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- [00:07]
A
Journey on Magic lies within the trails we ride. You're listening to the Journey on podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warrick is a horseman, trainer, international clinician and author who helps empower horse people from all over the world with the skills, knowledge and mindsets needed to create trusting partnerships with their horses. Warrick offers a free seven day trial to his comprehensive online video library that includes hundreds of full length training videos and several home study courses@videos.warwick shiller.com.
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B
G'day everyone. Welcome back to the Journey On Podcast. I'm your host, Warwick Schiller and my special guest this week on the podcast is a veterinarian named Dr. John Madigan. Now, you would have heard me say time and time again that the podcast is not about horses. And so you're probably thinking, well, for a podcast not about horses, why do you have a veterinarian there? But Dr. Madigan, he looks at the world a bit differently than a lot of people. And I will, when I reached out to him to be on the podcast, I'm going to read to you the little bit of an email that he sent me. So he said, I just returned from Belgium speaking at the equine reproduction meeting with 700 vets from 45 countries. My opening address for the conference was the transition of consciousness at birth in the neonatal fold in comparison to the human infant. So that kind of gives you an idea of what Dr. Madigan's on about. And he's actually kind of famous in the horse world, well known in the horse world for developing a technique that overcomes a problem. A lot of, well, not a lot of foals. But if a foal has this problem when it's born, it's really, really difficult to deal with. And it's a thing called a maladjusted foal or a dummy foal. So the foals are bor. Like a zombie. They come out, they don't nurse, they don't nicker, they don't, they don't recognize their mother. They go over and they'll bump into walls. And, you know, they just, there's, they're not quite right. And they used to be a great deal of time and effort and injecting with hormones and all sorts of stuff to try to resolve this problem. And Dr. Madigan figured out what was causing the problem and has this technique that requires no veterinary intervention to resolve it. And the story about how he came to discover that is fascinating. You know, I met Dr. Madigan at the Western States Horse Expo. A couple of years ago, I had, you know, I had a booth at the Horse Expo, and I was doing demos, and I came back to the booth, and I had a lady working in the booth for me, selling books and things. And she. She gave me this card, and she said, oh, this guy came by to ch with you, wants to have a chat with you. And I looked at the card and it said Dr. John Madigan. And I'm like, I think that's the guy that developed that. What's called the Madigan squeeze. And, like, as far as I can tell, he's like this famous vet brainwave guy, you know, And I thought, I wonder why he wants to talk to me. Well, it turned out he'd looked at. He worked very closely with a vet at UC Davis, where he's a professor who. She's a neurologist and does all sorts of neurology stuff with horses. And they'd both been watching some of my YouTube videos about my experiences at clinics with horses that have sleep deprivation and how all the connection work I've done with them. You know, if you've ever heard the story back in the very first episode about the mustang at the clinic in Texas, they were interested in that. So it was fascinating connecting with them then. And then recently, after Dr. Madigan presented at that. That conference in Belgium, he reached out and he thought, how do you think that? He said, do you think this would be a good conversation to have on the podcast? And I'm like, yes, please. And, yeah, I'm so glad that he reached out and had him on the podcast, because this conversation is pretty cool. And it's, you know, like I said, this is not about horses at all. And, you know, so many of our favorite themes are in this consciousness, manifesting your destiny, discovering your purpose, all those sorts of things. So I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation with Dr. John Madigan as much as I did recording it. Dr. John Madigan, welcome to the Journey on podcast.
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A
Hey, thanks very much. It's fun to get together with you.
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B
Yeah, we met a couple of years ago at the Horse Expo, and I probably mentioned that in the. In the intro. And yeah, it was great to chat with you then, but I'm really, you know, when you reached out to me about. I had asked you maybe about being on the podcast or mentioned it, and you reached out to me a while ago, and you said that you wanted to talk about folds and consciousness and the link to the human infant and neurodevelopment. I'm like, okay, that's Exactly. This sort of stuff I want to talk about, but we don't want to go there yet. We want to. What I want to figure out is how did you get to looking at the stuff you're looking at? Because you were just telling me a second ago that you, before we got on, what was that conference in Barcelona, you told me that.
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A
Yeah, there's a five day conference on human consciousness and there's all these different tracks, hundreds of researchers from around the world discussing all different aspects of consciousness. Until you wade in there, you don't really understand the scope and magnitude of this consciousness thing. And of course, if you listen to podcasts and social media and reels and whatnot, you know, this element of your unconscious mind and how it influences things, it's really big. And I'm sure, you know, it has a lot, a lot of really important aspects to life and how we live and what we think and how we do things. And then you've just dissected so much about how the horse consciousness, you know, exists and how we can work with that to improve our ability to get along with horses and do things with them and safely and enjoy them. And, you know, that's what attracted me to want to go up and say hello and tell you a little bit about the area that I was working in as a, you know, so that, that's how that's connected with me. Yeah.
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B
It's interesting you mentioned social media and reels. Right. Then, you know, they've got the, they've got the. What's the, the algorithm. They've got my algorithm because if I get on, if I get on, oh, what's it called? Instagram, and I start scrolling through reels. They're all about consciousness.
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A
Yes.
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B
It's all that metaphysical stuff, like they, they know what I'm interested in and they keep feeding it to me. And there's so many fascinating conversations out there right now.
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A
Yeah.
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B
About stuff that just blows your mind. I was listening to a podcast today, actually re listening to a podcast. I have mentioned it before in this podcast. I think it's a guy named Sean Ryan. So he's an ex Navy Seal, I think, and it's, it's mostly a military podcast, but he had a guy on there named Colonel John, John Alexander. Have you ever heard of him?
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No.
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B
So he was in charge of a lot of the telekinesis and remote viewing stuff for the army during the Cold War, trying to figure out what was going on in the Kremlin. But he was telling a story about There's a guy in the army who. He's the Army's number one lie detector guy. Okay. And so. But he lives in New York City or. Sorry, not Washington or Northern Virginia there, something like that. And he's got house plants in his house. And one day he was watering his plants, and he thought, I wonder how long it takes the water to reach the leaves. So he hooked his plant up to a lie detector, which has that galvanic skin response which detects moisture. Anyway, he found out how long the moisture takes to reach the leaves, but then he left the lie detector attached to it, and he noticed over a couple of days that the needle was going up and down and different things, and he started to realize that the plants were responding to the emotions of the human in the room. So then he starts jacking around and he. And he burns leaves of the plants. He takes a cigarette light, he goes, wonder what happens if I burn one of these leaves? And there's a response on this lie detector thing. But he took it one step further. He found out that when he thought. This is where it gets a bit metaphysical. When he thought about getting his lighter to go over and burn one of the leaves, the plant would have a response. So the plant's consciousness was interacting with human consciousness. And that. That's interesting.
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A
Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're using that example. So when my stuff comes up, it won't seem too far out because.
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B
Oh, don't worry. On this podcast, nothing you say will seem too far out. So why don't you. Why don't you tell everybody exactly what it is you're you're doing these days and all your titles and all that sort of stuff.
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A
Well, yeah, thanks. Well, I'm a. By title, I'm a distinguished professor emeritus, meaning that I don't have to go in and talk to the dean, you know, every day. And I still have research projects and whatnot at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California at Davis. And I'm involved with still some ongoing research there. And one of the focuses is the transition of consciousness at birth in the neonatal foal. And then I think we've made some very significant discoveries there that have changed how newborn foals are in other species. Now it's gone to ruminants and goats, calves, creas, and now puppies. And I think there's something to be learned as it relates to the human, so we can get to that. But. So to get back to your question, I'm an emeriti faculty at Davis. And then I have authored some books and a manual of equine neonatal medicine, which is. I was doing a book signing in Belgium last month at a meeting there with veterinarians from 47 different countries. And the nice thing about this Internet connection to relay information like you're doing is that I'm just shocked at how widespread the findings from our research as it relates to practical matters that spread around the world. And I. Somebody comes up to me and so I want to tell you my story about using the procedure that I developed. And I said, oh, that's great. Where are you from? He says, tunisia, you know, and I go, well, I think I got to look on a map for that one.
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B
It's next to Morocco, isn't it? Maybe.
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A
Yeah, I think so. I do want to, you know, so, you know. You know. Anyway, so that's what I do now. And still doing some research and been involved with some other welfare things in emergency and disaster medicine. But we're still uncovering things that I think have some human connections.
- [11:49]
B
Yeah, well, you mentioned, you know, how we first met at that horse expo was, you know, you'd probably seen some videos of me talking about helping horses with narcolepsy clinics. Not narcolepsy, sleep deprivation. Sorry, totally spoke out of turn there. And I wasn't trying to resolve the. The sleep deprivation. I was just working with the horse as I would work with them. But I found that these horses that had sleep deprivation would feel comfortable in that environment and lay down and go to sleep. And it's like the. The least likely place for a horse to feel comfortable in. In front of a crowd of people at a loudspeaks and stuff. So when. Yeah, you came up at the, the. The horse expert, actually you left a note at the desk. I had a lady in the booth and you left a note there. And I came back and she said, oh, this man left it for you. And I'm looking like John Madigan. That's the guy that developed the Madigan Squeeze. It can't be the same guy because, like, he's famous. What the hell would he want to.
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A
Be talking to me about?
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B
So before we go any further, let's talk about that because in the general horse community, I'd say if anybody knows of you, they know of you through that. So can you tell us what, tell us what, what it is and what, what situations do you use it in and what does it do?
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A
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right because I didn't name it the Madigan Squeeze. Just to get started. It's a procedure that's used on newborns, and I'll talk about that. But somebody, you know, named it, like, for example, this disease in of horses, Potomac Horse fever. You know. You've heard of that? Well, that was. A newspaper guy named it that because it was a summer syndrome. People didn't know veterinarians. And then he called it because it was by the Potomac rear. Well, this. So they go, oh, do the squeeze prisoner. What. What's that? Oh, it's this thing. Madigan, you know. So I did anyway, and I was very delighted once I found out that it worked and had my name on it. That was. That was good.
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B
It's good to have something that works with your name on it versus something that doesn't work with your name on.
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A
Exactly. So just to tell you how it gets started, because we have a few minutes here, is that, you know, I was in private practice and then discovered this infectious disease up in Mendocino county and a horse in the parking lot at a clinic. And we'll kind of talk about more how life can change for you if you, you know, with small events. And. And it turned out it was this rare infection that only six cases in the world. And so I was lucky enough, diagnosed the horse and treated it, got better. And then I ended up reporting on 41 cases of that at an American Association Equine Practitioners meeting. And I was one of the few equine practitioners in with the academics at this meeting of 5,000 equine vets. And so a guy died in a plane crash over at Davis. And then I was doing another project with Merck, and when they first came out with Ivermectin, because I had some horses with hypobiotic small strongye. So I'm dropping some samples off over in Davis, and the guy that's in the clinic goes, what are you doing over here? I said, oh, I got this research. He goes, you should apply for the position of the veterinarian who died in the plane crash. I said, oh, geez, look, hey, I haven't done a residency. I just. I'm up here in the country, you know, and no, I. You know me, you know. Really? And so he said, yeah, you should do it. So I got this invitation to do it, and. And I said, okay. And then I bought a new tie and went and did the interview. And I didn't really want the job. I had my own practice. It was paid for. I had built a large animal clinic there. I had a partner playing Polo on Wednesdays and on weekends. And so I'm over there. So every time I interviewed with somebody, I asked them, what research are you doing? Well, then we talk for 30, 40 minutes. Then they go, well, wait a minute, I'm supposed to ask you stuff because I just had this curiosity. It was really fun to hear what people work at. So, geez, I get this damn thing in the mail saying, hey, we've accepted you to come from Ukiah, this remote area, you know, I was in a two person practice to be in this, you know, leading veterinary school in the world as an assistant professor. I didn't know what that really meant was a tenure, you know, I didn't know. So I thought, well, and a guy friend of mine said, hey, this guy, his dad died and left him a lot of money. He wants to buy half your practice. So I talked to my partner. Anyway, circumstances just happened. So I go over to school, I'm learning right and left, and I'm only there a year, and this other faculty dies in a plane crash. And the department chair walks up to me and handed me his binder of slides and he said, you're going to teach the neonatal stuff, the full stuff. And I go, hold it, hold it. I look, I saw about 10 folds, you know, in three years up there where I was. And he goes, well, the slides are there, you'll figure it out. So I start. It's a good thing sometimes to start knowing you don't know anything. And you better figure out how to learn something because something's coming up and you're going to have to be sharing information. So right at that time there was this evolution in veterinary medicine of equine neonatal critical care. Before this, or we were foals would just get a, you know, a bottle in the stall with a mare kept warm. We didn't have pharmacology of what the drugs were. We didn't know how to give IV fluids. We didn't have, you know, all those things going. And so there was a group in Kentucky and one in Florida. So I reached out to them, I traveled and there was an international meeting. I, the department sent me there. So I started, you know, learning as much as I could and teaching it. And then I realized we better start an intensive care unit just like they have in Kentucky and Florida right here at UC Davis. So I saw this part of the. This is again, because I didn't know anything about the university. I see this area that's empty and it's got a couple of stocks in it. So I just rearranged it, built a couple of cardboard, of wooden, you know, things to hold the foal and put it next there and talk to all these people other places that were starting to do critical care. So that's how I got started in that. It was in the early 80s. And then I got. They formed a group, the International Perinatology Society. I went to all those meetings because I knew I don't know much about this and I gotta. I gotta learn because our place is one of the best place in the world. And I'm supposed to be running this field. I better do it right. And the other thing they did that these other clinics did, they always got a human neonatologist, you know, from one of their local medical centers. And we had the UC Davis Medical Center. So I called up there and I got a hold of this guy, Boyd Getzman. He said, yeah, I'll come down, I'll go to your rounds, I'll do stuff. Every time we present a foal, what we were doing, he said, well, you might want to consider doing this. You might want to consider you could do this. And so I developed five or six procedures that are used worldwide. Like we used to operate on foals, for example, for meconium impaction and cut the impaction out. And he goes, well, why don't you use acetylcysteine? That's what we use in the infants. I go, what? I know about that? So he tells me, we test it. Now it's a routine procedure and foals very rarely get operated on. It was just one example. But getting back to this transition, so that's the introduction to things is that I created then a set of notes so that I could remember everything I was learning. And people said, hey, could I get a copy of those? So Boyd Getzman says, take a look at this. This is my manual for infant neonates. You need one for the foal. I go, oh, okay. So I write this book, the first manual of Equine Neonatal Medicine. And I self published it because they had all this new stuff that people would have edited out if it was with a big publisher. And I thought my wife was gonna, you know. Well, she wasn't too happy. I was self, you know, doing this, publishing it. And we mailed these things out of the living room with the little folders. This is before the Internet. And oh my God, we spent a lot of money printing the books. And they're all in the office at our place or the living room and then a week after we do this massive mailing, go to the post office, and they. And I had this little box that we rented, and it was just full of all these return blue orders for this foal manual with a note. We have more that we can't put in the box. So I go, oh, I think I'm going to be okay at home now. Plus, it looks like people want to know how to take care of foals. And I just wrote down stuff that I learned so that I could remember it next year because they come every six months. So.
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B
So what? I gotta. I gotta interrupt. Sorry, John. What did that. Why did all the books come back?
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A
Oh, there were orders for the books.
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B
Oh, oh, sorry. Okay.
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A
Yeah, these mailers, these blue mailers, and you tear off the bottom and put a stamp on and say, I want the book. Mail it to me. And there were so many of those things crammed into the box. I still remember that moment. I could see it in there. I thought, because you mail them. And then I go the next day, and of course it's too soon. But I look, oh, I don't know, maybe the next day, nothing. But by, like, day four, oh, my God, we're going to be all right. All those orders were in there. So that's what that was. And so anyway, now it's in the fourth revised edition. You know, I did a book signing in Belgium. I got a line of people, and they want to talk about their full stuff. And so. And that's how it started because I just had to write down the stuff I was learning, share it with somebody else. Your book on the guide, that may be saying it wrong, you know, is how to train horses really fundamental? Well, this is. I got a sick Foley, has this kind of symptoms. This is what you should think of. And I could put comments in there called EC Editor comment. I go, people have tried this, but I haven't had much luck with it. So be really careful. And you may want to go to the. And they could. I could leave it in there because I. I was a publisher of the book. I didn't have to have an editor saying, oh, you know, that's your opinion. Where's the, you know.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Reference for it? So people love that. The practitioners, they just go, yeah, that's very helpful. You know, so that's the. That's the book story. So I got, you know, being the author of the. One of the first man, you know, manuals of how to take care of, you know, equal new foals with all the latest stuff in it was really big. But here's the deal. So then I'm running the intensive care unit, and all of a sudden we're not seeing 10 folds a year. We're seeing 90 to 100. And we're rolling. We got residents that are coming from around the world to work in our unit. We got cardiologists there, neurologists. It's a great place at UC Davis. I see something, I go, I don't know. This is involved. Something with the heart. Doesn't sound right. Get the cardiac guys down here. Okay. So being in private practice, I was not afraid. I didn't have some deal where people thought that I should know this. That's a philosophy that served me very well there. Even, you know, I. I just don't mind going, you know, I gotta ask somebody else about that. That's. This. This is, you know, I just. Anyway, it's a good thing. And in the university, there's just other specialists. Dermatology, neurology, gastrointestinal, the kidney guys from upstairs with the dogs. They come down, we got a fold with a funny, you know, kidney parameters that don't make sense. They come down, help you out. We put one on dialysis, you know, I mean, so it was just a fantastic thing. But a big part of the caseload is this thing. And this is the topic is the dummy foal. And people in the horse world, a lot of them heard about, oh, he's a dummy. And so the. All the publications had been written and reviewed, things said, oh, that's low oxygen.
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B
Before you. Before you. Sorry, interrupt. Before you go ahead. For people who are not in the horse world, what is a dummy foal? Can you say where it looks like before we start figuring out what.
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A
Yeah, I keep forgetting that we're not right, you know, in the.
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B
This is not necessarily horse world here. This is. This is consciousness and metaphysical world as well as horse world.
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A
Yeah. So mares are pregnant for about 11 months and they have a foal that weighs between, you know, thoroughbred foals and warmblood foals between 80 and 100, sometimes £120. So they're in utero and they got long legs and they're sleep. They have to be quiet in there. You know, one of the rules that we have is no galloping in utero. In other words, you know, that would not be good. So they're in this sleep like state, but they can't be frozen. They have to move their joints a little bit and they have to practice swallowing, but they don't breathe, they don't have gut motility, they don't have to look for their mother in utero, right? You think of all the in utero things they don't have to do. The placenta giving you oxygen so you don't need ventilation, Gut motility, getting all your nutrients, you know, thermal regulation, you got all that. But those are the things that we take care of in the intensive care unit when these foals are sick. So you think about, I started thinking about, you know, what's going on in utero and then what's going on shortly after. So when a mare decides to foal and there's these remarkable, you know, signals and she has a lot of control is over this. So you can be out checking the mare that's, you know, very close to foaling and they start getting relaxed and their udder, you know, starts to fill up. And you go and have a cup of coffee in the house because it looks like nothing's on. You come out and the foal is there. This happens all the time because the mare wants privacy. And in the wild, she will leave the herd and go out by herself and lay down. Position the foal. Remarkable, isn't it? It's laying there upside down, 100 pounds with his head in the pelvis area, but it's upside down. And then she lays down, rolls, gets those feet and nose into position and then starts labor and pushing that foal through the birth canal. We call that stage two labor. And the average time for that is about 20 minutes. It's pretty fast. So then she kicks the foal out, it's covered in amnion. They move their feet and whatnot, and she's still laying down. And then the foal starts to move and wiggle a little bit. And it has to go from being asleep for 11 months to I better get up before the saber toothed tiger comes. They're a prey species and the riskiest time is that shortly after birth. So they're on their feet. These are these little benchmarks that we tell all owners about when they're saying, hey, is my foal doing everything normal after birth? They're going to stand in one to two hours. And before that they sit sternal too. That meaning that their feet are out like, you know, to wide. And we found that that increases their oxygen. So if they're not, even if they're laying flat, we tell them first thing to do is put them sternal For a minute. See what happens with their breathing. They get up one to two hours, they nurse within two to three hours and then they are attached to the mom. I mean, they immediately, this is a marvelous thing. They fall in love immediately. So that mare, she's running around, there's other foals there. They could have newborn foals that are a week old and they all stick close to their moms. They don't interact until they get a few months of age, actually. But when that foal is born, it'll look over that big brown thing and go, oh, you are wonderful. I am following you around. You're protecting me. This is the greatest thing that happened. I'm not leaving your side. I'm glued. And then the mare is licked. Lick, you know, and. Oh, you know. Hi. And so this bonding and a lot of it was thought to be oxytocin. Well, there's more, more hormones involved that. But oxytocin is part of it. So part of our discovery is this. The dummy foal fails in that transition to do all those things when it comes out, may stand up, may move around and then it starts to wander. It doesn't recognize the mirror, it doesn't nicker, it doesn't respond. You walk up to it, it's not scared of you. You touch it, it doesn't jump or move around. Its sensory things are really messed up.
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B
So it's kind of zombie like.
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A
Zombie like? Yeah. Absolutely inappropriate responses to the environment compared to a foal that's got the normal evolutionary biology 20 minutes through the birth canal. And by the way, when you go through the birth canal, it's probably a good idea that you're not wiggling your feet back and forth. You know, if you're stuffing that 100 pound foal in the head and the neck through there, you've got to compress it and you've got to immobilize it. And that's what the squeeze. The squeeze happens first in the birth canal when the, when the foal goes through there. And so that's the signal. It creates a tonic immobility and it signals this receptor in the brain. I'll tell you more about how we figure that out. But what, what's supposed to happen is all that. And when it doesn't, we say it's maladjusted. It certainly could be congenital problems. It could be, you know, birth hypoxia and whatnot. But when we saw these foals come into the clinic and they'd be they'd have these clinical signs. They're not nursing. They have to get colostrum. That's the immunoglobulin rich milk. So unlike the. The human infant, where there's transfer of immunity across the placenta, there is zero transfer of immunity across the placenta in the equine. They must ingest the colostrum. And then they have this magnificent mechanism we call the open gut, where they nurse these. The milk that has these intact giant molecules, these immunoglobulins, just like. And it absorbs them just like you gave it iv. It doesn't digest them and break them down into amino acids or anything. It engulfs them. That's called the open gut. And it's a fabulous thing. And then the gut closes after 16, 18, 24 hours. And then the milk, because you don't want to be absorbing the wrong stuff. So those things that are supposed to happen after birth and if that foal doesn't nurse, they have no immunoglobulins and they have an open gut. So they're going around, they don't know where the mother is. They're licking the wall, they're licking the side of the stuff, the dirt. They don't know what's going on. Well, guess what? You get a little bacteria in the mouth and then the, the gut allows that bacteria to cross. We call that translocation. So the leading cause of death in neonatal foals is. Is what we call septicemia. That's bacterial infection that's gained entrance to the bloodstream and I'll kill you just like sepsis in a human. So those are our patients and those are the. That's what a dummy foal is. And I'm seeing a lot of them. And here's. So then I'm starting to give some talks in different places and I. This birth hypoxia thing was always kind of nagging at me. Is that really what's going on? Because here's the problem. I give a talk to and there's a bunch of physicians in the room we go to because I have this neonatal guy from SAC med center. Hey, come on, John. And tell everybody about your foal unit. So I tell them about these foals and they go, well, what do you do with these foals that have the birth hypoxia? And they recover and they have these adverse neurologic deficits like we see with the infants that have had birth hypoxia or the animal models with lambs and everything. Lots of study for this because it's important. And I go, well, guess what? 80% of the foals that we treat for the dummy foal, if you got enough money in three to five days, recover and they have no neurologic deficits and 20% don't make it. And that's data that still exists today. And the 20% now turns out to be actually birth hypoxia. And the 80% recover, we figured out it's not low oxygen. It's a persistence of the hormones that keep you asleep in the womb so you don't gallop around and you don't thermoregulate and you don't do that stuff. They haven't gotten the signal to get rid of those things. Does that make any sense?
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B
Yeah, so that, so they haven't got the signals to like away, you know, like the, like the hypnotist, when he hypnotizes people and then he clicks his fingers and goes awake. They don't get the awake signal.
- [33:17]
A
Well, when I was in New Zealand, the reason that we figured out that it's a persistence of these hormones. You're exactly right. They're not getting the signal to awake because the, the things that keep you asleep in utero, the fall asleep in utero, are not made from the placenta, they're made within the foal. They regulate their own. Don't gallop in utero, don't mess up. And they have to cease producing those and block the receptor in order to stand in one hour and nurse in three hours and follow the mare and do locomotion. They can't do locomotion in utero. So I was always puzzled by this. The physicians would say, hey, do you think something else is going on? So I was on sabbatic with, I took my two kids in New Zealand and I was, I walked into this lecture, there are these pain specialists for animal welfare and they were talking about sedative progesterone derivatives. And we knew from one study in a guy in England that these foals had elevated progesterone. And it was like, okay, well the dummy foal has that. Well, what's that mean? You know, they're chemistry is messed up. Nobody knew. And this group down there said, oh no, these are. These then are the precursors for the things that sedate the go to the brain receptor. Just like an anesthetic. That's why they're asleep in the womb. This is in New Zealand. These were in lambs. Nobody had Ever measured in the fold. So I go, oh, boy, I wonder if that could be going on, because these guys are waking up like it's not low oxygen. So as soon as I get home, we develop this mass spec, have all this stuff at the university, ask for that, have some grant money. And we measured in the, in the first dummy foal, and he's got 10,000 times the level of some of these hormones that a foal that is, isn't a dummy, that's the exact same hours of age and is walking around with his mare nursing, hanging out, following her and doing all that stuff. And the dummy foal is full of this stuff. So. And then when you look at the research that people did, taking samples from, from fetuses, you know, through catheters and things like that, equine fetuses, they knew that these hormones were, were, were responsible for the sleep, but they didn't know they persisted. So that was a big discovery.
- [35:41]
B
So it was, it was like 10,000 times the amount of progesterone. Is that what it was or what else was there?
- [35:47]
A
Well, there was a whole bunch of them there. The, the. There's a couple of really potent allopregnanolone because progesterone is on a pathway. And if you've ever seen a steroid poster with all these tentacles going out of what starts and which enzyme, 5 alpha reductase and all this stuff, it leads to this allopregnanolone, which works on what we call the GABA receptor. So if you've ever, anybody ever had a dose of valium, the reason you're calm is it's on the GABA receptor. If you've had an anesthetic, the reason you go to sleep and then when they take it away, you wake up, it's the GABA receptor. So these. We measured allopregnilone along with progesterone. Actually, eight different neurosteroids were elevated in these maladjusted foals. And we published on that, we did an international study. Look, 40, 50 foals, they all. Not, not a few. They all had elevation of these neurosteroids. So we discovered the cause was not low oxygen, but it was the persistence of these hormones.
- [36:53]
B
So, okay, so you figured out, you figured out what it was, but you were the guy that figured out how to fix it. And that's the, that's the. Yeah, that's the thing I love to do on the podcast is like, people that have done something, like, you have so figured out something else. No one else figured out. What I know is how did you figure it out? What. How did that come about? How did you go in that direction?
- [37:18]
A
Well, having looked at some of your suggestions and then previous podcasts, I realized I can tell you the whole story.
- [37:27]
B
Oh, yeah, you can tell the whole.
- [37:28]
A
Story with some aspects of human nature. And I think it's a lesson to be learned that. And so let me just tell you what is. So we make this discovery. Okay, so the neurosteroids are elevated. We got it. We don't have a drug to eliminate them, but we now have some idea, you know, what's going on and how do we lower those or how do we block them? We don't know. So separately, completely separately, because we got a big place, we got a lot of stuff. I get a call from this former resident, and she said, hey, I never ask you for a favor, but I am now. I said, okay. She's a faculty member now at San Luis Obispo. I don't. I don't mind mentioning this. She goes, you get a resident there. And they were. There were two, and he's got a girlfriend who's there, too, and they're from Hungary, and his girlfriend has got a job and a grant, and he doesn't. He didn't have it last year. And unless this guy gets a project that he can do in a year, they're not going to make it. And I go, okay, Kim, so you want me to find a project for one year with this guy? She said, exactly. I never asked. I said, okay. So I'm thinking around, well, what could we do in a year? That's a master project. So I talked to our neurologist there, Dr. Monica Allman. We've always wondered, because I'm a horse guy. Here's another behavioral characteristic. Every equine veterinarian or horse owner that's ever held a newborn foal after they're standing in one to two hours nursing, and you put your arm in front of him and then one behind him because you want to hold them for the vet to examine them or do something, and you put some pressure on like that, their head drops. It's called the flopping reaction. It's been described in the 20s in those old textbooks and whatnot. And so this veterinarian in New Zealand, and this is a competition that goes on. He said, oh, that's a form of narcolepsy, cataplexy induced by this holding procedure. And neurologist said, I never thought that was it, you know, so So I said, hey, could we do a study and figure out what's going on with that? How will we do it? She says, oh, well, you need brainwave like you were talking about the plants earlier. Well, Dr. Aleman is a board certified equine neurologist. They've got training on how to. And you can put those little things on their forehead and all around their head and say, are they alert? Are they asleep? What's going on? Are they having a seizure? That's all done routinely now in veterinary medicine by these neurologists. And guess what? We got one right there. So we decide we're going to do this thing and she's going to. We're going to put. Fold these foals up and then we're going to figure out what the mechanism is. Nope. And she goes, by the way, I need 20 minutes to get a good brainwave. 20 minutes. Remember the 20 minutes we were talking about? So with no connection at this point. Okay, well, shit, I can't hold them for 20 minutes. Pardon me, I'm swearing in your podcast.
- [40:35]
B
That's all right.
- [40:38]
A
So I remembered when I was in private practice, you could throw, put a bowline between the front legs and a half hitch over a cow. It's reported in the 1950s Cornell restraint book. You know, it's been around for years and years that if you do those half hitches over the thorax or over the abdomen of an adult cow, they'll lay down, they'll actually go into tonic immobility. Just like you turn a shark upside down or you rub the nose or the tonic immobility is what happens when the cougars got a hold of the neck of something and then it has to release it and then the animal runs away. And guess what? That's all GABA receptor stuff. Didn't know that. So we're doing the project. I'm back to the project. We got to figure out how to keep these foals quiet for 20 minutes so she can get this damn brain wave. What, what is it like when they're awake? What's it like when we've got them squeezed and measure heart rate? Endorphins, all that stuff. Okay, so I put this half thing we never ever had put this on a fold. No, I never talked to anybody that did, but I'd done it. So I just put in there one day at the center for Equine Health, put it on there and this guy just lays down, I mean, just flops out. Just like he's going through the birth canal. He has to be no more movement of your head or feet. And he just lays there. So we keep the clock running, take the rope off. He gets up, nurses say, hey, we got the system. So we do eight foals here. We get getting to the end of the story. We do eight foals there, and we figure out they go into slow wave sleep. And then in order to get this published for this resident, because he has to get a publication out of it with the project, and we're paying them, you know, to help do the research. So I'm fulfilling my duties for my friend that called me. And we do this. We go, well, listen, why don't we measure the neurosteroids before we do it and after, you know, because we're doing that in the hospital and, you know, these science guys, they want to see you doing everything because all we got is a heart rate. You know, we're putting a rope around a foal, and he's going to sleep. We got to get this published. So he said, okay, so we measure acth, cortisol, you know, the whole deal. So at the end of the study, we do this, and we're looking at the data, and some of these neurosteroids moved around, and they're very complex. Androstenedione, dihydroepi nd stenedione. They've got a lot of names that students have to remember and get tested on, but they're subtypes of these progesterone derivatives. At the end of 20 minutes, a couple of these moved around, and so we had our team meeting. And also this ACTH went up, which is a known primer. Right before birth in the foal, ACTH surges and turns on a million things that says, hey, we're going to a new place here, and you better be ready. And acth, one of the signals. So I was asking the guy and everyone that was just stress. And I said they were asleep. What do you mean, stress? So I'd be driving home at night thinking, and I did my master's because I couldn't get into vet school. I didn't have good enough grades. I did my master's on insulin. And there was a lot of feedback with endocrinology. So I thought, what if they're trying to tell the body to quit making that stuff to keep you asleep? And 20 minutes is how fast you go through the birth canal. What if that's a perfect signal? What if this is the evolutionary biology of how this works? The foals Upside down, asleep. He gets his two feet and nose in there he goes through the birth canal. Time to squeeze and not move a single muscle. Good, good. Go through, go through. Turn off the anesthetic, gang, we're going to be out, start dialing down. You got 20 minutes to turn that thing off. Just like you tell somebody that's got a horse under anesthesia. They're always asking, hey, are you almost done? So they can turn it off so the horse can wake up without breaking his leg, you know, so would that be what's going on? This is what, you know, just driving around, you know, thinking. So the good thing about being a veterinarian that's been in private practice is a lot of my clients have my cell number and I don't mind talking to them. So then I get this call from Ellen Jackson and she's in one of our videos has now got nine and a half million views. Is. And she says, hey look, it's the end of the foaling season. I am broke and tired and I got this eight hour old thoroughbred foal. He's upside down in the feeder. I can't do anything with him, he's a dummy. And somebody said, you're doing some research if you've got a shot that doesn't cost much that I can give him, you know, and everything. And I go, well, tell me more about it, Ellen. And she goes, well, there's nothing. You just, you know. And I said, how was the birth? And this is the kind of thing you got to ask kind of carefully sometimes. She says, oh, it was fine. And I said, well, how fast was it? And she goes, oh, I was in the kitchen and the fall alert went off. And when I went out there, he was already up. And I go, oh, maybe a quick birth. And then I had gone back into the literature in the 60s from Peter Rossdale, describing the maladjusted forward. He said, we see this associated, we think, with quick births, but nobody knew, you know, why. But he commented. So I go, hey. Well, hey, I, I couldn't maybe help you. I, I could. You want to try something? It's new. She goes, well, it hurt him. I said, oh no, we've done research with false. She said, okay. I said, I just want to know one thing, if you've got a rope. And she said, oh for Christ, you know. Anyway, she says, yeah, I got a rope. So I drive. The only full neonatal medicine call that I've ever just driven there in my Prius. No drugs, no syringe. No, nothing. And I get there and she's got a rope that you could tie a large boat up with. And so the foal is upside down. I got videos of this. He hasn't. The mare is over in the feeder. She's kind of given up on trying to bond with him. So I put the rope on this guy and do the squeeze. And sure enough, he just lays down. And of course, the. She's looking at me with several people in the barn because I'm there. And they go, look, we're trying to wake this guy up, you know, killed him. You got to stick with me. There's a little kind of a. Just hang out for a minute. I let that rope off after 20 minutes, you just loosen it. And we know that they stand up. And when he stood up, he nickered at the mayor. First time, really in there, eight hours he nickered. I have it on tape. I get almost, you know, like watching Joe Montana throw the touchdown pass. Feeling Hail Mary. Yeah. Over and over he knickers is this video on YouTube. Knocks everybody over to get to the full. She goes, oh, my God, he's. There is something here, you know, that, that I'm supposed to do something with. She's waiting for this, you know, feedback, and she starts licking them. And the mayor, the. The owner's over there milking the bear out so I can tube it. She doesn't have any belief that anything fella's gonna drink.
- [47:56]
B
Yeah.
- [47:57]
A
So I said, hey, give it, give it a minute. And within about three, four minutes, he's not having a little trouble getting a hold of the. The teat. He's sucking it down, curling his tongue, not aspirating. And he never needed any other treatment. He had switched. He had made the transition to post birth consciousness because he got another birth canal pressure of 20 minutes and he didn't get enough signal the first time.
- [48:29]
B
Wow. And that was how you. That was how you started the whole thing. How did that, that. What was. What was your, like, internal response to that at that time? Like what was going on in your body or in your head or, you know, how did, how did that did that affect you right there and then?
- [48:49]
A
Well, I. I'm on tape, you know, because other people were videoing me doing this procedure. Her helpers there, and they've sent me this, you know, video. I got the rope on him and then he knickers. And I didn't. I didn't know what was going to happen, you know, or how fast. And when he nickered, I said, hey, it's going to take him like maybe an hour to nurse. He thinks he's been born. Now I start barking this out like I've been doing this my whole life. I absolutely had no doubt that he was going to go over a nurse if they just quit milking the mirror. I said, look, you got to let him go around and let the mare do this and that. And I said, he's going to nurse. And this is recorded. And everybody said, jesus, you know, you're a rather confident. How many times have you done this? Well, I hadn't, but when he nickered, that's what happened. I've seen newborn foals, dozens and dozens of them. And that starts this connection. When you see that nickering and the mare turns her head around, they're laying down, they nick her back and everything. This is the start of this whole connection thing. Then you better turn off those sedative neurosteroids. And that's the GABA receptor gets blocked because you're not ultra filtering all these. We know they're still elevated, but they can't be working on the receptor. So you have to remove that. Just like tonic immobility, you can go from to asleep to awake, asleep to awake. That's all through this receptor, which has this giant chloride channel that's like an electrical switch, this negative ion goes into these, these pathways and that's just like the switch going off and when it closes, then the positives there. So that, that's, that's kind of what's going on. And then I had a vet in Australia because it was a different season. She had a full 48 hours old and she videos the hell out of everything. And she watches this thing and she, she called me, said, I heard you have. You know, I'll tell you what. Have you noticed the horse community? You know, if you find out something, somebody, 10 more people are going to know it in an hour. Right?
- [50:54]
B
Yeah.
- [50:55]
A
So. So she did it. Same thing, you know. And that was your entire practice, the one in Australia.
- [51:02]
B
Was that the second one ever?
- [51:04]
A
Yeah.
- [51:05]
B
Tell me about your second one ever. Like, you see, you know, after that first dummy fall, and you're kind of like, this thing works.
- [51:14]
A
Yeah.
- [51:15]
B
I bet you. I bet when you got the call for the next dummy fold, you weren't kind of like, I'm not sure. I'll go and see what happens. You're like, let me add it.
- [51:23]
A
Did you. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. No, I can't even. I'd have to go back and look because, you know, when this was, it was 2012. That's how long this has been around. And this worldwide recognition is just in the last few years, you know, because it's just really, really exploded. Because it's not an intuitive thing, you know, that you can write a publication and whatnot. And some veterinarians read it and they've been convinced for 30, 40 years that this is low oxygen. And then you got this guy from Davis saying, oh no, we got this. And the people that have been publishing stuff and lecturing on how to treat low oxygen and foals, I'm not getting Christmas cards from these people anymore because I'm just telling them everything they've been talking about is wrong. And that's not the goal. But it's true.
- [52:21]
B
You know, it's funny, I was talking about that podcast I was listening to before and there were scientist guys in there who some of these experiments that they witnessed, they're like, nah, don't tell me the physics that I know is incorrect. Like, I can't, I can't, I. What's that called when you can't let go of a, you can't have that paradigm shift. What's it called? Oh, there's a term for it, you know. Well, you can't let go of your beliefs. I can't think of the word for it. Yeah, but it's a bit like that. Like you can't tell me everything I know is wrong.
- [53:00]
A
No, and they've been, you know, it's in textbooks, it's in papers, they even name this hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy syndrome, you know, or neonatal asphyxial syndrome, you know, but when you, you ask them. And then I would go to audiences before, I wondered the magnitude of this, you know, because you don't know, well, how many of these. And then I, you know, can you reverse with this thing? So then we did a study and we had about 100 folds in each group where veterinarians would be in the field or the hospital and they'd say, okay, looks like a dummy. I would normally give them. And they'd give them all these things, steroids, you know, to reduce brain swelling from the oxygen, thiamine, you know, these other inhibitors of oxygen free radical things.
- [53:49]
B
You know, did that ever work?
- [53:52]
A
No, no, because when we, then there would, what would happen is we would think, for example, you know, dmso, you know, is just all over the place. And you, you know, for anti inflammatory. Well, it's given IV and it was for head trauma and all this stuff. So we thought it was a study. I won't mention the school. And they were saying, oh, we use that, and it's, you know, really helping. And then it turns out that some DMSO and some concentrations can be a teratogen. And there's a lot of females working in veterinary medicine, so they had to. They couldn't use DMSO anymore. Their results didn't change one bit. Their outcomes, you know, were exactly the same. So what you were doing was just providing nursing care, preventing infection, low glucose, and all this stuff, till you moved them around enough, and they got enough external stimuli to block those neurosteroids, and that was normally three to five days. Then the foal would go home. This would happen to me all the time in the clinic. I'd have a client on the phone, and he'd be, say, day three or four, and it's a thoroughbred client guy, and he's a business guy. He'd say, how's that foal doing, John? I said, well, is he nursing yet? No, he's not, but we're giving him fluids. He's stable and everything. Oh, man, I don't know whether I want to keep going. I said, hey, this. You know, sometimes they'll. They'll change. Don't. Don't give up on it, okay? And then I. I'd actually flub it a little bit. In fact, the resonant said, you lied. I said, hey, I got to make another call. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Because I didn't want him to tell me to euthanize the foal. They go, you didn't have another call? They'd tell me that in rounds. I said, well, I think I thought I heard my phone ring. So anyway, and then I called him the next morning, and I'd walk in, and this guy's been wandering around. It's day four, and he's latched onto the mirror like nothing happened. He's all of a sudden blocked his neurosteroids through time. And, you know, we're holding them. We're doing lots of stuff to nursing care. And this was what would happen. 80% would recover completely. And the guy would say, okay, well, what do I need to do with them at home to help take care of them? I go, nothing. He's fine. He's nursing. Huh? Okay. You know, they'd be like, God, he was pretty bad last night. I know, but he's not now. Okay, well, how'd that happen? I don't know. But come get him. So, you know, this has been going on with me for years to know. So we're missing something here. This. This is. This just, you know, it just was in my gut. And then when I saw that thing from the sedative progesterone in New Zealand, and then we measured it, I said, okay, this isn't low oxygen. This is these hormones that keep you asleep. And then the critical care aspects. Warwick, when we're in there, the foals are what we call. They're hypothermic. They lose their thermoregulation when they come in. They're severe dummy foal. They. They just, you know, can't thermoregulate. Guess what? You don't need to. In utero. They don't have good gut motility. So when you feed them, the milk stays in their stomach. Guess what? In utero, you don't need gut motility. Their CO2 are through the roof because they're not ventilating. We give them these chemical stimulants for the CO2, or we used to try to ventilate them. All these factors. You can just go, what. What is going on in utero? That. That the body's taken care of, you know, by some other mechanism via the placenta. And then what are our problems? And, you know, and this applies to the human infant. And I'll get to that, you know, in a little bit, because I think a very similar thing is going on, and we actually have some data for that. But that's a big leap here in the talk.
- [57:40]
B
Is it a big leap? You know, there's a. There is a Buddhist kind of philosophy or thought, a thing called. That they call beginner's mind. And beginner's mind is about forgetting everything, you know, about a subject and looking at it with a beginner's mind.
- [57:58]
A
Like.
- [57:58]
B
Like, throw out what you know and look at it again. And it seems like that's kind of what you did with these dummy folds is. You know, there's been stuff written about this in books for 30 or 40 years, but instead of going, well, it said it in a book, so it's gotta be true. You're like, there's gotta be something else to it. And I love the fact you said this gut feeling, like you had this. It's like you had an intuition that it's got to be something else.
- [58:25]
A
Yeah. No, it really. It really was bothering me, you know, and then the other thing is, you know, you'd have. You'd run out of money from the Clients on some of these foals and you couldn't get some of them need five days of this symptomatic care and they go, hey, I just can't afford anymore. You know. And then it's a welfare issue. You got to put a fold down that if you could provide some additional care you've got a, you know, a chance that he could recover. But he needs all this extra fluid and you know, thermoregulation and glucose and tube feeding and all that stuff. So it was really, you know, when you have to put one of those foals down and you think of I just had a little more time or I knew what the hell was actually going on here, I wouldn't have to do this because you carry that home.
- [59:16]
B
Yeah, I bet. Okay, so you, you recently spoke somewhere overseas on folds and consciousness and the link to the human infant and neurodevelopment. Can we go there?
- [59:31]
A
Yeah.
- [59:31]
B
Because that sounds fascinating.
- [59:34]
A
Yeah. Well, that was a title they had never had at this conference had been going on for a number of years. It 700 veterinarians from 47 countries and it was this international symposium on with equine reproduction focus and it was the full from in utero birth to post birth and all this stuff that goes on. So I was very pleased to be asked to do the opening address and I really wanted to get this information I've been thinking about and I. For the background on this, let me just jump a little bit. So you know, we have all these lectures at school and you know, for the public and they'll have what they call one health things or somebody's made some discoveries and then, and sometimes the audience comes there. They're not horse people. They're just, you know, they're, they're going to hear a lecture on another species and this and that. So I would get asked because we had some discovery and there'd be 150 people in the room and they, you know, come there and I give this talk and I measure these, you know, talk about these neurosteroids. And I'd have people come up to me and I talk about if the birth is interrupted or the. Always the question comes, well, what about a C section then? Is this. Would this relate to anything? And this really, I mean this, this didn't happen once. What I'm about to tell you, there'd be a little line of people because they didn't want other people to hear what they were going to ask me.
- [61:06]
B
Yeah.
- [61:06]
A
So they wait and they go, hey, I've got my child with autism. And we had these, you know, we had this, you know, C section thing. And it was. The baby was away from the mother for a long time. And then some of the behaviors you talked about, I listed all these different failure to interact in the. In the way that we normally would. He said, it just reminds me of our child. And he said, do you think anything similar could be going on? You know, and I'd be hearing it from, you know, from people, you know, not. I'm just sitting at home wondering about autism, you know, because everybody reads about it. So I've had that in the back of my mind. And when we did this video, the school wanted to do this at the farm where I did the squeeze. We did another foal there, and they had a professional videographer. And then I mentioned that, you know, that we wonder, you know, it's been brought up that maybe the foal with these elevated neurosteroids post birth, which hasn't been reported in other species, you have to wonder, could some other behavioral entities and other species, including maybe should this be looked at? You know, should the researchers that are doing the work look at that, you know, within autism. And I gave a talk at the MIND Institute, and they had all these grants for autism. And, you know, in the hallway I overheard somebody saying, well, I don't know what this horse doctor thinks he's telling us, you know, what the cause of autism is, you know, because we got, you know, grants to figure out our idea about what it is with this or that. So that was out there, and that kept happening. And then I got reading this remarkable history of what's called kangaroo mother care, and I'll may periodically call it KMC just to abbreviate it here in this talk. Kangaroo mother care. And that involves swaddling, okay? And so when I got into this squeeze thing, I'm reading the swaddling literature because there is some on this stuff. And what you're doing is holding the infant in a very tight, snug way. And I'll tell you about the tipping point for me with a YouTube video, if I don't forget that. So I'm reading about it. In the 70s, these research epidemiologists had heard about what was happening in Colombia, where there was a lot of premature births because there wasn't prenatal care and nutrition and all the things were. And then they had this very high mortality of the premature infants in the hospital. So the midwives there said, don't send them into the hospital. Keep them here, they're dying in there. And then when the baby was born premature, they'd stick it on the mother's chest and swaddle it. And then the mother, everywhere she went, constantly she's carrying the baby with her. And that's actually the evolutionary biology of what would normally happen to an infant. You know, hundreds, thousands of years ago. They'd be right there with the mother and guess what? They had a 50% reduction in infant mortality with the same risk factor, the exact same ages and all this stuff. No, you know, no coincidence, same nutrition, same living conditions.
- [64:28]
B
You know, I was reading a book a while ago and I forget what the book was about, but in there they talked about this. Partway through the book, they talked about this study they did. They went around the world and they drew blood on all sorts of info. I don't know if they'll maybe one year old, two year old, something like that. And they found that there was this one place in Uganda where these kids had protein levels that were off the charts compared to the rest of the world. And in a good way, like you, you know, it's you. They're much healthier with these protein levels than, than any other child on the planet sort of thing. And so they looked into the diet. What are they eating that no one else is eating? And they couldn't isolate it to diet. But then they realized that in that family group or in that village or whatever it was, those infants are never ever put down. They're always held against someone's body, whether it's grandma, it's a, you know, there's all these aunties basically, and that child is never actually put down in like a crib or whatever. And I, it was basically saying that's how we evolved. And so those protein levels are not abnormally high. They're normal for how we're supposed to be. So we're all at a disadvantage because of the way we, we now live.
- [65:47]
A
Exactly right. And this fits very well into, you know, the, you know what, what's going on with this kangaroo mother care. So then this started getting looked at more and more. And so in my talk in Belgium, I gave the latest results and it took a while to evolve from the 70s, just like this thing with the squeezes, it took a little while. Now the World Health Organization recommends that all infants that are born receive mother swaddling because there's data showing, and not only premature infants, but full term infants. But the other thing that's happened besides increase in survival, which is study after Study after study, and they can measure out to age 18 or 20. Actually, the last study, there's a higher level of what they call neurodevelopment in kids that have had kangaroo mother care versus kids that didn't. And that's in premature infants. You're a different person if you've had this normal procedure performed. And then the other thing about it, because, see, we have all these things with the foals where we see that they immediately get their gut motility back and everything. So then all these studies started coming out. Let's look at hypoglycemia in the premature infants and see what happens. We'll do one group that we give the IV glucose to, and the other group will do this waddling. So they measure the glucose is low and it's in the incubator, whatnot, they give it to the mother and the glucose goes up just like you gave it, IV fluids. The autonomic activity associated with the regulation of glucose is kicked in. When you're doing swaddling, you're changing the neurochemistry of the brain and the autonomic nervous system. And there's paper after paper. And then, so I'm reporting over there in Belgium, I'm digging around and in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, which is, you know, fits into the idea that's, you know, really permeating my, you know, thought process. They're saying, look, when we have a premature infant, do kangaroo mother care before you do stabilization in icu? Because it'll go better, the outcomes are better. Guess what? You're telling the infant that you're out of the womb and it's time to use your gut. It's time to use your CO2 regulation. It's time to thermoregulate. And we'll help you along the way. But we're going to, you know, that's what supposed to happen. But it's even bigger than that when I want to tell you the one that really, it just, I, you know, this just turned me into the, you know, almost evangelistic, you know, crusade about this thing because I, I'll just tell you, I watched this YouTube video and if I can tell you about it now that. And somebody sent it, somebody sent it to me and you can see it on, you know, you can find it. But it's an Australian mother and it's now like nine years ago. And they show this on the Today show and they say this remarkable occurrence we want to report on. So they show video, somebody's videoing the mother. She said she had pregnant with twins and then she delivered them and they were 26 week premature twins. They were in the hospital in Sydney. Okay, not, not, not some remote area. And they, they, they were born, you know, immediately cared for. And they took him to the incubator and she's laying in the bed and they're filming this thing. And they say the first baby has died and the mother is there with her midwife. And she said, bring the baby back to me. So they bring the baby back and they put her on her chest and she starts doing swaddling and kmc. Her husband takes his shirt off, helps her, and the baby wakes up, it starts moving a little bit. Then she puts the milk on her finger and the baby takes it in. And then the baby starts to nurse and then they tell the doctor, oh, it can't be. No, it absolutely can't be. And so that baby went on to survive. It has normal neurodevelopment, which I think we know from the foal, exactly why that happened, how the brain was protected and why. And at nine years of age, I called her and talked to her on the phone. And she has a scooter business in there in Australia and some town on the coast. And both kids are playing ball, doing everything normal. They have no developmental things. The one that was in NICU and the one that was nearly dead because you'd say to yourself, well, what about the brain then, right? You know, if we have something like that and you, you know, could be. So two things. That baby went into hibernation because we've measured in the neonatal foal, or what I think happened to the baby is this hormone that we measured, allopregnanolone, which study after study after study shows incredible neuroprotection of cellular machinery. It's what hibernates the brain. It's like you went under cold water and, you know, you can survive without oxygen for such a long time. Well, allopregnanolone, I think evolutionary is designed. If an infant, not an infant is born and you're in a puddle, let's say 1,000 years ago, will you fill your body full of this endogenous allopregnanolone to protect your brain, because you're going to need that your whole life as a higher species. Not, not. No, no offense to the foal. And so then when somebody picks you up, it's time to reverse that. Sedation and hibernation and hypothermia and brain reduce brain activity. Now you can do it because you're in your mother's arms and you're going to be protected. And so it's safe. You're. You're. You protected yourself from that low oxygen event, which is a huge, huge, huge, you know, risk factor still for births, you know, with infants is low oxygen. So there's this mechanism. And in the neonatal foal, we have persistent allopregnylla. It doesn't help you with it as a prey animal because the bad guys are gonna, you know, the cougar is gonna get you. So. But it's sure helpful in the evolutionary biology of the infant.
- [72:36]
B
So that story about the lady from Australia, that's. That's unbelievable. You were talking about. You're talking about autism before and. Yeah, and the kangaroo mother care. And do you think that's anything to do with, like, how Temple Grandin built herself that little squeeze box thing? I tell you what, I was. I was in England a few years ago at a clinic, and there was a girl who I'd. She follows what I do and was pretty active on my Facebook group. So I conversed with her a lot online, and I met her at the. I met her at this clinic, and she said to me, she said. She said, she's Swedish. And she said to me, she said, I am autistic. We're sitting having lunch. And she said, I'm autistic and I do not recognize facial features. She said, if you left, I was wearing a cowboy hat. She said, if you left the room and came back without your hat on and sat down across from me, I wouldn't recognize you.
- [73:39]
A
Yeah.
- [73:40]
B
But anyway, so she's told me she's autistic. And so I think it was the next day at lunch, she walks up to me and she's crying like she's bawling her eyes out. She walks up and stands in front of me and she says, put your arms out. Like. Like a zombie, you know, like, put your arms out. And so I put my arms out, and she steps forward between my hands and she says, squeeze me. And so I kind of squeeze her shoulders a little bit. She goes, no, harder. And I start. Yeah, she's harder. And I squeeze really hard. And the waterworks like a crying just went away. And her face brightened up and she goes, thank you. She just turned and walked off. It was. It was the funniest thing. But the next year, I went back and I was doing a clinic in Switzerland. My wife was with me, and she wasn't with me the Year before, we're having lunch at this clinic, my wife and I and son. This girl's there, she walks up bawling. And as I'm eating a sandwich and as I see her walking towards me, I just get up out of my chair, she walks up to me, I give this big squeeze, she stops crying, she walks off. I sit down and start eating lunch again. And my wife looked at me like, what the hell was that? But anyway, sorry, getting off track. Do you think that's, you know the squeeze box thing that that Temple Grandin built herself, do you think it's related to that?
- [74:51]
A
Yeah, I do. And we've had a lot of meetings with Temple grand and you know about our stuff with the foals and in person with her and. Yeah, so what she saw because she had powers of observation that other people did. And so when she was sent to her parents or relatives cow ranch for the summer, she didn't want to go. But they put these cows in the chute and they would squeeze, you know, the squeeze shoots. And then she'd see that the cows were going into this. Drop your head, some of them, them. And he. And she asked the cowboys there, why are these cows, you know, not moving around and their head going? They said, she said, well they can't move, little girl, that's what's the matter. And she said, no, no, something else is going, they're changing, they're changing when they're squeezing, which is of course what happens with those half hitch ropes. So she went home and had her parents, they must had a pretty good shop there, build this squeeze box for her. And when she was feeling poorly, you, she'd get in there and then she'd feel better. And she told me that she couldn't go to the supermarket where the doors would open and close. She was too afraid of those things. And if she did the squeeze thing before she could go in there, well, that's like a shot of Valium which goes back to the GABA receptor, which goes back to the tonic immobility associated with birth and all the chemistry of tonic mobility. So I think in the birth process it's a big transition, but it involves that receptor that turns off these neurosteroids that shouldn't be there if you're going to develop your normal neural connections over time. So as you go, get back to the autism thing. Since then, there are six or eight papers published, peer reviewed, measuring various neurosteroids, including four of the eight that are elevated in the fold, that are found in the Saliva of children that are 8 to 10 years of age, and they have elevated levels of four of these neurosteroids that are elevated in the maladjusted foal. And they're in the kids that are 10 to 12 years of age. And then there's a study out of Stanford with this form of head bonking, you know, where they repetitive hitting their head and they're low in allopregnanolone and in their bloodstream. So there's. There's some components here, without a doubt, that involve neurosteroids. It's not, you know, there's a lot of, maybe subsets of this spectrum of autism, but, you know, it's coming out there. And then we got together with a group in Stanford to get back to this thing, and we measured progesterone at 24 hours of age, if you had a normal vaginal birth, infants versus C section. And progesterone is significantly elevated at 24 hours of age when you've had a C section compared to a vaginal birth. So you're. And then people say, you know, unless, you know, you start thinking down this road of progesterone being a precursor for this and that, and then you have to have neurodevelopment, and you're supposed to be away from it. You're supposed to have transitioned away from those things that are going on in utero, let your brain develop and all that. And then it makes me think, what about this, you know, out to age 18, if you've had this kind of swaddling and tightness and a significant amount that your brain's a little different because you've been allowed to do all this neurointegration. And of course you'd say, well, gee, what a crazy idea for the foals it'd be. And we made this recommendation, don't pull every foal that has to be born, because we saw a big increase in maladjustment or dummy foals when they accelerated the birth, thinking you had to help them be born. And then the second thing is, maybe if you can, if you don't have extenuating surgery, have a vaginal birth and then guess what? Give the baby to the mother right away. And, you know, that's not too shocking. But if you say there's evolutionary biology to suggest that's associated with neurodevelopment and survival, it becomes something to try to get integrated into the normal practices.
- [79:07]
B
When you think about it, you're just going. You're just going back to what we should be doing. You know, I know some friends of mine who've had, had, had kids in the last few years kept the, the umbilical, didn't cut the umbilical cord for, I don't know, 45 minutes to an hour or something afterwards. Because they say after those kids are born, there's still nutrient, there's still stuff going back forth in that umbilical cord and normally they just pull the kid out and cut the cord, you know.
- [79:37]
A
Yep. No, there are cytokines. There's a lot of. I totally agree. Because if you think that we're going to just go ahead and improve on thousands of years of evolutionary biology, that's a, you're, you're thinking you're pretty smart because, or if you want to call it, you know, creators, you know, design whatever it is that's worked out. There's, you know, it isn't just fouled up, some fouled up system that allows, you know, the birth process to occur. And then to protect your brain with that little kid showing, you know, that one kid in the hospital in Sydney, and then these neurodevelopment studies and then the Columbia studies, you know, you have to say, hey. And then I love that the New England Journal of Medicine is now saying, hey, give the baby to the mother first before the critical care people get all their catheters in and doing all that stuff. And I'm trying to, you know, some veterinary clinics don't, don't believe in the squeeze. You know, they want to go back to the IV fluid pumps and the glucose and the ventilation stimulation and thermoregulation and it's rocking and rolling with their residents. And I think, well, now there's more of it. But it's been a slow acceptance from, you know, to do this procedure first and if it helps, great, and then repeat it. You know, we have some really good guidelines out there for. You may have to do it two or three times to get the stimulus for what the stimulus is requires more squeezing. So lots of repeat studies showing that. And in our publication, I'll just get to that. 4% of foals that got traditional treatment, you were asking what the treatments were. There's a whole variety of them, but it's all about protecting the brain and glucose and things like that. And then 4% were nursing in an hour. And if you did the squeeze procedure, 39% were nursing with an hour. That's, they were on the, you know, the odds ratio. You were 16 times more likely to be nursing. And then if you nurse, you get the colostrum, you get the immunoglobulins, you get the glucose, then you start looking at your mom and you got enough energy to follow her if the bad guys are coming, you know.
- [81:55]
B
Yeah, I think mother nature kind of knows what she's doing in that case. So I've got some questions I want to ask more about you than about what you do. So you are one of the highest ranking professors at the world's highest rated veterinary school. So sounds like you're a major brain. But you mentioned before something about. I took some notes here while you're talking. You're something about you. You. You couldn't get into vet school or something. So are you always academically inclined? Because just based on what you are doing, you'd be like, you'd always be the smartest person in the room all your life sort of thing.
- [82:35]
A
Yeah, no, if I, if I hadn't got a B in metal shop in, in high school, I wouldn't have graduated.
- [82:43]
B
Metal shop was your saving grace?
- [82:46]
A
Yeah, I could do stuff and I gotta be there. And so that brought up my F in world, you know, history and stuff. So I barely got out of high school and I had a horse trailer and a horse hauling business and I hung around with the shoers and whatnot. So then I went to college, San Mateo, because I'm going to tie in a horse thing for you. I went to college, San Mateo because the draft was on. I didn't feel like going in the army. So I'm going to night school and then for 12 units, enough to do it, and then working at the California Beef Council and just packaging boxes and stuff. So one day I just decided I'm going to call this gal, Carrie Lindfoot, who I knew in high school. And I'd gone to some Ropens and I'd seen her there and so I drive over there. And back in the day, when you go on a date out there, you know, I had my wingtips and slacks on and I washed my truck and stuff, you know, and I pull in the driveway and there's a guy sitting on a horse and I get out of the truck and he goes, do you ride? He's carrying a polo mallet in his hand. I go, yeah, yeah, I ride. He goes, well, get on. We need another guy for the. We have a little pickup game here, you know, polo game out in the back. And this is Bill Lindfoot, a nine goal player and a veterinarian, and he does wild horse breaking. I Don't know whether you ever seen any videos of his because back in the day it was before then, but I actually have a few I'll send to you because I went to several. So I said, well, gee, I'm supposed to go. He said, hey, look, get on the horse. So then I see Carrie there, she says, I'll call and delay our reservation. I said, okay. So I get on there and we're playing with a beach ball and I do that and we go. So I started hanging out with the Linfoots and he was this, you know, really top rate guy with the polo mallet and a really good vet. And then he did this wild horse breaking stuff. And so I got to be friends with her brother and hanging out. We never went on another date, but I just started hanging out with the family and they, he started telling me about, about how he had to really work to get. He said I wanted to work with the horses and I was shooting a few horses and had to, you know, just, you know, trying to avoid the draft and whatnot. You know, not, not unpatriotic. I just didn't want to go at the time. So I, I, I watched him do this wild horse breaking thing after he told me. And then I realized the focus that he had to look at this horse, he would rope it. And I mean, these are out of Nevada and these solid, you know, trailers that come in there right off the range, these things are hitting the wall and he ropes them and he's on him in 40, 50 minutes. And they, he, he has got the connection with him. He takes a rope off him, he sits on a bareback, he's rubbing them, touching them, doing the whole deal. But what he did was his focus, man intensity. I watched the way that he had to keep his eye on those horses when he was doing this. And I cited and he told me, if you got to study 8 hours to get a B in that class and the other, your roommate, two hours, you got to do it if you want to work for the horses. He said, I wanted to do the vet men. I thought, okay, well, I think that's what I want to do now. So I went to class and I went from a 1.9 GPA to a 366. And I had to take bonehead chemistry, bonehead everything. And so I just had to do the uphill deal. My grades were so bad, you know, that, and I didn't have the academic background to do well. I had to take all these extra courses to just get caught up. But it was the horse connection. And I just watched that guy the same way Bill Lindford watched that wild horse when he was in there. He never took his eye off. And he's got a mic on. He's talking, talking, talking. And as soon as that horse, he's got the rope on. As soon as that horse makes a millimeter of movement towards him, he's releasing. And that horse realized, well, you know, this is the fundamental pressure release. And he. He was. He was brilliant at it. And those horses realize, just like with that horse that would sleep next to you, this horse goes, you're okay. I'm okay with you. I mean, they. Their chemistry, their head carriage, their everything. And he's jump sitting on him, going around, and then takes a rope off him. And I'm going, okay, I want to. I want to get into vet med and do that. So I had to. Had to really bust my ass, go to. You know, then I had to get a master's because my. Couldn't get in. And if you want to know what happens to you, can I just finish with this thing? Because some of the. You talk to people that would want to maybe do something like I'm doing, be a veterinarian, don't have very good grades, something like that. Well, you got to keep with it because if you really want to do it. But this manifestation thing will happen. So what happened was I had so much trouble concentrating. I had sleep apnea and everything. I'm living by myself in this little cheap motel apartment out in the boonies. And this guy that was a biochemistry instructor moved in at number nine. I was number one because he was having some shenanigans with his lab tech. I guess he got kicked out of his house. And he was the crankiest, meanest guy that you ever. He had a reputation for it. And I was in his class, and I'd asked him a couple of questions, but I never looked at him when he lived in this thing. And he would see me with my horse trailer, and I'd get up and check on these horses that I was watching from this ranch. We had 110 horses and mules turned out up in the shearer. So I'd leave in the morning, and he'd see the light on at night at my place, studying, studying, studying. And so he called the exact. The admissions committee. And I found that out after I became a professor there. The guy who was on the committee said, well, I guess now that you're on the faculty, I can tell you. He said, we had your Third application and you were still on the edge. And so we put it in the reject pile once again on your third application, he said. Then we got a call from this guy, the biochemistry guy and he never had said a good word about anything about. He wrote terrible letters saying this kid don't do, do. And he said you ought to let this guy in. And they were so shocked and they were pals with him. They were all in biochemistry. This guy that was on the committee was a biochemistry professor. So they moved me from the stack. That's how I got into vet school. So, you know, that's sort of this manifestation. You, you believe in something or you think about something and there's all kinds of methods to do it. But I wanted it really bad. And it happened.
- [89:19]
B
You've. You've had a lot of serendipitous things happen. Like you know, how you got into Davis and the, you know, the, the whole bit. So obviously, you know, obviously one of, one of the questions I was going to ask you is what do you think your true purpose is? But I before you answer that question, is it. You seem like one of those guys that what you are doing, you're supposed to be doing that because you couldn't have got, you know, you can't, you couldn't have mapped that out. It's not a, it's not a normal progression of life. Like you had all these serendipitous things happen that ended up with you where you are that probably no one else could actually accomplish that. So. Yeah, so let's ask about your true purpose. What do you think your true purpose is?
- [90:05]
A
Well, yeah, I actually reading a book about that because when you go from full time faculty to Ameriti, you know, and you change some of the things you do, you start thinking about your purpose again and it hasn't changed at all. And you know, so I think my purpose was to make some discoveries that change things for animals. And then, and people and I now with this transition of consciousness at birth and all the potential one health as we call it implications, you know, and I get sent these videos of ruminants. Now there's a 50% reduction in mortality when they're using the squeeze procedure in cow calf operations involving you know, measuring this is in thousands of calves, why not? So I think that. And then the thing that makes me, you know, want to continue doing things is the, is the purpose, I guess. And so besides my kids and the family, you know, my purpose is to help discover some things about us. And because I really have the horse gene. The horse has been, you know, a pathway to discovery in. In some aspects of this. And. And with your work and understanding more about, you know, the horse and the chemistry of the horse, if you want to call it that, or the consciousness or the perception. And so I narrowed it down kind of this birth. Birthing. But we both are kind of studying, you know, rather, you know, similar things. And so I think my purpose is. And what I enjoy most is figuring something out that's beneficial. And for me, the fact that this thing. If you have a rope and you have an Internet connection and you have a calf or a lamb or in their studies and lambs now showing the benefit or a Korea or even now a puppy, they put a little, you know, this little hitch on the puppy that wasn't nursing and have it go. When I see that, that making a difference that people can do on their own is. Is gratifying. And I think it's gratifying because that's part of my purpose.
- [92:18]
B
It's got to be gratifying. Like. Like you said, if someone's got an Internet connection and a piece of rope, you can do more good than a whole vet clinic full of therapies.
- [92:30]
A
Absolutely. Absolutely. And then the story. So what's happened is. And I'm sure this happens to you. So if I'm at a veterinary conference and I got my name tag on, like, I was trying to just take a cab from the thing, and there was 5,000 veterinarians there at this, and these two female veterinarians a little bit older, they said, are you going there? And so we get in the car, they go, do you have to long flight? No, no. Then they go, well, where are you? In California. Oh, that's it. What do you do there? I'm at the school. What's your. Oh, you're John Madigan. You do the Madigan squeeze. You know, can I do a FaceTime interview with you while we're on the way to the airport? I have some questions from all the people that are on my site. We do this thing and we share the squeeze stories. And we just shared it, and there were 2,400 people that watched it. Could I ask you some questions? I said, sure. So I'm getting this interview in the cab because of the Madigan squeeze. I'm in the elevator, going down the elevator, and there's a gentleman there, and I could tell I didn't know him. And so I was enjoying the conference. Yeah. Where are you from? The Philippines. And I said, oh, hi, I'm John Matting, so I know who you are. I have your book. And I go, oh, that's good. He goes, And I use the squeeze. And they want to tell me their squeeze story. And of course I go, okay. And they tell you, oh, I was in the barn, and I didn't have this, but I had the rope. And the people didn't think this was going to happen. And then I did this. And then they thought, oh, my gosh, the baby was nursing. And somebody's so happy because the birth, if you get back to it, you waited 11 months, and there he is. He's out. You see this? Oh, it's good. He moves around. And then, oh, no, something's wrong. I mean, the balloon just gets emptied. And then if you can go in there with your girlfriend or pal or anybody and pull your husband out of the house, because he's not the horse guy, but he's got the Internet and say, pull that video up. Well, you hear. Heard from Sally that you can do this thing. Step one, do it. Put it on the little guy. Then they watch, and the husband's sitting there, you know, and then they take the rope off and it stands up and it wiggles. And then it starts going to the thing, and everybody. You could hear a pin drop, and it goes over and starts nursing, and they're hugging each other. You know, it's not a small event because birth is just the, you know, the miracle of birth. It's just a fabulous thing, you know, by itself. And then when it goes wrong and you can fix it, it, oh, my God. What gets better than that? That's a Super bowl victory for the home team.
- [94:57]
B
Yeah. And I'm sure you get people, especially the owners that talk to you that have, you know, ex had, that helped them out. I'm sure they. They get emotional. You know, a lot of times at horse expos like the one I met you at, I have a lot of people come up who either watched my videos or listen to the podcast, and a lot of times say, it's the podcast. Something someone on the podcast has said has changed their life in some miraculous way. And they're. They're usually quite emotional when they. When they come up and have a chat. I'm sure you've experienced that.
- [95:37]
A
Yeah, yeah. In. In it. And you've experienced. So you know that. That what you're doing is making a difference. And so some of that is. Falls under. The purpose is you'd like to do something that, you know, falls into the positive category for you know, other people and animals. That's your nature. I, you know, I'm not, you know, sitting here labeling you, but I know enough from watching and why you do things and how you do it. You're just so conscientious and careful. But I know that, you know, it's got to be very gratifying to have blown a tire going 75 miles an hour and not have any money and then get a trip over here and then take it to the actual maximum limit. And that's the same with me going on a date and hitting a polar ball around, you know.
- [96:26]
B
Right. Yeah. No, it's, it's like you, you're obviously doing what you're supposed to be doing. Other questions here. What accomplishment are you most proud of? Of?
- [96:37]
A
Well, I think we made some discoveries in a variety of different areas. This one would probably be, you know, really big because of the worldwide effect. I'm really happy that we've discovered some things with infectious disease and other things. But I really think being able to describe something that people can do, just as you mentioned, on their own to help an animal. And I know, you know, I'm a very practical, realistic thing. The majority of foals born on our planet are not seen by a veterinarian. And if you can have a treatment that may help some of those and do that, I think that's the biggest accomplishment is giving someone the power to make a difference right then and there themselves.
- [97:28]
B
Yeah, most certainly. What about the most worthwhile thing you've put your time into?
- [97:41]
A
Well, that's a hard one.
- [97:42]
B
I remember you chose that question. So yeah, you can skip it if you don't have a, if you don't have an answer.
- [97:50]
A
I don't have any context, do I, with it?
- [97:55]
B
It was just one of the questions that you chose.
- [97:57]
A
Okay, well, it must have been early on. So the most worthwhile thing that I put my time into. I just have to say I have a little, we have a little school here at our house now and I have a 8 year old grandson that was having the same kind of trouble I had in school. He's got. But you know, I think some of my chemistry, a lot of it and you know, ADHD type things and the mind moving and missing out on stuff. That's why I had to do the concentration like with the bill in foot horse breaking thing and he was, you know, growling at his teachers and I was, when they would ask him why he wasn't doing something that all the other kids were doing. That's because his mind was racing about other things and the world or what around him. He says a smart, curious little kid. So you know, realizing he had that and then having some property here myself and talking things over. So I, I moved out of my house, which has three acres and that stuff and into a little modular house here. And then we created a little home school and there's six or eight kids that, that come here every day and, and go in the barn. We built this beautiful barn and I only got two horses here and so they have their school in one of the 20 by 20 stalls and table that I used to have Thanksgiving on is what they do their homework on. And I built this driveway, this circular driveway here when I was playing polo. I played a lot of polo after it, you know, meeting Linfoot and whatnot. And I drive in with my six horse trailer with six horses in there and make a circle, drop them off and then be ready to go, you know, to the next day to a two day tournament or something or go somewhere else. Well now the parents come in with their car and I can see them from my window across the way. And the kids go in the saw, do their study and then they have recess and we have this big field that I planted with a, with a, you know, a little thing to climb up in on and swings and jumping thing, you know, trampoline and they can run and kick the soccer ball and play and I hear them. Wonderful. Is wonderful.
- [100:06]
B
Yes. That's got to be so cool.
- [100:08]
A
Yeah. And this kid, all of a sudden the kid that you know is growling. He's so. He loves this teacher. He has to move around. They, this teacher knows it. I. Probably half the kids are like that and he's doing great. And so I gotta say, and watching my daughter, how happy she is, her husband and stuff, it's. It's been worth the. When you move out of a place you've been to for 40 years, it's not the easiest smooth. And I'm glad I did it. So I got to say that for me right now I just feel so good about that doing that. So that might answer that question.
- [100:44]
B
Yeah, most certainly that. And. But once again it's kind of coming back to what you, you know, like say with the, with the, with the horses. It's. With the. Even with the, the kangaroo mother care thing, it's like getting more back to being somewhat more natural. You know what I mean? It sounds like those kids have the freedom to run around a lot more and, and things like that, you know.
- [101:05]
A
They'Re supposed to kids are movement. You know, there's this great podcast by this guy on the effects of movement on the brain. And he can measure it with all these neurochemistry things. Movement. If you fibromyalgia patients, if you do yoga, change the movement things, you feed into these neural pathways and everything. And the worst thing for a horse is living in a 12 by 12 stall or even a 10 by 10 one, as we know. And so movement of watching these kids and she knows if they've been on a vacation over a Christmas vacation, she goes, no, we're going to be very short today because I know they're going to have to adapt to being into the closed classroom in the school. So yeah, I mean, gosh, I feel sorry for those 26 kids sitting in a little chair and all that. I couldn't do it. I was always in trouble, trouble, you know, always in trouble for not paying attention or, you know, goofing off.
- [101:59]
B
You said your grandson's maybe got a bit of your chemistry like adhd. Ish. Have you been diagnosed? Because I haven't been diagnosed, but I've had enough people go, I think you pretty much, yeah, fit the bill. Have you been diagnosed?
- [102:14]
A
Yeah, yeah. Actually when I came from private practice and then I was here hanging around the university and then I was up with. I had the a, you know, neonatologist helping me and I realized with the different things that I was doing, you know, that and you take these little surveys and I go, I, I'm falling into this. So they actually had. And this was, I got to be very good friends with her, a psychiatrist who was an authority on ADHD in children. So I sent her an email because I was on the faculty at email address says, well, I don't see that many adults. Well now it's, you know, it's gotten much more. This is years ago because I was been at the university and so I had several things with her and she says, hey look, there's no doubt in my mind that you, you got ADHD chemistry and you can take some things if you want or Adderall. But she said, you know, you're doing pretty good so you might want to just try to do some stuff on your own, knowing that that's what's going on and try to get the people around you, the that they're talking to you and you don't even hear them because you're in na na land in your brain thinking about something and if they can sort of understand that that'll be the Most helpful thing for you, she says, because I don't think we're going to be able to change it.
- [103:32]
B
Yeah. They say a lot of entrepreneurs are adhd and if you think about, you know, entrepreneurs are, they're ideas people, they come up with these ideas and you think about what you've done, you've come up with ideas. I read a fascinating book recently called ADHD A Hunter in a Farmer's World. And this lady basically divides the world into two types of people, hunters and farmers. And hunters are, Hunters are ADHD type people. They have to be aware of things all the time. Their focus can changes all the time. Whereas farmers can do the same thing over and over and over. And it's, it was, it's a, it was a fascinating book but like towards the end there she was saying that a lot of entrepreneurs, adhd and the ADHD will is great for the ideas, it's not great for the execution. You know, you almost need to have a farmer to. And this is, you know, and reading that book made, it made me understand my, my wife and I can do the things we do is. Because I'm the hunter and she's the farmer, you know.
- [104:36]
A
Yeah.
- [104:37]
B
I'm the ideas guy and she's the, she's the doer of deeds.
- [104:41]
A
Yeah. So the, the finishing is then if you've got a lot of grad students and residents who want projects and you can think of one and then outline it and let them take off and be the lead first author. If you don't care about it, you know, being the, you know, let it go, that's been really, really good for me. You know, that's why I got a lot of publications, you know, several hundred. And I'm not the first author on very few because there are things that I got started, get the funding for or what have you, and I got, I mean, I've been very lucky. And when I've helped some horse owners, they've been very good about sending funds to help and they actually don't. They could be my project or the most recent one was standing CT for horses for our neurology program. I thought that was the most important, important and it was a client I saw for a horse that was attacking people in Oklahoma a few years ago. And so she kicked in the funds for the purchase of that $1.8 million standing CT. Wow. Yeah.
- [105:45]
B
And how long have you had that?
- [105:48]
A
It's just being installed and it's, it's, it's the slowest installation you ever saw. But you can do head, neck, teeth, all the way back to T1, T2, and all these warmblood neck problems and other problems. You can get some really good imaging. So we have the Dr. Alderman here who's a board certified neurologist. She's the one that really wanted it. She's helped us with these FOE projects. Anything to do with the brain and spinal cord, you know, she's all over the world doing things. This gonna, gonna help us understand that process, you know, what's going on there where these horses get neck pain or in coordination from, you know, nerve, nerve problems. So we're looking forward to having that. And because it happens fast, they don't have to go under anesthesia. And it's even better than a myelogram. Or you can do a standing myelogram right. While you do it.
- [106:39]
B
Really? How many, like, how many, how many of those are in the US of.
- [106:44]
A
The one that we have like this? There's probably four.
- [106:48]
B
Okay.
- [106:49]
A
Yeah.
- [106:52]
B
Wow, Great stuff. Okay, I got one more question for you that you chose. What's something you've done that has changed the course of your life? And we may have covered this already, but it's one of the questions you chose.
- [107:03]
A
Oh, yeah, and I was just talking about, because I was reading some of the preamble, you know, for this, is that you, you may not understand the significance of an event and, but by, by just, you know, the circumstances of life can, can turn into it. So I was. If you, if we hadn't talked about just asking this gal out for a date, this, you know, somebody new in high school, and then meeting this person was a veteran, I wouldn't have, I actually wouldn't be in veterinary school. I might even, you know, be in the prison system. I don't know, with my personality and, and driving record not being that great. But. Yeah. So when I sold my practice at a Corvette, six head of polo horses and everything, and then the child came along and I was looking out the window, you know, as she was looking out the window. One time I was playing polo locally and I just played in Pakistan with a USA practice, you know, or unofficial team. And, and she was hi, daddy and everything, and I'd lead her around. So I sold all my polo horses, I bought a pony and kept the one that was quiet and started that aspect of life. So I think having the children, I wasn't expecting any. And then it's been just wonderful. My daughter, my son, a huge part of my life now.
- [108:27]
B
Yeah, that's awesome that they're, they're Right there too. Yeah, there's. You're talking about like those sliding door moments, you know, like the one decision that you make that at the time, like you just said, doesn't seem like a big decision at all. And in the end it becomes a total life changing event.
- [108:49]
A
Yeah. And I think that, you know, I think people have to believe that if they discontinue and persist, you know, in activities, you know, and you hear some of these guys saying, well, the first thing you do is if you're struggling a little bit is make your bed in the morning, you know, and then do this. And so I'm an example. I just persisted with some things. Things, even though I was kind of didn't really know where I was going. And you just. Good things can happen. And I think when people are at a little bit of a low point, it's hard to believe. But I just believer that if you can convey to people that those feelings are usually transient, they're not permanent. And I'm an example of how those changes can happen and have the luxury and privilege of, of making some discoveries and working in a good environment with lots of good science people and whatnot. So not to be discouraged is very, very hard. We have a lot of people struggling with just if you want to call it discouragement or depression and whatnot. And knowing that things can change, don't give up. Is a good message.
- [110:05]
B
Great message. Yeah, we might finish on that, but thank you so much for joining me. How so how can tell us about YouTube? You said if someone's got a rope and the Internet they can watch this video. Is it, is it on YouTube? Where is this video?
- [110:20]
A
Yeah, yeah. If you just put in Madigan squeeze and UC Davis, it'll come up. If you go to my Manual of Equine Neonatal Medicine website or just full manual Madigan, we have the step by step instructions of how to do it it. And then there's dozens of other people that say, hey, I want to show you how to do this. So you will have no trouble at all, you know, doing it and with the procedure. But the one that we use and how we do it is UC Davis Vatican Squeeze or Manual of Equine Neonatal Medicine. And then if you want some entertaining thing, go into TikTok and put in ruminants and you know the guy with a manure on his face and he goes, and his language is horrible. You know, he's going, this little won't nurse and I'm here with him. He's got menorah on his face. He said, now my wife told me I got to try this God damn, you know, da, da, da. And then he goes, okay, I'm going to do it. Then he's got the, you know, he's right in front of his face. Then he come back and he says, you won't believe what the hell just happened. That little. Just went over there and started nursing. And then he goes, I'm a believer in that. Damn. I forget what it's called, but the squeeze thing, you know, I would love to show that in some meetings, but the language is so horrible, but it's so real with the manure on his face. And he's in his barn and he turns from this grumpy son of a gun to, oh, man, that little guy is doing it, you know. And so anyway, that's pure joy.
- [111:52]
B
Yes. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been, been fascinating and an honor actually having you on here. But, yeah, just excited about the fact, or not excited, but, you know, so thankful that you've had that curious mind that, that, you know, you, you, you, you tried things that people didn't try, and, and now you've, you know, you've changed lots of humans and horses lives. So that's pretty amazing.
- [112:22]
A
Well, I think it helped that I, I hadn't just excelled in everything, so I wasn't afraid to try something that didn't work because I had done that quite a few times in my early life with my grades or academics. So it didn't bother me to try something that might not work, as long as it wasn't harmful. And I think that was helpful.
- [112:43]
B
Yes, it's that thing I referred to before, that Buddhist concept of beginner's mind. So, yeah, hopefully that might explain, inspire some others out there to have a bit of a beginner's mind about some things and hopefully they too can change the world.
- [112:58]
A
Yeah. Well, thank you for all the work you do with the horses and I've used some of your methods when I'm trying to keep my horses not being unhappy, separated and everything. And I really enjoy your perception and contributions. So that's why I wanted to go up and say hi to you and just explain a little what we were doing. And we're both thinking about the horse's brain and behavior and how to do things better. So it was a real pleasure for me to meet you and thanks for letting me be on your podcast.
- [113:27]
B
Hey, no worries at all. I didn't let you be on. I was honored to have you here. And yeah, thanks for coming up and introducing yourself at the Horse Expo. Otherwise we wouldn't have had this conversation. So I appreciate what you're doing in the world and thanks for joining me, you guys at home listening. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Jonium podcast.
- [113:47]
A
Okay, thanks a bunch, Warrick. Bye bye. Thanks for being a part of the journey on podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warwick has over 850 full length training videos on his online video library@videos.warrickshiller.com Be sure to follow Warrick on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to see his latest training advice and.