The Natural Path to a Healthier Cat: Gut Health, Nutrition, and Wellness | The Feline Wellness Summit With Dr. Katie Woodley

 Welcome to the cat dad show. My name is Scott Colby. And did you know that a cat's gut health can be optimized naturally? Well, I'm going to be talking about that in this clip of my interview with Dr. Katie Woodley. She's the natural pet doctor and an integrative veterinarian. She was a guest as part of my feline wellness summit.

And in this clip, we talk about. how gut health is such a hot topic for humans these days, but we know that most people don't think about gut health for cats. So she talks about how gut health is so critical for cats. And what are the first signs that their gut might not be in great shape?

Again, this is a clip of my interview with Dr. Katie Woodley. She was a guest at the feline wellness summit. If you want to hear the entire interview, as well as interviews with 20 other feline wellness experts, just go to feline wellness summit. com and you can grab a free ticket. But for now, enjoy that clip.

Yeah, this is a great question because, you know, I found and I experienced personally myself at, as a vet, at the beginning of my career, telling pet, like, cat parents, like, oh, a bit of vomiting's normal, right? Like, cats vomit, that's just what they do. But in reality, it's not. Like, hairballs, vomiting, those are not normal behaviors.

And so we've kind of taken this symptom and turned it into a normal when in reality it's a common symptom and it's completely abnormal. So this is where it's missed a lot because it's dismissed.

Common Gut Health Issues and Symptoms

And the reason why gut health is very important is that it's central to a lot of other things. systems in the body.

So when we think about gut health, a lot of times we're just thinking about, okay, it's like poop and digestion, right? Like we eat food, we digest it, and then we poop out what we don't need, right? Like that very simplistic form. And so we have it a little bit wrong because it's doing a lot more than that.

Yes, digestion is really important, but we also too, with cats, a lot of us, are feeding species inappropriate diets where cats are obligate carnivores. They don't have a physical requirement for carbohydrates. And so we kind of get it wrong from the beginning essentially. And we're kind of setting them off on the wrong path for potentially the rest of their life.

And some cats, they never experienced any health issues, which is fantastic. But a lot of the like cat parents I work with and what I hear and see online is that There's a lot of cat parents that are frustrated because we're seeing skin issues. We're seeing vomiting, diarrhea, inflammatory bowel disease.

We're seeing hairballs and they don't know why. And a lot of times. We're not getting to the root imbalance, which is the gut and the gut involves not just digestion. So starting from, you know, the dental structure, do we have dental disease? And then it goes to the stomach. That's going to be like the enzymes.

The stomach acid is the pancreas working. So cats are prone or pancreatitis. And that is a direct connection to the gut health. And then we have the small intestine and the large intestine. And that's going to comprise a lot of what's going on with the microbiome, which is trillions of different types of microorganisms that should all be working together.

There should be a lot of diversity. We shouldn't have overgrowth of bad bacteria. Um, and we're not looking at that just because there's a. You know, there's not a lot of research out there on the pet side. There's more on the human health side, but that microbiome is really, really key because it's actually speaking to your cat's immune system.

Over 70 percent of the immune system lives in your cat's gut. And that immune system is key for dictating, okay, what gets inactivated like bacteria toxins. It's also going to be communicating with the brain and the nervous system. So that's, you know, we have a lot of cats that are over grooming or have behavior issues and they're being medicated with anti anxiety medications.

And it was actually a gut health problem, but it was just not, it wasn't looked at. And so this is why gut health is so key is because there's a lot of different factors that are impacting a lot of different other areas in the body. And when we better understand how they're all interconnected, then that's really when we can really help our cats achieve optimal health.

Um, and you mentioned skin issues, and I know a couple of my other guests have mentioned skin issues as well, but I haven't really. follow it up. What kind of skin issues are we seeing here?

Yeah. So I work with gut and skin health issues. And so a lot of cats, they're experiencing like they're itching a lot.

They're creating sores. They can also over grooming. So a lot of cats will groom their belly. That could be a urinary tract issue. It could be that their tummy hurts. So it could be a pain thing and it's a self soothing thing. But if they're itchy, they're going to lick a lot. Yeah. So you'll see your cats like walking and they stop and they start licking and you're like, what are they doing or they're over grooming their back or they're, you know, the twitchiness where they're just like super reactive.

They can get ear infections, anal gland problems, hot spots, sores. There could be food sensitivities. These are all typically connected to the gut. Obviously there could be like fleas and parasites that can create itchiness. So you want to rule those things out. But. A lot of the problems that I see, especially chronic skin conditions are going to be related to the gut because that immune system is directly connected.

And if we have an imbalance in the gut microbiome, we have inflammation, that immune system is getting overstimulated and that's leading to inflammation in the rest of the body because there's a direct connection with the circulatory system and blood flow.

Yeah, I want to go back to vomiting.

Yeah. How it's normal.

Um, because actually, so I had two previous cats and who are no longer with us. And one of them, his name was no more. So he would. And then he would often, I mean, it wasn't every time, but it was frequent enough where if the vet asked me, Hey, you know, is there any issues? I said, Oh, no more, you know, he vomits every once in a while after he eats.

So just a little bit of background about my cats for the first, probably 12 years. I only. I didn't know any better. We know now from all of our amazing guests that that's probably not the best choice. Um, so he would throw up somewhat after he ate his meal. Uh, and then later on he actually had to have a couple teeth removed.

So I heard you mentioned dental problems as well. So if I had a vet that said, you know, it's kind of normal for him to, for cats to throw up, you know, maybe they ate too fast. That's kind of like the. phrase that I heard, or maybe I made that up in my head.

No, you probably heard it.

If I had gone to you or another kind of natural pet health, um, veterinarian who, you know, has done extensive research into the gut now, what would you have maybe had me do instead of just kind of ignore it?