Latest / The Bridges and Beacons Podcast / The Path to Pet Wellness with Dr. Jeff Feinman

Transcript

The Path to Pet Wellness with Dr. Jeff Feinman · The Bridges and Beacons Podcast

• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Mystic Nerd Squad podcast.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Kelly Meyerson.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And today I am delighted to have my friend Jeff Feynman, who is a veterinarian and the founder of Holistic Actions.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Using molecular biology and current research in energy, happiness, love, and spirit, his mission is to help pets have long and happy lives.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, I am so thrilled to have you here today.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't wait to dive into your story.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having me.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's just uh it's a pleasure and honor.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, thank you.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I know people are listening in and they tuned in and they heard, did she say that we're gonna talk about pets and having them be happy and have long lives?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I would love to start with just telling us a little bit about your story.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Your background is being a vet and working with animals.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe tell us the story of when you decided to make that pivot to thinking about pet health care as more of a holistic practice.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess the honest answer is never.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I've always seen everything as being connected, and that's one of the weird ways my brain works.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we found out later in life that was my own brain disease, but that's a whole different story.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I've I've pretty much always seen everything holistically and connected, and actually my backstory was started in research.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, my research was on the cellular level, and then my level had some.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've always wanted to be a veterinarian, so I went through the conventional veterinary route, but all the while with that that weird, connected, you know, open-minded brain, because that's one of the definitions of being a scientist, is you accept what is not known.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, magic, for example, magic, science is magic before we know it's really science.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, what was magic years ago?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um electricity was magic.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, light bulb lit up, you know, atomic bomb, you know, um, you know, nuclear anything was was magic.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, now we're in the whole quantum world where you know where everything quantum is is magic to begin with.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, that was the mindset that I went into vet school with.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, vet school, medical school inculcates us into a very rigid way of seeing the world, very reductionistic, very much the opposite of the holistic uh way of seeing things.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how I practiced for many years, you know, always seeking, always trying to find a better way within the frame, but then realized gradually after about a decade that there was a lot of stuff that we didn't learn in vet school that really worked and that could really help our pets.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I started actually practicing more holistically as far as choosing supplements and diet and lifestyle, all these things that we don't really learn about in vet school.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: But the veterinary model was wonderful for providing a job basis against which I could, you know, move on and still use as you know a very, very important way to diagnose and and name diseases and name things that are that are going on with your pets.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so similar to the medical model.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so many of us who have had experiences of going to the doctor for a particular problem, and the solution doesn't present itself because what you have going on doesn't niche into a box of a disorder or disease, and you're left feeling like, well, you could try this, but it it might not be effective.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I know in my own journey taking care of my human body, it's it's been some of the holistic things that I've come across, whether it's supplements or meditation or things that made me feel like a healthier human being.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I I completely relate to that experience.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And from the science perspective, you know, go being an occupational therapist.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you learn the body, the biology, the neuroanatomy.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you get a child in front of you, and you're like, oh, okay, that's not in the box.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I I completely relate and I love the way that you talked about historically things that we now take for granted were considered magic before we fully understood them.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I I love that comparison.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to jump into something that I really got excited about when I was looking at the work that you do.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the acronym is BEAM.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can you tell me a little bit about what BEAM is and how you use it?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: So learning and understanding more about the beam may be one of the most important things that we do talk about because it goes back to holistic versus reductionistic.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: We reduce the body to parts or symptoms.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a problem with the eye, there's a problem with the ear, there's a problem.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: And medicine, veteran medicine is kind of very good at getting rid of symptoms, addressing those symptoms and getting rid of them, whether it's with an anti biotic or anti-inflammatory, anti-this or anti-that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that to me is is an issue because an anti is working against the body, and beam is a way of looking at the body, looking at our pets that is working with their bodies.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: So beam is the acronym for behavior, energy, appetite, and mood, which are the factors that directly correlate to how the animal is doing internally.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: So they may have a really bad ear or really you know itchy skin or you know something going on, but if their beam is good, you know that they're operating on all cylinders, and that it's really the symptom is just the body's way of trying to tell you something's subtly going on.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you a quick example of the use of beam.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Fairly recent, two different dogs they both vomited with blood.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of them, the beam dropped from a nine out of ten down to a four out of ten, so it didn't want, he was really sick.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other dog, the beam didn't change at all.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Just so happened that the one dog that had a high beam but vomited blood was a couple hours away from the ER, so they didn't rush him to the ER inside of it because he had a high beam.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: They would wait till the morning.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: When they did get the dog exam, there was nothing, nothing going on.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the dog whose beam had dropped never vomited blood again, but the beam stayed low.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the vet exam found all kinds of problems going on.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I I just used the word problems, but they're not problems, they're just you know minor challenges because the body is sought to get over all of these challenges that we perceive as challenges because they're usually not bothered by it.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um animals are not worried about what their symptoms are.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: We are exactly, exactly.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So is is beam, does it have a scale with it in a way of rating your your pet to figure out whether one area is a relative strength or going well, or another is really having a little bit of an imbalance?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank thank you for asking that.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And there is you know a beam score.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we score that on a one to ten scale where 10 is 100% like normal, and one is like really, really, you know, uh zero is you know, there's nothing left at all.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So tenth's best.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: There are ways to look at that score and keep it above an eight.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually the level that I like to sit at an eight, nine, or ten.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and each little aspect breaks down, you know, behavior you look at, you know, is your dog, you know, alert, is your cat purring and happy?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um energy is easy to see.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Do they get up?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do they grin you at the door?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do they want to play like usual?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do they walk as far as usual?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Appetite is the easiest part once it takes to come actually measure things like how long does it take him to eat?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is he picky at all?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Does he finish the bowl?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Does she um leave food over?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of thing.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And mood and behavior go together.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because unless you're actually communicating with your dog, you can't say so you're in a bad mood.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you can you can see that by you know, a dog a dog or a cat that just wants to fly around and wants to go off and be by itself and doesn't even want to be with his mom or dad.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see that.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have a little puppy, she's 11 months, and a couple months ago, she started not being interested in eating.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: She was having a very loose stool, you know, she was a little quieter, didn't want to play.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, okay, we kind of looked at all of those things.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, something is wrong.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's time to go to the vet and figure out what's happening.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It turned out she had Giardia and she just needed to take medicine and be away from other animals and all the things that go with that.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and they also recommended changing to a whole food, very gentle chicken and rice diet, which she's my picky eater.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So she was delighted about that part of it and very quickly was into eating again.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I can see what you're saying about how their behavior and mood, you know, when you have this predictable way of being, she loves to be with us, she loves to play.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: She usually has like her little zoomies that she does once a day.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So anytime any of those things fall out of the picture, we're like something is not right.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's probably a typical experience that you know pet people have.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: It it is, it is for sure.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then the whole other issue of you know, do they really need the medications?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Do they really need you know an antibiotic against chiardia or against the bacteria?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that secondary?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is the primary problem really with the pickiness?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why, for example, if you're picking dogs in the wild, animals in the wild, if there's food, they're gonna eat it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna say, I don't really want that today, but I'll have this.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: But they're eating a fresh food diet, that's often you know a game changer for a lot of a lot of animals.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've we've for convenience's sake made them and actually made them eat a culture processed dry or wet food diet, which is about as far from a natural diet as we can as we can ask.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say at this point, around 75% of what I see, whether it's vomiting or diarrhea or pickiness or other allergies symptoms, those are resolved by going on to a fresh food diet, fresh food um yeah.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: So and we can certainly talk further about what that what that even means, but you know, fresh food as that's opposed to processed food.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh probably along with the human model of many of us eat way too much processed food, and our bodies are not always motivated or doing their best work with a processed food diet.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you hit the nail on the head because the body is designed to do a job.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: The body is designed to stay in balance, and our animals are great at staying in balance, unless we introduce something that's gonna push them off that balance, whether it's diet, whether it's a toxin, whether it's a drug.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the time, and where being comes in, a lot of the time the answer is just let your dog or cat be a more natural dog or cat or any any animal.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Let them let them be themselves.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that is actually what the whole conscious and compassionate communication system is all about.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's just letting them letting animals choose their own thing.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was lucky enough to get a little sneak preview of your book that's going to be coming out.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I I loved it, and I know every pet person that I know is gonna want a copy.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can you tell us what is the title of your book and and what is the premise of it?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the original title, uh it's being it's actually in process still, but the original title was named after, I don't know if you know this book, Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is the book that the first book from the late 50s or 60s, I guess it was, where this gentleman Norman Cousins um had a crippling, painful disease that he left away by laughter, by watching Candy Camera re reruns or Marx Brother films.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: His open-minded doctor began to realize that this was you know helping him and it eventually cured him.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I was gonna name the book after Anatomy of Illness, but it's really anatomy of pet wellness.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: But the publisher said, Oh, you can't really use the word anatomy, it makes you think it's like a textbook.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the book is now called Path Pet Wellness, and the subtitle is that it's a conscious way to be connected with our pets to help them be happier.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because really that happiness and that laughter are what it's all about for animals and for us.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, every day I do laughter yoga, and people from around the world are just on Zoom laughing for half an hour.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the premise of the book, and I know I can keep going around and around, but the the book Pet the Pet Wellness is based on a positive and practical veterinary spirituality that connects all the pieces of our of our pet well-being and help them maintain their health but also regain their health.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really just a I mean, if I had to sum it up, it's really just a different way of looking at it.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: So uh different from what we as veterinarians learn and tell you all is the only way, and the only way is we gotta get rid of this symptom, we've got to get rid of this disease, we've got but all that really does put us into a fixed mindset.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're fixed, it's what Gabor Mate calls for people, they call it the cult of medicine.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: You have to do what the cult leaders say is the right thing to do.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: I love that the path to pet wellness, and I think it's such a nice companion for so many of us that are embracing the idea of improving our well-being, holistic living, and now we have this opportunity to help our pets.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So um, when is this book coming out?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Where will people be able to find it?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: That is a really good question.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably gonna come out because I want everyone to know that there's at least a different way to look at it, it's gonna probably come out in the ebook version by the end of this year, but it'll be launched in bookstores hopefully by late spring, early summer of next year.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm personally excited because I want to read the rest of the book because I'm already invested in it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I really love the stories in there.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna give any of them away because I want your readers to really enjoy some of the great stories in there.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but also I'm gonna suggest to people this is the perfect, uh, you know, if you're you have a favorite vet and you're looking for something to give them as a thank you for the extraordinary pet care you're getting.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: What a great gift to give to a veterinarian um or a new pet family who has a new dog or cat or other animal.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're not discriminating against other animals, we're just uh generalizing all pets.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's a great, great, great idea, which I actually had not thought of.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that is, you know, had parents gifting their vets with with the book.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: But um it's really just introducing the vet to a different way.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I I will say over the years, I've seen a lot of veterinarians adopting this path that's really the road less traveled.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, really off the beaten the beaten path.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason it's off the beaten path, not only for everything we talked about, but it's based in the reality of our life.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: What what allows us to be alive?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: That that well, what allows a car to work?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Putting gas in the tank when the gas when the tank is empty, the car doesn't work.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: While you and I work, the animals work.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: by energy as well.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: We don't use chaos, but we have energy.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Without energy, our beam is zero.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're not, we're no longer our pets are no longer alive yet.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Energy is not something that we learn about in vegetable.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: We learn only about the physical and physiological manifestations of that energy.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: So really what the book is about is ways to increase that energy and increase the flow of the energy in the body.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a one take home from book and I'll give this away because we could all start using it right away and the one take home is go with the flow.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Just go with the flow of life go with the flow of energy.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Just if you're opposing it if you're negative if you're saying no if you're using an anti but you're going against the flow.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: The flow is very very powerful.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: I love that I love that I am so grateful for you.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope you'll come back even if we do a quick episode where we can just hold up a picture of of the book and share it with people so um we can let them know when it's available.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thrilled for all the work that you're doing and the inspiration and um you know personally excited about your journey because I have a 10 year old who wants to be either a vet or a zoologist when he grows up.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I told you that uh I'm gonna have to get a copy and put it aside for my son for himself for the future.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: He'll be able to look at the pictures and and read some of the text for sure and and I just want to add one thing before we go and that is if anyone wants to learn how to start doing this they just hop over to holistic actions and take that free course free course five easy lessons we'll walk you through the whole system which is really really intuitive it just feels right and it works.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love that and so we can put that link in the show notes so people can go down in the show notes and they can click on that link and uh I'll definitely be taking that course.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited to put this into practice with my little girl who's uh almost 12 months old and uh I really thank you I'm so thrilled for the work that you're doing in the world uh it's been an honor having you on here um any final words for everybody yeah have fun play and have fun because that's really what life is all about and our animals are our greatest teachers because they live for fun they live to eat they live to have fun and sleep and that's it I love that thank you so much and have a great one take care thank you