The Horse's Advocate Podcast

Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) and Insulin Resistance (IR) are just words to most horse owners. We hear them, and we hope our horse doesn't "get them" attached to their health report. Even the veterinarians get a bit confused about how horses get started on the path of poor metabolic health. Expressions are created that lack meaning, such as "sugar is evil." If it were, why does it exist? So, I did some digging, surprising myself to find that what was taught to me in vet school over 40 years ago has recently been turned on its head! Here is one example: there is no such thing as lactic acidosis in muscles caused by anaerobic exercise (low oxygen).
Insulin resistance is a normal, regulatory process that ensures our cells receive the right amount of fuel. In this podcast, I explain how understanding this can transform the way you feed your horses, improving their health and saving you money. Clear, science-based insights will help you cut through the confusion often found in barn conversations, magazines, and social media.
We want the best for our horses, both in their health and in their performance. We are conditioned by marketing to believe we should add products to fix a problem, when that is rarely effective. For example, if your car's engine lacked power, you wouldn't add more fuel tanks to make it run better. Yet, that's what happens when different feeds and supplements are added to a horse's diet—it doesn't solve the problem and can worsen it. Listen to this podcast a few times and take notes, as I did to create it.
 
#horses #veterinary #horseteeth #horsecare
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Geoff Tucker is a veterinarian and horseman who has worked with horses since 1973. He earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University in 1984. Over the years, Geoff went from mucking stalls as a farmhand to starting his own equine practice. This journey helped him learn how to blend medical care with good horsemanship.
Geoff believes in doing what is best for the horse and in working with the horse. While at Cornell, he started the Cornell Student Horseman's Association, which organized talks with local experts, a knowledge competition called the Intercollegiate Horse Bowl, and Foal Watch at the Equine Research Park to help with live foal deliveries. Wanting to educate horse owners even more, Geoff also launched the first "I Love New York Horse Symposium," which drew 500 people from across the northeast.
Geoff also spent time working at the Equine Isolation Lab with respected colleagues, including Dr. Coggins, whose name is on the well-known test. He worked both part-time and full-time at Cornell's Equine Research Park.
On graduation day in 1984, while his classmates celebrated, Geoff drove his fully stocked vet truck to his first call—a sick foal. This marked the beginning of The Finger Lakes Equine Practice, which still operates today. Geoff sold the practice in 1996, worked for a short time at another clinic near Albany, NY, and then started The Equine Practice, focusing on equine dentistry. He continues this work from his base in South Florida.
Geoff worked on his first horse's teeth in 1983, when his mentor showed him how to place his hand inside a horse's mouth without medication and rasp off the offending sharp points. He was hooked from the start and made dentistry a key part of his practice. Since then, he has examined the mouths of over 84,000 horses across the United States - yes, he's been counting.

Cancer is defined as normal cells of the body behaving badly, at least that's the simple explanation given by AI. It's more complex than that. Luckily, in horses, cancer is rare; three of the top five occur in the skin, where we can see them. Of the other two, one is in the ovaries and remains locally there, and the other is in the blood, which isn't good.
This podcast covers two related topics: the top five cancers and ways to prevent your horse from developing cancer. But it must be said that I am not an oncologist (an expert in cancer). Therefore, the descriptions of the cancers are superficial. I do this because there are so many new treatments veterinarians are using; all you really need to do is recognize them and contact your local expert. There is also the fact that these cancers have been around for hundreds of years, according to books dating back to the Roman days, and that the treatments haven't really changed: surgery and natural chemicals applied topically. Vaccines are being tried along with chemotherapy, but with so few horses with cancer, there are not many available for research.
The second half of the podcast describes the use of glucose and, more importantly, lactate as fuels for all cells. When a cell becomes cancerous, its energy needs increase due to increased cell duplication and proliferation. The rate of glucose uptake and lactate production increases, signaling these cells to weaken and promote the further growth of cancer cells. There are many anecdotal stories in humans where cancer patients overcome their disease by not eating any glucose, which is an easy task by eating only meat. But is it possible that horses can restrict their vegetarian diet to consume less glucose and, therefore, reduce their risk of cancer? Further, can the addition of sufficient high-quality protein improve the skin's ability to defend against the causes of two of the three common skin cancers?
In past podcasts, I described why horses should eat only forage, limit this to half a day, and add high-quality protein (soybean meal) to help them thrive and avoid metabolic diseases. Could this also help prevent cancer, too? There is no proof, but then again, if the horse thrives, then by definition, every cell in their body thrives.

My wife placed a supplement ad for horses in front of me and said it was "interesting." She knows me, so she was testing me to see if this one was really special or just another waste of money.
Rather than give the same old response about marketing ploys to take money without substantiating the product, I decided to go deeper. The expression "correlation does not mean causation" is familiar. But what about randomized, controlled studies - the "gold standard" of research? Do these expensive, precise studies live up to the hype? Not necessarily. 
Mendelian randomization is a new approach to randomizing a study population in a true and natural way. It reduces (or eliminates) biases by looking for variations in the genetic code that have occurred over millions of years. This podcast goes into SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) and GWAS (Genome Wide Association Studies) to see if this new research technology has come into horse research, and more importantly, if it can prove the use of supplements to make horses healthier.

Cornell Veterinary School is well established as one of the best veterinary schools in the world, renowned for specialties like wildlife, infectious diseases, and equine practice. A quick search of data shows that Cornell's vet school was ranked #1 from 2000 (no data before this) until 2015. Currently, it is ranked #2 in America (behind the University of California, Davis) and #3 in the world (behind the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, and UC Davis).
Being accepted into their program was not only an honor, but also a miracle: one of only 80 people accepted in 1980. I tried not to sleep through my classes. When I graduated, I set up my equine practice 15 miles from the school, which allowed me to use it as my referral hospital.
One afternoon in 1991, I sent in a colic I considered surgical. The resident veterinarian performed a rectal exam and confirmed the presence of a displaced bowel. But, instead of agreeing with the surgical treatment, he said, "I think this is one of those new colics I just read about!" My look of surprise went unnoticed as he continued with the description of a nephrosplenic ligament entrapment, a new form of colic recently reported in a veterinary journal. And while the first report of this colic was in 1902 in Hungary, it was not until 1991 that a JAVMA (Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association) article reported it, making it widely known among veterinarians. Now, I often hear clients mention that their horse recently suffered from a nephrosplenic ligament entrapment colic.
The pattern of current ailments of horses not mentioned in my 1984 veterinary textbooks invites the question of why. This podcast covers these "new" diseases and stimulates us to ask what has changed in the care of horses to cause them.

Most advice from horse professionals focuses on solving problems using standard approaches, rather than looking for the root cause. For example, if you look at a chart of all causes of death in horses, dental issues barely register compared to colic, laminitis, or metabolic diseases. Many horse owners truly love their horses, even if they struggle to explain why. They want the best for their animals, but often depend on experts for advice and care, without considering how they might prevent problems before needing expert help.
Horse owners often look for someone to fix their horses when something goes wrong, but horses are not like cars that can just be repaired in a shop. Still, both veterinary and non-veterinary care often treat horses as if they are objects with problems to solve, without considering the horse's perspective. It's true that many skilled people can help fix these issues, but it's worth asking if every repair is really needed, or if there might be simpler solutions.
Sometimes, people approach fixing horses in ways that make themselves seem more important, which can make things more complicated than necessary. Many horse owners, even though they care deeply, follow expert advice without always considering what's best for the horse. In my podcast, I talk about a new way to treat a passage between a horse's mouth and sinus, where food can move from the mouth into the sinus and come out the nostril. To us, this discharge smells bad and needs daily care, but from the horse's point of view, it doesn't seem to be a problem—at least, scientific reports don't mention it. How common is this issue? Do horses really need to be fixed if nothing is done?