← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Crunchy Pets: Raw Food Diet, Vaccines, Heartworm and MORE | Holistic Vet Dr. Karen Becker
01:53:20
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- [00:00]
Alex Clark
What would shock pet owners about the state of conventional dog food in America?
- [00:05]
Dr. Karen Becker
99% of pet foods in North America, they are USDA inspected ingredients and failed. And then they go into pet feed. In the US there are 33 vet schools, all of them sponsored by big kibble companies.
- [00:18]
Alex Clark
Is the pet vaccination schedule as compromised as the childhood vaccine schedule?
- [00:24]
Dr. Karen Becker
We give the exact same dose of vaccine to the 2 1/2 pound teacup Yorkie as we do to the 220 pound Tibetan Mastiff. But it's all one vaccine.
- [00:56]
Alex Clark
You're killing your dog. Well, you love your dog and it's not intentional, but you might be shaving some life off your dog unknowingly. We're diving deep into the world of holistic pet care with the incredible Dr. Karen Shaw Becker. Dr. Becker is not only a renowned holistic veterinarian, but also the author of the Forever Dog Life, one of the most eye opening and inspiring books I read last year. We'll be discussing everything from the shocking truth about conventional pet food and the raw food diet to controversial topics like vaccine scenes for dogs. You'll hear her take on why biologically appropriate food in your pet's immediate environment are the true keys to a long, healthy life. We'll uncover the real reasons why some pets live to a ripe old age. Spoiler it's not just luck. Explore the best ways to transition your dog to a raw diet and even tackle the science behind preventing chronic health problems. Whether you're wondering about how to fight allergies, what to do for GI distress, or if you're using the right cleaning products for your pet's health, this episode is packed with the game changing, clean pet tips that you've been waiting for. Watch this interview on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel or culture Apothecary on Spotify. I love seeing you share the episodes on your stories, especially when you show what you're doing. When you are listening, I'm always curious. Don't forget when you do that to tag Culture Apothecary on Instagram. Now before we dive in, when was the last time that you left a five star review for this show? If you could do that, it's completely free and it helps the show immensely. Now there is an option to financially support the show with a tax deductible donation through the link in the show notes as well. Please welcome holistic veterinarian and author Dr. Karen Becker to Culture Apothecary. What would shock pet owners about the state of conventional dog food in America?
- [02:48]
Dr. Karen Becker
I think most People don't realize that 99% of pet foods in North America, they are USDA inspected ingredients and failed. I'm a USDA licensed meat inspector. When all foodstuffs are inspected, they're either passed and goes into the human food chain or those raw ingredients that we're inspecting fail, and then they go into pet feed. And pet feed as well as livestock feed. The animal feed industry nourishes chickens, cows, pigs, everything that is rejected for human consumption. We feed to animals. But that includes pet feed because it shouldn't really be called pet food. Food means, in theory approved, that it got passed USD inspected and it's inspection and then is healthy enough for humans to consume. But that's not the case unless your pet food says right on the label, human edible ingredients. And the websites claim that they're using human grade ingredients. The raw materials in your dog and cat food have failed USDA food inspection.
- [03:48]
Alex Clark
And so what kinds of things are these raw materials?
- [03:51]
Dr. Karen Becker
If you look on the back of your dog or cat food bag, there are probably some grains, there's probably some veggies, and then there's meat byproducts or meat meals. So everything that can be used for pet foods that would have passed inspection is already in the human supply chain. All the pieces and parts, all the abscesses and tumors, everything that we in the slaughterhouse that it fails inspection, the grains that fail inspection, the fruits and veggies that fail inspection for whatever, those are the raw materials that get into the animal feed industry.
- [04:24]
Alex Clark
If it's an animal and not a human, is it okay for an animal to eat things that were not approved for humans?
- [04:31]
Dr. Karen Becker
That comes down to your personal, moral, ethical beliefs. I would say no. I would say that if we have, let's say mycotoxin contaminated grains, which are absolutely a problem. Mycotoxins are tasteless, invisible, odorless fungus that can grow on food crops when the moisture levels are too high. They're very damaging. They cause organ failure and cancers in all mammals across the board. If we have mycotoxin contaminated feed that is too high for humans to consume, we shouldn't be feeding that to other species that should be condemned, which means nothing consumes it. It should not enter anyone's food chain.
- [05:08]
Alex Clark
Right.
- [05:08]
Dr. Karen Becker
What's frustrating is that all the pieces and parts that are left over from human food waste as well, those are upcycled into animal feed. So I don't believe should be recycling leftover pieces and parts into animal feeds, especially for for pets. I think that if consumers knew the quality of the raw materials they were feeding. They would choose to feed human grade ingredients. But most pet parents just don't know.
- [05:34]
Alex Clark
You'Re a holistic veterinarian. And in 2023 you heard rumors that there was this dog that allegedly had lived into his 20s, maybe even his 30s. Did you discover that the rumors were true?
- [05:46]
Dr. Karen Becker
We saw online that a man in in Europe was celebrating his dog's 30th birthday. I was really quite cautious about any dog living to 30. So Rodney, my writing partner, said, I'm going to put out a plea. So Rodney put out a public announcement on social media and said, if anyone knows this dog, Bobby and his dad in Portugal, please DM me. And about eight hours later there was a ping. And Leonel said, hi, Rodney, this is Leonel. I own Bobby and I'm inviting you to come to Portugal and meet him. So Rodney and I got on a plane and we went to Portugal to meet Bobby. And I was still skeptical. He was the owner, said he was a 30 year old dog. I wanted to meet the neighbors. I wanted to meet Bobby's veterinarian. So we did spend a week there. I was able to go to the animal hospital, meet Bobby's veterinarians, look at the medical records. I was also able to talk to Leonel's neighbors. He lives in a rural part of Portugal and he was born and raised in the same humble home that he has lived in his whole life with his mother. And the dog has been there this entire time. So I was able to talk to Leonel's neighbors who did confirm that the dog is 30. It took a year to get the dog into Guinness Pick of World Records. But Guinness did retract Leonel's award, stating that they could not confirm the exact birthday of the dog. So they did take that claim of the oldest dog in the world back. But I do believe Lionel's veterinarians and his neighbors that the dog, it was 31 when he died.
- [07:18]
Alex Clark
Was this dog. An anomaly like this never happens. This one dog is just wild. Like that's crazy for a dog to live till 30 years old or there. Dogs all over the world, you think that are really living to 20, 30 years old?
- [07:30]
Dr. Karen Becker
Well, Aniko Kublini, which is the Hungarian scientist that really is studying this phenomena, she discovered about four years ago that many of the longest lived dogs in the world actually contain some genes that she named Mathematic Methuselah genes. Methuselah was this old biblical human that lived hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And she discovered that some of the oldest lived dogs in the world have this rare genetic anomaly that allows that them to have this exceptionally long lived life. Rodney became obsessed with this concept that there are some dogs that might be nature versus nurture, it might be a genetic predisposition to having this exceptionally long live life. But really we also know that the environment is very powerful. We decided during COVID that we would investigate this. Rodney said I am going to zoom with the oldest dog owners around the world and, and do long extensive interviews. What they ate, where they slept, were those animals vaccinated, what environments were they in, what type of stress level, how much fresh food did they get, what type of ultra processed food do they get, how much exercise did they get, how much choice did they get? Did they have prong collars, electric collars, no collars? Did they live in a rural environment? Did they live in a city environment? Rodney went really deep with these interviews and then he gave me this body of information from the oldest dogs in the world, these interviews. And I took this information to the leading longevity scientists around the world and asked these people to reverse engineer this body of information. And that was actually our first book, the Forever Dog. We put the science together from the oldest dogs in the world with the latest human longevity science. And we were able to discover that the Broad Institute says that about 80% of longevity with humans, 90% even could be environment and 10% genetics. I believe it for dogs because humans have really erroneously damaged our dog's genetics in the last 500 years. Humans before we had genetic testing, breeders were breeding mother and son together and brother and sister. It's called line breeding and obviously we don't do that anymore. But we created some genetically damaged dogs in the last 500 years, which is.
- [09:39]
Alex Clark
Mine'S one of them squished face, you know, made it hard for them to breed.
- [09:43]
Dr. Karen Becker
That's true. Anytime that your dog's nose is behind their eyes, that's a man made creation that has not necessarily gone well for those breeds. And because of that those animals suffer physiologically. They have more arthritis, they obviously not breathing well. They can have secondary heart conditions, joint issues. They just can oftentimes have problems because of their physiologic morphology of their structure of their body. But well bred dogs and mutts is what the research shows. When they have this really nice genetic diversity along with a loving environment and the ability to have choice in a low stress lifestyle along with healthy food. That is what we found to be the magical combination of exceptionally long lived dogs.
- [10:23]
Alex Clark
So what was Bobby, the 30 year old dog in Portugal, eating?
- [10:27]
Dr. Karen Becker
First of all, Bobby was born in a woodshed behind the family's house. And so he was born on that property. There was no fence around the home. It's a very humble home, rurally. They live on a five acre garden that surrounds the home. His mother, the entire family gardens. They produce about 70% of their own food.
- [10:47]
Alex Clark
So cool.
- [10:48]
Dr. Karen Becker
And they grow rabbits and chickens for protein. So Bobby was born into a home that was growing most of the food themselves. And he's never consumed commercial dog food in his life, like never. He's never consumed a little brown crunchy ball that those of us in North America know as kibble or dog food. He's never ever had one bite of that. He's only ever had homemade, organic, fresh meals. And do I, as a functional medicine doctor, have to stop and think there's probably something to that? Of course, yeah. Now, he also had good genetics. His mama lived to like 23, 22, 23. And Leonel said that his family has always had dogs live into their 20s. So I think part of this is a beautiful, clean environment. They literally have no chemicals in their home. There's no chemicals on the fruits and vegetables and foods that they're consuming. They live in a really pristine environment. But there's also very low stress. Every day Bobby takes a walk through his little village and he kind of meets up with other neighbor dogs. They go up to the forest together, a little pack of dogs go up and then he comes home in an hour. Leonel said that Bobby has been able to make his own decisions his whole entire life. And science does back that up. You, if you think about it, we control every aspect of our dog's environment. What they eat when they go outside, how much exercise they'll get while they're where, where they'll walk, if they're going to turn left or turn right.
- [12:06]
Alex Clark
Yes.
- [12:06]
Dr. Karen Becker
We control everything about our dog's life.
- [12:10]
Alex Clark
Do you think that's exclusively an American thing?
- [12:12]
Dr. Karen Becker
I think it's an exclusively modernized country thing.
- [12:14]
Alex Clark
Okay. Okay.
- [12:15]
Dr. Karen Becker
And a lot of dogs I know have literally never been off lead. They've never been to a, a dog park where they're able to move their body. They're always on a six foot lead, so they don't even know what it's like to kind of sprint or run at top speed or be able to roll. They just have their, their environment's really controlled, depressing. I think that once you think of it that way and when you look at the research about the oldest dogs having choice and being able to put their joints through a normal range of motion on a daily basis, and being able to choose how long they stop outside and sniff certain environments, which improves cognition as well as the social aspects of dogs being able to interact with whom they choose and when. That aspect of allowing dogs to kind of live their best life is something that I think as Americans, we don't really think about. But I tell you, after meeting Bobby and meeting the scientists that reverse engineered this, I am thinking a whole lot more about what I can do to intentionally improve my dog's quality of life. I do. And I think that we owe that to our dogs to think about that.
- [13:17]
Alex Clark
What did you find as a holistic veterinarian that owners are doing on average to help their dogs live longer? I mean, you brought up the diet and things, but there were there specific things like, oh, these dogs were really high and like they ate a lot of beef or chicken was really good for them, or always filtered water or things like that.
- [13:35]
Dr. Karen Becker
So in Bobby's situation, and in fact, all of the dogs in the Forever Dog book that Rodney interviewed, all of those dogs were eating some fresh food, meaning human foods that their owners were giving to them from the fridge, not necessarily from the table. Because, you know, we're not trying to create a bunch of begging dogs, but every single dog that we researched, they had the ability to consume fresh fruits, veggies and fresh meats. In Bobby's situation, he consumes fish almost daily. One of his meals is very high dha, epa. And we know that dogs need a lot of those long chain omega 3 fatty acids, not just for good skin and coat, but to manage inflammation. And what's frustrating is that pet foods in North America, they're not required to add DHA and EPA to the food. So most dogs eating commercially available kibble are omega 3 fatty acid deficient. And then that plays into inflammation and immune health as well, long term. So, yeah, I think that many of these dogs that we looked at were eating fresh food diets that were low in complex carbohydrates. So not a lot of corn, wheat, rice. You know, dogs are scavenging carnivores and cats are obligate carnivores. So they're primary mainstay of their diets are meat. And clean meat is the reason we're.
- [14:50]
Alex Clark
Putting so much grain and corn into conventional pet food in America is because we have these subsidized crops and all this extra stuff, we have to put it somewhere.
- [14:58]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yeah.
- [14:58]
Alex Clark
So it's interesting to me because, like, when I hear you talk about what is wrong the pet food industry, so much of it to me mirrors like what we talk about in the MAHA movement, you know, the Make America Healthy Again movement for humans. Like we need to get these chemicals out of our food. No more ultra processed food. Etc. So would you say we almost need like an arm of MAHA for pets?
- [15:18]
Dr. Karen Becker
We absolutely need to be thinking about why our dogs and cats are dying of chronic degenerative diseases at epidemic levels. Dogs and cats are no longer dying of infectious diseases where, you know, we're not having these plagues. Like Parvo doesn't wipe out millions of dogs anymore, thank goodness. The downside is the number one cause of death for dogs in America. Cancer and degenerative diseases. Right. We're seeing more allergies, autoimmune disease, organ failure, cancer than ever before.
- [15:45]
Alex Clark
Okay, now see, this is juicy because how is it that that is happening identical. The chronic disease crisis exploding with human Americans. And it's also at the same time you're saying exploding for pets.
- [15:58]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yes, it's the food. It's the food. Absolutely. And even one step more horrible. You talk a lot about why humans. In fact, every pediatrician, every doctor, every common sense human knows that we should be minimizing our consumption of ultr processed foods. Veterinarians around the world are the last group of health and wellness professionals still advocating that the only thing we should be feeding conventional veterinarians are recommending only feeding ultra processed foods from birth till death. Veterinarians are beautiful humans with amazing hearts and they have gone to veterinary school just like young kids going to medical school. And they are taught that the only safe food that has been nutritionally complete and balanced for dogs and cats is ultra processed food. And so they're just coming out of veterinary school as brand new doctors and parroting what they were taught in school, which is, I don't know about homemade diets or fresh food diets or raw meat diets, and I didn't learn about that in school. I think we should just stick with feeding ultra processed foods from birth to death. So there is thankfully in the last 15 years, a growing movement of wise, open minded veterinarians that are like, this does not make sense for my body, this doesn't make sense for my family's body. And now that I think about it, it doesn't make sense for my patients. But those are veterinarians that are evolving and learning and applying what they learned after veterinary school in the U.S. there are 33 vet schools, all of them sponsored by big kibble companies.
- [17:27]
Alex Clark
It's like exactly with human food. Exactly the same scenario if big pharma.
- [17:34]
Dr. Karen Becker
Were sponsoring medical school pharmacology class. That is a direct conflict of interest.
- [17:38]
Alex Clark
Oh it is.
- [17:39]
Dr. Karen Becker
All this is happening and in veterinary schools, every single vet school is sponsored by Purina or a Mars company, you know, science diet. They're, they're sponsored by an ultra processed pet food company. And of course there's a conflict of interest. Every single one of those ultra processed pet food companies do not produce any fresh human grade species appropriate living food diets. They don't make those foods. They're too expensive to produce. They're marketing to the, to our next generation of veterinarians. And certainly 30 years ago when I went to vet school, the, the only category of foods that was discussed in my six month nutrition course, which in some veterinary schools can be elective. You can graduate as a veterinarian, never taking any course in small animal nutrition. So as vets graduate, they're brilliant kids who don't know anything about food and they certainly don't know anything about biologically appropriate foods because it's not being taught in schools.
- [18:29]
Alex Clark
What are biologically appropriate foods for dogs?
- [18:32]
Dr. Karen Becker
Dogs and cats do not have a carbohydrate requirement. They have a fiber requirement. But they don't need corn, rice, soy. They don't need this abundance of starchy, high carb, high glycemic foods. And yet when you look at the volume, the amount of carbohydrates in the vast majority of pet foods in the US they're 50% carbs, 60% carbs, 70% carbs. And then you wonder why all of our dogs and cats are fat, lethargic, they're struggling with obesity. Over 60% of dogs and cats in the US are struggling with weight issues.
- [19:06]
Alex Clark
You are kidding.
- [19:07]
Dr. Karen Becker
It mirrors the human obesity epidemic. Yes.
- [19:10]
Alex Clark
I didn't know it was that high.
- [19:12]
Dr. Karen Becker
It is over 60%.
- [19:14]
Alex Clark
That is absurd.
- [19:16]
Dr. Karen Becker
The frustration is fresh living, biologically appropriate foods with a significantly lower glycemic index, lean meats would be the appropriate thing to nourish our dogs and cats with. Now do we want to make sure that we're following a recipe to make sure that we are making meeting our pets individual needs for trace minerals, nutrients, you know, dha, epa, calcium, phosphorus, of course. But to assume that the entire veterinary industry is saying that pet parents, owners are incapable of nourishing their dogs and cats themselves is really untrue and takes away our ability to make good choices. Because we're relying then on the pet food industry to tell us the truth about the products that they're making.
- [19:58]
Alex Clark
Is all commercial pet food bad?
- [20:01]
Dr. Karen Becker
No. In fact, thankfully, in the last 15 years we have this, this flood in of fresher foods that are made with USDA inspected and passed ingredients that are biologically appropriate for dogs and cats. Now, are they significantly more expensive than the rendered inappropriate car based, ultra processed little kibbles that we're used to feeding? Yeah, a lot more. Because we're going from terrible quality food to excellent quality food. Just like why is it that organic apples cost three times what terrible junk food costs? It's, it's frustrating. So pet parents are not used to looking at the price tag associated with really good quality, human grade, biologically appropriate food. They're not used to it, which is why homemade diets are becoming so popular. Veterinarians are very anti homemade diets because people guess on recipes and they guess wrong. That's one of the reasons that we wrote a cookbook, is we wanted to be able to give people nutritionally complete balance recipes that are biologically appropriate, that your vet can look at the entire nutritional analysis and say, okay, you're, you're meeting your pet's minimum nutritional requirement needs. And that's a possibility. We don't want people to guess in the kitchen, but we also want people to be able to relax. And when you open up that fridge and you see those dented blueberries, of course you can pop one to your dog. If you're cutting off little pieces of meat and you have a kitty, they're begging for meat. Of course you can share your human grade leftovers with your dogs and cats. The number of foods that are truly toxic for dogs and cats are very few. No grapes and raisins, no onions, no macadamia nuts. Now, macadamias don't have a specific toxin, but they're high in fat, so they can cause some GI upset. And chocolate. Yeah, don't feed those things to your dogs and cats. Everything else in moderation is a great idea. And that's one of the things that I'm really passionate about is helping pet parents relax and have way less anxiety about feeding their animals fresher foods because they have to be given permission to be able to do that. There's so much misinformation between websites and conventionally trained veterinarians that literally people are stuck in fear not wanting to feed anything other than ultra processed food for an animal's whole life. And what that just denies them is the Ability to experience what real living foods can do for the body.
- [22:17]
Alex Clark
Now, how many, I'm sure you have a bajillion animals around that are not even just dogs and cats. I'm just guessing. But dogs and cats, how many do you own?
- [22:25]
Dr. Karen Becker
I'm at a lull right now. Most veterinarians and veterinarians listening. We end up taking everything that, you know, gets dumped at the hospital. Everything that people say, you know, I, I can't afford my animal, I'm going to take it to the Humane Society, whatever. We end up rescuing a lot of animals. So I have had as many as 28 animals at one time right now because of my crazy work schedule as my animals have transitioned. I have a rescue kitty who's 14. I have a rescued terrier on the COVID of the cookbook. His name is Homer, he's 17. And I have a blue tongue skink which is a lizard named Gordy. And he lives, he's a house lizard. So I have three, which is not very many compared to where I was before.
- [23:06]
Alex Clark
Yeah, that's way less than I thought.
- [23:08]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yeah.
- [23:08]
Alex Clark
Okay, so then having two, like a, like a cat and a dog compared to 28. So my quite. I was just going to ask you, you know, are you buying these pre made raw pet foods for your animals or are you cooking up these like unique meals every night? Like what does that look like for your pets?
- [23:25]
Dr. Karen Becker
Both. So I travel a lot for, for my job and so when things are crazy and when I find myself being crunched for making nourishing good organic meals for myself, I will end up either ordering organic meals delivered to my house and I also do the same thing for my dogs and cats. I will buy human grade organic fresh food for my dogs and cats that comes frozen and then I feed that. I do try and make at least half of the meals for my dogs and cats because I love having the control over the quality you're able to see. I know the date I made it, I know the freshness, I know the leanness of the meat. I know where my meats have come from. I love having that control over the nutrients going into my animals bodies. When life gets crazy, I pivot to companies that I trust that then make the foods for me. And so I do a mashup of both commercially available raw food diets and home cooking.
- [24:16]
Alex Clark
If you can afford it, is it actually important to opt for the non GMO organic grass fed, grass finished.
- [24:22]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yes.
- [24:23]
Alex Clark
Meats for your pets?
- [24:24]
Dr. Karen Becker
It is if you can afford it. The only reason not to do that is it's astronomically expensive. If you've been blessed enough to make money where you can nourish your body in a chemical free way, do it. We have enough environmental exposure otherwise. If you can't, then buy conventionally raised animals and produce and you wash your produce and do what you can. There are things that we can do to help minimize the amount of glyphosate, you know, coming into the body. So you're then pivoting towards conventionally raised fresh fruits and veggies. But research is pretty clear that even if you can't afford organic, free range, ethically sourced and slaughtered everything, eating fresh and minimally processed foods, that the levels of polyphenols and flavonoids, antioxidants in those fresh foods actually outweighs the potential risk of, you know, ingesting a water glyphosate. If you're buying fresh fruits and veggies, you can, you know, you can wash those fresh fruits and veggies in a way that helps reduce the amount of environmental contamination passing up the food chain. But even conventionally raised fruits, vegetables and livestock that then become food for our dogs and cats, the quality is substantially better than anything that you would be buying at any big box store.
- [25:30]
Alex Clark
Okay, but even what you just said there is so encouraging and gives so much grace to parents who are already stressing about being really on a tight budget with their family and trying to feed their kids healthier. Like what you just said about even conventionally raised, like eating just real food is still going to outweigh the potential risk of other stuff. That that's still really important.
- [25:51]
Dr. Karen Becker
It's really important. And I think that sometimes the guilt that we have, especially as moms, whether it's two legged kids or four legged, having information like eating fewer pesticides is a wise idea. Of course it is. But not being able to afford to do that, that is an incredible stressor in our hearts. Because we know better, we just can't afford to do better. When we can afford to do better, do better. So visit your local farmers markets, check out food co ops. I have some of the most amazing clients that are on a really tight budget, a shoestring budget. And it was important to me that when I started suggesting homemade meals that I didn't make it seem like this was an elitist way to feed that. If you, when you are trimming the tops and bottoms of your carrots off, you can recycle those into the roughage that can become a homemade meal for your dog. When you are preparing your two legged family's meals and you're trimming off excess. Dogs and cats don't need perfect cuts of meat. They don't need perfectly flawless fruits and veggies. They can eat our human leftovers in a nutritionally complete meal and do great with it. And the quality is so much better than anything that they would be eating otherwise.
- [27:06]
Alex Clark
So the other day I was getting ready to meet some friends for a hike and I realized something. I was running out of deodorant. I thought, ah, okay, no big deal, I'll just grab whatever's in the bathroom. But as I reached for it, I paused. It was one of conventional brands that I used to use, filled with parabens, synthetic fragrances and I'm pretty sure I saw aluminum listed on the ingredients. Bad past Alex. I couldn't do it anymore. I've spent so much time switching to clean beauty products and my deodorant had to be the next thing to go. So I decided, you know what, on this hike in particular, I'm just going to go without it entirely. It was one hike. I wasn't going to knock anybody out. Zebra is truly clean deodorant that actually works. It's paraben free, aluminum free, fragrance free. There's no harsh chemicals here. It is just simple pure ingredients that perform. I love how smooth it goes on. It's not chunky, it's not thick. It actually works. Doesn't like skid on your armpit when you try to apply it. And even when I'm out in the Phoenix heat, this thing works. Which if anyone was going to be a guinea pig for deodorant, it should be someone living in the climate with 118 degree days. Am I right? Plus they have a baking soda free option. So if you're like me and you have sensitive skin, Zebra has you covered. And let me tell you, it smells amazing. It's not overpowering, it's just fresh and clean. I've completely swapped out my old deodorant for Zebra and I couldn't be happier. So if you are ready to make the switch, head to yay zebra.com use code Alex for 10 off your first order. That's yay zebra.com. don't forget to use code Alex for 10 off today. They also have clean toothpaste and floss that I love. I've had multiple guests on Culture Apothecary recently talk about how red light therapy is changing the way they approach their health, especially when it comes to sleep and gut health. I'm sure that you've heard me talk about my struggle with sleep. But since incorporating juve red light therapy, I have noticed I'm falling asleep faster, staying asleep longer, and waking up feeling refreshed. The impact on my energy and overall wellness has been incredible. So why is red light therapy such a game changer? Red light therapy helps you produce more energy by stimulating the mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cells. We all remember that in high school science. This boosts your body's cellular function, reduces oxidative stress and promotes healing. So joovv, by the way, is FDA approved. It's medical grade panels. They use clinically proven wavelengths to deliver a safe, effective dose for therapeutic benefits like enhanced sleep, gut health and pain relief. Studies have even shown its benefits for conditions like alopecia and gut issues, making JOOVV the ultimate wellness tool. If you are ready to boost your health with red light therapy, just go to Joovv.com Alex they will give you an automatic discount through that link. Joovv J-O-O-V-V.com Alex for better sleep, better skin and overall wellness. Don't miss out. Check it out today. Some exclusions apply when you're feeding them raw meat. Meat. I'm assuming you're thawing it first?
- [29:45]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yes.
- [29:46]
Alex Clark
Okay, so it's thawed and then how do you make a nutritionally complete raw food meal for a pet?
- [29:53]
Dr. Karen Becker
You follow a recipe that says right on the recipe. This food has been formulated to meet minimum nutrient requirements for aafco. AFCO is the American association of Feed Control Officials. That's the organization in the US that deems this minimum amount of vitamins and minerals needed for dogs and cats to sustain life.
- [30:10]
Alex Clark
Life.
- [30:10]
Dr. Karen Becker
The reason that veterinarians around the world discourage home cooking for pets is people just guess they're like, well, I've got some ground beef, I have some carrots and some veggies. I'm going to throw it together and my dog loves it. Of course your dog loves it. That's the freshest food that your dog or cat has ever eaten. The downside is there's no vitamin E, no vitamin D, no calcium. There's a bunch of things that can go wrong. Now. A meal of nutritionally imbalanced food. Fine. We eat not healthfully regularly as humans. The body's resilient and strong. What you don't want to do is put a growing puppy or kitten on profoundly deficient meals day after day. And even for adult animals, you want to make sure that you are in the ballpark of generally meeting your pet's nutritional requirements on a pretty regular basis. And you do that by following a recipe.
- [30:56]
Alex Clark
Okay. And. And you can just Google, like, raw pet food recipes or your book or what?
- [31:00]
Dr. Karen Becker
Well, so what I would say is research shows this is another arguing point that many conventional vets will bring up to me. And they are right. 90% of the recipes that you find online are not nutritionally complete. There are beautiful pet parents that say, my dog loves this recipe. You should feed it. So it's the qualifying statement how you know that the recipe that you're following is probably meeting minimum nutritional requirements. Is it will say this recipe has been formulated to meet AFCO minimum nutritional requirements, and it comes with a printout that has the breakdown of all the amino acids, fatty acids, as well as vitamins and minerals in that recipe.
- [31:37]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [31:38]
Dr. Karen Becker
It's an easy way to discern someone who's guessing with a homemade recipe and a veterinary nutritionist or a qualified pet nutritionist that has formulated the recipe to be nutritionally complete.
- [31:48]
Alex Clark
Okay. So when it comes to raw dog food brands that are making the little patties or scoops of meat and everything for you that are supposed to be nutritionally complete, which brands do you think are doing it right? You like these and which ones are you like, stay away from?
- [32:02]
Dr. Karen Becker
Just like the kibble industry, actually, across. Across every category. Whether it's kibble, freeze dried, dehydrated, gently cooked, oven baked, air dried, or raw, there's all of these different categories in pet food. You need to call your manufacturer and say, hey, I just listened to a podcast. I was wondering if you would share with me your complete nutritional analysis. It's over 21 individual nutrients. It's not 5 or 6, it's over 25. Actually, if your pet food company says that's proprietary, that's what all the top five companies will say is, oh, we can't tell you what's in our food. That's a secret. Can you imagine?
- [32:39]
Alex Clark
No.
- [32:39]
Dr. Karen Becker
Can you. Can you imagine, like, providing infant baby formula for your human toddler, calling the company and saying, hey, I had to put my kid on formula. I'd like to know what's in the formula. And the company saying, that's proprietary? Absolutely not. And yet the top pet food companies in the world refuse to even give veterinarians a complete nutritional analysis. If I were to call Mars or Purina right now and say, hey, could you just send me what's in this brand of food, they will say it's proprietary.
- [33:05]
Alex Clark
Wow.
- [33:05]
Dr. Karen Becker
How you judge the transparency of A company and how you know in your heart that you are meeting your animal's minimum nutrient requirements. Also not toxifying your animal with too much copper and iron and some of those heavy metals that are dumped into commercially available pet foods in huge amounts. So we have a deficiency concern. Yes, but we also have an excess concern. And how do we know? Companies that are proud of the pet foods that they're making will gladly email you a complete nutritional analysis. And you can look and see companies that refuse to send you a complete breakdown of what their food is, don't support those companies. Then it becomes crystal clear and really easy to choose. Transparent companies that are proud of their products versus companies that are hiding behind this whole proprietary excuse.
- [33:51]
Alex Clark
So let me tell you what I'm feeding Mochi and then just tell me if I have a lot of work to do as a dog mom or like, this is probably okay. I'm doing two small batch raw rabbit or turkey patties because the vet said to me, my holistic vet said that Mochi runs hot, so he needs to do cooler meats. Just some pumpkin. I do a little supplement from Dr. Harvey's. There's a day one and a night one. And then I. She told me I need to add some crunchy. So I put like some kind of organic little crunchy food topper on there and that's it. But I feel like there's more I could be doing. So what is your honest assessment?
- [34:33]
Dr. Karen Becker
So, first of all, you're doing great.
- [34:34]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [34:35]
Dr. Karen Becker
That is significantly healthier than what the average dog in America's eating. So nicely done. Okay. What I will say is just like the advice I would be giving if you had a small kid, a toddler.
- [34:46]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [34:46]
Dr. Karen Becker
The more variety you can give your toddler, the better. So I love small batch. It is human grade. Great. They do a great job of being transparent. You can call the company and they'll gladly send you a complete nutrition analysis. Great customer service, but happy to help you get the answers you need about their foods, which I love. The more variety you can give your animal, the better. Now, I rotate proteins. I feed my animals like I feed myself. I like to eat something different every day. I really want to work on microbiome diversification. I want to work on building a strong, resilient gut for myself and my animals. So that's done through a lot of nutritional diversity. So when I'm having snacks throughout the day, if I've got a raw almond, I'll share one with my dog. If I'm chopping, if I'm eating raspberries. I'll share one with Homer. Whatever I'm nibbling on. Except that limited three ingredient no, no list. I'm sharing a bite with my dog. Every bite of fresh food that my dog gets is helping to nourish a specific bug in his gut. Which means I'm helping to build gut resiliency and microbiome diversity. That's a great way to build diversity so you don't have to rotate every day.
- [35:45]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [35:45]
Dr. Karen Becker
But I would tell you rotate flavors and brands periodically just for this nutritional diversity aspect. Now, now, crunchy foods don't clean your dog's teeth any more than eating crackers or granola cleans your teeth. I do agree with your holistic that your dog needs to chew. And trying to get a Pekingese to like hold a raw bone and really scrape plaque and tartar off his teeth, that could be a task because part of his. His teeth don't even line up well.
- [36:11]
Alex Clark
That's a huge thing. He had to, we had to do a massive surgery. He had to get a ton removed in January because there was infections and things going on from before I had gotten him a couple months ago. And so he had to get a bunch removed. And it's because of the way his teeth teeth are. So that's what she's trying to do. And she did give me some cloths for him to chew on to clean teeth or whatever. But as far as food goes, that was her suggestion to help a little.
- [36:32]
Dr. Karen Becker
So you have a high maintenance breed when it comes to dentition. I mean, you're going to have to work on his teeth because of the breed that he is. He's naturally going to be prone to infections, a lot of plaque and tartar buildup as well as bad breath. Just because he has a party in his mouth and he's not. Even if, even if he is given a bone, he probably is not a huge chewer of just wanting to hold a raw bone and naturally help remove plaque and tartar himself. So the more things that you can work on and toys that he can chew on that will help reduce the amount of plaque and tartar that's building up on his teeth. You adding toppers? Whole food toppers are great. That's another great way to increase microbiome diversity, especially if it has dehydrated fruits and veggies in it. That's the source of antioxidant polyphenols. Excellent.
- [37:13]
Alex Clark
Yeah, that's what this crunchy organic food. It has like strawberries, blueberries. It's something like that.
- [37:17]
Dr. Karen Becker
Great. And so that, that's a nice addition for microbiome, maybe a little bit of plaque and tartar reduction. And I love of food that you're feeding. But just like you probably have a favorite brand of human organic food that you love, only eating that food every day for your whole life.
- [37:32]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [37:32]
Dr. Karen Becker
Even though it's a great brand and you love it, the more diversity you can cycle through, the better.
- [37:36]
Alex Clark
If you are somebody who's really wanting to do this right, you want to switch over to a raw dog food diet and you want to get this diversity going. What is the best way to introduce diversity without disrupting the GI tract?
- [37:48]
Dr. Karen Becker
That all depends on how resilient and healthy your dog or cat's GI tract is to begin with. Just like people. If, if. And you've met people like this too, that eat like two or three foods and that's all they can eat. And then they go to diversify. If you take a human on a very limited ingredient diet and they go up for Mexican, they will be hospitalized with blowout diarrhea. Same is true of your dogs. Right. That's not what we do. So we do begin working on gut diversity very slowly and with really bland foods. For instance, the little dollop of canned pumpkin, 100% canned pumpkin. That's a really great start of introducing some new fiber. Something new for the gut. It's great with beta, it's full of beta carotene, has that prebiotic fiber that is really good for helping.
- [38:28]
Alex Clark
Well, that's what I'm trying to do is figure out the fiber component because I feel like if I'm only giving him the patties, then I just. I feel like sometimes he didn't be constipated and stuff. So I'm trying to add something. So that's why I've stuck with this pumpkin.
- [38:39]
Dr. Karen Becker
And that's great.
- [38:39]
Alex Clark
What are some other things?
- [38:40]
Dr. Karen Becker
So any member of the zucchini family, including pumpkin, pumpkin, squat, summer squash, zucchini, Zucchini, all of the zucchini family has, first of all, it's bland, so really good. If you have an animal that's prone to ibs, ibd, sensitive stomach, those are the animals that you are going to give very small amounts of very bland veggies to and, you know, maybe a half a teaspoon at a time, and you're going to watch the poop by you just begin offering maybe a little slice of apple or a bite of apple. Watch the poop as you begin trying a bite of this and A bite of this, you're going to begin seeing the poop the next and be like, all right, everything's fine. Then you can increase. You can maybe swap your ultra processed dog treats that you're buying at big box stores for fresh food treats. That's a great way to save a ton of money and diversify the gut and provide antioxidants, polyphenols, all those really important things that we are looking for with fresh foods. The poop is going to tell you when you can begin transitioning to more fresh foods and less ultra processed foods. So then you'll do 70% ultra processed food, 30% new, diverse, fresher food, and then 60, 40, 50, 50. Ultimately speaking, I would encourage everyone listening to feed as much nutritionally complete fresh food as they can afford to feed. There's no reason, just like with your kids, if you can feed all organic, really healthy, minimally processed foods to your family, do it. The only reason why we wouldn't is cost. And the same is true for pets. If you can feed all fresher foods, human grade aid, minimal pesticides, that's a healthier approach to achieving longevity and reduction in degenerative diseases as pets age.
- [40:20]
Alex Clark
One thing that no one has been able to answer for me, I tried googling and everything once in a while. Mochi's poop will be completely encapsulated in a mucus. Thick, thick like coating of mucus, like a tube around it. What does that mean? What is that telling me?
- [40:35]
Dr. Karen Becker
So mucus is produced in the last 8 inches of the colon and mucus is produced there as a lubricant to help the feces pass naturally from the rectum. Rectum. When you see a ton of mucus, that's the body producing mucus because either the stool's too dry and hard and so I think you're onto something. When you said you think he could be a little constipated, I would agree with you from just what you've told me that it could be that he may benefit from a little bit more healthy roughage, slash fiber in his diet. And so he. I do believe that that extra mucus is his body. He probably is a really hard poop poo on that day. His body's producing a lot of mucus because he needs to be able to evacuate his colon, but the feces needs to be able to pass without being stuck and really hard. That that straining and pushing is called obstacation. Very common with kitties and can be a problem for many dogs that don't have Enough fiber in their diet or not getting enough exercise. So it's really good that you're clued into poop because poop is one of those really important things that we can objectively use on a daily basis to evaluate the internal health of our dogs and cats. So looking at your poop, looking at your dog and cat poop, it's one of the important things that people maybe don't have permission to do, but it's really important. That's how we know how strong and resilient our animals, GI tracts are, is by evaluating the poop. And what we want is beautiful, firm poop. Lovely. You pick it up, it holds together. Not too soft, certainly not loose, but consistently beautiful poo. On a daily basis. We can assume that our animals are being nourished in a way that allows them to have healthy bowel movements and an turn a healthy gut.
- [42:12]
Alex Clark
Couple things you can add to help with constipation and a couple things you can add to your dog's diet if they're having consistently loose stools.
- [42:18]
Dr. Karen Becker
So psyllium husk is one of those things just right off the top that two research papers demonstrated that a little pinch of organic psyllium husk is actually more beneficial for stress induced diarrhea than the most commonly prescribed antibiotic we use in veterinary medicine for stress induced diarrhea, called metronidazole or flagil. Veterinarians hand out this antibiotic like candy. Anytime an animal's being boarded at a, at a clinic and has diarrhea, or animals get stressed and have diarrhea, veterinarians automatically write a prescription for flagil met metronidazole, which completely disrupts the microbiome. And we have two nice research papers now demonstrating that a little pitch of psyllium husk actually is more beneficial at firming up both intermittent loose stool and intermittent constipation. So it's this great source of, of fiber that you can buy at any health food store. You can buy it online. And if you have an animal that you're like, o, my animal is finicky and doesn't want to eat any fresh fruits or veggies. They just don't want to eat anything. Psyllium husk does a great job. Kitties that have hairballs, kitties that can be obstinated or straining to go poo too hard, too soft, or those dogs that have belching gassy, intermittent, you know, really loud GI sounds and then throw up a little bit and then oscillate between not pooping and enough or soft, mushy, stinky poo. The psyllium husk is a great natural, easy, cheap remedy that you can try a pitch on a pinch on the diet. Canned pumpkin. Just make sure it's not pumpkin pie filling. If you're, if you're out on buying canned pumpkin, you can buy pumpkin whole pumpkins and steam them. They're not in season right now, so most people are relying on canned pumpkin. That's an easy, quick one. Zucchini squash. You know those giant zucchinis in the middle of summer that no one wants to buy at the farmer's market? In fact, sometimes they're free to go to home. They're just like free giant zucchinis. I whiz those up in my food processor, put them in ice cube trays and freeze them. So all winter I'm able to just pop out one of those squares thought add it to my dogs or cats food. And that is providing some nice prebiotic fiber that helps keep their bowels perfect.
- [44:19]
Alex Clark
There's this belief that the pet food companies are regulated just like human food. But I think I know the answer to this. Do you think that the pet food laws are strict? Enough math.
- [44:30]
Dr. Karen Becker
The FDA regulates what goes on your pet food bag. Like the font size, the pictures, the words that are allowed to use, and actually the ingredient definitions are all regulated. FDA regulates what we can and can't say on a pet food bag. Afco, this organization that I mentioned to you, the American association of Feed Control Officials, they don't have regulatory abilities or control, but what they do do ao does set minimum nutrient requirements for dogs and cats. Now who sits on the board of afco? All of the pet food companies sit on the board of afco. So they are basically setting their own rules for what constitutes good health. But am I thankful that at least we have in the US we know enough to know the basic minimum nutrient requirements that are necessary to keep animals alive. I'm very grateful for that. Minimum nutrient requirements and optimal nutrient requirements are two totally different things. So can we keep animals alive meeting minimum nutrient requirements? Yes, we can. And I'm thankful that I live in a modernized country that has some basic bare bones, really rudimentary guidelines. Could we do so much better? Yes, we could. Just like we can do a whole lot better with the human food pyramid and nourishing our kids in schools. We can do a whole lot better. But am I thankful for the pet side of things that we are able to have minimum nutrient requirements as established by aafco? Im they don't regulate quality. So now we're back to you have to trust the company for the raw materials, the raw ingredients that go into your dog and cat food, you gotta call the company, ask where those come from. And if your company doesn't want to talk to you about where they're sourcing meats, where they're sourcing their fruits and veggies from, are these coming in as meals or powders? Are they coming in fresh? What's the quality? Is it human grade quality or is it feed grade quality? These are all really simple questions that should be on company websites that oftentimes aren't. If you can't go to the website and feel really confident about the quality of the raw materials you're feeding your dog or cat, you should call. If you don't get the answers you want, I would tell you to pick a different brand.
- [46:37]
Alex Clark
We are talking a lot about seed oils for humans and how we need to avoid them in our food. Do you also need to be avoiding seed oils for pets?
- [46:44]
Dr. Karen Becker
Dogs and cats actually have a nutritional requirement for omega 6 fatty acids. So dogs and cats both need omega 3 fatty acids in the form of long chain DHA and EPA. So that's coming from marine oils, usually fish oil. That's a contaminated industry and we can talk about that at a, at a different point. But dogs and cats also have a requirement for short chain omega 3 fatty acids called Ala alpha linolenic acid acid, which comes from plants. Dogs and cats also have an omega 6 requirement. So on the back of pet foods you will see usually sunflower oil, walnut oil, safflower oil, they're adding those seed oils in not because they're trying to create massive inflammation in your dog or cat's body. They're adding those omega 6 seed oils in because dogs and cats do have a minimum nutrient requirement for them. But here's the scoop. Just like with humans, it's the ratio of omega 6s to omega 3s that is so overwhelming with most pet foods. And that's true with human foods and that's true with pet foods as well. Most pets are getting a lot of omega sixes and not enough of the anti inflammatory DHA and EPA. So it's that ratio we an ideal ratio of 6 to 3 is like 3 to 1. Three omega 6s to every one omega of 3. The average bag of pet food is a 20 to 1 ratio. So that's, whoa, a lot of 6. That's a lot of inflammatory sixes and not enough DHA and EPA. So adding in some sardines packed in water. Lovely way to give pets DHA and EPA adding in a clean source of fish oil, a great way to increase those omega 3s that dogs and cats are so deficient in. There are things we can do as pet parents at home, home to help swing that ratio back to a less inflammatory ratio.
- [48:34]
Alex Clark
What are some of the most egregious examples you've seen of pet food companies putting misleading labels on bags or, you know, containers of pet food?
- [48:45]
Dr. Karen Becker
Well, first of all, every single picture that you see of like, a grilled sirloin steak with, like, the little hash marks in the grill, that there is no grilled sirloin going into pet foods. I have a, a private subscription group called Inside Scoop. And people say, why does it have to be private? Because I am trolled and I get tired of being trolled. And I really want a safe community. We have about 6,002.0 PET parents, manufacturers, and integrated veterinarians around the world. And we get together every Sunday and we do a live Vodcast video broadcast and answer questions and talk about things. Right now, we're doing a pet food review. And the other thing I would tell you, when we are reviewing every category of food foods, all of the categories, it's shocking to me how even raw companies will at the very last, the last two ingredients on the label are, let's say, are blueberries and turmeric. That means that there's less than 1% of those ingredients in the food. And yet on the front of the bag, you see a bunch of blueberries and it's less than 1% in the bag. So there's all of these deceptive marketing techniques that are allowed in the pet food industry. When you look at a bag of pet food, don't ever look at the picture and assume that that's what's in your dog or cat's food. That's probably tip number one. Tip number two, if you flip over the back of the bag of dog or cat food, you're going to see a little box that says guaranteed analysis. That's the amount of crude protein, fat, fiber and moisture that's in that food. If you add up those numbers and subtract it from a hundred, that's the amount of stuff, starch, AKA sugar, AKA carbs, are in your pet food. Now you should say to me, why don't they just list the amount of carbs in the food? Because that is a requirement for human foods. We have to have carb requirements on foods that you buy at the grocery store. It's not a requirement for pet foods. So one way that you can discern how much filler, AKA unnecessary starch or sugar is in your pet's food is to do this simple equation. So you add up all those numbers on the guaranteed analysis. Minus 100. That's the amount of the missing ingredient, which oftentimes is 50% or more of the ingredients in the food is the carbohydrate content that's not found on the label.
- [51:02]
Alex Clark
And so you want the added number of all of those ingredients to be as high as possible.
- [51:08]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yes. You want the added number of the protein plus the fat plus the fiber to constitute the bulk of what you're. We really want fat, we want protein to be number one. And that's. People say, what's number one on the ingredient label? That's probably the oldest trick in the pet food book is people say, I see meat as first on the label. Label. It's fine. You add up the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth ingredient and that's 90% of what's in the.
- [51:31]
Alex Clark
You've mastered reading the labels for your family. Now we gotta do it for the pets. Everyone's gonna go home, they're gonna read their labels. I know it. How much do we really know about the gut microbiome in pets and how important is it to their overall health? Do you think that we're really just scratching the surface of understanding how diet affects pet behavior, digestion and mental health?
- [51:52]
Dr. Karen Becker
I think that we are in the infant stages of looking, looking at how important microbiome is for every mammal that we're studying. In fact, right now we're using dogs as translational models for people for a lot of different research because dogs and humans kind of co evolved over the last, you know, several thousand years. First dogs, we use them for working. You know, we had dogs on the farm and they stayed outside and then slowly they came into the mud room. And in the last 250 years, now they're in our beds like they are officially members of our family.
- [52:19]
Alex Clark
Do you think the pets should sleep with their owners?
- [52:21]
Dr. Karen Becker
I'm not getting into that. So I would say controversial. Well, no, it's not controversial. What I would say is if you have like an out, if you have a child that has hives and allergies, and if you're feeding an ultra processed allergenic pro inflammatory diet, your. Your dog could be, or your cat could be setting your kids allergic response off. Oh, now I would assume, hopefully if you have healthy kids and you're healthy bodied. What research does show is that you and your dog, it's not. But the study's not been done on kitties yet. But you and your dogs do share some microbiome activity. I am all about diversifying and building my microbiome. So I sleep with my lizard and my dog and my cat.
- [52:54]
Alex Clark
Your lizards in your bed?
- [52:55]
Dr. Karen Becker
My lizard is a house lizard. He goes everywhere. Some people say, oh my gosh, I could never do that. So you need to do what's best for your own family. I'm all about building and diversifying my microbiome and I'm all about creating a gut of steel for myself and everything in my house. And we do that by having good access to outdoor time. So direct contact with the earth. Earth meaning unsprayed, pesticide free, contaminant free soil.
- [53:19]
Alex Clark
Because you live in this area with me, I mean, so one thing I think about is, even with me is that everything here is cement or turf. Because we live in Arizona. What do you do with that?
- [53:29]
Dr. Karen Becker
So what I did, I live in a tiny house and in my. I'm, I'm in less than a thousand square feet, but 4, 400 of those square feet is actually an outdoor courtyard. When I moved into my tiny house, it was set. There was rock in my little tiny courtyard yard and fake turf. I ripped that up. I bought an entire truck full of organic soil and I dumped that in my backyard because I want to be able to hang out. I want to be able to have a garden. First of all, I want to be able to plant. I planted clover for my kitty. But I want my dog and cat to be able to go outside and make direct contact with the earth, AKA grounding. And I want them to be able to have access to healthy soil when needed. We know that there are beautiful microbes in a teaspoon of soil that actually play into dogs and cats. Healthy microbiome that we can't get anywhere else than soil. So dogs and cats were meant to spend time outside and direct contact with the earth. So I just created a little patch in my backyard for that to happen for myself and my animals. If you're in a downtown high rise in Tokyo and you don't have that, then it's really important that you pack your dogs and cats up and if possible, take them on the weekends or at least once a week to an area that's calm and safe and allow them them to be in a forest setting and or natural soil that's unpolluted with chemicals and allow them the opportunity to to have access to clean soil. Some people have created that inside their homes. Like if you have small dogs and cats and you are on the 10th floor of a skyrise or you live in a totally unsafe neighborhood and you can't walk around the block, some people will convert a spare bedroom or a hallway to a dirt box. You get a sandbox with a plastic pool, put some organic soil in there and there you go. So that is an option as well. But I think think the more environments you can expose your dogs to that are clean and pesticide free, the healthier that they're going to be. Same with kids. If you're able to expose your kids to soil in a forest floor, they have substantially healthier microbiomes later on in life. So the more outside time and clean, fresh environments, the better for all of our family members.
- [55:29]
Alex Clark
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- [57:51]
Dr. Karen Becker
Well, we know that a dog's and a kitty's neurotransmitters is partly based on the food that they're eating. Their ability to produce adequate neurotransmitters, bitters and their body's ability to have normal physiologic responses is partially determined by what we're putting in their mouths. So of course if the diets are deficient in some of these key things that we know influence brain health, cognition and healthy neurotransmission like ehadpa. We know across the board that every dog eating commercial food is deficient because it's not a requirement to add that in. That's one of those things that should be probably added to every dog and cats meal is either low residue, small fish like sardines packed in water, or people say I'm not buying sardines or I don't, that's gross. Or canned fish grosses me out or it smells disgusting. You can feed a clean fish oil, whether that's squid oil, ethically sourced krill oil, pre caught salmon oil. It doesn't matter the type of EPA and dha, but it does have to come from the ocean because we can't really get DHA and EPA inadequate amounts from algae or any other plant sources. It really needs to come from sustainably sourced marine oils. Supplementing that is a great way to improve neurotransmission Now, a lot of behavior problems in dogs and cats are because their owners stressed them out, didn't train them, inconsistent boundaries, or those animals were rescued and had PTSD and emotional mental trauma done to them before you ever took them home. So there's a lot of variables. Variables. Just putting your animal on a beautiful diet is not going to fix every behavior problem. But have I seen as a functional medicine doctor over and over, that by nourishing an animal's brain well, that we are able to provide to them the raw materials for healthier cognition in terms of supplying the amino acids and the nutrients they need for healthy brains to thrive. And that's something that should happen first, and then we'll talk about behavior modification. But food is where we need to start when it comes to fixing potential brain behavior neurotransmission problems.
- [59:55]
Alex Clark
How important are the cleaning products you use in your house as a pet owner?
- [59:59]
Dr. Karen Becker
So the environmental working Group as well as several other organizations are now using dogs and cats, actually cats as the primary gold standard sentinel in the home. They're putting tags on dogs and cats for 96 hours from around the country and then asking volunteer pet parents to submit those tags back in for chemical analysis. Analysis, wow. The levels of polybromidated dipheny ether, so the levels of flame retardants, the levels of off gassing from chemicals sprayed on upholsteries and fabrics, carpets, Teflon water contaminants, airborne contaminants, is two to three times higher in cats than that of human counterparts. And partly because kitties aren't taking a shower. You know, you and I wear protective clothing if we do go barefoot or we run our house, our house naked. If we're naked in our house, we still shower on occasion. Kitties and dogs are not showering and rinsing those chemicals off their body. So they are laying on contaminated surfaces. People using traditional sprays on their counters or on their floor. Their dogs and cats are laying there and then grooming themselves and eating the chemicals. Household chemical exposure is, is a massive reason dogs and cats have chronic degenerative health issues. So just cleaning up the chemical load in our homes is one of the best places we can start at beginning to think about reducing environmental chemical exposure for dogs and cats and in turn improving healthspan and lifespan.
- [61:27]
Alex Clark
If your husband is upset and he doesn't want you to switch your cleaning products to branch basics, you say, I'm sorry, Alex Clark and Dr. Karen said we have to for the dog.
- [61:34]
Dr. Karen Becker
And you know, what's so interesting is a lot of people and I have found a lot of humans not picking on men. But a lot of time, my male clients, they've been told this forever. And what allows them to pivot is when they look at their research for the dogs in their home and they realize, oh my goodness, my animals are being exposed to really high levels of the products that I'm using.
- [61:58]
Alex Clark
Well, that's really juicy that even the flame retardants and things that are on furniture and upholstery in your rugs, in your house and the carpeting in your house, that they're also picking up that those chemicals and that just, you know, is so convicting about really trying to transition if possible as as much of the, you know, furniture and fibers and, and blankets and stuff in your home to being organic and natural.
- [62:17]
Dr. Karen Becker
I don't know if you've priced organic couches. It's like 10 grand. No one can afford it. So what we can do, we can all afford water filtration. Usually you can afford maybe for Christmas, switching from toxic Teflon to stainless steel. The back half of the Forever Doug Life cookbook is all about home cleaners. We give you ant spray, tile spray wood cleaner.
- [62:36]
Alex Clark
We went through everything, polish everything, everything.
- [62:39]
Dr. Karen Becker
So you're able to save a ton of money making your own home cleaners, but also getting the chemicals that are totally toxic to your dogs and cats out of your home. So that's one of the reasons that we included that DIY home section is because people are like, I can't afford to buy organic green home cleaners for my pets. Great, make them cleaning up. That is step number one when it comes to like replacing your, your Ikea couch. Not, not brand bashing. But there are. I've not been able to find anything organic home wear at Ikea. You can buy an organic organic throw rug or sheet and cover your where your dogs and cats are laying. You can cover your toxic off gassing upholstery and furniture with an organic sheet or blanket and then wash that organic sheet or blanket a couple times a week. So you're putting a layer of protection in between the off gassing chemicals in your pet.
- [63:27]
Alex Clark
You talked about the water, which I think is interesting. So I get made fun of a lot. That mochi only drinks glass gas bottled spring water.
- [63:37]
Dr. Karen Becker
Well, and what I would say is probably because you are also only drinking great quality water. Yeah. When you know better, when you can see what are in our local water supplies. Like here in Arizona in Fountain Hills, where I live, we have A massive arsenic issue. Rodney, my co author, lives in Nova Scotia, sitting on the largest mass of naturally occurring arsenic in the world. So bladder cancer is the number one thing that Rodney sees in dogs around his town. Because of the arsenic in the water, people were unaware that they should be filtering their dog's water. Water. If you live in cities, fluoride and chlorine are in there. Dogs and cats don't need fluoride and chlorine.
- [64:12]
Alex Clark
Even birth control.
- [64:13]
Dr. Karen Becker
Absolutely. Yeah. So if you are filtering your water for your two legged family members or yourself, please extend the courtesy and do it for your dogs and cats as well because they are susceptible to the exact same secondary ramifications as the rest of your family.
- [64:27]
Alex Clark
How important are the materials that your dog's dish is made out of?
- [64:32]
Dr. Karen Becker
I will just say let's everyone ditch the plastic. Plastic, any type of plastic, just pitch it. Because water sitting in plastic, it doesn't matter. It's going to leach secondary chemicals into the water. Just is food in plastic is not much better because there is the secondary effect of leaching occurring. So stainless steel and glass are really my favorite. Glass is, you know, usually a big risk and people don't want to do that. It needs to be Pyrex. But stainless steel dishes are really important. The other thing that we see oftentimes sometimes is contact dermatitis. Dogs and cats, muscles, when they're eating out of plastic, they can get this secondary reaction on their lips and muscle chin that, that is a dermatitis, a secondary skin inflammatory response from eating out of plastic bowls. So I'm not a fan of plastic, I am a fan of stainless steel.
- [65:17]
Alex Clark
Why is the time that your pet eats on a day to day basis important?
- [65:21]
Dr. Karen Becker
If you think about it, dogs and cats never ate on a schedule. We think back 150 years ago when dogs and cats run farm, farms, kitties, barn kitties didn't catch a mouse at exactly 6am and exactly 6pm and same thing with dogs. Dogs might, they would get human leftovers. They might get a lot. One day they'd hunt a litter of baby bunnies, the next day. There was always this constant cycle of feast and famine. Never in the history of ever have we put down food where it's this all you can eat buffet where aunt dogs and cats can go to and from the bowl and basically eat to their heart's content. That never has happened in history and until recently when many pet parents don't have the willpower to pick that food bowl up and they just leave food down especially for Cats, It's a really terrible idea, both physiologically, because these are not vegan grazing animals. Dogs and cats really fall into the carnivore bucket. So they do not need to be eating all the time. And when we ask their bodies to be digesting all the time, the body can't digest and participate in physiologic house cleaning and autophagy. The same with humans. We either are going to rest and digest, or we are going to be participating in cellular cleaning and immune system regulation. We can't do both simultaneously. That's one of the reasons intermittent fasting has become so popular with people, is that it gives us a window to eat all of our daily calories and then the rest of the time the body is resting and in repair mode. When the body is fixing itself and doing cellular house cleaning. The same is true for dogs and cats. They need a period of gastrointestinal rest because that's when their bodies are able to repair themselves as well as the cellular house cleaning that gets rid of cancerous cells and detoxification occurs also during that time frame. So creating an eating window where we give our animals the calories they need in a set period of time, let's say eight hours for dogs and 10 hours for kitties, that allows them then the remaining part of the day to participate their bodies to participate in this really important rest phase. That not only gives their bodies a break from constantly digesting potentially unnecessary calories, but gives them the opportunity to be able to, to clean up and detoxify their bodies from environmental chemicals as well as potentially neoplastic cells, cancer cells. Oh, that's, that's when the house cleaning occurs and when is when digestion isn't best.
- [67:39]
Alex Clark
Hacks for skin allergies with pets.
- [67:41]
Dr. Karen Becker
So skin allergies come from either food allergies or environmental allergies. And we've got some tests to determine that. But here's kind of a dirty, cheap, quick way to find out. If your dog or cat is itching year round, it's probably something going into their bodies year round, around, like food. If the dog or cat, it's just, let's say March through June, chances are it's a ragweed, grass, pollen, mold, something in their environment. So you can look at your animal's seasonal itching patterns or where the, where the itching is on their body and kind of get some idea of could this be food or could this be environmental? We manage food and environmental allergies very differently. So if we're talking a food allergy Creating a skin condition. The most common proteins that dogs and cats tend to react to are beef and chicken. Because beef and chicken are about 80% of the foods available that we're feeding our animals are either chicken based or beef based. And because many pet parents still believe this myth that we should never switch our dog's food, which was absolutely a lie from the pet food industry.
- [68:42]
Alex Clark
Oh my gosh.
- [68:42]
Dr. Karen Becker
Of course, if you are a pet food manufacturer and if you perpetuate this lie that says never switch your dog's food, you have a client for life. They're going to just keep going back and buying your same brand.
- [68:51]
Alex Clark
It was a marketing scheme.
- [68:53]
Dr. Karen Becker
It is the worst marketing scheme because not only does it create, create a narrow gut that's not diversified in the microbiome that can't sustain any diversity without gut problems, it also dramatically increases the likelihood for leaky gut, which then leads to food allergies.
- [69:08]
Alex Clark
Oh my God.
- [69:09]
Dr. Karen Becker
That are manifested in the ears and on the paws and on the skin. So backtrack and just think about that whole nutritional diversity conversation because that's an important thing. What I would say to, to people that have dogs and cats itching year round is let's slowly transition them onto a new protein. Let's say Ra rabbit. You could do a quail based diet. You could try goat, but take them off of the chicken. Beef, Chicken, Beef, Chicken, beef. And give their body something new. It could take three to six months before you see any type of improvement. Work on getting some of that DHA and EPA into their bodies to begin to provide the base amount of Those essential Omega 3 fatty acids necessary for a healthy skin barrier. And then work on cleaning up the environment to minimize potential secondary chemicals that could also be exacerbating even irritated skin.
- [69:53]
Alex Clark
What would be a good thing to add into food for dry coat?
- [69:58]
Dr. Karen Becker
Omega 3 fatty acids. DHA and EPA. Yep. So just a little shedding. That's right. But good quality fish oil.
- [70:03]
Alex Clark
Okay. Like they're not a sponsor, but I'll just say like Nordic Naturals.
- [70:06]
Dr. Karen Becker
I like Nordic Naturals because if, if you call them and ask if what are they doing in terms of Marine Stewardship Council, you're able to call these companies and say, hey, what are you doing to assure us that you're harvesting from the ocean and that we're not over harvesting and that you're using clean ingredients. Audience companies that are happily willing to show you third party testing, which that brand does, is a really good way for you to know in your heart that you're not Getting mercury contaminated fish.
- [70:32]
Alex Clark
Oil, do you break that capsule open and pour it on the food or just give it to them to eat?
- [70:37]
Dr. Karen Becker
So it depends on how finicky your animal is. Yeah, yeah.
- [70:40]
Alex Clark
I think Mochi would leave it. He'd be like, this isn't food.
- [70:42]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yeah. And so you're probably going to want to squeeze it out.
- [70:44]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [70:44]
Dr. Karen Becker
And we have doses in both books on how much EPA and DHA to give. You don't want to give crazy amounts. But because the vast majority of dogs and cats are deficient, supplying some omega 3 fatty acids is a brilliant way to reduce shedding, reduce skin inflammation, and improve the integrity and the health of the skin itself.
- [71:01]
Alex Clark
I had a huge debate with one of my friends who I love and loves her golden retriever. These dogs shed like crazy, right? Everyone knows that golden retrievers are the worst shedders. My question is, is it true or false that by changing your golden retriever's diet to a real food or raw food diet, that you could dramatically decrease shedding?
- [71:24]
Dr. Karen Becker
If the real food or raw food or fresh food, even if it's gently cooked, if it is nutritionally complete, including optimal levels of DHA and epa, then you will take a shedding dog and all shedding breeds will continue to shed. It's natural for them to shed. But you can reduce the volume of hair by up to 50%.
- [71:46]
Alex Clark
I knew it. I knew it. Dr. Karen. I knew it. I told her.
- [71:50]
Dr. Karen Becker
Smart you.
- [71:51]
Alex Clark
I knew it. Is there a reason why labs get fatty cysts?
- [71:55]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yeah, lipomas. These are benign fat glumps. When you and I gain weight, we gain weight a little bit everywhere. When animals gain weight, they will gain weight everywhere. But many golden and labs both are prone to laying down lumps of fat called lopomas. And there can be some genetic predispositions, but this also comes back to fat metabolism, daily exercise, and what are the macronutrient breakdowns of the foods that those animals are eating. So if they're eating a high carb, high starch diet, and if they're not moving their bodies a lot, that fat is going to be much more likely to be layered on in glumps and lumps.
- [72:30]
Alex Clark
If your dog smells yeasty in their paws or ears, what can be done?
- [72:34]
Dr. Karen Becker
So yeast or that classic cheese popcorn kind of Frito. We call them Frito feet. Kind of just that musty, stinky smell. Yeast are completely normal on dogs bodies. Actually, they're normal on our bodies too. Healthy human dogs and cats have a thin layer of skin microbiome that includes Normal malesthesia for dogs and cats, candida for humans, a small amount, totally normal. If there's enough malesthesia or candida growing on you or your dog's body that you can smell it, you you have overgrowth. And then you need to be thinking about what conditions did I create either through diet or my animal's environment that allowed this overgrowth to occur. Yeast also need a food supply. Yeast love sugar and carbs. That's one of the reasons that for humans, if you're prone to recurrent yeast infections, your ob gyn will say, listen, let's just minimize the amount of sugar and starch you're consuming to try and help reduce the likelihood of these yeast being overfed. The food source course same is true with dogs and cats. I'm not a fan of feeding a high starch diet because they don't have a carb requirement, right? So if we can get that starch, corn, wheat and rice down under 20% of their intake, that's going to help reduce the likelihood of secondary yeast. Don't bathe animals in oatmeal shampoo. Oatmeal's carbohydrate that can facilitate secondary yeast growth on skin, right? And then there are some things we can do to think about skin microbiome rebalancing when it comes to putting healthy bacteria area back on the skin that allows them to effectively out compete secondary opportunistic yeast.
- [74:08]
Alex Clark
What is your opinion on body shaving when the breed has a naturally long coat like mochi My Pekingese.
- [74:15]
Dr. Karen Becker
I'm not a fan of shaving animals down because hair and air actually, believe it or not, are a great insulator both from heat and cold. A lot of people think, well, you know, I live in Arizona, if I shave my animal down, they're going to be cooler. And while trimming and maybe removing some of the weight and allowing better air flow is a good idea, shaving an animal completely down actually reduces their ability to thermoregulate. So I am not a fan of shaving short. I'm a fan of what's called a puppy cut, which is reducing his hair from here to here. So that's going to allow him to have less weight and more airflow, but that also is going to not compromise his ability to thermoplast.
- [74:56]
Alex Clark
Regulate pet supplements. Are they a scam or are they worth the investment? And what should pet owners look for when choosing a supplement? And how do they know when it's actually working?
- [75:06]
Dr. Karen Becker
Pet supplements are in the exact same category as Human supplements, which is. It's the wild west.
- [75:11]
Alex Clark
Yep.
- [75:11]
Dr. Karen Becker
Got to trust your brand. Same thing with pet supplements as pet foods, meaning there are feed grade supplements. So I am a fan of using only human grade supplements for pets. That doesn't mean feeding human supplements two pets. That means calling your supplement company and saying, hey, are you using feed grade raw materials or are you using human grade vitamins, minerals, nutraceuticals? So I'm a huge believer in using excellent quality supplements from the human industry when needed and when necessary for specific conditions that we can identify. And at a dose appropriate for dogs and cats. If you are feeding really good food to healthy animals, animals, most dogs and cats don't need supplements. And you can never supplement your way out of a bad diet.
- [76:00]
Alex Clark
Correct. Ever, ever for pets or humans?
- [76:02]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yes. I have clients that will spend 200 bucks a month on supplements and 50 bucks on food. You need to put your money into healthy, clean, biologically appropriate food. And that will by default usually reduce the need for excessive number of supplements.
- [76:16]
Alex Clark
What should you do today and not do anymore if you have a very overweight weight pet?
- [76:21]
Dr. Karen Becker
If you're hearing this conversation and you're like, this all sounds great, my vet does not have these conversations with me. This is not uncommon. You can find yourself a functional medicine slash holistic or proactive wellness veterinarian at civ. The College of Integrative Veterinary Therapies is civt and their website is C I V T E D u dot org. You can go on to C I V T E edu dot org, click Directory of veterinarians worldwide and you can find a vet like me that can zoom or Skype with you. If you live in North Dakota and there's no chance there's an integrated vet right around the corner, you can zoom and Skype with one or you can find one locally in big cities. We've got several here in Phoenix that you can choose to show up in person just as you have found and be able to start an ongoing relationship. And I really view integrative veterinarian just as we do for humans that you can a la carte. The health and wellness professionals that you have on on your team caring for your body, you can do that for your pet as well. So I recommend having an ER vet ready to go in case you, God forbid, ever need that. I recommend having an integrated, proactive wellness vet. And if you have a family vet that's conventional, that you've been going to for years and you love them, you just want to add a different perspective to your dog or cat's wellness team. You can go to that website and find a veterinarian that is talking this language with you and will help you pick program protocols, foods, as well as calculate caloric requirements for fat dogs and fat cats. Obesity is that topic that we is sensitive, but we really can't afford to overfeed our dogs and cats, creating a metabolic issue that decreases their quality of life, shortens their lifespan and creates a whole host of secondary degenerative diseases that are completely preventable. And we can prevent that from happening by calculating the number of calories that our fat dog or cat needs to be optimal. Which means if you have a 34lb dog that should be 25lbs, your veterinarian is going to calculate the volume, the amount of food you need to feed to get them down to their ideal body weight while you are beginning an appropriate exercise program to put their joints through the healthy range of motions they need to build tendon resiliency, muscle tone, cardiovascular health and well being. So as we start a healthy lifestyle protocol for our dogs or cats that are over overweight, we can slowly diet them down to an ideal body weight which dramatically reduces this lifestyle of degenerative diseases that will eventually catch up with them and in essence decrease their quality of life. Obesity is a totally preventable disease. We just have to have the commitment to do it.
- [78:50]
Alex Clark
Do you think that the majority of American pet owners are killing their pets and have no idea?
- [78:55]
Dr. Karen Becker
I'm going to qualify this into well loved animals. The people listening to your podcast past I am assuming all have well loved cherished animals. They love them. These are not animals that are chained to a tree in someone's backyard. So we're not talking a pet owner that doesn't care. We're talking about people who love their animals dearly, with the owners being cognizant of I love this dog or cat with my whole heart and I want this animal here as long as possible. Those people are as misguided for their own nutrition and ability to make excellent, wise lifestyle choices for themselves and their kids. They are misguided with their pets as they are for themselves.
- [79:37]
Alex Clark
Wow.
- [79:37]
Dr. Karen Becker
And what I have found is that as they begin educating themselves, first of all they have overwhelm and second of all, they have guilt. And Alex, the whole reason that we wrote Forever Dog book and then which is the why of tell us why animals are dying younger than ever before. That's the science. The whole reason that we wrote the how to the Cookbook, the Cliff Notes version of how to take lifestyle and food and make it work for your dog or cat's benefit is because people are willing to do anything for their animals. They just don't know what to do. And by giving people a blueprint and a roadmap on what they can do to clean up their dogs and cats food and environment, and by giving them the science, people are capable of making excellent choices. They just need the information. And what I have found is that so many people who haven't been able to put these pieces into place for their own health and well being, oftentimes because we don't necessarily always love ourselves enough to do it, we will do it for our beloved dogs and cats. And what's so cool to see is pet parents saying, I'm going to shift and start a health and wellness new chapter of my dog and cat's life. Because I know that this matters for their overall longevity. And I want them in their body for as long as possible, but I want them to be thriving and well in their body. You don't want them to degenerate organ by organ, joint by joint, until they die of cancer. Cancer at half their life expectancy that they should. The most important thing we can do is gain the knowledge we need to make better choices. And that does two things that keeps our babies here longer, but that also reduces the regret and frustration. And I think it's the guilt that swallows people alive when we look back on animals that we've had previously. And you're a first time dog owner and I love this because you're like, this hasn't happened. But this is why I'm so glad that you are having me on your show. You have the ability to know enough to be one of those rare humans that will not have regrets. Your job is to put your head on your pillow at night to the day your beloved dies and say, I did the best I could with the knowledge I have. And every day I'm going to gain new knowledge so that I never have to say to myself, I wish I knew then what I know now. You know what it takes to be healthy in your body and your home right now for you. And you are so wisely applying those same principles to your dog's diet and lifestyle. Good on you. Most people don't do that. Most people in the US don't know to do that.
- [82:04]
Alex Clark
Do you think that if pet owners took what they learned in this episode and applied it today in their pet's life that they could buy an extra 10, even 20 years?
- [82:14]
Dr. Karen Becker
Years they will add absolute time to whatever time was in the genetics unfolding for the animals that they are caring for. They will add quality time. How much time? That is a question that I can't answer because it depends on so many variables, including what that animal came from, how old they are now, what their previous history was, what they ate, genetic lineages as well as environmental damage and secondary toxic psychosis. All of those things come together to create longevity and health span. Homer, who's on the COVID of Forever Dog Life. That's my precious rescue. I rescued him at 12. People will say he's like an old man didn't. Don't you just want him to live out his life and you know, just get whatever time is left? Yes, but do I want to intentionally create a body for him that he feels good in as he's 18 aging? Yes. Do I want his brain to function throughout the rest of his remaining years in a way that allows him to not have cognitive decline? Doggy dementia. I want his brain to work. I want his little arthritic body to be less arthritic next year than it was when I adopted him. I'm doing that. I took his little fat obese body that I adopted him in and dieted him down to his ideal body weight. I'm working on building and maintaining resilient lean muscle muscle mass so that he can go on two to three mile hikes still as a 17 year old dog and feel good in his body as he's moving. I am working on minimizing the progression of his cataracts that I adopted him with by putting him on an intentional protocol to help minimize how quickly his eyes are degenerating. These are all things that are within my wheelhouse I can do. I might not double his lifespan, but what I do know is whatever time he has left in that blessed little body, it will be healthier and better. Better than if I had not made the effort. And that Alex, has to be our goal as pet parents, as guardians. It's not ours to know exactly how long we're going to have our beloved dogs and cats for. What our responsibility is, is to do the best we can and to make the commitment to continue to learn.
- [84:22]
Alex Clark
Yeah.
- [84:23]
Dr. Karen Becker
So that tomorrow our animals are healthier and better than they are today because of the choices we are making. The quality of our animals lives rests in the palm of our hand. We are in control of everything. We have to make really wise decisions and we do that by educating ourselves.
- [84:44]
Alex Clark
As the weather warms up, I always do a little Spring Cleaning around the house. I love focusing on my closet. If you live in Scottsdale, hit up goodwill. But this year I realized that my beauty routine needed a cleanup too. I mean, when's the last time you checked what's in your makeup bag or your bathroom cabinet? Cabinet. It's crazy how many products are filled with chemicals like talc and synthetic fragrance. I finally decided it was time to throw out those old products and make the switch to something better for my skin. And I found Adele Natural Cosmetics. Adele is a family owned company committed to creating clean, non toxic beauty products. Since 2014 they've been handcrafting cosmetics with simple skin loving ingredients like jojoba oil and cocoa butter. Their moisturizing foundation offers medium buildable coverage while nourishing nourishing the skin. It's a great option if you're looking for a product that can do it all, cover, hydrate and care for your skin. And if you're looking for a blush that's both versatile and hydrating, their cream blush is perfect for adding a natural flush of color. I love Adele Cosmetics Blush in shades. Rose Petal and Pink Melon. I've got the rose petal on now. Spring cleaning. Your beauty routine has never been easier. Head to Adele Natural Cosmetics.com use code ALEX for 25 off your first order. That's Adele Natural Cosmetics.com code ALEX for 25 OFF your first order order. It's time to refresh your makeup bag with clean, safe products that nourish your skin and keep you looking fresh. Are we over vaccinating our pets? Is the pet vaccination schedule as compromised as the childhood vaccine schedule in America?
- [86:13]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yes, and that is for twofold reasons. First of all, we give the exact same dose of vaccine vaccine to the 2 1/2 pound teacup Yorkie as we do to the 220 pound Tibetan Mastiff. It's all one vaccine. The second issue that causes profound potential for adverse vaccine reactions in veterinary medicine is the fact that the vaccine schedule is for dogs will give a Parvo distemper, adenovirus, parainfuenza, leptocronal, Lyme, Bordetella and Arabes every year from birth till death. We never stop. Even if you buy the conventional MMR DPT vaccine schedule for human kids, you and I don't go in every year till we die to get an MMR DPT booster. Even if you were vaccinated as a kid, we're done as adults. But that's not true for dogs and cats. The veterinary profession Says to continue administering year after year vaccines. And here's my problem with that theory. Modified live viruses that are given to dogs just like vaccines for humans. If I was, I was vaccinated as a kid, my parents just didn't know. Well, sure, yeah, I had mmr, dpt. If I go in and do a blood titer right now, I can do a blood test, I can do a vaccine antibody titer and measure my level of those childhood vaccines and I am protected for life. Easy simple test. I can go in and measure your dog's Parvo and distemper antibody levels from previous vaccines. Easy simple test and proactive Wellness veterinarians do that all the time. When you get that little postcard that says, let's do more vaccines, wellness veterinarians say, hey, let's find out if your dog needs more vaccines. Because the vast majority of dogs are protected for life once they have established protective immunity. And this is something that even though we learned this in veterinary school, Alex, Veterinarians forget that once we have established protective immunity for modified live viruses, dogs are protected for life. There's no way that we can even boost them because you can't boost an already protective, protected immune system. Once they have established protective immunity, Boosting those shots every year doesn't give them more protection. It just increases the likelihood for an adverse reaction reaction.
- [88:39]
Alex Clark
The different vaccines that they recommend we give our pets, are they actually protecting them? Like your dog will never get rabies if they have the rabies vaccine, for example.
- [88:49]
Dr. Karen Becker
So there are three types of vaccines? Well, there more than three. But the three most common types of vaccines we give in veterinary medicine for small animals are killed. The rabies vaccine is a killed virus modified live like Parvo and Distemper. Those are viruses that were previously active and live that have been modified to not create disease in the body. Body. And then Bactrins. Bactrins are vaccines for Lyme disease and Lepto. They're vaccines for bacteria. The equivalent would be like a human tetanus shot.
- [89:16]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [89:17]
Dr. Karen Becker
Bactrin based vaccines are not protective for life. Just like you, if you go to a conventional human md, they're going to say get a tetanus shot every seven years because they wear off because there isn't lifelong protective immunity. Okay, Lyman, Lepto, Same thing. Lyman. Lepto, Lepto. The kicker about getting Lyme and Leptov vaccines, they are the most reactive vaccines. We see the most side effects with those vaccines. And to your point, they don't guarantee protection against getting Lyme or Lepto disease, they minimize the shedding. If your dog gets Lyme or Lepto, they minimize potential transfer. Like Lepto is potentially contagious to humans. It's a zoonotic disease, which means humans can catch it too. Vaccinating your dogs against Lepto and lime is not a guarantee that your dog is not going to acquire those bacteria when they're out and about in their environment. And that's probably the biggest frustration is people then go on to put topical pesticides on their dogs every month for fleas and ticks.
- [90:13]
Alex Clark
I want to know about that too.
- [90:14]
Dr. Karen Becker
And so now they have a vaccine on board that is potentially really reactive, doesn't prevent against Lyme disease, and they're using topical pesticides to prevent tick adhesion on them. So we have an ineffective, potentially ineffective vaccine along along with an overwhelming whopper dose of pesticides that the owners are reapplying on a monthly basis. That's the combination for potential reactions on a multitude of different levels.
- [90:42]
Alex Clark
If you were today adopt a, you know, brand new puppy, are there any vaccines you'd be like, I would give my puppy that or you wouldn't do any.
- [90:51]
Dr. Karen Becker
So Ron Schultz, who was the head immunologist of the Madison Veterinary School in Wisconsin, he ran the immunology lab up until about five years ago when he retired. And he was the most amazing immunologist because he was the man that did all of the antibody vaccine titer studies with live virus challenge, which means he vaccinated dogs with rabies vaccine and then challenged, he exposed them to live rabies and and then determined were the animals able to was this a protective vaccine or not? He did that with Parvo and Distemper as well. He was this brilliant human that actually reverse engineered how many vaccines really are effective and how many are really needed of which type of vaccine to actually provide protective immunity. He was the guy that kind of distilled all of this confusion in veterinary medicine when it comes to how often should we be vaccinating and with what products and how long does duration of immunity last? Meaning how long do vaccines really last versus what our vets telling us to just come in every year and just let me qualify for people listening saying, oh my gosh, my veterinarian's money hungry. Not at all. Veterinarians are following what our organizations tell us to do. They are great people that are just rule followers and doing exactly what they are told to do. Yeah. When you read the research, when you look at the studies of Duration of immunity. It's shocking. And what Dr. Ron Schultz found when it comes to puppy vaccines, ideally, and this is what I would do in an ideal world, so let's just assume that like that's a category of rescue dog. The first thing, the first thing I did with Homer when I rescued, rescued him is titered him. I did a quick blood draw and I measured how much previous vaccines he's had. He was very well protected. So I would never give him more because he has plenty of vaccine antibody titers in his system. Vaccine antibodies floating around his body. His title was adequate. There's no, there's no reason to give him more. Ideally with a puppy, if you are rescuing, this is not an option. But if you are going to a breeder, we can measure mama's when she's pregnant. We can measure mama's blood work and determine the exact day that maternal antibody wears off. It's called a vaccine nomograph. And we can find out the day that we need to begin giving one vaccine. And that's what Dr. Ronscholtz found, is that one well timed parvo and distemper vaccine as a puppy can yield protection for life. Now we have to determine when that is. But one vaccine vaccine can yield lifelong protection. Why would we not recognize that and then honor that individual's immune system and confirm that our dogs are protected? That's the one thing that I love about titers. Some of my conventional colleagues will say that's this is a very reckless recommendation that Dr. Becker would just say one well time vaccine. Except that we can prove efficacy. So if we know that puppies need the vaccine between nine and 12 weeks of age and we give that one vaccine during that time frame, we draw blood two weeks after that vaccine and can demonstrate that the dog is protected with adequate antibody titers. We do not have to continue to vaccinate that puppy ever again for those diseases. He's done, he's protected and now we're honoring his innate immune system. We're not guessing that he's protected. We can prove it and then he's done. You're saving so much much money with unnecessary vaccines. You're preventing your dog from having an adverse reaction. And you're able to know in your heart that if your dog is out there eating some wild fox or raccoon poop full of parvovirus, no problem. We know your dog's protected. So it's such a beautiful, scientific, elegant way to minimize unnecessary vaccines while making sure that we know in our hearts our dogs are protected. And I don't understand why that isn't protocol. Like I believe that it's such common sense and brilliant way to structure vaccines that why wouldn't we do it? And yet it is not accepted across the board yet in veterinary medicine. But it's one of my heartfelt passions is educating my peers and colleagues about this because you can't argue the science and it's such a beautiful way to make sure our pets are protected without over vaccinating them.
- [94:59]
Alex Clark
And this is a big part of the Forever Dog Dog book.
- [95:01]
Dr. Karen Becker
The big part of Forever Dog Book are all of the variables that current dogs in modern societies are encountering that is taking away from a long and healthy lifespan. One of them being early spay neuter over vaccination and an abundance of veterinary derived flea and tick chemicals, pesticides, voluntary application of repetitive pesticides that we know can hinder health Span.
- [95:26]
Alex Clark
Did Bobby was he.
- [95:27]
Dr. Karen Becker
Bobby was not neutered.
- [95:29]
Alex Clark
Okay.
- [95:29]
Dr. Karen Becker
Bobby never ate kibble in his life. Bobby had no vaccines except rabies. He. He was vaccinated for rabies.
- [95:35]
Alex Clark
So when would be the right time to spay or neuter if you have to do it?
- [95:38]
Dr. Karen Becker
My position has totally shift on spay and neuter. I was raised in a shelter system, so I know firsthand the overpopulation problem. I spent my life as as a shelter worker and I've euthanized homeless animals. This is a topic close to my heart. After spaying and neutering dogs as a private practice veterinarian and me spaying and neutering them early enough that I induced endocrine damage in my patients, that's also wildly painful for me to talk about, but I did that. I was so obsessed with making sure that nothing could have an unwanted litter that I spayed and neutered all the dogs in my practice. This topic does not apply to cats. We can talk about that next podcast. This is a dog issue issue. But veterinarians for years have said spay your dog before 6 months of age because it's healthier for them. And the overwhelming avalanche of science coming out now saying absolutely not.
- [96:33]
Alex Clark
Oh wow.
- [96:33]
Dr. Karen Becker
It's like removing the ovaries of an eight year old girl. She's gonna have endocrine problems. She doesn't have her ovaries or eunuchs removing the testicles of young boys. They're going to have physiologic issues because their endocrine system is never going to be balanced. We're removed sex secreting glands before puberty. Same is true of Dogs. So now what I recommend is a hysterectomy, which is just the removal of the uterus. And we can do that at any age. So shelter workers and people working at humane societies listening to this, we can pivot from a complete desexing procedure, AKA total removal of all hormone secreting tissues, we can pivot to a simple hysterectomy. We accomplish the goal, sterilization. No unwanted litters, no Pyomet Demetra, no problems. Dogs can be rendered sterile by just doing hysterectomy on females and vasectomy on males. And we can do that at 8 weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, whenever we want. So what I'm pitching to the American Veterinary Medical association and to all 33 vet schools in North America is let's start teaching kids when they are in veterinary school how to do vasectomy and hysterectomy so they're easier, simpler, it's a cheaper procedure, less time anesthesia under anesthesia, smaller in size decision. This is a win, win, win. Why would we not do that? Because veterinarians don't know how.
- [97:50]
Alex Clark
Wow.
- [97:50]
Dr. Karen Becker
So this comes down to educating the veterinary community on how to do these simpler, easier techniques. And then we can provide these sterilization techniques that don't compromise a dog's endocrine system and can be done at any age safely and healthfully. So that's my pitch, is that we switch surgical techniques for sterilization that can be done at any age, and we accomplish that through hysterectomy. That's also called ovary, sparing, sp spay and vasectomy.
- [98:17]
Alex Clark
Heartworm, flea and tick.
- [98:19]
Dr. Karen Becker
Heartworm, flea and tick, which you'll read about in Forever Dog Book, is best accomplished when you analyze your particular dog's risk. For instance, an outside dog in North Dakota on a farm, has an entirely different risk for heartworm than a dog in Florida year round with all those mosquitoes. Same with if you live on the east coast and you are picking ticks off your dog constantly, versus here in Arizona, where I hike all the time with my dog and I've never found a tick on him. We have to identify what the environmental risk is in the area that you live as well as your lifestyle risk, which means if you're an outdoors person and you are hiking deep in the woods, you're going to want to do something to help prevent against ticks. And there's a whole host of natural things you can do to help minimize potential tick infestation, but also minimize potential disease transmission from ticks. To your dogs. Same with fleas. Fleas are not a massive issue here. Have you had any issues?
- [99:16]
Alex Clark
No. And so here's the thing though, as I'm like really at this time of like I need to figure out what I'm doing. So I was given like heartwarm and flea and tick and all this and I'm just like overwhelmed. Like I don't know like what he actually needs and like what I'm just being told to do. Cuz that's what they tell everybody. So I was curious your thoughts. So I haven't done anything so I need to figure that out.
- [99:35]
Dr. Karen Becker
You do need to figure it out. And what I will tell you is there's no cookie cutter answer because if you, you are living in Boston where Lyme disease is off the charts, you have to do something to prevent tick exposure to your dogs. And there's a bunch of things that we can walk through, but that's a whole different protocol than where we live here, where I'm not wildly concerned about ticks here. So it depends on your personal lifestyle. Are you outside hiking with your dog? Are you deep in the woods? Where do you live? Does it freeze in the, in the winter? All of these variables come together. If you are unaware to make an environment environmental assessment of what your dog's risk is, then we're going to recommend that you partner with your veterinarian to figure out your dog's environmental risk. But it has to be a holistic veterinarian who recognizes that. Just saying, year round heartworm prevention and year round flea and tick pesticides for all dogs and cats, regardless of where they live, in every state, in every nation that we have to do this every month till they die. That is just not true. Some places around the world are hot beds for Lyme infection and those dogs living in that environment, you need to make sure that you are squared away with a protocol that you feel comfortable using. Same for yourself. You're also out there being exposed to Lyme disease. You need to have tick check protocols for your whole family when you get home. I also recommend swapping a traditional heartworm test for a Lyme screening test. That's called a 40x or Accuplex test, depending on what lab veterinarians use. So instead of a basic heartworm test every year or every six months, if you live in a Lyme endemic area, your veterinarian can do this simple, easy test to see if your dog has had exposure to Lyme disease. What a brilliant way to minimize agony over oh my gosh what if my dog could be exposed? Just find out. So twice a year when I was in Chicago, I checked all my dogs. I screened them for exposure to Borrelia, which is the etiologic agent that causes Lyme Lyme disease. Because I was picking ticks off my dogs left, right, and center. So in that environment, I checked twice a year to see if my dogs had exposure. That's a really good way to empower myself because it. Lyme is easy to treat as long as you catch it early. How do you know if you're catching it early? You're testing for it. So it's easy and simple if you are in a Lyme positive area. We do not have crazy Lyme disease where we live here. And I don't know if you're. I don't know if you're camping every weekend, but no, I.
- [101:48]
Alex Clark
He doesn't do anything anyway. I mean, like, stays indoors, basically.
- [101:51]
Dr. Karen Becker
Exactly. And so you have basically an indoor dog that might. When he's outside, he's on a sidewalk, probably.
- [101:56]
Alex Clark
Or the turf.
- [101:57]
Dr. Karen Becker
Exactly. Fake turf. So his exposure is really, really low. He's not an animal I would ever suggest using pesticides on. Because risk versus benefit is not the.
- [102:07]
Alex Clark
Only time he's in an environment like that is like once or twice a year. You know, for holidays, I go home and visit my mom in Indiana.
- [102:13]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yep.
- [102:13]
Alex Clark
That's the only time. And he's just in her grass in her front yard.
- [102:16]
Dr. Karen Becker
Yes. And so, I mean, if. If you're in the winter, you're in the clear because it's horrible out. If, if it's during the summer, then you can, you can use the flea and tick spray that you can. You can make homemade DIY safe, effective flea and tick sprays that you can use during that high risk time. And if he's there on a repeated basis, or if you are hiking with him in the woods and you are picking ticks off of him, next time you have wellness blood work done at your local veterinarian, ask her to just screen for Lyme. It's such an easy way to make sure that there was no. No lime exposure.
- [102:47]
Alex Clark
Is it true that giving a dog cold water versus room temp can make them throw up?
- [102:51]
Dr. Karen Becker
Some dogs are more sensitive to frozen foods, ice water, and cold water. And you can have this like, lower esophageal sphincter spasm where it's more like regurgitation where they drinking cold water and they're just kind of. And up it. Kind of up it kind of comes and Out So room temperature can help minimize the potential for this lower esophageal spasm.
- [103:12]
Alex Clark
The juicy question that everybody is going to want to ask you as a veterinarian, is it the breed or is it the owners when it comes to pit bulls?
- [103:23]
Dr. Karen Becker
Okay, so I like all these hot fire topics. It's actually some of both. We know that there can be some genetic predispositions to aggression with certain breeds, however. Absolutely. Nurture plays a bigger role. So even if you get a pitbull from a fighting light, third or fourth generation fighting lines, that animal's environment and how they were raised absolutely trumps genetics. If they come from a long line of fighting dogs, animals that have potential to express that can still be modulated with appropriate fear free, safe and trust building training techniques. The biggest issue I see with not just pills, pit bulls. I've been bit by more Chihuahuas in my last 30 years than I have ever and I, I had pit bulls up until they all blessedly died. I had three pities. Lovely. The downside is that they're strong and if they are not trained in a way that builds trust and allows them to feel safe, or if they have been exploited, mistreated or trained in a way that fosters them to feel not safe and or need to be defensive, they're capable of being very defensive. So picking your training technique, picking your trainer and starting appropriate safe training as soon as you get your puppy is the most important thing we can do to socialize our dogs in a way that allows them to feel comfortable in a multitude of different situations. Being home alone, being out in the middle of a busy area, being around different colored people, different size people, different ethnicities, people in wheelchairs, people with big hats, people with umbrellas, loud sounds, crazy environments. Life is full of really diverse experiences that if we build into the framework of our puppy's experiences as being okay and safe and a part of life, our puppy will store that in his brain data bank and be okay with, all right, I've been in this environment before, I can take a walk and I don't have to fear this loud sound. If our animals don't have appropriate exposure to appropriate life lessons starting young in life, then they end up without the social skills needed to be able to navigate all that life has to offer. And what that means is when they're put in an environment where they don't feel safe or they believe that you could hurt them, they are going to protect themselves. And that's very natural and normal for all species to do. Yeah, So I believe humans really are the root cause. People say my dogs crazy. Yeah.
- [106:00]
Alex Clark
Do you have any concern whatsoever for a young family that owns a pitbull who's who is thinking about having children for the first time and having a baby around?
- [106:08]
Dr. Karen Becker
If they've rescued that pitbull from a fighting ring and they have seen signs of the animal being nervous and fearful in certain situations, that is a situation that you would have to manage exceptionally well because that animal comes from a history of experience is that makes he or she feel not safe in certain environments. And if you can't manage that, then that animal is at risk of exhibiting protective qualities because they feel unsafe. If you have an animal, you've exposed him to a lot of different situations and he's been in environments where there's other dogs and there's a lot going on and he's been in highly stressful situations and or confrontational situations and you've never seen him bend. He's trustworthy around all dogs in every situation and you can trust his responsibility response? I would be far less concerned about having any. This is not a pitbull specific. This is any dog that has the social skills to be able to handle stressful environments. And having a kid, bringing a kid home is a stressful environment.
- [107:07]
Alex Clark
Holistic pet care often gets a really bad rap from conventional vets. What is the biggest misconception that you wish today that you could just clear up about holistic treatment and natural remedies?
- [107:17]
Dr. Karen Becker
I think the biggest misconception I see out there is that holistic suggestions don't have any science behind them, that there's no research, so we shouldn't be doing any of these less toxic or pharma free options because there's no research. I hear this when it comes to fresh and raw food diet every day there's new studies coming out with fresh and raw foods and it's amazing. It's exactly what you think it would show. It's really much better to feed less ultra processed food and more real foods. Every study is substantiating that. When veterinarians say that's a great idea, but there's no science or that could be risky because we don't know or we're practicing or guessing with your pet because your veterinarian is not aware of the new research coming out. That doesn't mean that you have to remain in a state of not knowing, which means you ultimately speaking you end up becoming your dog or cat's best advocate. Which means if you haven't kind of decided that you're going to be a 2.0 research longevity junkie, now's a really good time to, to start. Because if you know enough to be able to trust the decisions you're making, usually based off of common sense and you having a deep knowing that, you know, this does sound right. It doesn't make sense that we'd be giving the same dose of vaccine for all size dogs. It doesn't make sense that any ultra processed food was to say life from birth till death for all animals. All of these things make sense. If your common sense barometer is definitely saying this is all very logical, you can find science to support that. Your conventional veterinarian will not have the science because he or she is not focused on that path, but the science is out there. And then you can begin to educate yourself and present that research and science to your veterinarian so that you can partner together to improve the health and well being of the animals that you are caring for. You as the dog owner are driving the bus, you get to call the shots. But that means you have to know enough not to yell and scream with your vet, but to lovingly educate them about topics that they didn't learn in veterinary school. And respect is really important. I think, think that that's, I think the most important thing is I, I don't know doctors that don't have great hearts. I know that they're out there. But generally speaking, most veterinarians and human MDs, they are good people that don't necessarily know everything that you know. And so starting a dialogue, a respectful, kind dialogue, is really important.
- [109:37]
Alex Clark
If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, and that could be physical, physically, mentally or spiritually. And it doesn't have to only apply to pets, it could be people, whatever you want, what would that remedy be?
- [109:49]
Dr. Karen Becker
Knowledge. Because knowing enough to reduce regret is the biggest, most powerful hammer we have in our toolbox. For us to be able to not have regrets about our own health or anything that we're caring for. If we are in charge of another life, even if it's a plant, if we have something living that it relies on us for life, we should know in our hearts that we are making the best decisions at this point in time. We're doing the very best we can. And if right now people hear this and say, ooh, I don't know enough, don't panic and don't freak out and don't melt down and certainly don't beat yourself up, what's important is that we recognize what where the holes are or where our deficiencies are or what we need to learn more about and then dive in and not enough to overwhelm you, but if you can work on learning something every day that allows you to feel a little bit more important, empowered to make better decisions tomorrow than you made today, you are on the path of making better decisions which ultimately over time, will minimize regret. And that's what this life is about, is being able to do what we can for each other and together by supporting each other, having these discussions, but also then putting into action what we've learned to be able to take the best care of our bodies, our earth, our societies, but also those of our families members.
- [111:09]
Alex Clark
Remind everybody what the names of your books are and where to get them.
- [111:12]
Dr. Karen Becker
So first book is the forever dog. And second book is the Forever Dog Life. My website is drkarenbecker.com and you can go to Forever Dog Foreverdog Life for books or Dr. Karen Becker.com will get you there as well.
- [111:23]
Alex Clark
And the Forever Dog is like a traditional chapter book with a bunch of information in it, all words.
- [111:30]
Dr. Karen Becker
It's 400 pages of words with over 400 citations. It's just a lot of really heavy, great science for you to understand why our dogs need help.
- [111:39]
Alex Clark
And then the Forever Dog Life, which is weirdly, that's what I found first. And so now I got to go back and read the Forever Dog. But the Forever Dog Life is a gorgeous, you guys, picture book. How to she lays out every single thing you could imagine. Different recipes for real food, little snacks, making special popsicles, flea and tick spray. You know, how to make all of your home cleaning supplies home made. Like this book covers everything and it's so beautifully done. And so I, I have recommended that book to everybody in the last year since it came out. So it's like been my favorite book to recommend pet owners. So everybody should buy it. And you're on Instagram. What's your Instagram?
- [112:17]
Dr. Karen Becker
Dr. Kieran Becker.
- [112:18]
Alex Clark
Dr. Becker, thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [112:20]
Dr. Karen Becker
It has been a joy to be here. I'm so happy and I hope we can do it again.
- [112:24]
Alex Clark
Oh, let's do it.
- [112:25]
Dr. Karen Becker
Awesome.
- [112:29]
Alex Clark
I have been waiting, waiting for months to get to interview Dr. Becker. As soon as I read this book and got mochi, I was like, oh my gosh. It just makes sense that everything that I've learned for myself I need to extend to him. Just like when I finally, God willing, have kids, then I will be extending it to them. Please leave a five star review. Tell others why they need to be listening to Culture Apothecary and what episode. Maybe it was this one that brought you here. We're on a mission to heal a sick culture twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern Eastern. Every guest brings their own unique remedy to heal a sick culture physically, mentally and spiritually. Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube where you can watch every episode and find other additional content from me, like vlogs and reaction videos. You can also follow me on Instagram at Real Alex Clark I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.