Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it. Hello and welcome back to our Naturally Healthy Pets Podcast. Today I am interviewing Dr. Marlene Siegel and she has some incredible information to pass along today. The last 20 years of Dr. Siegel's nearly 40 year career as a veterinarian has led her to develop the widest array of alternative therapies and detoxification services in the country. A true entrepreneur determined to solve needs that the pet world has led her to be an international speaker and an innovator in integrative veterinary medicine. She developed her own raw pet food company and supplements EvoLoveRaw.com along with online programs for pet parents and veterinarians to teach integrative vet medicine.
Visit www.transformingvetmedicine.com for more information. She is launching S’Paws Family Wellness in 2023, detox centers for pets and their parents. Connect with her at drmarlenesiegel.com
Dr. Judy Morgan
Marlene, thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us about all of the wonderful things you're doing down there in Florida.
Dr. Marlen Siegel 1:19
Thank you, it's my passion to talk about that. So it works out well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:24
Well, perfect. And for those of you who can see what's going on, Dr. Siegel, has an office with murals painted all around it with sea life and ponds and mountains. And it's just incredible. I think we all need to go there and just hang out in our office and be a little bit Zen. So we want to talk about ways to detox your dog and cat. And unfortunately, we do live in a toxin filled world. And depending where we live, I think there are still some clean areas in this country. And unfortunately, I lived in New Jersey for my entire life up until the last couple of years. And I don't think it's one of the cleanest places to live. So probably a lot of detoxing needs to happen. So I think first off, we need to talk about the organs of elimination and what we are looking to detox. So can you first just talk about diagnostics that somebody might need to get done in order to know what's going on in the body? And then I want to talk about those six organs of elimination?
Dr. Marlene Siegel 2:36
Absolutely. So I would say that what I practice is more bio regulatory medicine, another word may be integrative medicine, but basically what I'm doing is I'm studying the biology of the body, understanding the metabolic pathways and how things work, and then trying to identify the deficiencies and the toxicities and where the mitochondria, the little powerhouses that make the energy in our body. Where are they dysfunctional? Because at the end of the day, if we can identify those three features, what are the deficiencies of essential nutrients that the body needs in order to function? What are the toxicities that are interfering with those metabolic pathways? And then where are we interrupting the normal mitochondrial activity, if we can identify those three and fix that we can fix almost all dis ease. So when I'm looking at the animal, I'm testing for deficiency, so we do particular tests that are looking for deficiencies in vitamin D, magnesium, B12, folate, we're looking at deficiencies in our essential nutrients like magnesium, molybdenum, calcium, zinc, selenium, these are so important. And these are trace minerals that are not the vitamin D, that's a vitamin, fat soluble vitamin. But on the other products that are trace minerals, they used to be in our food, and we used to eat them. But our diets are so nutrient depleted, because the soil that the food is being grown on is nutrient depleted. And then whatever's eating, those plants are going to be nutrient depleted, whether we're eating the animal or we're eating the plant directly. So it's really important in today's age that we understand that those essential nutrients, the ones our body cannot manufacture in sufficient quantities. We have to supplement that in our bodies. It's not even an option anymore. That is one of the has to be in your diet essentials. And that includes vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and amino acids because we're seeing a lot of animals when we're doing bioenergetic testing that are deficient in a lot of amino acids and amino acids come from the protein. Well either we're not able to break that protein down sufficiently to the individual units, which are amino acids, or there's something blocking the uptake of those amino acids into the body. Or there's a blockage on the plant being able to produce the precursors to some of those amino acids. And as an example, glyphosate blocks the shikimate pathway. It's a cool name, but it's blocking the bacteria from being able to produce the aromatic amines, which are the building blocks of our neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Well, isn't it interesting that we're seeing in our modern society, not only people with a lot of unhappiness and a lot of discontent, but we're seeing a lot of animals with anxiety. And I think it's because we don't have these aromatic amines in the body to be able to produce the neurotransmitters that we need in order to have happy feelings and being able to be content. So it sounds kind of easy peasy. But these are really critical pieces that we're not being taught. And we're not talking about it. So when we talk about testing, I'm looking for those deficiencies. So we have a variety of different tools available to us to test for the vitamin deficiencies, the mineral deficiencies, the amino acid deficiencies, the fatty acid deficiencies, and just being able to recognize what's deficient and replacing that in a biological way that the body can use it, can make a huge difference in the health of everybody, people and pets. So that's number one.
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:43
So are you testing using blood samples, hair analysis, multiple ways of testing?
Dr. Marlen Siegel 6:50
Multiple ways. So we do blood testing, we do also hair analysis, we do energetic testing with a bioenergetic scan. So there's a variety of different ways that we obtain information so that they support each other. And then after we identify what's deficient, we want to identify what's toxic, because a lot of times it's the toxicities that are interfering with the metabolic pathways, whether it's absorption or function. And I did a study almost three years ago now, on heavy metals in animals, I think we all recognize that they were probably there because it's such a big deal in people, but no one ever tested. So we did a study of over now. It's now it's over 1000 animals, but at the time, it was 250. And we found that in the animals that we chose, which were three categories, one, absolutely healthy animals never had an illness. And by the way, there was one animal in that category. Honestly, it was it was really frustrating. Because the second category were animals that came in with an occasional problem. It could be an ear infection, a little bit of skin problems, some itching, it could have been an occasional vomiting or diarrhea. So it wasn't anything major or chronic. But it was just something that indicated there, there was a dis ease in the body. And that was the majority. And then the third category were those with cancer or other chronic degenerative diseases. But what this study indicated was across the board, we had anywhere from three to five significant levels of heavy metals in all these animals. So here we are going through thinking we're addressing health, when actually we have so many toxins in the body that are interfering, mercury, lead, strontium, cadmium, arsenic. I mean, there are huge problems. And they are very, very high in our animals.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:53
Do you think that they're getting those heavy metal toxins from their diet from the environment from vaccines? Where do you think all these heavy metal toxicities are beginning?
Dr. Marlene Siegel 9:04
all the above and water. So our food, our water, I had one dog that was feeding a raw diet, they were getting all their raw ingredients from a particular company. And they had a nutritionist that was putting it all together. But they had a lot of fish in the product. And the mercury levels in this dog were off the charts. So you know you we just have to be a little more cognizant of what we're doing where our sources are coming from, but tap water. Tap water is a plethora of strontium and arsenic and a lot of other heavy metals that are in the water. So if they're not being filtered properly, and the water is not structured, that's where a lot of our contamination may be. And then of course, environmental, we don't see a lot of lead based paints anymore, but there's still a lot of places where lead based paints were used and it's not stripped off the building.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:00
Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so we do all this testing. We're doing heavy metal testing, we're doing just normal Chem profiles, the usual stuff that we would do the nutrient testing, which I love. I absolutely love doing the nutrient testing, and then bioenergetic testing. So now we've got we found out we've got all these things in the body. How did they get detoxed?
Dr. Marlene Siegel 10:22
That's the fun part. That's why S'paw s is on its way because we have six organs of elimination. So we have our kidneys, our colon (poop shoot), we have our lungs, we have our liver, the skin and the lymphatics. Now, they're all important. But in my opinion, I think the liver and the lymphatics are the heavy players, because they do most of the detoxification, and we need to support them. So what's happening in our modern world is we're just literally overwhelming it. So imagine that you have a sink and a toilet, and you just overfill it and you don't clean it on a regular basis, and it starts to back up. That's what's visually happening in our body, and it shows up as dis ease. So we literally have all these toxins in our body. And our normal, innate intelligence is just overwhelmed and can't get rid of it. So we start getting this back up into multiple areas. And that can show up in all kinds of dis ease in the initial cases, maybe it shows up as a picky eater. So that's what I hear the most is people say, Oh, my animal's always been a picky eater. And you know, we just can't find anything that they voraciously eat. Well, Dr. Judy, when we watch National Geographics, or Wild Kingdom, for those old enough to remember Wild Kingdom, animals that are in the wild, they don't expend all this energy to chase down their meal, wrassle it, kill it, and then go, I'm just not really hungry today. So I'll just pass.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:53
I don't like this flavor
Dr. Marlene Siegel 11:55
An indication that there's something wrong. So that might be the pet owner's first indication that their pet has a problem is that they're a picky eater. And we did another study, years and years ago with Dr. Todd Tams when he was still practicing. He was probably the veterinary industry's leading gastroenterologist. And he and I were teaching side by side, I was teaching out of otoendoscopy, and he was doing gastroenterology. And so I just on my own, I wanted to get better at doing endoscopy. So we started scoping all these puppies and kittens that we were putting under anesthesia, just for the practice of doing it. But what we found was over 80% of the animals that we were scoping, had acid reflux. And when I went back, and I asked the owners did your dog because they've been I remember when they came in, they said, Oh, no problems whatsoever. But after I'm seeing the acid reflux, I went back and asked, did your puppy or your kitten ever have a day where it didn't eat? Oh, yeah, all the time. You know, I'd hear the rumbly tummy, and then they would kind of pass on their breakfast. But by the next day there, we're back to normal. So I didn't think anything of it. So we're missing those early indicators that there is a problem when the behavior of these animals is telling us there's a problem.
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Dr. Judy Morgan
Okay, so how are we detoxifying all of this?
Dr. Marlene Siegel 14:12
Each organ has its own system. And so we target for instance, let me back up a second because as we're talking about detoxification, let me re emphasize that the most important step is to stop poisoning the body. Right. So we have to stop doing the things that are overwhelming the organs of elimination, so we can actually go into cleaning it because if you're it we're all moms right, so we're trying to get the floor clean and everybody's tromping through with muddy boots right behind us. You're never going to get the floor clean. And so the analogy is if we don't start cleaning up these animals' environment, their diet their water, then it's almost useless to try to detoxify because we're not really getting ahead of it. So with that disclaimer, exactly, we use a variety of things for each organ. So let's say for the lungs, we literally have a salt booth. Now, if you lived in Europe, you can go into a salt cave, I just don't have a salt cave here. So we created a salt cave in my office, which is it looks like a telephone booth. And the animal goes in there, it's about a 10 minute treatment, the induction and the the time that they sit afterwards, maybe 1520 minutes, but the salt acts as a desiccant. And it also draws to it all the goop. So when they're sitting in there, it's acting like a toothbrush, cleaning the entire respiratory tract, from the nose all the way down into the lungs. So we get them to take a deep breath, we can get it down into the lungs even better. And then it also the salt booth is also wonderful for skin. Because as that salt falls on you, it acts as an antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, it's nothing grows in salt. So it's a wonderful modality for doing a couple of different things. And then we have frequency therapy, which can be modified for many different things with our frequency therapy, we can get our patients into a parasympathetic state, which is the only state that the body can heal in. So that's another big take home point is that we need to get these animals in a relaxed state, which means the parents need to get in a relaxed state, because the animals are in training off of the parents who are living in this constant state of chaos and fear and in just high sympathetic tone. And so we need to find modalities, it could be frequency therapy, could be sound therapy, that help the entire family to start to relax and get into that parasympathetic state. So we use frequency, we also use infrared therapy. So I'm a fan of following nature. I think nature supersedes anything man can do. So nature created the sun. And the sun has a full spectrum of infrared therapy. So we have the near, the far and the mid range frequencies. In the olden days, we used to be outside. So our ancestors went out when it got sun. You know, when the dawn came up, they were outside and they worked all through the day until dusk. So they got that natural spectrum from the sun, because they were literally in the sun all day long. Well, we are light deprived in our world, because we're living under artificial lights. And we don't get out into the sun very much, or our pets are living inside with us as well. So we're all light deficient. That light literally is what drives our mitochondria, those little powerhouses I mentioned earlier, it's literally what drives the cycle to make energy to make ATP. So if we're not getting exposed to natural sunlight of the various wavelengths, we're gonna have a problem. And we kind of live in the most sick society of the entire world. So I think we're seeing it. Well, what we can do is use infrared therapy. So I'm a fan of using full spectrum, the animals not so much fun going into a full sauna with them. And the individual sauna's actually a little bit worse because they have to sit on your lap and you're sweaty, they're not happy. So we use a pad we have a special infrared pad has low EMF, and it has full spectrum Jade stones produces negative ions, all these wonderful things to help in enhancing energy production and detoxification of the liver. Then we have hyperbaric oxygen, which helps to increase oxygen content and push that out into the tissues, which is also very parasympathetic, by the way I love going in my chamber, I usually dive with my patients, and within 10 minutes, we're all asleep. It's wonderful. And the animals like it's so much they'll actually jump into the chamber if I open the top, I've got videos of them just going right in because it's such a relaxing environment. And then we use ozone which detoxifies many different organs. It has so many different functions in being able to produce it's prooxidant. So it produces glutathione, which is our master antioxidant, and it helps with detoxification of most of our organs in some way or shape. And then we use what else do we use with so many things. We talked about light frequencies, we talked about sound frequencies, we talked about vibration, lymphatic therapy, you know, here I mentioned the lymphatics and the liver the most important so we do something called assisted lymphatic therapy. So we have a special machine that has glass probes and they produce negative ions and a microcurrent and some inert gases, including ozone. And then we place that over the various drainage points of the body to open up those drainage points. And then we do Do particular patterns over sections of the body that then sweep into that particular drainage. So as an example, the left arm is going to drain into the armpit, the axilla. And it's also going to drain into these particular and the left thoracic. so, you don't have to remember the names, just know that everything drains somewhere. And this on the left side is the master drainage point. So as everything is getting stirred up, it's all going to get dumped over here. So we need to make sure that that lymphatic is moving, that it's thin enough and it's doing its job, it also produces a lot of our immune cells. So when the lymphatics is working, then the whole body is able to not only produce more immune function, more immune stabilization, but it's also able to detoxify better. The lymphatics are, are moved by our muscles by movement. So here we have all these animals that are in the house, they're light deficient, they're not getting any high intensity exercise, walking around the block for a potty break, for a dog is not really sufficient to move those lymphatics well. And getting up from the couch and walking over to the food bowl doesn't happen either. Do we really either need to move more with our animals, high intensity means short bursts of high intensity physical activity, well, in the ancestral realm, they had to find their food, there was no bowl to walk over to in the morning. So they had to get up and be hungry enough to be motivated to hunt something, chase it down, wrassle it, kill it, and then stuff themselves when food was available. Which brings us to the next point, food was not always available. So they had to do some intermittent fasting, not by choice. But biologically speaking, it was a really important feature of health, because when we are fasting, we start cleaning up all the cells that are dying. So we make something like 300 billion new cells a day. Well, what's happening to the cells that they're replacing, they've got to be cleaned up and gotten rid of. So with fasting, it puts us into a state of autophagy, which means self eating. And so we're taking all the cells that are dying, but there's still some good parts to them. So we want to repurpose them. And that's what the body does, it takes and utilizes the parts that are still good, puts them into new cells. And then it gets rid of all the other waste through the liver, through the kidneys through the colon, you know, all these different pathways that we have for getting things out of the body. But in our modern day, one of the problems that we have is our animals are overfed. I'll be it by the wrong foods. So we're giving them a lot of processed foods, a lot of high sugar. So most people don't realize that they're processed foods that they're feeding those kibbles. And those cans are 40 to 60% Sugar, it's not listed on the label, they don't say look carbohydrate, you have to calculate it. And then you go, Oh my god, I'm paying for all this sugar, and I'm harming my pet in the process. And nobody Dr. Judy, you do a lot of lecturing, I do a lot of lecturing, when I asked, raise your hand, if you're happy to poison your pet, you know, no one raises their hand. Nobody wants to harm them. We all want to do the best thing possible. And you know, when I'm getting my histories, they always say and I feed the best food. And I have the best water in plastic bottles in there just they're clueless that they just really they want to do the right thing, but they don't know how to do the right thing. So it's really...
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:45
it's so true. It is so true. Because you know, people would come in and they'd say, Oh, yeah, he's up to date on all of his vaccines. I make sure I do that. And I give him his heartworm preventative every month and I've been treating for the, you know, flea and tick prevention. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, will you stop being such a good pet parent, because this is really not working. And unfortunately, it is the narrative that has been fed to pet parents for so long. And that's one of the reasons why we have this podcast because we are trying to educate people and open their eyes. And we only have about a minute and a half left. I know time flies so I want to basically, we want to really quickly give people things that they can do so diet is one of them we need to stop feeding the processed high carbohydrate foods. So you have developed a raw pet food so obviously you are a huge fan of feeding raw food because that's what our pets are really meant to eat. You said that tap water is bad and so we should be using filtered water which I don't I have well water and I guess I should start thinking about that. So and then number three In an external environment, absolutely, we don't want to be spraying chemicals on the lawn, that sort of thing. internal environment, obviously, not using cleaning compounds that are going to be toxic to our pets, a lot of, you know VOCs, that kind of thing. So you also, before we sign off, you have a course that you're putting putting together for pet parents tell us where people can find that.
Dr. Marlene Siegel 25:26
So if they go to DrMarleneSiegel.com, that's our main hub. And from there, you can find the transforming vet medicine courses, you can go to our online store, you can go to my hospital, there's just a plethora of information out there. But just to recap your steps, like you said, number one, stop polluting the body. Number two, provide all the essential nutrients the animal needs, in order to function. Number three, heal the leaky gut. We didn't talk about leaky gut, but all the things that were causing a problem leave a leaky gut and all the consequences there. I'm sure you've covered that. Number four, detoxification of all six organs of elimination, number five, support the mitochondria, all the different things that we have available that we already talked about today that help to support the mitochondria. And number six is actually clearing trapped emotions. Because with all disease, there's always trapped emotions associated with it. So that's a simple six step. There's a free download ebook that people can get if they go to the www.transformingvetmedicine.com site. And that'll give them a blueprint. And then of course, we are available for consultations and in house visits.
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:34
Awesome. Thank you so much. You are a wealth of information. I think we'll have to do this again, because there's so much stuff that we didn't cover that we absolutely should. Thank you very much, Dr. Siegel
Dr. Marlene Siegel 26:44
Thank you everybody. Bye.
Outro
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
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.
