More Vets Smoke Camels #1: How Much Nutrition Do Veterinarians Learn?

Host Jennifer: Well, earlier this week, kind of ironically, I had to take both my girls to the vet. I had a wear some check up some blood work. Uh, so that's is I had a little bit nerve-wracking slash you know, expensive, but it's always an educational experience of either getting schooled on something that I'm doing wrong or learning something new about my dog's body. But it, it was very ironic when later we decided to do this episode on vet and we're gonna lay a lot of educational stuff out there.

So why don't we jump in? Let's kind of explain this series a little bit, cuz we want this to have multiple episodes around it. So go ahead. Walk us through what exactly the series is meant to be.

Host Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I actually had a, um, interaction with, with, with our, one of our vets as well. This week we had little thing going on with one of our dogs, so I've had some bad time too, but yeah, so the idea, right?

So in our podcast, we're trying to cover a few different things that we think are interesting and that hopefully are interesting and useful to, uh, pet owners that are listening to the program. You know, one is to about specific science topics that pertain to how you think about your relationship with your dog, what you should feed it, how it behaves, blah, blah, blah.

Um, another thing is to help people understand the ridiculous, uh, pet food industry. How do you decipher, what's being told to you in the context of advertisements and uh, in packaging, how, how do you make good decisions for your dog?

Who do you trust, blah, blah, blah. Where do you do? Like label reviews and look at individual products and stuff like that. And then this third part I think is really interesting, but I also think it's got some potential to be misinterpreted. So like you said, we're doing, we're looking at vet stuff and the name, our, you know, our working title for this little Suber is more vets smoke camels.

And you can imagine from the name of that title, what does It mean? Well, it's just got a little bit of a, you, you could tell it's got a critical angle. Okay. Right. So this is designed to highlight things in the  modern practice of veterinary medicine that we think pet owners should know about.

That represents in our eyes, at least to some degree, something that's wrong, something that could be corrected. Um, this is not our way of saying that, um, all vets are bad. Don't listen to your vet. Do, uh, uh, uh, we've got a problem. You should, uh, elevate us above that. Like nothing like that. But there are to my eye from the work that I did writing my book, where I like lived this stuff for a long time, there are some pretty clear problems. There are things that have solutions and they're definitely things worth talking about. Cause they don't get better unless you talk about 'em. And so the vet more vet smoke camel series is our way of trying to, to bring some of that stuff to the forefront. I like that. That should be our tagline topics worth talking about because it is true and it impacts all of us in one way or the other, you know, I'm coming at this from a nonscientific. I'm not a scientific researcher. And so this is always fascinating to me. So I'm gonna be sitting right next to everyone else learning and asking questions as we get into this. And so yeah, let's kind of start off with how do you become a vet? Yeah. Okay. So look, what we're trying to, this is the idea behind this show. So the more vote smoke Campbell series, we're gonna talk about vet veterinary stuff and it's generally gonna have the perspective of here's things we could do better. This specific one is designed to give our listeners a sense of a few things. What it basically, what is it like get trained up on nutrition as a vet. So it's, I I'm sure you've had this experience. I've had this experience more times than I can count and I'm sure everyone that's listening to. This has too, you have a question about what to feed your dog and you go to your vet to ask, what do they think about it? Or your vet provides information on what they think you should feed your dog, even kind of unsolicited. They notice something is going on with your dog. And so they tell you what you should feed them. And so this program is us giving an overview of what is it like to get trained up in nutrition as a vet? So we're gonna walk through, so some facts about the modern veterinary medicine academy, I guess you'd say vet school, what that looks like, what role nutrition plays, how it compares to similar, um, domains like human medicine. And then we're gonna highlight two specific criticisms, two things about the way that vets are taught about nutrition in the modern era that we think pet owners should know about. And that we think could be improved upon if we want to make everybody's dog as healthy as possible. If you, I, I always struggle. Like what's the way to say public, like veterinary public health, like companion, animal, public health, but like whatever that is, these two things are, if we could fix these to some degree, I believe you'd do better in that way. I love it. Let's let's dig in. Let's get started. And I, I agree. We really should start with, what is the training? What is the path? What is the lead up? Yep. To you becoming a vet. All right. So you put up this beautiful slide that's And we'll definitely have this in this show notes because it is beautiful, but we'll be walking everybody verbally through. Uh, but I mean it's straightforward information, but it's really good information. So when we start throwing out references back to, or what does it mean and where are they learning this? This is good information to know. That's right. I agree with you. Um, you know, so what we've got on the screen now is this timeline that shows, what does it look like, uh, to what, what kind of training takes place to go from being a high school graduate to being a practicing veterinarian? And so the take home points are number one, you need at a bare minimum, eight years of schooling to go from a high school grad to a practicing vet. Um, you need four years of undergraduate education, um, in order to get into vet school, um, it, in the course of doing that, uh, undergraduate program, you gotta take certain courses. Of course, right? There are veter. Each vet school has prerequisite courses. You have to arrive having learned enough about biology and chemistry and stuff like that, to be able to get something out of the, the vet school course. Um, once you finish, once you get your college, your undergraduate degree, your bachelor's degree, yay. You're going out into the big, bad world. You say, I want to be a vet. What that means is you gotta go through the process of applying and getting accepted to a veterinary school. So at present there are 33 veterinary schools in the us. And we'll talk about how that compares with some other, um, postgraduate, uh, programs, uh, in a second. But, um, something you hear a lot, at least I, I, I used to hear this all the time and I don't know if it just kind of like stop. I don't know. It just kind of feels like it's like a discussion point. That's outta circulation now, but used to always hear people say that getting into vet school is harder than getting into human medical school. Hmm. And I, I think that the lodge there is basically cause we'll get into the admissions rates in a second and the admissions rates are, are reasonably close to one another. I think medical school admission rates are somewhat lower, but they're pretty similar. Um, but I think really what we're talking about is the fact that like, there are a lot more human medical schools than vet schools. There's something and we have a whole for this in a second, but like they're 150 ish human medical schools, whereas they're only 33 vet schools and they're smaller than the medical schools in the first place. So you got fewer slots overall. So getting in is not, um, I took the right courses in undergrad. And so I'm just getting in that's it's not the case. It's selective. You gotta, you know, have, have a good application. You gotta take, I think it's the GRE is the, the test that the graduate school admissions test that's required. But anyway, eventually you get yourself into vet school vet school programs are four years long. So you get, you get accepted to school, you go off to vet school and you spend four years there while you're there you take the, the courses you're gonna take fall into two buckets. One is the core curriculum and the other is the electives. So I don't, I mean, for, for anyone who ha who's listening, who's gone to college. You're, you're at least somewhat familiar with these concepts, right? In order to get your degree from college, it works this way too. You gotta take some core courses. You gotta take, it depends. It changes school to school, but the things that essentially the school is saying, anyone that's gonna go out and say, they're a graduate of our college has to have some level of education in this sub. They've got to have gone through, um, English literature or something like that. Right. Um, and then the electives are where you get to, uh, apply some of your personal flare to your education, where you can take courses that are designed to cater to your specific interests, right? You, it's not just that all vet are created equal, right? They specialize in individual things. You're gonna work with certain kinds of animals. When you graduate. Maybe you're gonna focus on specific kinds of diseases within a specific subset of animals. Maybe you're gonna, you want to just be a professor and you want to teach. Maybe you want to be somebody that's on the front lines, in an emergency medicine clinic, something like that. And so the electives that you choose to take will tee you up for that kind of thing. Okay. Um, at that point, if you graduate, you take the courses you need and you graduate from your four year program. Like I said, you're now eight years outta high school. Um, and you're in a place where you can become a vet. You gotta, there's a, a national exam that basically no matter what state you're gonna practice in, you gotta pass it, but you don't need to take any more schooling. You just gotta pass that test. And, um, the idea is that if you've aced your vet school program, that you should be able to pass it in reality, like a lot of these kinds like licensing exams, um, like, you know, all this tracks really well with law school, which is my professional schooling. Like you go to, you have to go to college, you go to law school. Once you graduate from law school, you've gotta pass the bar in each individual state. And in the world of the law, it, the, the law is somewhat different state to state more so than the facts of <laugh>, you know, the anatomy and disease issues surrounding individual, uh, animals, which is tends to be exactly the same, no matter what, where you live it in, in law, legal world, it, the law changes state to state. And so the exams are different state to state veterinary world. It's all kind of one exam pass that exam. And you're a vet. Right? And I think the most interesting part of this that was like a ha aha moment for me was I thought all vets had to do residency. And when you were walking through this, it's only if they choose a specialty, I don't know. Look, my biggest reference to medical world is Grey's anatomy. So I'm not coming at us with any sort of research, uh, you know, opinion, but I find it interesting. And it's, it's just interesting to kind of understand where they kind of choose their, their, you know, focus where they want to collect all these electives for their own personal interests. And then they can choose the specialty such as the surgery from nutrition, uh, where they wanna kind of go with their education. So, Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So yeah, you don't need to go through a residency program in order to be practicing vet, uh, in order to be certified to practice veterinary medicine. Right. But a lot do, um, and it's the same as in, um, in the human medical world where there's like, there are, like you said, there's a real benefit to having high level professionals focusing on specialties in this domain, you got enough people, you got a lot, a lot of vets and there's a to, on a material, you know, it's easy to forget that a veterinarian doesn't just have to learn about a hand, like, like human medical, like medical doctors learn about one species, the organ systems and other issues that arise in the human animal. And that's it, veterinarians are big, basically being told that they're responsible for every animal other than that. And so, you know, you're dealing with companion, animals and animals that are relevant, like livestock and agriculture, mm-hmm <affirmative> relevant food system stuff. Those are obviously the most like those areas receive the most study. But I mean, just to, to, to conceptualize, like the amount of material that's out there to be learned is way bigger than in the world of human medicine, because you've got all these different species that work somewhat differently from one another and you infer things across them. But like overall, the amount that there is to be known is far greater in the world of like doing medicine for animals. And so special is a way of admitting that reality. Basically, it's like a way of saying like, you can't be, there's too much here for you to be a true expert level person with regards to all these things, right. You're gonna know more than the average bear for sure. But if you really want to be a top, a cream of the cream, cream of the crop, best of the best level expert on some subject, you not only need to graduate from vet school, you need to pursue a specialty. And like you said, you gave some good examples. Surgery is kind of like the quintessential example. There are a lot of vets that don't really do anything surgical. There's nothing really going on with their hand hands where they're opening animals up. And they're, they're doing stuff with their hands to internal organs, but that's not the only specialty. There are folks who specialize in treatment of cancers in oncology. There are folks who specialize in, um, emergency medicine. So the kinds of things that raise life threatening, um, sudden issues, um, nutrition obviously is something where everybody gets like all these topics, you get some degree of exposure to them during the general curriculum. But if you really want to know what's up, you take this one to two year period beyond vet school to complete your residency complete. Um, uh, there's like a, uh, what I forget the, what the, what the word for it is, but basically you've got kind of two stage internship, um, of, of this kind of like postgraduate process. You gotta take an additional exam, right? Like you get a, have to demonstrate that not only do you know enough to be a practicing vet, you know, enough to be a specialist, one you're you're mm-hmm <affirmative>. And, um, there are all these professional organizations, the, uh, the nutritional one is the, um, the academy of veterinary clinical Nutri, ABC N I think American academy. Okay. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and, um, they're the folks that set the standards for this. They say, okay, you gotta do a one year residency at one of these schools. You gotta do a one year internship. You gotta pass this test, et cetera. So anyway, recap, four year college, four year vet school, if you wanna do a specialty, you do T you pass your test, and now you're in, you're a vet and the world is your oyster. <laugh> Right. And now you pay <laugh> now You, oh, yeah. I mean, we're not talking about the financial side. We could do a whole episode on the financial side. I mean, as a 40 year old man who financed my own legal education law, school's only three years, not four. And I didn't have to do any kind of internship or residency, but like, um, yeah, somebody that's still paying off my, uh, law school loans. Some, uh, I guess it's like 15 years ish later that those financial pressures are, are real that you, right. I don't have the number here on the amount, the average amount of debt that a answers the workforce with, but it's, uh, I popping, Oh, I'm, It's a six figure. It's a big six figure number. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. And it, it is very interesting and it makes sense. The closest I've ever come in terms of like an industry comparison was in a previous life. I worked with like salons and the space and salon artists or hairdressers do also take continuing education. And so when I saw Cece credits, I knew exactly what that meant. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. <laugh> yep. Any it's, that's a pretty well established, like professional requirement, any like field that Fancys themselves professional, it typically were, requires this out of its members. So CE continuing education, like, again, I'm very familiar with it from my law practice, continuing legal education courses are, um, courses that are designed for people that are out there practicing already. So you're a vet, you work in a clinic you're, you're helping animals. You're helping clients every year. You've got to take a certain number of additional educational courses to stay up to date science changes, practice of professional practice changes as time passes. And you can't just rest on what you were taught, because all of a sudden you're gonna find yourself 30 years out of that school and not having learned anything new about what's transpired in the scientific community over the past 30 years. So yeah, that's a requirement you've got to in order to continue to keep your license to practice, uh, valid, you've got to take a certain number of continuing education courses every year after you graduate. Right. So interesting. The, the path to, from, like you said, high schooler to fat and the education continues, which is great. That's what we want from our vets. We want them to be staying educated, but we'll, we'll dive into what those C classes look like. So let's talk about, Uh, yeah, so, okay, so you just pulled up another slide and the other slide that's on the screen now, and again, it'll be in the show notes, but if you're not watching this on video right now, this is a little beautiful. Might I add beautiful slide, Jen, that is, uh, that compares, um, some key facts about medical school with veterinary school. And, um, basic the take home point here is that like the veterinary side of it is just not as big and well developed as the human medical side. The number of schools is, is pretty significantly different. There's only about 20%, the number of veterinary schools as medical schools, human medical schools in United States, 33 schools, and around 150, it's actually hard to get. I it's around 150. Um, uh, yeah, so you're talking about five medical schools for everyone, veterinary school mm-hmm <affirmative>, um, same thing plays out with regard to the number of students enrolled in any given moment and the number of practitioners out there serving patients at any given moment. So there's something like 12 to 15,000 veterinary students learning to be veterinarians at veterinary schools at any given point in the us right now. Um, medical school is something like eight times that, and then the same kind of ratio translates into practicing professionals. So you've got at least a million doctors, human medical to MDs in the us right now. And you've got something like 125,000 practicing veterinarians. So big, both of them, relatively large communities. I, I, I think if I didn't know those numbers off top of my head, or like, if I hadn't learned those numbers, I, uh, I wouldn't have guessed that the veterinarian number was that high. I would've guessed somewhat lower. Um, but yeah, that's basically where it shakes out. There's a little line on here about the number of Ivy league schools that have, um, these, these kinds of programs at, at each institution. And, you know, it's just, there's only two IVs that have vet schools, Penn and Cornell. And, um, I just put that on there to highlight, like, it's just kind of like, not as well developed yet a profe. I, I would bet that you're gonna see more veterinary programs as time passes, but at present, despite the fact that there are so many animals that are so important to so many human beings, it's not as big a, the, the training, the academy for becoming a veterinarian is not as well to developed. Hasn't, hasn't blossomed as much as the human medical community just yet. Yeah. And 125,000 sounds like a big number, but I, I'm very curious, and maybe we'll do an episode on it, of what the specialty breakdown is of, you know, how much, or in the companion animal space versus these other or specialties. Yeah. And how further cuz I'm sure they have to really focus on more urban areas because me versus, you know, on the country, there was like a vet that you had to drive to 45 minutes away and everybody went to this one vet. So yeah, If you're practicing on, uh, you know, fifth avenue in New York city, your ability to treat the most common diseases found in like cattle is pretty, uh, uh, unimportant, pretty irrelevant to your practice. Right. And vice versa. You know, if you live in, uh, out in Pawny city, Nebraska, where one of the factories that makes keto natural pet food products is based, um, I can tell you from having been out there that the, the, your familiarity with diseases that are commonly encountered among livestock animals is much more important than it is if you're a, um, you know, urbanite, New York city vet. Yeah, absolutely. And we will get to the, yeah. We have numbers on the nutrition specialty. So we'll get to that. Yeah. A little later on mm-hmm <affirmative> but yeah, I, maybe we will be able to break that 125,000 number down into like more slice and dice it a few other ways in, in, in some future show, cuz yeah, that is, that's pretty interesting subject. And I think another interesting statistic we'll, we'll just briefly, uh, touch on because it really has no implications to, of the specific topic we're talking about right now, but this is, oh yeah, yeah. The a, a, a V M C you, we were going through these slides and I was looking at the gender representation for, um, at us colleges. So these are students and around between 19 five and 1990, the amount of female students in, you know, exponentially blew up and the amount of male students exponentially went down yup. And dropped out. So it's very, uh, very interesting. Um, yeah. Yeah. So like, just, just for people that aren't looking at this on video, right. Right. Now what Jen's talking about is this slide that was part of a presentation that was put together by the American association, maybe academy of veterinary medical colleges. So this institution that, um, uh, uh, issues accreditation to different veterinary schools, I can't just launch Dan's veterinary school and say, right, we're number 34. Now you gotta do what these folks say you gotta do. And so they have access to all the student info and blah, blah, blah. And so they publish a variety of interesting things. And so they publish this thing that breaks out student demographics and variety of ways. And you, yeah, there's this one on, I'm gonna have to like sit up a little bit to look closer, but yeah. On gender representation among students and yeah, it's just two criscrossing lines between 1980 and 2020 in 1980. It's 70% male, 30% female ish from there to 2020, it's just a downward slope on the male line, an upward slope on the female line. And by the end, it's 80 female, 20 male. So huge difference. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and I wonder what's up basically. I mean, it could be, it it's, you know, you could get misled by this, uh, in the sense that you could, um, one way, one, something, one, one pattern that would produce a graph that looks like this is like, if the number of female enrolls just grew and the number of male didn't change, like if from 1980 to 2020, right. Women were entering professional communities more. I mean, they were, if, if that number, that proportion was increasing, you'd see this. Or if you saw, um, maybe the number of women stayed equal and just men dropped out of the veterinary community that would produce it. Or if it was both going on at the same time, that would produce it. So, yeah. I don't know anymore about it, but it's interesting for sure. Yeah. I, I, data is always interesting and I I'm a visual person, so of course, when I saw this, I said, what is going on? We need to at least touch base on this, but yeah. Yeah. Well maybe we'll do a different episode just on these slides. Cuz there was so much interesting information in there. Yeah. But we, I mean, anecdotally I could tell you that in my personal life, I'm friends with a lot of folks who are veterinarians and strangely enough, I did not meet them through my work like this, these aren't people that I encountered through writing my book or running the, the okay. Or anything like that. But I just like kind of fell into a community of folks when I moved into salt lake city where like the common hub guy was a vet. And so I learned, I met a lot of people that he's from with too. And um, that said anecdotally in my experience, yeah. The majority of the veterinarians that I know personally are women, um, I know two that are dudes and probably something like six that are women. Um, and then I would also say anecdotally, cuz I don't have some, the systematized the research that I do did do in the course of writing my book, which involved a great deal of contact with clinical vets, you know, the, the kinds of folks who are treating individual patients and offering advice to individual patients as well as academics, um, that are pub that are doing research work and publishing work on veterinary topics. The majority are, are women for sure, for sure. In my experience. So, Um, oh yeah. I, my entire vet clinic, uh, let's see five unstaffed full-time vets, all women. So yeah. Interesting. It's It is. Yeah. I don't know, You know, we just celebrate international. Sure. There, there are all kinds of theories that come to mind, but um Right. Yeah. They they'll do a, a separate episode on, on that specifically, but yeah. Yeah. I think, I think we'll go back to this path of education and so something we really wanna focus on, we talked about these core classes and electives and this core curricula sometimes includes and sometimes not doesn't include nutrition. Correct. And it depends on the college. So I think let's start there. Let's kind of go through this first CRI big criticism that we wanna appeal the layers back. As I always say, like peek behind the red curtain, it's not common knowledge. Let's kind of think through and talk through how vets learn about nutrition. Right. Okay. So like to recap, to make sure we're all on the same page here, we've given you guys an overview of what it generally takes to become a veter in terms of training to become a veterinarian in the United States. And now I like the analogy. I mean, I like the analogy behind the curtain, but I love the analogy of how the sausage is made <laugh>. And so in this case, the sausage is what your vet tells you or knows about the subject of nutrition, companion, animal nutrition, that's the sausage, we're gonna show you how the sausage is made, what they, how individual, like a few different buckets kinds of vets, um, are taught what they're taught, how they're taught and we're gonna highlight kind of two specific things that feel like problems to me in how those, the, the sausage is made. Um, and you're wrong. And Won't go with vegan sausage cuz we don't wanna any, any little pigs and <laugh> okay. That's fair. That's fair. I'll take that. <laugh> um, So how do, and what do vets learn about companion animal nutrition in college? Okay. So quick, um, uh, preview two criticism are number one. The vast majority of vets do not learn enough about the subject of nutrition, which is a really important subject. It's very important for them to know a lot about it because it's caused hugely consequential and it's relevant to every single companion animal in the United States or in the world. Um, so they're not taught enough. Number two is they are being taught, using information materials and people that are big bias in what they're taught inherent conflict of interest is baked into too much of what veterinarians are taught about companion, animal nutrition, uh, in the United States right now. So, and, and all this, uh, there's a lot of this that's that I've updated, but like all this comes from this isn't speculative like stuff. This is the book that I wrote that I published in 2016 dogs, dog food and dogma. It's a big book, 400 page book and there's a hundred, literally a hundred pages of documented, just kind of references and like where all the facts come from. So, and a fair amount of this. And I'll try to like highlight when the facts I'm gonna kind of relay come straight from the research from the book, because in those cases, that stuff is accurate as of 2016, when I, when the book was published and fact checked, whereas, you know, we've had six years, things have changed to some degree, so I'll try to like highlight that. But basically this stuff comes a lot through that experience. It's a big part of the, you know, big part of my professional life for a long time. So this stuff comes out of it. So you Don't know it at all. Got it. <laugh> Yeah. Don't know it at all, but I'll do my best to try to tell you what it do know. Um, okay. So remember we said a minute ago, there are about 125,000 veterinarians in the United States right now. And there is such a thing as being a specialist veterinary nutritionist. That is one of the specialties that you can choose to Sue. If you're a rising veterinarian, how many veterinarian nutritionist are there in the United States? There are fewer than 100. So roughly you have about one out of every 1000 vets is a vet that has completed the course requirements to be a, a board certified veterinary nutritionist, fewer than 100 of them in the United States. So wow. What that means if you're playing the odds, if you know, a ton of vets like I do just through whatever luck and circumstance, if you know a ton, if you know a dozen vets, there's almost zero chance that any of them is a board it's I'll bet all day against you, that none of them are veterinary, uh, nutritionist. It's just really uncommon. And it's something like, you know, uh, so in the course of writing the book, I asked a bunch of questions of that, of the ACV N the, the organization that certifies veterinary nutritionist. And they have some inform on who go like what kind of practice they have. And so a huge chunk are academics that are basically, they teach nutrition at vet schools and do some amounts of research science and provide clinical. Like a lot of them do some degree of like clinical work too. You can like reach out to the vet school at, you know, the university of Florida, something like that, speak to their nutritionist about a specific issue with your dog. But outside of that, there are right around 10 board certified veterinary nutritionist in just everyday clinical practice where they just hung up their shingle. And it is Dan's veterinary nutrition practice. If you have a question about nutrition, come to me, you're talking about legitimately 10 in the United States. So I've ever 10,000 vets. Yeah. 10 zero, very, very, very small number of the overall universe of vets falls into this group of specialized board certified veterinary nutritionist. And when it comes to the subject of, so, and my criticism number got kind of two points here, right? Number one is that most vets aren't taught enough about nutrition. And number two is they're being taught, using biased, um, material, um, on the first subject, no criticism about the folks that are being taught, uh, to that, that are, that are board certified. Like if you're a nutritionist, you have received a lot of information about veterinary nutrition. I do have issue with the accuracy and bias baked into it, but the there's no complaint about the amount of material. They have an obscene amount of things they've gotta learn, right? Like nutrition impacts all kinds of organ systems. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> all kinds of diseases. And again, with vets, you're talking about all kinds of different species, not just one, so an obscene amount of information, but that's the, you know, 100, that's the one in 1000 vets, the much more relevant issue is what are the rest of them being taught? That's the thing. You're not any nutrition advice that you've received in your life, in your personal life. And any amount that I've received in my life has not come from those people. Okay. When I go to my local clinic, any place I've ever lived in my entire life, none of them are board certified veterinary nutritionist. They're all clinical vets that maybe specialized in something, but not that. And so the issue of what are those folks being taught is definitely one where mm-hmm, <affirmative> not being taught enough is an issue basically. Um, so you can, um, there are a bunch of like factoids that paint the, like that showed the extent to which this is so, so here are some of my favorite ones. Number one in one third of the veterinary schools in the United States, right now you can graduate without taking any course in nutrition. So you can, um, remember we talked before core curriculum versus electives core curriculum, no matter what kind of vet you're gonna be, you gotta take it. Mm-hmm <affirmative> elective. That's your personal interest. One third, approximately one third of the veterinary schools in the us right now you can complete the curriculum without taking any nutrition at all. That blows my mind. It is kind of mind blowing, right? One third of the vets you're gonna meet at, like, if you roll the dice at, you know, one out of every three times, you go talk to your vet, they might have never taken any kind of course at the college or at the, uh, graduate level about the subject. They're gonna be telling you about not one course. And my mind kind of goes to, they still need to answer questions for their patients. So I'm sure there are go-to reference materials, continuing education, things like that. They're follow, but again, we'll kind of get into, well, that's still an issue because of what is still being presented of, oh, well, here's a go-to resource for how to answer, you know, I have a diabetic dog I've dealt with chronic illness to obesity, to all these other things where their patient needs help. So they have to pull something forward, even if they didn't receive it. But my mind really goes to this visual of all these buckets, right? Like literally a feel full of like all these buckets, all these topics that the vet has to, you know, like you said, at least have something <laugh> to take with them when they graduate. And nutrition is not part of that. Yeah. But that was not deemed important enough. And we'll get into the ones that do, it's kind of like a little drip in that bucket. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's a fair analogy. Um, and, and these things, uh, there's, there's always an explanation for why some evolved system ends up the way that it is. And in this case, it feels kind of absurd on at first glance to be like, wait, they're not required to take any info about nutrition. Nutrition is such an important, uh, it's got such you, you know, prominent links to health, how could they not be required? Well, to the best of my knowledge, the, the most, the theory that makes the most sense to me, the story, the explanation that makes the most sense to me is that more than in human medicine, veterinary medicine is a treatment focused profession rather than a preventative health focused prevention, uh, profession. It's something that as a matter of industry, what people are willing to pay for. So not like how it should be to maximize health, but like, you know, the, the insurance system that governs like medical care in the human medical care in the us is not in place. The veterinary world. There are such things as veterinary insurance coverage, but like it's, it's completely different and it's uncommon. And so really, you know, what people ought to be focusing their practice on is one thing, but what clients are willing to pay for to make it a industry to make it so that mm-hmm, <affirmative> the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt you're taking on while you're in school are gonna get paid back act, is it, you know, it's dictated by the market. And the market says with animals, companion animals, people are much more willing to pay for treatment. My dog has a problem, fix it than preventative health, which is, I want to, I'm gonna go to you and pay you money. And you're gonna tell me what I need to do in order to keep my dog from getting sick in the first place. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, that's just not as much of a thing. And I think that that's a pretty relevant part. A lot of nutrition, there are ways in which you come in, you go, my dog's got this, that, or the other problem the vet says he has this disease is. And one of the things you should do is change his food to make it X, Y, and Z. That's a thing it happens, but a lot of nutritional stuff like, do you think, I think about my personal diet all the time. I'm sure you do too. And it's not because I have a disease that I'm trying to treat. It's because I'm trying to manage the likelihood that I develop other things I don't want develop, you know what I mean? <affirmative> and so it's a lot like that in companion, animal nutrition too. So in that sense, you can kind of see why the, um, academy would develop the way that it did still. It's fair to criticize it, given how, uh, it's not just an industry, it's a public service profession as well. Like these are people that we should reasonably expect can answer these kinds of co questions, because I will tell you, I have never, once in my life, professionally or personally had the experience of bringing a nutritional question to a veterinarian and having them say, I don't feel qualified to answer that question. That is not something that I've ever encountered in my life. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think in a perfect world, the folks who haven't taken, who, who have graduated from these schools without taking those courses would, would be open to admitting that cuz it's, I think it's something that patients, clients would want to know. Um, Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a fair criticism. And even thinking back to my vet trips this week, it was very much, yes, there was some blood work, but it was to talk about things that were happening in it was never let's get them to an optimal weight to prevent things. Let's talk about what's going in their bodies, because if they intake this thing, it was never a discussion like that. It was very much imediacy something's going on. Let's figure it out. And that's what, that's what I you're right. That's what I'm comfortable whipping out the credit card for, because I say, yep, absolutely. I Scared, scared, scared is a disease. Please help me. This is, this is not, you know, so nutrition sometimes falls on the pet parents too, or we're trying to figure out, and we'll also have an episode to interpret dog food packaging, cuz that's another layer of trying to interpret best nutrition for your dog. Anyway. Multiple layers. Let's get back to the talking. Yes. OK. All right. Second. So first fact toy is that in one third of the veterinary schools in the us right now, you don't have to take nutrition at all to be graduate, no factoid, number two in the schools where it is required, cuz two thirds of them do require some form of it. Mm-hmm <affirmative> in all but three of them. So in the vast majority of them, vast majority like 90 per I, I don't know the math off the top of my head. You're talking about something like in all, but three of the schools, all that's required is a single two credit course. Um, which if you have gone through college, you could rack your brain and try to remember the distinction between a four credit course on the one hand and a two or a one credit course. On the other hand, what this, what this distinction is, is basically like how much material you're being taught. Four credit courses require more. There's like more classroom, you meet three times a week or something like that. Where in two credit courses you're like meeting once a week. The amount of material that you're being taught is smaller. So the amount of time you invest is smaller. So the amount of credit you get is less and that's kind of just like how it, how it fits into your degree requirements. And so let me give you, I got some visual aids for, for anybody that's watching on video. As I try to find a place to put my coffee, okay. Here is something from my own education in law school, they have four credit courses and two credit courses as well. Mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so this or the point that I'm gonna make here with these written materials applies to law school. Like I'm familiar with this phenomena, how many gone through it? So this is a textbook from a securities law class that I took in law school that is a four credit class. Security is like stocks and, and how companies are formed and exist is a complex topic that involves all kinds of stuff. And it is a four credit class when you take it in law school. And so the material that the lectures come out of is this thousand page textbook. I mean, that's like four inches. It is significant happy book. <laugh> I just read this article and I forget some like website about the weight of some of the like big popular books that have been written recently, this big novel that I'm reading now, I think it was like two and a half pounds. Okay. That's pretty big. Yeah. But um, now to give you a contrast, uh, look at this pamphlet, show you what the oops subject is yet, but you can see there's some animals on it. Um, the word nutrition is written on the side. This, um, I got from, uh, someone that I interviewed in connection with my book who was good enough to give it to me. This came out of her, uh, two credit, uh, veterinary nutrition course that she took during vet school. And she went to a school that us news and world report, you know, how they ranked like colleges, business schools and all that stuff. They ranked veterinary schools every year, too, whether of the, the, the rankings hold water or not. I don't know. But she went to a super legit vet school that according to us news and world report is consistently one of the three top rated vet schools in the country. Okay. Consistently, always there it's like one of the best ones and this, uh, you know, 80 page pamphlet is what she received in the course of doing her. So this is for the people. This is like, if your school requires it and if your school is super good, like one of the best in the country. And it happens to also be one that requires nutrition in all likelihood, this is the type of written material that your vet was given to work off of in the course of doing it. And Maybe I shouldn't even say this, but it looks like it was like binded at like office Depot or something. It's very, when you literally, when you compare it to your law now, granted law school, I do think of them being like very prestigious books and they're like perfectly, you know, oh, I mean like, look here, I've got another visual. Like we're gonna go into this in a second. But like, if you take clinical, if you're, if you're a board certified veterinary nutritionist, you work off something like this. Okay. Like real serious stuff. But this, I mean, I like the thing that I like, and I'm gonna try to cover up the author's name cause we don't need to do put it on blast. Real part is just the Clip art. Yes. Is fantastic. But it also, it underscores, uh, something that like exas that makes the point even stronger, which is that. So on this, I've got a, uh, a sheep, a dog, a cat, a horse, and a cow. Wow. So again, yeah, you're being taught about the organ systems, disease implications, nutritional of requirements of nutrition when it pertains all of these species and this 180 page thing. Like, you know what I mean, if you were getting an ebook, if I was a life coach and I wrote a, a ebook that was 80 pages long, that was equivalent to this, I give it to you for free. You know what I mean? I couldn't char you couldn't charge people for that, this not enough materials. So, and, and that is on the upper end of what your veterinarian is likely to have received in the course of their nutrition training. You know, again, this is one of the top vet schools in the United States and it's one of the schools that actually does require a veterinary course, uh, in their core curriculum. And, and I just, this is another fact from my book and I, I really only highlight it because I like how it, the examples I chose, but let me tell you some other two credit elective courses that you can take at veterinary school to give you a rough sense of how much emphasis veterinary nutrition is getting at your yeah. Like What class, what category, how are they thinking about class? It's roughly the same, it's other two credit electives, ornamental fish medicine, equine dentistry. So just the teeth of just the horse is important, as important as all the nutrition of all the animals of all this makes no sense to me. Oh my gosh. So Yeah, it, it feels, yeah, I feel that vets are being shorted and it, it, it does kind of bring up a little emotional, uh, you know, feelings for me as a pet parent of really, I do wish my vet had taken hours and hours and hours of nutrition in terms of feeling very confident in, like you said, answering those questions that I'm bringing her, I'm sometimes in a pickle of what do I feed my dog? She's acting sick or things are not going well with her diabetes. And it often does feel, I don't know, maybe we can try this and I love my vet, but now understanding, like you said, just the, just the very short sided nature of, well, at least we talked to them about nutrition for all the species. It's like, just again, that drip in the bucket. Yeah. Where small, oh, there all these other buckets, like you said, two credit course for just the teeth of just the horse within another bigger bucket of equine, you know, vet here. Yeah. Yeah. That's so anyway, it's fascinating. <laugh> Yeah. I mean, it is kind of fascinating and you know, again, there's the criticism and then there's the recommended fixes, right? What we're raising is what, something that feels like valid criticism that I bet you, the majority of veterinarians of your Topo would also say is something that they're critical of. They wouldn't say, I think it's a hard position to take that, those facts. We, uh, we agree, you know, we agree with your sources, your facts are right. We just don't think it's problem. Nobody's saying that, right. What people might be disagreeing about is what's the significance of it? What do we do about it? How do we change the work? How do we change the, the practice in order to fix it? Mm-hmm <affirmative> and then you get into things like, well, you're gonna have to get people to pay for it more of it, because it's gotta be, and a variety of other types of fixes that are kind of beyond the scope of this. But I would just say, I guess, kind of the like last point that I wanted to make, or just emphasize, cause we made it before is just that you were like, I really would like my vet to be confident about these nutrition issues when I go in and talk to them and I would say, that's not what I want. <laugh> I, I, it is what I see. I almost never get any admission of this. Isn't something I know that, well, I didn't receive that much training about this. I'm not certain about, you know, I can tell you all about, um, your dog's cardiovascular system. I can't tell you that much about what you should feed it. That is not something that I hear very often at all. I do see a lot. I instead I get a lot of confidence. I just believe that it's misplaced confidence. Um, And You know, that's, there are, you know, what are the causes of that? How do you fix that? I'm sympathetic to all that. You know what I mean? It's like, right. I get, I get that if a client comes in and doesn't, and regardless of how poor your veterinary nutrition training was, if you're a vet client probably doesn't know as much as you and they're, they're more in the dark than you are and they're coming in and they're, they've got questions and they need help from an expert. It's not really, it can be problematic to, to admit, to be like, I don't know either man, we're in this, we're in the dark together. Like that's not any easy conversation to have. Right. So I'm sympathetic to it, but it doesn't change the reality of the situation. It just, you know, it is what it is. And so something should be done about It. Yeah. I, I really categorize this as voice for change. There certainly are inherent CRI criticisms in terms of talking about this topic, but in, by talking about it and bringing it to the surface level, at least it can become common knowledge and, and hopefully be a voice for change. And, you know, yeah. It's like, you know, so we talked about the, the working title for this area is more vet smoke camels, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> so the reason that that type I works, in my opinion, is that with the benefit of 60, 70 years of hindsight, it seems ridiculous. Like it's like more smoke camels doctors don't smoke camels. It seems ridiculous, but that's because there's been 60, 70 years of progress. Yes. In that domain at the time in the 1940s and fifties, there were real ad campaigns that really worked that were, that used the tagline more Dr. Smoke camels at that point, that was not weird or problematic. That was just what people accepted. And if there is progress in this community, in this subject, over the 60 or 70 years, looking back on it, we'll be able to say, oh my God, that was a ridiculous period of time. Um, but right now it doesn't feel that way. You know, it's, it's, it doesn't feel that way to the vets that are in it. It's just, you're just exp you're just, this is all, you know. Yeah. I, I do hope, I do hope, you know, that my children, when they have dogs or cats or whatever animals they do choose maybe livestock, who we will see. Yeah. I do hope that there is change enough where, you know, I don't know. We'll, we'll see, I, I don't wanna do too much, uh, theorizing, but I do hope there is change in the industry. And I think one of the things that I'd love to see is let's just jump into this next criticism. Yeah. And, and I do think being that how much time we've already spent on the first one, the second one, I think does deserve its own episode, but we'll at least really dive into cuz you also have some visual examples. We have some visual examples of industry bias. Who's, you know, publishing some of these textbooks on nutrition itself. Right. But also this continuing education credits. Yep. Okay. So if the first criticism of, without vets are taught, nutrition is they're not taught enough material. The second one is what material they are taught has is comes from bias sources. More particularly it is heavily influenced by pet food industry folks, the companies that make pet food play a big role in, um, funding and putting together the material that is taught to rising veterinarians. That's a problem because those are for profit entities that have an interest in making sure that veterinarians are taught. That is good for their business as opposed to bad 40. And again, to use the, it wouldn't have been weird in the 1930s or the 1940s for a, you know, a lung doctor is a pulmonologist cancer doctors, oncologists. It wouldn't have been weird at that period of time for the, the organization that funds most of the medical training for pulmonologists to be, uh, Philip Morris that wouldn't, you know, like if you had, if that had been at place at the time, it would've just been like, well, yeah, there are big company that has a lot of money and there's it, it makes perfect sense that they should be involved in teaching. They know a lot about lungs. Smoking goes into the lungs. They know all about that. Of course they should know about it. It's equivalent to that. That's in, in with the benefit of the, of hindsight that feels completely absurd. It feels criminal would be criminal in this day and age, right? It's the pro it's what's in place right now in the veterinary nutrition world is just the reality. There is no, the, the amount of money that exists in the world of veterinary nutrition is entirely from the folks who make pet food. And that's it. There's no. Um, if you're doing, doing academic research, concerning human medical health issues, organizations, governmental organizations, like the national institutes of health you can apply to for grants, or you can apply, apply to private foundations, charitable organizations for grants, the amount that's available for human focused medical research from types of entities is just, there is no, it's not even fair to say it dwarfs the equivalent in the veterinary world. It's just like there, there's just, there's nothing. It's not there in the veterinary world. All of the money comes out of pet food companies, period, that's it, there are big, big billions and billions of dollars. And the extent to which there are little nonprofits that are putting together charitable grants to compete with that or to supplement that is just, it's so small that it's negligible, it's not even worth mentioning. It is. If you're doing academic research in the companion animal nutrition world, you are getting money, pet food company one way or the other it's somehow coming down through there. There's just no money there otherwise. Yeah. I never really thought of it that way it's go where the resources are and the resources are where are at these pet food companies, because, because they are the billion dollar organization. That's Right. That's right. That's a hundred percent. Right. And so meaningful change, you know, if we are talking <affirmative> about what would have to change, you have to have something that competes with that. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, tax funded, governmental stuff, you can imagine how difficult that would be because obviously your dog and cat don't vote <laugh> um, so it's not likely that that's coming around in time soon or some kind of charitable organization. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, you we've seen in the world, there are a lot of animal focus, uh, non-profit organizations they're not focused. There's nobody that focuses on this specific type of issue, providing unbiased funding for research and academy veteran nutrition academy. It's just not there, like, you know, to the same extent to which there are like rescue organizations for homeless pets, that kind of thing. Like, You know? Right. So, all right. So yeah. And I think, yeah, let's, let's kind of jump into, we give you These examples cuz they just punch there's So much I all about examples. Yeah. So this is the, uh, um, the textbook I showed you before. This is a leading, this is actually, they have a fifth edition now. So this is a little bit, if I was to be quoting material from, it would be a little out date, but this is a leading veterinary clinical nutrition textbook. As you can see, it's huge. It covers all kinds of subjects. And it's one of, you know, there's only a hundred veterinary nutritions in the United States. So it's not like you need six different textbooks, some type some subjects like if you're just gonna do undergraduate biology, go to the Amazon store, look for biology textbook. You're gonna find a lot. It's not like that in the veterinary nutrition world. There are very few, this is the leading one. Okay. And if I flip this over, why can't I do this? I'm just like totally turned around <laugh> and hold this up to the camera. You can see on the bottom of the right there, cover of this book, there is a logo for the company Hills pet nutrition that says compliments of Hills. And then if I were to go into the, um, the actual like material, so who are the editors of, uh, of this book? I've got veterinary fellow Hills science and technology center, vice president of research Hills science and technology center. The dedications, uh, one is to Mark Morris, senior and Mark Morris, Jr. Those are the people that Mark Morris, senior founded Hills pet nutrition. Okay. So this is a compliments of Hills created by editors that are full-time employees of Hills and dedicated to the founder of Hills. Okay. So just like, and it's the textbook. So just take like replace that. Let's do the analogy game, pick your favorite industry. Okay. If you're gonna learn about geology and climate science, it's like having a textbook from Chevron. Okay. Right. If you're gonna learn about human nutrition and diabetes, it like having a textbook written by Coca-Cola and McDonald's, you know, going to medical school, I got my McDonald's textbook written by the full time employees of McDonald's or the really punchiest example is I'm a pulmonologist I'm taking my pulmonology course at, at, at medical school. And I wanna learn about lung disease. And this is the textbook that was sent to me by a Philip Morris. Right. Those are all direct analogies to what is the real that is happening in the world of veterinary nutrition right now? Yeah. The, the resources going back to the resources make sense in terms of getting at least a textbook together. Okay. I can kind, but when you opened it up and were speaking to the editors then goes into, well, this internal information within this book, that's like you said, even multiple additions. So they're really on top of it is I would say seemingly biased of how are presenting what's quote good. What's quote, bad of in terms of pet nutrition. So it's just, it feels so uneasy to me because you cannot really deem any other industry that does this and does this ease and has done this for years. Yeah. For decades. Yeah. Decades, They're filling a white space basically. Like if they were to just pull out and say, or if we were to have a law said you can't private industry can't teach academic information. Then in a lot of ways, for at least a period of time, there would be no information that's taught, like it's a white space. And so if you said Hills, you can't fund it anymore. That it's not like somebody else is stepping up with the, to fill that. And so it's, it's, you can understand where it comes from, but that doesn't mean it's not a colosal problem. Right. And, um, you know, it's not the only, here's another text, not as serious. Okay. Not as serious, but That's the hard back version. This is the Paper, but it's still, it's the same. It's the same kind of material where it's like we're walking through in diseases. In this case, editors four editors, one, not working for a pet food company, but the other three full-time employees of Proctor and gamble, pet care, which no longer exists is now Mars pet care, uh, manager of scientific community, associate director of research and development manager of scientific communications for Proctor and gamble, pet care, think Mars pet care. So you've basically got the, um, Mars textbook and the Hills textbook, you know, think, think you've got the, uh, the taco bell, human medical textbook sounds delicious. Or the McDonald's Human edible pages, Human textbook. Um, yeah. It that's, that's the reality. That's just that, that is the system right now. Yeah. It's it sounds bizarre when you use other industry analogies, but it sounds so seamless with the vet industry because it's been like, we keep saying it's been ongoing. There's no change. And it, yeah. It needs to be called out. It needs to be surface level conversation of this. And you said that even though these B books aren't 20, 22 additions, that nothing has changed nothing. No. Yeah. So, you know, so, so one other thing, I think you've got stuff queued up that you could show for the folks that are watching this on video. But we talked about when we were doing the overview right. Of the veterinary of like how you learn, if you're a vet, you, you get into practice and your obligation to learn doesn't stop. Yeah. You gotta keep going out and learning, taking continuing education courses every year, certain number of them. Well, it might not surprise you to learn that the same pet food companies that try to influence what veterinarians are taught during school are doing the same thing after school. It's a lot easy a year after school, because most of these programs you gotta pay for. If you're a vet and you wanna learn, you wanna take a, a continuing education thing about the latest surgical techniques, right? Coming outta pocket for thousands of dollars. If you wanna learn a nutritional topic, Hills pet nutrition will gladly give you credits for free. And you've got, you've pulled up this big, big menu of different video, online video options. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> produced by Hills that are all available, um, for, for veterinarians to satisfy their annual for opportunity for free mm-hmm <affirmative> I, in the course of writing my book, I even went to one of these that this was before COVID, you know, zoom era. And so it was in person. I went, I ate the nice lunch that was provided. I listened to the nice presentation from, it began with 20 minutes from a Hills, not even a, a like scientific per, like a salesperson that every, everybody there seemed to know, it was like all the other, like all the vets that were in attendance at this presentation. And you're talking maybe like two dozen people, the guys like, oh, hi, it's Brady. And they're all like, hi Brady. Like everyone knew this sales rep no scientific training, no scientific literacy. That's kind just running through like, here's our latest, uh, product for brain health. Here's our later. And you know, maybe You were talking about product editions and their product line. And that is just, And then you eat the free lunch and you end up getting a, a continuing education credit, but like, Hmm, take, take that out. I kind of slipped into a different issue. The issue of material. Take that out, take that off the table. We, we don't have have it's off, off the, we don't have, we've already been going for an hour. If we were to tackle what's being presented on specific subjects and where what's being taught, doesn't line up with the reality of what the facts and the evidence say. We would need everybody to tune in all day. We, you know, we'll be at, we do that already, right with our individual sign things. But this is just like you can't quibble with the reality. There's no longer room for debate over whether having implicit financial conflict of interest influences the material that's taught. That issue has been studied in every academic domain. Every time it's done, they find by if you've got and it, of course only it's only common sense. Like if you are Philip Morris, you do not put out a textbook that says lung smoking gives you lung cancer. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, that's not happening. You are a for-profit entity and you will get sued if you put out informa, but your shareholders will literally have grounds to Sue you. Right. If you're gonna put out something, that's gonna be that damaging to your business. And so what, you know, what I'm asking everyone to recognize is that every time that issue's been looked at the issue of whether financial conflict of interest tends introduced bias into what materials being taught, you can go try to quibble with that if you want. And in what I, you know, experience I often have is I talk to individual researchers, individual vets, and they'll say, yeah, it's a problem, but it's not a problem for me. I'm not influenced by it. I see that it's there and I'm not influenced by it. And that may or may not be true are in individual cases, but in the aggregate, which is the only level that we're looking at this on, right. We're talking about a societal level problem. It's it has a colossal colossal role in shaping what, um, what veterinarians are taught. So yeah, it's the materials during school. It's the postgraduate education through CLEs, uh, it's the sponsorship of, and financial support of nonprofit organizations that ostensibly are public service organizations, but are really funded heavily by these companies. It's like, if you fall, I did a, just a lot of paper trail following in the course of writing the book. And it's just like, you can't find, there's not channel it's, there's not a channel where the money doesn't somehow get traced back to, uh, big pet food companies. There's just no other money there. Wow. So that bias is, is baked into everything <laugh> bias. Is there, I think that's the big takeaway. And, and I feel like I just sat through a really good two credit hour, her course on Dude, right? Like good. It should be an elements of, I mean, that Jen, that is a pretty, I think that's a pretty darn good idea that like, you can teach whatever you're gonna teach to vets. But the very first thing you have to teach them is look, the only place there's money in this industry or to teach you guys comes from pet food company. So everything you're gonna be taught here is coming from a pet food company. If that was hammered into their heads at the beginning of every, that might be a darn good way to like effectuate some beautiful kind of change. Stay tuned for Dans vet education.com eCourse <laugh> well, Jen, I am the founder of a pet food company. No, I I'm able to this stuff because there's money in it. I can tell you that when I wrote my book before I founded the company, there's not enough money that in people wanting to read a book like that for B to be able to do this, but it's just like, what I try to do. Mm-hmm <affirmative> is be really clear about that reality. Yeah. And that's like the equivalent, I guess, of doing what we were just talking about, where the very first course you take, or the very first lecture is this is all biased info. And it's like, I would, you know, I have bias. It's like a, the video series that I put out before we started filming these podcasts was called, or I just always would call myself a complete Charleton with a massive financial conflict of interest. Cause I want people to understand that that's there, it's there for me. And you should approach what I say with the critical eye too. It doesn't mean you get to just discount everything altogether. Just like I'm not saying this book comes from Hills, therefore burn it and don't listen to anything in it. But I'm saying you have to approach it with a degree of skepticism and you have to be willing to get into the weeds and not just accept, uh, everything that, that comes out of somebody's mouth. I agree, you know, put away the cuz I read it on internet because I read it in a book. You really do have to take everything with a critical step back critical eye critical ear. And it's so information and I, we did go over a little bit more than we do. So we really do hope you stayed on and listened to the entire episode. But I think this underscores how much information is within this subtopic of more camels, more We'll be able to go. We're gonna have a lot more to say. I think that making this one of this, the issues that we deal with on a recurring level on the show really frees us up to go into the weeds on this is very much an overview type show. But if you want me to like try to replicate as much as I can without violating IP rights, what it's like to go through ACE course put on by hill. Maybe that's something we can yeah. Maybe we'll do some reenactments or <laugh>. Yeah. You could be Brady. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We're we're doing it for, for everyone. We're trying to get this information out there. So we hope you enjoy this episode until the next episode. Thank you for coming along the ride and yeah. Thank You. The next time. It's A pleasure. Talk to y'all against soon.