How to Help Your Dog & Cat Live Longer With Real Food

Nick Urban [00:00:01]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity, the show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week, we decode the tools, tactics, and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body, and performance span. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting-edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel, and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. A woman brought her dying dog to my guest today. And my guest treated it with food instead of another drug. A year and a half later, that woman walked back in with a new puppy, and my guest didn’t even recognize her.

Nick Urban [00:01:06]:
She and her husband had lost more than 200 pounds between them. They’d watched what real food did for that dog, looked at each other, and asked, why aren’t we doing it for ourselves? My guest today is Dr. Judy Morgan, a holistic veterinarian with 36 years in practice. Welcome to the show.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:01:27]:
Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here.

Nick Urban [00:01:29]:
Excited to host you. So I haven’t talked much about the role of pet health on human health. We have a lot to cover today, so let’s start there. What does the health of our pets and having a pet do for us as humans?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:01:46]:
Well, we have lots and lots of studies in the literature that show that pets can help get people moving. So if you have a dog, you need to get it out and take it for a walk. But any animal can help lower our blood pressure, can help lower our cortisol levels, can help keep us engaged and give us motivation to get up, get moving, and keep going. And we see it particularly with senior people, people who sometimes say, well, I don’t have any kids in the house. It doesn’t matter if I get up and get dressed today. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t take a shower all week. It does matter because your pet still needs you to take care of them no matter what it could be a goldfish in a bowl, but it’s still going to need someone to take care of it. And that is really critical.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:02:36]:
And I love it when I go visit senior living centers and they allow people to have pets.

Nick Urban [00:02:43]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:02:43]:
Because it can make just a huge, huge difference. And we see it with animal-assisted therapy, people with any kind of disability, whether it is mental or physical, using animals for therapy. Can make just astounding differences in people’s ability to do just about anything. When I used to take my children and a whole slew of animals to hospitals and nursing homes, I remember going to the veterans hospital once and they had a man who was seemingly basically kind of comatose in bed and he hadn’t spoken to anyone for a very long time, hadn’t gotten out of bed for a very long time. And we put a cat… On his lap, lying in bed, and his whole demeanor changed and he started to talk and he started to talk about animals that he had when he was young and on the farm. And the astounding differences that we can see just by having animals in our lives, it’s pretty amazing. And then when we make changes like my clients for the animals, a lot of times it will also change the lives of the caretakers.

Nick Urban [00:03:58]:
For the science nerds, how is this working specifically? Is it regulating, helping us regulate our nervous system more effectively, or are there some kind of other like chemical messengers that are transmitted between animals and humans?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:04:10]:
Well, I think that a lot of the feel-good chemicals come from the animals and also from us when we interact with the animals. So serotonin goes up, melatonin goes up, and all those things, our cortisol goes down. If you think about anybody who has animals, you come home from a really bad day at work and your dog or your cat greets you at the door. And, you know, if it’s a dog, the tail is wagging and they’re jumping up and down for attention. And everything that went wrong at work sort of gets left on the other side of the door because now you have someone who loves you unconditionally, who wants to be in your space and wants to make you feel better. Think about anybody who has animals. Anytime you’ve been depressed or you’ve been upset and you’re crying, what happens? The animals They sit on your lap, they rub up against you, they lick your tears, and they’re doing everything they can. They’re very empathetic.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:05:09]:
They are doing everything they can to try to bring you back into that space of wellbeing.

Nick Urban [00:05:17]:
All right. So what does a holistic veterinarian do differently? And when it comes to like the idea of food as medicine, how does that apply if the patient is a dog?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:05:27]:
So when we look at holistic medicine versus traditional Western medicine, you know, in traditional Western medicine, it’s sort of like there’s a drug for that. And we tend to look at things individually, like a pet will come in and we do lab work and we, oh, look, your dog is in kidney failure. And so now your dog is labeled as kidney failure. When you come into a holistic veterinarian, and I practice traditional Chinese veterinary medicine, uh, as my base, so it becomes very different. It might be that your dog has a kidney yin and qi deficiency, which is very… and then they may have an overall blood deficiency, which can go in conjunction with that. So we look at the whole animal, not just… so when we have an animal whose kidneys are not doing well, then we know because the water element in Chinese medicine also affects bones, teeth, Nerves, spinal cord, brain. So we know we have to look at everything. And from a holistic standpoint, we are not just going to hand you a pill and say, give this, it’ll be fine.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:06:37]:
We are going to talk about everything that is going on in the pet’s life. And so for me, food is the foundation of life, so I always start there. It’s like, oh, your, your dog has been eating, or your cat has been eating dry kibble. His entire life. That’s a very low moisture food and not the best for digestion. So we’ve got to make a change because this is an animal, particularly if it’s a kidney function issue, this is an animal with a water problem and we’re feeding him a dehydrated food, which is very far from what they would eat in nature. They would eat other animals that are 75 to 80% moisture. So you look at a cat, what’s their normal food? It’s a rabbit or a mouse or a squirrel.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:07:25]:
There’s a lot of moisture in that versus dry kibble that has 6% moisture. So we, we need to make a change just to make everything function better. But then we’re also going to look at, well, what is their, um, environment like? Are they having arthritis issues that goes along with the kidney issues? Are we supplying, uh, you know, a good supportive bed for them? Are we supplying physical therapy if needed to strengthen their muscles and keep them moving well? Are we providing any sort of joint support or pain support if needed? And, you know, can we supply that pain support from a more natural perspective instead of running for the drugs? From a holistic standpoint, I will use drugs if I need to. I have said for many years, if I get hit by a bus, I want some really good drugs first, and then I am going to use all these holistic modalities to put my body back together and make it function. So that’s really what we would do, or I would do, when animals come in the office. It’s like, what do we need to put out the fire right now? Okay, great. Here’s a very short-term drug that I might have to use to put out this fire.

Nick Urban [00:08:41]:
Hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:08:42]:
If I could find something natural, an herb or acupuncture, or a cold laser or whatever else I had in my toolbox that would do the same job and be able to avoid the drug because drugs always have side effects. And so if I could avoid the drug and I had something natural that would put out the fire, I would run for that first. If I needed something very short-term, it’s okay. I’m not afraid to use it. But the goal is minimum chemicals, minimum amount of time, and ask the body to heal, not just treat symptoms. And from a Western medicine standpoint, we are so often only treating symptoms and not asking for healing and not putting all the puzzle pieces back together that have all fallen apart. So we look at things a little differently. We’re also going to look at the emotional state of the animal.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:09:35]:
Is your animal feeling bad? Is your… so here’s a good example. When I, this is before I was into holistic medicine, I had a 9-year-old Doberman. He was a big dog. He was 125 pounds. And He wasn’t very active. We had 3 acres, we had horses on the property. I had 2 small kids. So, you know, and I’m thinking, oh, he’s just getting older.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:09:57]:
He’s sleeping a lot. Well, then the first nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug came out for dogs. And I said, well, he’s probably got some arthritis. I didn’t even x-ray him. I said, he’s probably got some arthritis. And this was touted at this, again, before I was into holistic medicine, this was touted as the best, newest, like this is better than sliced bread. This is gonna cure every patient in the practice, you know? And I said, well, I’m gonna give it a try. Looking back on it, he was absolutely the wrong patient for it, but I gave it to him and within 2 days this dog was racing around our 3-acre property, jumping fences, jumping over the back of the sofa.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:10:36]:
And I went, oh my gosh, you were in pain and I didn’t realize it. So it was a great lesson for me. Like, old age is not a disease and it’s not a diagnosis, but if there, Not being mobile, are we ignoring pain? Do we need to address something? So looking back on it, if I had that dog now who was slowing down and starting to show some of those issues, I’d be saying, well, he probably needs some acupuncture. He probably needs some cold laser. He probably needs some herbs to, and maybe some joint support supplements. And I, I know that I could have gotten that dog up running around the field chasing deer, doing all those things, but I could have done it without the drugs that, that actually a year later resulted in his demise. But, at that time, that was the only thing I had in my toolbox. I didn’t know anything else.

Nick Urban [00:11:27]:
I’m going to be a bad interviewer. This is a 2-part question. I’m now thinking through, you mentioned the holistic lens. And, one of the things when it comes to humans and holistic health is one of the things you look at is the environment, whether it’s mold or it’s just the people you surround yourself, whatever it is, your environment really fundamentally shapes what goes on internally. And then for dogs, if, or any pets, if you’re coming home and you’re all stressed out, are you using them as a crutch at their expense to like help relieve some of the stress that you have? That’s the first part of it. And the second part of it, when it comes to like acupuncture or cold laser or these things, like these are treatments, but like, wouldn’t you still wanna try and find the root cause of what’s going on, what’s causing the, dog to have pain. Like it’s, but of course we want the treatment that has the least side effects possible and it’s better if it’s natural and it works. But then again, like, are you actually addressing whatever the root causes, cause or causes are?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:12:28]:
Yeah. Okay. So environment, uh, on our pets, yes, everything in the environment affects our pets. So if you’re burning candles that have poor quality oils in them, uh, that are making smoke and you know, if you’re using cleaning chemicals, VOCs, all of those things that we’re using in our house, you know, Teflon-coated pans for cooking, uh, all of that stuff has an effect on our pets. When we test for cancer-causing chemicals in the household, and we, if we have dogs, cats, and people all living in the same household, we might test the person and find, you know, in their blood and urine and hair samples that they’ve got 25 different cancer-causing chemicals in them, and here’s a level that they’re at. We’ll test the dogs. The dogs are going to come back with all those same things, but at levels 10 to 15 times higher.

Nick Urban [00:13:23]:
Hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:13:24]:
When we test the, the cats, they are gonna be 25 times higher. And so our pets spend a lot of time on the floor. So if you have rugs that are emitting, you know, if they’re coated in flame retardants, they’re emitting VOCs. Our pets are on that all the time. Whatever cleaning products you’re using on your floors, your pets are lying on that all the time. Your pets also bathe by licking themselves. So anything that they’re exposed to that’s on their skin, on their hair, they’re internalizing all of that. And cats tend to lick and groom a lot more.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:13:59]:
Our stresses, our emotions, 100% affect them. And it is really interesting, but in practice, people would come in with their pet and I’d say, ugh, okay, well, we just diagnosed That he’s got environmental allergies. And the mom will 99% of the time say, ugh, all of my kids have environmental allergies too. Of course our dog does. And so it’s sort of like the pets take on what is going on with family members. So a lot of times if we have somebody with respiratory disease or lung disease, we’ll find the same thing in the animal. Now, is that because they’re all living in a moldy environment? Is it because they’re all living in an environment with poor air quality? Could be. Or are our pets just taking on the same things that we have going on? As far as emotional stresses, yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:14:53]:
We’re using them for a crutch and they will take that on. Like if everybody in your house is in a very depressive, sad, you know, let’s say there’s a death in the family and everybody’s mourning and everybody’s crying and every, or there’s a, you know, Terminal diagnosis. If everybody’s walking around in grief, your animals are going to feel that as well. So we had a dog who, she was a rescue that we’d only had for a couple of years, and she was given a terminal diagnosis. She had intestinal adenocarcinoma. And, um, she only lived 8 weeks from the time of diagnosis to the time when we had to let her go. And we did a lot in those 8 weeks. But part of what I would tell clients and what I did with myself is I said, you know, we experience anticipatory grief.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:15:45]:
And so we start… I have a family member right now whose father has a terminal diagnosis and he’s already in anticipatory grief. He’s already, you know, it’s like, well, you’ve got a couple years probably, like, And enjoy that. But as humans, it’s so easy for us to get stuck in that cycle. And so we have a pet that we’re very attached to and they get a bad diagnosis and we’re already crying and we’re holding them and crying on them. And I can’t stand that I’m going to lose you. So our little dog that was diagnosed with cancer, we had a family pact. Nobody cries over the dog. Nobody cries with the dog.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:16:27]:
You need to cry. You need to be upset, depressed. You go outside. Don’t bring it to the dog. When you’re with the dog, you say, what do you wanna do today? What are we gonna do for fun? Because that’s what your dog is thinking, like, what’s for dinner and what are we doing for fun? Um, so anybody who came to me with a pet with a terminal diagnosis, I would kind of be like, great, you are not allowed to put your anticipatory grief on them. Go outside, uh, or put the dog outside and you stay inside and cry for 20 minutes. I don’t care. Get it out of your system and then go do something fun with them.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:16:59]:
It’s really, really important. Um, as far as the root Yeah. I feel like this is 3 different things, but as far as the root cause, when we do acupuncture or Chinese medicine or food therapy, we are rebalancing the body and we are treating root causes. So let’s say we have a diagnosis of blood deficiency. Well, if we have a blood deficiency, either the bone marrow’s not working right, or we’ve got a liver blood deficiency. So we’re gonna use acupuncture points that are going to rebalance the system and get the system doing what we need it to do. So case in point, I had a dog that came to me. She was about 7 years old, and she had been at the university veterinary hospital.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:17:43]:
She had been put on a drug which is used in people too. It’s called Flagyl, also known as metronidazole. It’s used for, uh, colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, that sort of thing. It’s actually an antibiotic, but it’s also an anti-inflammatory for the bowel. And the dog had a really bad reaction to the metronidazole. And part of the problem was she was on the wrong food, so she had inflammatory bowel disease, so it was put on a drug long-term that is not meant for long-term use, but it caused aplastic anemia. Her bone marrow shut down. And she, she was at the university.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:18:13]:
They put her on high doses of steroids, high doses of immune suppressants, and gave her 3 or 4 or 5 blood transfusions over the period of a couple of months. And her doses of immunosuppressants were so high that all of her muscles wasted. She looked like a kind of walking skeleton with skin because all of the muscles had just disappeared from the drugs. And she had other infections because of the immune suppression that was going on. And over all that that they had done, her bone marrow never responded, and she just couldn’t make red blood cells. And so the university finally said, there’s nothing more we can do, we’ve done everything possible. And they sent her home basically to die with, we can’t do anything else. New client comes to me and says, here’s the situation.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:19:01]:
And I’m like, Okay, never treated this before, but we’ll give it a try. And so I basically treated it from the root cause. Well, what’s the root cause here? We have a spleen Qi deficiency, which means she’s not digesting and absorbing her nutrients correctly to make muscle. So one, we have to wean her off of all these dumb drugs. And 2, we have a blood deficiency because she’s very anemic. Her bone marrow’s not working. I said, okay, great. Here’s the acupuncture points I’m going to use for those 2 things.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:19:31]:
We’re gonna stick those in. You’re gonna come in twice a week. We’re gonna do that. Here is the new diet that your dog needs to eat. And all of the foods that we are going to choose are considered blood tonics, as in, you know, build blood. And they’re also, we were also using things for digestive efficiency. So we added digestive enzymes and probiotics. And within about 3 weeks, she started making red blood cells.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:19:58]:
Now, this is after the university said there’s nothing more that can be done. But they weren’t looking at the root cause. They weren’t, you know, they were basically symptomatically treating, like, we’ll just turn off the immune system. Well, guess what? Part of that’s the bone marrow. This is so, you know, the dog’s body was just like, I don’t know what to do with all of this. None of it’s working. You gave me drugs that caused this, and now you’re giving me more drugs, and I don’t even know what to do with any of that. So, you know, the great thing for me about doing holistic medicine and looking at alternative therapies is the university had a couple of tricks in their little bag of goodies that they could use.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:20:36]:
They could use immune suppressants, they could use blood transfusions. And then you come to me and I’m like, well, I got 27 different things in my bag of tricks. Let’s start going through them. Oh, I did put her on an herbal medicine too. Again, a blood tonic. But so, you know, we are treating the root cause when we do that. We are looking at what is out of balance and what do we need to put back in balance.

Nick Urban [00:20:59]:
Got it. And so, you had the right protocol and you also addressed the diet, the nutrition that presumably is causing, is part of what’s causing the blood to need extra support to begin with.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:21:12]:
Yep, exactly. So, if we’re feeding a diet that is not appropriate for an animal, so for instance, our cats are obligate carnivores and 95% of people feed their cats dry kibble. Dry extruded kibble can’t be more than 30% meat. It doesn’t stick together to make the kibble. It just gums up the machines. So we’re taking an obligate carnivore, which means they have to eat meat, and we give them 30% of their diet is meat, and the other 70% is corn or peas or potatoes, and they don’t know what to do with that. So for, it’s really, it’s worse for our cats. Our dogs do a little better at assimilating things, but, um, ’cause they’re not obligate carnivores.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:21:56]:
If I had cat clients come in and they were vegetarians and they wanted to make their cat a vegetarian or a vegan, yes, there are vegetarian cat foods out there, but I would basically tell them, you can’t be my client. This cat is going to die of things that are nutrient deficiencies. There’s a very big difference between getting all of your nutrients from whole foods versus getting all of your nutrients in a pill. You know, I, on The Jetsons, if you’re old enough to remember The Jetsons cartoon, yes, they could get all their food from a pill and, you know, it just kind of poofed up in their little cooking thing, but we can’t do that. And when you take synthetic vitamins and minerals and amino acids and use those to replace what you’re not getting in the diet, it’s not going to have the same effect.

Nick Urban [00:22:45]:
Yeah. There’s so many cofactors and synergies. You can’t just recreate it from one isolate and think you’re going to get the, all the entourage effect that you get from consuming it in the diet.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:22:55]:
Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:22:55]:
It’s one thing if it’s, it’s, it’s an additional supplement, it’s going on top of an already well-formulated, well-balanced diet.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:23:01]:
Right.

Nick Urban [00:23:01]:
It’s another if it’s completely replacing.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:23:03]:
Exactly.

Nick Urban [00:23:04]:
Yeah. I’ve seen the trend of cats on a vegan diet following what their owners are following. And it makes sense. I, I’m not conspiratorially minded when it comes to a lot of this stuff. Like I think the peop… the companies’ businesses just follow the economics, what makes sense, what they can actually produce. And so I didn’t realize that it was because cat food itself, like you can’t produce it in a way that is compatible with a, an obligate carnivorous diet.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:23:34]:
Right. So that’s with dry kibble, but yes, we can absolutely make diets that are compatible with what our cats need. So this is where the, the, the groundswell over the past decade has been more and more people feeding whole food diets to their pets. So whether that’s raw feeding, gently cooked, But one of the things that is a huge problem for me is if I look at the ingredient list on a pet food, whether it’s a bag, a box, a can, whatever it is, if I see chemical soup on there, you know, it’s sort of like, oh, okay, the first ingredient’s chicken meal. I can kind of guess what that is. The next ingredient might be peas. Well, I know what peas are. And then about 4 ingredients down, all of a sudden it’s just a bunch of chemical names.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:24:21]:
So that’s your synthetic vitamin mineral mix that’s being added in to fill in all the gaps in the diet that are left because it’s not nutritionally complete, either because it doesn’t have all the ingredients that it needs or because it’s undergoing high heat processing, which extruded kibble undergoes high heat processing about 4 times in the process. So you end up with a lot of the nutrient density is just gone. And that’s why we end up having to, when you’re formulating, you’re using a computer model and you put in, okay, we’re gonna use the extrusion method. And all of a sudden it’s like, well, now you have all these deficiencies, you’ve gotta add this vitamin mineral mix back in. And unfortunately, a lot of the recalls that we’ve had in pet food are related to imbalances in those vitamin mineral mixes. There’s only a few companies that make them, so when you get a recall, you’re gonna get it across a lot of brands. The last really big one was in 2018. ’18 and ’19, um, the vitamin mineral mix that a lot of companies were using had excess vitamin D.

Nick Urban [00:25:24]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:25:25]:
And excess vitamin D for our pets will cause kidney failure and kill them. And unfortunately, it takes tens of thousands of animals becoming ill and dying before enough veterinarians start having a little conversation and saying, are you noticing a lot more animals in kidney failure? Like, I’m having 3-year-olds in kidney failure. What’s going on here? And then when enough people ask questions, that’s when we start testing and go, oh, oops. That’s a problem. And so we’ve seen this many times throughout the course of history of pet food, uh, that a mistake is made somewhere, you know, either in the calculations to make the formulation or in what just, you know, got dumped into the vat accidentally. So, you know, for me, if I can get the nutrients from whole foods, I’m like, well, kind of hard to have an excess when you’re eating whole foods.

Nick Urban [00:26:14]:
Yeah, that’s actually the exact pushback that I’ve heard previously. It’s like, okay, I would prepare my own, prepare real foods for my pet, but I don’t know how to do this in a way that is balanced. And this right here, this product, this kibble actually has it already done. Let’s go into this. You told me previously that the same companies that produce our ultra-processed foods for humans are also the ones that are using the sometimes remains of that for pet food. Walk me through what’s physically happening between the rendering plant and a bag of kibble that we’re buying on the shelves.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:26:53]:
All right, this is where I hope none of your listeners are having breakfast or lunch because it’s… when you, when you hear the truth about what goes on, it’s a little scary and eye-opening. So the 2 largest manufacturers and sellers of pet food are Mars. Yep, the candy company who makes ultra-processed food. And Nestlé Purina, another candy company that also makes ultra-processed food for people. And a lot of the waste products from human food go into pet food. And it’s estimated that about 40% of the ingredients that go into pet food are what they call upcycled ingredients. And so that sounds really good. Upcycled, awesome.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:27:35]:
You know, like we’re reusing something so it doesn’t go to the The waste plant, which great. And that’s what they always say to us, like, do you want this to go into a landfill? No, it’s better to be used for pet food. Well, that depends on what it is. So humans, at least in America, because it’s very different in other countries, but we don’t like to eat heart and liver and kidney. We kind of go, ew. But go to Scotland and steak and kidney pie is pretty popular over there. It just depends on your cultural background, but here we don’t usually eat those things. So those are called byproducts.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:28:12]:
And so byproducts aren’t all bad, but there’s also bad byproducts.

Nick Urban [00:28:17]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:28:17]:
So like in the brewing industry, they use a lot of grains for making alcohol and the spent grains, basically the ones that have already had kind of the sugars and the starches and the nutrients taken out of them, Then gets sold to be used in pet food. Well, it’s a good fiber source, but that’s about it, ’cause it doesn’t have much nutrient value left. That kind of got cooked out of it. When we have animals like cows or horses or any kind of food animal, pigs, think of all the chickens that have been killed for avian influenza. What have they done with those millions and millions of chickens that they wanted taken out of the human food chain? So they will kill off the entire poultry house and they usually smother them in foam or put carbon dioxide in, basically suffocate them. Then all those chickens are basically sucked up and go into a rendering vat. And the same if a cow dies out in the field and you don’t know what it died from, you can’t send that off for slaughter for the meat to be used for people. So it goes to the rendering plant.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:29:25]:
The problem is it might sit out in the field for a couple of days, it might sit in the back of a truck for a couple of days, and then it might sit in the parking lot at the rendering plant for a couple of days. So It’s kind of putrid by that point. But all of this goes into a big cooking vat, and that’s what rendering is. It’s basically taking all these different animals, putting ’em in a big vat, cooking it down until you have this soup and everything is basically, you know, cooked down to a mush. And so all the fat, as it cools, all the fat rises to the top. So that is a fatty product that can be used in all kinds of different industries. It can be used in lubricant industries, it can be used in fertilizer industries, it can be used in pet food industry. Then you have all the kind of meat slurry that is dried and made into a meal.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:30:10]:
So on an ingredient list, if you see meat meal or meat and bone meal, so I forget which cartoon it was where they, or which program they used to talk about the mystery meat for lunch in the lunchroom that the, you know, the lunch ladies would serve mystery meat. Well, this is mystery meat because if it says meat meal, we don’t know what it is. It could be poultry, it could be pork, it could be cow. Sometimes it’s horse. It’s whatever went into that vat together. So you never ever wanna buy a pet food product that has meat meal or meat and bone meal. It’s not named. Now, if it says chicken meal, okay, it’s all chicken that they just cooked down the chickens.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:30:50]:
That’s great. The problem is that they cooked down the whole chicken. So I don’t mind the feathers being in there. I don’t mind the organs being in there. I do kind of mind the intestinal contents being in there.

Nick Urban [00:31:02]:
Hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:31:02]:
‘Cause it’s like, oh great, we just cooked down Cook chicken poop for dinner. It’s got some nutrients in it. It’s not all bad. But, and so then we say, well, okay, are anybody worried about the bacterial content of this? Well, no, because it’s cooked at high heat, so the bacteria is killed. So I don’t like to see meals in food because I’m like, I kind of know how that was made. And it’s, ah, which is why I feed gently cooked or raw because, and I’m using whole meats and whole organs, and I know exactly what’s in there, and it doesn’t have the meals, so it doesn’t have that extra stuff in there. The other problem that we get with the ultra-processed kibble-type foods that are extruded is they have to have a starch source to hold it together, otherwise the machines don’t work.

Nick Urban [00:31:46]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:31:46]:
The extrusion process was originated by the Kellogg’s brothers, you know, Kellogg’s cereal, and it was made to make dried flakes of Out of grains. And so in order for this process to work, we have to have that starch source. And that’s why we can only put 30% meat in a dry kibble. Otherwise the machines don’t work. So we always have to have that starch, and it’s going to be a grain or a potato or a legume like peas or lentils. Our pets have zero requirement for carbohydrates in their diet. Zero. Like when you look at the requirements on the computer systems or in the official publication that tells you they need this much of this amino acid and this much protein and this much water or whatever, whatever.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:32:29]:
Under carbohydrates, this is zero, zero requirement. Yet when you feed these ultra-processed foods, they could have 50 to 60% carbohydrates in them.

Nick Urban [00:32:38]:
Hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:32:39]:
And so the requirement’s zero, but what’s the cheapest ingredient to put in is going to be those grains. And the requirements for protein are stated. For dogs, it’s 18%. For cats, I think it’s 22%. is the minimum protein level that you have to have for a food to be complete and balanced. And if we give our pets free choice, like if you just say, here’s a bunch of stuff, pick what you wanna eat, dogs and cats both will choose about 48 to 50% protein and about 45% fat.

Nick Urban [00:33:14]:
Wow.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:33:15]:
And so, you know, the powers that be did some experimentation and said, yeah, but they can survive on 18%. Okay, yeah, they can, but are they thriving? And that 18%, it doesn’t say that has to be meat protein. So peas are very high in protein. So a lot of times the meat protein in that dry extruded kibble is actually pretty low because we needed something to make a starch to make it all stick together. Okay, we’ll go for peas. That raises our protein and peas are a lot cheaper than meat. Yeah. So it’s It’s all about understanding how to read the labels and knowing, you know, what you’re… so people, people generally know like, oh, I want the first ingredient to be a meat.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:33:58]:
Well, in a dry kibble, it’s probably gonna be meat meal, chicken meal, turkey meal, fish meal, whatever meal. But be aware that that is still no… it is maximum 30% of the diet.

Nick Urban [00:34:12]:
Oh. Sad. Not something I really wanna learn about cuz it, it makes the world of pet food a little more dismal. But I mean, it is what it is. So it’s important to know.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:34:26]:
On, on the good side, it is changing. It is definitely changing. And so, and it’s coming, it’s being driven more by pet owners.

Nick Urban [00:34:37]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:34:38]:
Certainly not being driven by veterinarians cuz veterinarians, a lot of their funding for veterinary education, continuing education, veterinary schools, a lot of their funding comes from Big Pharma and big pet food. So they are very much on board with always recommending these, these ultra-processed foods because they’re told how good it is. It’s sort of like advertising wins. And but pet owners have gotten smart over the years and they are asking for gently cooked, fresh food, whole food. And so now we are seeing even these big companies, Hills, Mars, Purina, are now coming out. Almost all of them have, I think all of them have come out with gently cooked fresh foods. The problem is they’re marketing them well and they’re calling them fresh foods and they’re calling them gently cooked, but they’re still using the kind of icky quality ingredients, still way too high in carbohydrates. And the price points on them are so much higher than the whole food products that have been on the market for the past 15 years, ’cause there’s a lot of small companies that have popped up.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:35:51]:
There’s, I see new ones every single day that are making fresh whole foods that are complete and balanced for dogs and cats. And people, this is what people are asking for, and that’s why we’re seeing more and more of it.

Nick Urban [00:36:06]:
Hmm. I had a dog in childhood and this is long before I knew about this whole world of alternative pet health, if you will. We were recommended kibble. Of course, we fed the dog, our dog kibble, and she had kidney issues. We were told that she was getting too much protein in her diet, which…

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:36:28]:
Protein.

Nick Urban [00:36:29]:
Yeah. So if people hear that their dog is getting too much protein, despite having, like, being on consuming kibble, what’s really going on there?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:36:40]:
So funny thing, I graduated from vet school in the ’80s, and I remember very vividly in my first couple years of practice, Purina came out with Purina Hi-Pro, which was a high-protein food. And I clearly and distinctly remember telling clients, oh, Oh, don’t feed that because that extra protein is gonna wreck their kidneys. Uh-uh. Oh my gosh, I feel so bad. Like, if I, if I knew then what I know now, like, I just wanna go back and slap younger me and say, what are you talking about? Uh, so one of the things that is promoted and has been promoted for years is that the instant your pet is diagnosed with any, um, decrease in kidney function… so we, we have 4 stages, stages 1 through 4, and there’s a lot of pets run around in stage 1 kidney disease, kidney failure, whatever we wanna term it. I, I hate the term failure. It’s, it’s sort of like, oh, you went to school today and you failed. Like, no, you didn’t.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:37:43]:
And I don’t, I don’t wanna ever, you know, tell an animal they’re failing. I don’t wanna tell a client that their animal’s failing. So it’s like, yes, his kidney function tests are showing slightly decreased function. Well, in the old days, we would say, oh, we have to restrict Restrict their protein. Absolutely. And so we would put these animals… so remember I said cats need about, you know, minimum is about 22% protein, and dogs is 18%, just for, you know, normal life. And so we would take these animals, as soon as one of their kidney function tests started to go up a little bit, we would instantly put them on a prescription diet that had like 9% protein for dogs and 12% protein for cats. And what we would start seeing… within a couple of months, muscle wasting.

Nick Urban [00:38:26]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:38:27]:
It’s like, ugh, they… and then we get what I used to call them dinosaurs, these old rack of bone cats that are literally just skeletons with skin on ’em. They’re dehydrated all the time because they’re eating dry kibble with no moisture in it. Cats are desert animals. They don’t drink very much. So by… and by nature, they’re supposed to have 75% moisture in their diet. So it’s like, here’s your 6% moisture diet. You’re not gonna go drink enough. Your kidneys aren’t working.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:38:53]:
You’re not conserving the water that you need to. This is like a recipe for failure. Failure. And that’s what we saw, failure. And we saw them lose all their muscle mass. And so then they had mobility issues and they would just sleep in these little curled up balls. Their coats were dry and rough, and we would lose them very quickly, and they would progress very quickly from stage 1 to stage 4 and to death. Now, particularly in holistic practices, there’s no restriction of protein until they hit stage 4.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:39:23]:
Mm-hmm. Like, they’ve gotta be to the point where they just can’t process it anymore. And for a lot of our animals, if we put that… so it’s really more about having a low-phosphorus diet. It’s really interesting, but phosphorus is much more important for kidney failure than the whole protein thing is. So now we look at ’em, we go, okay, well, we’ll keep their phosphorus level low by, you know, changing their diet around a little bit. We’re gonna put them on a high moisture diet. And from a Chinese medicine standpoint, we’re going to feed them Kidney Jing tonics, which is basically things that support the kidneys. Kidneys are the root of life.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:39:59]:
For humans, when we’re born in Chinese medicine, we’re given 100 years. If we treat our body well, basically treat our kidneys well, our kidneys will give us 100 years of life. If we do things really great, you know, we stay active, we eat well, we don’t drink, we don’t smoke, we don’t take drugs, Maybe we’ll get 120. That, that’d be amazing. There aren’t very many people that manage that. But, you know, everything that we do that is an attack on our body or an attack on our kidneys, attack on our immune system, our gut, is taking that 100 and going, eh, eh, eh, eh, and just shortening it down.

Nick Urban [00:40:36]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:40:36]:
And we don’t know what that number is for dogs and cats. In my mind, it’s 20 for dogs and 30 for cats. And not very many people see that. But in my practice, we were seeing it more and more. And so that’s what we want to do. We want to support that kidney function. So what supports the kidneys? Well, they’re the root of life. So what’s the root of life? Eggs, small fish, sprouts, small seeds.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:41:01]:
So we’re going to make a diet that’s going to incorporate those things because those are all going to support kidney function and it needs to be high moisture. So that’s why I design recipes, and I have a couple of dog cookbooks, cat one hasn’t come out yet, to be utilized for different problems. Is your pet having a kidney problem, a heart problem, arthritis problem, which is related to the kidneys? Are they having respiratory issues? Well, we can fix so many of these problems using food.

Nick Urban [00:41:34]:
That’s great. We’re gonna come back to this because it’s a super important topic. I don’t want this to all be about fear. We’ll return to the thread of eggs and small fish and things that we can do that aren’t going to break, break the bank, but can dramatically transform our pets’ health. Before we go there to paint what’s possible on the other side of this, if someone has a pet right now, how has life expectancy changed now and in the not too distant past? Because I think if we understand that we actually can change these things by what we give our pets, the way we treat them, it paints a very different picture than what the conventional approach currently shows.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:42:12]:
Yeah, absolutely. So back in the 1970s, the average life expectancy for a medium-sized dog was 17. It’s now 10. So we’re doing things wrong. So that tells us something right there. And food is part of it. You know, the good news, and I don’t like to be the picture of gloom and doom, I wanna be the, the person who’s offering hope, like we can fix this. Right now, the, the The chances of your dog getting cancer, 1.6 out of every 2.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:42:37]:
It’s really high.

Nick Urban [00:42:38]:
Wow.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:42:39]:
So we wanna look at how do we change that? How do we get that longevity? And if we’re doing things right, right now, I was just talking to somebody the other day who said, oh, my Great Dane is 7 and a half. He’s really old. And I’m like, old? He’s like only halfway there. Like, you know, I was getting Great Danes and German Shepherds and these large breed dogs in my practice that were living 13, 14, 15, 16 years. So I don’t want people to look at their 10-year-old dog and go, oh my gosh, he’s gonna die. No, like you should be looking at your 10-year-old dog and saying, all right, we’re halfway there. And, you know, still wanting to get that longevity. And it’s never too late to change.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:43:20]:
We adopted an 8-year-old ex-puppy mill breeding male, and he, on his x-rays, he’s only 8, his x-rays were horrible.

Nick Urban [00:43:28]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:43:28]:
He had the worst arthritis. And I was like, I don’t even know how this dog is moving. That dog with us lived to be 19.

Nick Urban [00:43:36]:
Whoa.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:43:37]:
And so, you know, we started with somebody in a really bad place, and he was just… he ruled the roost. We had 13 dogs at the time, and he had all his girls that were his little harem. And he, he was just… he was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, so he was 15 pounds, but he was large and in charge, and he was just like, I got this. And he lived to 19 with a very high quality of life. So it’s never too late to change. It’s never too late to say, okay, I’m feeding kibble, but what can I add to the bowl? And if you can’t make a complete changeover, then you can just add some whole foods to the bowl, and that is gonna make a huge difference. Um, and then we can also talk about vaccines and chemicals and all the other things that go into that as well.

Nick Urban [00:44:25]:
Sure. Let’s start right there. Say someone’s standing at their fridge right now. They have perhaps an egg in their hand. What are the actual things that they can feed their dog that are simple, don’t require a huge bud… budget, perhaps more than they will spend on their own meal, and that they can add in a, like, time-efficient manner as well?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:44:45]:
So literally just about anything. We can’t feed our dogs and cats grapes and raisins. They’re toxic to some of them and we don’t know why. Uh, so don’t feed grapes and raisins, but other fruits, vegetables, meat, Eggs are super, super good. I know the price of eggs keeps going up and down and up and down. We have our own chickens, so it’s no big deal for me. But sardines, canned sardines are an amazing topper. It’s a small fish, just buy them in water.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:45:12]:
I tend to buy mine like by the case from Amazon or Vitacost or wherever, and I just keep them in the cabinet and it’s like, oh, I need a topper, I need a little add-on. So, So we use things like that. Pumpkin is really good for them. Any kind of mushrooms that you’re cooking for your family are excellent for the dogs and the cats. They may or may not eat them. We really like to use coconut oil and olive oil if we’re going to be adding fats to their diet, especially if we’re gonna be cooking. But steaming and sautéing veggies, if you’re making, you know, steamed spinach for the family, throw some on the dog’s bowl. You can try your cats.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:45:52]:
Sometimes they go for it and sometimes they don’t. But if you bake a chicken and you don’t add a bunch of spices and you, you know, you don’t want your pets to have the drippings, the grease off of that, that’s a big problem.

Nick Urban [00:46:02]:
Oh.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:46:02]:
You don’t wanna feed them the skin and the fats. But let’s say you bake a skinless chicken breast. It’s perfectly fine to peel some of that off and add it to your dog’s bowl, or your cat’s bowl, or feed it as a treat. Fresh blueberries. My dogs, I make, we have our own dairy cow, so I freeze little treats of whole milk for them, which they absolutely love. But if I don’t have any and I run out, then we use frozen blueberries. It’s like, here, have a blueberry. They think it’s like the best thing in the world.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:46:30]:
Blueberries are so good for them, just like they are for us. They have all those antioxidants in them. Those, those dark purple colors are good blood tonics. I mean, there’s just good things about them. Uh, one of my Dobermans loved carrots. We had a horse training barn, and God forbid a client would bring a bag of carrots for the horses, ’cause he was in the barn, he’d steal ’em, and they were gone. Um, You know, a lot of the herbs and things that we use, I have an herb garden. My dogs go out there, even my cats, and they graze in the herb garden.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:46:59]:
And it’s really, it’s zoopharmacognosy, which is basically allowing the animals to self-treat.

Nick Urban [00:47:08]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:47:08]:
And so I will see them out in the herb garden and they’ll sniff the lemon balm and go, yeah, not today. They walk over to the dill and go, yeah, not today. They walk over to the spearmint or peppermint and go, oh man, I’m chowing down. And they’ll sit there and just eat a cupful of leaves. It’s like, okay, your digestive system needed a little help today. That’s good to know. And so I just kind of let them go graze through the herb garden and pick whatever they want. But, you know, any of the squashes, sweet potatoes are actually pretty good for our dogs.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:47:41]:
So if you have a garden or a farm stand and you’re buying fresh stuff for yourself, make a little extra for the pets.

Nick Urban [00:47:49]:
Interesting. But you would not recommend using the same herbs and spices in the food that you’re going to serve to them because then they don’t have the option of…

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:47:56]:
They don’t have the option and you might make it too spicy for them. And if it’s something… one of the really interesting products that we carried for a while and then they stopped making them were herb gardens. And they were for cats, but you could use them for any animal. And so they would come with 10 little packets of herbs in them. And there was one labeled for Arthritis and one labeled for grief and one labeled for anxiety. And it would have 10 little different packs of herbs. And what we were supposed to do is take a towel and lay it on the floor, then put the 10 piles of herbs around the towel, separate them a little bit from each other, and then put your cat on the floor and see what they do. And the first time I did that, I took one of my indoor cats and I said, have at it, do what you want.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:48:44]:
And so she kind of sniffed all of them and then found one that she really wanted and she ate it all. I was like, all right, fine. And then she found the next one and she rolled in it. I said, okay. And then she went to 3 more and said, meh, and just walked away from them. And it’s really interesting. So you can buy dried herbs and you can… and we used to do this with essential oils. We used to do a lot of horse chiropractic.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:49:11]:
And we had 2 bottles of essential oils. One was lavender and one was rosemary. And horses are very definite about what they like and don’t like. So we would take the bottle, both bottles, and one at a time, hold them in front of the horse, and they’d either back away from it or they would do the Flehmen response, which is sticking their nose up to bring the odors in.

Nick Urban [00:49:34]:
Oh.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:49:34]:
And so whichever one they chose, It was like, oh, you really like this one. This is going to be the calming oil for you. And so, we would just put a couple drops on the horse, and it made it much easier to do their chiropractic or their acupuncture because now they were in the mood of, I love you, you brought me something I really like. And lavender, almost everybody knows that that is very calming and soothing, but there were some horses that were like, uh-uh, no way, don’t get that near me. And so, giving them a choice is a lot better than giving them something that’s highly seasoned with, you know, 5 different herbs that you like, ‘Cause they may not.

Nick Urban [00:50:10]:
Ah, so I mean, that seems like you could apply that same principle to like the food you’re giving cats and dogs too. It’s like you have a couple different things on your plate, assuming that they’re in the list of all the foods that are non-toxic to them. Bring a little bit to each of them, bring a little bit of, of each of them to the animal and then see what they like and then give them a little more of that. Yeah. And less of the things that they don’t like.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:50:32]:
Absolutely. I mean, we have 9 cats right now and my mother does all the cat feeding. She lives with And, um, she offers the cats 2 different proteins at every meal. She feeds them twice a day. And so they, they eat on these big platters, and the platter might have rabbit at one end and chicken at the other end. And you’ll get some cats that dive into rabbit and some that dive into chicken. And so she always gives them a choice. And we have about 10 different proteins.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:50:58]:
So every day, every meal, it’s, you know, 2 different things. And it’s really interesting. And Not, you know, you kind of go, well, they all should like chicken and they all should like rabbit. No, it’s about half and half. Interesting.

Nick Urban [00:51:13]:
One thing that stuck with me is that like our animals are a live readout of our environments. They’re more sensitive to the chemicals and things that we’re using. So when you’re working with a client and they’re asking you about like what they should be using, of course you’re going to recommend non-toxic stuff. For them and for the pets. When it comes to diet specifically, are animals more sensitive to conventional versus organic? Like, does it bioaccumulate in their bodies faster than it would for humans?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:51:43]:
I, I’m not sure that anyone has looked at that specifically, but we do know that there are huge differences in the microbiome of our pets if they are fed like grass-fed, free-range meats versus confinement-raised raised animals, we’ll see differences in the microbiome. We also see differences in the microbiome is basic. We have microbiome all over our body. So there are certain bacteria and things that live on our skin, in our lungs, in our gut, and inside our noses. It’s all different. I did a really interesting experiment with my cats because 7 of them are barn cats that we live on a farm. So they’re outside and they get, all of our cats get fed the same thing, indoor and outdoor, but the outdoor cats obviously have a different lifestyle. They’re hunting all the time.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:52:36]:
They’re running through the fields. They’re catching grasshoppers, they’re catching mice, doing normal cat stuff, climbing trees, being crazy. Our 2 indoor cats are a little bit older. They could go out if they wanted to, but they don’t want to. And they eat the same thing, but they don’t have the same activity level. They kind of just hang out. And cats, one of the things with them is they really In nature, they like to climb. So you see cats climbing trees and sometimes they get stuck.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:53:05]:
We have cats that climb in the barn rafters. And a lot of people don’t offer that indoor climbing or the hunting for prey inside. I’m not saying you need to turn mice loose in your house, but you do need to give your cat a chance to hunt and pounce on something. So whether you use toys for that, a lot of people use like a laser laser beam for the cats to chase. If you do that, make sure they get to win at the end. So throw a toy where you turn off the light, or throw a treat where you turn off the light so they can jump on it and carry off their, their, their spoils. But I did microbiome testing, so it’s just a stool test on my indoor and outdoor cats who all eat the same base diet, and my indoor cats came back with unbalanced microbiomes, whereas my outdoor cats came back with beautiful microbiomes.

Nick Urban [00:53:57]:
Really?

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:53:58]:
And the difference is that studies have shown that over 80% of indoor cats are highly stressed because they’re not doing normal cat things, which is the hunting and the jumping and the climbing and all of that. And, you know, we have 4 dogs in the house with 2 cats, and that could be a little stressful. They mostly get along, but, you know, every once in a while a dog will go, hey cat, let’s chase, you know? And so, But it was really interesting to me that, you know, just the difference in environment was enough to make a difference in microbiome. So we see the, you know, the same thing in our dogs based on, you know, what they’re being fed, what kind of chemicals are being used on them, what kind of chemicals are in the environment, how over-vaccinated they are, and how stressed they are. Like, is there a lot of stress in the household? If you have have a lot of fighting going on in the household or a lot of high anxiety, a lot of worry, that’s gonna show up on them as well. And a lot of times it shows up in the gut. And so like I have one little guy, he’s very, very attached to me. And so he has separation anxiety.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:55:08]:
He’s a COVID baby.

Nick Urban [00:55:09]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:55:10]:
So, you know, he, he basically grew up without going out in public and meeting a lot of people and seeing a lot of… I’m like, he’s on the farm. He’s got other dogs. He’s got people It seemed like it was normal until I took him into town the first time and he lost his mind. But, and even though there’s almost always somebody home in our house, if I’m not home, he’s stressed. And so he has weird bouts of vomiting if he’s had a couple of stressful days.

Nick Urban [00:55:41]:
Sense.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:55:41]:
And so it shows up as my gut can’t do this. And if we look at his microbiome on those days, it’s very different. than it is on the days that he’s all chill and mom’s been home for the whole week.

Nick Urban [00:55:53]:
Wow.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:55:54]:
So yeah, we talk about the gut-brain axis. Basically, our microbiome in our gut, their gut, is responsible for making things like short-chain fatty acids and butyrate and things that affect the chemicals that are produced by the brain. serotonin and melatonin and all those feel-good chemicals when we’re stressed and the gut gets out of whack, then… so, it’s sort of like which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the anxiety, the gut imbalance, or the gut imbalance, then the anxiety? Because it could go either way.

Nick Urban [00:56:32]:
Yeah. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to you, but…

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:56:34]:
Speaking of. Hi.

Nick Urban [00:56:36]:
Hi. I’m sure this comes as no surprise to you, but I’m now realizing how many parallels there are between humans and other animals.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:56:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. We see so many things the same, and that’s why it’s really important that in taking care of them, we’re taking care of us. When you get on a plane and they’re going through their whole put on your seatbelt and do this and do that, one of the things they always say is put on your oxygen mask before helping somebody else. And so, we see that for people who have animals with a terminal diagnosis, or that 19-year-old dog who’s having mobility issues. One of the things that we say is make sure that you have the equipment that you need. So, if you have a big dog that you’re helping them get up, make sure you have the right harness or the right way to help lift them. If you blow out your back, there’s nobody to care for the dog.

Nick Urban [00:57:35]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:57:35]:
So, it’s really critical critical that we keep ourselves healthy in order to keep them healthy.

Nick Urban [00:57:42]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:57:43]:
So, they go hand in hand. You know, a lot of the… we don’t have 100% handle on what causes cancer. If we did, we’d be able to cure cancer a lot better. But, you know, we know some things that contribute to it. And we know that high anxiety, high cortisol, high blood sugar, which, if we look at the blood sugar on animals that are fed high carbohydrate diets, it’s gonna run around 120 in dogs. Uh, we look at raw fed or dogs that are fed whole food, low carbohydrate diets, their blood sugar runs around 80. That’s a huge difference.

Nick Urban [00:58:24]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:58:25]:
In what stress we’re putting on the body.

Nick Urban [00:58:27]:
Wow.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:58:27]:
And what stress we’re putting on the endocrine system, the adrenal glands, the, uh, pituitary gland, the thyroid, It just makes such a huge difference. One of the things that is really being looked at now is spay and neuter.

Nick Urban [00:58:45]:
Hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:58:46]:
For as long as I can remember, since we’ve kind of come into the new realm of veterinary medicine, we’ve always, and what I was taught in school, we’ve always been taught spay and neuter all dogs at 6 months of age. And now with shelter medicine, we’re spaying and neutering as early as 8 weeks of age.

Nick Urban [00:59:03]:
Wow.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:59:04]:
But we’re, yeah, we’re finally getting a lot of studies coming out, particularly in large breed dogs, not as bad in the small breeds, but particularly in large breed dogs. Dogs that are left intact have a lower incidence of cancer.

Nick Urban [00:59:16]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:59:17]:
And have more longevity. Uh, so we’re starting to question what have we been doing? And it’s really interesting because we can compare it to Scandinavian countries, uh, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Denmark, they don’t spay and neuter. They leave their dogs intact. And interestingly, they don’t have the overpopulation problems that we have.

Nick Urban [00:59:40]:
Wow.

Dr. Judy Morgan [00:59:40]:
So, you know, part of the reason… and I get, you know, all the rescue people get really mad at me when I say, hey, we should leave these guys intact because it’s better for their health. You know, God, God put those organs there for a reason and they have a big purpose, you know. And for people who argue and say, well, she might get a uterine infection or he might get testicular cancer. so we should remove those body parts. I’m like, so I might get bone cancer in a leg, so I should remove my leg on the 1% chance that something might happen? It’s such a weird argument, but we’ve been using it for so many years. And then the overpopulation problem is a people problem. It’s not an animal problem.

Nick Urban [01:00:25]:
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:00:25]:
It’s us being responsible owners, which sadly Sadly, a lot of us are not. But if we, again, if we compare it to Scandinavian countries where they don’t automatically spay and neuter and most of their dogs are left intact, cats are different. We do need to spay and neuter them by a year of age because they have different issues. But for the dogs, leaving them intact is protective against a lot of things.

Nick Urban [01:00:52]:
That makes perfect sense too. Because if you think about it, even if we were just to push that time back when you spay or neuter, That would probably have better effects if you have to do it at all than it is to move it down to 8 weeks. Yeah. Because there’s a purpose of these and like these hormones are anti-inflammatory. They have like all kinds of other like anti-aging effects when they’re at natural levels. When you completely remove the organ that’s, or you disable the organ that’s supposed to produce these hormones, it’s gonna mess with the physiology.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:01:20]:
Yeah, it’s a huge problem. So one of the things and why it’s a bigger problem in the large breeds When we spay and neuter early before they have finished growing, which for these large breeds is a long time, like 18 to 24 months that they continue to grow. If we spay or neuter before they’re done growing, before their growth plates close, the long bones get longer.

Nick Urban [01:01:43]:
Oh.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:01:44]:
And so we end up with these dogs with really long legs. I have a friend with a Cavalier who was, neutered at 8 weeks of age. And I call him Stilts because he has the longest legs on any Cavalier I have ever… he is so tall.

Nick Urban [01:01:59]:
Wow.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:02:00]:
And it’s because his hormones were taken away and his bones kept growing. And so for the large breeds of dogs, we end up with hip dysplasia and elbow dysplasia because those bones grow so long and they push out of the socket and causes huge problems for them. So, You know, in, in my last few years of practice, as these studies were starting to come out, we totally changed what we were doing and we were trying to leave them intact as long as possible, particularly for the large breeds.

Nick Urban [01:02:28]:
Of course.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:02:28]:
But, you know, for a lot of people who were just like, listen, I’ve got males and females and everybody’s crazy when somebody’s in heat and I just can’t deal with this anymore. So somebody’s gotta get something done. It’s usually the girls that end up getting done, but we would wait till they were about 24 months old. It’s like, okay, they’re done growing. We’re in pretty good shape at this point. Um, we can do it and then we monitor because the endocrine system, all the glands work together. And very commonly when we take, uh, an older, middle-aged or older, uh, dog, particularly large breed, and we then spay or neuter them, 6 months later their thyroid gland goes.

Nick Urban [01:03:06]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:03:06]:
And it’s because, you know, and then a lot of times we end up with Cushing’s disease or Addison’s disease.

Nick Urban [01:03:11]:
Yes.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:03:11]:
‘Cause the adrenal gland is struggling.

Nick Urban [01:03:14]:
Yeah.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:03:14]:
So all those endocrine system organs work together, and when you take away one, the rest of ’em kind of go, eh, we gotta make up the difference here. And then everything starts to struggle.

Nick Urban [01:03:26]:
Well, Dr. Judy, we have a long checklist of things to do, including changing the diet or adding in certain things, delaying spaying and neutering as long as possible, cleaning up the home. There’s one more story that I think really nicely exemplifies the idea of putting on your own mask before you put on your pets. But one other thing before we get there, when it comes to the environment of your home where the pets live, are there any particular substitutions or removals or additions that you see having the biggest effect? If you’re using, say, a cleaning product on the carpets, that’s the first one and most important one to get rid of?

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:04:03]:
Yeah. I mean, any of those chemicals. I had a dog that came in, had been adopted from the Virgin Islands, and he was with a rescue group, and his skin was terrible, absolutely terrible. So they allergy tested him and found that a duck-based diet was gonna be pretty non-allergenic for him. And then he was getting environmental allergy injections, like all kinds of things that they were doing. And his caretaker was so good, but this dog stunk so bad because his skin was so horrible. And so I’d been working with the dog for a couple of months and we just weren’t getting anywhere. And I I said, we’re missing something here.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:04:41]:
And I said, you know, he really stinks. Do you have carpet in your house? And she said, yes. And I said, how many dogs do you have in your house? Because this is a foster home. And she says, I have 7 or 8 dogs. And I said, does your carpet smell as bad as this dog smells? And she said, no, I use a perfume carpet powder on my carpet. And I went, oh, light bulb moment.

Nick Urban [01:05:04]:
Okay.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:05:05]:
Hey, your dog, this dog is allergic to that stuff. It is very irritating. Not only is it irritating to his skin, but it’s also irritating his sinuses and everything else. Um, so I had her just steam clean the carpets with no chemicals, get all of that powder back outta there. Within 2 weeks, the dog looked beautiful. And so it was just a light bulb lesson for me. Like, we have to look at what is in the environment of these animals. And, you know, it could be dust mites, It, you know, if you, one of the best things you can do for yourselves and your dogs is get rid of carpet.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:05:38]:
We have no carpet in our house. I don’t want carpet, especially with animals. Like the hair sticks to it, all the smells, like, ugh, God. It’s just, it’s just a breeding ground for everything bad. Um, and then cleaning your floors, make sure that you’re not using chemicals. Like if it’s got all those perfumey smells in it. And one of the things that I discovered when I was doing research on VOCs is the natural or green Like plug-in air fresheners? They’re just as bad. They are not natural.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:06:07]:
They are not green. They are not good for anyone. I had one dog that had all kinds of sinus problems, and his owner happened to be a very heavy smoker.

Nick Urban [01:06:19]:
Hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:06:19]:
So I was like, okay, well, we can chalk it up to the cigarette smoke is causing problems for this dog. But in order to cover up the cigarette smell, she wore very, very heavy perfume. Like, you knew when she walked in the office. And, you know, it wasn’t offensive to me, but I was like, man, I can’t imagine living in that environment where everything is saturated with smoke and then permeated with this perfume. And the dog ended up developing sinus cancer, and it was just from chronic assault of chemicals that are bad.

Nick Urban [01:06:55]:
Hmm.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:06:55]:
So, for anybody who’s a smoker, probably nobody listening to this podcast smokes because you’re the health guys, guy. Uh, so I would hope that’s not a problem, but if it is, man, get outta the house. Do not subject your animals to that.

Nick Urban [01:07:09]:
Yeah. And even if you use a, a cleaner of some kind, a green, healthy cleaner, make sure that it’s not gonna mess with the dog. And I’m sure these days you can figure out whether or not the cleaner is gonna be toxic.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:07:18]:
One of the things that we, we like to use for cleaning is white vinegar. Yeah. Dilute, dilute white vinegar. Um, which is funny because for our cow milking machine, We clean it with vinegar, but it’s a 49% vinegar. It is really strong. Don’t wanna use that in your house. Like, I can barely stand when I’m cleaning the machine. And even that we dilute down.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:07:37]:
But it, you know, a dilute white vinegar, and I have recipes in my book, Raising Naturally Healthy Pets. There are natural cleaning recipes that you can make yourself using high-quality essential oils. And with the oils, you only need a drop or 2 in a quart of water. It’s so dilute, but it’ll give you that smell. Lemon is wonderful for cleaning. A lot of really good things that we can use that will do a great job cleaning and not leave all those chemicals in your house.

Nick Urban [01:08:06]:
Beautiful. Dr. Judy, if people wanna pick up your books or to connect with you online, where do you wanna send them?

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:08:12]:
NaturallyHealthyPets.com or DrJudyMorgan.com, all goes to the same place. Uh, and we have about 700 different products on our website, natural health supplements. Uh, my books are available there and on Amazon. Uh, we also have courses available. available if people wanna dive deeper into making their own pet food, treating naturally, all kinds of different things available. Uh, but we’re on all social media, so if you have questions about anything with your pet, if they’re suffering with chronic allergies, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, we’ve probably got information about it somewhere on our social media or website.

Nick Urban [01:08:50]:
Perfect. I will put a link to all those in the show notes for this, and I believe your team also set up a code, HIGHPERFORMANCE50. So if you guys tuning in, go ahead and use that. I think that will save you on Dr. Dr. Judy, one thing to wrap up this episode, and it kind of ties a bow on the whole thing. Tell me about the story that we discussed a long time ago about the client who didn’t know how to turn on her oven.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:09:15]:
Oh my gosh. So I used to do a lot of phone consultations. And so this was an older woman in California, and I cannot remember what was wrong with her dog, but she wanted to know what to feed her dog to solve the issue. I was like, all right, this would be pretty simple. I can’t remember what it was. And so I started going through all the different foods that would be great. And she… I said, you know, is there something that your dog… well, he really likes it when I share my chicken with him. And I’m like, oh, cool.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:09:44]:
And so I started going over a recipe that I wanted her to use. And she said, well, how do I make this? And I said, well, you know, you could put it in a slow cooker. You could, you know, mix it all up and put it in a pan in the oven. And she said, Oh, I don’t know how to turn on my oven. And I said, do you live alone? She said, yes. I said, really? How? And then she said, well, I guess I could call a neighbor to come over and turn on my oven or to teach me how to do it. And I said, oh my gosh, this lady’s going to burn down her house. So I said, well, what do you eat that you’re sharing chicken with your dog? And I’m thinking she’s going to say rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, which would be horrible.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:10:25]:
And instead she He says, I buy TV dinners. And I went, oh, okay, there’s a lot of sodium and preservatives in there, but, and man, your health probably isn’t good, but okay. And I said, so you microwave a TV dinner for yourself every night? Yes.

Nick Urban [01:10:38]:
Okay.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:10:39]:
And you’re sharing that with your dog? Yes. And I’m like, oh, this is so not good. So I said, well, if I could find a company that makes basically a TV dinner for your dog, all you have to do is, you know, peel the plastic off the top and put it in the microwave, warm it up. Could you do that? that? Oh yeah, I’m great with the microwave. I said, okay. And it just happened that there was a fairly new company that would do that, that would make, uh, pre-made portion-size meals for your dog, uh, that were complete and balanced. And so I solved her problem. She had no problem spending the money on it.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:11:11]:
She had no… like, deliver it to my house, this is awesome, like I don’t even have to go to the store. And so she was really happy. And so I thought this was really weird that she didn’t know how to turn on Well, then I get an office manager who bought a small condo and she didn’t have much storage space. And so she stored all of her purses and shoes in her oven. And I said, what are you doing? And she said, well, I don’t have much storage space and I never turn the oven on. So it’s a box, it’s a hole in the wall that I could put things in. So I guess there are people out there. I mean, my oven’s in use all the time, but there are people out there who don’t know how to turn on their oven.

Nick Urban [01:11:51]:
Yep. And even if that’s you, a small tweak here and there can still make a radical difference in your health. And if it’s you that’s coming across and doing it for yourself, or it’s your pet that’s inspiring that change, either way it works.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:12:05]:
Yeah. I’ve had, I had one client in Pittsburgh who didn’t know how to cook. She’s a young woman and she went and took cooking lessons so that she could learn how to cook. And her father lived with her and she said, we used to eat out all the time. Now I can cook.

Nick Urban [01:12:20]:
Well, Dr. Judy, it’s been a pleasure and really fun chatting with you on all things about holistic veterinary, veterinary health, and then also how that can translate into better human health, because after all, like a life with a canine or feline companion can be a better life. And so thank you for joining the podcast.

Dr. Judy Morgan [01:12:42]:
Thank you very much for the invitation.

Nick Urban [01:12:45]:
And for all you tuning in, thank you for sharing your time, your energy, and your attention with us. Until next time, be an outlier. Thanks for tuning in to High Performance Longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes, and resources mentioned at outlier.com. Until next time. In the meantime, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.