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 pet's 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 these 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.
Today, I'm so happy to have a good friend Dr. Kendra Pope joining me. She's like one of the smartest people I know literally. She received her veterinary degree from University of Florida in 2011, as well as certifications in veterinary acupuncture, Chinese herbal therapy, food therapy and Tui-na at the Chi Institute of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine. She completed a rotating internship and residency in medical oncology at the University of Pennsylvania and became board certified in 2015. She founded her integrative medicine and oncology center in 2017 in New Jersey, which has recently become Prism Integrative Veterinary Health Center. She's an avid lecturer, author and speaker. And let me tell you listening to her speak, you just kind of sit there with your jaw on the floor going, oh my gosh, she's so smart, and actively participates in research projects that legitimize and validate the benefits of integrative medicine which we so need, because everybody's always like, well, where's your double blind PLACEBO studies, blah, blah, blah, and I get really tired of it. Kendra, thank you so much for agreeing to be on today.
Dr. Kendra Pope 1:51
Oh, of course, that was such a kind intro Judy. I really always love talking to you. So I'm happy to be here.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:56
I know, we always have so much fun. And I learn lot every time I talked to you. And sometimes we get really sidetracked. But it's good to be sidetracked. They are they are. So first of all you did your veterinary training at University of Florida. I'm not sure that I realized that. And I probably have said it in a lot of interviews before. But is that where you got turned on to holistic medicine? Because they actually do have their Chinese medicine tract? Or is this something that has sort of been in your life even before that?
Dr. Kendra Pope 2:28
No, I definitely credit going to UF. And it's funny, because, you know, when you have those moments in life, where you like, turn around and look where you came from, and you're like, oh, that's why all that kind of fell into place. I think my choice to go to Florida was like the eye opening part of integrative medicine because they have such a robust curriculum, not just like extracurriculars, I mean, an acupuncture rotation, like going on the acupuncture service is one of your clinical rotations. So, you know, I hope that one day it'll be like that for all vet schools. But I feel really grateful that that's where I chose to go.
Dr. Judy Morgan 3:08
I'm very grateful that you went there, too. But I do wish that it was more mainstream in other schools. Because even wanting to be able to lecture or give a talk to students at veterinary schools, it's like, well, maybe you could talk to our holistic vet club, like they're not really important. We try to ignore them. And it would be so nice. Like I I actually asked, I was going to be in St. Kitts where Ross University is. And so I wrote them six months ahead of time and said, Hey, this is who I am. And this is what I do. And I would love to be able to talk to some of the students and they were like, well, I guess we could ask the the holistic club, maybe and they literally just stopped it right there and wouldn't even allow it. And I thought that was just a shame. Because I think that more students, if they were exposed to it would kind of gravitate to more toward it, or at least be a little more open minded about it.
Dr. Kendra Pope 4:08
Oh, I mean, they're the students are hungry for it. Because I before the pandemic happened, I was doing some time at the University of Pennsylvania on their clinical oncology service. And every time I was there, they would have me do rounds, because they were just like starving for this information to talk about food to talk about supplements, because the clients are coming in asking these questions, and we're not preparing our students. So you know, it is it's more than just disappointing. I mean, it's, frankly, a disservice to our profession, because we're getting asked these questions and we're not prepared to answer them.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:44
Yeah, absolutely. And it's because of social media becoming so huge in people's lives. People are asking these questions, they're getting good advice. They're getting bad advice. They're getting wrong advice. I mean, it's just they're going to go in and talk to their veterinarian with their bag of supplements and say, Well, you know, I'm trying all these things and it's not getting better. And the veterinarian has no recourse. They, they are totally unfamiliar with this stuff. So, yeah, I don't I don't know what we do to get those changes into the universities. But I'm open to ideas.
Dr. Kendra Pope 5:20
I know I know, that's a bigger fish to fry for another day, right?
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:25
There you go. So, you, when whenever I talk to you about a case, which isn't that often because I don't want to overwhelm you and burden you but I do send people your way. Anybody who's like up in your area, she's in New Jersey, by the way, for those who are listening, anyone who's up in that area, and like see if you can get in but Dr. Pope with your disaster of a case or cancer case, because you use a lot of novel therapies that other people either aren't looking at aren't talking about or are unfamiliar with. Give us a sense of some of the things that you do that are different, like I Vitamin C is very popular, mistletoe, I had one client who had to order her mistletoe therapy. I think she was doing injections, but she was getting it from Germany. And I couldn't help her at all. I had never heard of it. I didn't know what she was doing. But she did the research and did it herself. So talk about some of the things that you do that are different.
Dr. Kendra Pope 6:23
Yeah, I think that one of the foundational differences, that it honestly is still interesting to me, how many of our holistic colleagues are still having trouble making this, like intellectual shift is to stop treating cancer as a disease. So like as this myopic single disease, like focusing on the tumor. So cancer is a systemic imbalance that in people we have evidence to show that at the time of diagnosis, had probably been forming for 10, 15, 20 years. So we still think of cancer the way that we think of heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, where we focus on the disease. But I think that one of the foundational changes that I made in approaching my cancer patients, is to stop focusing on the tumor and to start focusing on the patient. So that's the first thing like, let's take a step back a 10,000 square foot view, and be like, how did we get here to begin with? And then that helps to drive some of these novel therapies, because the novel therapies can do different things. And some patients, even with the same Western diagnosis, will have driving factors that are completely different. So, for example, on the human naturopathic side, there is a general acceptance to the fact that almost all cancers are driven by underlying mold, heavy metals, chronic infections. Those are the main ones. And then an ever increasing topic that's being discussed at a lot of the human conferences that I attend are emotional traumas. And so you know, we still look at these patients and we say, Oh, they have lymphoma. They have hemangio , they have osteo. And then we put together a protocol for their cancer, but what's driving those cancers, what led us to have those cancers in the first place? What's going to allow us to successfully treat those cancers are if we are ever able to actually identify kind of what's at that center of that onion that has all those layers? So although there are really fun, cool, you know, unusual tools in the toolbox like European mistletoe, high dose IV nutrient therapy, you know, more kind of out there stuff, like medical ozone treatments or energetic therapies, or PEMF for or, you know, energy healing or cranial sacral or, you know, getting really out there. It all comes back to like my colleagues stopping and calling me and say, What's your protocol for osteo? There is no protocol. So, I think that that is the biggest shift that's also hard for pet parents, because you know, they come to us and they are desperate to treat the cancer. But what we have to do is we have to treat the patient.
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:35
Absolutely. This is something I talk about a lot because I have my lab courses, it's stop treating the piece of paper and treat the patient that is standing in front of you or the pet that is standing in front of you, because your dog's kidney failure or your dog's cancer is not the same as somebody else on social media who has a dog with kidney failure or a dog with cancer. or even as a veterinarian two, quote kidney failure, patients can come in standing side by side. And their driving factors, like you say, are totally different. And so they need to be managed totally differently. That's where it gets really difficult because people want kind of that magic pill, that magic protocol that just tell me what to do. And I'll do it and it'll be simple and easy. And they really are looking for that one size fits all. And this is where it becomes very difficult for the pet owner and I get it because there aren't enough Dr. Kendra Pope's to go around. Unfortunately. It would be nice if there were
Dr. Kendra Pope 10:43
my staff's like, can we clone you already?
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:46
I know. I know. So, you've decided to become a registered herbalist along with everything else. Is that your newest addition?
Dr. Kendra Pope 10:57
The newest alphabet soup? Yeah. So after doing the Chinese medicine training at the Chi Institute, which I think was like a beautiful Foundation, and, you know, Dr. Shay makes Chinese herbs so accessible to so many practitioners, I think it's really been this amazing journey of, you know, getting the conventional veterinary community to like get their hands in Chinese herbs and comfortable prescribing them. You know, I looked for the the next place to kind of dive, dive deeper. And, as you know, Judy, there's no advanced certification in herbs that's recognized, you know, by our veterinary community, but on the human side, they have this registered herbalist certification, which they do allow veterinarians to pursue. And, you know, I think that this is just a step in that journey of, you know, continuing to try to present this, you know, forward facing certifications and advanced trainings that so when people try to knock us down and people try to, you know, Ill legitimize what we do that you can continue to be like, nope, see this? Nope, see this? Nope, see this? Because, you know, we face so much adversity, and there's so much inherent bias to what we do anyways, that, you know, I think part of what my journey is, and my mission is in my professional career, just like you read in my bio, is to be able to silence some of that any way that I can. And I just see that as like a stepping stone to doing that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:30
That's amazing. And it's interesting, because I see so many TCVM veterinarians who also become certified in oriental medicine on the human side. And I don't think it's because they want to go out and practice acupuncture on people and add that to their list of 7 million things to do. I think, like you say, it's a way of legitimizing and saying no, I really have, you know, done a deep dive into this, I really understand what it is that I'm talking about. It's kind of a shame that we have to go that far. But I'm sure that being a certified herbalist is beneficial for you as a practitioner.
Dr. Kendra Pope 13:09
Yeah, I mean, I definitely will say that they're the programs that you know, are recognized for that application process are different, you know, there are a lot of them are human programs. And so it's interesting, because it's just, you know, we have so much to learn, like just the area of holistic integrative medicine, like it's this vast universe with all of these exciting things that we love to learn about. And so we'll spend the rest of our lifetime getting all this new knowledge and information. So it's just another avenue to do that. So I found it really interesting because it has also allowed me to do a deep dive into kind of what's called the Materia Medica, which is like all the specific constituents and mechanisms of action and you know, all of those details about the herbs so that when you are you having a confrontational conversation with an oncologist or another conventional practitioner, or maybe even just like a very stubborn client that you know, is trying that is open to what you do but maybe not so open to what you do. You can use that science language that they're more comfortable with to make them understand what you're doing because it really is just about that like bilingual speak, which is very frustrating. You know, we call it chi they call it you know, the nervous system. So it's just about us getting to be able to speak to one another in a language we all understand.
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:29
Dr. Judy here. I want to thank our sponsor, Dog Eared with Lisa Davis. Do you love to read books about dogs on all subjects? I was just recently a guest on the podcast Dog Eared with Lisa Davis, where she interviews authors who write books about dogs, and I highly recommend you check it out. Lisa reads every book cover to cover and her warm and engaging personality draws out her guests and the resulting conversation illuminates the book, but without giving away the whole story. Also, I will be on monthly to answer her listeners' questions about Natural Pet Health. So whether you want the latest advice on how to keep your furry friend happy and healthy, training tips, inspirational memoirs, or anything else, dog, Dog Eared is right for you. Go to where you get your podcasts and type in DOG-EARED with Lisa Davis.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So because you are, and I love that you are doing this, and I would hope that more young, integrated veterinarians would take this very similar approach. Because you have such a strong interest in clinical research and being able to offer proof to those who question everything that we do. You are at your new Prism Veterinary Health Center, you are doing clinical trials. Are the clinical trials for pharmaceuticals, or are they clinical trials using some of these herbal slash alternative complementary therapies?
Dr. Kendra Pope 16:08
So the best part about it being my practice is that I can study what I want to study. And so two of the studies that I'll tell you about are completely herbal natural protocols. And then one of them is the addition of a natural agent to conventional chemotherapy. So to help pet parents kind of understand about clinical research, like you mentioned prior, there's so much criticism about oh, there's no trials. Oh, there's no studies? Well, first of all, that's not true. That's just wrong. There are plenty of studies on preclinical research, which is like mechanisms of action and petri dishes and cell models. But one of the much larger issues about why these natural agents are not studied is twofold, in my opinion, two major issues in my opinion. The one is that these natural agents are not patentable. And so there are no large financial interests in these agents. So companies are not paying for research. So that's the one thing if there is not financial benefit for an organization, they are not going to be spending hundreds of 1000s to millions of dollars to publish literature to prove that they work. That's the first problem. The second problem is that when we talk about clinical research, the most common type that that we have in our medical literature, it tries to limit the amount of bias and confusion for the statistics so that when we find that something is significant, we can be sure that it is that one intervention. So when we do a single pharmaceutical drug, it has a single active ingredient with a single mechanism of action. And then that's very easy for us to create trials, and then to say, Yep, that was that drug. This is what it does. See, it works. When we talk about our natural agents, not only do these natural agents often have hundreds of active ingredients, they often will also have multiple agents of 100 ingredients together in formulas. And so from the conventional dogmatic way that we do clinical research and scientific research, it already is giving us problems, on top of the fact that we then use those herbs in a very individualized nature. And on top of that no one wants to pay to do this research. So in order for these types of trials, to start getting out in the in the the literature that's available, and for our conventional colleagues to start noticing, it's going to require us to have outside of the box, thinking of how we're going to study them, so that we can do them in the way that they're meant to be prescribed. And they're meant to be used, but that the conventional community can still accept it and acknowledge it as a legitimate trial.
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:03
Right. That becomes difficult because usually, when we're looking at some sort of herbal therapy or a holistic type of treatment, for instance, for a cancer, it's pretty rare that we're just picking one herb or one thing that we're using as an intervention. So I think it complicates things like to find 20 patients with that all have the same diagnosis. And again, they may all have a lymphoma diagnosis, but they all may be driven by different factors and be presenting from a different, different perspective when we look at it holistically. So from a traditional standpoint, it is oh, they all have lymphoma from the traditional Chinese medicine or the alternative standpoint, each one of them may have a very different presentation. So good luck.
Dr. Kendra Pope 20:03
Yeah, well, you know, it's not straightforward, right. And it's not like, oh, there's an obvious solution to that. But I'll just give you the example of one of these trials. And we can see how something like this could work. So it's so it actually is on dogs with lymphoma. And we're partnering with a human herbal company who there's a Master Herbalist behind this company, and they've been treating stage four cancer patients forever. And they are having so much trouble getting their data published because of the same reason. So one of our thoughts together was that let's take a group of dogs that have the same spontaneous type of cancer that humans develop the dog's lymphoma is, very similar to human lymphoma. And let's prove what we could do. So the first phase of the trial is going to look at this multi herb protocol, and the efficacy, so the realisticness of us to be able to give this multi herb protocol, as well as the outcome. So we'll see what the lymph nodes do, and we'll see how long that they live. When you think about chemotherapy for lymphoma, we also don't use one drug, we also use multiple drugs, because we know that more drugs are better than one drug for the same reason that more herbs are better than one herb. So that part I don't think is going to be super difficult for us to relay to the conventional community. But the second part of the trial, what the human researcher wants to do, is he does take these more advanced markers, you know, inflammatory markers, urine pH, you know, vitamin D status, and tailors the herbal protocol for those findings. So the second part of the trial is going to use that personalized medicine, and then say, well, let's compare that to just like that first tier of patients and how much better they do. And frankly, the reality of the situation is, that's where conventional human oncology is going. It's not about this waging the war with these big guns, high dose chemotherapy, because we've realized that it only can get us so far, the way that conventional oncology inhuman medicine and veterinary will follow when we can, is to these personalized medications that are matched to your gene mutations that change over time that are more targeted, because this general approach to cancer is just not working.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:28
No certainly is not. So not working in the human field or the veterinary field, unfortunately, no, it's not. So how how, so let's say somebody is nearby you and they had a dog with lymphoma, is just going to be cats too or just dogs? Just dogs for this one. For this one. Okay. So if somebody had a dog diagnosed with lymphoma, how would they find out if there is room for enrollment in your study?
Dr. Kendra Pope 22:57
So all of the clinical trials will be updated live on my website, DrKendraPope.com. So that as we are doing enrollment, as we have additional clinical trials coming, as there are, you know, trials that need funding, there's going to be a centralized location, because at the end of the day, where the money is probably going to come for these trials is a you know, crowdsourcing, because it's not the big companies that are interested in this. It's the pet parents, it's the small donors. It's the people that know and believe in holistic and integrative medicine that want to see this move forward. So my, my website is a good place to go just to kind of see what's happening.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:36
Awesome. And so in order to do this, because we got all these traditional people, where's your double blind, placebo, blah, blah, blah? Are you going to have to assign some of the dogs in this group to get a placebo instead of the herbs?
Dr. Kendra Pope 23:53
Yes, they are. So there's going to be computer generated randomization. So that means that you know, if you're dog number one or you're dog number eight, the computer is going to determine whether you are in the treatment or the control group, the treatment group is going to receive the herbal interventions, and the control group is going to receive placebo. And so all dogs will receive steroids. So we do know what that outcome looks like with lymphoma. So we'll be able to compare that to historical controls. So basically, previously published literature that tells us survival times with prednisone, but yes, half the dogs are going to receive a placebo pill.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:33
So yeah, and that was gonna be my next question. You already answered it. Can they be on prednisone or so they can be on prednisone, but how about other treatments, they can't receive other chemo or anything else along with this?
Dr. Kendra Pope 24:44
No these will be owners that will have declined conventional chemotherapy.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:49
Amazing, amazing. So I've had this conversation with many other alternative therapists and also with traditional oncologists and I think I know your answer on this, but I've had oncologists tell me right and left that it is absolutely fine to vaccinate or use heartworm, flea and tick prevention chemicals on dogs that or cats, whatever that have cancer, or are undergoing chemotherapy. What are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Kendra Pope 25:22
So I really would love to share some recent data that has been published, because I think it's really important for pet parents to understand what's happening. And it not only speaks to animals that are actively undergoing cancer, but But animals that we want to prevent developing cancer. So I Fall is always like a big continuing education time. So there was quite a few conferences that I attended. And generally speaking, I go to human oncology conferences, just because I, you know, I tend to get more information that I can apply there. And a general theme that was happening between all of these conferences is all of the speakers were talking about the exponential increase in young people, young humans being diagnosed with cancer. And it was the same theme over and over and over again. And then there was just recently an article that was published in a very prestigious human journal, which one of our pet parent colleagues published on their social media, about how there's this huge surgence of cancer in people under 50, which is not supposed to be what happens, it's supposed to be a disease of the aged, and that in evaluating these populations of younger cancers, that they are finding that it's the environmental factors that are driving all of this. So dietary choices, chemical exposure, water filtration, underlying chronic infections, antibiotic use all of these environmental drivers. So simultaneously, I'm hearing about all of this. And then I attend my Veterinary Cancer conference. And there's a new cancer registry coming out, which is great, because the data has not been updated in like decades. So it's awesome that they're starting this. But in their original data, what they published is both the prevalence and incidence of cancer in dogs in the United States. Now prevalence is basically the percent of dogs that have cancer currently, which is pretty similar, slightly lower than it is in people. So is that because they're not living as long with cancer or not as many people are treating them and they're being euthanized? It's unclear. But then what was terrifying is the incidence. So the incidence is the percent of newly diagnosed cancers, and this was in 2021. So in people, it's about half of a percentage. In dogs, it was almost 3%, it was more than five times higher. The number of dogs are diagnosed with cancer in the United States than people every year. And we know as practitioners that it's not old dogs, it's all dogs all the time. So if the younger populations of humans are surging with cancer, we think it's environmental factors. Dogs are surging at cancer at five times the rate that people are, what do we think is driving this? Environmental factors nutrition, toxins, chemicals, adjuvants, heavy metals, water, all of those same things that we think it is in people, and we absolutely are exposing our animals to more of those in many of our conventional veterinary practices, and so clearly you can tell in my voice, This is something that just like makes my like, I'm like flushing with with heat in my face right now if you guys could see me, because we have to stop ignoring what these factors play and the decisions that we make with these animals every day.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:57
Absolutely. I cannot believe we are out of time because I could talk to you literally for like a week.
Dr. Kendra Pope 29:05
We always have so many things to talk about.
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:07
We do and you're so you're so up to date on all the research and you love reading this stuff and diving into it. And so I and I like your interpretation. It's much easier for me than having to wade through the literature. So for anybody who wants more information or to find out about clinical trials or to see if she has room to take on your pet as a patient if you are anywhere in her area. It's DrKendraPope.com. And then also PrismVetHealth.com. Kendra, thank you so much. We'll talk again soon just because I always enjoy talking to you.
Dr. Kendra Pope
Absolutely always. Thanks again.
Dr. Judy Morgan
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 enjoyed 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 30:11
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.
