Dr. Judy Morgan 0:00
Hello pet parents, welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast where we empower and educate you to be the best advocate for your pets, giving them a happier, healthier life. Are you confused about all the overwhelming information out there about your pets health, nutrition and overall wellness? Well, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan, an integrative veterinarian, author and speaker. Join me for an exciting show where you'll discover the healthy options for raising your pets in a more holistic manner. Find out the answers to your questions during the short and succinct episodes where I chat with experts in the industry and showcase the latest products that will help your pet stay naturally healthy. So let's get to it.
Well, welcome back. Today, we are going to be talking about how we can treat cancer from a more holistic viewpoint. And looking at safer options for this devastating disease that unfortunately, statistically has a really good chance of affecting, particularly our dogs, but even our cats are being afflicted much more commonly with cancer. So my guest today is Dr. Judy Jasek, and she's been practicing veterinary medicine for 35 years and has extensive experience in treating pets with holistic alternatives. One of her specialties has been providing safer alternatives in treating pets with cancer, which, that's that's a hard task Dr. Jasek, so thank you so much for what you're doing. And thank you for agreeing to be with us today.
Dr. Judy Jasek 1:36
I'm happy to be here. And I'm happy, always happy for the opportunity to spread the word and to help, you know, just let people know that there that there are alternatives because the prognosis for cancer that come out of conventional medicine are almost always so doom and gloom, you know, one to three months to live kind of no matter what kind of cancer it is. I mean, really, the the prognosis one to three months or three to six months or they'll have some other statistics as they decide to do chemo but and other conventional treatments, but it's not very good. And it's there's very little hope people are given very little hope, pretty much it's a death sentence no matter what they do. And, you know, what I have found in treating more holistically is there's a tremendous amount of hope. And I've seen, you know, some cases that that are just, you know, nothing less than miracles and not, not because I'm doing anything miraculous, but because we're taking a different approach. We're not just focusing on the cancer and and I think the big difference in the two approaches to treating cancer is in how we look at cancer and all disease in the first place. Conventional medicine treats a diagnosis, and they treat symptoms, like they always have to they have to name something. So people will have to spend 1000s, and 1000s and 1000s of dollars doing diagnostics, because they can't treat something that they can't name. And so they have to, you know, do the biopsies and do the phasing. And and we got to know exactly, there's so many different types of lymphoma anymore. I can't even keep up. I really can't. But from my perspective, that isn't as important as I look at the patient. How's the patient doing? Do we have a strong life force? Does the pet have a lot of vitality? Is it still eating? Is it is it you know, feeling good? Does it want to go for walks? Is it interacting with the family? If we have that, then I know we've got a lot to work with. And then we start by supporting the patient not attacking the cancer, that yes, we'd love to see the tumor go away or whatever is showing up in large lymph nodes. lymphomas just become so off the charts common anymore. It's pretty sad. But you know, sometimes we get these enlarged lymph nodes, we might lose lymph nodes to go back down. We want the tumors to go away. Sure, that's important. But those things are just the tip of the iceberg. And what I have found in just observing this, and observing how cancer behaves in pets for a lot of years, that if we don't address the patient and support the natural healing ability of the body and the body does have an amazing ability to heal, even heal from something like cancer, if we don't support that and look at what what are some contributing factors that may have caused the cancer in this particular pet, which I think always comes down to some sort of toxicity, whether it's poor nutrition, environmental toxins, vaccines and pharmaceuticals. You know, like I think there's some sort of toxic reaction in the body that's reponsible for a lot of cancers, it just manifests in different ways. And ultimately, it's just a sign, there's something so out of balance in the body, the body can't manage this process that's taking hold. And, and so we, if we approach it from supporting the immune system and supporting the natural healing ability of the body, help it get on top of the process, then we can make it manageable. So I look at cancer not so much. We got to get rid of this tumor, I'm actually not a huge proponent of jumping in and doing surgery. Even doing needle aspirates anymore. I've seen so many tumors blow up after just sticking a needle into them, especially the really reactive ones like mast cell tumors. I've seen so many of those like could quadruple in size just after a simple Needle Aspirate. And from my approach, like I said, naming the tumor really isn't that important. I'm looking at the pet like, okay, there's something abnormal here. Something's out of balance in this pet's body, what do we need to do to start correcting that, and I look at the patient, and I look, first and foremost, foremost, at quality of life, you know, are we preserving this pet's quality of life? Are our treatments, keeping the pet healthier, more comfortable doing the things that they want to do, and what I find is oftentimes we can hit an intermediate, maybe that tumor doesn't completely go away. But the pet's living a really good quality of life, they're happy, they're doing things they want to do, they're eating and interacting with the family or going for walks. To me, that's a huge success. In a more conventional approach like that, to get rid of the tumor, the first thing is, you know, do surgery, take the tumor off, if it's if it's bone cancer, take the leg off, like, you know, like this immediately just gotta make that go away, like that's treating the cancer, in my opinion, removing a tumor does nothing to treat the cancer because we have to be treating the whole body or our long term results are are not going to be good. And I also see over and over and over again, tumors removed, even with good margins, which means they've done the pathology, you know, they've gotten beyond the tumor, there's no cancer cells left, and we see them regrow. We see that all the time, then they regrow with a vengeance because we disrupted the natural circulation, the natural lymphatics, especially if lymph nodes are removed in the area, and that tumor grows back. It's really, really hard to get on top of those again, because you've disrupted so much of the natural defenses of the body in that in that locality.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:45
Yeah, I've seen that so many times, particularly with the mast cell tumors, spindle cell tumors, yes, it's impossible to get clean margins on a spindle cell. And in the mast cells, we think we have clean margins, and then you're right, they come back, they come back with a vengeance. And they don't come back in the exact same spot, they come back next to it, where there were cells past those margins that weren't seen. And with conventional treatment, it really is cut, burn, kill. And it's so targeted at the tumor itself, without looking at the whole body. So only once in my life with one of my pets, did I ever seek out an oncologist for chemotherapy. And it was really one of those, I totally get where clients are coming from because when you get scared, and you're like, oh my gosh, you know, my, my pet has a bowel obstruction, we have to go do the surgery to remove that mass that's blocking the bowel. We have to make it so this dog can get nutrition. And then because it wanted to come back so quickly, I got scared into doing chemo. And I really thought, Okay, we're making great progress. And after four weeks of pretty aggressive chemo, the dog was declared cancer free and we had a big celebration and had champagne. And then one week later, she had three new tumors. That's how quickly because chemo, it attacks, the easy to kill cells, the ones that are resistant, they just kind of lay low a little bit, and then when they attack, there's, there's no, there's nothing you can do at that point. And I think that it's it's really interesting. The oncologist that I had at the time for my dog was actually trained in TCVM therapies as well. So I thought, well, this will be perfect, and she hadn't taken food therapy yet. So I was working on the food part of it, but she was a great herbalist and acupuncture and that sort of thing. But I questioned her while I was there just because I loved you know, picking somebody's brain that sort of thought somewhat along the same lines as me, but then also had this traditional way of treating things. And so I asked questions like, well, would it be appropriate for this dog to receive flea, tick and heartworm chemical medications while she is receiving chemotherapy? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you need to continue doing that. And would it be appropriate for this dog to get vaccinations while she's undergoing chemotherapy? Oh, yeah, yeah, no problem with that. Oh, my goodness, to me, and and I'm sure that I'm preaching to the choir here, because to me, all of that is just attacking a body that's already under attack, and needs to be healing itself, not having the immune system bombarded.
Dr. Judy Jasek 10:42
Right. Oh, absolutely. I just cringe when I hear about one of our cancer patients, they go into one of their conventional vets or to their oncologist, and they get around to vaccines. I'm like, Are you kidding me? I mean, first of all, all vaccines are labeled, if veterinarians actually read the label inserts, that they're only to be given to healthy animals. Well, how can you consider a cancer patient healthy?
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:10
Exactly, exactly. I don't understand that at all.
Dr. Judy Jasek 11:15
Yeah,like, it makes no sense. And then this theory that like, well, they're immunocompromised, so we need to vaccinate them to build up their immune system like no, in that scenario, that vaccine is having a negative effect on the immune system and driving it down further, which the chemo's already doing. And you know, the scenario you describe with your dog, I see that all the time, this rebound effect, because the chemo goes after the cancer cells, but it also disrupts normal immune system function. That's why they have to constantly be checking white blood cell counts. They're constantly doing blood work, you know, if this stuff was so safe, why do they have to monitor these patients so closely, they watch them like a hawk, they're doing like CBCs every week on him, if they're getting aggressive chemo to make sure their white count doesn't drop. But they're like, but they they'll say, oh, it's perfectly safe. Dogs don't get sick from chemo. Dog people get sick from chemo. Dogs don't have any negative effects. I mean, this is what I hear from my clients that the oncologists tell them and I hear that over and over and over again. Yet I see patients suffering from chemo all the time. And I and I do treat patients where people do both. And I support people's choices. Fundamentally, I am all about providing information, informed consent, and supporting people's decisions. But the things we do, it's really hard to treat pets that are also going through chemotherapy, because they can't evaluate the response to treatment. Because if they get diarrhea, well, is it from the herbs or from the chemo? And unfortunately, clients tend to blame herbs, you know, like a benign, you know, they don't think that that because they've been told that chemo is so safe, they don't think about, well, maybe it's the chemo that's making my dog sick. And like the oncologist, a lot of times, just and I'm generalizing here, I you know, I want everybody in the same boat, because I don't like that. But these are the type of things that I typically hear is that side effects are just kind of considered part of the treatment and they just roll along, they treat those they get diarrhea, they put them on metronidazole. Or they vomit, they put them on an antiemetic like cerenia.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:31
And their white cell count drops, and they just put them on antibiotics. And those of us who work with the microbiome all the time, we know that metronidazole, antibiotics, we just took an immune system that's already trashed, and we just trashed it even further, because 70% of the immune system is in the gut and all those little microbes that we just killed.
Dr. Judy Jasek 13:52
Right. And then and then we're surprised when the cancer comes back. Like I just know, I mean, you know, once they stop the chemo, there's going to be this rebound effect, because we wiped out the immune system. And you know, I try to do things to stay ahead of the ball and keep the immune system strong. But I I see way, way better outcomes when no conventional therapy is done. The very best outcomes I've seen is if a tumor shows up, and it's never touched, there's never a needle put in it never had surgery. We don't do any conventional treatments, we just start supporting the pet if people can go along with that. It's it's it's hard for a lot of people not to know what that is what's going on with their dog.
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:42
It's hard when you're scared to say, Oh, I'm going to go down a path I've never been down before. Certainly if you've been you know a holistic, holistically minded pet parent and you've tried to follow that path all along, that it's a lot easier to stay on that path and say I'm really going to boost and support what I'm what I've been doing now we now we need to literally drive that that boat even harder to support the body. But it's it, it is very hard for someone who has just been given a one to three month prognosis to say no, I'm not going to to follow through with the things that the oncologist is recommending. But I find that with a lot of specialties, so the cardiologist, you take your dog into the cardiologist, and if they have a problem, they give you the one to three months, three to six months. And I don't know, I sometimes wonder do specialists give these gloom and doom? Prognosis so that if the pet lives longer, they look like a hero? Or are they setting everybody up for not having unrealistic expectations? And I certainly cannot say to someone with a dog with cancer, yes, I can keep your dog alive much longer or I can keep your dog you know, I can cure this cancer, whatever. But I do appreciate that with our approach. We are really striving for high quality, whatever quantity of life is left and I think there's a huge difference in quality between conventional therapies versus holistic, alternative, complementary whatever term we want to use for that.
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Dr. Judy Jasek 17:18
Yeah, yeah, I, I agree I focus on on quality of life, I think that's most important. And that's what I tell people as well. Like, I can't give statistics like that every pet's different like, I mean, I don't even know how they can really come up with those numbers, except for the fact that they're going through the same procedures, they're wiping out the immune system. And after you wipe out the immune system, the pet's going to maybe live a couple of months beyond that. And that's where their statistics come from. But in my experience, it's all over the map. But I will tell people that the longer we go on treatment, you know, out on our treatment, the better idea I'm going to have. So if we're six months out and the pet is doing phenomenal and feeling good. And you know, depending on the type of cancer, whatever we're watching, is it is the tumor growing? Is there signs of metastasis, and the longer we go out, the better our chances are of, you know, long term stability, and some are just too far behind the ball. You know, I mean, we do what we can, but I always tell people, my goal is the best quality of life for as long as possible. If that's three weeks, then I want that pet to have the best quality of life for as long as we can. But I would say most, most often, I would say probably 90% of the time, we go beyond what the conventional oncologist is telling people those few months usually, we can get them out beyond that. And I've seen some where the cancer becomes undetectable. I actually have a case of osteosarcoma, only one that have had this kind of success on and it's not just me. It's also a very diligent, very, very good pet parent. But we are I think probably two years post diagnosis and this dog shows no sign of lameness. The lump actually shrunk, the owner was actually measuring it and the tumor actually went down. This dog's living a perfectly normal life. So that doesn't happen in all the cases. And that's the only case of osteo I've seen this happen, but it just tells me it can happen and so we need to keep something to keep...
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:31
I had a standard poodle with an aggressive mammary adenocarcinoma in the last gland which is the worst place for it to be and it it had spread to the lymph nodes. We knew that and the owners were very holistically minded. The dog was 11 years old. And so we made a protocol and it was the first one of these many years ago was the first case like this that I had gone all in did my research and said, Okay, we're gonna design a protocol for this dog. The dog lived to be 16. So five years, no more spread, no return of tumor growth died of something totally unrelated at the age of 16 as a standard poodle. So we do see this with holistic therapies. And I, when I would have clients come into the office with their pets with cancer, I would explain to them kind of like you look, our goal is not necessarily to cure the cancer, our goal is not necessarily to kill the tumor. And I tell them all the time, make friends with that tumor, talk to it, tell it that, you know, you can be here if you want to, but you cannot Kill my pet. Because if you kill the pet, you die as well. And I think when you can kind of get into that mindset of, hey, you know, we don't have to be all out at war, but I'm going to support the patient as well as I can, so that they can live with that, or their immune system can actually take care of that. So I think I think we just have to have a different mindset when we're going into it as well.
Dr. Judy Jasek 21:14
Yeah, and I think that's a really important point that the human energy around the dog or cat is super important. Like, I can almost predict now depending on how fearful the people people are, and I totally understand it's devastating to hear that your pet has cancer. And it's, of course, you're going to be afraid you don't want to lose your pet, I really understand that. But as much as people can turn that around, be positive, say we've got this, like you said, we're going to, we're going to make friends with this, it, it's it's not my enemy, it's there, but we're going to deal with it. And we're going to support the pet, and you put a positive spin on the situation, the pets pick up on that. And I and I really feel like there's a difference in the success that we have. Depending on the human energy, the people that are like, Nope, you know, we got this, this is not taking my pet, I'm going to do whatever it takes. And they're also very good at following treatment protocols. And one thing I see sometimes in pets that do start doing really well, and the people stop treating, and it's a lifelong treatment. I mean, once we're treating cancer, we can back off, like maybe we don't have to do as many things or we can rotate a little more spread out frequency of treatments, things like that. I don't think we ever stop treating. And because the people you know, I've had some clients that life happens, they lost their job or something, other circumstances where they just had to back way off, the pet's doing really well. And then we see the cancer come back. So you know, and you know, it really happens.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:52
It really is about supporting that immune system and supporting the foundation with good nutrition that is going to have to really give those pets what they need. So many times, I would see the same exact thing where people were like, Oh, I just can't do this anymore. I'm tired of putting all these herbs in the food, I'm tired of making food or I want something easier. And it is something that you really kind of can't take your eye off the ball. But it doesn't mean it has to be drudgery and it doesn't mean it has to be something that takes over your life. It just becomes a part of what you're doing to support your pet on a daily basis.
Dr. Judy Jasek 23:40
Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. And it's a you know, it's it's it's definitely doable. I mean I so I keep I keep doing this because I see you know more and more cases that really can live good quality of life. Even if they have a tumor even I've seen some pets with some huge tumors just unsightly. But they're happy they're going for walks and you know it's like it's a big cosmetic thing nobody likes looking at it's not affecting them. they come in tail wagging they're happy they don't care. Yep you know and so to me that's great you know yeah, I'm trying to do things maybe we can get that tumor to go down in size. But let's focus on the pet the light in their eyes, you know, the wagging tail, they're still happy to see us. Our pets aren't sitting around worried about that they have cancer. They're wondering why their beloved human is crying all the time and and so sad every time they look at them, you know, that I think is really devastating for animals. They don't understand that they just want to live their lives. And I think as much as people can keep that, you know, positive energy, keep their quality of life good, get them out doing things that they like to do. I think that's really important. And I think it just sometimes gets overlooked when we're addressing cancer.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:59
Yeah, well When our little one was diagnosed with the cancer, we would wake up every day and say, What does Myra want to do today? And we would do something that revolved around Myra. We went to many parks, many outdoor restaurants where she could order a turkey burger. We did so many things. We took her shopping and it was just her when she only lived for eight weeks. And at the end, I said you I have no regrets. We spent quality time we did. I kind of regretted putting her through as many surgeries and chemo as I did, I don't think we would have gotten quite as much time, but her quality of life was really pretty amazingly awesome. So can you, we only have a couple minutes left? Can you give us a couple of things that people can do at home to help prevent cancers or support their cancer patient?
Dr. Judy Jasek 25:51
Well, first and foremost, is you mentioned a few minutes ago nutrition. I mean, if if somebody was going to just do one thing, don't feed kibble. There's no good kibbles. just don't feed the processed foods. There are no good ones. every time I hear well, it's a really good kibble. No there is no, right, exactly. And because they're processed, they're so highly processed, even if you read the ingredients, and the ingredients sound pretty good. Those ingredients have been so highly processed, all the proteins have been denatured, the fats are probably toxic. And then they're about 50% processed carbohydrates, which are very inflammatory in the body. So some form of fresh food diet, you know, I am a big proponent of raw feeding for dogs that do well on it. Or dehydrated or freeze dried, or if you know, you can get a good recipe and you're doing home cooking some some form of fresh food diet and get some guidance on that, because it's so important that the diet is still balanced. And I think I mean, I kind of promote, like a whole food rotation where we're not dumping a bunch of supplements in we're trying to mimic, you know, Mother Nature in the diet. But that's probably the most important thing and then stop poisoning the pets with things like vaccines, and I do think vaccines are, are poison, they're toxic. I see so many new cancer diagnoses within a few months of a round of vaccines. I think they do way more harm than good. And especially when they're given over and over and over again. You know, I've done I've done a lot of titer testing in my practice and I find like sometimes a puppy, like I do monovalent vaccines will give just like one Parvo shot and do a titer test. As far as that's all they need. They've got antibody, we're good to go. don't vaccinate that. I don't even think they necessarily need those initial vaccines either. But I try to work with people's comfort level. But bottom line is I think preventing cancer is more about not poisoning the body and get doing good nutrition. And then don't do all the things that are so toxic like vaccines, overusing pharmaceuticals, be really careful with your preventatives. I live in Colorado, so heartworm, flea and tick, those are minimal problems here. But even in an area where they are more of an issue, you know, be aware of the life cycles, how you know, what times of the year do you really need to use those things and minimize them as much as possible, use natural treatments, stop poisoning the body, don't walk your dog, where, you know, they're they just sprayed a bunch of weed killer, you know, exactly. Pretty much any public park, you know, they're going to be exposed to toxins dogs, that their noses right down there breathing this stuff up. So good nutrition, and stop poisoning the body and also be aware of EMF, I think this is the big issue that doesn't get recognized. So these are the frequencies that come off of our electronic devices like our computers and cell phones. So don't you don't want your dog napping by your router. Keep your cell phone away from your dog because those frequencies in those electronic devices will disrupt the healthy frequencies in the body and we are fundamentally energy and frequency. That's what keeps us healthy, I think. And if you're disrupting those natural frequencies, your pet's going to have a lot harder time staying balanced and staying healthy.
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:33
Exactly. Judy, this is this has been just an amazing conversation and I really appreciate you taking the time to educate people. So for further information about Dr. Jasek and her work, her website is https://ahavet.com/. And she is offering an amazing 25% off initial consultations if people schedule within 30 days of the release of this episode, so if you are within that 30 day window, go to https://ahavet.com/. schedule a consultation. And if you're not within that window, go ahead and schedule a consultation anyway, this is something that could really be life changing for you and your pet, particularly if they are diagnosed with cancer, which is devastating. We all get that. Dr. Jasek, thank you so much for everything that you do for our animals.
Dr. Judy Jasek 30:28
Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Appreciate it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:57
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
Disclaimer 29:25
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
