Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello, and welcome to Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I am your host, Dr. Judy Morgan. My guest today is Julie Anne Lee and she is the Founder and Co Owner of the Adored Beast Apothecary, where she formulates holistic pet care products, and they are amazing. She's also a pioneer in studying the animal microbiome and developing protocols for optimizing gut health, all part of a rapidly expanding picture and understanding of the crucial role the microbiome plays in the health of all of our animals and ourselves. And I feel like we spend so much time now talking about the microbiome, and I don't know if I ever talked about microbiome before I met Julie Anne. She's also part of a research and development team examining, producing and formulating unique first in the industry, species specific probiotics and functional prebiotics for animals and we'll get into that a little bit more. Currently, Julie is in her fourth year of an extensive research project on canine cancer at Dalhousie University, and is doing research and development within her medical mushroom forest. One of these days I'm going to come see the forest in Nova Scotia, Canada called Myco-Biome. Julie lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, very cold. On her rescue farm Joseph's Field. She shares her home and farm with numerous dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, cows, chickens, one legged ducks, a blind pot bellied pig and a ball python named Bob, all of whom came to Julie as a last resort chronically ill or abused and who are now living their best lives at their forever home. You definitely win, you definitely have more crazy things than I do on my farm.
Julie Anne Lee 1:58
they say The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:03
Well, I am not going to try to catch up because I am never going to own a Ball Python. So you know, one legged ducks and pot bellied pigs maybe but the Python he's off the list. Sorry.
Julie Anne Lee 2:13
I didn't think I would either. But
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:17
yeah, yeah, no. Okay. Okay. All right. So working with pre and probiotics for the last 27 years. What was your reason for looking at pre and probiotics from an ancestral and functional perspective?
Julie Anne Lee 2:39
Well, you it's interesting, because you said Oh, I really want to come and see that medicinal mushroom, forest, right. When I started getting into medicinal mushrooms, I started looking at the concept of them being much more having much more medicinal value if they have bacteria. So it's part of what I am researching at Dalhousie. So when I really started getting into the forest part, it just brought me way back to my roots of what are we what are we looking at now as far as chronic disease goes? How far have we come with like holistic medicine and you know, probiotics and gut health and all that, like we've been in the last 20 years, it's been exponential, right? So I felt like I needed to really sit and when you're when you're dealing in, in the forest, and you're looking at mushrooms, and we're doing all this research and allowing them to grow naturally, we started really kind of trying to unpack chronic disease and looking at things like okay, what is still alive, but not necessarily getting the chronic disease that we're seeing in humans and in our companion pets, right? So I started looking at Wildlife because you see it all the time. That the in the forest, right, like you're seeing it constantly and it's really, it's a really amazing place to just sit and contemplate things. So I started looking and thinking about wolves and how wolves are, you know, they're big animals, right? They can, they can some of those wolves can be up to 170 pounds. So they're not small breed canine and they're having babies at 10 and some of them are living in the wild, you know, 15-16 years old. So when you when you think about them living in the wild, not having that care, you know, eating their own food, you know, having to hunt, dealing with the the weather, things like that. I just really started thinking about, you know, what, what, what are they doing? What are they getting? Well, first thing is that they're getting like sort of their freedom to choose, right? They're not in this space where they're confined or suppressed in their natural inclination of what a canine would do. The next thing, they live in groups and packs and families, they aren't getting antibiotics, they're not getting vaccinated, they're not getting sleep medication, they're not getting any of that. So I started thinking like, their microbiome must be pristine, it really must be amazing. And I also followed the scientists that went to the oldest living group of people, and spent a bunch of time there. And he this is really why started looking at the probiotic perspective. So long story short, within a very short period of time, I think he ate 300 different species of proteins, and plants and insects and things like that, over the course of I think he said, one week or two weeks, like really, like massive amounts of stuff. I know. So he had a fecal transplant with these people. And he continued to check his his thing when he got back, I think he was from Detroit. And he ate as much as he could, right, like, he ate as much, you know, diverse vegetables as he could get in, in the US. And within three months, he didn't have it anymore. Right? It slowly started to decline. So when we think about that, of what keeps that viable, and what keeps that functioning, it's hard. It's hard to keep up with that, right? So I started looking at because probiotics didn't work differently than transplants very different. So, so I started looking at, you know, what, what would it look like, if we started looking at species specific probiotics, but from wildlife, right? So things that are still eating that diversity, in comparison to our companion animals. And so that's, that's why I went that route, is to is to, is to look at, if I found if I was able to isolate or if we're able to isolate these particular bacterias and research them and see what they do. Is there a possibility that we're going to be getting, you know, a probiotic, or a bacteria that stems back that has been sort of as much as possible, untouched by industry and pharmaceuticals and, you know, even high level stress of being urbanized? They have different stress. Right? But so that's, that's the road I took as far as like looking backwards, like looking behind us to see okay, what happened, why, you know, why are animals even with this great stuff that we do right now, why are they still getting disease? Why are we looking at like, longevity drugs, which is amazing, but But why, you know, why can't we just kind of go back and go what was happening that was good back there, that we can maybe incorporate and use for our future.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:40
So that is so amazing I love I love the human study that is so that is so cool. And you know, I think it's true that in the environment that most of us live in and the environment that our pets live in, is like I know that in one of his talks recently, Rodney Habib looked at the longest living dogs and so that was the thing that was similar between all of them and they all lived outside like they lived a very natural and most of us would be horrified to have our dogs live outside you know that that's that's the things that the you know, the SPCA comes knocking on your door your dog lives outside. And you know, but if we look at the wildlife that is so much healthier. I mean, a lot of it has to do with the drugs and the chemicals and the pollution and everything else that is in our you know urbanized lifestyle. But that's pretty amazing. Yeah. And It's also amazing how fast it goes back to awful.
Julie Anne Lee 9:51
I know. I know. Yeah. Like to not being able to have like when you when when you're in the forest and you see things eating things. You know, they're eating our Turkey Tail, they're eating our, you know, the wood, the logs, they're are eating dirt, they're eating bugs, because they're eating. They're even even if they're, even if they're a deer, which is a, you know, an herbivore, if they're eating, if they're chewing something from the grass, they're not spitting out little bugs, right they're, they're ingesting the insects they're ingesting, they're getting such a diversity of they're consuming such a diversity of different of different bacterias, different, you know, vegetation, different fibers, different prebiotics, different everything, that I think that to try to replicate that is, is is almost impossible, because it changes with seasons, it changes. When it rains, there's more mold, when it when it's dry, there's more, you know, different kinds of dusts and things like that, like more dirt. So it changes it changes daily. So to try to mimic that by feeding is is really difficult. So that's why you know, and I also have a very strong, strong philosophy that and the reason that I have is is not really from a research as much of a research perspective, as what I've seen by working with 1000s of animals at my vet hospital, right, like, like empirically seeing emotional changes and things like that, that my my hope was with this with this wolf strain, that that resilience, and that sort of emotional fingerprint is what we call it at our, in our lab. Also transfers because we know that that happens with with fecal transplants, right, like they've done that study with mice, where they have two sets of mice that are that are friendly, and they it's terrible. It's awful. It's an awful, awful thing. But then they shock. They shock one group of mice, right. And they make those mice more aggressive and fearful. And then they transplanted their fecals in the mice that were calm, became more aggressive and fearful. Right, and then vice versa. So we know that that DNA and that emotional, conceptual perspective transfers through the body. Hence, the gut brain access. So so one of my goals was to try and elicit that fingerprint of that sort of resilience. And that, and that, the calmness that happens within that pack mentality. Right? So not because me mental and emotional has just as much of an effect as drugs and physical stuff like that. So I think that when we're wrong would wrong. Yeah, for sure. Because when Rodney looks at that, I, what I felt too is that they have freedom, right? So it's not just being outside they have freedom.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:09
And decision making. And yeah, yeah, absolutely. We need to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, we'll be right back and we're going to talk more about prebiotics and different things that we can treat with probiotics and really looking at functional medicine. We'll be right back. Stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
Thanks to Solutions Pet Products for sponsoring this podcast episode. Solutions is a raw fermented pet food producer that specializes in high organ percentage complete diets, raw cultured goat milk, gelatin based supplements, and herbal remedies. Using traditional farming and modern science, they work to provide simple solutions to complex problems. Modern agricultural practices have failed us. Pesticides, GMOs, over vaccination, monocultural industrial farming, a flagrant abuse of soil and ecosystems. Solutions Pet Products works with small family farms to regenerate the land. And in so doing revitalizes pets everywhere with clean healing, ideally formulated raw, fermented pet foods. Ask your local pet food retailer about purchasing options, or reach out to Solutions directly at [email protected].
Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back. You're listening to Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host Dr. Judy Morgan. My guest today is Julie Anne Lee from Adored Beast Apothecary. We're talking about her amazing work with pre and probiotics from an ancestral and functional perspective and this has been amazing and she does a lot of work with wolves and wildlife and her Myco forest which mushroom part it's just amazing stuff. And in my brain, I'm sitting here going okay, I don't know how Oh, you make this stuff. But that's I want to cover a couple other things. And if we have time, we'll get back to that. So I know you do a ton of research on all your probiotics, and you have a bunch of different strains. And I know that because they're in our warehouse on the shelves, we've got a whole bunch of different ones. And I tend to just kind of rotate through them with my own pets. But I want to talk about functional prebiotics. What's a functional prebiotic?
Julie Anne Lee 15:27
Okay, we're gonna go through this super fast. So at my clinic, when I was starting to do research, pre and probiotics, which was like 27 years ago, I thought to myself, Okay, I get the probiotic and how animals would get probiotics naturally in the wild. But how are they getting prebiotics naturally in the wild. So I dug in and looked at a natural prebiotic. Because most prebiotics are in things like FOS, like basically sugars, right? So sugars work really well to keep the bacteria fed in the gut. But they don't have a lot of functional value. And I am someone that if I don't want to put anything in my body or my animals bodies that doesn't do something other than, you know, that is functional, that that has some, some value has medicinal value. So I really started looking at prebiotics. And what I found was like we first started using larch, right in our original formulas and stuff. And larch is made from a bark. And the reason that I use that is because it was basically something that everything ate, because when a wolf or a coyote or a mountain lion or whatever eats the gut of their prey, that's predominantly how they get the majority of their prebiotics. So I started looking at that, and basically everything eats bark, like chipmunks, birds, deer, everything eats bark. So it to me that was more of a species oriented prebiotic, and it has all kinds of medicinal value. So when I was looking more at ancestral, I thought, Okay, well, what I want to I want to start having more prebiotics besides larch if I if I want to stay with the medicinal functional perspective. So when I was there, I think I mentioned they're all eating our Turkey Tail, right? Like they're, they nibble on our turkey tail. The squirrels and the chipmunks and the deer and they all like nibble around it and stuff, especially when they first start growing. So I thought, wow, there's amazing medicinal value in mushrooms, and they have huge amounts of fiber. And so I started doing research on that. And also chlorella. Right? Because I wanted to have something that was some coming from water, because we don't have that there's out there in the world. We don't really have that perspective. And it was important to me because at one point, the whole world was covered with water, right, and the mineral aspect of it and all of that, so I got into that whole, you know, hypothesis and whatever. So I was like, Okay, I want to look at too, you know, my, my amazing business partner Dion's like, Hey, Julie, you can't look at 3000 prebiotics, you have to figure out what you want. So I used Turkey Tail and chlorella. So basically, the science behind that was that we, you know, took it to the lab and we worked with it in the lab to see if it maintained the probiotic viability, so was the probiotic healthy when it was ingesting it? Did it have the, the that that Pro and prebiotic post biotic effect which is like the short term fatty acids and all of the amazing things that probiotics create, together with with a prebiotic, and it did. So that's a very short, you know, version of how we did the study. And then we did the feeding studies and the viability was amazing with the probiotics using those as prebiotics. So, so functional, prebiotics, for me, is a prebiotic that that not only feeds the probiotic to keep it viable, but gives the body functional benefits, you know, for me anything from you know, antioxidants to minerals to, you know, cell health to a billion different things. So, yeah, so then
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:48
makes perfect sense. So, if you're, so we your start, you've got the soil and sea and then you have the wolf So to start your probiotic cultures or whatever it is that you're making. In the lab, do you start like, do you go out and collect wolf feces? Or? So that's what you're doing?
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:14
That is amazing.
Julie Anne Lee
Yeah. And we found like, and
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:17
then you're able to just keep that, that going and multiplying and growing. In your lab or whatever,
Julie Anne Lee 20:24
we take the feces, and we do a test on it on its entirety. And then we choose the specific, we isolate specific strains that are starting to produce results within the lab. So so we're always looking for one big thing is immune modulation. Because we have so many animals that are on steroids and, you know, immune suppressive drugs, immune suppressants right. So so that's, that's our, one of our key things that we look at is does it have immune amazing properties, and then the post biotic and then as soon as we isolate the ones that are working the best, then we take those strains and move them into the fermentation perspective so that we can continue to, to use those specific strains that we've researched.
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:24
Cool. Very cool. So are there specific diseases that you think are or issues that these specific like the soil and sea, the wolf that the roots? The ancestral strains? Yeah. Is there? Are there diseases that you think these target more specifically than just like your everyday probiotic, are there? Are there specific times when you would say this would be a much better choice?
Julie Anne Lee 21:54
Yeah. So I'm all about rotation? For sure. I think it's like when you said you rotate our probiotics with your animals. I mean, that's perfect, because that is what ideally keeps the body the intellectual perspective of the gut, which is massive on its toes. Because then it's like, oh, I have this, oh, I have that, oh, I have this Oh, I have that. It's, it's really, really good. It's, it's almost like I say, using a crossword puzzle for your brain, rotating probiotics, and my perspective does that for you the intelligence of the immune system of the gut. So, so but the wolf strain, I think, is one of the better ones to use when it comes to, especially when you're dealing with deep chronic disease. So if you've, if you've rotated through some stuff, and you have some deep chronic disease, that that, that, for me, is sort of like in the lineage of that animal. It's like they need a for me, it would be like a, okay, here's, here's a, here's some seeds from something that you're not getting from anything else. Right, like something that is in your ancestry that is been virgin or untouched, or you know, so real deep seated chronic disease is something that I love working with. The wolf, I can't tell you why or how but I have that sense. Like I said, we I can't tell you how many reviews we have about how profoundly affects their mental state, like anxiety dogs, like separation anxiety, things like that. We have lists of people asking, Can this happen? Does this happen? Why is this happening? And I was so excited because I was hoping that was going to happen, and it is happening.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:54
I have to tell you on that note, I have a 16 year old English toy who has cancer, mitral valve disease, facial paralysis, CM syringomyelia. He has so many issues going on. And I have him on the Wolf. This morning. He was playing with our two year old like he was a puppy like racing around, and I haven't had him on the Wolf. He was on something else. And I just started reusing it. And he's running around like I looked at him this morning. I said what are you doing? Like remember you arean old man? And he was like, What? No, I'm not remembering. Oh, crazy. So it's interesting that you would say that.
Julie Anne Lee 24:48
It's true though. I mean, we're getting so many reviews about that. It's like I get really excited because, you know, I grew up on a rescue. A lot of our rescues were animals that that couldn't Be homed because they had major anxiety or aggression or whatever reactivity. And for me to think that, that we're producing something that is going to help them in that space is just really, really amazing for me. You know, I mean, all the animals that I rescue have anxiety, right? Or PTSD, right? So, I mean, I've got my horses on the Wolf one, because they all have PTSD,
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:30
I was gonna ask you that because I haven't been giving probiotics to my rescue donkeys and horses. And I was going to ask which one you use. So that's interesting that I could put them on the Wolf as well.
Julie Anne Lee 25:44
I put them very, obviously the equine one because it's equine specific probiotics, but then I also rotate with Soil & Sea and the Wolf, those are the ones my horses get. But um, and then the Soil and Sea is amazing for SIBO. It's probably one of the best probiotics, because you have to be really careful with probiotics and SIBO. So really careful. So those, and the fact that it has chlorella with it as the prebiotic, we're not eliciting any sugars, which is what you have to be really careful. You're not even really supposed to use real prebiotics when you have SIBO, right? Like FOS and inulin and things like that. So the chlorella works as that but it really isn't. It doesn't it doesn't have the negative effects like the sugars do. So for SIBO. We've seen so and dogs with pancreatitis, right? Because I think a lot of dogs with pancreatitis have SIBO a lot are underlying SIBO with dogs. So it's really great for for and my cats love it because it's got the chlorella in it. So it's really good for cats, and my horses like it. So
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:03
very cool. So we've got specifics for pancreatitis, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, anxiety, this is this is amazing. I could talk to you about this all day, but we are out of time. So people who want more information about Adored Beast can go to www.adoredbeast.com. There is and you also have Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, but you have blogs and information coming out your ears. Just amazing information on there. And you probiotics are just one product. Well, one group of products made by Adored Beast that are all amazing. There are topicals and you know things to help treat infections and just all kinds of amazing things coming out of Adored Beast. So Julie Anne, thank you so much for all the work and I hate doing research so I love people like you who do the research and then there's tell me what to do. You make my life so much easier. Well, thank you very much.
Julie Anne Lee 28:10
You make everyone else's life. Yeah, it's it's the it's the working together as teams, right? Even if we're not in the same building.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:19
exactly. And we we so appreciate that. Thank you for everything you do. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
Julie Anne Lee
Thank you.
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.
