Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello and welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan. My guest today has been practicing Holistic Veterinary Medicine for a very long time. Dr Basko is from Hawaii. I'm really pretty jealous. Actually, he's lived there for a very long time, and he has a fully holistic practice on the island of Kauai, where he focuses on nutrition and supplementation, treating geriatric and injured dogs and cats, dealing with geriatric medicine, cancer, allergies, all the chronic digestive problems and skin problems that all of us holistic veterinarians get to see a lot of. He uses acupuncture, massage, cold laser and nutritional counseling as well as herbal therapies. He's written a couple of books that are very good, and he also does phone consults for people who need more help than what they're getting from conventional medicine. He also has a great radio show on Saturday mornings, Pets, People and Paradise, which presents holistic concepts to the listeners and how to care for pets at home. Dr Basko, thank you so much for joining me today.
Dr. Ihor Basko 1:19
Aloha.
Thank you for having me and I'm for the opportunity of sharing my knowledge with people to help people with their pets.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:26
Yeah, well, you, I've heard you lecture at the Holistic Veterinary conferences. You, you have an amazing amount of knowledge stored up in your brain from all these years of doing this, and I'm sure you've seen just about everything come down the pike?
Dr. Ihor Basko 1:43
Well, I try to be educate myself to what's scientific, as well as some of the, you know, so called holistic stuff that a lot of people don't like realize is really helpful, like, what to feed your dog besides something out of a bag or can, you know, which is my major thing, you become what you eat. Your food is really important, and you should know what quality of food you're buying and not just take somebody's for granted. It's good and it's balanced. That doesn't mean anything. Every animal is different, and every animal needs a specific set of vitamins that might support its health better than just a general feed, the same, everybody, the same, all the time, and that is not a good way to eat for humans. So why put that on animals?
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:54
Exactly, you know, and it's it's something that I've been saying for so many years, that there is no one size fits all for our animals, whether it's food or vaccines or treatments. But today, we are going to focus on the aging process, and you've got some really great information on how pet owners can improve the quality of life and longevity. And a lot of what you look at is from the Chinese medicine standpoint, and it's, it's so critical, because we, we can see things coming down the pike before it gets to a disaster, if we're really paying attention. So let's start with What is aging? Like why do our bodies look much worse when we're 80 than when we're 20.
Dr. Ihor Basko 3:43
Yeah, well, it's a natural process, unfortunately, and nobody can get away with it. You can't clone yourself to be younger. You can clone yourself to be as old as you are. So you get born at 78 years old, that's not good. So aging is a natural process. Cells die, and then some cells regenerate. So as you get older, your ability to regenerate, to heal, your immune system is a lot less functional than when you're 20 years or 30 years younger, and the same goes for the dog. So degeneration increases in your body, and degeneration increases while regeneration decreases. So you have less ability to regenerate, and that's why I focus on antioxidants, because antioxidant foods and supplements help with repair and regeneration and detoxification, which is really important as your older animals, you'll see you know they have problems with urine, and they have problems with digestion, because their body organs are falling apart, basically. Rhen there's this thing called oxidative stress. So your body produces cells, cells die, and then what happens to those cells? They float around in your body causing inflammation, and inflammation causes more degeneration and more cell death. So it's like a vicious circle. So how can you stop that circle of degeneration? Is by increasing regeneration, and the best way to do that is with food high in antioxidants, which is going to be mostly your vegetables and your supplements that are good for the for that specific dog. So the dog's got kidney problems, which by the time they're 12, usually small dog will either have a heart or a kidney problem. Most cats have kidney problems eventually, because they're eating dry food, but those the heart and the kidneys are probably the two most important organs outside of the liver. The liver needs to detoxify things in the body, even human food is not perfect or pure, so we have to constantly rejuvenate our detoxification within our body, and that's by improving liver support. And the liver loves certain things like antioxidants, and especially medicinal mushrooms. So I'm really into medicinal mushrooms, because they do many things. So the thing about a drug, it does it's one molecule. It does one thing. And most drugs do not cure or heal anything. They help, but they're not like you take a vitamin and you feel better, a drug make might make you feel better, but doesn't give you any regeneration properties, so you need to regenerate. And how do you do that? You use antioxidants and good food.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:14
Yeah, unfortunately, you know the problem with traditional veterinary medicine is that we want to reach for a pill, and with that pill, we're trying to suppress symptoms. We're not usually looking at making the body regenerate or heal or move forward. We're basically just saying, Stop scratching, stop breaking out in hives, you know, stop having diarrhea, stop vomiting, which, you know, short term, yeah, we need that stuff. But long term, what we really want is what you're talking about. We want the regeneration. We want to slow down that aging process. Why is it that some people and some animals seem to age so much more quickly?
Dr. Ihor Basko 8:02
Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the diet and what you eat and what gets stuck in your body, like your your dog's feeding dry eating dry food. Dry food is heavy with heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, those things stay in the body pretty much, unless you go on some kind of detoxification plan, which could be another subject in the future. But so those impurities, those toxic elements, further age your body quicker. A lot of genetics is important. So old dogs that had old mothers that live to be 17-18 years old, they'll probably live longer than a large dog that usually at eight years old is pretty ancient. So genetics the size of the dog, so little dogs seem to live longer. I have a 21 year old Chihuahua Terrier, and I have a 19 year old tabby cat, and they're still going pretty strong without right now, without any medications except the food, which I find is, I mean, I my oldest dog was 24 and all I did for her is feed her, good food that I made. So most of my dogs live to be 20, and I don't really do much to them, exercise them. They have a great life, massage them, those kind of things. But in general, why do animals live shorter times? Because the buildup of heavy metals, pesticides and chemicals in their body increases oxidative stress in the heart, in the kidneys, in the liver, and then they get cancer. Their their organs don't break down like certain breeds. And you should know when you buy a dog to look up, is this breed susceptible of cancer. So you have like Labradors, you have golden retrievers, you have German Shepherds, you have Dobermans, all susceptible to cancer if you don't well if you feed them regular commercial diets, and you give them a lots of the flea and tick medications, and they've been on drugs a lot, off and on. And so you really got to purify your body, and the best way to do that is through food. Purify your food, diversify your food and make it specific for the animal's needs. So some dogs have kidney problems. So you can focus on high quality, biologically sensitive foods that don't stress the kidneys out as much as other foods would.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:01
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're, you're talking my language when we talk about it, because your, your book, Fresh Food, Ancient Wisdom, yes, it's an amazing book using Chinese medicine theory, food therapy for treating kidney issues, heart issues, and so it's, I think, I think your book doesn't get enough play. It's a really, really good book. I it's been on my bookshelf for many, many years and and I really enjoy it. But, you know, we kind of look at things the same way, like if we've got this dog or cat that has a specific set of symptoms. And really we want to look at it from the Chinese medicine standpoint, more than just kidney failure. It's like, Well, are they too hot or too cold?
Dr. Ihor Basko 11:48
Yeah. So Chinese have a system of organizing all the symptoms and putting it in a category, like kidney Yin deficiency. What is that? Well, your dog is incontinent or has to urinate a lot. Hair coat gets dull, the knees get weak, the hearing goes so then what do you do you do with that information? Well, there is a set of Chinese formulas, herbal formulas. There is a set of antioxidant formulas that you can use to help fortify those organs, whether it's kidney, heart, liver, and so by putting all the symptoms in a category, there's categories of Chinese herbs that will help that syndrome, and that's what I like about it. Use food for therapy. That goes back to the Greek times. Let your food be your medicine, and let your medicine be your food. Hippocrates, and it's been through hundreds of years, if not 1000s of years in Chinese medicine and then Japanese macrobiotic medicine, which is kind of like Chinese medicine, but it's more modernized in one way of speaking.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:24
very fascinating. All right, we need to take a break to hear from our sponsor. We'll be right back. Stay tuned, because we're going to talk about supplements and foods that are going to be very beneficial for your senior pets. Stay tuned
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Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back. You're listening to Dr Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets, and I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan. My guest today, Dr Basko is a practitioner of holistic medicine in Hawaii and has a has just a wonderful practice and does amazing things for his patients. So I know that you treat a lot of geriatric patients. What are some of your favorite supplements, or antioxidants and let's talk about some of your favorite antioxidant foods as well as supplements, because we can kind of approach things from a couple different directions.
Dr. Ihor Basko 16:13
Yeah, I think as you age, coenzyme Q10 is very important. I had many well experiences with it, personally, but with the animals, seeing how much better they did. So they're on some drug for the heart. But unfortunately, the drug increases oxidative stress. It does improve output, cardiac output helps blood flow, but in the process of doing that artificially, the heart cells keep dying. So I looked up this research that showed that if you're on heart medications, it'll clear up your symptoms, but you're not going to live that much longer anyway, because of this cardiac oxidation, called stress, which the cells break down, create more inflammation, create more cell death. So Coenzyme Q10, good for the heart, good for the kidneys, good for the brain, good for the spinal cord. So it's one antioxidant. It's easy to find, and you could just start with that, with no side effects.
Dr. Judy Morgan 17:33
Yeah. Huge fan.
Dr. Ihor Basko 17:35
The other one would be your food. So your cruciferous vegetables, your kale, your broccoli, your broccoli sprouts, your cabbage, that whole family. I mean, you don't have to just feed them cabbage all day, but a little bit of that, 1/3 of the diet made up with dark leafy greens. So anything that's dark leafy greens will have beneficial antioxidants. And any vegetable that's orange, yellow or red, also will have your antioxidant substances. And you can look this up online, you can tell, okay, what does broccoli have? What's the difference between spinach and kale? Well, spinach has more things for the eye, whereas kale has more things for the liver. So it's kind of cool, because I like to cook, so I'm constantly like making food for my wife and myself, and then my dog and my cat. So I'm always thinking food and what do they need? You know now, some dogs don't eat vegetables. How do you cook vegetables? Well, so they will eat it. Well, You have to cook it with meat, okay? Or put the vegetables in the meat broth and let them sit in the meat broth for a little bit so they're flavored, and then you chop them up really small and mix it with cooked or raw meat. The other one that seems to be easier for some people to start with, is clover sprouts. So if you look at raw clover sprouts, they have all these detoxification things in them. It's really a good thing. Cats don't mind it tastes like grass. Cats will eat grass. Dogs don't, don't mind it. You only need, like, a teaspoon, depending on the size of your dog or cat, with each meal, so it's not a lot, but it has a big punch on the detoxification, Vitamin K and some other things that are beneficial for cleaning the blood. So clover sprouts is one thing. And then if you're going to use other things for detoxification, you want to not use a lot of vegetables. Then chlorella, an algae, a blue green algae. Chlorella is really good for Detoxification helps with kidney ammonia levels. And so those are like the key ones, Co Q10, I think, and chlorella, your clover sprouts, and then your vegetables that have dark leafy greens, orange, orange, red and yellow. So all those give you a clue that this is probably good for detoxification, good for regeneration, good for repair.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:30
Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, because everything you're listing, I'm like, okay, these are all liver blood tonics, which, you know, basically we need our liver to be able to detox. We need, you know, good liver blood production, particularly for these older animals who are getting what you described. Their nose is getting dry, their coat is brittle, their pads are dry and brittle. And all of these things are going to be so helpful for all of that. Let's talk about mushrooms.
Dr. Ihor Basko 21:00
Yeah, well, the aging mushrooms. So I read a lot of research from other countries that are really into mushrooms, like China, Japan and Eastern Europe. So the mushrooms that keep people living longer, there's three basic ones and animals too. So your reishi mushroom, your Ganoderma lucidum. Reishi mushroom is one of your best mushrooms for overall health, liver, kidneys, heart, anti cancer, anti allergies. The problem with the reishi is it's really bitter. Okay, so it's hard to like. Let's sneak it in the food. Now, you could do that with cooking it, first with bone broth and then putting in the food, but in general, capsules work pretty good for most animals. You just give them a capsule, and it's non capsule. I like to make it into a liquid tonic, which I mix with a B complex vitamin syrup so it has a liver flavor with the mushroom in there. So Reishi would be number one, heart, kidneys, liver. Cordyceps a weird mushroom that grows on insects when you pick it in the wild, but when it's made commercially, it's not grown on insects. It's grown on special medium of amino acids. So this mushroom, cordyceps mushroom, is another mushroom for the kidneys, for the lungs, for the heart, for the liver. So you'll notice that most of the medicinal mushrooms have many functions, and are all good functions. And the latest mushroom was kind of inspired by a few people that were clients of mine that are having cognitive problems, like, where did I put my keys, and what did I do with you know, this or that. And so I read this research from Japan, and they have a problem where people live a long time. But because they eat so many fish with mercury, their brains kind of start dying. Okay, so how do you replenish a brain? Well, reishi mushroom, lion's mane. Mushroom lion's mane and reishi mushroom have the best results. So after three months, even if you have Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, takes about three months to start noticing, Oh, wow. I can remember things. I can recognize who I live with. Some people don't know who are you. Anyhow, that kind of inspired me to like, I don't want to have dementia. I don't want my wife to have dementia. But it seems like dementia is one of the things of the aging and even pets, if they live long enough, some pets will get some sort of dementia, depending on their past diet and how many minerals that are toxic are stuck in their brain. So Lion's Mane, reishi mushroom and Cordyceps are the three what I think geriatric mushrooms, because they're good for everything, and if you didn't do anything else, those three would be a good amount of supplements without worrying about anything else.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:42
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of mushrooms, like I, I cook with mushrooms all the time. I put I want them in almost everything, plus the mushroom supplements. I just feel like they're, they're, they're so incredibly powerful and so underutilized. And I think that they make a huge, huge. Difference for our animals when we when we do use them.
Dr. Ihor Basko 25:04
Yeah, kind of depends on your culture. Like, in some cultures, mushrooms are like, ooh, they are toxic or they're funny mushrooms. But Eastern European Ukrainians, Asian people, they're really into mushrooms, and that's where most of your good research comes out of those countries where it's in their culture, mushrooms are not scary. And yeah, in the morning, I make miso soup with three mushrooms in it, so that carries me through lunchtime, and a lot of times I'm not even hungry at lunchtime, but it gives me the energy to do my work without a lot of you know those are the main supplements in the morning. Is the reishi, the Cordyceps and the lion's mane in my soup, my wife's soup, and it just, it's, it's amazing. Actually, how it makes you feel when you don't do that for three days versus when you do that daily? You have a whole different body experience.
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:09
That's pretty cool. I know they're I just heard an ad today they're making a lot of mushroom coffees now. Coffee with all the mushroom powders and stuff in it, which maybe I should start drinking that, because I do drink coffee every morning. So one more thing that you talked about in your notes is using massage and bathing for our senior pets. So give us the benefits of doing this, and how often you would recommend it?
Dr. Ihor Basko 26:45
Yeah, I recommend veterinarians to get a massage so they could appreciate the benefits. Like today, I'm getting massage. One of my client's bought me a massage for my birthday, and it's a therapeutic massage. It's not like just, you know, La La Land. It's like, oh, working on these pain areas, you know? So the benefits is improved circulation, improves mobility, improves flexibility, and so you feel better after a massage than before a massage. And like I tell veterinarians who do acupuncture, you know, really go to a lot of different acupuncturists who have a good reputation. So you that's how you learn different acupuncture, not from the book, but from someone that can talk to you that's working on your own body problems. And the same thing with massage, there's good massage people and bad massage people. And eventually you find out who's great. And when you work on your animal, the veterinarian normally does not have enough time to examine a dog properly within 10 to 15 minutes, I take, like an hour to an hour and a half with new people, visualize the dog, feel them all over, gently and then more intensely, and then localize the area, and then show the people how to use massage at home, maybe with a liniment. What's a liniment? A liniment is something that helps improve blood flow circulation and decreases pain. So massaging at home your dog is probably as good as the acupuncture, if you can do it every other day. And so, yeah, to appreciate massage. One should get a massage themselves, and then they'll know understand how to do it on their pet. Cats are a little more tricky with massage, but they do like massage. It's a different technique, maybe softer. And then bathing, you mentioned bathing. So bathing is like, don't take a shower for a week or two. You got to bathe an old dog because they have a lot of body waste. And then the body wastes come out through the skin, and then there's bacteria in the air, yeast. And then next thing, you have a stinky dog with a skin problem that's itching all the time and losing hair. So bathing like I gotta do that to my dog this weekend, bathe her once a week with a mild shampoo that I make various kinds, and I give people recipes something that will restore the microbiome. So in your hair and your skin, you have beneficial bacteria, you have beneficial oils and enzymes, and you don't want to wash all that away. You don't want to kill all the bacteria. You want to cleanse. You want to moisturize, in some cases, and you want to definitely improve regeneration. And so like green tea, chamomile, aloe vera, things in the shampoo that help regeneration, repair.
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:10
Amazing. We are out of time. So for those of you who want more information and to find Dr Basko's books, it's Drbasco.com very simple. It'll be in the show notes. Keep doing all the great work that you're doing. I so appreciate you and your time. I appreciate everything you have done for the animal kingdom.
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:32
Any plans to retire soon? Are we going to keep doing this forever?
Dr. Ihor Basko 30:34
Yeah, my wife said we're going to retire. I say, Who's going to pay the bills? And what would I do? Play golf. I'm too old to surf, so no, I love what I do. Okay, so I love medicine, I love food, and so I continue to study that, and that keeps me going, because it's beneficial for myself, personally, my family and my clients talk to me, so I love giving people information that could be helpful, and I don't know what else I would do, watch TV, watch sports. No.
Dr. Judy Morgan 31:10
Well, we appreciate you, and we thank you for your time today.
Dr. Ihor Basko 31:17
Thank you, doctor, aloha.
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.
