🔗Shownotes Links:
🔹 Dr. Marlene Siegel’s Website
🔹 Empowered Pet Parent Course
🔹 Dr. Siegel’s Books
YouTube Timestamps (Concise & Key Points):
00:00 – Introduction to holistic veterinary care
03:41 – Dr. Siegel’s transformational journey
08:13 – The story of Lily: A life-changing horse rescue
15:36 – Why pet food is failing our animals
19:18 – Emotional trauma & trapped emotions in pets
30:06 – The importance of mitochondrial health
38:13 – The dangers of stress and how it impacts pets & people
46:04 – Why veterinarians experience high burnout rates
52:51 – The importance of passion for long-term well-being
58:30 – How to transition your pet to a holistic health approach
1:03:25 – Final thoughts & actionable steps
Healing Beyond Medicine: Dr. Marlene Siegel on Holistic Veterinary & Human Health
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:01] Hi, Dr Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health Community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q &As on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel. Now, we’ve done hundreds of podcasts, all worth listening to, with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders. But with membership, we have our Unstress Lab podcast series, where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes which are jam -packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress Health Community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel, click on the link below, or just visit UnstressHealth.com to see what’s on offer, and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we explore the world of integrative veterinary science. Well, actually, it’s so much more than that. I mean, I’ve had integrative practitioners on over the last four or five hundred episodes and explored many different aspects. But this is the first time I’ve actually heard it from the angle of a vet. And before you turn off and think, well, I don’t have a pet, let me tell you, there is so much in this episode you could strike out the word pet and put in the word human, and it would be equally applicable. I’m thrilled to introduce Dr. Marlene Siegel. She’s a true pioneer in the world of holistic veterinary care. And Marlene’s not just your average vet. I mean, that is an understatement. She’s the go to guru for integrating cutting edge therapies with good old fashioned animal love. Her journey started with the dramatic horse rescue story that changed everything. And she shares that with us. And now she’s on a mission to revolutionise. Well, we could say pet health, but I’m going to say human health as well. She’s here to share some mind blowing insights that will change your thoughts about not just your fairy furry friend’s well -being, but your own. Get ready for a wild ride. I mean, into the future of animal and human care. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Marlene Siegel.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:02:45] Well, thank you, Ron, for including the fur world into your podcast.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:49] I haven’t really thought of it that way. But listen, when I got the invitation, your suggestion to join me, I grabbed it because I’ve explored the world of integrative medicine many, many times over the years and truly believe it is the way of the future in health care. A win, win, win for practitioner, patient, and the public health. But to get an integrative holistic veterinarian has been a first and I grabbed it. And I’m looking forward to our conversation. Your journey into holistic veterinary medicine began with saving your horse, Lily, I think it was, and after you had a traumatic accident. And could you share with us that experience, fundamentally how it reshaped your approach to animal health care and what it taught you about the limitations of conventional medicine?
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:03:41] Wow. That’s such a great story. And I’m so grateful. Thank God nobody got injured severely. But my youngest daughter was riding Lily in the arena and they came into line up. A couple of things that happened during the class, so something wasn’t quite right. And then as they were in line up, Lily reared in the air. We could actually from the sidelines, you could see something happening to her neck. And when the trainer reached her hand up to fix what she thought was just her forelock tickling her ears, the horse had a spasm in her neck and she reared. Well, no one had taught my youngest daughter that if your horse rears, you need to just bail off to the side to safety. Because the number one cause of a rider’s death when a horse rears is the horse falling over and crushing the rider.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:24] Wow. So
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:04:24] I had a 50 pound child and a 2000 pound horse. And because my daughter didn’t know to let go, she’s trying not to fall off. And the only thing she could hang on to were the reins, which were tied to the bit, which is inside the horse’s mouth. So she’s acting like a fulcrum and she’s literally pulling the horse over backwards. Wow. So as everybody is watching this nightmare, it seemed like an eternity, but it’s seconds. And you could tell Lily was going to go over backwards. And as I’m standing on the sidelines watching this, you’re frozen in just shock. And I could see Lily squatting down on her left hind leg as she’s on her back legs, flailing her legs, trying to get back on the ground. She squats on her left hind leg and pushed herself as hard as she could to her right. Well, my daughter was falling to the left. So when Lily hit the ground, fell over, you couldn’t see space between rider and horse. There was literally you couldn’t tell if she was if my daughter was crushed or not. So I had already jumped over the rail. I was running towards them. Lily caught her breath and she got up and my daughter was still laying on the ground, not moving. So when I got there, my daughter opened her eyes and thank God she was fine. Shook up and embarrassed, but she wasn’t hurt. We thought that was the end of it. But a couple of weeks later, we’re back at our training bar. Everybody’s riding. I’m on a horse. My older daughter’s on a horse and my youngest is riding Lily again. And I hear a commotion and I turn and look and I see the trainer is now yanking my daughter off and pounding on poor Lily’s mouth. And I’m asking what’s going on? And she said, well, she started to do that same behaviour, which she thought was spooking. And so she was trying to make her more afraid of the punishment than the actual procedure. Well, what happened after that? A couple more times I was standing next to her when I saw what looked like a seizure going up her neck. It turns out that she was having neck spasms and the pain was so intense. It caused her to pull away from the discomfort. And with my daughter hanging on the reins, of course, that’s what happened. So I had equine veterinarians come out and look at her. They didn’t know what was wrong. And they literally said to me, we don’t know what’s wrong, but we can tell you she’s not safe to ride. She’ll never be shown again. You can put her out to a pasture or you could put her down. And it was those words that I found totally unacceptable. It was something woke up inside of me. And I tell this part of the story because it’s so impactful. I’m getting chills as I’m saying it. There’s many people out there that have heard those words from their doctor about themselves, their loved one, an animal, a person, whatever. And they’re told there’s nothing more that can be done. And I’m here to tell you there’s always something that can be done. You’re just dealing with somebody who has a more limited resource and they don’t have an answer. Not that they wouldn’t love to have an answer. These equine veterinarians were not being malicious. They literally just didn’t have a wider toolkit. So that began my quest because I was going to save this horse and I was going to allow this duo to keep going. And it was through that process that I learned chiropractic and acupuncture and then herbs and frequency and lasers. Everything I learned to treat Lily, I applied in my small animal practise. And Ron, five months after being told she’d never be shown again, and I should put her down, that little duo went on to win the United States Reserved Youth National Championship, which is the most prestigious horse show in the United States for youth riders.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:08:13] What a story. My God. Well, we’re going to spend the next hour unpacking that. But there is so much you said there. I mean, you made the statement that it wasn’t that nothing else could be done. It was that the person giving advice didn’t know. And one of the most empowering things, I think, for a practitioner and perhaps one of the most difficult things to say is, I don’t know, but someone else might. But how far into your veterinary career were you at that point?
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:08:47] I was already practising for 15 years. So, you know, I wasn’t a newbie and I had a very busy practise staff of 15. I had I was homeschooling my two young daughters. And so I my plate was full. The very first chiropractic case I did long before that, I actually called my human chiropractor, who had been trained in animals. And I would call him and say, hey, come out there. Can you can you do a chiropractic adjustment on this animal? And he would do and he kept saying, you know, you got to get trained in this. And I just kept saying, Dan, talk to the hand. I couldn’t take on any more homeschooling. I’m running a practise. We’re showing horses. I just didn’t feel like I could do anything else. But I tell you, when the universe has a plan for you, you find the time to do it. So that was my first awakening was being motivated to do more. I thought was possible. And back then, functional medicine was just becoming a thing on the human side. So in my world, on the veterinary side, there was acupuncturists and there was herbalists. And that was it. Nobody was really doing what I would call bioregulatory medicine. They weren’t solving the root cause of problems. And so now I’m using functional medicine doctors on the human side. I’m absorbing everything, every webinar, every talk I could go to, every person I could call. I’m asking about the technologies, about the medicines and just absorbing everything and then applying it to the animals. So a lot of these guys would come back and go, well, I don’t know how to tell you to treat an animal. And I would have to repeat over and over. I’m not asking you to treat me to tell me how to treat the animal. You tell me how you treat a person. I will extrapolate and figure out how to treat the animal. And from there, it just became one thing after another, after another. And the remarkable changes in my small animal practise was one thing to see Lily get better. That was amazing. But then to see the transformation in my small animal patients as well. It was so rewarding. And here I am 15 years into practise, loving it, thinking I’m doing great. And now I’m really understanding what healing really looks like. And it was wonderful. Absolutely. You know, I’m now practising. I’m almost 70 and I’m practising 40 years and I apply everything that I learned to myself, to my practise, to my family. And I’ll tell you, somebody asked me today and my comment about how I enjoy practise and they said I am happier and healthier today than I was when I was in my 20s. Just because I understand biology better and I am so excited and fulfilled with the kind of medicine that we have, the ability to practise.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:34] What an inspiring story, Marlene. And really, you must have asked yourself many times over the last 25 years since this epiphany, this turning point. Why aren’t the other practitioners embracing this? Why don’t they have the intellectual curiosity or professional curiosity? Because you must have come up with a lot of what? A holistic. OK, what are you doing? Crystals on your patients? Are you laying hands on? Are you meditating with your with your animals? What kind of wankery is this? You know, is that the kind of reactions you’ve been getting from a lot of your colleagues?
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:12:13] Well, I don’t because when I’m speaking at conferences and I’m lecturing and I’m, you know, at different places where I’m doing presentations, I show my cases. So my presentations are actual cases where I explain what the problem was, what we did to diagnose it, how we’re treating it, and then the outcome. And you cannot deny the outcomes from cancer cases to paralysed animals, to chronic kidney disease. It really across the board doesn’t matter what the disease is. And I said dis -ease very intentionally because I’ve learned that there is no disease. That’s an American term. But we’re really talking about dis -ease. We’re talking about when the body is not in balance, then you see an expression or a symptom. But that’s not where the problem is. We need to find the root cause, which is always going to be either a deficiency of essential nutrients, an overwhelming amount of toxicity, mitochondrial dysfunction, little powerhouses can’t make energy, and trapped emotions. And Ron, it is that simple. Now unpacking it and diagnosing it and then fixing it is a little more complex. But it is that simple to understand the biochemistry in the body. So when the body doesn’t have the things it has to have to function, that’s a deficiency. Well, we know the food that we’re eating today is nutrient deficient. No surprise there. And yet most veterinarians are not testing for deficiencies. As an example, vitamin D. Most people do not know how carnivores, our dogs and cats, get vitamin D. They assume that they get it from the sun, like you and I can, because we can get it from our diet and we can get it from the sun. But a carnivore can only get it from their protein source. So think about if they’re feeding a non -organic diet where the animal that’s in that can or bag has never been outside. It’s a feedlot. It’s been in captivity. It’s never really been on pasture for any length of time. That animal cannot convert vitamin D because herbivores, the cow, the deer, the buffalo, whatever, they convert vitamin D from the sun. So if that animal has not been in the sun, their protein is going to be vitamin D deficient. And whatever eats that protein is going to be vitamin D deficient. So that’s just one example of how the different bioregulatory systems in a carnivore are unique to them. So as we take all of these principles and we start to test, confirm, toxicity, same thing. You know, there are certain toxins that are inhibiting the body from being able to function properly. Well, how do you expect to have your car run if it’s missing gasoline or if it’s the wrong gasoline or if you don’t have oil in there? Right. There’s just some essential things that the car has to have in order to work. And the same thing with the body. So I do bioregulatory medicine. And the difference is understanding deficiency, toxicity, the pathways, how do they work and what have we done to interrupt or mess them up?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:36] Oh, wow. OK. Now, let’s just back up here a little bit, because you’ve said so much. I mean, my God. No, no, no. I love it. I love it. This is absolute. This is not just music to my ears. This is a symphony to my ears, because to hear to hear you just said herbivores can generate vitamin D from the sun. Carnivores can generate vitamin D only from the protein. You know, that in itself is a statement. I’d love to let’s unpack a little bit more. But let’s just stop for a moment, because I want to come back to how you’ve said a lot there. But let’s just refresh. How do you define integrative veterinary care? And what are some of those core principles? You’ve mentioned nutrition, toxicity. You mentioned trapped emotions. I want to talk about that. Just give it to us. Give it to us. Integrative veterinary care 101.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:16:31] So it’s basically taking the best of both worlds. Since the Flexner report that was commissioned by the Rockefellers way back in the 19 early 1900s, we have now deleted very intentionally because of how the Rockefellers set themselves up to have more of a petroleum based pharmaceutical control on our health. So because of that, these ancient principles of acupuncture, homoeopathy, homotoxicology, herbs, oils, acupuncture, chiropractic, all of these other modalities that used to be commonplace. They were part of our normal health regime. They were eliminated when the colleges couldn’t get funding if they kept teaching these other programmes. And then the doctors quit going to these colleges because if they graduated, they couldn’t get a job because they weren’t accredited. So that’s how we lost all of these ancient sciences. Now, coming full circle, we call integrative medicine taking the best of both worlds, because certainly the Western practise offers a lot of wonderful things that we don’t want to lose. But we have to integrate that with all of these other technologies and techniques that have been effective for hundreds and thousands of years. Why can’t we marry them together? Veterinarians who call themselves holistic or they call themselves is really understanding the biology of that pet. In other words, they’re not looking at mind, body, spirit. They’re not understanding biochemical and biological pathways. So they’re feeding processed foods. They’re continuing to do the toxic lifestyle that has become the norm, fast, cheap and convenient. But instead of using a pill for the ill and a diet for the disease, they’re using an acupuncture point or they’re using an herb for symptom management. But we’re not in true integrative medicine or bioregulatory medicine. It’s not symptomatic management. It’s actually finding the root cause of the problem and fixing it. It’s that simple. So there’s grades of what people understand. And it sounds very sexy to say, oh, I’m an acupuncturist. It’s very sexy to say I can do chiropractic work. But if you don’t do it in the context of the whole animal, then you’re still doing symptom suppression because you’re naming it, you’re blaming it. And then you’re coming up with a treatment, not just a pharmaceutical.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:19:18] Love it. Love it. No, no, that’s that’s so so interesting. The you mentioned the I’ve got to come back to because you captured my imagination with the trapped emotions, the trapped emotions of the animal. Now, that’s an interesting one. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the rabbit hole? That’s OK. I’m just fascinated by that.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:19:41] So we are all energetic beings. We’re light beings and we all have emotions that are attached to every aspect of our consciousness. In fact, emotions are the road map. If we use them properly, it’s our GPS to help us either stay on path or understand when we’re off path. So, example, when we have a lot of conflict or we have a lot of resistance in our life, everything you try to do goes wrong. That is your emotional compass trying to tell you you are not going in the right direction. So we need to back up, take a better look and decide where is the flow. We’ve all gone down the lazy river, you know, where you’re on your tube and you’re floating down the river. Well, if you try to go upstream, it could be a little challenging. But if you flow with the river, everything flows and it’s just serendipitous and it all works out nicely. So that’s what our emotions can do for us. If we use them as our GPS, it’s our guidance system. Am I having a day of beautiful synchronicity and flow? I’m probably on the right path that I’m supposed to be on. If I’m getting a lot of resistance and frustration and all these other things are happening, then it may be because I’m resonating at a lower frequency and therefore I need to change that. So I want to make one more point about emotions, which I think is so amazing, is that they are on a scale. The lowest vibration of motion is shame. And I don’t know if you’ve got a Disney World or a theme park where you’re at, but when I used to take my kids to Busch Gardens when they were little and I’d be in the kids section and I would hear parents all day long shaming, blaming, yelling at their children. It’s such a low frequency. It’s not teaching them anything except destroying their self -esteem. And then you go all the way through all those negative emotions, not in order, anger, frustration, blame, hatred, you know, all of these. You can feel the darkness and the heaviness when we say those words. And then you go through the centre and then you start going on the other side because everything has an equal and opposite, including our emotions. So now you get into compassion. You get into love. The highest vibration, interestingly enough, is gratitude. So lowest is shame, highest is gratitude. And you have all these gradations in there. But suffice it to say that for every negative emotion, there’s an equal and opposite positive emotion. I think part of the game of Earth School is to recognise when these low vibrating emotions are coming up, not to torture ourselves, but to be able to step back from the story and go, isn’t that interesting? I’m feeling X, Y, Z. Do I want to keep feeling that way? Or do I want to shift my perspective, because it’s all perspective, and decide to experience this event differently, maybe as a blessing instead of as a victim? So that’s setting the stage for the human aspect. Any questions on that part?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:23:10] No, no, no, no. And we’ve done, you know, so many of our our podcasts come to mind, as you say, that I had the pleasure of interviewing Paul Gil, Professor Paul Gilbert, who’s written the book called The Compassionate Mind. And we talk about how gratitude is a win, win, win for everybody, for the person, for the person listening and for the person receiving. You know, so gratitude to be the highest emotion is something that resonates very strongly. So, no, I love this.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:23:39] And so, you know what I want to re -emphasise so everybody really gets it. It’s not the fact that you have a low vibrating or negative emotion. It’s what you do with it. So when you are using a GPS to find an address you’ve never been to before, if you miss the exit, you don’t fall apart. You don’t just figure that’s the end of your life, right? You listen to the GPS and it says, make a U -turn at the next turn. Make another U -turn. You keep missing the turn, right? So recognising that these experiences are simply the way that God or the universe is showing us what we have an opportunity to heal and or experience in a higher state of vibration. If we can kind of play the game, it is way more fun than being a victim for sure. And how animals play a role. And it’s not just animals. I think all of nature, all of nature, including our pets, have this special quality to be able to mirror and or reflect back to us the very experiences that we need to have so that we can move from victimhood into victor and be able to shift the experience. Now, think about for people who don’t have pets and you’re really upset, most people will walk outside. They’ll be barefoot and grounding. They’ll walk through a forest. They’ll sit by the beach and then they feel better. Think about what animals do when we are really upset and we’re crying or super angry and our fur baby comes over. Typically, the small guys and the cats, they’ll get up on our lap and the bigger guys may take their head and push it underneath your hand. So now that you’re cutting the top of their head and unconsciously, every pet parent I’ve ever spoken to says this happens to them. Unconsciously, they start to pet that animal or they hug them. And as we’re in training to that perfect unconditional love that they’re sharing with us, we start to feel better. I mean, for sure, this is a very dense part of the world right now. They’re making it easier for heaviness that we’re experiencing. Help us with the experience. We are not making them sick. We are not torturing them. It’s all on how we choose to perceive the situation and shift our belief systems. Now, I’m going to call belief systems our BS. And for some people, they may go, oh, that’s bad word. But whatever it is, it’s a belief that we keep repeating doesn’t make it right, doesn’t make it wrong. It’s simply the belief we keep repeating. So now once we start to recognise that, we can take a step back and decide is the way that we’re perceiving this situation truly benefiting me? Is this making me a better person? Is this helping those around me? Is it making Mother Earth better? Is it helping anything? And if the answer is no, then change it. It’s not that hard. And if it is helping, then keep doing it. That’s fine. I mean, this is not about judgement. It’s all about our choices on how we want to be better people. How do we want to serve our communities and our world better? And even if we all go back in a non -physical and you all laugh at me and go, what was that story you came up with? It’s OK. Because if it helps us to navigate and be happier people, I did my job. It’s just a creative way of doing it. So that’s my story. That’s how I see Earth School.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:38] Hi, Dr. Ron here. And I want to invite you to join our unstress health community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q &As on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing unstress health advisory panel. Now, we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders. But with membership, we have our unstressed lab podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes which are jam packed full of valuable insights. So join the unstress health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel, click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. Your summary of all those emotions and that we have to kind of remind. We’re not just talking about animals here. We’re talking about living beings here. And you could equally have been talking about the owners, the pet parents, as you noted, are calling them. So I think that’s just so interesting. And to see those range of emotions from shame to gratitude and gratitude being the highest and actually so accessible to all of us. You know, love is a challenging one. And we have to, you know, we should be grateful for that. But gratitude being even higher than that is something that is accessible to us all. And we should be practising it regularly. I want to come back to mitochondria, because that was another thing you said. And, you know, you have been following this world of bioregulatory medicine, functional medicine for the last 25 years. And you will know that mitochondrial function has become a big focus of health care. And philosophically, it’s an important difference between conventional medicine and integrative medicine. Talk to us a little bit about mitochondrial function in a pet sense.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:30:06] So our mitochondria actually have two major functions. One is they produce the energy that we need in order to keep functioning. They also communicate with our microbiome, all the organisms that are in and on us. And when they do that communication, they’re helping to decide what genes expression do we need to either quiet down or express. So that’s a pretty important function. So think about on a given day, if you have a particular emotional experience, then you’re creating these neurochemicals to be released based on how you experience a situation. If it’s in a negative way versus in a positive way. So if it’s in a negative way, we are sending off these neurochemicals, which are going to then be picked up by the mitochondria and the microbiome, which are saying we have danger. We have problems in this planet. And we need to start expressing a different genetic information to be able to survive in this bad environment. Our terrain is going bad. So we need to express something differently so that we can survive when the planet goes down. So we now understand that the mitochondria have such a big role. They are their own little organisms. They are living in a symbiosis with us. So they’re using us as their planet and they their their desire, I’m sure, is to have their planet thrive. But when circumstances happen that are causing us to go into survival instead of thriving, then they make adjustments accordingly. And if we create such a toxic environment that they can’t function well, then at some point they are going to go in the bunker. This is called the cell danger response mode. And this is probably only 20 or 30 years this has been understood. I’m going to back up a second because we know that the vagus nerve, when stimulated, turns on the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s the half of the autonomic nervous system that is in charge of rest, repair, digest, reproduction, detoxification. The other half of the autonomic nervous system is our fight flight, our sympathetic side. And when we have to fight for our lives because there’s eminent danger, you don’t care if you’re hungry, you don’t care if you have to go potty. You certainly aren’t thinking about who you’re going to have sex with that night. You are only focused on what do I need to do to survive. And blood is shunted, cortisol is released. All these mechanisms happen to allow you to fight hard, run hard so that you can survive. And the mitochondria help with this coordination. Now, we were designed to withstand these super sympathetic moments and these super relaxing moments. But we watch a herd of gazelle. When the lion is chasing them, the lion’s in high sympathetic tone, the herd’s going crazy, everybody’s running. They’re all in high sympathetic tone. But once that lion is either successful or gives up 100 feet away and the herd stops and goes back to grazing unalert, but they go back into a more parasympathetic state because we just can’t live in this high sympathetic tone. So now look at our modern world that we all live in and we wake up by the alarm clock. So we’re sleep deprived and we’re startled by the alarm clock. We get out of bed. Most families are eating some kind of a sugary, nasty processed food for breakfast and feeding that to their kids. And then it’s either go to work if people still go to work these days and deal with traffic and deal with employers and deal with different people at work and conflicts with your clients and all these things that are keeping us in high sympathetic tone. And then we get our mail and we open the credit cards and now you got money stress. And then after school, you have to pick up the kids and they have to go to all their activities. And then you finally get back home, didn’t have time to make dinner. So you make this processed food stop at a health less than health food place. And in America, we have the worst food ever. Thank God we have an administration that wants to clean it up. So, you know, so people are just inundated with not only high sympathetic tone, but they’re eating on the run and they’re eating highly processed, toxic food with a lot of hormones, chemicals, pesticides and genetically modified ingredients. So it’s a perfect storm for disaster. Now, our bodies were never designed to stay in that high sympathetic stress because your body doesn’t know the difference between the sabre tooth tiger that was chasing your ancestor and your credit card bills and your boss and the traffic and your car breaking down and the kid fights and the spouse fight. They don’t know the difference. They just know danger, danger, danger. So what happens is there reaches a point where the mitochondria who have not had a break because it is just constant sympathetic tone is sensing the motherships going down. And so they metaphorically speaking, they go into a bunker, they go into a cell danger response mode and they kind of cover their metaphorical ears and they go, la, la, la, la, la. I’m going to hang out until I see whether my planet survives or it goes down. And if it’s going to go down, I’m going to stay alive long enough to try to find myself in another planet or however that works. So our mitochondria are these organisms that have learned to live symbiotically with us. And they do so many things. In addition to making energy as a byproduct of making energy, they produce ozone in the body. And that ozone acts as a redox signaller. It takes a communication and it sends it out further and further, sort of like a cell tower. I may have a phone here, but my transmission has to get passed from cell tower to cell tower to cell tower until it reaches you in Australia. How interesting that it can do that, right? Well, our mitochondria are responsible for that in the byproduct of making ozone. And I’m sure there’s a lot of other things that they do that we don’t even understand because they’re not simple. They’re very complex. So we talk about mitochondria. I think the most important thing to have a discussion about is the terrain of the body. Like what is your planet look like? Is your planet healthy and is it have good symbiosis? Is it in homeostasis? Are the organs talking to each other? Are they functioning well? Or are you so toxic? Are you deficient in energy? Are you so sugar loaded that you have all these metabolic derangements? You know, here in America, we have so many cleaning products that are oestrogen disruptors. And so our cancer rates are almost higher than any country in the industrialised world, which is really sad. It’s pitiful, actually. And so what do we need to do differently? Well, boy, Kim, I’m just going to say it, Ron. We all need to take control of our own health. We need to take action and be responsible. There is no saviour going to come down. There’s no government. There’s no white horse. There’s nobody going to come and save you. Your saviour is inside of you in you having the intelligence to make decisions, to get knowledge, to learn and to take action.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:38:13] Well, that’s a recurring theme of the last 600 episodes in this podcast and everything I’ve ever read. No, no, it is. Take control. Your health is just too important to leave to anybody else. We’re very lucky to have a Western health care system to catch us when we fall. But, you know, there’s lots of things we can do before that. You know, it’s so interesting because you mentioned before about mirroring emotions. And I’m guessing that if a pet parent is stressed and anxious and da da da da da da, a pet will mirror that kind of emotional regulation. But also we have over the last 40 or so years been exposed to unprecedented levels of processed food, which the health care, the pet food industry must be a prime example of that. Absolutely. Yes. I mean, everything that we say about processed food being bad for humans. I mean, what are the majority of animals eat now?
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:39:20] Processed foods, because we have been sold, at least here in the U .S. and I think everywhere. I was in Bangkok doing lectures out there and I went to this really amazing veterinary hospital in Bangkok. And they have all this advanced technology that they’re treating cancer. And they were selling processed dog food in their waiting room. So wait a minute. Let me think about that. You’re fixing cancer. You’re trying to fix cancer, but you’re literally feeding it to those animals. It doesn’t make sense. I was at a yoga retreat this past week and it was a really cool experience. And they’re talking about your mind, your body, your spirit, eating healthy and when to eat and how to have relationships. And they had plastic water bottles for people to drink water. And the food that they served came from a restaurant that only uses canola oil, which canola oil is a carcinogen and very, very bad for you. And needless to say, plastic water bottles for ourselves and for the environment. And they didn’t do it maliciously, but they stopped. And I don’t have a very good filter on my mouth. So after the end of the course, of course, I brought my own water and and I didn’t eat their food. But, you know, after we brought it up, they go, you know, you’re right. We just hadn’t they hadn’t got to the next level. And I learn every day. I improve myself every day. So I’m not saying it as a criticism. It’s more of a consciousness. The more we learn, the better we can do. And that doesn’t mean you have to change everything for your pet, for yourself all in one day. It means that as you’re learning, you take a piece of paper, you fold it in half and column A becomes all the things that you’re learning. You should be doing, but you may not be doing it yet. And then column B are all the things you shouldn’t do. Absolutely not. And you’re still doing them. And it’s as easy as taking one thing from column A and starting at one thing from column B and just stop it. Just one thing for me type. And then after 21 days, it’s who you are. It’s not what you’re doing. You go back to your list and you pick one other thing that would be very impactful. And then another thing that you stop doing. And before long, you have really made some major changes for yourself, for your family, for your pets and for Mother Earth, because the less toxins we give into Mother Earth, the better her microbiome can breathe and do well.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:54] Well, you know, we started the conversation talking about intellectual curiosity and learning. And this is I’ve often said the more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know. And for me, on my journey, similar time period to yours, Marlene, I find that exciting. I find that really exciting and empowering. A lot of people crave certainty. They want certainty. I guess that explains religion’s success over the millennia, you know, because it provides that certainty. But I like that whole idea. And you also mentioned terrain, which takes us right back to an age old discussion between Louis Pasteur and the germ theory and Antoine Beauchamp in the terrain theory and one person saying the germ causes the disease and the other person saying, no, it’s actually the body in which the germ is planted that determines whether you have a disease. The problem is that the germ theory lends itself to the business model, which goes to a long way of describing what the paradoxes of health care are in our modern world.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:43:02] Yeah. Well, I wasn’t there when Louis Pasteur actually transitioned. But the story goes that he conceded and said he was wrong, that it really was the terrain theory, which was the right model. But once it became established, then it kind of took over. And it really it wasn’t until recently that we even reheard about the terrain theory. So I think now as people are becoming more awake, COVID was a wonderful experience in that it made people stop and go, you’re asking me to do what? And it doesn’t make any sense. And first you’re saying we should do it, then we shouldn’t do it. So I think a lot of people became very awake and started realising that not everything you hear in mainstream media is the truth and that we have to have some discernment and we, the people, have to give our dollars as our vote. It really is important that when you spend your money, that you’re spending it on companies and or products or education that is actually helping to promote the health of us, our pets, our planet, you know, an overall perspective. But when you’re just becoming just lazy or it’s just a little too hard to have to go look harder for answers, I don’t buy off of Amazon. So if they’re listening, I don’t, you know, I’ll do anything I can to buy elsewhere. I may shop it there to see what I want or what I need. And then I go back to the parent company and it’s because I don’t think they have our best interests at heart. And at some point they can turn up or turn off our ability to purchase and we’re going to be at somebody’s mercy. And I don’t like that feeling. I want to know that I have local resources, that I can still maintain the quality of life that I want to have. And I have control of that over my local environment.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:13] Yes, I know. It’s very it’s a great message. I support it as well. Now, Marlene, it’s really interesting because my focus now is out of clinical practises on practitioner well -being and the statistics for medical practitioners is quite shocking. I’ve read a report recently which said from the Australian Medical Association, which said medical practitioners and students, medical students, 65 to 75 percent of them are suffering from burnout, which is characterised by the acronym Die. That stands for disengaged, ineffective and exhausted. The dental profession are renowned for their high suicide rates. But I do believe that when it comes to practitioner well -being, veterinarians are up there and beyond. Can you share with us what the role is there?
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:46:04] Yeah, so compassion fatigue is a really big problem for veterinarians because what happens is you’re taking care of somebody’s fur baby and we didn’t cause their problem, but when things don’t go well, and it could be, you know, the animal passes in surgery or has a disease that can’t be fixed or, you know, the owner wants to blame or shame because, of course, they don’t want to take responsibility for the fact that they fed the processed food or the animal got out from their care or they neglected whatever. And so they have a tendency to really put a lot of shame onto veterinarians. And we are, as a veterinary industry, we have the highest rate of suicide of any industry in the world. And that is very sad because as veterinarians, I’ve never met somebody who doesn’t have compassion, who doesn’t want to do the right thing. You know, we spoke earlier about how if you don’t know better, you can’t do better. And, of course, these doctors are coming out of school and they’re trained in straight allopathic medicine. And it is very heartbreaking to look at an owner and say, I’m sorry, there’s nothing more that can be done. They’re not doing it maliciously. They’re not feeling good about it. And then afterwards, the guilt when they find out maybe there was something else they could do. But for whatever reason, they’re not in a position to be able to offer that. It is heartbreaking. And sadly, the quality of family life is very poor for most veterinarians. I mean, I work ridiculous hours and I’m on emergency call and I’m constantly giving, giving, giving, giving. And then you have people that write a one star review. Now, I have very good self -esteem. And so I have compassion for those people because I know hurting people hurt. And so these people go out of their way to try to hurt myself or others because they’re hurting so badly and they just want to blame and shame. I’m very good with it. And I always write a compassionate response. But there’s a lot of people who don’t have that. And and so they take it so personal and then they feel like everybody’s going to look at them and and make fun of them or think poorly of them. And sadly, they they they turn to drugs or alcohol or suicide as an escape because we actually beat you guys on the dentistry side for the amount of addictive problems. Because we have access to drugs. So it becomes that escape mode.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:45] Yeah. But I but I did note very early on in our conversation, your passion, your enthusiasm after 40 years of practise, you are you you’re better than you’ve ever been. I mean, you just continually getting better. And that’s an exciting place to be. We’ve recently did a an interview with a medical practitioner who had 35 years of clinical experience, was suffering from all manner of diseases and and was burnt out, ready to shut her practise down, then went to a low carb, low carbohydrate conference and totally turned her her own health around. And in the process, shut her existing allopathic practise down and opened up a new practise. And now five years in is loving it and changing people’s lives. And and that is an incredibly empowering thing, too.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:49:38] So you didn’t ask me the question in this way, but I’m going to give you the answer. What is the key to finding joy and happiness and not having burnout and all those other negative emotions? And the answer is passion. Find something I’m talking to your audience now, find something that lights you up so much you would do it for free. And you you willingly get up in the morning and you’re excited to go share and experience and have other people experience what you’re sharing. And that is the key is finding passion and passion is inside of you. What are you good at? What do you love doing? What do you have skill sets in? Because everything that happens in our life is preparing us for that moment when you’re ready to take your passion and share it to the world, whatever that looks like. So it’s everything that has happened to us has all been part of that guidance system, bumping us along the way. Oh, no, no, you’re off the road a little bit to the left. Come on back over here. But all those experiences help us to be able to relate to all the people who you are showing up for in school, because you’re not talking to everybody. Right. I’m not talking to non pet owners. They would have absolutely no connection with me. But people who have soul pets, which is my population, you know, these people, their pets are as important to them as their children are.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:51:19] They are their children. Well, you know, I would argue that if you didn’t have a pet, this conversation would be very, very interesting. And it’s and I say this whenever we do a programme on children’s health as well. I say even though you may not have a child, the children are the canaries in the coal mine. So if bad health is happening to them, we need to sit up and make note of it. And you mentioned also thank you for asking the question. I didn’t. I’m going to come back and ask you a question here because to practise health care, the way you are practising it requires emotional energy. You need the emotional energy to do it. And I would argue that for many health practitioners, they haven’t fully understand that understood the concept of the point of diminishing returns. You know, you think the more time you spend in your practise, the more good you are doing. And there may actually be a point of diminishing return where actually maybe working four days a week and giving it up. We’re all in those four is better not only for your patients, not only better for you, but better for all of the people you come into contact with in your personal life. The concept of the point of diminishing returns and having the emotional and physical and mental energy to engage with patients on the level that you and I have also engaged with them through our professional career. What do you think of that?
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:52:51] Well, I do agree with you. But what are you doing with the downtime that you have? And I think that’s as equally important is what is your own self care programme? How are you nourishing your mind, body and your spirit? So for me, I’m a deep, deep dive into the metaphysical world, into spiritualism, far more than religion. So I investigate all topics when it comes to mediumship and the metaphysical and the paranormal and trying to understand what earth school and life is all about. And then my own personal practise is I do breath work. I do meditation. And this is every day. So I work out. I exercise some form of high intensity most days. I do things that I’m absolutely passionate about. I live in a food forest in a little city. I’m in a city like everybody else. But my entire yard 360 around my house is all trees and raised beds and plants that produce food. I raise bees. I have a worm farm. I just these are things that bring me so much joy because when I’m outside and I’m planting and weeding and harvesting and just appreciating all the bees and butterflies and all the things that are in this yard, it is absolutely incredible. So I do things that bring me great passion and pleasure. And then I walk my talk. So I only eat organic. I don’t do any seed oils. I do eat meat periodically. I’m not a big meat eater, but I’m not a vegetarian or a vegan. But I eat things that I feel like I want to eat. But it’s always if it’s meat, it’s grass fed, grass finished. It’s organic. It’s wild caught. So I’m really careful about how I take care of my body. What I feed my body, what I drink is all structured molecular hydrogen water, very high energy. Just thinking about it and then gratitude. I’m sure I could list 100 other things I do on a daily basis, but I start my day in gratitude. I end my day in gratitude. And I truly try to look at every situation from a nonjudgmental perspective. And I try to add compassion and kindness in everything I do. Not always successful. There are people that will trip my trigger. But then I’ll take a deep breath before I respond to the one star reviews. And I just think about what is that person hurting? And, you know, you don’t want to not respond. But at the same time, we can respond with some degree of compassion.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:55:44] Yes. Well, you know, you almost answered your own the question when you said find something that you have passion with, because I think these health practitioners that are so absorbed in their practise. I mean, I don’t even know how some practitioners can see 40 or 50 patients in a day or 20 or 30 even in it. I mean, whatever the number is, you need to spend time to engage with people in a way that they deserve to be engaged with. And in order to do that, you need to be physically, mentally and emotionally able to do that. And if you’re suffering from burnout, you can’t.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:56:23] Exactly. And that’s why the the practises, the daily rituals of cleansing and breathwork and being able to do some form of meditation or exercise. I love yoga because you you really have to become in the moment with it. And you can’t be thinking of other things or you’ll fall down. So you really have to be present. And that’s another big aspect is being present in the moment. I my bedroom is upstairs and I have no curtains in my room so I can look out the window. The first thing that wakes me up is the sunlight coming in. So I try to have my circadian rhythm to be more in sync, although I do go to bed a little later than I should. I work on sleep. So I try to make sure I get between six and seven hours. And these are all the principles, how we eat, how we drink, how we think, how we exercise, how we breathe, the kinds of exercises that we do. They should be things that you enjoy doing, whether it’s by yourself or with others, and then making sure that you’re finding ways to recharge your power packs. And for me, it’s being in my garden or it’s cooking or it’s dancing. I can’t sing worth a hoot, Dr. Ron. Although I would love to sing, that is not one of my talents. So I only do that in the shower when no one’s home. But all these other things are just so wonderful. We have game night that my daughter and I host once a month, and we have friends come over and we just laugh and just have a wonderful time playing silly games. But it’s the camaraderie and the relationships that help support us. So all of those, I must have listed a hundred things that we can do. Yeah,
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:07] well, you’ve just described the unstressed health community platform that we invite all our listeners to join. Listen, for our listener, just finishing up, but for our listeners inspired with this holistic approach, what’s your first step for a pet owner, a pet parent wanting to transition from a purely conventional approach?
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:58:30] So I have a six step process and pet owners can download the ebook for free. I really like it. We’ll have links.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:38] We’ll have links to that, Arlene, in our show notes. links to them.
Dr Marlene Siegel [00:58:43] Thank you. And I’d love to encourage pet parents to take the Empowered Pet Parent course because it was so well designed to help them really understand. But in a nutshell, the first thing that we have to do is start becoming aware of the things that are causing the harm. Processed foods, tap water, the environmental things that we’re cleaning with, what’s in our air, the electromagnetic pollution that we’re exposed to, and the ants in our brain. Ants are automatic negative thoughts. So if we can get a handle on that, that’s step number one. And then step number two is making sure that we are supplying the body, whether it’s a pet’s body or ours, with the essential nutrients that it needs to do its job. So there’s 90 plus essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids that the body has to have non -negotiable. It can’t make it. You have to have these in the body for it to function well. And so that’s step number two. we do testing to identify the deficiencies. Number three, we heal the leaky gut. Of course, there’s a variety of things that we do to do that. Number four is detoxification of all six organs of elimination. I’m a little partial to the liver, the lymphatics slash fascia, because I think they are the heavy lifters, but they’re all important. But I really focus on the liver and the lymphatics and the fascia. So I actually have a fascia decompression course for pet parents to take. and they need no equipment, they use their hands. It’s amazing. So I’d like them to take the Empowered Pet Parent course and then the FASHA decompression and that will be life -changing for most pet parents. Number five is the mitochondria. How can we get healthier mitochondria? How can we support them to be more active and more vibrant? And then number six is clear trapped emotions. So with that blueprint, And I went through it pretty fast, but with that blueprint, if people could just do that column A, column B and start implementing things to help fulfil that blueprint, life changing, life changing, absolutely.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:00:52] Fantastic. Look, we are going to have links to all of that. One last question I wanted to ask you, and I wanted you to take a step back from your role as an integrative veterinarian and a functional medicine expert, because everything you’ve said is equally applicable to the human as it is to the animal. But taking your step back, because we’re all individuals on a health journey in this modern world. What do you think the biggest challenge for us as individuals on that journey is?
Dr Marlene Siegel [01:01:22] Lack of knowledge. Yeah, number one is lack of knowledge. And number two, it could be analysis paralysis, where we get inundated because of social media with so much noise. There’s so much information out there. Is it right? How do you implement it? What’s fake news? There’s just so much noise and confusion. So it comes back down to the same thing, having good education from resources that you trust. and the ability to start implementing. If you overthink it and you spend all this analysis paralysis time, you’re going to be overwhelmed and you’re gonna do nothing. So I like to go to column A, column B, get some knowledge and then start implementing one thing at a time. So that, you know, I don’t like the analogy, how do you eat an elephant, but. but For the sake of this conversation, it’s one bite at a time. Metaphorically speaking, it’s one bite at a time. How do you do anything in life? One step at a time. Metaphorically speaking. And so I just encourage people, just start somewhere. Start where you’re at. Don’t judge it. Don’t beat yourself up. Everything happens in divine timing. If you’re hearing this for the first time, this was the time you were meant to hear it. This is also the time you were meant to start taking some action. And that could be as simple as taking the Empowered Pet Parent course. After you take the course, we can have a consultation. I can help people with implementation. I am honoured to hold their hands and walk them through the process, but they have to be willing to show up and do the work.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:03:11] Well, well, Marlene, what a note for us to finish on and thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom and your wonderful insights with us. Thank you so much.
Dr Marlene Siegel [01:03:21] It’s an honour and a blessing and I’m so grateful. Many blessings, everybody.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:03:25] Well, as I say, when we have programmes on about children’s health, if you don’t have a child, the children are the canaries in the coalmine. So it’s good to know what they’re suffering from, because it gives you a clue of what you as an individual are most susceptible to. The same is true for pets. I mean, talk about mirroring, mirroring your emotions, mirroring the processed foods that you’re eating, mirroring the environment in which you live and seeing the effects of that on your pet health, not to mention your own. Listen, Marlene mentioned courses and handouts, which we will of course have links to in our show notes. I hope this finds you well. Until next time, this is Dr. Ron Erlich. Be well. Feeling stressed, overwhelmed? It’s time to unstress your life. Join the unstressed health community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness. From self -sabotage to self -mastery. And together, let’s not just survive. but thrive. Expert led courses, curated podcasts, like minded community and support and much more. Visit unstresshealth .com This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.
