20/11/2025
Charcoal and Garlic are some of our best go-tos!!
DOESN'T CHARCOAL BIND "X" FROM THE MIX....?!
We get this question once a week.
That or "isn't the iodine in your seaweed dangerous"?
Or, still, though not as much anymore "isn't the garlic in your Yeast Defeat" product lethal for dogs?
In garlic's example, it was a single overdose study where 7 poor, unforutnate dogs were fed the equivalent of 125g of garlic per day (25 cloves) for 7 weeks to see what would happen their blood. It wasn’t good.
Yeah, don't do that.
"While garlic is in the Alium (onion) family, it contains little to no of the problem compound (thiospulphate) commonly found in onions in large dose which will lay your dog out. Garlic in small doses is wonderful".
I must have said that 1000 times in the last few years. It's pretty exhausting. And still vets are concerned. Worse, having never seen a single study to support their stance, we are asked to provide copious amounts of scientific reasoning why it’s fine, which always seems a little unfair. More here:
www.dogsfirst. ie/raw-garlic-for-dogs/
It's the same with iodine. 15 years of selling seaweed you can imagine how sick we are of explaining this one. For those still confused, check this out
www.dogsfirst. ie/real-versus-conical-flask-iodine-for-dogs/
And its the same with charcoal. I REALLY want to use this ingredient in my dental product as it’s very likely helping to whiten their teeth but people are worried it absorbs other stuff the dog needs.
In short, incredibly, activated charcoal only ADsorbs (meaning stick to it) non-polar (ie not plus or minus an electron) stuff such as toxins and nasty gases. Most vitamins and minerals are charged (bar iodine, which might help those terrified of that essential nutrient!), so they don't stick to charcoal very well.
This means, unless huge doses of charcoal are taken, all is fine in the vitamin /mineral sense. Learn more about Van Der Waals forces in the FAQs here www.dogsfirstshop. ie/products/dr-bradys-dental-prothyroid).
As always, it's about the dose. Even if you wanted to use it to absorb stuff, say after a poisoning, you need to use LOTS.
Check out the attached table - look how much they used to have some sort of binding effect on medications given at the same time (as I said, it adsorbs toxins....!!!).
We don't use such doses. Activated charcoal is around 2% of the Pro Clean mix. So, your 10kg dog would be getting 2% of 1g of powder, or 20mg of charcoal, or 250 times less than the smallest dose tested in these studies!
And if you're STILL concerned, simply don't feed with the drug!
Now you know!
