An edited transcript of the video is provided below:

We’re going to broach a subject today which everybody’s talking about, it’s all over the internet, it’s the new thing that everybody’s trying to treat their pet with, especially in Encinitas and Carlsbad. And that’s obviously CBD. Think of any disease, and somebody has a cure for it with CBD. What I want to talk about today is what is the science actually say about it, and fortunately we’ve had two papers recently published about CBD for various diseases in dogs. I want to go through that, let us know what those papers found, because that might direct the use of this drug.

Now, the two papers that were published, one was on osteoarthritis in dogs. The other one was on seizures in dogs. The arthritis paper found that the owners saw an improvement in their dogs, when they received CBD, in conjunction with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. The veterinarians didn’t notice an improvement when they did their exam, but the owners felt like their dogs got better. So that’s good. The seizure paper found possibly a dose dependent reduction in seizures, so as the dose got higher in certain dogs, their seizure frequency decreased. But it didn’t meet the threshold for truly reducing seizure numbers. The reason why that paper may not have found any benefit, or much of a benefit, is because this sample size was so small, it’s nearly impossible to make any conclusions. There was less than 10 dogs in each group, and you can’t really make major conclusions off of such a small sample size. So, you can’t tell yet, whether or not there’s a major benefit for arthritis, or a major benefit for seizure reduction.

But then the other question comes in is is it beneficial or the 2nd question is is it safe, and that’s where a lot of interesting results actually came out, because in both papers, they found that dogs that were receiving CBD, their liver values started increasing. And as soon as they stopped the drugs, the liver values went back down to normal. Now we don’t know if this will eventually cause liver failure in dogs, or if it’ll cause liver damage that would require any treatments, or what the ultimate outcome is. It’s still too early and they didn’t biopsy the livers to find that out. But it isn’t necessarily safe. We know that it’s causing adverse effects. And that’s kind of the fallacy of natural medicine, you know, quote unquote. Just because it’s natural doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe. It just means a lot of times it hasn’t been studied. And then once you start to study it, you figure out that oh yeah, this stuff either doesn’t work, or it has side effects to it. That’s one of my favorite saying from vet school, is if it’s going to have an effect, it’s going to have a side effect.

So CBD may or may not be safe. Plus the other side that they found in the seizure paper was that two dogs actually became ataxic, meaning that they got wobbly when they were getting the CBD. CBD shouldn’t cause that in dogs, as far as we know so far. So it may be that the CBD formulation that those dogs were receiving also had THC in it, and dogs are extremely sensitive to THC, so never give your dogs THC. So, that’s the other problem with CBD, is that it’s not controlled, and that there are so many different companies making it, we don’t really know what’s going in it. There’s lots of papers that have been published on the human side that found that when they actually analyzed CBD samples, or even THC samples, that they are mislabeled left and right. Some have more THC in them, some have less than what is on the label. And the purity of these samples are a real problem. So, that’s the difficulty with using these medications that aren’t regulated, haven’t been tested, and are still figuring out what the use is, and what the side effects of them are as well.

So if your pet has a problem, if they have arthritis, if they have seizures, if they have anything that you’re trying to treat with CBD, please bring them in. Let’s talk about treatments that we know will work, and can be safe, and at least have a conversation about potentially some of the side effects of the other medications that you’re giving, which we don’t necessarily know if they’re going to work, and if they’re going to have a side effect. If you have questions about that, give us a call, we have Encinitas veterinarians and Carlsbad veterinarians available for appointments.

I hope that shed a little bit of light on the current status of CBD. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of comments about that, so we’ll keep you updated as more of these papers come in. Thank you for watching, take care.