Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello everyone. I'm Dr Judy Morgan, your host for the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. My guest today is Dr. Cathy Alinovi, a fellow veterinarian. She is a pet lover and a nationally celebrated author. Actually, she has her fingers in a lot of other things too that aren't even listed in the bio, but that's okay.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:26
Dr Cathy Alinovi wanted to be an animal doctor since she was nine. That's a little ahead of me. I think I was like 12 or 13 when I decided. Her mission then was simple, to make the world safe for dogs and now healthy patients totally naturally is just as powerful. Absolutely! you know, I especially those of us in the holistic field, we're just, we're really passionate about making our pets healthy and returning them to that state of health and vitality by, You know, stopping poisoning them with chemicals and bad food and all the different things that that have gone so wrong in the past few decades.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:08
So today, we're going to talk about, when is it NOT appropriate to use food energetics for your pet? And I think this is an interesting topic, because TCVM, food therapy, food energetics is, like, kind of my my thing. It's my number one thing. It's what I talk about, it's what I write about. So for me, this is really important. And
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:34
I think this is, you know, this is sort of the opposite, because we talk so much about using energetics, but there are times when maybe we need to back off, or maybe we're looking at something from the wrong direction. And you know, the fun thing for me since I started doing all this and teaching my clients how to do this for their patients, is watching the clients also apply it to themselves. Which is so cool. And actually, because there weren't really any books on the topic, when I first got into this, I was using human recipe books and
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:14
human books on food energetics, because there are quite a few much older ones out there. Daverick Leggett from, I think he's from England, he has written quite a few books. And I love his books, and I I've used them. I've taught from them for for years. So, you know, that's kind of where we had to start. And now we're getting more and more from the animal perspective,
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
I've used a bunch of the Bob Flaws books on your bookshelf also, yeah, big time you're right, but you're right. But started in people food
Dr. Judy Morgan
Exactly. But Chinese medicine, food therapy and acupuncture have been used for animals for 1000s of years. You know, especially in China, it was used to treat the livestock and how to make the livestock healthier. So it really kind of started more in the horses that they needed to use for their work animals. But it just, it all translates the same. The food energetics don't change between a dog and a cat and a horse. Watermelon is cooling period,
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
Right. It's just a matter of, how do you digest it, and where do you digest it? You're absolutely right. Yeah, it's interesting, because you and I share a lot of clients. I don't know if you know that. I have a good number of people who come to me, who have followed you, who have your cookbooks, you know, they've come in with Dexter. And I'm like, Okay, this is great. And that's how I got the idea for this, is because people come in and they say, Well, Dr, Judy says, blah, blah, blah. And my dog is fire personality, and so I want cooling. And I'm like, Okay, Dr, Judy's right, but, and the but the biggest one, because I was thinking about this, it's really pretty much one situation that I can think of that drives this is food allergies.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 4:14
So if a dog or a cat is allergic to something, I don't care if it's right for his constitution, if it's gonna piss off his allergies, we don't do it. and sometimes we can reset the immune system. That's our goal. With all of the natural medicine that you and I do, it doesn't always work that way.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 4:37
And so that's that's where people have to stop and think and go, Oh, okay,
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 4:45
sometimes it's a matter of how the food was fed.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 4:51
Ideal world, we all have plenty of money, and we can buy grass fed, grass finished, any kind of meat, right?
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 5:00
Ethically raised, named, petted, all of that because it makes better it makes better food.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 5:09
And I tell people all the time, even if you shop at the low cost store for your chicken or your beef, it's still better than kibble. It is. It's better than kibble, but it may still be inflammatory. So if those animals have eaten pretty much only corn that's been fed moldy corn sprayed with lots of Roundup, because that's in everybody's health benefit, I'm kidding.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 5:41
that's really inflammatory meat. And so for my clients who are able to come up the next notch and do either organic or pasture raised, pasture finished all of that, they're providing less inflammation.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 5:56
But let's go back to our TCVM. What's inflammation? It's heat. So even if we're feeding a cold meat, like duck, if that duck ate only corn, it may now be a hot meat, because when all those books were written, it was mostly before the Industrial Revolution. I've got some of the old ones on the shelf that have Chinese on one side and English on the other side. And so, you know, these are animals that were fed running around. The chickens would go eat. Can you imagine?
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 6:39
they ate bugs. Chickens are not herbivores.
Dr. Judy Morgan
No, they aren't. Oh my gosh, my chickens are. They're cannibals. I was going to say they're cannibals. Absolutely they eat everything. But, you know, the great thing is, we have zero, like, I can't compost because I have zero kitchen waste. It all. Everything that's left goes to the chickens. And, you know, the good news is we, eat mostly organic and fresh. You know, we don't eat processed foods, so everything that our chickens are eating, it's great.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
And the egg yolks are beautiful, almost orange.
Dr. Judy Morgan
They're and they're huge.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:19
Yeah, it's, it's kind of amazing. We actually one of our employees helps out at the farm quite often, and so he gets eggs when he comes to the farm. And after eating our chickens eggs for the last couple years, he went to the grocery store to get eggs, and they made him deathly ill. And he's like, I can't, oh no, I can't eat grocery store eggs anymore. We've just totally reset them, which is, which is so cool. And you know, so going back to your allergy dogs and the inflammation, one of my, my, my favorite dogs of all time. We only had her for two years. She came to us at age six. Her name was Myra. She was a cabochon so Bichon Cavalier. So, you know, that's just a dog looking for an allergy place to happen. So when we got her, she was surrendered at age six. She had oxalate bladder stones. She had no hair. She had bright red elephant skin, bacterial infections, yeast infections, just a train wreck and just the sweetest dog ever.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:29
So of course, she had been eating a large brand kibble, and then the owner didn't have a lot of money. So every time she would take her to the vet and she would get antibiotics, she would only give a few of the pills because she wanted to save some for the next time that she was really bad, you know. And then the same with the steroids and whatever else was being used. And so when we got the dog, I just looked at her and I said, Okay, well, this one came to me, obviously for a reason, because this dog is going to teach me so much. So I made, of course, I went with cooling, and I made her a nice little slow cooker meal with rabbit as as her base. So we did that for a while, and let me tell you, deboning rabbit, a nightmare.
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:13
I finally got to the point where I would just put it in the blender, like I would take out the big stuff, just to make sure that I didn't, you know, but it worked great. Yeah, my immersion blender the best thing in the world. So we did that, and within six months, she all the infection was gone. I did surgery on the bladder stones because I just wanted to get it done fast.
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:33
Her skin was beautiful. Her hair grew back like she's been her picture has been in a lot of my books with the before and after, because she's just, you know, it was such a beautiful case. And, you know, I did the blood test, allergy testing, and of course, she's allergic to, you know, all the crap that's in kibble. And she came back as highly allergic to chicken. And I thought, well, of course, because everything she's been eating has been a chicken based highly inflammatory.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:00
Hot, you know, blah, blah, and so after I got her healed, I thought, well, all right, I'm gonna try an experiment. I am going to give this dog a homemade meal. Chicken base,
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:14
zero problems, zero problems. She, well, she didn't have a true chicken allergy. She had what you're talking about, the reaction to bad chicken. You know that's fed all the wrong stuff, highly inflammatory, combined with all the inflammatory things that are in kibble. So you know, True Food Allergies are not very common.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
They're not. They're not. I tell people that a lot, they come in with the blood tests or the
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 10:50
saliva test, and you probably tell them exactly the same thing. When the animal comes in and they're allergic to every single thing, it's not an allergy. That's a immune system that is so pissed off that anything it has seen it's like, I hate you all, and it's just overreactive and and your example is gorgeous, because people also want an instant fix, and that's what the steroids and the antibiotics do, is today create cooling and drainage, to temporarily shut down the immune system. And as soon as the pills are gone, boom, immune system's back to flaring up.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 11:31
or we could reset it. And your soup is gorgeous. And I'm also guessing that the chicken that you used when you tested it was good chicken that didn't eat corn, and it wasn't the crap that goes in, the pet food that died two weeks ago, got thrown in a dumpster, exposed to the elements, the cockroaches, the rats and all that, thrown together and we call that Chicken.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:59
it's the green, moldy chicken. Yum.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:02
but, yeah, so, but, you know, and so that dog, as I said, she came to teach me things. And so, and I this was, this was a lot of years ago, so I didn't know near as much then as I know now. And yep, so, and I want to talk about where we went really wrong with this dog. So we need to take a break to hear from our sponsor. When we come back, we'll talk about a big mistake that I now know. Stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #1 12:32
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PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #2 13:00
want to learn more about Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine Food Therapy? Well, now's your chance in our TCVM Food Therapy 101 course, Dr Judy, a certified veterinary food therapist, will share the basics of TCVM food therapy, the properties of food and it includes homemade diets for specific disease problems. Order the two hour course on DrJudyU.com and use code PODCAST57 for a 15% discount.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:30
Welcome back. I'm Dr Judy Morgan, and you're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. My guest, Dr. Cathy Alinovi and I are discussing food energetics, food therapy, and I was just talking about our little foster who we adopted. Of course, Myra
Dr Judy Morgan 13:49
There were very few that I fostered that I actually gave up. A couple of the rescues quit letting me foster because they're like, Well, you keep adopting them. I'm like, Well, what's wrong with that? Like, I'm pretty sure I'm a good pet owner, and it's a good home for them. So why is this a problem? Anyway, it is what it is.
Dr. judy Morgan 14:09
So we we cured Myra's allergies. You know, basically what we did is we cured her inflammation, and we reset her immune system enough that she was now able to eat pretty much anything, as long as it was high quality human grade, you know, pasture raised all that, you know, without all the GMOs and all the crap thrown in. But the one thing that I really did not reset like now, if I knew, I definitely would have done a fecal microbiota transplant for that dog, because two years after we got her so and things were going great. We had, we had about, you know, a year and a half of just amazing with this dog. I never had another skin flare, never had more bladder stones. You know, doing great.
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:00
Then she developed intestinal lymphosarcoma. So did I completely heal her gut? No, and we didn't know as much then. I didn't know as much then. And so if I had to do that over again, part of the healing process for that dog would have been treat the leaky gut protocol. You know, with leaky gut protocol, do the fecal transplant and really get that immune system in tip top shape.
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:37
Like, we didn't detox things
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
Oh, gosh, you're right. Yeah, that hurts. And you know, it's interesting, because pet owners will do exactly what you did. Look and go, Oh, Fluffy looks fantastic. Boom, I'm done. Thanks. Dr Judy, thanks. Dr Cathy,
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 16:02
right? And then they come back, and now it's like, oh, wow, uh huh. It's tough, and it boy, the persistence and the patience, and sometimes it's even hard to prove to people
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 16:18
that we still have those underlying issues going on.
Dr. Judy Morgan
exactly because you can't see them, you know. And cancer is something that is smoldering, so all that inflammation that she had in her body for the first six years, or at least, probably five out of the six. No, I'm gonna go all six, because I'm sure she was a pet store dog puppy. So, you know, she got 27 vaccines, you know. So she was set up for failure from from the very beginning, and those are the ones that we have to work so much harder at really cleaning up the system. So, you know, what had been smoldering for a lot of years, we put that fire out, and got a really great two years, but we didn't completely extinguish it. So again, lessons learned,
Dr. Judy Morgan 17:12
you know, and this is, this is why we do these podcasts. This is why we talk about our successes and our failures, and where did the train fall off the track, and what do we need to do differently so and it's really interesting to look at that little dog who had all that inflammation. And we would, we would say, Well, God, why would you feed that dog something warming, energetically, like the chicken? Well, I did it for two reasons. One, I wanted to prove that she didn't have a true allergy, right? And that we could get these dogs to calm down. Because, do you ever get those emails from people that they say, What can I feed my dog that can't eat any protein?
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 17:55
Yeah? Yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan 17:57
that is especially that is not physically possible.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
Well, it is a death sentence. It kind of sort of is. And so I don't know how much time you spend doing physiology review with people, but they come in for science lesson in my office, which is that poster. But yeah, we start out and I say, what do we use protein for? And eventually, people figure out to make muscle. And I'm like, good. What's the heart? A muscle. Good. We need protein. Let's figure this. Uh huh, yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:36
well. And the thing is, plants have protein. I mean, oats are a source of protein. I mean, not, not. I'm saying that's what they should eat. But when you're saying my dog can't eat any protein, well, peas have protein, lentils have protein, corn has protein, oats, so, so are we just feeding them lettuce? I mean, it's just lettuce. It's it's really impossible to survive without any protein. But it's those allergy tests that you're talking about, where it comes back, they're allergic to absolutely everything, and they're not. They can't be.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
and this is where our education in vet school doesn't help us as practitioners. Look at that and go, Oh, every single thing is pissed off. How's that immune system?
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:27
So I think a lot of times we get, you know, hyper focused on what the piece of paper says, and don't put it together to say, oh, maybe we just need to treat the entire immune system and calm everything down you know, and find the least inflammatory thing that that we can feed.
Dr Judy Morgan 19:45
So, when? When else? So, and you're so you started with a fire dog needs something cooling. Well, a fire dog can have a yang deficiency. A fire dog can be cold
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 20:00
absolutely, absolutely and so, right? Right? When people start with constitution, they should be starting with puppies and kittens that don't have problems. If there are problems, I don't know about you, if there there's problems going on, I say, okay, Constitution's nice. We need to take care of what's in front of us. And so when I did my TCVM training, it was, you take care of the acute, right now in your face problem, and then you take care of the underlying issue. So like, if your little cabochon may also have been Jing deficient,
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 20:37
you know, with the ultra breeding and the Jing got damaged with all those vaccines and the horrible food, so the candle that she may have been born with ended up being quite shortened.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 20:50
So there's hindsight, but the Jing deficiency would have been the last thing to work on. You did it with the acute in your face, nasty, damp heat, skin,
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 21:07
Everything cleared that up, and then right, superficially it looked good.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi 21:14
So did you do just out of curiosity, because, because I'm with you, I could just as easily come up with a bunch of cases like that. Myself. Did you then, after you fixed that, go to her constitution, because you could do a bunch of testing, which some clients have the money some don't, or do we just go to the Constitution?
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:39
Well, this was one of those I mean, so her intestinal lymphosarcoma. I was chopping up pineapple one day, and all the dog we had 10 dogs at the time, and they're all crowding around, and I'm like, Oh, you guys can eat pineapple. So I'm throwing chunks of pineapple at them, and they're snarfing them down. And she loved it like she was just grabbing pineapple. And a few days later, we had vomageddon. I mean, she vomited all over our house, and I went, Oh, went in and did an x ray, and it's like, Oh, you look like you have an obstruction. Went in and did surgery, and there was a piece of pineapple wedged in her upper small intestine.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:22
Well, doggone it, she's like I gave my dog an obstruction by feeding her a piece of pineapple that she didn't chew.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
So her intestine should have been able to digest, had they been properly functioning
Dr. Judy Morgan
Exactly. Yeah, so, and she only one piece was stuck, and she ate a whole bunch. So I took it out. The bowel was a little irritated there. And I was like, Oh, it's fine. Closed her up, and everything was good. And a week later, maybe 10 days, and it happened to be Labor Day weekend, of course, she vomageddon again. And I'm like, crap, like, I must have some scar tissue or something that's blocking the bowel there. So at that point, I call my surgeon friend, my board certified surgeon friend, and say, Hey, here's what happened. I think, you know, something's wrong with the surgery. Can you go back in and, you know, probably remove that little section for me. I, you know, at this point, I'm questioning myself. And so he said, Yeah. And he came in on Labor Day weekend and did the surgery on my dog calls me after surgery, and he said, Yeah, the bowel was pretty angry right there. And he said, I think it's fine. I just removed that little section. Do you want me to send it out for biopsy? I don't think it is anything. And I went, Well, you have the piece, so why not just send it? And then when he did, yes, when he called me a week later and said, We have intestinal lymphosarcoma, it's very aggressive, and I just went, O, M, G, and, you know, so after I went home and cried a lot,
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:55
it was one of those, all right, what do we do? So I went to see an oncologist, and she happened to be a TCVM trained oncologist, which was pretty cool. It was not Dr Pope. She was not around then, and I wish she had there. What are there two? Yeah, exactly. She hadn't done food therapy yet, so I was teaching her food therapy,
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:18
and we decided to go for chemo. Because the dog I I couldn't get anything into her. She wasn't eating, well, she wasn't digesting. Well, it's like, I can't even get anything into if I want to. So even though it was like, great, I've made this wonderful protocol, holistic protocol, but I can't get it in the dog. So I'm like, All right, we're gonna try chemo. And I'm so against chemo, but decided do it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:44
So four weeks in, we had a beautiful ultrasound, and they said she's cancer free, and we went home and drank champagne. One week later, three new tumors. Week after that, she had them in her esophagus. She had them blocking her airway.
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:04
It just so it we we literally had eight weeks from diagnosis to to having to put her down, and it was just her immune system just could not handle anything. I don't think I would ever do chemo again, but I felt like I was backed into a corner because I couldn't get anything in. So, you know, again, she taught me so much we learn from these animals. And again, if I had to go back and do that case again, once everything was going well and she was eating well, yes, I would, and I didn't know again, I didn't know as much, then I would have looked much more deeply at the Jing deficiency, the spleen chi deficiency, you know, all the other things that were that were underlying what was going on. So, you know, this is kind of a warning for all those people who have animals with lymphoma or any kind of cancer,
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:00
be sure that you are treating the underlying deficiencies Right. Like I know that Dr Shea always says, especially with senior pets, always treat the spleen chi like always, always, always. And you know, it's one of those. And so the chicken that I gave her was actually really good for spleen chi
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:22
So, you know, it's just we, we kind of, we kind of go, yay, it's a success. And then forget to keep pushing. Keep pushing if we can, with making sure that we have absolutely everything balanced and that we don't have deficiencies that we are overlooking. So, you know, food energetics very appropriate that dog, because she had had so much inflammation, I probably stuck with too much cooling food for too long, and that underlying spleen chi deficiency that allowed us to develop that cancer didn't get treated well enough. So
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
pluses and minuses, you could also not beat yourself up too bad.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Oh, I don't beat myself up because I didn't know.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
But ironically, any food, especially if it's quality food, feeds, sling chi, yep, right. You know, normally the spleen foods tend to be the warmer, sweeter type foods, any food, though, has elements of treating spleen. So,
Dr. Judy Morgan
yeah, it is what it is,
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:31
yeah. Anyway, she's a great dog. I was really blessed to have her for the two years that we had her. She was great. She taught me so much, and she taught a lot of other people.
Dr. judy Morgan 27:41
You know, I wrote a lot of blogs about her journey and our journey, and the ups and downs and and so I would say to anyone who's working on feeding your dog based on their constitution, based on their energetics, that is great. You are doing so much to help them. And you mentioned the Dexter book. I don't even own a copy of that one.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:06
That was the very first one. 90% of the recipes in there are not my recipes,
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:13
so, but that's, that's why I wrote the yin and yang books, the two yin and Yangs, because I was like, and again, my thoughts on what we should be feeding have changed over the years. So you know, we we don't know what we don't know. It's a we continue to learn. And I really appreciate all the teaching that you do, and you know the clients that you're helping. It's It's amazing. So thank you for that, and thank you for being my guest today.
Dr. Cathy Alinovi
My pleasure. I enjoy everybody. We share together.
Dr. Judy Morgan
That's good.
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.
