If you’re interested in WHY arthritis happens, have a listen. Because arthritis is not from old age, or wear and tear, or genetics. Those “reasons” are people guessing.

I would be so happy if people knew the truth about this!

Some years ago, I was doing TBT bodywork on a horse and overheard a conversation with a local vet, who was nearby working on another horse.

I was shocked.

This vet was doing a pre-purchase on a 4 year old horse for a jumping prospect.

What was shocking?

The vet telling the owner that the flexions test were poor…but it’s very easy to “maintain” the horse on joint injections. And that maintaining with joint injections is normal for all jumpers.

This is so much garbage!

Sure, maybe that is his experience.

But it doesn’t have to be “normal” to inject joints for “maintenance.” That’s once again just treating the symptom without trying to find the cause.

To be fair, vets don’t know the cause. But you can know.

We just need to get the joints healthy. And this podcast tells you exactly what to do.

Summary:
Summary by AI:

The speaker, a veterinarian with 30 years of experience, argues that horse arthritis is not permanent and can be healed by addressing its root causes. She says arthritis is commonly misunderstood as irreversible joint degeneration, but claims it actually results from two issues: misaligned joints and liver dysfunction that weakens ligaments. Misalignment leads the body to create extra bone for stability (what vets call osteoarthritis). Liver issues supposedly reduce the “groceries” ligaments need, causing joints to compress and lose fluid.

Typical veterinary explanations—age, injury, conformation, stress, diet—are acknowledged but said to be secondary. Conventional treatments (joint supplements, injections, hoof angle changes, stretching) are described as temporary symptom management.

Her proposed cure:

Fix the liver, primarily with her recommended product “TBT Liver Revival.”

Realign the bones, ideally through the Tucker Biokinetic Technique (TBT) or sometimes chiropractic, massage, or other bodywork.

She claims that once alignment and liver function are restored, the body will reabsorb excess bone and arthritis will resolve. She also promotes additional TBT products for chronic or advanced joint issues.

Transcription:

Renee (00:00:00.00)
Horse arthritis can be cured, even though we’ve been taught that it’s permanent, that it’s just aging and there’s nothing to be done. I’m a 30-year equine veterinarian. I worked with thousands of horses and helped them recover from arthritis. Here are the real causes of horse arthritis: how to prevent, identify, and heal it from the root. What is horse arthritis? Horse arthritis is believed to be a degeneration of joints. It’s not, and I’ll explain what it is as we go along. The word arthritis literally means inflammation of a joint. Arthra means joint and itis means inflammation. It’s somehow that word has enlarged and morphed. On the one hand, people now believe you get arthritis when the joint cartilage, bones, and surrounding tissue are unrepairable, usually from aging. On the other hand, veterinarians tell you there’s arthritis when they see extra bone buildup around the joint on an X-ray. This is technically called osteoarthritis because osteo means bone, so there’s There’s definitely confusion. Let’s start clearing this up. How to know if your horse has arthritis. Official veterinary osteoarthritis can only be diagnosed with an X-ray. The X-ray will show a buildup of bone around a joint.

Renee (00:01:12.22)
Arthritis can be found in any joint. Socks, knees, fetlocks, back and neck, anywhere there are bones. Some symptoms you might see with arthritis are stiffness after rest, difficulty getting up, uneven gait, behavioral changes, reluctance to work or irritability under saddle. Physical indicators can be swelling, heat in joints, or reduced performance. In senior horses, we tend to think, Oh, they’re just getting older. But in younger horses, people may think, Why is this horse so lazy or so slow? Okay, let’s talk about the real causes of horse arthritis. Traditional vet might tell you, arthritis can be caused by poor confirmation, past injuries, repetitive stress from work, uneven footing, uneven movement patterns, or an imbalanced diet affecting joints. Yes, the diet can affect the joints. In fact, a lot of common foods that people give the horses are actually harming their health. I cover more of that in this video. But the real cause of arthritis is two things going wrong. It could be one or the other, but it’s usually both. The first cause, misaligned joints. Every joint is made of two bones. The bones are connected with ligaments. These bones should line up with each other perfectly straight.

Renee (00:02:22.19)
When they’re perfectly straight, the weight of the horse and the movement pressures transmit evenly from one bone to the next. But if one of the bones is misaligned, there’s extra pressure on one side of the bone. When there’s extra pressure, the body purposefully makes more bone. That extra bone is there for stability and support of the joint. This support is needed to hold the joint together so no ligaments are torn. If you correct the misalignment, the body will reabsorb unnecessary bone. It can take time, but unneeded bone is removed faster than the time it took to build up. The second cause is liver issues. This is unfortunately super common. Now, I know it’s a little weird to connect the liver with the joints. Let me try to explain it in simple terms. The liver makes ligament groceries. Groceries are what I call the many items the ligaments need to keep themselves strong. But today, most horses’ liver are saturated with chemicals, toxins, heavy metals, etc. For simplicity, I call these things bad stuff. When the liver is saturated with bad stuff, it can’t make enough ligament groceries. So the ligaments are not as strong as they should be.

Renee (00:03:29.13)
Now, we’re It’s the effect of two bones making a joint connected by ligaments. But what keeps the two bones from touching each other? Also ligaments. Ligaments connect bones and keep the joint bones from touching or rubbing on each other. With weak ligaments, the bones get too close together and the joints get squished. We often hear about joints not having enough joint fluid. But what if the reason there’s not enough fluid is because the joint is squished. So there’s not enough space for the joint fluid. So when there’s weak ligaments, not enough joint fluid, and the bones are too close together, all this destabilizes the joint. In order to help, the body puts an extra bone, aka arthritis. When you have both misalignment and weak ligaments, you will get arthritis. You may also get cartilage erosion, OCD, and even bone chips. To prevent horse arthritis, most vets will tell you things like proper warmup and cool down routines, maintaining a balanced horse diet and nutrition, monitoring for early signs, catching arthritis before it progresses, adjusting the workload and footing for horses prone to joint stress, and all these are okay, but they will also tell you to give joint supplements.

Renee (00:04:38.17)
Joint supplements are the absolute opposite of what you should do to prevent arthritis. Let me explain. When you give joint fluid supplements, the body thinks it has enough, so it slows down production of joint fluid. This is called the negative feedback cycle. This is why sometimes when you take horses off joint supplements, they can be stiff or sore. That’s because it takes up 30 days for the body to ramp joint fluid production back up. Now, I know there are plenty of horses out there that do better on joint supplements when they already have signs of arthritis, and we’ll talk about that shortly. But joint supplements as a preventative is 100% wrong. By the way, this video is part of a series where I talk about the most common horse issues and how to get to their root causes. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next one, and please comment with any horse issues you’d like me to review. Okay, now we’re getting to how to cure horse arthritis. There are several treatments that’s recommend to manage the symptoms. For example, controlled exercise or turnout, including decreasing the amount or the intensity or level of riding.

Renee (00:05:41.22)
Also, if the horse is not lame, you can ride a horse with arthritis. Proper hoof care. Whether the horse has arthritis or not, the best hoof care is barefoot trimming, trimmed to the hard sole plane. Well-intentioned people may suggest changing the angle of the hoof to help an arthritic joint, but changing the angle to something other than what is natural for the horse causes other problems. Gentle massage is good, but I don’t recommend stretching. Why? Because the ligaments are already weak, stretching is not best for them. Joint supplements. Here’s where joint supplements can be helpful to alleviate symptoms. Joint supplements give your horse joint fluid building blocks such as glycosamine, conjointin, and hyaluronic acid. If the horse has arthritis, there are liver problems which make the ligaments weak. But guess what? The liver also makes the building blocks, glucosamine, conjointin, and hyaluronic acid that we just talked about, all those are made in the liver. So until the liver is fixed, joint supplements do help the horse. Just a note about joint injections. Joint injections give these building blocks directly into the joint. But joint injections also have steroids in them. Steroids degrade joint cartilage.

Renee (00:06:53.22)
Therefore, you want to avoid joint injections if at all possible. The truth is, with these treatments, you’re just getting temporary relief of the symptoms, not getting to the root cause of the issue. Therefore, you continue to spend money with no one in sight and your horse is still in pain. So how do you really cure horse arthritis? All you need to do is fix the liver and align the bones. Here’s how you do it. For the liver, I recommend TBT Lever Revival. Links in the description. This is an energy-based product. Other liver cleanses or liver support products can be helpful. However, they don’t directly help the part of the liver that makes ligament groceries like TBT liver revival does. They do help clear out the bad stuff, though, so that can be helpful. Now, for the bone alignment, I recommend hiring or becoming a TBT practitioner. Tbt stands for Tucker Biokinetic Technique. Tbt is a two-handed energetic alignment technique that finds and corrects the primary causes of issues, eliminating the need for continued therapies. If you don’t have a TBT practitioner available, certified animal chiropractic practitioners can help. I say can because many of them don’t address leg bones muscles, which you really need for arthritis.

Renee (00:08:01.22)
Other modalities such as acupuncture, massage, miofascial, and the like can also help alignment. They help if their modality targets the primary cause of the misalignment. For example, if the primary cause of a bone misalignment is a tight muscle knot. A massage therapist will be perfect because they target muscles. In summary, osteoarthritis is purposely created by the body to help the joints. The root cause is two things, bone misalignment and a liver saturated with bad stuff. When you realign the bones and help the liver, there’s no need for osteoarthritis. Over time, the body will reabsorb the extra bone, and that is how you get rid of arthritis. You’ll be surprised at how well this will work. One last thing, if your horse has had arthritis for a long time or has OCD or cartilage problems, please try TBT joint revival. This is an energy-based product directly helping the joints heal. It’s not a joint supplement. If you want to dive deeper into how TBT can help your horse, I invite you to learn more. It’s helped me and my students heal thousands of horses, and it can change how you care for yours forever. Just check the link in the description.

Renee (00:09:13.06)
Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.

Want to Align and Heal Horses? You Can!

LEARN MORE HERE