great.
It was.
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