Dr. Marlene Siegel - Redefining Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Marlene Siegel is a seasoned veterinarian with over 40 years of experience. Her career pivoted 25 years ago after a pivotal incident where a show horse saved her daughter's life. When conventional veterinary medicine couldn't offer a solution to save the horse's career, Dr. Siegel's refusal to accept these limitations led her to explore alternative treatments. This journey, which began with a quest to heal her own horse, has since transformed her practice, incorporating holistic and innovative approaches to veterinary care, impacting the lives of countless animals.

Dr. Siegel shares the extraordinary story of her horse, Lily, who defied all odds to achieve competition success after being diagnosed with severe arthritis due to a dental issue. Emphasizing holistic care and critical thinking, Dr. Siegel reveals her comprehensive approach to pet health, which combines chiropractic adjustments, nutritional supplements, acupuncture, laser therapy, and homeopathic remedies.

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Takeaways

1. Always seek holistic alternatives
2. Ensure your pet's diet is species-appropriate and free from harmful additives
3. Be an informed consumer; understand product label

Connect with Dr. Marlene Siegel:

Courses for Pet Parents | Instagram | Youtube | LinkedIn | 
Websites: 
https://drmarlenesiegel.com/
https://www.facebook.com/DrMarleneSiegelHolisticVet

Transcript

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Welcome to Your Infinite Health. Are you getting older? Are you feeling it? How would you like to do that in reverse? We're your host Doctor Tripp. And Lanae. We've run an integrated medicine practice for 13 years. Together, we have 60 years of combined experience helping clients. We've helped tens of thousands achieve success in health and live longer, happier lives. In this show, we'll cover peer reviewed and evidence based integrative approaches to creating the health you've always wanted. We also share professional experience we see in the field every day. So if you're ready to feel, look, and live your best life, you're in the right place. Welcome to Eurofina Health podcast. Hey, guys. Linnea here. Tripp will be joining me shortly, but I wanted to jump on because we've got a great guest for you today. It's a little different than our previous topics, but if you are a pet lover, you're definitely going to want to stay tuned for this. So So I'm just gonna jump right in. Today, we're gonna be talking to doctor Marlene Siegel who is a pioneering figure in integrative veterinary medicine with a career spanning over 2 decades. Beginning as an emergency medical technician in 1975, she later became the 1st female paramedic in Florida in 1977. Graduating from the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine in 1985, she established her own practice in 1987 after gaining experience in various veterinary settings. In 2004, doctor Siegel explored alternative medicine following a challenging case with her show horse, Lily. This journey led her to integrate chiropractic treatments, acupuncture, and more into her practice. Doctor Siegel's commitment to education is evident through initiatives like veterinary support staff training and her volunteer program. With nearly 4 decades of experience, doctor Siegel is internationally recognized for her expertise in integrative veterinary medicine. Her practice, Pasco Veterinary Medical Center, offers a wide range of alternative therapies and detoxification services. She also provides online courses for pet parents and veterinarians along with developing her own raw pet food and supplement company. Thank you for joining us, doctor Siegel. Alright. Doctor Siegel, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm pretty either. I'm so glad that we connected. Yeah. So I'm pretty excited. You're gonna be the 1st integrative veterinarian we've had on the show, so be a little different. But, definitely, we're pet lovers. I'm sure most of our audience is as well. Actually, have a rule in our clinic that if our dogs don't, you know, if they don't respond well to somebody, they're probably not gonna be a good patient. That's how I used to date. I think it's very smart. I think animals are you know, they're probably a little more intuitive than we are. And Absolutely. Well, so can you tell the listeners a bit about what got you interested in providing integrative, veterinarian services? That seems pretty niche. So how did you even end up there? So I've been practicing veterinary medicine for 40 years, but about 15 years into practice, I had a life altering incident with one of my show horses and my youngest daughter was riding her and this horse literally saved my daughter's life. So in my quest to get the horse fixed, I was told there was nothing more that could be done for her. They could put her out to a pasture. I could put her down, but basically her show career was over. And that was an unacceptable answer. That was really what lit me up and said, there has to be other answers. Just because our limited toolkit can't go anywhere else, doesn't mean there isn't something else out there. And so I started a very big dive down many rabbit holes looking for answers initially just to fix the horse. And then as I was working towards that, all these modalities I was coming across, I thought, well, why don't I just integrate that into my small animal practice? Because even though we're showing horses, my focus of medicine is small animals. And so I started incorporating these elements of course, to heal the horse, but also into my small animal practice. And then the more I did that, the more I integrated it into my personal life. And one thing leads to another. And I really want to emphasize how this lifestyle becomes who you are, not what you do. Yes. I do things differently. I'm sure you guys do things very differently than the average American family, but it really turns into more of who we are, the ethics, the morals, the principles, the dedication, the commitment to a health and a lifestyle to support our bodies and for me to support my pet bodies. Could you be a little more specific? Like, what happened to your horse exactly? So my daughter was riding in a class, and several times something happened that caused her to start to canter. And that for a walk, trot rider out of 10 year old child on board, they're only supposed to walk and trot. So she comes into lineup and we already knew she lost her class. And as the trainer was standing in front of them, all the trainers come in and stand in front of their riders, God forbid something were to happen and the unthinkable happened. She started twitching her head like she had a bug chasing her. And the trainer reached her hand up to fix she thought the forelock that hit her on the front of her face was tickling her. And so she went to move that, and that motion caused the horse to pull back and her neck spasm, which we didn't know it was a spasm at the time. All we knew is it caused her to rear in the air. So now I have a horse vertical in the air, a 10 year old child who's no one told if your horse rears, bail. Just jump off, fall off, whatever, but get off because the number one cause of a rider's death when a horse rears is the horse falling over and crushing their rider. Oh. So I had a 10 10 year old 50 pound child and a 2,000 pound horse with a saddle. And as we're all watching in slow motion, it was truly a nightmare that I finally stopped reliving in my psyche. And you could see the horse is gonna get pulled over backwards because my daughter's literally hanging from the reins, which is pulling the bit, which is pulling the horse over backwards onto her. But by the grace of God, this horse somehow felt where the child was falling and squatted on her left hind leg as my child was falling to her left and pushed herself as hard as she could to the right. However, when she hit the ground, you could not see space between child and horse. So when I jumped over the railing running to my daughter, I truly did not know what I was going to find. And you're numb. Your brain doesn't think. You're just you're breathing and you're moving, but you really aren't thinking. And then I got there and she opened her eyes because the horse had already gotten up. It it it's all happened in a matter of seconds, but it felt like an acuity. And so my daughter opens her eyes. Now I know she's alive. I asked her if she wanted to walk out of the arena or have me carry her, and I think that's the moment where the embarrassment, the shock, you know, all the emotions came together, and so I carried her out of the arena. But that wasn't the end of our story because back at home, we had a about 2 more incidences. And on the 3rd incident, I happened to be standing next to the horse. And I saw what looked like a seizure going up her leg, upper neck. And I had equine veterinarians come out. Nobody knew what was wrong with her. They just said, we can put her down or you can put her out to a pasture, but she'll never be safe. We don't know what's wrong with her, so let's take her out. What was her name? Lily. Lily. Out in my backyard, by the way. She is. I still have Lily. She's in her thirties, approaching her forties, and she had a forever home. You know, there was just all my horses have a forever home. But, yeah, it was in my quest to fix her. And then I ended up having one of my, I took a chiropractic class and one of the veterinarians teaching that class actually diagnosed her over the phone. Didn't even have to see her. She'd seen it so many times. And basically what happened is the teeth in the back, horse's teeth grow and they grow points. And the person who was floating her teeth or preparing her teeth had not caught those spikes. And so it had caused her jaw to lock. So for years, she's trying to bend her head at C 1 at the pole, and she couldn't. So she was straining all of her neck muscles, creating severe arthritis in her neck, which was causing a lot of pain and trauma. And yet she's out there trying to do her job. You know? She's ready. And, you know, everything she went into, she won despite the fact that she was in that much pain. It was amazing. I I can't and she almost got put down because of a dental issue. Well, that was their recommendation. That's true. That's true. I wasn't going there. Yeah. That seems so dismissive, in my mind. Well, I think what it says to me is that sometimes we have to look for answers. Sometimes the answers aren't to parents. Sometimes we have to go out of our toolbox. You know, in veterinary medicine, we're all taught this standard toolbox allopathic lifestyle and life medicine. And we're not taught critical thinking. We're not taught our children aren't taught critical thinking in today's world. So you put that combination together and it's pretty deadly. So they didn't have any other answers, but I was determined to find other answers. And then the other thing because I believe everything happens for a reason. So the rest of my career was dedicated to my then motto, which was, I will never tell somebody there's nothing more that can be done ever. And I came close one time to wanting to say it, but I didn't. And, you know, it and I was able to be successful. So not that we make everything live to forever. No. It's not the point. It's about quality of life, And it's about doing your best in the earth suit that we have for the length of time that we're here. It's finding what is our passion and then serving with that passion. That's what life is all about. So what was the path that had to be did they just have to take the teeth out or what how'd that happen for her? So we did have her teeth filed properly. Had a friend of mine came out and another fellow veterinarian. So we got her teeth fixed, but it took daily therapies, chiropractic adjustments, nutritional supplements, acupuncture. Those were the beginning therapies. And then I got into laser and a variety of other homeopathic formulas and just anything that I could find that could treat her infrared therapy. We used everything. And then everything I learned for her, I applied into my small animal practice. How does infrared therapy work for a horse? Same it does on people. We use full spectrum pads, so we get deeper penetration, and it's all about detoxification and tissue regeneration and increasing the Krebs cycle, increasing energy production through the mitochondria. So red light is a fabulous therapy, but it's a tool in a toolkit. And so I wanna help people understand that we come from a background now where our country, it's at least in the United States, we're conditioned to name it, blame it, and then come up with a pharmaceutical or a therapy. And what we're really doing is symptom suppression because we're not looking at the root cause of what created the situation to begin with. So Lily's root cause was her teeth not being filed properly. We fix that, and then we have to start working on reducing inflammation, the pain triggers, restoring the muscles some a more supple state, helping to fix the fascia, you know, doing fascia decompression. So all of those features had to come in place to help repair what was originally a functional problem. Mhmm. May may I add one thing? Yeah. Of course. Later, after being told she would never be ridden safely again, that little duo went on to win the United States Reserve Youth National Championship. I hear everybody out there applauding. And and yeah. And it was marvelous to watch. I mean, they were just the most amazing duo, and I work on that horse every day just to relieve the pain and the inflammation and the spasms. Yeah. Sure. I I was gonna ask, do you have, like, a comprehensive lab panel that you're using and interpretation of those lab values? Yeah. So what I do you know, we have the standard CBC chemistry thyroid, you know, those those are standard. We do the standard radiographs. We do ultrasound, which is pretty standard in veterinary medicine now. But I go way beyond that because I'm looking for deficiencies, and I'm looking for toxicities, and I'm seeking the underlying cause of mitochondrial dysfunction. So that's a big fancy word for the listeners. It's basically we're looking for the essential nutrients, which are the nutrients the body cannot produce in sufficient quantities on its own. As humans, we have certain essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids, and animals have similar ones. They have a few extras that they have to have, but, you know, we all depend on this, and it has to come in through our diet. Well, we live in a world where our food is nutrient depleted. I don't think anybody questions that part anymore. So it is really essential that we supplement their diet with those essentials because the body will take those and make everything else that it needs. But that also leads us to species appropriate diet because we are what we eat and so are our pets. The pet food industry was really developed through the waste products of human processing. So, you know, your humans are now processing their food, which that's junk to begin with. And now they have all these byproducts. Well, what are you gonna do with that? We're gonna make it into dog food and cat food. And it has caused tremendous harm to our pet parents or to our pet patients. And the pet parents are starting to become more aware that what they're feeding their animals are actually contributing to the problem. So dogs are carnivores. We call them scavenger carnivores because they were adapted to eating off of the garbage of man plus hunting on their own. But cats are obligate carnivores. They have no dietary requirement for carbohydrates. And yet the food that is sold in the stores, the kibble and the canned foods are 40 to 60% carbohydrate. So they're basically eating sugar, and we all know sugar leads to inflammation and gut damage and leaky gut. So is it a surprise that our animals are doing poorly? In fact, today, animals are living 7 years shorter than they did 25 years ago. Wow. Despite all the amazing advancements in medicine and in therapies, we are going in the wrong direction. And it's because a level of toxicity and the lack of essential nutrients, you can't fix the body. You can't have your car run if you don't put gas in it. You know, if you have the wrong oil or you don't have tires, if there's some essential things that the car has to have as a machine to work. And people seem to forget that we are a regenerative machine, meaning that we will do everything we can to survive even under less than ideal circumstances. So now somebody goes, but I've been feeding my dog this food for years. Well, yeah. But for years, that animal has been nutritionally starved. Metabolic pathways aren't functioning properly. And at some point, it's going to show you a symptom. And if you don't listen to that symptom, it's going to get louder and louder. And the end stage of chronic degeneration is cancer. So dogs have the highest rate of cancer of any mammal on the planet. 1 at 1.65 right now. That's almost a 100% of dogs getting cancer and not when they're old. I'm seeing cancer in animals that are 2 4 years of age. So this is not an old dog disease. Oh, absolutely. And cats, they say, is 1 out of 3, and I think that is highly underreported. We're seeing ridiculous numbers. And I started seeing it about 15 years ago. When I started practicing 40 years ago, we would see cancer once or twice a year across the board. Now I see cases 10 to 15 a week. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Now that's that is one of those mic drops that you have to stop and go, what's going on in our world? I mean, look at the rates on people. You know, men are 1 out of 2 and women are 1 out of 3. So when do we stop and start taking control? Obviously, our governments are not saving us. Obviously, the food industry is not out there to be our best friend. So it's time for us to become conscious. It's time for us to take the power to heal back to ourselves. And we can make choices. Our pets can't make choices. They are totally dependent on what lifestyle we provide for them. So I think it is extremely imperative that pet parents at least become receptive to learning. If you don't wanna do it, that's your choice. But at least give yourself the opportunity to learn how does this animal's body work, what will help it thrive, what will help it survive. Survive is good because it takes you through to the other side, but you can't stay in survival mode. That's when you start having the degenerative problems. You need to move from surviving to thriving. So far, for dogs in that, what percentage of their diet should be carbohydrate, if any at all? Technically, none. Really don't need carbohydrates. In the wild, they would have killed an animal and eaten it in the state that they killed it in. But they would also, as they went through the abdomen looking for organ meat, they would have pulled out the intestines. They would have chewed through some of those intestines, and all that material that was in the herbivore's intestinal tract is all that fermented carbohydrate and fiber. So they got their prebiotic, they got their probiotics, and they got all of those nutrients from these rich grasses and such that the herbivore was eating, but it was already digested for them. So it isn't that it's bad for them. It's that they are not the primary digester of it. So when people are out feeding their animals different vegetables and leafy greens, they are truly designed to break that down. They have a pancreas, and that pancreas can only do so much. But think about the animal that's been eating processed foods for 5, 8, 10 years of their life. They're just whacking that pancreas every bite of every meal because they don't have amylase in their saliva. Amylase is the enzyme that we as humans use to break down our carbohydrates if we chew our food properly in our mouth, you know, 60 times before you're supposed to swallow it. And most people barely chew 2 to 3 times. So dogs and cats were designed to tear, gulp, and swallow. Why? Because they're out in the wild. They've just chased down something that they're going to kill and eat, and they're making a big commotion, which is going to attract other carnivores and other scavengers. So you have to get as much as you can, stuff yourself when meat when meat's available, and then go to your den to digest it. So that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. But today's dogs and cats, we feed them this kibble diet, which I call Frankenfood, and it resembles nothing of what they were supposed to eat. It's devoid of moisture. It has no digestive enzymes in it. There's no living enzymes in it, and it's full of pesticides and GMO products and just terrible foods, if it even has any meat in it. And so they are eating all day long. Well, again, they weren't designed to eat that way. They were designed to hunt at dawn and hunt at dusk. If they were lucky, they found something that they could eat, stuff themselves because you don't know when your next meal is coming. So when you look at their evolutionary their biology, it really makes a lot of sense. Nature never waste energy doing anything that is not appropriate ever. So why put amylase in the saliva of a dog and a cat when they don't chew their food? That's a waste of of energy. So digestion for them begins in the stomach. And then their pancreas was to kick in that extra little bit of proteolysis and carbohydrate digestion, and maybe some sugar digestion, depending on what they were eating. So these people that are out there talking about, well, dogs should be vegetarians. Well, they can survive eating anything for a little time. In fact, if they were out starving, you'll see wolves dig up tubers and gnaw on things because they're starving. They don't have a choice, but that's not their biological diet. That's not the diet they're going to thrive on. So we wanna help educate people that we have to stop and look at what are we doing? What are we feeding ourselves and what are we feeding our animals? And does that meet their biological needs? So for any kind of a canned kibble processed food diet, the answer is emphatically no. Well, so now you're freaking me out. Is there anything at Petco or PetSmart that's really suitable or people shouldn't even buy that stuff? Like, is there anything? No. What do you think? You gotta go to the meat mark butcher? That's a great question. So it's not about going to Publix or the butcher and getting a piece of meat. Because in the wild, they ate meat, fat, bone, and organ meat. I call that the macronutrients. Now somehow they intuitively knew how much to eat of any it wasn't the same every meal granted, but over time, they were able to keep a balanced diet. So we still need to balance the meat, that bone, and organ meat. Otherwise, you get all kinds of metabolic problems. The people that are eating that are feeding straight meat product without any bone are gonna have a calcium phosphorus imbalance, which can lead to more problems than just feeding a kibble diet or at least as many. So it it needs to be balanced. And this is another important really important piece is that whatever meat that they're eating has to come from a grass fed, grass finished animal, and here's why. Herbivores only process vitamin d from the sun. So when they're outside grazing on pastures, out in the sun, they are synthesizing vitamin d into their meat, into their muscle. So when you eat that meat, you are getting their vitamin d. Humans are both. We get vitamin d from the sun, and we get vitamin d from our diet. But carnivores only get vitamin d from their meat source. They don't synthesize vitamin d from the sun. So now all these canned and bagged foods are using waste product from slaughter fields where these animals probably have never been outside, and they're vitamin d deficient. And in fact, there is a university study that was done a few years ago on a lot of kibble diets and canned foods. And they found that 85% of the dogs that were eating a canned or kibble diet were vitamin D insufficient. So proof that but nobody's to, I've test for that. But the average veterinarian isn't testing for essential nutrients and not testing for vitamin D or magnesium, which vitamin D and magnesium are both critical for the innate immune system to function. It's the coenzyme that runs that pathway. So if you're deficient in 1 or both of those, your entire innate immune system is shut off. Now do we know that? Do we feel it? No. But do we see it in our health? Absolutely. That's why vitamin d is so important to our health. It and all these essential vitamins, they aren't just the Flintstone vitamin that we took when we were kids. They are actually the cofactors that run our metabolic pathways. So leading up to, I practice bioregulatory medicine, which is really not even a thing in veterinary medicine. It is in people. And I'm calling it that because I'm teaching people the biology of their pets' bodies so that they understand what are you doing that's contributing to it working well? And what are you doing that is inhibiting it and keeping it from functioning well? That's really the, that's medicine right there. You don't have to go through all your books and get it complicated. What are you deficient in? What are you toxic in? Why is the mitochondria not functioning and making energy? So you have mitochondrial dysfunction. And what are the trapped emotions associated with the disease that you have? And if you can dial those in, you can go back to thriving. Okay. So I I see your brains going, okay. What do I do? I like it. I feel like I'm probably murdering my dogs. I've got some guilt right now. So what's the, like, what's the answer for somebody? Like, what where is the nutrition? Where do they get the nutrition they need to give their pets the nutrition that they want their pets to have? If they've been doing it wrong all along, which it sounds like most of us probably are. Yeah. I would say start number 1 with getting educated. That's really where it needs to go because I don't want this to turn into symptom suppression again where you pick one item and you go, okay. Great. I'm gonna feed a better diet. But now you haven't learned anything about detoxification, their 6 organs of elimination. You haven't learned about their gut health. You haven't learned about their microbiome and how to support that. So what I'm about to say, I'm prefacing with get the whole picture, get educated so you really understand what you're doing, and then we start picking the things that we need to change. So diet number 1. And we I do promote a raw diet. But because over the past 10 years, so many companies are jumping on the bandwagon, and in fact, Royal Canin is one of the biggest processed food companies. It's owned by Mars, and Mars owns over 15, maybe 25 percent now of the entire veterinary industry. Mars, the candy bar company. They they own something like 15, 20 different pet foods that are you can buy in the store all processed. They also own prescription diets. They own Banfield Hospitals. They own BluePearl Centers. So look at the trail here. You go to feeding your animal toxic food from the grocery store. They get sick. You go to the vet. The vet keeps doing symptom suppression till they can't do that anymore. Now they get a serious disease. Now they get referred to BluePearl. BluePearl puts them on the prescription diet, which is loaded with corn and genetically modified ingredients. And they poor people spend 1,000 of dollars for cancer therapy, and they're still doing the things that are causing cancer. They haven't changed lifestyle. So my biggest quest is to educate people on what are you doing that helps and hurts. And I have a course for that. So I actually have a pet parent course that the pet parent can take. It's not expensive. It's 3 hours broken down into 10 minute bites. So, you know, you can drive in your car and start understanding it. But then once you understand, then we start a list. Column a, all the things you should be doing. Column b, all the things you shouldn't be doing that you just learned about. So, like, for you, step number 1 would be, I need to start feeding a different diet. And b, no more kibble. No. Period. Now you're gonna make a transition. You're not gonna do that cold turkey, obviously, but at least you know what your goal is. Right? So so number 1 is getting them on a raw diet or a species appropriate raw diet. But, again, because there's now so many companies that are coming out of the market, they're using a uneducated population and saying, oh, look. We're a raw company, but they're using genetically bonafide meat. They are adding synthetic vitamins and minerals. They're adding other additives that are not healthy. They are using vegetables, you know, and think about this. You're paying meat prices for a diet. If you're gonna feed a raw diet, that means you're feeding a meat based diet. Well, these companies are adding all these vegetables and stuff in because broccoli has a list of these nutrients, and spinach has a list of these nutrients, which sounds wonderful. But do we really know those nutrients are in there if they were grown on depleted soils or they're not organically grown? So again, this goes back to education. How do we become a good consumer? How do we learn to read labels? How do we learn to understand labels? For instance, a package can say grass fed. And if it doesn't say grass finished, by law, that animal can be on a pasture for one day. Go back to the feedlot for the rest of its life, and it can be called grass fed. Because it was grass fed Laura's beef is a lie. Absolutely. So these are the things that we need to learn. We need to be more advocating for our health and our pet's health and ultimately for mother earth as well. Because when we make better decisions about the products that we're buying, when we as consumers spend our dollars on supporting companies that are doing the right thing, then the companies who aren't getting supported are either gonna go out of business or they're going to have to come do what the good guys are doing. That was the whole GMO labeling thing years ago with Jeffrey Smith. Right? Companies lobby that they're not gonna put on their label that they have genetically modified ingredients. So what happened? Jeffrey's group went and said, okay. If you won't label that you are GMO, we're going to go to companies who will go out of their way to label non GMO. So now people are trained. If it doesn't say non GMO or organic on that label, they're not gonna buy it because, obviously, there's something in there that you shouldn't be eating. Mhmm. So we as consumers are really the responsible parties here. If we keep buying products that are unhealthy, then the companies are gonna keep making them. I go to restaurants. This is a big contention for me because I will always call ahead and I what are the oils you're using in my food? Is there anything organic as an option? I don't want anything that has gluten in it. And so I asked every chef I talk to, I asked them, why are you still serving gluten meals? Why are you still using canola oil or soy that's genetically modified? And they said plain and simple. It's not being demanded to take it out. Shame on us. I'm surprised. I would have thought the answer would be from a cost benefit response. Well, it it is they say it's cheaper, but come on. How much olive oil do you use when you're cooking? A tablespoon? Right. Like, can you tell me that that is the big deciding factor is the difference between canola oil, infused olive oil, and straight olive oil. It's the you don't use that much in each dish. It's a smattering. So, you know, they can say it's that, but it's really not. It's that they've gotten away with chat fast, cheap and convenience. And no one's questioning it. There's not a big enough demand. There is now a movement. You see a lot of people who have gluten allergies or gluten sensitivities, and they're asking for healthier food, and some restaurants are providing it. I was in the Hilton a couple of years ago, and they had nothing that they could feed me. Nothing. It was a cute story because it it was the assistant chef, and I was teaching an ozone class. So I have all these doctors, and we're all supposed to have lunch together. And I had called ahead and said, I want a gluten free meal with no canola oil and no soy that I didn't even ask for organic. And they, sitting at the table and they came out and go, we we have nothing to serve you. Nothing. And I went, you wanna go back and check your kitchen again? And they went back and they came back and they're, no, the chef said we can't do anything. Well, the actual chef was back the next day, and he was mortified. He goes, I have butter back there. I could have cooked you something in butter. So he acknowledged that they just didn't try. That is a 5 star Hilton hotel. Yeah. That's egregious. That is the difference between somebody who just doesn't, like, dismiss, like, oh, we have to put your horse down, and somebody who is, solution oriented and solution driven. There needs to be more solution driven people on the planet, I think. Yeah. And less consumer complacency. Yeah. So what I did the next day to day 2 in our class, I literally went to a organic store, and I bought avocado and a bean mixture. And I had my little cooler, and I just went in while all my students were eating their toxic food, and they're watching me, and I'm eating a healthy diet. So when the chef came out, he goes, what can I make you? I said, I'm gonna everything I need. And it it was a point. No. I did that for me, but I also know that I was influencing others to be a little bit more of an advocate for their own health. And I'm I'm 70. I'm turning 70. It looks great, listener, for first. It looks Thank you. An idea. My biological age, because I test periodically, you know, telomeres and all that. My biological age is in my fifties. Mhmm. So I have reversed my age by over 20 years. And I'm not saying that as a brag. I'm saying that because what is life about? It's about feeling good and having energy and enjoying the things that you're doing and enjoying your family and being productive. Not about going to the doctor and feeling like crap or taking your dog or cat constantly to the vet for relapse after relapse. That's not life. So let's use that contrast to help drive our motivation so that we choose something different. And you don't have to change every aspect of your life overnight, but make that column a and column b. Column a, what are the things I should be doing and I'm not doing them yet? I said several things during this podcast that people could take for their pets. Column b, what are the things that you're doing that you shouldn't be doing? And let's substitute that for something healthier. It's not that you it it's not hard. It's just that we have to take a little time to think about it and become educated. Right. Well, it's behavioral modification. I think the the larger question is I mean, and not that I think what I said about consumer complacency. I mean, we all own our health, and we own our pets' health, so to speak. But at the same time, why does this not translate into a larger level on a social scale? I mean, this is a national, it's not global problem or challenge that actually should be should be addressed at higher levels so that we're not faced with the falsities or the unethical behavior of organizations that are profit motivated. Like Mars. Okay. To your point to your point, listen, you know, think about the fact that we have our country is run by the pharmaceutical industry and the food industry. And many of the pharmaceutical companies actually own the food industry. So they they actually have double fisting in there. So they're not motivated until we require it to make something healthy and safe. And our government against it. Yeah. And our government isn't passing laws. Like, to me, a no brainer would be we should have a law that there should not be gluten in our food. Yeah. Even people that don't think they're sensitive, they're sensitive and they just don't realize that it's that little inflammation in their fingers or it's that joint pain or it's the stuffy nose or it's the burping or constipation. That's it. But they don't realize it because it's not, they haven't got stamped with the cancer word yet. So these are the points that we really need to drive. There are other countries that ban GMOs. There are other countries that ban gluten. So why are we not doing that? It's because we, as a country are not demanding it. We, the consumer drive and it's all money oriented. Absolutely. Yeah. So we have to, if I don't get any other point across in this podcast, it is take your health back. Choose how you spend your dollars and research what you're eating and what you're feeding your pets. Yeah. Real quick. I wanted to ask about this before I let you go. Detoxification with respect to pets, how does that work? So pets have 6 organs of elimination as we do. They are the kidney, the colon, the lungs, the liver, the skin, and I used to just say the lymphatics. But now I say lymphatics and fascia because we know so much more about what the fascia is these days. I actually have an entire course teaching pet parents how to do fascia decompression for their pets at home. It's really cool. And they just use your hands. There's no equipment required. So how do we do that? Each organ of elimination has a different modality. But for lymphatics, in the clinic, I use a machine that actually decongest and helps to move the lymphatics. It produces a microcurrent and negative ions and inert gases, and we actually do, like, lymphatic therapy on them. But move. Literally moving. You can take, if you have a rebounder at home, you can take your pet and just set them at your feet. Now don't bounce them off the rebounder. You're just doing little bouncing, little motions because lymphatics all move by muscle contraction. So as long as you're doing something that's causing that animal to move their muscles, that's helping to move their lymphatics. The liver, I think, is the other most important organ of detoxification, and we use herbs. We use bitters. We use infrared therapy. We use also encouraging the lymphatics. There's many different things that we can do to encourage liver detoxification. The most important is stop polluting it. You know? I I know that sounds so simple, but that's step number 1. You know, maybe this will help is I have a 6 step system for pet parents. Step number 1, stop doing the things that are causing disease. Food, water, environment, EMS, and the ants in your brain. Number 2 is supply all the essential nutrients, which are all on my website. Number 3 is heal the leaky gut. Number 4 is detoxification of all 6 organs of elimination. And then number 5 is mitochondrial support. So the mitochondria are making as much energy and as good energy as they can possibly make. And the number 6 is actually clearing trapped emotions that are associated with disease. And I've said that several times. I said disease, and I there's a hyphen between the dis and the ease because there really is no disease. There is simply the body not being in balance. So when the body is not in balance, there is dis ease. The body is not at ease. K. Cool. I was just gonna ask about and the supplementation for, I mean, as we as ourselves and we age, part of the issue is mitochondrial mitochondrial numbers are dropping progressively. And do you use supplementations, PQQ, CoQ10, those types of things for your pets? And I use it all the time for human beings so that we're enhancing that maintenance and that that vibrancy and the energy production in the ATP. So Absolutely. Yes. But I'm gonna go back to that 6 steps that I just mentioned, and that's a free PDF. Anybody wants to download it, you can just go on my website and download the PDF or holistic healing vet.com. The first thing we have to do is stop doing the things that are causing harm. And I can't say that enough. And that's the there's no cost there. That is just becoming conscious and aware. Because if I'm out in the river trying to clean up all the pollution, but I haven't sent a memo upstream to say stop throwing pollution in, then I'm forever trying to clean up at the end point, and I'm never really fixing the problem. And that's what much of veterinary medicine is today. It's symptom suppression. Oh, your dog's itching here. Let me give you this drug that's gonna stop medicine likewise. Right? Mhmm. Exactly. Exactly. We've been conditioned that way. And how frightening is it to know, well, maybe it's a good thing, that we won't have antibiotics in 20 years. The rate of antibiotic resistance is so high now that there are many conditions that we're treating that have no antibiotic that works. And yet people still come in for a viral problem and go, can you just give me an antibiotic? No. Because 1, it doesn't work against viruses, and 2, that's the wrong thing to do. I'm gonna cause more harm in that animal's body. So, you know, me as one individual, I'm helping to educate people on the harmful effects of some of the things that we do and how to make better choices. But as a community, we're starting to reach more and more people. I think that's and I think that's the key. I think, part of that, when I said the consumer complacency, it's basically and I I hesitate to use the word because this Ignorant? Yeah. You have to use the word ignorant. Nessient. It's a nessient's problem. So much trouble for calling people ignorant. I don't call them ignorant. I use the word ignorance, and getting the information because I I on a daily basis and new patients, I you know, the as I assess them, I will see that same level. They'll look at me oddly sometimes about doing the mind body component, the, you know, the the all of the things that are designed to actually enhance the cellular function and decrease the toxicities and all of those things and getting them. And when the but when they do it, they reap those benefits, the amazing benefits. The rejuvenation almost that takes place is amazing. And then but the very often, if it doesn't come in a pill, then they'll and that's so ingrained in a lot of people. They will not engage in the learning that needs to be done to achieve those incredible outcomes. Yeah. I have two things that people say to me all the time when they're first starting. The first question is, why have I not heard this from my veterinarian before? Because they weren't taught that. And they haven't left they haven't left the sandbox. And then the second one is, well, why would the government allow this if it was harmful? Well, gosh. Have you watched the 6 o'clock news, or have you watched commercials? Now I don't actually have a working television in my home, and I haven't for over 20 years. But every once in a while, I'm somewhere where you hear a commercial. Talk about desensitization. Oh, you have colitis. Take this drug. It could kill you. Don't worry about bleeding out of every orifice of your body. But, yeah, take this drug. Your posture. And I'm thinking to myself, what person in their right mind would take a drug that has worse side effects than the condition that they have? And they're telling you that. Fair transparent and you would be sensitized to common sense that we go, okay. I'll take the pill. Mind boggling. I don't have any patience for that. I have empathy and I have compassion, but I have no patience. And I my career started as an e m I was a paramedic. I was the first female paramedic in the state of Florida. And I would see people that did stuff to themselves, and I just said, dude, what were you thinking? You know? Like, you did that to yourself. Why would you do that? And so I thought, for sure, I'm not going into human medicine because that is just stupidity. And I wanted to help a group of beautiful sentient beings that were here to help us and teach us and guide us and help their pet parents who love them dearly, help them create that lifestyle that actually allows them to go back to thriving. And in doing so, the pet parent starts to have better choices and behaviors for themselves and then ultimately does less toxic things to mother earth. Very cool. So I see you I see that you were developing or have you developed your own raw pet food and supplement company? I do. I have my own raw food and my own supplement company that is very targeted to the things we were talking about. What are the essential macronutrients? And if I may, the industry has these standards that are not designed to keep our pets' health in mind. So the industry standard is that if you label a food complete and balanced and you have to if you're gonna sell it as a complete and balanced diet, you have to add synthetic vitamins and, fatty acids and such into the diet. Well, that defeats whole purpose because, a, they're not even nutrient available, b, they cause more harm, c, you don't know if how much your pet's actually getting. You know? Are are you feeding a Chihuahua the same way as you're feeding a Great Dane? And what if their metabolic needs are differently? How are you judging that? You can't. So I said, okay. Well, I'm not gonna play that game. I'm not going to call my food complete and balanced. I'm going to separate the macronutrients from the micronutrients. And that's what I did. So all my supplements are organic, and they're all bioavailable. They're all natural. And we dose it based on the animal's weight and biological needs. Right? So if you have a cancer patient, they may need more of certain things than an individual who doesn't, and we test. We don't guess. So we're looking to see what are their deficiencies and then what are their toxicities, And then we do detoxification principles for those that have heavy metals. And I'm finding on the nutrient side, across the board, most animals are deficient in more than 75% of their critical nutrients. Wow. Wow. That's huge. And and because no one's looking, they just assume bad thing to do. They're assuming that what they're feeding is actually balanced, and it's not. It's actually causing more harm. And this is the time that we just need to wake up and start doing something different. Yeah. Cool. Well, what is one I would say that across the board. What Yeah. Let's say Yeah. And people are waking up. Freaking out not only for Yeah. To that. That seems to be a theme. Like, we're hearing the awakening consciousness. Like, these are words we never heard before. Like, 25 years ago, that was not a language. And now we're all looking and going, oh, there's another awake person. There's another awake. Our tribe is finding each other. So it's a beautiful thing. I think COVID was the best thing that happened to our planet because it did wake people up. It had helped people to reinvent themselves. It helped people to find out what was important in their life that they needed to start making changes. And and it was a motivator to get off the couch and quit listening to a narrative. Make your own decisions. Mhmm. Take a perspective. Take a stand. Yeah. Yeah. Quit being passive and just allowing bad things to happen to you. Very cool. This is very Ben, very eye opening, comprehensive, great conversation. What is one thing that you would like the listener to know? They have the power to heal their pets and themselves. Totally. 100%. The power is within their own hands. And now start with education. Like, I would love everybody to take the empowered pet parent course. It's affordable for everybody. And even if you don't employ everything, at least now you have a benchmark to make decisions from. Cool. And where can the listener find out more about you and your courses? Everything I have lives at drmarleensiegel.com. Awesome. And then, you know, put it in the show notes. If you're driving, don't rep trying to write stuff down. Well, thank you so much. It was great having you on. I learned a lot. Thank you. I have a lot more to learn. We we should do a second show once you convert your animals to, a species appropriate diet. Yeah. And we have a second conversation telling me what are the changes that you see in your pets. That would be great. I would love that. Absolutely. Alright, listener. Hope you found this educational, informational, somewhat entertaining, and until next time. Thanks for subscribing to your Infinite Health. I'm doctor Tripp. And I'm Lanae. Until next time. Feel it, look it, and live it.