The Beljanski Cancer Talk Show

Episode 7: Animals Prove Integrative Medicine Works with Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM

• The Beljanski Foundation • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Join hosts Sylvie Beljanski and Victor Dwyer as they welcome Dr. Marlene Siegel, an integrative veterinarian with 40 years of experience, to discuss her approach to bioregulatory medicine. Dr. Siegel highlights the importance of addressing the root causes of health problems in pets and elaborates on the integration of eastern and western practices in veterinary medicine. She emphasizes the significance of species-appropriate diets for pets and addresses common deficiencies and toxicities found in pet diets.

Dr. Siegel also delves into the role of emotional health in pets, explaining how human stress can mirror onto them. She provides insights into various holistic treatments for conditions like cancer and underscores the importance of proper nutrition and detoxification.

In this episode, Dr. Siegel offers practical advice for pet owners on enhancing their pets' health through diet, reducing environmental toxins, and ensuring plenty of love and exercise. For more resources, including training courses and consultations, visit her website at drmarlenesiegel.com.


Episode Highlights:

  • The Integrative Approach to Pet Care
  • Differences Between Integrative and Conventional Vet Visits
  • Species-Appropriate Diets for Pets
  • Challenges of Feeding Pets a Vegan Diet
  • Emotional Health and Pets
  • Addressing Cancer in Pets Holistically
  • Understanding Disease Causes
  • Detoxification and Elimination
  • Advanced Therapies for Pets
  • Importance of Light and Lifestyle
  • Top Recommendations for Pet Owners
  • Cost and Benefits of Raw Diet
  • Lymphatic and Fascia Health

Dr. Siegel is a renowned holistic veterinarian dedicated to transforming pet health. She's generously offering a FREE ebook on the 5 Keys to Healing Pets! 📚🐶🐱

📥 Grab your free ebook here: 5 Keys to Healing Pets

Stay connected with Dr. Siegel:

🌐 Website: http://www.drmarlenesiegel.com/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMarleneSiegelHolisticVet
📸 Instagram: @drmarlenesiegel
🐦 Twitter: @msiegeldvm
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarlenesiegel/
📺 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drmarlenesiegel 


Don't miss out on the opportunity to learn from the best in holistic pet care! 🌿🐾



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Introduction: The Alarming Rise of Pet Cancer

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Dog cancer rates right now, as I am sitting here talking to you, is almost a hundred percent. It's over one out of 1.65. Cats, they say, is 1 out of 3. I think that's highly underreported. So, we're talking a… epidemic of disease in these animals.

Welcome to the Beljanski Cancer Talk Show

Victor Dwyer: Welcome to today's episode on The Beljanski Cancer Talk Show. In this episode titled, ‘Animals Prove Integrative Medicine Works,’ Sylvie and I are honored to welcome the renowned veterinarian, Dr. Siegel. She's a pioneer in integrative medicine for over two decades. As an esteemed author, globe trotting lecturer, and hands on clinician, she's dedicated to advancing holistic healthcare for our furry friends.

Tune in to be inspired as we explore how animals prove integrated medicine works. Dr. Siegel, thank you so much for joining us today. Please give the audience a little intro about who you are, and then we'll dive into a little bit about animals and integrated medicine. Thank you so much for joining.

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Thank you for enjoying the fur world into your world.

And I really appreciate that.

Meet Dr. Marlene Siegel: Integrative Veterinarian

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: So, my name is Dr. Marlene Siegel and I am an integrated veterinarian, which is a very different type of nomenclature than what we're used to hearing. I actually do what is called bioregulatory medicine, which means simply that we find the root cause of the problem and we Fix the root cause of the problem so it doesn't keep coming back, manifesting as a different issue.

And I've been a veterinarian for 40 years. That's four zero. And I've been doing integrative medicine for over 25.

Victor Dwyer: Wow. That's amazing.

Understanding Integrative Medicine for Pets

Victor Dwyer: Can you give us, the audience, a little intro about what integrated medicine is in your point of view?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Absolutely! So, we're taught in medical school or veterinary school to name it blame it and they come up with a pharmaceutical fix for it, but we're not really taught the why and the how. So, for instance in the lymphatic system, we know there's a lymphatic system. We know it makes some of our antibodies and we know it gets cancer, but we were never really taught how do we keep the lymphatic system healthy.

So, in a true integrative approach, we're taking the best of both worlds, the best of the Eastern modalities and the Western modalities, and we're focused on understanding what are we doing that is creating the problem, whether it's in the food, the water, the environment, the toxins, deficiencies, whatever that is - we identify what those underlying causes are, and then we come up with solutions so that, ultimately, we allow the body to do the healing. We're not smarter than the body. The body has this amazing innate intelligence. And when we can tee the body up to do its job properly and stop doing the things that are creating a problem with the body, then it's pretty, I would call it miraculous, but it's really common sense.

The body does what it is innately understanding to do.

The Comprehensive Approach to Veterinary Care

Sylvie Beljanski: So, so technically, uh, if I am a pet parent and I go to your dispensary, uh, how is the experience going to be different from going to a regular vet?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Oh, Sylvie, that was a great question. Thank you. So first of all, all veterinarians should be taking a thorough history.

And most of them do. And when I say thorough, I'm looking at everything that that animal is exposed to currently, and what has happened in its past. So what was it eating before it came to me, historically, what kind of lifestyle, what kind of toxins are in the environment. All of those questions and of course any health challenges that they've had in the past and how it was treated.

Then the second thing I do is a very thorough physical exam. I call it from the tutor to the snooter. So, from tip to tail. We can, we look at everything and, and honestly, I was trained so early in my career that even if it's a broken toenail, do a thorough exam because if you don't look, you're going to miss it.

So, we really want to make sure that it's a thorough exam. So, in those two categories, if you go to your veterinarian and they are not taking a thorough history and they are not doing a thorough physical exam, you might want to consider finding somebody who can do that for you.

The Importance of Testing for Deficiencies and Toxicities

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: And then the next thing I do is I test, I don't guess.

And that's my motto because we can't really know what's going on under the hood. And it's shocking now that I've spent almost 20 years looking for deficiencies and toxicities, deficiencies of essential nutrients that the body actually has to have to have proper metabolic function, and toxicities are the overwhelming amount of toxins that have come into our world, especially since 1942, there've been over a hundred thousand synthetic toxins introduced into our environment and that's our food and our water.

So, I test and I'm finding that even animals under one year of age are coming up with massive amounts of deficiencies. It could be calcium, copper, zinc, vitamin D, magnesium, the list goes on. And I'm finding that these animals, when they're presenting under a year of age, and it could be limping, it could be skin disease, and when I'm testing them, I'm finding that they have anywhere from 3 to 10 deficiencies in significant quantities.

So, they're eating processed foods, which are nutrient deficient. I think you almost have to live under a rock these days to not realize that our food is not being grown with regenerative type of agriculture.

So, therefore, if the plants that are being grown are deficient in nutrients because the soil is deficient, then whoever's eating that's going to be deficient. So, it's kind of follows along the trail. And then on the toxins, again, we have to test for toxicity because you can't look at an animal and go, ‘Oh, that looks like mercury or a lead or a strontium.’

You can't look at an animal and see that because the signs are so subtle. And again, on average, we've done thousands of animals and we have found that, I don't think I found 10 animals that had less than two heavy metal toxicosis in all of the cases we've done.

Sylvie Beljanski: It sounds very much like, you know, what we find in humans.

I mean, there's a toxicity and also the deficiencies. That's very, very similar to what, I mean, human doctors, uh, complain about, at least when we are speaking with holistic doctors, but how do you address those deficiencies and those toxicities when it comes to, to, to our furry animals mostly?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Our furry babies

Sylvie Beljanski: And, uh, because we cannot address it tonight, uh, the diet of all the animals that, you know, the big, small, let's, let's, uh, limit that to the cats and dogs tonight.

Species-Appropriate Diets for Pets

Sylvie Beljanski: Those, those animals are carnivore. So we, we, the, the, their diet has to be different from what you consider a healthy diet for those animals than what you may consider a healthy diet for humans. Can you elaborate on that?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: I would love that. So we have grown up in a society where we have been trained and convinced that fast, cheap, and convenient is okay.

It's not okay. So whenever I try to talk to somebody, I help them to come back to common sense. And I know common sense is not really taught to our children anymore. And it's also, a lot of adults have forgotten how to use common sense. But if we think about it, nature has already designed all the systems to be sustainable and successful.

Agreed?

Sylvie Beljanski: Absolutely!

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: So, when we want National Geographics, or in my day, it was Wild Kingdom. When we watch these documentaries and we watch what wild animals do, the carnivores, your lions, your tigers and bears, they're carnivores. And when they're out in the wild, they eat another animal. So, they kill their prey and they eat the meat, the bone, the organs.

Actually, the organs are the first thing. If you watch a lion pride, the male lion will go in and eat the organs first and then the girls come in and eat behind him. So, they innately know that they need to eat a balance of meat, fat, bone, and organ meat as their macronutrients. When they ate the intestines of that animal, they were getting all that rich green, fermented already for them food in the intestinal tract of the herbivore that they just killed and are eating.

Make sense? So, our dogs and cats were really not designed to be the primary eater of a carbohydrate. And we know that because they have little to no amylase in their saliva. They also don't chew their food. Like you and I as omnivores, we're supposed to eat a wide variety, we won't argue about whether you should be vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore, but whatever you eat, we're supposed to chew it thoroughly up to 60 times before we swallow it because we're mixing all that food in with our saliva to begin the pre-carbohydrate digestion before it drops into the stomach.

Well, animals, carnivores in the wild, They have to tear, gulp, and swallow their food because if you are a wild animal and you have just hunted something down, you chased it, you made a lot of commotion, you rassled it, you finally killed it, and now you're eating it, and you're going to attract any other predator that was in earshot of you.

And that predator is going to come in and go, ‘Wow, maybe there's a free meal out here.’ And while you're eating, you're distracted. So, nature intended for our carnivores to tear, gulp, swallow, stuff themselves when meat is available, because they don't know when the next meal is coming, and then they go back to their den, and that's where they lay and digest throughout the day.

And they eat, typically at dawn and dusk, when they're driven by hunger to do so. In our common world now, we provide food 24/7 to these poor animals, and they need a digestive break just like we do. We're not supposed to eat around the clock, and neither are they. They're supposed to eat at dawn, they're supposed to eat at dusk, and their biological diet is the composition of an animal that they kill.

The cat, as an obligate carnivore, they have no dietary requirements for carbohydrates and they have not evolved from that yet. And yet we're feeding them carbohydrate diets that are up to 40 to 60 percent sugar. And we wonder why are they not living very long? So, we're feeding them a very species-inappropriate diet because of this fast, cheap and convenient model. But, when we stop and think about it, if nature wanted our animals to eat a dried kibble that was enzymatically dead because it was cooked at high temperatures, I'm sure nature would have put some kind of a model into the system to make that happen. It didn't.

Challenges of Feeding Pets a Vegan Diet

Sylvie Beljanski: But, there are some organizations like PETA, for example, that are all about welfare of animals and they want to put all the animals are vegan because that's a new trendy thing. So, what, what do you say to them?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Oh, wow, that is a real big dilemma for some people because I understand that they, they, they don't want to kill an animal in order to feed another animal, but honestly, that's how nature designed it.

Like lions go out and they hunt gazelle and they hunt whatever they can catch. So, are we going to tell them that they can't eat that either? Just because now we're in captivity, now, all of a sudden we're going to have a consciousness. We have to feed our species appropriate diet. If I bought a car that only uses, um, high octane gasoline and I go, well, I don't want to use that gasoline, I want to use regular gasoline or water or air or whatever. That engine wasn't designed to thrive on that product and it has no ability to adapt.

But we're trying to put our animals into position where we're not giving them a species-appropriate diet and it comes with its consequences. Now, could a dog eat some vegetables and be okay?

Yeah, they could, but most vegans and vegetarians, I won't say most, a lot of vegans and vegetarians can't balance their own diet. They don't get enough B12. They don't get a balanced diet to where they can be healthy and thriving. So, it's hard enough to make a diet that's species appropriate. And now when you're going to try to take and feed an animal in a way it was never designed to eat just because you don't want to harm another animal to feed your dog or cat.

I don't want to say you shouldn't have a dog or cat because everybody's entitled to their choices, but I think before you make that decision, you really have to understand the welfare of the pet that you love. And if we want them to live the longest, healthiest life possible, the best way to do that is to feed them a species-appropriate, balanced, organic, diet that is made of meat, fat, bone, and organ meat with a supplement of the essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids.

Sylvie Beljanski: It looks like there is a big need for education…

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Huge

Sylvie Beljanski: for pet parents about those issues. I mean, we are bombarded with a lot of advertising, uh, for croquettes and meats and this and that brand and that brand. And, uh, and it's difficult to, to know what's best for your, uh, for your pets. So, uh, do you know any good place where people can find the appropriate resource to educate themselves?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: So, I have training classes and there are a few other veterinarians that are doing more of a holistic approach and integrative approach where they're, we're going back to our roots, Sylvie. It's, it's really not rocket science. We have to just cut away all the marketing and then start educating ourselves on what does nature do.

So, I'm going to go back to that. So, my website has a lot of information. We have a raw company that we actually, uh, we produce our own diet and our own supplements and the animals that we are using have all been grass fed, grass finished, so they're, they never go into feed lots. They're out in pastures or whole entire life.

Yes, we are sacrificing them in order to be able to eat. And I get that that's hard for a lot of people, but at the same time, if, if you're going to have a pet that is a carnivore, I think there's a responsibility to help them thrive. And the best way to thrive is to help feed them their species, appropriate diet.

Sylvie Beljanski: And, uh, you mentioned your website, so can you share, uh, with us what your website is?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: So it's dr, like in doctor, dr and then my name dot com. So, drmarlenesiegel.com and if, I don't know if my name is up there so you get the spelling, but that's the hub. So, everywhere that you go within that site, educational courses are there, the hospital website’s there, consultations, online store, food, everything is from that site.

Supplements and Nutritional Needs for Pets

Victor Dwyer: So you recommend a lot of vitamin deficiencies that these animals have. Um, how do you go through and making sure that your, your animal has these correct vitamins in them? Are you feeding them a pill? Are you putting in their food? Um, how exactly does that work?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Well, the first thing that we do is we actually test for the deficiency. So, then we have data to show what they really are deficient in. And we know that the body cannot produce the essential nutrients in sufficient quantity on its own. You really have to get it from your diet. When you buy processed pet food in order for that pet food to be labeled complete and balanced, they are required to add vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, no aminos, but vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids to the diet.

Well, two problems with that, one, it's not shelf stable. So, they end up adding synthetic vitamins, which are really not bioavailable to the body and actually can cause a problem. And one example of that is because we do test for toxicity, we test for cobalt.

Now, in people, they're testing for cobalt toxicity because, in the olden days, people would get cobalt implants, like a hip implant made out of cobalt. But cobalt is actually the center molecule of B12. So, the center of a B12 is a cobalt molecule. Because these companies are using synthetic B12, we are seeing exceedingly high levels of cobalt.

Now no one's been able to explain that to me, but logically it seems to me that, if you're taking a bunch of synthetic cobalt and you are not able to synthesize that, you're gonna have byproduct left over, and that means you're going to have a lot of cobalt in the system, and we're seeing that in a lot of animals and we can trace it back - every one of them that we test are on a synthetic B12.

And then, and so, so that's one thing is we want to make sure that we're supplementing the essential nutrients and that's vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fatty acids. So again, those are the ones that the body can't produce on its own. So I, you can't test the food all the time and actually know how balanced the food is.

So, I think it's easier and way more efficient if we just supplement. And the beauty of what I did is I separated my macronutrients, the meat, fat bone and organ meat from the micronutrients. So they buy supplements separate from the meat product itself, and then they can dose that animal based on its age, its weight and its biological needs.

Because you don't know if you're feeding a Rottweiler versus a Chihuahua, they're obviously going to eat a different volume of food. Are you thinking that all those vitamins, minerals and fatty acids are evenly spread through the food, like there's the same amount on every kibble? Probably not. So, you really don't know what your animals are getting. And now that I've been testing for so long, I can tell you, they're not getting a lot.

Sylvie Beljanski: And, beyond the nutrition, uh, do you have a line of supplements or a line of supplements that you recommend, on your website?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: I have my own line and I'm not saying that you have to get mine, but I am saying you have to get something equal to or better than mine.

And that would be the benchmark. So, if you use mine as a benchmark, you know, our meat is all grass fed, grass finished, no artificial, anything in it is the meat, fat bone and organ meat in the proportion that it needs to be for a healthy animal. And then we created the essential nutrients, which are the vitamins and minerals, the amino acids and I use a plant-based fatty acid mixture that has, I call them the parent essential fats, and these are the fatty acids that make up the cell membrane. And then when the body needs to convert and make all of the other types of fatty acids that we need, there's a metabolism available within the body to do that.

So, that's what I do. And that way I know, and I'm assured that that animal is getting the nutrients that it needs and I can test and verify that they have it. Now, I will mention one thing is we don't recommend putting the vitamin mineral mix or the amino acid mix in their food because it really doesn't taste good and you know, how would you feel if you had to eat something that was pretty bitter or very sulfury, you know? You may not want to eat that. So, we don't want to discourage them from eating. We want them to eat with vivaciousness and they should eat with a gusto. And so, we, we'll recommend that the, the supplements are either put into a little meatball of food when they're really, really hungry. We'll give them a meatball with no supplements in it, then we'll give a meatball with a supplement in it.

But that brings up one more point that I want to make because a lot of pet parents are going to listen to this and they're going, well, my cat or my dog is such a picky eater. They smell it and that they smell something weird in there, they're going to walk away. Well, that is the very first sign of an unhealthy animal is a picky eater.

It means that their gut is not healthy, they probably have leaky gut, they probably have some dysbiosis, and so they know they're supposed to eat, they go over and they have that little, probably like an acid reflux feeling, and so they don't have a vivacious appetite like they should. And I have videos of our dogs and cats that are, they eat with gusto.

Like my dog, it's a puppy, when she eats, it's gone in under 30 seconds! Now, a lot of pet owners get offended by that and they go, ‘Oh my gosh, I put this food down and my dog ate it so quickly. They didn't even chew it. They didn't even taste it. I spent all that money on that good food and they didn't even enjoy it.’

And they don't think about food like we do. They are driven by hunger to replace the nutrients that they need and they don't stop and think about, ‘Well, do I want Chinese food tonight or do I want Mexican?’ You know, they, they ate another animal and I don't think that, you know how we say everything tastes like chicken?

It probably all tastes like chicken to them, right? Because they're just eating another animal in the state that they killed it in. They didn't season it, they didn't fry it, they didn't roast it. You know, so we have a tendency to think too much of what we want instead of what our animals need.

Sylvie Beljanski: Absolutely.

When it comes to humans, and I like to always compare humans and animals because I think we get a better idea of their needs when we compare with our needs, what is similar, what is different.

Emotional Health and the Human-Animal Connection

Sylvie Beljanski: But when we speak of human health right now, one of the big topic is, uh, emotional health. I think when you, a pet lives with a unbalanced human, it probably gets this imbalance, its emotional turbulence, and that also affects the animal.

And one thing also that we see is that when a human, uh, becomes sick. So, very often we see the same disease in animals, like, you know, it's a love story, they share the disease. Is it something that you have observed, uh, a lot in your practice? And, uh, do you, how do you address, uh, emo, emotional health for animals?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Wow. Did you open up a kettle of worms! Uh, so you're absolutely right! So, let me distill it down a little bit smaller to start with. So, we know we have an autonomic nervous system and our pets have an autonomic nervous system. We have a sympathetic side and a parasympathetic side, and they live like on a teeter totter from each other.

So, if your sympathetic side is really turned up, your parasympathetic side is turned off and vice versa. Why that's important is because our sympathetic side was our drive to live and survive. So, if you were being chased by a bear or a boogeyman, you really need to have all of your blood shunted to your muscles.

You don't have to think about anything else other than I need to save myself. And if that's running or fighting, whatever that looks like. But when the danger is gone, we were designed to turn off that sympathetic side and turn on the parasympathetic side, which is our rest, repair, digest, detoxify and reproduction.

And it makes sense. If you're running for your life, You really don't care about having sex. You don't care if you're going to eat and if you have to go potty beforehand, you don't remember that because you're just going to go potty while you're running. You're just running for your life. So, that's the first part to understand.

If you are in a household where there is constant stress and in our modern day, it's not the saber tooth tiger, but it's our bills, it's our children, it's traffic, it's our workplace, it's family members with drama and trauma - It's all of these other factors. And then, of course, you add in the toxic food and the hormones, chemicals and pesticides and the toxic things in our house. And it just becomes this overload.

So, when the family is in high sympathetic tone, our animals actually entrain to them. That's a physics principle. It's not even woo woo. We, we know that girls that live together in a dorm over a period of time will start to have their periods together, that's entrainment.

So, the animals are doing it for us, and I think there's another layer there as well, so we don't have to feel guilty if we have created a lot of stress in our animals. But I really think that by design, they have come into our lives to help offload some of that heavy fifth dimension energy that we have.

Because think about when you have been really upset about something, something horrible in your life has happened, and you're crying, or you're super angry, and who comes over and puts their head on your lap, or bumps you so that you can put your hand out, and unconsciously, almost every parent I've ever talked to, they take their hand and they either rub the animal, or they hug them up on their lap, and within a few minutes they start to feel better.

And that's because they're helping to offload some of that heavy and denseness that they're feeling and they're feeling love and gratitudes for their pets. So, I think that is a big, big factor. We certainly know from studies done now that people that have pets have higher dopamine and higher serotonin, higher oxytocin, all of these hormones that make us feel love and happiness are always higher in people that have pets. We take pets to nursing homes now and to cancer centers so that people can love on those animals and enjoy them and help the person feel better and lighter and raise their endorphin levels.

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: So, that was part of the answer to your question. And then on a metaphysical level, I think these animals do help to either mirror or reflect things that are in our lives that we need to see.

So, for me, life is earth school and everything is a play. I take ownership for being the head of the play. So, when something happens in my life, I own it. And I say, ‘Okay, that was really interesting. Why did I create that? Why did I allow that into my consciousness?’

Understanding Low Vibrating Energies

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: And then I look for the gift or the blessing.

Our animals can help us do the same thing. We just have to be open and receptive to realizing that we are here in an experiential world in order to be able to, I think, do things better. So, when we see these low vibrating energies, those negative energies like anger, frustration, bitterness, blame, shame, when we are experiencing those, we have an opportunity to either a, choose to experience a situation differently, or we can choose to take that low energy and shift it into something of a higher vibration that is far more serving.

Did that make sense?

Sylvie Beljanski: Sure.

Addressing Cancer in Animals Holistically

Sylvie Beljanski: You just mentioned cancer center. So, one of the diseases that we see more and more in humans is unfortunately cancer. How, and I do believe that, I mean, also in animals, there is more and more cancers because of the toxicity of the food, of the environment, of the water. How, as a holistic health, uh, vet, do you address cancer in animals?

What kind of modalities do you use that a pet owner would not find in another practice?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: So, we, we talked about that there's three things that, there's four things that cause disease. One is deficiency. Two is toxicity. Three is mitochondrial dysfunction. So, when the mitochondria, the little powerhouses of ourselves, when they can no longer do their job, we're not making enough energy, and they're also responsible for the communication between themselves and the microbiome, all those organisms in and on our body to be able to tell the cells what they need to turn on and turn off. The fourth component is the emotions. There's always trapped emotions associated with all disease. Okay. So that set me up.

Detoxification and Elimination Organs

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Now, the first thing we do is take a thorough history, thorough physical exam. We find the deficiencies of toxicities. Now we're ready to start detoxification. Now this is very important because we have six organs of elimination. We have our kidney, our colon, the lungs, the liver, the skin, and the lymphatics.

When we overwhelm those systems, the body can no longer effectively and efficiently get rid of toxins. If we start treating cancer and we start stirring up the pot, so all this debris is now coming to the surface but it has nowhere to go, we're going to make that individual more sick. And I think that's what people refer to as that Herxheimer reaction.

They start to do something and then they get sicker before they get better. And that's because they truly cannot eliminate the toxins. So, in my practice, I focus very heavily, already having taken care of deficiencies and toxicities on detoxification.

Innovative Therapies for Pets

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: So, we use infrared saunas, full spectrum with the animals.

We do ozone therapy, both intravenously and, um, and rectally or intra-articular, whichever is appropriate. We do salt therapy for detoxification of the lungs and the respiratory system and the skin. I'll use intravenous photo dynamic therapy and photobiomodulation, which are two terms that refer to literally taking a fiber optic light and putting it in through a catheter into the vein and irradiating the red blood cells.

So, basically the light, the red blood cells pick up the light and they carry it around the body, delivering that light energy. And why that's important is because we are actually light beings. We were designed to use light in order to be able to thrive. Our mitochondria, the whole process that these mitochondria make energy, they need light as one of the elements to drive the Krebs cycle so that we make more energy, literally needs light.

The Importance of Light and Outdoor Exposure

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: And what kind of a life do we live right now where we get up at dark and we get into our car and we go to work and then we get out of work and we either go to the store or dinner or we come back home.

So few people are going outside. They're not touching the earth. They're not involved with the earth. They're not even connected to their food source and they're not getting light. So, no wonder we have all of these deficiencies going on in the human population, and in the pet population because they're simply mirroring what we do when we go to work where there's a pet state typically in the house, right? They're not staying outside. 

So, we have really modified our lifestyles and people that live in apartment complexes and high rises, they don't even have a yard. They really rely on being able to walk their animal or people that have cats in a high rise and the cat goes on to potty in a cat litter box.

They never see outside. They never touch the earth. It's not good.

Top Recommendations for Pet Owners

Victor Dwyer: So, if you, if you were a pet owner and trying to decrease the chances of your pet getting cancer or having future diseases, what would be your, like, a top three list of what you, what the pet owner should do? Like what would be your top three recommendations of pet owners that are trying to reduce the amount of cancer in their pets?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Easy question, short answer - feed a species appropriate diet with the proper essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids and aminos, reduce the toxicity in your environment and give a lot of love and exercise, and get outside. It's really not that hard. You know, we make medicine so complicated so that people don't understand, but empowerment means that you can take control of your health and especially your pet's health because they don't have a choice.

We can go and choose what we're doing to our bodies, they cannot. They're only going to do what we offer to them. So, it really becomes a bigger issue when we talk about ‘How do we support them biologically the way they were designed to function?.’ So, that's the short answer and we've got so many little hacks that we can do but it's, it's not hard. We just have to become aware.

Now some of the arguments people go is, ‘Oh my gosh. It's so expensive to feed raw.’ Well, it really isn't because when you calculate what you're paying for broke care, you know, we just, every workup that we do can run easily between a thousand to $3,000 depending on what we do for that workup. Blood work, looking for deficiencies, toxicity, CBC chemistry, thyroid, looking at X-rays, ultrasounds, uh, doing the special testing for the deficiencies and toxicities, that adds up to a lot of money.

What if we just make sure that these animals had what they needed to operate on from childhood, from puppyhood and kittenhood, but we just weren't taught to think that way.

The Role of Lifestyle in Pet Health

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Now once you hear it, you can't unhear it. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. You have to start taking responsibility and go, ‘Well, maybe I'm not feeding the most species appropriate thing.’

And my encouragement to you is not to feel guilty. It's not a shame and blame game. This is just learning. So, maybe it's the right time, if a pet parent is out there and they're hearing this conversation and it starts to resonate with you, then maybe this is the time that you are ready to come forward and make changes in your pet's life, which will ultimately make changes in your life.

And I would like to think that with those changes, perhaps we can ward off a more serious disease. You mentioned how much cancer is in people right now? Dog cancer rates right now, as I am sitting here talking to you, is almost a hundred percent. It's over one 1 of 1.65. Cats, they say, is 1 out of 3. I think that's highly underreported. So, we're talking a… epidemic of disease in these animals.

And of course the pet parents that find me typically are the ones that have already been through cancer with their pets. They don't ever want to have to go through that again and they want to learn ‘What can I do differently? What can I do better?’

‘Cause they've made the connection between lifestyle and outcome. And they're taking responsibility and they want to do something right about it. Now, I just did have a guy in, two days ago, Justin is his name and you can find him because he gave me a one star review and blasted me, uh, really made me look like I was a charlatan and didn't even have a license to practice medicine, but he knew better because he'd had dogs his whole life and all of his dogs go to the vet, get a medicine and go home and get better.

And then go back to the vet when they got a relapse and get medicine and they got better and go back to the vet and like he didn't see the cycle and then I said, ‘Well, I'm really happy for you if you've never had a dog that had cancer before. You know, that's great.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no, I didn't say that. All my dogs have died of cancer.’

He made no link between his lifestyle, his attitude and the outcome. And I went, ‘You know what? That's okay. You know, you're not ready to have a change in your life.’ And that's okay. You know, if somebody is very offended by what I'm saying right now, you're entitled. That's why there's somebody for everybody, isn't there?

Right? So you can find a practice that will meet your personal needs. But if you are a pet owner, well, let me make that distinction because I called him a pet owner, that's how he referred to himself. He was a pet owner. Well, when you own something, it's a commodity, isn't it? And when the commodity breaks and wears out, what do you do?

You get another one. And that's what the habit of this particular person was, is when the animal got sick and you didn't want to spend the money to fix it, he just euthanized it and then got a new pet. But my wheelhouse are pet parents, pet guardians, people who, their pets are their sole family. Okay.

Not for everybody and that's okay. I can't treat every pet in the world. I can only treat the people who want the kind of care that I can offer them and number one, I would like to help them learn so that they can do preventative health care, because they put so much heartache and money into once the animal is already sick. Now you're behind the eight ball. You have a long way to climb up that hill to get it to go the other direction. Can be done, not always successful, but wouldn't it be so much easier if we learned from the get go, ‘How do we really take care of these animals?’

Which also, you know, brings us to before you become a pet parent, really put some thought into ‘What kind of pet would live in my lifestyle the best?’ Do you have children? Do you travel a lot? Do you live upstairs to an apartment complex? Are, do you have a big backyard? These are all questions that are really important to ask.

What can you afford? So, if you can't afford to feed a Great Dane, a raw diet, then maybe get a small dog because then that's not difficult whatsoever. And everybody could afford feeding a cat or a dog under 30 pounds, a raw diet truly, because they're already spending money for food. Now, you're just going to save all that money on your vet bills.

So, you know, insurance is becoming a big deal in the veterinary industry. So, people think, if I have insurance, then I can go ahead and have a toxic lifestyle because I can go to the doctor, insurance pays for it, and I'm going to get a pill for the ill or a diet for the disease. Well, it really doesn't work that way.

And, in the veterinary world, it's even more interesting because a lot of companies will not pay for alternative services. So, they won't pay for hyperbaric oxygen. They won't pay for ozone. They won't pay for lipid therapy.

Sylvie Beljanski: Just like for humans, yeah.

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: You would ask me earlier, what are some of the different things we do? And I got sidetracked because I was so excited.

But, uh, you know, we talked about light therapy, hyperbaric oxygen. We do lymphatic therapy.

Lymphatic System and Fascia

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Oh, I want to spend a minute here because up until about 40 years ago, no one ever talked about the fascia. or the lymphatic system. Then, we started learning a lot about the lymphatic system, and we have a very particular machine that we used to do lymphatics, and it uses a nerve gas.

Victor Dwyer: Oh, sorry. Can you give the audience some reference of what lymphatic means and everything there? That'd be great.

Sylvie Beljanski: And the fascia also. I'm sure a lot of people don't know.

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Thank you. I will step back for that. So, we have our circulation system, which we know is our heart and all the blood vessels. And then we have another circulation system, which is lymphatics.

And the lymphatics make antibodies with that's what makes our T cells. And it also is the number one source for eliminating toxins. And it circulates through the body. It does not have a pump. So, like the heart pumps, this doesn't have a pump. We need to move in order for this system to be able to actually pump the fluid around.

And then it eventually dumps it back into the circulation system. So, again, in veterinary school, we learned about it and we learned that it gets cancer really easy, but we didn't learn how to take care of it. So, one of the number one things to do for the lymphatic system is move, literally move. And that means trotting and running and playing and having good activity every day.

Now, the fascia is even newer in conversation, really only in the last 40 plus years. And the fascia is all that space that scientists thought was empty. So, it connects all the cells. It connects all the bones and muscles. It connects muscle to muscle. It's all of that space and it's made up structured water, which is a special form of water that is more like a gel and that's why when we cut ourselves, we'll bleed if you cut a blood vessel, but you don't see all of our liquid leak out because it's in a gel state. And that's the state that plants use as well, that all the fluid that's in a plant is also in structured state.

And when we disrupt that system through toxins, through, um, scar tissue, like just in general, just as we age and we have inflammation, it causes some of this fascia to start to twist and bind down.

And when it does, we find ourselves not sitting up as straight. We're crunching a little bit over. I hope everybody is sitting up a little taller now, as I said that. And the same thing is happening for our animals, they start, their fascia starts to contract when we do surgery on them, or they've had an injury.

I just had a little dog, uh, he's adorable little Bichon and he was doing zoomies around the yard and ran head straight into the pole that holds up the boat, you know, like the ramp of the, um, the boat trailer. And he just rammed into it. And so he had horrific pain in his neck. When we X-rayed him, you could literally see the contracture of all the muscles on one side as it was spasming and trying to hold that neck in stability.

So, what we did for him is we started doing chiropractic work, electrical stem acupuncture to help relax the muscles and we did laser therapy to increase circulation and decrease inflammation. He went into the hyperbaric chamber every day. We did ozone therapy, rectally, and we also did ozone and platelet rich plasma along the spine.

So, we went left and right along the spine, all those muscles that were tight and we activated that and it took 72 hours and now he's back to eating and he can actually move his head and that's a really short period of time when you think about if you've really injured yourself pretty badly and you're really bruised.

You don't usually get better in three days. It's really sore for a couple of weeks. So…

Sylvie Beljanski: I'm sure a lot of humans would love to be treated by you.

Victor Dwyer: Sounds about right.

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Then send them to my human counterpart.

Empowering Pet Parents

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: But yeah, facia work is extremely important and we have a fascia course for pet parents. And all you have to use…

Sylvie Beljanski: Where the parents can find this fascia course?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: That's on the drmarlenesiegel.com. It's right there. It's like literally when you land on the page, you see the Empowered Pet Parent Course, you see the Fascia Decompression. And these are things that I encourage all of our pet parents to do before your pet has a problem because we want to keep that fascia healthy.

Why fascia is so important is, number one, all the communication between the microbiome and the mitochondria that we talked about earlier, all that communication happens through the fascia. It's not dead space. It's a very active, living, vibrant space. There's an exchange of nutrients that happens in there. And it's what helps keep us stable.

The lymphatic system runs through the fascia. So, the more we can have healthy fascia, it improves the structure, the physical structure of the body. So, for humans, we sit up straighter, we move our diaphragm more healthy because we're not crunched over and unable to breathe.

We're not, we look at a lot of older people they're, they go like from standing up and then they crunch over and they get further and further until they're like literally hunched over like Notre Dame, right? And that's because their fascia has just been pulling and pulling and pulling from years of not being able to create healthier movement in that fascia.

So, gravity alone can do it. So, it's very important and there are programs out there. We do it for the pet and then my partner in doing the pet program, Deanna Hansen, her program is for humans, and I do her program every day. It's just, it's amazing, but it's all about how do we take care of the body and the way that it's going to allow it to work the longest, the healthiest and the most vibrant.

Now, I'm approaching 70 years old and I am more agile, more clear thinking and more vibrant than I was in my twenties because in my twenties I was in college and we were studying all the time and we didn't get good exercise and we were eating, somewhat trash. Back then we didn't, uh, based on my age, do the math.

Um, we, we didn't have GMO foods back then. Roundup wasn't around, but we still had junk food and we still had sugar and we still had bad fats. And so, you know, I look back at what my life was then, and now I lead such a more intentional life. And that's what I try to help the pet parents do is think about being intentional.

When you take a step forward, you have to, you should be actually thinking about what you're doing when you're stepping forward. How many people drive home and they get to their house and they have no idea how they got there. Like, they don't even remember making the turns. That is not being present. That is being in the future, in the past, but you're not in the present.

The beauty of our pets, they teach us what the present is, every moment. Because that's how they live is for the present.

Sylvie Beljanski: Wow, what a lesson!

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Yeah

Victor Dwyer: Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Uh, we're getting a little bit of philosophy in here, too. That's great. Thank you. So, Dr. Siegel, thank you. You mentioned, um, your trainings and things like that in your book as well.

Is there any other way that people can get in contact with you if they ever have any questions or anything else like that?

Dr. Marlene Siegel, DVM: Absolutely. We do consultations. I do ask that if I'm going to do a consultation with somebody that they have to take the Empowered Pet Parent Course, because otherwise they are clueless with what I'm talking about.

The course is three hours and it gives them case presentation so they can actually see what a hyperbaric chamber looks like and what it does. And we show them live blood analysis and we show them about ozone and intra-articular laser therapy, if they're, animals have arthritis in their joints or cruciate rupture.

So it's really important that they get a visual and an understanding and then start developing a belief system because the number one most important thing that will determine if you get better or not is your belief system.

If you believe that you are going to die, you will. And there, we have gazillion examples of doctors that tell people you've got three months to live and they go home and, I had a girlfriend, she died three months on the day, because she believed her doctor that she was going to die. Where if we take and our own responsibility, if we empower ourselves to say ‘Well, if I do or I don't, I know I'm gonna die someday.’

But, what if I choose to start taking care of my body? This is an earth suit, right? We're in earth school. Our earth suit is the only one we get to have. We can't go out and buy a new one, right, ‘cause it wore out? We have to take care of it. And the same thing for our pets. We are even more responsible for them because they can't choose their lifestyle. They can only do what we offer them.

So I love when people come to me and they're really motivated to do something for their pets. Ironically, people will do more for their pets than they will for themselves, but at least it's the first step. And then this all big picture comes around to ‘How do we treat mother Earth?’ So, when we humans can make better choices for ourselves, for our pets, for our children, we ultimately are making better choices for mother Earth. Because if we kill mother Earth, we won't have a place to live. The rest of the conversation's mute.

So we really need to start talking about, if you live in a community, you can petition to have them stop spraying glyphosate on your yard. If you have a yard, then plant a tree that produces food. I'm in Florida. I literally live in a food forest. Sylvie, I can't wait till you come here.

We have avocados, we have mangoes, we have macadamia, we have grapes, we have Surinam cherries, we have Barbados cherries, we have plantains, we have bananas. I have a dragon fruit. I have peanut butter fruit. I don't know if you've ever seen a peanut butter tree. It's pretty cool. Um, cotton candy tree. We have passion fruit.

I could keep going on and on. And then I have raised beds where my lettuce is and the kale and, and the, you know, the corn and the peas and the beans, the tomatoes.

Victor Dwyer: It sounds like you got a little bit of everything. So, that sounds really amazing. Oh, I, Sylvie, you got to tell me how it ends up being, so thank you.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Victor Dwyer: Uh, unfortunately, that's all we have time for today though. I know we can go on for this for seven more hours. Um, so thank you, uh, Dr. Siegel for telling the audience where to find you, how to find more about you to do the consultation and everything else like that.

Thank you for enlightening us on animals, integrated medicine. I feel like I need to be feeding my dog a lot better now than, uh, than what I'm doing. So, thank you so much for that. And I think the audience will definitely benefit from that. So thank you so much for joining today. Um, and thank you for our audience watching today.This is The Beljanski Cancer Talk Show, and we'll catch you next time.

Thanks guys.



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Sylvie Beljanski

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Victor Dwyer

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