298. Dr. Judy Morgan: What Kibble Does to Your Dog's Liver

Over half the pets in our country are overweight, and Dr. Judy Morgan puts dog cancer incidence at 1.6 out of every two. Our animals are living shorter lives than they did in the 1970s, with better diagnostics and more treatment options than ever. Dr. Morgan explains what actually changed. CLICK HERE TO BECOME GARY’S VIP!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Get Dr. Judy Morgan’s books here: https://bit.ly/4ik8TTR Listen to “Naturally Healthy Pets Podcast” on all your favorite platforms! YouTube: https://bit.ly/4wER8lS Spotify: https://bit.ly/46audDZ Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/4g9uInH Connect with Dr. Judy Morgan Website: https://bit.ly/4zxPGV6 YouTube: https://bit.ly/4wER8lS Instagram: https://bit.ly/4zsHp4t Facebook: https://bit.ly/4ikn4bu TikTok: https://bit.ly/46h3jKA X: https://bit.ly/4qoQSFT LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3SFX3cl Thank you to our partners A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD AIRES: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/4a3Duze BAJA GOLD: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp CYMBIOTIKA: “BRECKACYM30” FOR 30% OFF: https://bit.ly/4tjyluP GENETIC METHYLATION TEST (UK ONLY): https://bit.ly/48QJJrk GENETIC TEST (USA ONLY): https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S PEPTUAL: “TUH10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4mKxgcn SNOOZE: LET’S GET TO SLEEP!: https://bit.ly/4pt1T6V WHOOP: JOIN & GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST: YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps 00:00 Intro of show 04:18 Pet Obesity, Cancer, and Longevity Rates 08:20 Carbs in Kibble and Why Cats Cannot Handle Them 10:06 How Often Dogs and Cats Actually Need Vaccines 17:27 Flea, Tick, and Heartworm Chemicals 29:00 Heartworm Prevention and the Immune System 36:15 Why Judy Feeds Zero Kibble 37:38 AAFCO Minimums and What Pet Food Labels Hide 39:41 Rendering: What Is Actually In Meat Meal 42:53 Mold Toxins and Aflatoxins in Dry Kibble 47:18 Why Kibble Counts as Ultra-Processed Food 56:20 Best Raw and Human Grade Pet Food Brands 1:05:00 Why Indoor Cats Are Stressed 1:13:05 Herbs, CBD, and Flower Essences for Pet Anxiety 1:17:29 Raw, Fresh, and Home-Cooked Pet Food 1:20:23 How to Switch a Cat Off Kibble 1:28:09 Natural Flea, Tick, and Lyme Prevention 1:33:34 What It Means to Be an Ultimate Human Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Over 50% of the pets in this country are overweight or obese. Cats that live inside, over 80% of them are highly stressed. Cancer incidence in dogs is 1.6 out of every two. We have messed up what we're feeding our animals.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Looking at the framing of what has happened to healthcare in America, I never actually thought about superimposing that to our pets.

• 0:25Speaker 00

  The veterinary field is highly influenced by big pharma and big pet food. And they make ultra-processed food and the waste products of all that ultra-processed food go to our pets.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  And the same way that we started the war on saturated fat and protein in favor of high glycemic carbohydrates in humans, we probably did the same thing with our animals.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  That's why food therapy to me is so cool, because we can keep things in balance. Where we get disease is where it gets out of balance. And so the same goes for our pets.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  If we were to distill this down, where we've gone wrong in how we treat our pets, what would it distill down to?

• 1:02Speaker 00

  Three things that I talk about a lot.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka. Today, we're taking everything we talk about on this show, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and pointing it somewhere you might not expect, your pets. My guest is Dr. Judy Morgan, a veterinarian with over 40 years' experience, certified in traditional Chinese medicine, chiropractic care, and food therapy for animals. And what she's about to tell you is staggering. Over half the pets in this country are overweight or obese. More than 80% of indoor cats are chronically stressed, and dog cancer is now hitting 1.6 out of every two dogs. Our pets are living shorter lives than they did in the 1970s, despite diagnostics and more advanced medicine than ever.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Dr. Morgan is going to break down exactly why the ultra-processed food, the over-vaccination, the corporate influence reshaping veterinary care, and what you can actually do about it. So if you have a pet, pay attention. Or if you love someone who does, you need to hear this. Let's get into it. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today's podcast is going to be a twist on all of those things, anti-aging, longevity, and biohacking, because we have an incredibly special guest, an incredibly qualified guest, talking about all of those things and how they relate to your pet. So I know there's a lot of pet owners out there, including myself

• 2:48Speaker 01

  and a lot of my team, actually sitting in for this podcast. I've got a live studio audience back here. Because we care so much about our pets. And what is astounding to me is the overlap between the chronic disease pandemic that we see going on in America and the chronic disease pandemic that is quietly going on in our pets. So today's guest is Dr. Judy Morgan. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Morgan. It is so exciting to have you.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  I'm really happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  You're welcome. And not only are you a doctor of veterinary medicine, but you're certified in traditional Chinese medicine for pets, also chiropractic for pets, and also food for pets. So you're super qualified.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  And what's really astounding to me was when I was prepping for the podcast, looking at the framing of what has happened to healthcare in America. We are the sickest, fattest, most diseased nation, civilized nation in the world, spending $5 trillion a year on healthcare, type 2 diabetes, morbid obesity,

• 3:58Speaker 01

  maternal mortality, infant mortality, chronic disease, multiple chronic disease in a single biome. I never actually thought about superimposing that to our pets.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  It is so similar. Over 50% of the pets in this country are overweight or obese.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Our cats that live inside, over 80% of them are highly stressed. The cancer incidence in dogs is 1.6 out of every two.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Wait, 1.6 out of every two?

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  And we are literally going backwards in longevity. If we look at our animals in the 1970s, they were living longer. And now we have better diagnostic capabilities, supposedly better treatment capabilities, except many of those are actually causing a lot of harm. And we're seeing more cancer, more arthritis, more inflammatory bowel disease, more allergies, literally just chronic inflammation in our pets. And we're doing everything wrong. And we need to start making changes.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  You know, it reminds me of what's going on in our modern healthcare system. I mean, diagnostic CT scans, MRIs, full-body MRIs. You know, we've made leaps and bounds in diagnostic capabilities. And I would argue that we're probably the best at crisis management, right? If you have a catastrophic event,

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  we're extraordinarily good at saving your life. And I would imagine that the veterinary industry is the same.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I have said, ever since I started getting more into holistic, alternative, complementary, whatever we're going to term it, I have always said, listen, if I get hit by a bus, I'll take some real pain meds and I'll take some real surgery.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Thank you very much. But then healing from all of those injuries and all of those insults to my body, I'm going back over to the complementary holistic side, because that's where we're going to see long-term healing. And that's where we're going to return the body to functioning well. And so allopathic medicine is great for that crisis situation. But when people come to me with their animals, when I had my clinics, a lot of them were in crisis. And they had been on long-term medications, handfuls. And we have to look at that and say, well, that was great when the crisis started.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  But here we are, three years down the line. Things aren't getting any better. And you just keep adding more medications. And we're not getting anywhere. So how do we peel that back and go back to getting the body back in alignment and back into healing?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, before the podcast, I was saying, we could probably strike the word "pet" off of any of these books and replace "kids" or "humans", and it would be just as appropriate, right? So what do you attribute this to? If we were to distill this down, where we've gone wrong in how we treat our pets, what would it distill down to? What is that thing?

• 7:18Speaker 00

  So there's three things that I talk about a lot. Food is the foundation of life. So we have royally messed up what we're feeding our animals. And unfortunately, the veterinary field is highly influenced by big pharma and big pet food. They contribute so much money to the veterinary schools, to all of our continuing education. And as veterinarians, we just buy into it. And that's what we're taught in school. Hey, if the pet has kidney disease, we've got a prescription diet for that. If the pet has heart disease, we have a prescription diet for that.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  But it's all highly-processed food made with really, really raunchy ingredients. You think McDonald's is bad? Start looking into what's on the label on these ultra-processed pet foods, and it turns your stomach. And if we dive deeper into that, I will... I'm sorry to anybody who's eating when we get into that,

• 8:20Speaker 00

  because it's really horrible. So we are feeding them things that are causing inflammation in their body. We feed them inappropriately. Cats are obligate carnivores. They're little meat-eating dinosaurs. Like, think velociraptors. I'm going for the meat.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Mice, rats.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Mice, rats, rabbits, birds. But what do we feed them? We feed them dry kibble that is over 50% carbohydrates. They have zero requirement for carbohydrates in their diet. They need a little bit of fiber. That's it. So we are feeding them completely wrong. And then we wonder why they're obese, why they have dental disease, why they have urinary tract problems.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  My daughter and my ex-wife have the fattest cats you've ever seen.

• 8:57Speaker 00

  Exactly. And it's because we feed them wrong. So we need to go back to feeding... And dogs are not obligate carnivores, but they do a lot better on a meatasaurus diet with a little bit of carbs. So when we look at companies that are doing it right, the carbohydrate content, which is kind of the vegetable matter content in cat food, is going to be 2% to 4%. In dog food, it might be 15% to 20%, but that's where it should max out. Instead, when we look at ultra-processed dry kibble, the maximum amount of meat you can put in an extruded product is 30%.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Wow. So there's no way the protein content could even exceed 30%?

• 9:34Speaker 00

  Well, it can, because they use peas for protein and corn protein. And so they're using

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Cheapest ingredients.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Cheap ingredients that are not species-appropriate. And then we wonder why we have inflammatory bowel disease, which leads to arthritis and allergies and all these other issues that we have. So that's number one, food. Number two, over-vaccination.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Oh, God bless you for saying that.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  So when I

• 10:00Speaker 01

  I didn't know if we were going to go down the vaccine bandwagon, but let's go down there.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  We

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Get on that train. So when I was in vet school, the mantra and what everyone was taught is every vaccine for every animal every year. And the way that you get people in your office every year with their pets is to send them a card that says your pet needs shots. And it's one of the biggest disservices we ever did in the animal industry.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Because now we know that those core vaccines, just for parvo rabies, one vaccine probably lasts a lifetime. It's not something that needs to be given every year. And we have ways to discern that. If you need to... Our biggest problem is in boarding, grooming, daycare. And I was talking to one of the people on your staff who said, I just moved into a new apartment and they required a rabies vaccine for my indoor cat who never goes outside. And so she had to go get a vaccine for her cat.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  So we get stuck. If you want to take your dog or cat to the groomer, if you want to fly on a plane with them, if you want to live in an apartment complex, you're told you have to do these vaccines. And The powers that be put a timeline on that. It's like, well, you and it's really interesting because AVMA and AHA, which are kind of our governing bodies have now put on their websites, "Well, core vaccines could probably be given every three to five years." Well, there's no science behind that. Nobody, nobody like did a bunch of testing and said, "Oh, look, it always lasts three years," or "It always lasts five years." So, a lot of veterinarians have gone to the every three years, but there are still some who say, "No, every year."

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  And, and we have science that says, "No, we don't need it every year." And now, sadly, we have mRNA vaccines.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  So, for rabies for dogs and cats.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Probably from the same companies.

• 11:52Speaker 00

  Merck. So, rabies for dogs and cats, influenza for dogs, which I never gave the regular influenza vaccine, so why would we go here? But boarding, grooming, daycare, and then feline leukemia vaccines for cats, which I don't like that one either. So, it's really hard for the pet owner, because when you go into the veterinarian, there's a lot of clinics now, because we now have corporate ownership, and that's another whole box to open. But with corporate ownership, a lot of times, the, the line is, "In order to have your pet seen by our veterinarians, they must be up to date on vaccines."

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  And so, the problem is, so I'm standing here with an animal that's unvaccinated, and I say to the veterinarian, "Well, I need to bring him in for an exam. Well, he's not up to date on vaccines." Well, they will see him to give him vaccines, so that then they, I can come back and they can examine for the problem. Like, how does that make it? Like, you already touched him and did stuff with him without the vaccine.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Right. So nonsensical.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  It's nonsensical, and it comes across to the pet owner as, "You're just going for my money." And the veterinary industry used to be one of the most trusted professions. It is not anymore.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Really?

• 13:14Speaker 00

  Which is really sad. The suicide rate for veterinarians is the highest of any profession. Used to be the dentist. It used to be, everybody hated their dentist.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Suicide rate for veterinarians?

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Yes. And a lot of that is driven by corporate greed and private equity, because the veterinarians are given this huge carrot on a stick. A lot of veterinarians are coming out of school with $250,000 to $500,000 in school debt. And so, when the corporate groups say, "Well, we'll give you a $200,000 bonus to sign on, but you have to stick with us for three years," or whatever theirs is, "We'll pay you more than everybody else," and they make it sound great, and then the young veterinarian goes to work there and finds out, "Oh, no, you don't get 30-minute appointments or 20-minute." Nope, every 10 minutes. You got, crank them

• 14:03Speaker 00

  out, crank them out, because it's all about production. And now, they've instituted standard of care, which is, you know, it sounds good. Like, here's the standard of care.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  And who's determining these guidelines? Because the same thing happens in-

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Well, that's a really good question.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Health and Human Services, the FDA, CDC, same types of guardrails exist.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Right. And so, as a holistic practitioner, let's say, I have a client who comes in, I, actually, I just saw this, this is a good example. Saw this one online the other day. A veterinarian posted, "A client called me 20 minutes before closing." And, I mean, as a veterinarian, I, you know, yes, we close at 6:30, but if we get out of here before 9:00, that would be awesome.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  My kids grew up in the clinic. It's just what we did. But now, it's like, nope, 6:00 or 5:00 closing time. We only work 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday. Forget it. If your pet gets sick on a weekend, you're gonna have to go to a corporate-

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Urgent care.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Urgent, yeah, awful. So, this veterinarian posted, "A client called 20 minutes before we were due to close, and her cat was blocked. It couldn't urinate." Well, that's life-threatening.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  And the client was, I don't know, nice enough, dumb enough, honest enough, to say, "I only have $200." And the veterinarian said, "Well, they weren't even gonna get here." And so, she was online looking for somebody to say, "It's okay. You did the right thing. It wasn't me." And she said, "I told them I couldn't see the cat, and they would have to go to urgent care, knowing that urgent care was gonna be $5,000." So, these people were literally gonna have to walk in and mortgage something, borrow money, something, to get their cat seen. And she said, "Well, if I kept my staff, then they were gonna be on overtime, and I'd be paying them overtime." Now, as an old-school veterinarian,

• 15:57Speaker 00

  I would have been like, "Come right over. I'll wait." And then, I would poll my staff and say, "Who's gonna help?"

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  And anybody who doesn't want to goes home, and anybody that wants to, "Oh, we have a C-section coming in. I know it's after hours. If you need to go home for your kids, go. If you can stay, stay." 90% of the time, everybody would just stay, because we cared about the animal.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  So, the veterinarian turned this person away with their cat. I have no idea what ended up happening to the cat. But of the 100 replies that she got on social media, probably 95 of the other veterinarians said, "You did the right thing, and you know, you should have just offered them euthanasia. Euthanasia would have been a better answer." I'm like, "Really?"

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you can do that for 200 bucks, right?

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Oh, exactly. It's like, take their $200 and kill the cat. And I'm like, "What happened to, we are the profession of caring for the cats?"

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  So, I don't know. Our profession has changed a lot, and I, I think that our suicide rate is high because we have these moral dilemmas in our head.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I would agree.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  And I, I agree, because, just because we can't offer euthanasia doesn't always mean that we should.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  And, you know, as a holistic veterinarian, when people come to me with their, "I've already been to seven other vets, and they've told me there's, I've been to the university. They've told me there's nothing else they can do." And I'm like, "Well, I got 27 more things in my toolbox. Let's give it a go."

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  And so, we just are always looking for other things. So, let's see, that was the food answer, the vaccine answer, and then there's the chemicals. We're applying and feeding pesticides to our animals.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Same as humans.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  How does that make sense?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  How does that make sense? Which is really interesting. So, one of the, one of your VIP members sent in a question about Brevecto. Brevecto is one of the flea and tick pesticides that we feed to our animals. They now have a 12-month injectable. Like, you put it in, you can't get it back out, and there's no antidote if they have a problem. Oh, that'll be fun.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Really?

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  It's like a pellet? Like a dissolvable?

• 17:57Speaker 00

  No, it's an injectable liquid.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Injectable liquid, okay.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  But it also comes in a chew, and it also comes in a topical. These are neurotoxins. So, I don't know, if your pediatrician said, "Well, we don't want Johnny to ever be bitten by a mosquito, so feed him this pesticide. It'll last for three months. It'll be great. No problems." And then, your kid starts having seizures, and they go, "Oh, it can't be related to the neurotoxin you gave him."

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:21Speaker 00

  Excuse me?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Isn't that astounding?

• 18:24Speaker 00

  It is. And then, because we have all this inflammatory disease, like meningitis of unknown origin, didn't really exist when I got out of school, but now, it's very common.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Meningitis in these animals, dogs and cats.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Meningitis. My sister's dog had it. And looking back on it, my, when I was in traditional practice, like, five years into practice, my Doberman developed granulominous meningioencephalitis. So, basically, meningitis encephalitis. And when I took him to the neurologist, he went blind overnight. And so, I took him to the neurologist, and he said, "Oh, that's probably from his distemper vaccine." Now, that should have been my first clue. Like, wow, these vaccines might be a problem. But I was still in the every vaccine for every animal, every year, part of my life. And so, we're seeing so much more of it now. And it's like, why is, why isn't anybody putting two and two together and saying, "We need

• 19:24Speaker 00

  to do something differently?" But we end up with so many animals with these chronic inflammatory diseases. How do we, we can't cure them, so we put them on immunosuppressants.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  We wreck their immune systems, and then we wonder why the cancer rate is so high.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Actually, put them on immunosuppressants.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Oh. So, my Doberman was put on, at that time, we had-

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Prednisone, so he was on that. And I think the second drug was, it might have been Cytoxin.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Not good. But he was on it for a year. He lost all his hair. He just dribbled urine everywhere he went. He lost all his muscle mass. It was horrible.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  And looking back on it, it's like, oh, man, I would have done that a lot differently.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  But you don't know until, until you start looking at it and learning. So we're doing so many things wrong.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. If you know me, you know, I don't recommend anything I haven't personally tested. That's not a marketing line. That's just how I operate. I've been on the road my entire career, different time zones, brutal schedules, no margin for days off. And so I'm constantly testing what actually works in my own body. NAD was something I keep coming back to. It's the molecule your cells use to produce energy and repair, and it declines faster than most people realize. When I found symbiotica's liposomal NAD, the absorption technology is what got my attention. I tested it. I felt it. And it's been in my bag ever since. I'm always evolving what I put in my body, and this one has stayed on the list. I'm genuinely excited for you to experience it. This is the standard we hold every product to before it even reaches you. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I think about, I grew up on a, on a farm. We had a 300 acre tobacco farm.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  And so our dogs were outside a lot. They were, and they were well cared for. But when I think back about what we fed them at that time, we had hunting dogs. My parents actually rescued old English Mastiffs, which were massive, massive dogs. They're sweethearts, but they are huge animals. Some of the males would get well over 200 pounds.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  And, but we had these 30 gallon aluminum bins in the basement with a little lid. It didn't really seal. It just went on the top so spiders wouldn't get in there. And, and then I had a big scoop and a huge bowl. And twice a day, I would go out and I would scoop this up and dump it in the bowl. And, you know, thinking back, like, how many weeks it probably took me to get to the bottom of that bin. And, you know, I can still remember as a kid, getting to the bottom of that bin and seeing like, a little bit of fuzz down there at the bottom.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. We've got mold. We've got maggots. We've got storage mites. We've got rancid fats.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  So guilty right now. But then I was going upstairs and eating Lucky Charms. So that's on, that's on mom.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Listen, I was eating Milk Bones as a kid.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  But, you know, it is, the parallels are shocking, you know, because I was in the processed food mill, and our dogs were in the processed food mill. And, you know, now that I think back, most of our dogs lived nine to 10 years, maybe 11 years. My son and his fiance have two labs. One of them is about to be 18 years old.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Which is amazing.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Jack, shout out to Jack. And Jack is the happiest. Now, he's old, and you can tell he's an elderly dog, but he still gets around. And they are so militant with his food. I mean, he eats, I kid you not, true story. I worked out with my son one morning. We went upstairs into the kitchen. He starts making something next to me. And he walks away from the bowl. I slid it over because I thought it was for me. Because it had rice, had peas, had chicken. And I was like, thank you, man. I'm starving. He's like, that's for the dog. And, and, you know, so they have literally kept this dog alive, but with food.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And, and I'm also happy to hear about where you fall on vaccines. I mean, they're, they're getting married in September this year in like, Como, and we're taking the dog. And they gotta get all these vaccines. And, and, but they have a very progressive veterinarian who's, who's going to help them with that. And, you know, I think about the same thing in, in children, and the data coming out now on vaccination, especially group vaccinations.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And we do the same thing in animals, right? We group these vaccines.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  And so that's one of the things that, that I talk about a lot. If you are stuck, and to go to boarding, grooming, daycare, travel, whatever it is that you need to do, and you're given this list of vaccines that you need to get. And interestingly, this is actually being published in the veterinary journals now. And I'm like, what took you so long? Except that it's still ignored. They have great studies that show the more vaccines you give it one time, the more reactions you have, the more chance of anaphylaxis you have, the more chance of autoimmune disease secondary to it that you have, particularly with small breeds. So the smaller the dog, the more likely they are to react. There

• 24:31Speaker 00

  are some vaccines that they're now saying, these are core vaccines. I'm like, I never gave these to a dog under 10 pounds, and I never would. I've never given some of these vaccines to my own animals and never would. Rabies is really the only one that is pretty much mandated. Like, if you have a dog that you need to take anywhere, and you need to license them, or, you know, somebody finds out you have a dog in your house. In New Jersey, they knock on doors, they hire, hire college kids in the summer, and they knock on doors. And of course, your dog barks at the door. And they're like, ah, let me see the license for your dog. You don't have a license? Okay. And then you get 10 days to get your rabies vaccine and your license.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. So.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And is there some big pandemic of rabies? Or, or is this like, the scare tactic that's brought up?

• 25:21Speaker 00

  It's a scare tactic. And part of it is, and I get it, because in countries where we have a lot of stray dogs, there are countries where thousands of people die of rabies every year. This country isn't one of them.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  Part of that is probably because of how we handle our animals. We get a certain number of cases of dogs and cats with rabies every year. It's small. Usually, it's strays. Probably the biggest problem is stray kittens. Like, everybody finds a stray kitten and picks it up. They don't notice it's got a wound on it. And it's like.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Is that because they tangled with a raccoon, or tangled with a possum, or something like that?

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. So in the Northeast of this country, it's raccoons. In the Southeast, it's foxes. Skunks are kind of in the middle. And out West, it's bats.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  So we know what strain of rabies and what's going to be our, you know, sentinel animal that we need to be watching. So back in 1989, 1990, in New Jersey, we hadn't had rabies cases in years. And all of a sudden, there was a huge rabies outbreak in Northeast Pennsylvania. And the raccoons walked across the bridges, across the Delaware River, and brought it to New Jersey.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Damn raccoons.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  And so I ended up spending about two years decapitating a lot of raccoons to check for rabies, because that's how they were. And my husband at the time actually was head of the State Department of Health as a veterinarian, but he was in charge of the rabies thing.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  So they would trap these, you would test them?

• 26:56Speaker 00

  They would, right.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  And they tested positive.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  And so I actually had a client, it was a farm, old farmer, and he had this little tiny fluffy dog that was ancient. And he let the little dog out to go potty last thing at night, and heard this commotion, opens the door, and this little dog comes in with a raccoon attached to it.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Racing through his kitchen, and he couldn't get the raccoon off. So he grabbed a kitchen knife, yay farmers, grabbed a kitchen knife, and slashed the raccoon, to kill the raccoon, so that it finally dropped the dog. Yes, it was a rabid raccoon, because that's the kind of stupid things. Like, we saw them attacking telephone poles, attacking people's doors, attacking tires on cars.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Because their brains, I mean.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  Their, their brains scrambled.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  So it's pretty obvious when you have a rabid raccoon, they're kind of, they're kind of nasty. So it was a problem. And interestingly, the state of Pennsylvania during all this decided, because cat, you know, stray cats, outdoor cats, they're going to be the most vulnerable. Barn cats. I have a bunch of barn cats now, so I get it. So they passed a law that said that all cats had to be vaccinated for rabies every single year.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  You know, it's a three year vaccine minimum, but they just passed this law. Well, the wrong cats were getting vaccinated. If you had an indoor cat that went to the vet, it was going to get vaccinated.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  If you had.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  No chance it was coming in contact with a rabid raccoon.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Exactly. But all the barn cats and stray cats that are out that, that are coming in contact, nobody's, like, if I had to catch up my seven barn cats and get them to the vet, it's going to be a big problem, because some of them I can't touch.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  So, you know, it's like, okay, you guys are really sweet and nice, but putting you in a cage is, is not going to happen. So we were vaccinating the wrong animals.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  And a couple of years after that, the University of Pennsylvania, and weirdly out at Davis, California, at the vet school's diagnostic labs, they were diagnosing a lot of vaccine-related sarcomas in cats.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  And they, they figured out, oh, all these rabies vaccines are causing cancer in cats.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Wow. You know, and it's, it's sad, too, because I can still remember walking into the veterinarian's office, and there were always these pictures of hearts of dogs, or just shrouded in worms.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Right? I mean, it looked like you put it in a worm.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  It used to be everybody had a heart in a jar.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  They had that, too. Yeah. A heart in a jar with the worms. Or just like, the images or the pictures of just worms all over a heart. And so, you know, somebody walking into the vet's office with, that loves their dog, is like, oh, my God, I don't want Fifi getting that. And so, but not knowing, well, what is this, the statistical incidence, and you know, the chance of that actually occurring? And where was that picture taken? And what was that animal's history?

• 29:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Versus what's my animal's history?

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Who's living in my suburban home, or in my condo, is on a leash, and is going out for a walk every day, and coming back. You know, what is their chance of catching heartworms?

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  And.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  So that's, that's another one of those, that the Veterinary Parasite Council, I don't know their exact name. But they basically say that all pets, dogs and cats, all dogs and cats should be on heartworm preventative.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  Heartworms is a dog thing.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  I remember that.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  But all of them should be on heartworm preventative every month. And all of them should have some sort of parasite prevention every single month. Well, I don't use any of that stuff on my animals. I'm like, I look at their lifestyle. And the other thing that people kind of forget and that the veterinarians never talk about is a healthy animal won't be parasitized. An unhealthy animal. So if we didn't see that many heartworm cases in New Jersey where my practices were, but every year we'd have a few. And I could guarantee that that dog would have heartworms, roundworms, hookworms, whipworms. Like it was gonna have, it was gonna have fleas, it's gonna have ticks.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  It was gonna have everything. Because that's an animal with a weak immune system, not eating good food, that can't fight off anything. And so when one jumps on board, they all jump on board. If I had a family that had a dozen cats, they bring a dozen cats in for exams. And if they had fleas in their house, the old skinny kidney failure cat was gonna have 3,000 fleas. The young, healthy, adult cat might have one or two. Parasites parasitize the weak. So really important that we keep their immune system.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Keep their immune system strong. And where do you fall on pet food? Because one of the fascinating things, I want to get into pet food. I also want to talk about how you categorize different animals, wood, fire, metal. Because I find that fascinating, too. Because my former spouse was an Ayurvedic practitioner. It's like the oldest form of medicine, mainly based on observation. And they have different body morphic types that they put you into. And the characteristics, pita, vada, kapha, of the personalities, the diets, the tempers,

• 32:17Speaker 01

  their attitude, energetic, docile, aggressive, you know, congenial, really fits these descriptions. And you have the same categorization for animals, which I really find fascinating. And I was reading through this and I was like, wow, I was thinking back at the animals that I had. And I was like, wow, so many of the dogs that I had, now that I think about, they fit these verticals so perfectly. I just never thought of applying it to.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. So on our website, there's a pet personality quiz. So you can download that and basically do checkboxes and it'll.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  I'll put a link to it in the show notes.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  It'll help you, you know, kind of figure out what makes your animal tick. And then we also have the human personality profile. So if you want to figure out what makes your spouse tick. It can be, my husband is the only person I haven't figured out. He's got equal checkboxes all the way across. I mean, what are you? But it's, it's really kind of fun to do because every element personality is ruled by certain systems. So metal is lung and large intestine. Wood is liver and gallbladder. So earth is ruled by digestive system. So we look at all these different things. And if you, so I have a fire dog right now. I have four dogs, but one of them is a fire. She's a redhead.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Well, redheads are usually fires.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  They're very vocal. So she's the one who stands there and screams at me the whole time I'm making meals. Like, you are not moving fast enough. Let's get this.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Really? Howls at you and stuff?

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. She screams at me the entire time. And I feel bad when we have guests come over because we're right next to the guest room making dog food and she's screaming.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  So she, she fits all those things. Well, the fire personality is ruled by the heart. Guess which dog has mitral valve heart disease? Oh, that would be that one. But because I know that a fire dog is going to, if something's gonna give way, that's what's going to give way. It happens to be a genetic thing for the breed, too. But I have spent her whole life supporting her with supplements and food. So when we use food therapy, it's like, how do I support your heart? My dogs get hearts cut up in their meal every single day.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  So it's very cool to know kind of what rules them and where their weaknesses would be. So I'm a wood personality. A wood person, I'm your best friend until you do me wrong. Oh, man.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  And it's scorched earth?

• 34:53Speaker 00

  It's scorched earth. So that's a wood personality. But wood is kept in check by metal because the metal axe chops down the tree. So metal is lung and large intestine. Well, my wood personality has been so strong for so many years that my poor metal axe has been working overtime trying to chop down this crazy tree. And if I'm ever going to get sick, it's gonna be respiratory.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Really?

• 35:23Speaker 00

  My weakness is my lungs because my metal element has just been overworked. And so I know that. Well, metal is supported by white foods. Like, give me more white foods. I will eat more mushrooms. Thank you very much. Cauliflower.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  Cauliflower. So I look at those things and say, okay, well, what's gonna support my system? What's gonna drain my liver? Give me more asparagus and radishes, please. So that's why food therapy to me is so cool. Because we can keep things in balance.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  You know, where we get disease is where it gets out of balance. And so the same goes for our pets.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  So how do you, where do you fall down on food? I mean, are you feeding all of your pets raw food? Whole foods? Obviously, no kibble. Tell people, I mean, the one thing they should take out of their dog or cat's bowl tomorrow is what?

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Kibble. Because it's ultra-processed food. It's sort of like taking your, your pet to McDonald's and expecting to get good health when that's. And part of the fallacy and myth of the veterinary push for the ultra-processed food, because that's what they all push. So Mars and Purina rule the landscape. They sell about $23 billion worth of pet food a year. The next after that is Hills, which is owned by Colgate Palmolive, and they're about $6 billion. So it's a huge difference. And so the veterinary industry is greatly influenced by Mars Candy Company and Nestle Purina Candy Company.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  And they make ultra-processed food. And the waste products of all that ultra-processed food go to our pets.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  And, you know, they call it upcycling.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Sounds really good. And there are some upcycled products, like hearts. People don't usually eat hearts. They should.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  But they usually don't. That's a great upcycled product for my dogs who need it for their heart health. I'm in.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  So, but they also use the really awful ingredients in that extruded kibble. Like I said, it's very little meat. It's what's the cheapest ingredients we can put in there and get. So AFCO, which is the Association of Feed Control Officials.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  They set the minimums, some maximums, but mostly minimums. Like, we need minimum this much protein. We need minimum this much fat. If we allow our cats and dogs to choose free choice, they're going to go for about 50% protein and about 45% fat.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  And then the other 5% is that fiber.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Just instinctively.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Instinctively. If you give them a choice, that's what they're gonna go for. The minimum for AFCO is 18% protein for dogs. And 22% for cats.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Not even close.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, not even close.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  You know, they were like, well, what can they survive on? Oh, they can survive on 18%. And that's a lot. You can put a bunch of cheap ingredients in there. And it's really interesting. I remember my first few years in practice, we used to say, oh, too much protein's gonna wreck their kidneys. You don't want to feed that high protein kibble.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Oh, my Lord. So, yeah, we need to change what we're doing. So my animals, sometimes I make my own food, but I'm a little busy and I travel a lot. So I do have a few companies that I really, really like that are doing things the right way. You can download that list on my website as well.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  What's your website?

• 38:51Speaker 00

  It's naturallyhealthypets.com.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Naturally.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  You can also go to drjudymorgan.com, same place. But there's a great website, truthaboutpetfood.com. Susan Thixton lives here in Florida. You might want to have her on.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  I would love to have her on.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  She has been the consumer advocate for pet food for about 20 years. And the battles she has had, it'll blow you away.

• 39:16Speaker 00

  But she puts out something called The List every year. And she's up to about 40 companies on the list and other companies that are doing things right.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Okay. In terms of food?

• 39:25Speaker 00

  In terms of pet food. And they can't buy their way onto that list. They actually have to submit all their receipts for the year for everything that they purchase to go into their food. So she can see what's going into the food.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Like, it's, it's a big process for the pet food companies.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  So for big kibble, ultra-processed food, the law states that animals who have died otherwise than by slaughter, so like a cow dies out in the field, not allowed to be used. However, all of those animals that die out in the field go to pet food. They get picked up. This is where, sorry if you're eating, stop right now. They take these dead animals that might have laid out in the field for a few days. They're decomposing and rotting. They put them in these big, open trucks and then they take them to the rendering plants. And at the rendering plant, it's all dumped into the parking lot in the sun.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:21Speaker 00

  And they stay there for a few days and then it all gets bulldozed into a large vat and it's boiled down. And so it's the whole animal. So we're not taking out intestinal contents or hair, or we're not getting rid of the ear tags and the chains and like it all just goes in there.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  The whole animal goes in.

• 40:36Speaker 00

  It gets cooked down into a soup, rendered. And then the fat that's on the top is tallow fat that goes into a lot of different things, including pet food. And the meat meal is separated from the bone meal and it's ground, dried and ground. So if you see on a label, something that's an unnamed meat.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  An unnamed meat?

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Unnamed meat. So if it says meat and bone meal, or animal digest, or meat meal, it's unknown meat because it could have been pig, cow, horse, dog.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Any scrap.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Whatever went into that vat. There was a lawsuit against Rachel Ray Dog Food in 2023 because somebody tested the DNA and there was dog DNA in there.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Ended up in the rendering vat.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  The-

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Dog DNA in dog food.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  The head of the largest rendering association gave the keynote speech at one of the AFCO meetings a few years ago. And in that, he said, it's almost impossible to have a rendered product without euthanasia solution in it. Because, oopsie, that one was euthanized and it accidentally went in the vat. We didn't mean for it to. FDA knows it and there's been lawsuits about that too. And FDA says, we find it non-actionable. It's not in a large enough quantity to be a problem.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Wow. Where do they get these euthanized animals from? From veterinarian clinics?

• 42:05Speaker 00

  No, most of the veterinary clinic animals go to cremation.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  But there's been zoo animals known to end up in there. A lot of horse meat can end up in there. And we don't normally think about eating horses. But the thing is, nobody, it's rare for somebody to test the food and look at the, I mean, it's not cheap.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  So rare.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  Let's look at the DNA. Let's look at the mold toxins. One of the biggest recalls ever was for mold toxins. So where do you think the moldy corn goes? 60% of the grains in this country are moldy.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  Doesn't go to human food.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, glyphosate is a desiccant now to dry it out.

• 42:41Speaker 00

  Right. So, but it kills the mold, but the molds release mold toxins. So we have aflatoxins, vomit toxin. Yeah, all those. Those cause liver failure in animals. And one of the largest recalls ever was for mold toxins in dry kibble.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  So you can fumigate it all you want and kill the mold, but nothing kills the mold toxins.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  So, you know, if I had an animal come in the clinic and I did lab work and the liver enzymes are high, I'm like, well, which kibble are you feeding? Because you know that's where it's coming from most of the time.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  So back to my animals, no, they don't eat kibble.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's, so that's the one thing that everybody should get out of their-

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Pass bowl right now.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  And partly because for cats, it is so species inappropriate. Like our dogs can survive on it better. But for cats, we're just, we're asking for urinary problems. We're, it's, it's a dry food that has six to 8% moisture. Cats are desert animals. They don't drink very much. And then we wonder why they have crystals and very highly concentrated urine and urinary obstruction, like the cat I was talking about.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  They're dehydrated. They're eating a high carbohydrate, carbohydrate diet. They're not meant to eat a high carb diet.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  And they're obese and they're diabetic.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yep. And the same way that we started the war on saturated fat and protein in favor of high glycemic carbohydrates in humans. Yeah, we, we did, probably did the same thing with, with our animals.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for our private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  The exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than a hundred dollars a month. Your health is your wealth and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. And you talk about the industrial food complex in veterinary medicine and pet food. And you've touched on that a little bit, but what do you mean by this industrial food complex?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Is it, because honestly, you know, I, I chair a committee for Secretary Kennedy called the Maha Action. And in fact, we're meeting in Washington right now on peptides. And my son's dog is on peptides, which I thought was really cool. And it's helped my, helped the dog a lot. He's BPC157 for his hip dysplasia. You could noticeable difference in the pain that the dog had walking around. Now it's actually pain free. And like I say, it's going on 17 years or going on 18 years. But the absolute sinister nature and what I call commissive errors. You know, you have errors of omission, you have errors of commission omission is, hey, we didn't mean to do that.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Some E. coli got into the lettuce, but it wasn't intentional.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  The commissive errors are, we know exactly what we're doing. We know exactly what the risks are, but it's profitable. We're going to do it anyway.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And the, the voluminous extent to which this is done in human food production and this triangle hold that they have had for decades on our regulatory bodies. Again, never made the applicable transition to pet food. But you're saying the same.

• 46:48Speaker 00

  So FDA chooses not to enforce that animals dying otherwise by, than by slaughter are not allowed in food. But they're going to the rendering plant. We know, it's like that cow died in the field. Why are you not enforcing that? They said, we choose not to enforce it. We don't think it's actionable. Well, it's a law.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  So we just pick and choose which laws we want to follow.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  And that's so widely known and that's an inexpensive source. And so they grind it up and it becomes kibble. What else is in there? Like what else is, is it ground up animals? Is it ground up vegetables? Is it, I know seed oils and other highly processed ingredients are in there?

• 47:33Speaker 00

  So the thing with kibble, it goes through the extrusion process. So think of, you know, cereal, breakfast cereal. That's the extrusion process that the Kellogg's invented. And then, hey, we can make pet food out of that. And that's why, because it's that process, that's why we have to have this starch to hold everything together. Otherwise it gunk's up the machine. So we start with, hopefully, a meat of some sort, a meat meal. But if you're looking to, well, if you're extruding it, you have to have a starch. So it's going to be corn, peas, legumes, potatoes, something to hold it together. So that's, and they do something called ingredient splitting. So it might be pea protein,

• 48:19Speaker 00

  pea hulls, pea, like they'll have peas in their five ways, corn in their five ways, corn gluten meal, you know, spent corn, whatever. Like they'll name it five different ways. So when you add up all the ingredients, it's like, oh, I just fed my cat a lot of corn and he's a carnivore. So we've got that. And then it, it goes through multiple high heat processes. And so by the time it gets done, we have killed off a lot of the nutrition.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  The nature of the proteins.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. And now we have AGE's advanced glycation end products, which carcinogenic. Then we put preservatives in it. One of the companies that, when Susan Thixton first got into being the pet food consumer advocate, her dog had died of bone cancer and her veterinarian said, it's probably from that preservative in the pet food.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 49:13Speaker 00

  Ethoxequin. And so she called the pet food company and they said, oh, that stuff's shelf stable for 25 years. Great. That's not something I'd really want to brag about.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  So BHA, BHT, atoxiquin, and what's really interesting, and a lot of that's been taken out, but a lot of it's still there. So we've got preservatives because they want it to be shelf stable for minimum two years, but probably longer.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Two years?

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Think about a food product that you could leave out for two years.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  The expiration date on those bags is generally two. So if you're looking at, you know, if you're going to buy pet food, look at the expiration date because it's generally two years. So if it's about to expire, it was made two years ago.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  So a lot of our

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Great tip.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  A lot of our fresh and frozen foods, it might be one year, but some of them are still even two years. So that's because they don't have to put the made on date. They have to put the best buy date. I mean, that kind of goes with human food, too.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:16Speaker 00

  So I would definitely look at that. But then because they have cooked out all the nutrients, they add back in a synthetic vitamin mineral mix. And we know that the body uses synthetic vitamins and minerals very differently

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely true.

• 50:30Speaker 00

  from whole food nutrition. And so one of the things that we have seen so much of is copper toxicity in our pets, again, causing liver problems because the copper is stored in the liver.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  And AFCO has a minimum for copper, but no maximum. So let's say the minimum is seven. Some of these companies are coming in at 80.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  And so one of the things that people should ask is, I want to see the complete nutritional breakdown on the food, because all they're required to put on the label is protein, fat, moisture.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Carbohydrate.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  No, they don't even put carbs on pet food.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  No.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Really?

• 51:15Speaker 00

  It's like four things. It's ridiculous. And we, they've been working on changing the labeling, oh, for about 10 years. It hasn't happened.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Infamous Washington, kick the can down the road.

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Oh, and actually, after the huge, there was a big problem that killed tens of thousands of animals in 2007, 2008, where we had melamine, you know, melamine plates, plastic, that was being ground up and added to ingredients from China. And it caused kidney failure.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Is this straight plastic?

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Pretty much, yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  What is melamine?

• 51:56Speaker 00

  It's, it's made, it's used to make plastic plates, but it artificially elevates protein content.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  So they were putting it in ingredients that were used to make pet food with, you know, dried kibble. Actually, it was even in some canned foods. And a lot of animals died before they figured out what the problem was. I actually was in China studying acupuncture the next year. And all of the Starbucks and all the coffee shops had no dairy products because melamine was being put in the dairy products.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  So what hap, what was happening, I mean, so it's so corrupt.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  It is so crazy.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  They were diluting down the milk and the dairy products, but adding melamine to bring the protein level back up. So nobody would know that it was diluted. And infants were dying of kidney failure because it was in the milk products that were being fed to infants. So nobody could get dairy products.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  So I mean, that's how corrupt the food system is. It's like, oh, well, we killed 10,000 dogs. Who cares? Oh, wait, we just killed a bunch of kids. You know?

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Wow. And how did, how did that crossover occur? I mean, how did we cross over into human food so that children got a hold of it?

• 53:09Speaker 00

  It was in, I was in China and it was happening in China.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  And so, you know, the, the dairy companies were like, well, we will dilute down the milk so that, you know, a little bit goes further.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  And, but we have to pass the test of the protein level in it. So they were adding

• 53:25Speaker 01

  It helped artificially raise that.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just crazy. So, you know, we get, the vitamin mineral mix is a huge problem. We had another recall in 2018 and 2019, again, tens of thousands of animals died because there was excess vitamin D in the vitamin mineral mix.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  That much?

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was like 100 times what it needed to be.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  And again, all these animals are dying of kidney failure. And it, it takes a bunch of veterinarians to get together and say, you know, I'm seeing a lot more kidney failure than I get. Like, you think there's something going on here? Like, wow, why are there so many young animals with kidney, kidney failure? And then finally, somebody said, oh, maybe it's the food. And the, one of the biggest culprits in that was Hills. But it was across many brands because there's only a couple of these synthetic vitamin mineral mix companies. And they're from China.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Feeding the foods, yeah, of course.

• 54:17Speaker 00

  They're from China. And so all these companies buy from the same manufacturers. So when you have a problem, you have it across many, many, many companies.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  So when I'm looking at food, when I read the ingredient label, I want to know how to read every single one of them. And I don't want to see chemicals. I want everything coming from Whole Foods. And I, I get pushback from veterinary nutritionists who say, those synthetic vitamins are just fine and it's impossible to balance it without that. I'm like, really? I'm pretty sure we can do it. And I have done it. And we do a lot better that way.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Just in Whole Foods.

• 54:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  So what are some of the, you produce your own pet food?

• 55:00Speaker 00

  I don't.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Right?

• 55:01Speaker 00

  I don't.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  You produce your own pet supplements. Your daughter runs a supplement company.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  I produce some of my own supplement. Well, I don't produce some, but I formulate some of my own supplements. I have formulated recipes for pet food companies. And I have a couple that I work closely with, but I don't own a pet food company and I don't want to because I don't want to play with FDA. It's hard enough. So we sell products from probably 75 different small companies. In order to, for somebody to get their products in our warehouse and on my website, they have to jump through a lot of hoops. Kind of like Susan has her list of pet foods that people have to jump through the hoops. We look at the ingredients very closely. And then we also look at the company very closely.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  What are their morals and ethics?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  I love hearing that.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  And, you know, if, if, if they're trying to claw their way to the top by saying bad things about all their competitors, we're not going to work with them.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yep. We have the same thing in our industry.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  It's, you know, it's, it, there's, there's 160 million dogs and cats out there. We don't have to compete. We all need to work together.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  What are some good brands of either raw or human grade food for pets?

• 56:21Speaker 00

  So right now, for my own animals, even though I work closely with a couple of companies, I like to rotate brands. Because a lot of times a brand will, and not all of them, but a lot of times they'll have like, sort of a formula. Like, here's my meat source. But then when you get past the meat source, it's like broccoli, carrots, sardines, what, you know, it's kind of the same formula after that. So let's just say there's a micro mineral deficiency in there. I don't want to be feeding the same thing all the time. So I rotate, and I also rotate proteins for my animals. So in my freezer right now, I probably have All Provide, Viva Raw, Small Batch, I might have Evermore,

• 57:05Speaker 00

  Raised Right. Some of them are raw foods. Some of them are gently cooked. I'm fine with gently cooked. But these are all companies that are not using synthetic vitamin mineral mixes. And they're not throwing a bunch of starchy carbs in there. These are complete meals. So it makes it, my mom is, my 89 and a half year old mom is in charge of feeding the cats. So I need

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Good for her. That's going to keep her alive for a long time.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. She runs

• 57:30Speaker 01

  It's like gardening.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  She runs back and forth to the barn multiple times a day. She's really cute.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  But, you know, she's, she always, she's really funny. The cats always have two choices. So it might be rabbit and chicken, or it might be turkey and venison. She always gives them two choices twice a day. But our animals also get raw milk from our cow, the yogurt that we make, they get the eggs from our chickens. And we process our own meat chickens. So, you know, it's sort of a combination. But we've, we've kind of gone off the deep end.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  But still all coming from Whole Foods sources.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  One of the things you also talk about is constitutional matching.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Right? Not all food is meant for the same animal. So cats, not all cats, dogs, not all dogs, just because it's a dog or a cat.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  So how, how do you, because I know there's so many people watching this right now that deeply care for their pets. And they're like, I'm already somewhat on this bandwagon. And probably if they're watching the Ultimate Human Podcast, they're attentive to this, at least for themselves and their children. And if they have pets, their, their attentions are on to it. So what is constitutional matching for?

• 58:39Speaker 00

  So I actually have a line of food called Constitutions. And it's made by All Provide. But it basically matches the Chinese elements. So like

• 58:51Speaker 01

  To these personalities, metal, fire, wood.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Right. And what's really interesting, like I was talking about with myself, I wouldn't, because I'm a wood personality, I wouldn't necessarily buy the wood diet to feed me. I might buy the metal diet because my metal needs to be supported. But when I, when I formulated those diets, I tried to make them balanced. So like the wood diet would actually be helpful because it has things that are going to help drain my liver. So it's going to support it, but it's also going to drain it. Cause we don't want to make an excess of something. So that the constitutional medicine goes along with the personalities, but it also goes along with yin and yang. So yang is hot, yin is cold. And you can

• 59:37Speaker 00

  look at your animal and say, well, is he always laying on the air? I mean, we're in Miami and it's 95 degrees out. So it's hot out. I don't want to feed something that is going to add more heat internally to the body. So lamb, chicken, venison, goat, very warming proteins. I'd probably save those for the winter down here. But in the summer, we can feed things that are going to be more cooling. Duck and rabbit and turkey and pork. So we not only change the diet based on the personality or constitution of the animal, we also change it on the seasonality and the weather. And you may have a dog who, like

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  your 17 year old dog, a lot of times they're cold. They don't have as much body fat. So even though it's summer and it's 95 degrees, he still might need a warming diet like venison or chicken, because he's an old cold dog. But you know, a lot of the youngsters, they're hot.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. It's so funny because that's the personality of these two dogs. They have a very young lab named Aspen, female. And then they got the crotchety old man. And like, Jack loves Aspen, but kind of doesn't want anything to do with Aspen. It's like, if you're 15 years old and you have like a five year old little brother that's just constantly like, and, and so, I mean, she's always wanting to play and running around him and nipping at him and what have you. But she also has heat seizures. So they have to be really careful because she's jet black. And she has heat seizures when my son would take her out for runs in the wintertime, fine, but even just on walks in, in the summer, she actually will start seizing.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  We've had dogs that will do that too. So that's where knowing that what the energetics of the food are, you could say, okay, this dog, particularly in the summer, really needs a cooling diet.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  And then the older dog really needs a warming diet.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  And the guidance for this is on your website where they can get these different constitutions?

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's on the website. And I didn't bring that book with me, but I have a book that's Yin and Yang Nutrition for Dogs. And it's 62 recipes. There's the original one and now there's the 2.0 version, but I would do the 2.0. But the recipes are based on the five elements, but also on the yin and yang, the heat and the cooling. And so if you want to make your own food, it's okay, here's a complete diet that you can make. And I do recommend rotating. So like if your son is making your pets food, he should be rotating recipes and ingredients, just like we would for ourselves. You know, I

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  find it interesting that people go to their veterinarian and people are really getting away from asking their veterinarian what they should feed because they know what the answer is going to be. But if you go to your veterinarian and they're like, well, feed this bag of dry burnt brown balls. Don't add anything to the bowl because you'll unbalance it, which is a fallacy. They're not balanced anyway. We know that from testing. But you know, only put this in the bowl and don't add anything to it because you'll mess it up and feed the same thing day in and day out.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  24/7, year round.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  If they handed you a cereal box for your kids and said, everything is in here that your child needs. Don't add anything to it. Don't change it up. They just get this dry cereal twice a day, every day. You'd look at them like they lost their mind. But we go to our veterinarian and think that is perfectly normal.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Right. Wow. You also talk about prevention, not, not like crisis vet medicine. And obviously crises are going to happen, you know, dogs get in a fight or, you know, they're out, they burn their paws or they hurt themselves. But what do you mean by preventative medicine for a dog? Is there, do dogs need routine like humans do? Exercise, sunlight, community, connection like we do? I mean, dogs have what 100 times the oxytocin that humans do? And they form like these bonds? Maybe it's not 100 times, but they have a lot more oxytocin than humans do, from what I understand. And so they really form these bonds. And a lot of dogs, I mean, we grew up, they would get anxiety. They would get separation anxiety.

• 1:03:52Speaker 00

  Anxiety is huge. We have more anxiety in our pets than we ever have. Like I said, over 80% of indoor cats are highly stressed. And I see the difference. We have two indoor cats.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Is this because the owner's just leaving every day and they're in the

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  Well, that's part of it. We think that cats are like, you know, solitary, do their own thing. They're really not. They, they want interaction. So I look at my outdoor cats. They are all over the place. They're jumping through the air, catching grasshoppers. They're getting birds. They're chasing mice. They play with the mice before they do the mice.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  It's sort of cruel.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  It is cruel.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Play a game of tag and then eat him.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  But it's cats doing cat things. And because they're on a species appropriate diet and they have a lot of exercise, they're in a very safe environment, they're being real cats. They don't have any stress. I actually tested the microbiome. All my cats eat the same, the indoor and the outdoor cats. Tested the microbiome on all nine cats. The outdoor cats had perfect microbiomes.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:04:56Speaker 00

  The indoor cats had not so great microbiomes. The only difference is to live inside. They don't pounce. They don't hunt. They don't climb. They sit. And they don't interact much. They don't really like the dogs. But they also don't want to go outside. They could if they wanted. But so we, there's a huge difference in

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Right. The environment.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  In the environment that we see. So it is critically important that our pets have human interaction and for indoor cats that we allow them to hunt and pounce and climb. Cats are really into vertical spaces. That's why you find them on top of your refrigerator.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. We had barn cats growing up too. And they were always up on the rafters. We had these tobacco barns. And they were always up there on, on the rafters. And they would go up there and tangle with raccoons at the top of our barn, like 50 feet off the ground.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that's cats doing normal cat things. And so we need to get back. And so

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Run right up the side of the barn too. It's crazy.

• 1:05:58Speaker 00

  For those who play laser tag with their cats, which is a great thing for them because that's hunting and pouncing, make sure they win at the end. Don't just turn your light off and walk away. They're like, where did it go? And I didn't win. They always have to win. So throw a piece of dehydrated meat or a mouse toy, like throw something at the end where you ended up with the laser that the cat gets to win and gets to walk off with his prize. Always let them win. For our dogs, they need that mental stimulation and they are pretty darn social. So my youngest dog, when we got him as a puppy, he's a special needs kid with hydrocephalus.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  You told me about this one. He's got everything going wrong.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  He's a little crazy, but he really bonded with our 10 year old Cavalier. And they were best buddies. The 10 year old Cavalier happened to be in late stage heart disease and heart failure. And when he passed away, we had other dogs, but they would not play with the youngster. And so now he didn't have a friend and he didn't have a buddy. And yes, I will play with him. But it was very different for, and he was a COVID baby. So he wasn't socialized outside of the house at all. The first time I took him into town, I thought he was going to lose his gourd. It was, it was not good. So yes, we have

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  COVID children. My granddaughter's a COVID baby too. So a whole different thing. So another English toy spaniel came up online and a friend said, you really need to take this dog. He's been returned like three times. He's two, he's two days older than my Cavalier. And he was really cute. And my husband's a big mush. And he said, oh, we need to, we need to adopt Gilly. Okay. So we get Gilly and I still say, they're five years old now. We got them when Gilly was two. And I still say, I got my dog a dog. They are, they're like two brothers in that they are best friends. They do everything together. They sleep together.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  They play together. And then they fight like two brothers who want to kill each other.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  And they go right back.

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  And then they go right back. But I needed to get my dog a dog. I'm not recommending that everybody get their dog a dog. But we saw that social, interactive need. And I know everybody hates, not everybody, a lot of people hate dog parks. A lot of people speak very badly of dog parks because a lot of bad things can happen in dog parks.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. You see the dogs that aren't trained well, that tackle the dogs and things like that.

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Right. And it's not a dog park problem. It's not a dog problem. It's a people problem. It's people who aren't paying attention to their dogs, people who are bringing the wrong dogs to a dog. Like I would never take my dogs to a dog park. They're unsocialized. They'd be horrible with other dogs. But they have each other. So, but dogs really are social creatures. And like the owner of all provide dog food, single guy, he has a dog. And he takes his, this dog loves, the dog lived most of its life in the shelter and he adopted him. And he loves the dog park and he has friends. And so you get these dogs, they're like, they look forward to going to the dog park every day and playing

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  with their buddies. And so that social interaction is really critical. So we need good food. We need good social interaction. We, we need training. I love, you know, non obnoxious training. I'm not a dog trainer. If you want to untrain your dog, send it to my house. I'll ruin it. I'm really good at ruling them. But yeah, you know, if, if we could go back to

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  And training, just to touch on that for a minute, is this important in the early stages of the dog? Like the younger, the better?

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  The younger, the better. But Forrest, Forrest Gump did not go to training until he was two.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Forrest Gump is her dog, by the way.

• 1:09:58Speaker 00

  Forrest Gump is my little hydrocephalic crazy dog.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  He didn't go to training till he was two and I finally took him because our veterinary office that we go to, since I don't have a license now, I have to go to a veterinarian's really fun. She's great though. She had, one of her technicians was a trainer and so they were offering puppy classes. And I said, well, he's two, can he still go to puppy class? She's sure, bring him on in. And the reason I wanted to go is he wouldn't walk on a leash. When I put a leash on, he would just hit the brakes and collapse.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:10:28Speaker 00

  I was like, all right, he's scared to death of a leash. I have no idea why. And so we had to go to learn to walk on a leash. And now he's my best walker.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  Of all the dogs we have. And then when we got Gilly at two, I was like, all right, well, he's going to puppy class two.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  And so they went at two. My mother had dogs that she took at five and seven. I mean, you can, you can take, like, if you adopt a new dog that's older, you can still take them to school to learn things. You can still, old dogs can learn new tricks.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  And they should.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  We, we, we have a few dogs in the family that need some.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  We just want them to be good citizens.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they can be good citizens. They're great dogs, but not model citizens.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  And you know what? It's really, if you have no rules, it's really confusing for the dog. Like, he's allowed to jump on the bed today, but then you come in later and yell at him for jumping on the bed. Just set the rules. Either, either you're allowed on the furniture or you're not.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  But just let them know.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Right. And they'll get it.

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  And they'll get it. And then it like, Gilly is a, a food maniac and he'll steal everybody else's food. He has learned to sit in his corner while food is being made and he does, doesn't leave. Like, he just learned that. And it's like, well, this makes life a lot easier, that you're not attacking everybody else's food.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  Right. So I've been working out with my son lately, trying to keep up with him and his high rocks competitive athletes. And I've been starting to use this perfect amino pre-workout. I really like it. It's got BH4, it improves nitric oxide output, but it actually seems to stay after the workout and not crash. There's no stimulants. So no caffeine, no Ma Long, nothing that gives you that kind of amped feeling. You just feel like you're maybe better able to move during the workout, like you have better blood flow. So if you're in the market for a pre-workout, check out the perfect amino pre-workout. It's my favorite now. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. I love too that you apply traditional Chinese medicine to, to dogs. So these are things like herbs, acupuncture.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  So for the listeners that have probably aging dogs or dogs with hip dysplasia, or dogs that are exhibiting pain, or even anxiety, separation anxiety, because sometimes there's not a lot you can do. You gotta go to work. And so we're leaving our animals, then we're coming back home. What are some things that pet owners could do to help manage those scenarios with dogs, especially separation anxiety?

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, Forrest Gump has separation anxiety. When I leave the house, he does laps. He's nuts. So, and there's always somebody in my house. So it's kind of funny, but it's not me. So a lot of it is training, but there are also things that we can use to kind of help with that. I'm a huge fan of CBD for dogs. And they all react differently. Some of them, it calms them right down. Others, like when our cleaning lady comes every Tuesday, Gilly and Forrest lose their minds. So they get an herbal tincture called tranquil times and CBD the night before and the morning of makes life a lot better.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Is that something that would help them travel too?

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  Yes. So we have, so what's really interesting, we also use flower essences and a lot of people have heard of rescue remedy and they tend to want to use rescue remedy for everything, but it's actually pretty specific. But there are other flower essences that you can use for specific situations. So we have one called safe journey. Well, that's pretty easy. I, we're going on a journey. I need to be safe. Got it.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  Is that like an immune booster?

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  No, they're flower essences. It's, they call it emotional training in a bottle. But it's basically the energetics of the vibration.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  So they don't get so agitated or, you know, new environment, new surroundings, they're not freaking out.

• 1:14:15Speaker 00

  So we have flower essences. We have homeopathics. There's one called travel anxiety. Pretty easy to know what that one's for.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  We use melatonin. We use CBD. We have herbal tinctures. So, and it depends on the animal. Sometimes you have to layer on a lot of different things. We saw this in, when I was in the horse training world, we use flower essences a lot.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  In the horse training world.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  Because you're, when you're showing, you're not allowed to use any chemicals that would show up on a drug test.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  But flower essences are fine. You can use something like that. You can use homeopathic remedies.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Wow, that's great.

• 1:14:54Speaker 00

  So, you know, it's just kind of knowing what is accepted. Like CBD is not accepted in all circles.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Is that something they can test for?

• 1:15:04Speaker 00

  I don't know if they're testing for it or not. It's really interesting. I'm traveling around the world speaking this year and in some countries CBD is not allowed. So that makes it really interesting because you're like, well, this would be exactly what you, oh, you can't do that.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  That's all against the regulatory mark. But here in the US.

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  Just kidding.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  They're, they're good. And so you have these different tinctures, essentially do what the tincture says it does. Makes it very simple. Because I know a lot of people travel with their pets, but maybe it's two or, two or three times a year. Maybe it's only once or twice a year. And so dog has barely been out of the house or maybe socialized in the neighborhood. And then all of a sudden you're taking on this commercial flight, hundreds of people.

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  And that can, especially for our short-faced breeds, that travel can be really a nightmare. And so one of the things, like if you go to your traditional veterinarian, they're going to say, oh, here's tranquilizers, here's trazodone. They're, they're going to give you something. We used to use ace promazine before we had other drugs. But we can end up suppressing respiratory function in some of these animals who are kind of on the edge with that anyway.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  So you have to know your dog. And again, if you need to travel with them, it's kind of like taking cats to the vet or traveling with you. Get them used to wherever they're traveling in that carrying cage. So my cats, at least my indoor cats and my outdoor cats that are really friendly with me, they, they were all strays that came. So not as easy. But I leave a carrier out and leave, you know, treats and food. And so like my dogs will run right in a crate and just hang out.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:46Speaker 00

  Because that's just.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  That's great. Instead of the first time it comes out of the closet, you're stuffing them in there and then they feel like they're in prison.

• 1:16:52Speaker 00

  And that's why so many people have a problem getting their cats or their small dogs to the veterinarian. It's like, I, you know, he's hiding under the bed. I couldn't get him out. First of all, they know.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:00Speaker 00

  They know that you're getting ready to go. And if they see the carrier come out, there's no way you're getting them.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  So make the carrier a place that they like.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  And so it's, it's all about planning ahead. I understand things happen at the last minute sometimes, but the more you can do to plan ahead and make it seem like normal everyday stuff, the better.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  So I want, I want to go to like the raw, fresh homemade conversation. Because there's a lot of online manufacturers of pet food now that seem to be doing really the right thing. I don't profess to know these brands because I'm, I don't have animals in the house. I know that my son and my daughter-in-law do. Actually, we just have an, we just started having an animal in the house. I forgot. I got, I got hoodwinked by my youngest daughter. We were, we were supposed to be fostering a dog. And she was like, oh no, it's, it's going to be here for like week, two weeks. We're going to, you know, we're just going to nurse it back to health and then we're going to foster it home. And it's,

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  it's a whole racket for like kids and parents, like, and, and apparently it's a thing because now I've talked to other parents that have been hoodwinked by the same situation. So this dog comes in, his name's Tori, he's great. He's a staff chart and he's an amazing dog. But he came in very emaciated and, you know, came, came from the shelter and now he's put on weight. And I don't know that we've done a social media post or ever actually talked to somebody about adopting the dog. So that's how I know that I got scammed.

• 1:18:31Speaker 00

  That dog's staying.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  But now we're going on like four months and now my wife and I are getting attached to the dog. And so actually I think I do have a dog in the house.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  You have a dog.

• 1:18:39Speaker 01

  Now that you mention it. But the, you know, I, I spin the label around on this and it is organ meats and organ blends, ground beef, rice, chicken, whole lamb, peas, you know, a whole food. It's like probably something that I would actually eat. Do you find that brands that are doing that are, there are some really good trustworthy farm to table brands? Or are you back to, we should be making our pets food?

• 1:19:11Speaker 00

  No, there are some really good brands out there. Unfortunately, some of the biggest ones that spend money on advertising and are the, you know, ship direct to home are still too high in carbs. So I don't want to see grains. I don't want to see peas. I don't want to see, I don't want grains. I don't want legumes. I don't want white potatoes.

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  Okay. Great.

• 1:19:33Speaker 00

  And so some of these brands are making huge strides within the veterinary industry and influence. And I'm so thankful because it is so much better than ultra-processed kibble. But they still have a price point that they need to make. So there's way too many carbs and a lot of them are still using synthetic vitamin mineral mixes added into there. So I do want to see all, all whole foods in there, but I don't feed any, like, when you look at my recipes in the Yin and Yang Nutrition book, they're formulated without any grains. And then at the bottom, it'll say, if you want to add grains, this is the

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  grain that would be appropriate based on the constitution or whatever it is that we're working on. But for me personally, no grains.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I mean, and cat owners, like, listen up. I have so many cat owners in my life.

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  No grains.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  And all the cats are fat. And I haven't really even thought about the carbohydrate, the high glycemic diet.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  Cats don't know what to do with carbs.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:38Speaker 00

  Breaks down to sugar.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I didn't realize that they're, they're carnivores.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. And we see so many of them that end up being obese and then becoming diabetic.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:49Speaker 00

  Because, so the thing is, the ultra-processed food has palatins added to it, which is basically.

• 1:20:59Speaker 00

  The umami to make it taste good. And these companies spend a lot of time and money on what is going to make this cat be addicted to this kibble. And they truly are addicted. And the problem with cats is you cannot starve them into feeding them the correct thing. Because cats will go into liver failure in about three days if they don't eat.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  So you can't say, I'm gonna hold out. He'll eat when he's hungry. No, he'll just die. Cats, cats are a big problem. It took me-

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  So what do you do? Transition slowly?

• 1:21:31Speaker 00

  Very slowly. And so for anybody who has a cat that is kibble addicted, you could try offering them canned food. Sometimes they'll lick the juice and then walk away. For when I first did all this transition 25 years ago with my cats that were kibble addicted, because I didn't know any better, I started with freeze dried raw food because it is dry texture, more similar to a kibble. It's still a complete diet. And so I would put their kibble in their bowl and then sprinkle some of the freeze dried over it. And kind of not, and don't put a ton in, like at the very beginning, like crumble a piece. And then, you know, a couple of days later, it's a couple of pieces. It took me six months to get the original cats to change over.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Transition, yeah.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  But in our house, kibble for cats is kitty crack. And I guarantee you, if I went and bought some kitty crack and put it in my barn for my cats that have only ever eaten raw food, they would dive in headfirst because it's made so addictive.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  And, you know, interestingly, we saw that the administration recently opened the door to psychedelics for human beings. And a lot of this is microdosing with mushrooms. And where do you fall? I mean, because traditional Chinese medicine uses a lot of mushrooms, reishi, cordyceps.

• 1:23:00Speaker 00

  I haven't played with that at all. There is a veterinarian, Dr. Rob Silver in Colorado, who has written books on cannabis for pets and for the psychedelics. He's been doing a lot of the research into that. And I think there's a place for it.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  These are condition specific, though. It's not like blanket across all dogs, blanket across all cats, but ones that have severe separation anxiety or severe, severe behavioral issues or what have you.

• 1:23:31Speaker 00

  I think that there's a lot of substances in nature that we haven't looked at nearly enough. We just need somebody to do the research and the pharmaceutical companies are not going to do that research. There's no money in it.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  You can't patent it. I get that. Yeah. And if you can't patent it, there's, there's, there's no money in it. So tell me about the books that are on the table right here. Keeping Your Pets Naturally Healthy, Raising Naturally Healthy Pets.

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  So I wrote my first book, which is Needles to Natural, back in 2014. And that one's sort of autobiographical, like how I went from being traditional to what I ended up doing in my career. But it also has a, you know, a lot of chapters on seizures, diabetes, you know, pick a disease, and how I was treating them in my clinic. That was different from what everybody else was doing. And I actually wrote that first book on a dare. It was a Facebook group that said, you know, you answer the questions different from everybody else. It was a dog group. You know, you should write all this down somewhere. And I said, okay. So I wrote a book. And then the next book after that was Canine Kitchen Capers, which it was-

• 1:24:46Speaker 00

  It's stories that were sent in from people who started making their own dog food and the, like, blowing up their kitchen and like, all the different things that went wrong. And so it's kind of a fun, funny book, but also has recipes in it. It also has recipes for humans, like how to order takeout for dinner because you spent all day cooking for your dog.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  So that's kind of a fun book. And then I said, well, I'm gonna write a serious book. So I wrote my first Yin and Yang Nutrition for Dogs, based on Chinese medicine food therapy. And then I said, you know, I need to write something that is more for somebody just entering the holistic space and not necessarily into Chinese medicine. And so that's when Raising Naturally Healthy Pets came out. And so that's, it has things in there like how to find a holistic veterinarian, how to talk to your traditional veterinarian if you can't find a holistic veterinarian and not get kicked out of the office. There's a big chapter in there on vaccines because for me, education is power. And so as the

• 1:25:54Speaker 00

  pet parent, if you can walk in and say, well, I know how distemper is transmitted from one dog to another, and I really don't think that my dog has a risk for that. So this is why I'm saying no to the vaccine. Or my dog had that two years ago, and I know that vaccine lasts five to seven years or more. So, you know, if you go in with that kind of knowledge versus just meow.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:17Speaker 00

  You're gonna get a lot further. You don't want to have an argument with them. You don't want them to feel backed into a corner. So that's, and that is cats-

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  Cats and dogs. There's a chapter in there about making your cats not so crazy, like, you know, climbing and all that stuff. Talk about cat litter. The cat litter industry is multi, multi millions of, like, crazy amount of money spent on cat litter research. Yeah, it's nuts. And it is true. They have huge preferences.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  Cats do.

• 1:26:51Speaker 00

  Cats do.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  For the type of-

• 1:26:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And don't use anything that's perfumed.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  I can't imagine that stuff's very clean either. Because sometimes, yeah, you come in and it smells like-

• 1:26:58Speaker 00

  So the litter that I use is a dried grass.

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  Like potpourri over it.

• 1:27:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. So mine's a dried grass litter, because I have two indoor cats. It tracks a lot, but where I habit it's not a problem. So talk about, you know, how to choose that. So then I said, okay, well, for somebody who's already been in the holistic field a little bit with their animals, and they want to dive a little deeper, that's where Keeping Your Pets Naturally Healthy came about. So that one takes a deeper dive in. There's a big chapter in there on allergies, because that's such a huge problem.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 1:27:32Speaker 00

  Big chapter on inflammatory bowel disease, like, you know, this is how they're gonna diagnose it. This is what they're gonna tell you to use. This is what I would do instead. So lots of tidbits in there for how to treat your animals. Oh, geez, what else? Oh, protecting your pets from parasites. So this one started out as an ebook. And we said, oh, we need to put it in print as well. And it's actually on Audible and coming out in Spanish very soon.

• 1:27:59Speaker 01

  Because fleas, ticks, and heartworms are something that-

• 1:28:01Speaker 00

  Fleas, ticks, and heartworms, which is huge. And it also goes into Lyme disease, because that's a big scare tactic as well. So how do we, how do we protect them naturally? How do we not use all these chemicals? Oh, it's a huge problem.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  Huge problem.

• 1:28:16Speaker 00

  Huge problem. About as big as people.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:28:19Speaker 00

  But they also-

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Do they respond to the same type of antivirals and antiparasitics?

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  So we use herbs. We use homeopathics. And what's, what's not told to pet owners is a positive Lyme test doesn't mean your pet has Lyme. It means they have antibodies to Lyme. It's like, oh, he was exposed. Maybe he fought off. It's only, less than 5% who are bitten by Lyme positive test will, or tick will actually develop Lyme disease. But, you know, everybody gets scared into-

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Does they have an immune system too?

• 1:28:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Everybody gets scared into, oh, you have to vaccinate against Lyme. And I'm like, what about the other dozen tick-borne diseases? The, the big thing is, we have to keep them from getting tick bites. So like, let's just-

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  Check the dog.

• 1:29:05Speaker 00

  Approach it from a different direction.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  And like I said, a good immune system, like I have seven outdoor barn cats, go down in the woods all the time. Come, you know, they play with mice and bunnies and all kinds of things. We have deer in our backfield. If I pull off two ticks a year from seven cats, that's a lot.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:29:24Speaker 00

  Like, they just-

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Don't get them.

• 1:29:26Speaker 00

  They don't get them because they don't taste good.

• 1:29:32Speaker 00

  There's a lot to be said for that. So I'm trying to think if there's any other books. Oh, I have one called Unleashed about dog parks. I have a friend who, John Sarver, who owns Gyms for Dogs, and he designs dog parks, and he's built about 2,000 in the US.

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  Has he really? Wow.

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  And he's really big into the fact that our dogs are very social and need to socialize. But a good dog park is good, and a bad dog park is not good. So he asked me if I would write a book that he could give away to people going to dog parks to kind of say-

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there's several right around here where I live.

• 1:30:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they may be good, they may be bad. A dog park is not a chain link fence in a field.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  That's what most dog parks are.

• 1:30:18Speaker 00

  Exactly. So a good dog park is going to have a clean water source that's not, you know, where they're sharing a bowl. It's going to have pieces of equipment for the dogs to play on and be active with, where they're, you know, can get multiple levels and climb, and just like, just like a playground for kids.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 00

  We need toys for the dogs. You know, we need good ingress and egress so that we're not losing dogs. And we need to have separate areas for aggressive dogs. We need to separate the small dogs from the big dogs. So, dog parks can be very good. So I wrote that book for him, and now I am rewriting my very first book, because I go back and read it now 12 years later, and there are some things in there that I said that I'm like, ah, I can't believe I said that.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Wish I'd reframed that, right.

• 1:31:08Speaker 00

  So I'm like, I need to rewrite this one, because I really, really want, it's a great book, and it's funny, I remember one of my clients, she had a dog with Cushing's disease, and she had bought my book, or I gave her a copy when I first, when it first came out, and this was like a year and a half later, and her dog had Cushing's, and she'd been coming to me, and we'd been working on stuff, and, you know, treating everything naturally. And she took a trip, and she decided that she would read my book on the trip, and she's reading out loud to her husband as he's driving, and she got to the chapter on Cushing's disease, and she was like, oh my gosh, all those questions I've been torturing this poor veterinarian with, they're all in the book.

• 1:31:49Speaker 00

  So, you know, that's the goal, is we want to educate people, and that's, our social media and our website is just chock full of information.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  I'll link all that in the show notes.

• 1:31:59Speaker 00

  Because we, we want to empower pet parents. We want you to be able to make good choices, and to avoid making toxic choices.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  Wow. Dr. Morgan, this has been amazing. I know this is going to resonate so well with my audience. And again, the parallels between what we have going on in our food supply, and the pet food supply, and what we have going on in our medical system, and the pets' medical system, the parallels are just stark and astounding.

• 1:32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  But, parent, I mean, pet parents really are empowered to change the entire trajectory of their pets' lives.

• 1:32:33Speaker 00

  They are.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  And they have the resources.

• 1:32:35Speaker 00

  We're seeing that change in the pet food industry.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  That's good. We're seeing it in the whole food industry, too.

• 1:32:41Speaker 00

  Mars and Purina and Hills have all come out with gently cooked, fresh foods, that's what they're calling it, after the last 50 years of saying, that's horrible, that, that's going to poison your pets. All of a sudden, they now came out with it. Unfortunately, they're using really subpar ingredients, and they're charging a lot of money. But they finally got on the bandwagon and said, oh, that little piece of the pet food market is growing rapidly, we better get on board.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:10Speaker 00

  And so, kudos.

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  You're not saying it's all about the money, are you?

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  How dare you?

• 1:33:16Speaker 00

  How dare I? Yeah. Private equity buying up veterinary clinics. You know, it might be about the money.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  We can go down that rabbit hole in the next podcast.

• 1:33:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a biggie.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  That's a big one. I can, I can see your antenna going up. So, Dr. Morgan, I, I end every one of my podcasts by asking all my guests the same question. And there's no right or wrong answer to this question, but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 1:33:41Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  I should say, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate pet? But I feel like that would be the first time I've ever asked that one.

• 1:33:47Speaker 00

  I love that answer. And to be an ultimate human for me is to honor my God-given talents, and to honor that God charged us with dominion over the animals.

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:34:03Speaker 00

  And for me, my ultimate goal is to care for those animals in a way that honors them and their lives, and we don't do any harm. So, that's, that's my goal. And I've spent a lot of years talking about it, and I'm going to continue talking about it, because I think we need to make changes.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Well, of all of the guests that we have had on our podcast, we have the most number of VIPs waiting to ask you questions in, in our VIP chat. So, if you are interested in becoming a VIP, go over to theultimatehuman.com/vip, where we do private podcasts with our guests, and you can ask them questions directly. But I really hope that you enjoy this podcast. I have so many notes and takeaways from this. I hope you do, too. We'll link all of the subjects, the books, and the guides that she referred to on the podcast. We'll link those in the show notes for you. And until next time, that's your science.