Healing Cancer & Autoimmune Disease in Furry Friends

Introduction to Dr. Marlene Siegel 0:00

Hey, it's Nathan Crane, director of the Health and Healing Club and host of the Conquering Cancers Summit. And today, I am honored and excited to welcome you to a very special interview. Doctor Marlene Siegel is an international speaker and an innovator in integrative veterinary medicine. Her practice, Pasco Veterinary Medical Center, offers the widest array of alternative therapies and detoxification services in the country. She developed her own rough raw pet food company and supplements, which is Evil love Rom-Com.

She's passionate about education, has online programs for pet parents and veterinarians to teach integrative medicine, and has detox centers or launching a. S Paws Family Wellness in 2021. Detox centers for pets and their parents. You can learn more about all the great work that she does and connect to all her different resources at Doctor as Doctor, doctor Marlene siegel.com. Doctor Siegel, thank you so much for joining us. Oh it's my honor. And on behalf of our fur family, we are excited to share all this information.

Yeah, I'm excited too, because, you know, I've been so entrenched in research and experimentation in my own life in the natural and integrative health field for, over 15 years now. And along the way, I've only, you know, researched, briefly about our dogs and cats, about our pets, about animals. I mean, I've done a little bit here and there, but not the thousands of hours that I've put into for humans, you know, for myself and for helping others. And so I'm excited to learn from you today. I know you've helped so many people in so many animals over the years, I think.

What? I'm I'm not only excited for myself, but for everybody tuning in here. I think there's a lot we're going to learn. But you started as a traditional vet. You were telling me, and then you transitioned to more of an integrative approach. Integrative veterinarian. Why that changed? Why did you transition? What what happened there? Well, I've been practicing for almost 20 years when my horse, one of my show horses, and my youngest daughter were involved in an accident and the horse literally saved my daughter's life.

So when I went to get help from my daughter's horse, I did small animal practice. So cats and dogs and I used equine vets to work on our horses. And they came back to me and they said, Doctor Siegel, we're really sorry, but we don't know exactly what's wrong with her. But we can tell you she's not safe to ride. She'll never be a show horse again. And here are your two options. You can put her down, or you can put her out to pasture. And it was those words that nothing else could be done except my choices of putting her on the pasture

From Traditional Vet to Integrative Medicine 2:51

or putting her down was absolutely unacceptable. And in that moment, something awoken in me and it said, I'm going to go find an answer. And I didn't blame them for not knowing. I just knew I had to find other answers. And as I went out on that journey, on my quest, everything that I learned to help the horse, I ended up applying in my small animal practice to where I am today, and Lilly is still alive and well in my backyard. And so that led you that opened this whole door of, okay, there's other solutions available that what you didn't you didn't learn in veterinarian school.

None of this was taught in veterinary school. In fact, as I was a pioneer in this industry, looking for other solutions for her, I had to go into the human world and look at what was being done on that cutting edge of the integrative world, on the human side. And I took everything that I learned, and I applied it to her and to my practice. But I vowed that the one thing I would never say to a client ever is there is nothing more than I can do for you, because there's always something that we can do even if it's enhancing quality of life for a short period of time. That's huge.

So I delete that from my vocabulary, and I always offer people other solutions, but it's not always that we're going to make them live forever. None of us are going to live forever. We're all have an exit strategy on this planet. But the time that we're here, we should have the highest quality of life possible. So that's my quest to help educate people that there are other options out there. There are other things that we need to do, and most of it comes back to lifestyle. It's epigenetics. It's what we're doing that is creating the problems of today, both in ourselves, in our animals, and in the planet.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, but it's it's often hard to think about our animals as ourselves, right? Because they're, they can't they they can communicate with us, but they don't speak to us in the same language. Right. And so they may be suffering, they may have digestive issues, they may have pain. They may have. But you go and see them and they're going to greet you with love and joy and happiness. They don't come up complaining, oh, my stomach hurts or my my knees hurt or things like that. Right.

So it's a it's a little bit harder when you're just feeding them regular food and you're just, you know, you think they're fine and yet they're suffering. So I mean, how have you come to terms with that and how do you help pet owners come to terms with that? Well, over my I'm almost 40 years almost in practice now, and we've seen a big shift in the relationship between pets and their parents. We used to be we had a dog then we had a family member and now we're seeing soul pets. These animals are extremely important to people's lives, not it's different than we've ever seen before.

And I think these animals are carrying a spiritual quality that is coming to us at a time when we so much need guidance, and it's really important to understand that message that they're bringing to us. I do believe that they are our spirit guides. And when we pay attention to what they're showing us, what they're bringing us information to the point there's no accident that they have a particular challenge in their lives and they're in somebody's life. With that challenge. So if you have a pet right now that has a challenge, just know that there's a connection between that pet, that challenge, and the time in your life that you're experiencing that, and it's how you deal with it that is going to give you the highest and best outcome for everybody.

So I want to get into that a little bit more, maybe, maybe a little bit later in this interview. But I wanted to, for you to share. Obviously, with 40 years of experience, you have a lot of experience. What are really the top three diseases that dogs are facing today, and what are the top three diseases that cats are facing today? And are they the same or are they different? Very similar. Cancer number one one at a 1.65. Dogs right now will have cancer or do have cancer for cats it's one out of three.

So equating that to the human side in men, it's said that it's one out of two.

Pets as Family and Spirit Guides 7:00

So we have a higher rate of cancer in dogs than we do even in humans. In fact, they have the highest rate of cancer of any species on the planet. Cats are one out of three, which is equivalent to what they say females have. So it's a very high rate. Then when we add autoimmune disease, which is number two, and autoimmune disease covers a lot of things. So it's thyroid disease which is very, very common in cats especially, but also in dogs. And then we add arthritis or any kind of osteo arthritic problem.

And we're talking almost 100% of the animals that we see fall in those categories. Then you add obesity, you add dementia, you add skin allergies. It's literally it's 100% of the population and it's not age dependent anymore. It used to be that we thought about cancer when the animals were in their older lifespan. And now we're seeing cancers in animals under the age of two. Yeah, it's crazy. And I've been seeing that rise in almost ten years. What's worse is the life expectancy of our animals has gone down by over seven years.

So if you have a large breed dog, like a golden retriever or a Labrador, the chances are that that dog is going to live seven years shorter than they would have lived 20 years ago. So what would you say from your experience, is the number one cause of this increase in chronic diseases in both dogs and cats? Unequivocally it's toxins. But where are the toxins coming from? Well, they're coming from number one is food and we're feeding processed foods that are loaded with chemicals and preservatives and genetically modified ingredients.

If you have a canned or a bag at home and you were to look at your label, there is a high probability that you're going to have corn or soy in that processed food. And those are the highest genetically modified foods in our world right now. And that's going straight into your pets. And it's creating inflammation. Do you want to comment? So yeah. Yeah, I keep going I mean it's so so processed. Makes sense. The quality of the food that you're feeding and the fact that it's not a species appropriate diet.

So the way I like to couch, that is to say a species appropriate diet is the diet that that individual would have eaten if they were in the wild. And man did not intervene. So we know that dogs are carnivores, and by definition a carnivore kills another animal and eats it. Doesn't sound real pretty, but that's how nature works. And when they did that kill, they would have eaten through the abdominal cavity. They would have chewed the intestines while they were pulling them out of the body because they were in search of organ meat.

So organ meat is a very big part of a good raw diet. And when they chew through the intestines, they would of course rupture the intestines, and then they would get that beautiful fermented effluent that would be in their mouth. And that's how they inoculated their microbiome. So they were taking this beautiful, bold variation of microbiome from the intestinal tract already fermented done for you system. And that's how they inoculated themselves. And of course, every time they ate a meal they would re inoculate themselves.

And each animal was different, probably grazed on different things. And so they had a nice variety of nutrients that were coming in. And then they found the organ meat. And of course they ate cartilage and bone and meat and fat. And so they had this beautiful variety, even as they ate through the skin of the animal, they got some of the fiber as they were eating through the fur. So that was a natural, balanced diet for them.

Common Diseases in Dogs and Cats 10:48

Cats are obligate carnivores. So for you cat owners, this is extremely important because they have no dietary requirement for carbohydrates. Dogs have been more acclimated to man. They've been domesticated longer, so they're used to eating more of man's scraps. And so they have a little bit higher carbohydrate content. But it certainly wasn't meant to be what we're feeding today in the standard processed food diet, which shockingly, is 40 to 60% sugar in a can in a bag. And they don't put that on that right.

You have to calculate it. So if you were to take 100% of what was in that bag and you subtract out that meat and you subtract out the water and you subtract 7 to 8% for ash, you will be left with your carbohydrates. And they don't put that on the canned or the bag, because they don't want you to know that you're feeding mostly sugar. And these are to obligate carnivores or carnivores and their normal dietary species. Appropriate amount of carbohydrate on a daily basis would be less than 1%. So go 1% versus 40 to 60%.

Obviously, there's going to be some kind of a fallback from that. And the consequence is chronic inflammation. So imagine that every bite of every meal that that cat or dog is eating, it is setting off this inflammatory bomb that the body has to deal with. It's causing leaky gut, which when the gut is more permeable, then more toxins can come through because the gateway is opened and those toxins have to travel to Mr. Liver. Mr. liver is the organ that is in charge of the inflammation, you know, monitoring toxins.

So when Mr. Liver suddenly sees all those toxins, it goes, oh my gosh, we have to dispense the inflammatory army to take care of the invader. So out goes all of these moderators to inflammation. And then you don't see it all the time because the body has this amazing innate intelligence. So it's going to take care of the problem. And when the invader is gone, the army is going to go back into the barracks and take a nap. But when this is happening day after day after day, meal after meal, then at some point the body just can't recover.

The army becomes so fatigued because they're out there shooting up the enemy all the time, and then they start seeing enemies on the thyroid gland and on other organs. And that's how we start seeing our autoimmune diseases. But it's from the chronicity. It's every day having to deal with a toxin that's coming into the body. And at some point the body just goes, oh my gosh, I just can't keep up anymore. It's the same thing, with humans and dealing with cancer, right? It's, you know, there there are these underlying, deeper underlying causes that are continuously creating chronic inflammation in the body.

Toxic exposure is one of them. Stress, right, is another one, heavy metals, parasitic infections. You know, the toxins from the food, water, the air. Right. So I mean, these correlations are already scientifically documented, in humans, you know, we know this very clearly that carcinogens and carcinogens are just about everything from carpets to paint to the food most people put in their bodies have carcinogens in, known or probable or, considered carcinogens in them that we're just putting in every single day.

But you're saying this is also happening to our cats and dogs? And just to clarify, I want to unpack one, one little piece there to clarify about carnivore versus obligate carnivore, because I, I, I had heard that dogs were more like an omnivore. You're saying they're carnivore, right. So carnivore. Can you clarify what are the biggest differences and nuances we need to know as pet owners between a true omnivore, a carnivore that is a dog or an obligate carnivore?

Toxins, Processed Food, and Chronic Inflammation 14:45

What you're saying is a cat. So a carnivore gets there. It's a difference in the of course, the protein source and and their food, but it's also in how they get their nutrients. So a carnivore can only get vitamin D as an example from their food source. So if a carnivore is outside all day long, they're not synthesizing vitamin D like you and I can because we're omnivores, which means we can get our vitamin D from either our food or we can get it from the sun. We can convert that. An herbivore can only get vitamin D from the sun.

So your herbivore are the grass eaters. That's what our carnivores are going to be eating. So if you have a herbivore that has been on a feedlot, has not been grazing out in the sun like a natural environment, and they're not grass fed grass finished, then that animal is likely to not have very much vitamin D. So when your carnivore or obligate carnivore is eating that meat that came from those animals, then they're going to be vitamin D deficient. And that's what we're seeing. It's a huge issue.

Vitamin D is very important for people. It's the same in animals. It's what's responsible for your innate immune system. It has so many different effects on over 600 metabolic pathways. Right. So it's just being vitamin D deficient is a problem. Let me go through my six steps because I think this is going to make more sense for people. So step number one is we remove toxins food of course we just covered very well. We need to eat a species appropriate diet that's organic grass fed. Grasp it out.

Water is the second big source of toxins. And so many people are feeding their animals tap water. Or they use the water. That's filtered from the refrigerator, which is only filtering chlorine and iron. It's not filtering the heavy metals and the toxins. We just finished a huge, heavy metal study with Quicksilver Scientific and what we have found in almost across the board cats and dogs. They have a minimum of five heavy metals, if not all eight that we tested for arsenic, strontium, mercury, lead.

I mean, it's off the charts. So we need to be really paying attention to these sources. The third area to remove toxicity is the environment, air quality, which you just mentioned. So so think about the fact that if you have mold in your house and you get to go outside and breathe fresh air, but your pet is inside 24 seven, especially our cats. So the air quality is extremely important, the things that contact their skin. We know that the skin is the largest organ of its absorption and excretion.

So we want to make sure that whatever that they're touching is also going to be an organic product. So if you're not paying attention to what you're washing your clothes in, well, yeah, your pets may not be wearing clothes, but they're laying on your bed. They're rubbing up next to you. They're laying on your lap. Hopefully you have clothes on. So all of that is going to be going into your pet as well. So all those, you know, estrogens that are endocrine disruptors, all a big issue for our pets and probably more so for them because based on the square foot of their body, they're absorbing more toxins than we are and they're lower to the ground.

So whatever you're cleaning your floors with, they're inhaling it, they're laying on it. They're absorbing that through their skin 24/7. So no wonder the toxic levels are so huge. Electromagnetic pollution, another huge area. You leave your house, your Wi-Fi is still on. Yes, he's still on the house dealing with all that Wi-Fi. And our kitties. They love to lay on our computers, right? Biggest area of Wi-Fi production. So I recommend people hard wire and try to reduce test your house. We're not going to get into that.

It's a rabbit hole, but you want to learn how much EMF toxicity you have and try to mitigate it not just for yourself, but for your pets. And then the last area that we talk about for pollution, I call it the ants in our brain are the automatic negative thoughts. So if we have a lot of negative thoughts, a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, we're producing these neurochemicals that are giving off signals. And it's our pets that in train to those energies. So we are literally putting them in that same high stress, high sympathetic tone that we are feeling.

The biggest problem that occurs because of that is healing only occurs when we are in a pair, a sympathetic state which is the opposite of the sympathetic. Think of them on a teeter totter. There we go. You know, so you have sympathetic and parasympathetic. And when you are highly sympathetic, your parasympathetic is turned off and the ability to heal is gone. So we have to learn how to shift into that more parasympathetic state. Do you think about the average sad day in America? We have well, this this was pre-COVID.

But you know, I'm sure it's even worse now because some of the things change. But in the pre-COVID time, we had to wake up by alarm clock, so we had to run out of the house and grab the kids and make sure they had their meals and their homework, and was rushing off to school and rushed to work. And then it was, not having something healthy for breakfast. And then it was your crappy lunch that you had to eat, which we call the sad lunch, the standard American diet. Because there's hardly any restaurants that offer organic food and something healthy.

And then it was pick the kids up from school and do all their extracurricular activity. Of course, you didn't pack anything for them to eat, so now they're eating junk food as well. And then you get home. At the end of the day, nobody wants to cook anything. You're tired to go out to eat the sad dinner again, and then it's get the homework done and get to bed, which is usually later than what we shared. So we're sleep deprived, you know. And that was a typical day. But now in Covid it's they're actually higher stresses because you're not getting to go out in some states we're Florida.

We're free. Yay. But there's a lot of states that don't get that benefit. And so, you know, they're wearing masks. They're becoming fearful. They're listening to the news. They have all this high anxiety. They're not able to go do their typical activities, whether it was their social things, their fun things, you know, going even to church. People can't do that normally anymore.

Why Dogs and Cats Need Species-Appropriate Diets 21:00

And so that adds this whole new level of stress. And then the financial issues, and who is the one that actually comes over and tries to help you through that unconditionally? Are pets, right. They're the ones that come over and they put their head on your lap, or they sit next to you and they want to be petted and unconsciously as you're petting that animal, you start to feel better. So the worst day gets better as that animal comes over and gives you unconditional love. So it's not that we're intentionally harming them by giving them our stress.

I think that's part of what they showed up for, was to not only help to take some of that heaviness away from us and lightness up, but also to teach us so many things, like unconditional love about being in the present moment, about giving, about loving. There's just so many wonderful things. And for a lot of the animals that are showing up with some of their challenges, those are always, I find relatable back to their pet parent in some way, shape or form. That's interesting to to think about, right?

I mean, I've always noticed this, just kind of subtle correlation between a pet and the pet owner, like whether they look similar in certain ways. Right? There's similar looks or the energy is so similar or the, you know, you see these huge contrasts like, like I've seen, you know, big, bulky, strong, you know, men with little tiny chihuahuas. And then you get to meet them and this person things this big scary macho man is like this. You know, totally opposite and more like his Chihuahua. And, you know, it's so interesting.

You see those correlations when you pay attention. Yeah. But, you know, whatever challenge that, that the animal is going through your stress, oftentimes there's a correlation with the with the owner as well. Yeah. Not just physically but also spiritually as well. So the second area that we help people to master is making sure that they have all the essential nutrients that they need in the body to do its job. So I mentioned vitamin D as an example, because so many of the animals that we test for vitamin D deficient and 99% of traditional veterinarians don't test for vitamin D, which has vitamin D, magnesium and B12, we look for inflammatory markers.

We look for cancer markers because we want to know, is there something under the hood? Because they aren't able to tell us in our verbal way and they masks their symptoms, especially cats. They mask symptoms a long time before they start to exhibit it, because that's the nature of who they are. So we have to be a little more proactive to be looking for those deficiencies and those excesses, like heavy metals, to make sure that we are not dealing with that. And it's really frightening. When I did that study, I knew there was going to be a problem.

I just had no idea how bad it was. And we have animals that are off the chart for Mercury. Well, we know how bad mercury is for us. So you can imagine the debilitating fallout that these animals are experiencing just because we didn't know to detox them. So a lot of the failures that I see in the Western allopathic traditional world is because these things have not been addressed. They haven't stopped doing the toxins. So what was Einstein's famous quote? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

If we want to stop the pollution to the body and we want to allow the body to heal, we have to stop doing the things that are causing the problem. Then we have to make sure all the essential nutrients are on board so that they have the ability to run their metabolic pathways. We don't think about the body as all these cogs and wheels and chemical reactions, but that's in essence what it is. So, you know, try to run your car without gasoline in it or try putting water or salt in your gas tank, you know, of course it's not going to work.

But we do that to our bodies. Our bodies and our pets. Bodies are these resilient machines that are trying to survive. They're trying to hang on long enough so that the good times come back. We were designed to do that. But when it never changes, at some point you can't keep going. So to know number one, we stopped the pollution. Number two was make sure all the essentials are on board. And number three is heal the gut. You have to heal the leaky gut. You have to get the right microbiome to come back into the body.

Otherwise the body can't do its job. And the number four is detoxification. We have six organs of elimination for us and our pets. So we have the kidney, the colon, the lungs, the liver, the skin and the lymphatics. And I know even in the human world, the lymphatic system is so under utilized. And yet between the lymphatics and the liver, I think those are the two most important organs of elimination. We need to do a lot to help support them, because our bodies just weren't designed to endure the level of toxicity that we're enduring.

Today. We have a lot more work. And then number five is making sure that the mitochondria, those are the powerhouses that run our body. They make the energy that they're able to do their job, that they have all the things that they need to do their job, that they have, all the things that they need to do to make more of them. So we can make more energy. And then last but not least, we work on those trapped emotions, which are the spiritual and emotional attachments to the disease that we're seeing.

You know, this it's so fascinating to hear this because, you know, I have a nine module masterclass I'm teaching on cancer coming up here in July, and, and across the nine modules, I literally teach every single one of these things for humans, you know that the slightest difference is the diet. Everything else is exactly the same. Right. And so I want to I'd love for you to focus on that for a moment. Is, one let's start with dogs and then and then cats. So for dogs, what is your take on the the kind of dried bagged food, the normal kind of kibble type of thing, but an organic brand or a brand that is, you know, free from grains and supposed to be a healthy brand, you know, what is your take on that?

And then also, what is the ideal diet for a dog to help, you know, prevent reverse these chronic diseases? Important conversation. So number one, any canned or kibble diet is going to be high in sugar. So remember organic simply means that there is a reduced number of toxins in there. Yeah but it doesn't mean it's healthier. I remember when we when my kids were little, when we were going organic, they always found the junk food aisle in, okay, they're going to get more sugar. Potato chip is organic, right?

Right. They didn't realize that even potato chips back in the day before we had GMOs were still junk food. So it's still junk food. It's just now it's organic junk food. But we want to get away from the sugar. That's number one. Number two, we want to get away from the toxins that are in the food, the preservatives and and the things that are just very, not supportive of the body's immune system. But you mentioned grain free diet. So a lot of people got on that whole grain free bandwagon thinking that was going to be the right choice to make.

While grain free is not sugar free, that's number one. And we're seeing a huge uprising in the amount of animals having cardiac diseases, cardiac, cardiomyopathy in particular,

Detox, Nutrients, and Healing the Gut 28:30

because there's something happening in these grain free diets that in dogs is blocking their ability to make taurine. So dogs normally have the ability to make taurine as a product in their metabolism. But for some reason, when they're eating these grain free diets, they're getting cardiomyopathy, they're becoming taurine deficient. And we don't have an answer yet as to why exactly that's happening. I think it has something to do with the glyphosate interfering with the sugar mate pathway, which is the pathway in the environment that allows the microbes to be able to make those aromatic amines, those, particular sulfur based amino acids that we need in order to be able to process other things.

So when you think of a protein, this is for your audience. Protein is made up of individual amino acids. It's sort of like a pearl necklace. All the little pearls are the individual amino acids that when put together in the right sequence, make the different proteins. So you as a human, have a certain sequence of amino acids that make up your muscles. And then there's a different sequence that makes a dog, a dog and a cat. A cat and the sheep are sheep. And so it's how they're put together. But when we have an interference in that sequencing or there's errors in the protein folding, then we're going to get a misreading and we're going to have problems.

And so I think that part of what we're seeing has to do with the level of toxicity, the inability of these organisms to make the amino acids that we need in order to process. So something's happening in the dog cats. We have always known our obligate in the need for taurine because they can't process it themselves. So that's why they're an obligate carnivore. You asked me what was the difference is because they have to have meat in order to achieve the taurine and probably many other nutrients that we're not even talking about in their diet.

So, one of the things that I've learned about, in just the last couple of years about the dried food for dogs, right, is that they're it's typically cooked in these massive pressure cooker vats at like 400 plus degrees. Right? For 4 or 5 or six minutes at a time, destroying all the enzymes and basically turning what used to be a form of living food into a completely dead food. Is that true? It's absolutely true. So it's enzymatic dead is the way I describe that. So we have in our saliva, we have amylase.

And amylase is the enzyme that helps to digest our carbohydrates. Dogs and cats don't have amylase in their saliva because they were never designed to eat carbohydrates. Now we have a backup organ as our dogs and cats do, which is our pancreas. So when they were designed to eat a raw diet, raw meat means that the enzymes are still living. Enzymes are just proteins, and they're still living in that food. When you're eating food uncooked. So for a lot of people, hopefully they're eating they're eating salads and they're eating some vegetables that aren't cooked.

So we're getting some enzymes in our diet. But if we have a dog or cat and they're eating nothing but processed foods, they have no enzymes coming into their body to aid in their digestion. So the only thing that they're using to digest is their pancreas. Well, it's a finite amount of enzyme that is housed in there. So imagine every bite of every meal. It's just taking that enzyme down more and more and more out of the pancreas to the point where it can't keep up. Then you add all the sugar that's happening in their diet.

And Mr. Pancreas is in charge of releasing insulin, which is your sugar modulator. And it knows that the body's not supposed to have high sugar content. So you get this big sugar spike when you're eating this process kibble diet. Your animal is because of that, because not because of added sugar, but because the carbohydrates in the diet and just simply the carbohydrate, which is, it turns out to be 40 to 60% sugar when you metabolize it. Yeah. So now you get this insulin release and it's trying to regulate the blood sugar.

And if that was a one time event, not a big deal. But it's every bite of every meal. Not a surprise that at some point in early in life, we're seeing these animals become insulin resistant. And that's why they start to become obese, because they can't deal with that sugar anymore. So it starts going into your fat cells right now, that's how you're storing all that extra sugar is in their fat cells. The other problem with the kibble diets is that they're dehydrated. If you think about a natural species appropriate diet, your cat goes out and kills a rabbit or a mouse, and that animal is made up of 70% water, just like we are.

So 70% of the water intake that they were designed to get came from their diet. Cats came originally from the desert, they're from Egypt. So they were designed to be able to thrive on a low water intake, because in the desert you can't find a lot of water out there. And when you do, it needs to be running water. So instinctually they know as a cat that running water is going to be safe water. Stagnant water is going to be full of all kinds of nasty things, and it can kill you. So for many cat owners, they've always wondered, why does my cat come running over when I turn the faucet on?

Or why do they like it when when you take their foot and they start swishing in the water, they're looking to see if the water's moving. It's an instinct. So having towers for cats is always a good thing. By the way, that's a nice little, little tip there. So we want to feed them on the water side. We want the water to be structured highly filtered. In my world, I like it to have some hydrogen in it, but at least highly filtered and structured is incredibly important. And that is not what we see coming out of our town.

That's dead water. So are you saying is the water piece is huge? I'm glad you brought that up. And it did. Yeah. My cat, every cat we've ever had loves coming to the sink and playing with the water and just observing it. And so, you know, you just clarified something there that I think everyone tuning in, who's who's ever had a cat is like, there's an There. Yeah. And the number one cause of death in cats is kidney disease. If you think about the job of the kidney, it's filtering all the toxins as they go through the body.

Well, if I had a cup of water in this hand and had a swimming pool on the other side, and I had the same amount of toxin in both, which one is going to be more harmful to you if you drink it? The cup of water where the toxin is more concentrated, or the pool where it's a lot more diluted. So now you take these poor little cats and they're so they're already dehydrated by nature, and then you make them more dehydrated because you take 70% of their water source away. They don't have the instinctual drive to drink more water.

They haven't evolved yet there. And so now you get this dehydrated animal eating toxins, and that toxin becomes even more damaging to their kidneys. And that is the number one reason why we see kidney failure in our cats. Wow. So are you saying that dogs and cats, actually they're design. They're, you know, I would say their intentional design, their conscious design of their bodies actually does not need or should not have carbohydrates ever. Like they don't need fruit and vegetables at all. Well, technically they would have eaten those in the intestinal tract already fermented for them of the animal that they were eating, because they would have gotten some of that in their mouth.

Sure. So there is a small amount that they would eat in the way of carbohydrates, but they were already fermented and broken down for them. Right? That that's the key difference is that when you and I are eating carbohydrates, we're supposed to chew 60 times to pancake batter,

Raw Feeding, Supplements, and Fatty Acids 36:30

making sure we're mixing it with our saliva. So the amylase is pre digesting that and breaking it down. And then we swallow it. Cats and dogs don't chew their food. They tear and gulp. It really annoys a lot of pet parents because they buy all this expensive food and they go, but they didn't even taste it, you know, and it's because they're not supposed to. If you think about it logically, you're a carnivore. You're out in the big wild outside, you're in the Serengeti plain, whatever. And you have to chase your food down.

Right? It's not just going to come to you in a bowl. So you've now made a big commotion as you've chased that food down, you've caught it, you've struggled with it, you've killed it. What are you going to attract around you really rapidly? Other carnivores. Right. Because they heard something's going on. There may be a free meal out there. And so they come looking. Well, you have a very limited time to tear, gulp and swallow and get out of there because you can't just drag your whole carcass with you usually.

So they tear, gulp and swallow, and then they go off to their den or their hiding place, and that's where they do their digestion. So it makes sense why they don't have, because in nature they would have been somebody else's meal, or they would have lost their meal to other predators. Right? So as we think about how does nature solve problems, the more we can go back to mimicking that. Granted, they're not hunting out in the Serengeti plain because they're in our household, but principles like making sure they're eating a species appropriate diet.

So we're getting into a raw diet, but a raw diet is not taking a piece of chicken from Publix or Kroger's and throwing it on the ground. Right. That's got a lot of pathogens in it. And it's it's not balanced. They need the right proportion of organ, meat, bones, fat and then meat. There's skeletal meat and that proportion is important. The other thing that I think is very important, since we can't judge the quality of foods that are even if it's grass fed, we don't know the quality of the grasses that are out there.

Are they getting their micronutrients? Are they're getting the macronutrients? We don't know because there's so much variation. So I think in today's day and age, it's extremely important to make sure that the supplements we're using are making sure that the essential nutrients are in the diet, whether we have to provide them as a supplement, that's fine, but an essential nutrient is defined as the nutrient that the body cannot manufacture in sufficient quantities on its own. You know, I want to get into that a little bit deeper, but I want to just share, you know, my own personal experience with with my dogs, for example, you know, I've never taught them or stop them from embarking upon their own instinct to hunt animals.

Right. And my I've posted something on my social media a few years ago, and my somebody had seen it and then commented and, and was very upset that I was training my dogs how to hunt. It was illegal to kill rabbits and things like that, and it was just silly because they didn't understand what was really going on. When we go out running in the mountains or hiking, my dogs are naturally I've never trained them to do this is their instinct. They're on hunt patrol, right? That's like their purpose. When we're out in the mountains.

And I've seen it early on, so I never stopped it. And, sometimes I'll catch a rabbit, and when they catch a rabbit, they'll kill it and they'll eat every part of it. Just like you said. They love it, right? They'll eat the bone. They'll eat the fur. They'll eat the intestines. I mean, it's disgusting to me, but they love it. It's their instinct. That's what they want, that they know that's what they need. I mean, they'll eat the brain, the carcass, all of it. Every piece of that animal, every part of it.

And that's a total instinct. I've known that. So, you know, I feed them raw meat. I feed them bone. But I, you know, still, to make up, more of their diet, it's. I've given them dry food and dehydrated foods. It's got, like, berries and enzymes and probiotics and fruits and vegetables and things like that, and it and I but I want them to be the healthiest possible. Live as long as possible. So as a, as a pet owner, like what are those proportions? I need to know what do I really need to be feeding them for ultimate health?

You know how much meat, bone, organ fat versus how much supplement and do they need any of these, you know, dehydrated or fresh fruits and vegetables since they're not getting it from, you know, the, the fermented, stomachs that they turn into. Those are great questions. And what we do for pet owners, we have a food calculator, of course, we have our own raw food company. So people can go on to the website and just educate yourself. That's really step number one is just become educated. That's that's evil.

Is that the evil love? Yeah. Evil love. Raw evil love romcom. Is that the website? Yeah. So it's actually love spelled backwards and forwards. Oh, there you go. Now you can even now it's awesome. Yeah. The first Evo L is the love backwards. And then it's love forwards. There's a lot of sacred geometry that came into that. So the proportions, are variable for the individuals and their needs. If we have a cancer patient or an animal dealing with a chronic degenerative disease, we want them to be more ketogenic.

So we're going to have a higher fat content. So we make sure they're burning fat as their fuel source and not sugar. And then we have a lower fat and a higher protein diet for those animals that are thriving and healthy and don't have any challenges. What's really important is to understand where your pet is in their life and in their health issues or challenges, and then be able to work with a practitioner to find what is the best in the way of the macronutrients. And that's what I call the. The essence of my diet is the macronutrients the meat, that bone and organ meat.

And then the supplementation is your essential vitamins, minerals and fatty acids. And we can go down a whole rabbit hole on fatty acids. And you and I did talk about this, so I'm hoping I don't step on toes. But let's open the conversation of the right fatty acids. And I work with, a company that deals with what are called parent essential fatty acids. And those are the two fatty acids, the omega three and omega six, that actually make up the cell membrane. They're very specific. And our bodies have these enzymes that are they're designed to be able to take those to omega fatty acids.

The omega three, omega six parent essential fat and metabolize them into the derivatives like the DHEA and, GLA and all those other derivative EVs as you need them. What happens when you're taking fish oil supplements? Number one, most of them are rancid. Number two, they're high in mercury because they're coming from a fish base. And we're seeing that in our animals with high mercury and meat. It is. You can't even argue that. And then number three is you're giving derivatives. You're not giving the parent essentials which come from plant based products.

So the fatty acids that we send home with our pet owners are those parent essential fatty acids. Cats are lacking a specific enzyme that breaks that first step down into GLA. So we added GLA into our fatty acid supplement.

Practical Guidance, Programs, and Resources 44:00

So we make sure that we don't have to worry about whether or not they have enough enzyme to break that down. We just provide that. So there's no fatty acid deficiency, but they're able to break down the rest as their body needs it, which is all about balance. And that's I think the whole conversation here is we can live in this world if we learn how to balance what we're doing, we just can't be all swayed to one side or the other. Same as medicine, right? There's the allopathic world, and then there's the holistic world, and they're both awesome.

We need to figure out how to do that integrated center, right? We take best from both sides, so don't throw out one side or the other and think that neither one has value because you have to pick one or the other two. Yeah you don't. You blend them together. And that's why I think in my practice we are so successful. We see cancer cases. My cat's about to come into the picture. Perfect. We can't be talking about our three friends without an actual one joining us. I don't know if you like this, but he is 19 years young and he has no muscle wasting.

He does have arthritis in his spine because he's only been a raw eater for the last, say, 15 years. But, yeah, he's, he's just a 19 year old thriving cat that still has tremendous vibrance. And put it down here a little bit so you can see him so and so for your cat, are you doing is it basically just the raw meat and organ and bone and things like that with the supplements? Is that pretty much all you give your own pets? Yeah. And then it gets its fatty acids. B so when you think about eating fruits and vegetables, what is it in the fruit and vegetable that you're getting?

It's not the berry, it's the Fido nutri, it's in the berry. So our supplements have those phytonutrients in them that are ground down and powdered so that they're getting that variety. We're coming out with some new supplement lines that are very targeted. Another rabbit hole we could talk about on another maybe another episode, would be talking about things like Sylvester calls. These are natural chemicals that are produced by fruits at the time that they're ripening. So when they're ripening on the vine, these product lines, called Sylvester calls, are ripening in that fruit.

And their job is to keep predators from eating them. But they provide chemicals for us and for our animals that are anti-cancer. So they actually help turn on anti-cancer pathways, which, by the way, how amazing that is that we have these pathways that are already in our body. And when they see an abnormal cell, these foods that we're supposed to be eating in our natural diet turn these pathways on so we never see the abnormal cell because it has that programed cell death, the apoptosis that tells it, hey, you don't belong here.

You need to go ahead and die off. So our bodies have the natural intelligence. The only reason it's not working is because we have too much toxins. We have a deficiency of the essential nutrients that tell our body how to run those metabolic pathways. And so we we're kind of like these lone warriors out there. And we've lost the communication system, our microbiome isn't able to talk to the mitochondria anymore because those pathways have been cut off. So we have what I do is I create the programs for the pet parents so that they understand all of these different mechanisms in depth, and they're empowered to be able to make better choices.

So if it came down to one crux, it would be knowledge, right? Where only pet parents do what they're doing because they want to do the best for their pets. There is no pet parent out there that I've ever met that says, oh, I'm so excited to feed my dog kibble today and have it die sooner. We don't do that, and veterinarians don't wish ill on their patients either. But if they don't have a broad enough toolkit because they haven't had that outside education, then they don't know what to do and they're left with that.

I'm sorry. There's nothing more I can offer you for your animal that keeps having chronic relapses. But I love those cases because I know I can fix them in a matter of a few weeks. If the owner is willing to change the lifestyle, that's the key. You can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So if somebody wants to work with you, actually, how do they how do they connect with you? They could either go to our hospital site or the Doctor Marly website and they can contact us.

I do online consultations, I do online webinars. My pet program is the absolute best start. It's very inexpensive. It's a three hour, very intensive program that covers everything that you and I talked about and about another two hours more. So it's very, very heavy. And then they watch that program. I consult with them on actually implementing the program. So the two major things that we do wrong I'm sorry, the two major things we do wrong. Number one, we don't know what to do. And number two, we don't know how to implement it.

So I have fixed both of those I love it. So where where can people, get that program. They have to call my office at Pasco bet.com. And the phone number is (813) 973-2929. And I also have a program for veterinarians. And it teaches veterinarians how to integrate alternative medicine into their practices. Also extremely robust. Fantastic. So Pasco vet.com okay. You can connect with Doctor Siegel and her team there. Also Iva love ra.com. There's links to the the food the supplements, the amino acids.

I've been looking through some of that stuff myself to get for our pets. And Doctor Marlene Siegel, you can connect with her there as well and reach out to her. So I just want to say thank you so much for helping, you know, clarify some of these, confusing things that, we often run into. And, I know you've had tremendous success helping, all kinds of pets to, you know, bounce back from these chronic health conditions. And I just want to thank you for your time and the great work you do, and for being here and sharing all this great wisdom with us.

So thank you so much. Well, thank you for including our fur babies into your conversation, because I think it's going to touch a lot more people. So thank you so much. And I want to thank everyone for tuning in to the Conquering Cancer Summit. Please share this with friends and family. Together, we truly can make a difference for the future of humanity in ending the cancer pandemic. Thank you and I wish you ultimate health and happiness. Be well.