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5. What Integrative Veterinary Medicine Actually Means (And What It Doesn't) · Senior Pet Talk | for dogs + cats

• Amanda Steffen: You are listening to Senior Pet Talk, the show where we combine Western and Chinese medicine to give senior dog and cat parents the knowledge, the clarity, and the confidence to make sure that your pet's senior years are their best years yet. I'm Dr. Amanda Steffen. Let's get started. Hello, Senior Pet Parent. Thank you for being here with me today. I wanna talk specifically today about integrative veterinary medicine. What exactly that means, what it doesn't mean, what things you will hear that don't actually mean anything in the world of medicine, and how you can make sure that whomever you're going to is practicing evidence-based medicine. I want to start this conversation with a story. So when I first started doing in-home acupuncture care, it started as acupuncture and it has now progressed into kind of an integrative in-home senior dog and cat clinic. When I first started this, I took some flyers and some business cards to a couple different clinics. There is a clinic right down the road from me. I know a couple of the veterinarians that work there. They are wonderful people that I met when I first moved to the Ohio area. So I took them some treats and I took them some of my cards and information and basically a note that said, hey, look, I'm not crazy. I really love acupuncture and I really think it can help have parents. I don't want to take any of your business away from you. I'm not going to be doing like vaccines or blood work or anything like that. I'm just going to be doing acupuncture and in-home care for patients that are not good candidates to go into the practice or could really use acupuncture for one reason or another. So I would really love to work synergistically with you to help your patients and create more comfort for them and better care overall for them. So one of the doctors at that facility has now had quite a few people reach out to me because she became intrigued and she believed and she decided to take that information and give it to people who she seemed like were a good fit for it. I've seen patients from her that had intervertebral disc disease. I've seen patients with general issues like chronic kidney disease and inflammatory bowel disease, ⁓ some emulation issues and things like that. I've seen a dog with dementia from her and dogs with arthritis and things of that nature. So one of the most amazing cases to me is Fonzie, which you might've heard me talk about before, but Fonzie is a 15 year old cat and Fonzie was recommended to see me by this Western medicine doctor. And I started seeing Von C and we started to improve his life little by little. He was 14 when I started seeing him. He had diabetes that had been treated because he had acromegaly. So he was treated with a radiation therapy treatment and he was on insulin. He also has a history of IBD or inflammatory bowel disease. He was having a really hard time getting around and was having some substantial muscle wasting. He was just lethargic. He wasn't wanting to sleep with his mom anymore. He was just kind of out of it. And a lot of times with cats, what they do is just kind of what you draw from you. They just become more distant. And you're gonna notice these little changes and you may not think there's anything that can be done, but we can improve that relationship so much. So we started acupuncture on Fonzie. In a few months after starting acupuncture, he was starting to try and chase the birds and the squirrels on the windows again. He was asking to play fetch a little bit more and he just seemed happier, brighter, was sleeping with mom a little bit more. Everything was going really well. Fonzie also has an internal medicine specialist at a facility locally that I also do relief for in the emergency room. So I know that doctor very well actually from veterinary school. And I will, I'll text back and forth with the internal medicine specialist and his general practice doctor, his Western medicine doctor, and we'll all kind of team up and come up with these plans for him. He's got something going on right now. And that's what I've been messaging back and forth with the Western veterinarian to say like, ⁓ what about this? And then we, you know, kind of have been coming together and try to get some answers. And then I decided, hey, you know, I really think rehab could benefit him and I am not licensed in rehab yet. It is a goal of mine in the next two years, I will have my licensing. But it is something that I think can definitely benefit. I have a really good friend who's in British Columbia. If you guys do not follow her yet, her name is Komposhen, but she's wonderful and she is licensed in rehab and I have learned so much from her. And I have a friend who is a technician who is licensed in rehab therapy. She's amazing and so smart. And both of those girls are actually in my program and they do such an amazing job helping pet parents navigate rehab therapy and what can be done and how we can help build muscle back and things like that. So I said, know what? Fonzie needs to go see rehab. I think that would benefit him a lot. So I sent him to the rehab specialist, which for me, the rehab specialist that is at the clinic locally to me is also licensed in acupuncture. So I could look at her as someone who would be intimidating to what I do because maybe if my client likes her more than me, then she'll leave and not see me anymore. And you know what? That's okay, honestly. I have loved getting to talk with this other doctor. I love anyone who is interested in integrative medicine or Chinese medicine. It's just people tend to have a more open mind about life and things. And it's just really amazing to talk the talk with those type of people. So I've loved getting to know her. I've loved chatting with her. And I sent Fonzie to her. So now Fonzie has four doctors in his back pocket. and he started rehab therapy and he's so good at doing his exercises. His mom is so amazing at keeping up with his exercises. And now Fonzie plays fetch like 20 times a day. He like begs to play fetch upstairs in his room. He wants to do his exercises. He gets really excited when she gets all the equipment out to start the exercises. And his muscle mass has improved so much. He looks so good. And it's just... To me, this beautiful union of four veterinarians who all have an open mind and who all understand that multiple modes of treatment are an option and they've all come together for the better good of this patient and helped him. And it is just so beautiful to see how good he looks at 15 compared to how he looked at 14 because he's got these people in his corner who believe in medicine and who believe in options in medicine. So in that regard, I wanna talk to you a little bit about why I decided to pursue integrative medicine, what integrative medicine really means. A lot of times people hear holistic medicine. And holistic doesn't really have a definition in a lot of different places. We use holistic as a trigger word because people tend to pick up on that and they think it means natural, but it doesn't actually have a definition in medicine. So theoretically, a Western doctor who hates all versions of like herbs acupuncture, doesn't believe in it, thinks it's pooey, could call themselves a holistic practitioner because holistic truly just means treating the whole patient. And in veterinary medicine, as a general practice veterinarian, you are typically treating the whole patient. You're treating them from their dental disease. You're treating from, you know, spays and neuters. You're treating when they're sick. You're treating them when they're healthy. You're treating all their organ systems, right? So technically, any veterinarian is considered a holistic practitioner. It's a little different than human medicine because in human medicine you have you know, someone who's a hand specialist and someone who's a brain specialist and someone who's a spine specialist. You have all these different people that do certain parts of the body. We don't really have that as much in veterinary medicine. We have surgeons and cardiologists and things like that. But for the most part, your general practice vet is all of those things. So holistic is not really gonna be what you're looking for if you're trying to find an alternative veterinarian to practice. some version of Chinese medicine or a different type of medicine than Western medicine. Also same thing with natural. Again, doesn't really have a specific definition in that. Okay. So it's really just kind of semantics and you can pay for something with not a lot of training behind it. So we want to make sure that we are asking the right questions. And that leads me into this. There are four major questions that I want you to think about when you are deciding whether to go to an alternative or a holistic or whatever you find, a label practitioner. Okay? And before I touch on that, I want you to just understand briefly the differences in these. So when we talk about alternative therapies, we're talking about something alternative to what we're normally doing, right? So if we're going to see an alternative practitioner, we're probably going to see someone who is just practicing Chinese medicine or a different type of medicine than Western medicine. I do apologize if you hear the snoring. My friend G Emmett is sitting here beside me, helping me with this podcast. you all know that we love to have our babies close to us. So I let them be in my videos. If you want to go check over on YouTube, you can see his really cute little face. All right, so the four questions that I want you to think about and ask when you go to a different facility is one, Are you doing this as a replacement to my pet's current treatment or is it working alongside it? So is this alternative and we're going to discontinue what they're on in their Western medicine options or is this something that's going to be integrative? And that integrative concept is we're putting together multiple types of medicine to give everyone all of the options that you could possibly have, right? So you wanna Check in on that. And if you want only alternative therapy, that is perfectly fine. You just need to make sure that you're getting that distinction and which type of medicine that you wanna get out of this, right? And then I want you to ask this one to me is one of the most important. What are you actually licensed in? So you can take Chinese medicine classes and you can practice different types of Chinese medicine, but it doesn't mean that you're licensed in those medicines. I am very upfront about that. I'm not licensed in rehab. I'm not licensed in food therapy. So I always want to make sure people understand that the recommendations that I'm giving for these things are things that I have learned from people who are licensed, but I do not know all the nitty gritty of how to diagnose and treat these. And I have friends who are licensed in rehab and food therapy. And again, just like I did with Fonzie, I'm going to send people to them if they need those types of modalities. And I think that would benefit their pet. So it's important for you to check and say like, what are you actually licensed in? What have you taken courses in? And you wanna make sure that those are accredited facilities because there's a lot of programs running around in the internet, like certified in K9 nutrition. You can be certified in, there's like an integrative or a holistic practitioners and a lot of those are kind of made up. someone on the internet decided to make a program and they put people through that program. But that program does not have a defined test that is taken or any standardized type of knowledge that has to be known. So you may take a program over here from Frank and you learn these 10 things. And you take this program over here from Isabella and you learn 10 completely different things because they've learned from different people and it's just this big game of telephone. So you wanna make sure that you're taking information from people who have taken some sort of a standardized program and test to know that what they're telling you is going to actually be helpful for your pet and potentially not harmful, right? That's the big thing is wanna make sure we're not putting our pets in any way in harm in any of these situations. So like I am certified in veterinary acupuncture through the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society. That is what you want to know. And then it's also important in my opinion, and not everyone will feel this way, everyone has different opinions on evidence-based medicine. I always try to give people all the information with any sort of a new treatment option that I come up with of what data there actually is to support their specific condition with this specific treatment option, right? There's a lot of new stuff in the... integrative world and the alternative world with ozone therapy and stem cell therapy. And I think it's really interesting. And still, I'm going to be honest with people and say, here is what the data says. It's a little sparse right now. It is promising, but sparse. And for this specific problem, we don't have a lot of information. But these are the risks. and this is why I'd like to try it. This is what I have seen that makes me curious about it and want to try it in your pet. And then we have the discussion about whether that is something they wanna pursue or not. Unfortunately, the really hard decision now is always gonna go on you as a pet parent as to whether you wanna pursue this treatment option and give this a go, especially when it comes to alternative therapies. And then the last question that I want you to think about, so is this gonna replace my pet's treatment or work alongside of it? What are you specifically certified in? What does the evidence actually say for my pet's condition? And how will we know if it's working and by when? So do we give it a month? Do we give it four treatments? Do we give it two months? How long do we give this before we say, maybe that doesn't work for my pet and we hop back and we choose another option. So for example, with acupuncture, I always tell people what I was taught and learned is that we need to give it four, to six sessions and they're usually one week apart. And at that point, after that first four sessions, I typically am gonna sit back with the pet parent and say, okay, how do you feel? Do you think it's doing anything? Do you not? Because I don't want to waste people's money ever. Like I don't want you to feel like this is not worth your money and your time because it is a commitment. And if it's not working, great, that's okay. I can give you other options and we can part ways and that's that. Or I can continue to see you and we can talk about other modalities because this just wasn't the one for your pet and that's okay. Nobody failed anything, nobody did anything wrong. Pets don't read the book. They don't know what they're supposed to do. They don't know how they're supposed to respond to anything. So it just doesn't work for some of them as it does for others. We know the same with medications. Think about if you take a medication, you may think, ⁓ well, I respond way better to Tylenol than I do to Aleve. And, you know, your friend may say, ⁓ I'm the opposite. You know, it's your body and how it responds to certain treatment modalities. So it's important to know how long do we give this and when do we reevaluate. go a different route or talk about what other options are, okay? So I want you to definitely keep these four questions in mind if you decide to go see an integrative or an alternative specialist because it's something that's going to give you an idea of how quickly we expect results, what am I looking for, what changes should we be seeing, and make sure that you and the veterinarian are on the same page, right? So there's a lot of different certifications. You can certify in acupuncture, in food therapy, in massage therapy, in tweenaw, which is a type of manual manipulation type of therapy, in acupressure therapy, I believe is another one, rehabilitation therapy is another one, herbal therapy, homeopathy, stem cells, ozone therapy. I have a list of about... 10 different things I want to get licensed in in the next four years because I'm crazy and I really love learning and I love learning new things. Acupuncture, when I first went to my acupuncture classes, my practitioners said, listen, this is kind of like a gateway drug, okay? You're gonna come in here and you're gonna learn this and you're gonna implement it and then you're gonna be like, ⁓ man, I wanna take this and I wanna take this class and now I wanna do this. And I was like, ah, I was never really, I loved school and I loved vet school. But by the time I was through vet school, I was pretty beat up and chewed up and spit out from vet school that I was like, oh, I do not wanna do an internship. I don't wanna go to school anymore right now. And then I went to acupuncture and I was like, ah, I wanna know all these options. I wanna learn all of this. And especially as I started to dive more into senior dogs and cats, I was like, it's important for me to know all of this, to be able to help people. it's one of those things where I've enjoyed learning and I found something that I'm so passionately happy learning every day about. I could take classes every single day about some different modality of Chinese medicine and never get tired of it. It's the coolest thing ever. Have you ever left the vet with more questions than answers and then you drive home and you go straight onto Google? Yeah, I hear that a lot. And honestly, it's exactly why I created my Senior Pet Virtual Consultations. Imagine we have 45 minutes where we go through everything, your pet's full history, their specific challenges, their daily life, no rushing, we're gonna cover nutrition, integrative options, whole modifications and quality of life. and I send you a personalized plan after so that nothing slips through the cracks here. But don't just take my word for it. Chelsea called it a senior pup therapy session and said she felt so much better afterwards. Adiba got recommendations her own vet had never thought to suggest, and Denise said that the consult was incredibly informative and helpful, giving her many options to help her dog, feel better. This is the conversation that your senior pet deserves. And honestly, the one you deserve to. The link is in the description. I'd love to help you. So I do think it's important to say, acupuncture has been around for about 3000 years. Herbal medicine has been around for about 4000 years. So when you think about this, if you're not sold, just think about like Western medicine has been around for about 200 years, 200 versus 4000. And... a lot of the Western medicine medications are pulled from herbs. And I also think it's important to think about the fact that if something didn't work, would it still be around? You know, we at some point in Western medicine decided that a lobotomy was the way that we fix someone who has a brain issue. which means that you go in and you basically corkscrew around the brain matter and look, they're fixed. Well, we quickly learned that wasn't the right answer, right? And so we stopped doing it. They don't do those anymore to my knowledge. And we still practice acupuncture and herbal therapy and all these traditional Chinese medicine options. So to me, why would they still be around if they didn't work? And personally, I've treated so many things with Chinese medicine that Western medicine could not touch. I've treated dementia, I've IVDD that wasn't responsive to surgery even. I've treated certain joint issues. I've treated sundowning, I've treated seizures, I've treated anxiety. I've treated... Wobbler's disease, I've treated neurologic disease, degenerative myelopathy, degenerative nerve diseases. I've treated all these things, geriatric onset, laryngeal paralysis, and polyneuropathy. So what people think of as LARPAR, laryngeal paralysis. We don't make it better or fix it per se, but I have improved quality of life in those patients who should have gotten, were given a timeline. by a specialist of six to 12 months and we get 18 plus. So, and they're good times, they're good months. So to me, I think it's really important that we do open our minds a little bit more to this concept that maybe this medicine that we've only known for 200 years isn't the only answer. And it's not the end all be all. And maybe Chinese medicine really does know what it's talking about. Right now we're learning about the ways that gut microbiome or fecal transplant therapy can help with things like chronic enteropathy or chronic like inflammatory bowel disease type of things in dogs and cats that are on high doses of steroids or failing steroid therapy. Steroids are really hard on the body. And you're telling me that we can just take poop from another dog and put it inside of this dog? and it can make that dog not need steroids anymore and fix its IBD? Yeah. And do you know where that comes from? There was something in the, I believe the ancient Chinese Chang dynasty, I want to say, where they had something called yellow soup. And essentially this was poop soup. They would make poop soup from people that were healthy and they would give it to people that were unhealthy. who had some sort of GI distress and it would fix them, okay? So 3000 years later, Western medicine is finally catching on to this, right? I just can't unsee the things that I have been able to do with Chinese medicine. I still love Western medicine though. I think this is a huge distinction here is I don't believe, and you can agree with me or not, I don't believe that Western medicine is out here trying to make people sick or trying to gaslight people or just trying to make a buck. I really don't. I think that people that give their life or a decade of their life to go pursue a medicine degree, veterinarians go to school for eight years, but there's so much that happens before that prerequisite rise. I need to take 17 plus hours of classes when I was an undergraduate. Most of my friends were taking 12 and I was taking 17 plus and all these organic chemistries and know, physics and all these different really intense programs to try and get into veterinary school. And then getting in and spending four years basically with my face in a book. trying to pass that school and then, you know, when you come out, still a year or two trying to figure it all out and make sure that you're doing everything right. I just don't think that is a get rich quick scheme, right? It's 10 plus years of your life to be a human MD or actually human MDs, takes 12 plus years. Veterinarians, it takes average eight years. typically more than that, it's not a get rich quick scheme and you come out not making that much money. When I came out of veterinary school, I had about $400,000 worth of debt and I started in an overnight ER making $67,000 a year, which isn't crazy bad, but also for someone who has that many numbers of debt. and who just went to that much school, it's not much to be working overnights and weekends and holidays when nobody else wants to work. So I don't think it's something where Western medicine doctors are trying to make us sick. We're not brainwashed because, I'm sorry, but you can't have someone who goes to medical school and then possibly think that they're brainwashable. These are some of the smartest people you will ever meet. There's no way that they can brainwash you in school. It's just not how this works. So I know that's gonna be a hot topic for people, but I really just don't think that either medicine is trying to do harm. I think that we're both trying to do good in the best way that we think possible. I think that Western medicine just doesn't always understand the Eastern medicine modalities and they can be a little bit tainted by it because of certain situations that may happen. But I do think that in my mind, a beautiful future for veterinary medicine and human medicine is that we treat things in an integrative medicine standpoint where we work closely with both of our doctors and we can get a good protocol together. If you guys are not aware, I have rheumatoid arthritis. I was diagnosed a little bit over a year ago and I see a Western medicine doctor and I'm prescribed medications by that doctor. And I also see a integrative practitioner who used to be an OBGYN and then she decided to take Chinese medicine training. So I see that person as well and they have me on certain supplements and recommendations for things like meditation and journaling. and mushroom complex therapy and things like that. And between these two modalities, I have remained in remission for a year. I also have a diet protocol that's in place. Now, unfortunately, my Western medicine doctor doesn't really believe in my integrative medicine doctor's protocols, but you know what, that's okay. I just tell her, look, I'm doing these things and... She knows, so it's in her record. And if she doesn't agree with it, she's very good about just saying, okay, and moving on. She doesn't try to deter me from it. She knows it's my decision. So at least let's get there where we say, okay, look, I'm comfortable with this as long as we're being open about it. Because what I learned is most pet parents want to help their pet. They don't care. whether that means Western medicine or whether that means Chinese medicine, they just wanna help. And if you're gonna give them something that helps in whatever way that may be, they are happy to pay for it and they are happy to do it. They just wanna know what's actually gonna work in their pet. And I think we need to come together a little bit more to understand that and to work synergistically with other practitioners. Okay, that is my little rant because I think it's extremely important. that we are working together. So I want you to make sure that you're asking the questions, is this replacing or adding to our conventional care? What are your certifications? What does the evidence say? How will we know if it's working? I want you to look up any credentials that you don't recognize and make sure that the ones that you are seeing or they are telling you are recognized by some sort of like a governing body and have a... society or a standardized test behind them, right? Make sure you remember holistic is not a credential. So even though a lot of Chinese medicine practitioners use it because that's what people know, it is not, it does not mean that they are licensed in any specific type of medicine. So you want to ask what their credentials are. And there, there are a lot of evidence for things like acupuncture. I think I hold up some of the studies here I want to go over with you. So Colorado State University did a clinical trial on acupuncture in 32 client-owned dogs with osteoarthritis and they measured this with something called ground reaction forces. It basically means like how the body moves on a plate or something, outputs pressure. And then owner reported pain scales. This was a blinded trial so the owners did not know whether the pets were getting acupuncture or not. This is the best kind of trial because you don't want it to be biased by what a pet parent perceives. And it did note an improvement in the patients who received acupuncture. And there was another trial done with laser acupuncture in 2025 that produced improvements in joint health and pain reduction for dogs with osteoarthritis with and measurable changes in the inflammatory and the antioxidant markers. So this has on paper data to show that it improves inflammatory and antioxidant markers, which is amazing. Acubuncture combined with rehab found that it significantly increased the likelihood of dogs regaining the ability to walk after an acute disc injury. So like a slip disc, just doing surgery versus doing surgery and acubuncture, the surgery and acubuncture patients improved significantly over the other group. I have personally had quite a few amazing success stories. One is a degenerative myelopathy patient who, belonged to a veterinary cardiologist who was skeptical. And then she gave it a go and she was given six to 12 months survival time for him until he progressed to not being able to walk. Teddy made it 18 months and he was getting a little worse at that time, but he, the ultimate thing that took him out was he tore his stomach, his stomach flipped and bloated. But 18 months from being told six to 12 is pretty amazing. She actually took him off of his Western medications. She had him on Galloprant and on Gapapentin. We put him on two different herbs and acupuncture and I didn't tell her to, but she's a veterinarian. She slowly took him off of those other medications in that timeframe. and he was doing great. I had another patient who was a cat that was doing a lot of night waking. We put this cat on a special herb, was not a good candidate for acupuncture. She was not gonna handle that well, so we just did herbs and she did so much better. Stopped yelling around the house, was able to allow the pet parent to get some sleep and did much better. I had another dog that I treated for sundowning, same type of deal. We did acupuncture on him specifically. Never added any herbs or anything like that, but we got so much of an improvement with him just with acupuncture. It's amazing to see the difference that we can make with acupuncture. I had a dog who, he's a service dog, so he goes to like the Ronald McDonald House and sees kids and brings a lot of people joy. And he came to me and his mom said, well, we know he's gonna retire. We know we're gonna retire him at the end of the year. And I started seeing him in October. of 20, I think it was October 20, 2024. And she said, I know we're retiring him in 25, but I just want to make him comfortable because he had this really weird joint deficit that the Ohio State University could not get an answer for basically. They could see it on radiographs, but they did not have an answer as far as how to treat it. So we... did acupuncture on him, his name was Jake. And Jake has still not retired. Jake still goes to the Ronald McDonald House. It has been two years almost. And he's still doing his job, living his best life. He loves it. He has the best time. And he's also started going out with his dad again to go like hunting and running and things like that. So I just love the opportunity to give pets more options and to use modalities that maybe pet parents are more comfortable with. I know with my hard dog Floyd, I did all the Western treatment options with him to try and help his brain tumor and his dementia, and they just didn't work. I'm gonna be honest, I've had radiation therapy on a previous dog and it did a great job for a period of time. It did. nothing for Floyd. I just didn't see any improvement. Which I will always regret a little bit not knowing about Chinese medicine with him, but I do believe he is watching over me and is happily directing my life in the direction that it is right now so that I can help other people get more time with their senior babies that I didn't get to have with him. In that regard, before I start crying, I'm going to sign off for the night and I just want you to know that you were doing a wonderful job with the information that you have in this moment. And I hope that this gave you a little bit more of it. Maybe opened your mind to integrative care. If you're a practitioner, I hope that you can open your mind a little bit to collaborative care and those integrative modalities. And I hope that you all have a beautiful night. If you have any questions about integrative care, please send me a message on socials. or on my website and I would love to know more. Okay? Have a beautiful day. Thank you. That's it for today. If this episode helped you, please leave a review or rate this podcast so we can get the word out to more pet parents who need to hear that they are doing a good job. And if you're interested in working more with me, you can find me on social media or at seniorpetconnection.com because we all need to stay connected. Remember that you are doing a great job with the information that you have in this moment. and I am just here to give you more of it. See you next week.