My guest today is holistic veterinarian Dr. Deva Khalsa, author of the bestselling book Dr. Khalsa’s Natural Dog. We’ll be talking about the things that dog owners often do out of love for their pet, which might not be so good for them. Dr. Deva earned her degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine in 1981. Since beginning her holistically oriented veterinary practice over 25 years ago, Dr. Deva has been incorporating homeopathy, acupuncture, Chinese Herbs, nutritional advice, and allergy-elimination techniques. Today her work is a blend of sophisticated holistic techniques and traditional veterinary medicine designed to best enhance the natural strengths and attributes of her patient. Dr Deva has a reputation as a life-saver for ailing animals who would not have survived had they not been brought to her for treatment. 
She is often featured as a veterinary expert on radio and television, from National Public Radio, to Martha Stewart’s Veterinary Satellite Radio show, to her many appearances on major television networks. Dr. Deva also developed her own line of nutritional supplements through Deserving Pets as a gift to the animals she loves so dearly. Dr. Deva firmly believes that by enabling our furry friends to maintain optimum health through daily nutrition and diet, we will be able to allow them to live their lives to the fullest, by staving off many of the most devastating illnesses and ailments. www.doctordeva.com| www.deservingpets.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Caring for Your Dog Naturally
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Dr. Deva Khalsa
Date of Broadcast: June 25, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world, and live toxic-free.
I just heard, as I was waiting, and you’ve probably been listening to the news too. I just heard a commercial from Lumber Liquidators, and I just wanted to mention that they’re having a sale announced in that commercial, very low prices on wood line.
I have a Lumber Liquidators here. I’ve looked [at it this morning]. If you want to go check out the sale, that’s a really good price. They have flooring that is solid wood. Some of them have things on them, but go and take a look, and see if they have solid wood flooring.
I’m sure they have solid wood flooring. I meant to say solid wood flooring on sale because that’s a very good price. And if you’re looking to redo your floors, a pre-finished solid wood floor is a very good non-toxic option. I have them in my house, and it’s very, very good.
So my guest today is holistic veterinarian, Dr. Deva Khalsa. She’s the author of the bestselling book, Dr. Khalsa’s Natural Dog. She earned her degree in 1981, so she’s been doing this for about 25 years. She has been incorporating homeopathy, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, nutritional advice and allergy elimination techniques.
Today, her work is a blend of sophisticated holistic techniques and traditional veterinary medicine designed to best enhance the natural strength and attributes of her patients.
She really has been a lifesaver for ailing animals who would not have otherwise survived have they had not been brought to her for treatment.
So she’s got a lot of experience and information today. We’re going to be talking about how to care for your dogs.
Hi, Dr. Khalsa. You know what? I’m going to go call her Deva because I know her personally. Hi, Deva.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: That’s much better. Hey! Nice to be here. Very nice to be here.
DEBRA: Thank you. And she lives in Australia part-time.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: No, New Zealand.
DEBRA: New Zealand, that’s right. But she’s here now in America, in Florida, probably right down the street from me. And so we’re talking to her in this time zone, and not another one.
So tell us how you got interested in being a veterinarian, and why a holistic veterinarian.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: I always wanted to be a veterinarian ever since I was a little girl. I think when I was about two years old, the story is told about how I collected all the ants before my birthday, and put them in a box, so my mother won’t kill them.
And I collected every animal on the street, whether they were sick or not, and brought them home to treat. So I always wanted to be a veterinarian.
In those days, not that many girls were veterinarians. I actually think I’ve been a veterinarian for almost 35 years or 30, more than 25, as I add it up.
But I don’t want to add it.
But the thing is that those days, mostly men became veterinarians. And by the time I started in veterinary school, a lot more women were becoming veterinarians. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I totally, totally love it. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
But what happened was, the veterinary school at that time, still is pretty much, was the hardest professional school to get into. And it was harder than medical school. Dental school used to be doctor’s backups, and medical school was my backup.
So I got into medical school, but I didn’t get into veterinary school. And I lived in New Jersey, and only [inaudible 00:03:48] New Jersey. And New Jersey is packed full of people [inaudible 00:03:53] to veterinary school. They had deals with different veterinary schools.
So I moved to Pennsylvania, became a Pennsylvania resident in a year. The next year, I applied to University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. I got into veterinary school, and I turned down the medical school. I didn’t go to medical school.
Bur during that year, I thought that if I had to be a medical doctor, which I didn’t want to do, at least I’d become a holistic [inaudible 00:04:15] medical doctor because I felt that, especially in those days—now, times have changed quite a bit in the last 30 years. But in those days, people really didn’t take responsibility for their health as much as they do now.
They expected to go to a doctor and get a pill, and he would fix it. Nowadays, we’re still into supplements, at least, I’m sure the people who listen to this show, and eating rice, and keeping toxins out of our environment. And it’s a big thing.
But in those days, it wasn’t.
And I thought it’s just ridiculous. People don’t care for themselves, then they expect the doctor to fix it. So I wanted to do holistic.
So I took holistic human. Just courses. Lots of course. I got into veterinary school. I knew a lot of stuff. And as I went to veterinary school, I kept looking at what they were doing, thinking that if I did it like they do it with people, then what could happen is they could get better this way instead of this more toxic and more invasive manner.
So by the time I got out, I got a job, and I tried all the stuff I learned on animals, I learned on people but I tried it on animals, and it was beginner’s poker luck. Everything worked miraculously.
So I got so excited. I went to India. I went to Brazil. I went to England. I studied with the best of the best. And before I knew it, I was one of the top holistic practitioners in the world. At the first International Homeopathic Conference at Oxford, in England, I was the keynote speaker. And I just took all the people stuff that I learned, and I kept transferring it to animals.
And so I learned lots of different technologies for holistic health. And I had a huge practice in Pennsylvania before I moved to New Zealand, and loved it.
And that’s a long answer to a short question.
DEBRA: We’re going to go to break early because we’re actually going to reconnect and see if we can get better quality sound because we’re not as good as it usually is.
So you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is holistic veterinarian, Dr. Deva Khalsa. And as you’ve already heard, she’s quite experienced and knowledgeable, and we’re going to hear all about taking care of your dog naturally when we come back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is holistic veterinarian, Dr. Deva Khalsa. And her website is DoctorDeva.com, if you’d like to go there after you’ve listened to her speak.
So Deva, you said that you’d like to talk about things that dog owners often do out of love for their pets, which might not be so good for them.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Yes. I think that’s an important concept because remember, veterinary medicine is basically mainstream medicine. And so they live by conventional products and pharmaceutical products. So veterinarians recommend these things all the time [inaudible 00:07:05].
And we like our veterinarians because they like animals, and we like animals, and we trust them.
But they’ve been trained conventionally, and they haven’t been trained to look at what these products do, and how often are they needed. And they also sell these products. And so it makes money to sell products to animals that help prevent certain problems.
But what’s happening is, we love our animals, and we want to do our best for them. So people are spending a great deal of money on products their pets don’t need. And we can go over a few of these different products.
DEBRA: Yes, tell us about some of these products.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: What are your listeners’ area? Are they all over the United States?
DEBRA: All over the world.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Oh, perfect. That’s simple. Well, the first thing is that dogs don’t need the numbers of vaccines that they get. Research has shown, and this research has been thorough and carefully done over a period of almost 10 years by Dr. Ronald Schultz, who is Ph.D. in immunology, and he’s brilliant and well-known and very well-respected in his field, and Dr. Jean Dodds, who is a veterinarian, and that’s very well-respected in her field.
So you know how we get a polio shot when we were kids, and then we don’t worry about it? You’re not worried that your grandmother is 80 years old, and she’s going to get polio, but she hasn’t had her shot in 78 years?
That’s because it lasts for a lifetime. And the vaccines for parvo and distemper, that booster shot that you’re told to go in for every year, that shot lasts for a lifetime [inaudible 00:08:40] and especially after six months of age.
The research is pretty irrefutable. Let’s say, you get two puppy shots. Let’s say, when you have a puppy, you give him a shot at 14 weeks and 17 weeks, which is late, but that’s what I’d like to do with a booster. Then they get [inaudible 00:08:55] a year later. They’re fixed for the rest of their lives. They don’t need that booster every year. They actually don’t need it. It’s unnecessary.
The same thing with the cat distemper shot, the booster shot that you’re told to get every year. Many people with indoor [inaudible 00:09:11] outside. [inaudible 00:09:12] and they get this vaccine.
What [inaudible 00:09:18] is the puppy booster and the kitten booster, and not the rabies shot, just the boosters, they have a whole bunch of diseases in them. And we could spend an hour talking about the diseases, and how rare some of them are, and how they don’t work. But booster shots simply are not needed.
These vaccines are incubated in a broth of chicken. In one of serum, there are embryos, chicken embryos, which are eggs, basically, and bovine serum, which is a serum of cows, and some brewer’s yeast, and a lot of [inaudible 00:09:42] contaminated the broth for years and years and years—and then some adjuvants and some mercury.
It’s really a pretty toxic mix. And when you give it to your dog every year, you’re going to promote autoimmune disease, allergies, and lots of other diseases. In fact, cats commonly get kidney failure and have kidney problems after 10 or 12 years of age. Many cats start to get elevated kidney enzymes.
And that’s because the cat vaccines also have feline kidney tissue in the broth, and you’re sensitizing the cats to their very own feline kidney tissue.
So what we’re doing is basically the same thing as if we ran in every single year of lives, and got our polio vaccine, and got our tetanus vaccine, and got our diphtheria vaccine, and got our measles and mumps vaccine. And we ran in every year, and we did it.
There’s enough autoimmune disease in people, there are enough allergies in people, there’s enough irritable bowel disease in people that if we did that, it would be a plague rather than an epidemic.
So the thing is that we’re giving them these vaccines every year, these multivalent combination vaccines that are terrible for their immune system, and absolutely unhealthy, and they don’t need them.
My site is DoctorDeva, which is doctor spelled out, D-O-C-T-O-R, and then my first name, which is D-E-V-A. So it’s Doctor D-E-V-A, and E as in egg.
And on it, I have under free pet care health help, I have articles, research that was done, what was found, who did the research. It’s irrefutable.
Anyone who is listening can go on there and just look at the free pet health help. It’s a woman holding out to her dog, and then you look at the article about vaccines, and you can read it, and see all the absolute data.
I have 32 YouTube videos on different things. Some of them are vaccines for dogs and cats. I have magazine articles, many, many of them that I have written for magazines. There are hundreds of them. Probably, there is 50 on the site.
And you can get all the information you want about that to prove to yourself that you don’t need them.
And you have to actually educate yourself because your veterinarian is going to say, “Let’s get your dog a booster shot.”
In addition to the bordatella, which is the kennel cough shot, which is unnecessary, unless you board your dog, and it only lasts for three months. So unless you board your dog all the time, there is no reason to give that vaccine.
The last one that is very common is the rabies vaccine, which is legally necessary, even if the duration of the immunity is extensive. It’s lifelong, but it doesn’t matter. Your township wants you to give your animal the rabies vaccine.
But the rabies vaccine is known to be contaminated with the fibrosarcoma virus, a cancer vaccine. So it’s a fibrosarcoma cancer that is caused by a virus.
Cats get it commonly from the vaccination. So the students are taught to give the rabies vaccine to cats in their tails or their legs, so they can amputate one or the other if they get fibrosarcoma cancer in the areas of vaccine.
So in short, vaccines are [inaudible 00:12:48] and consumers should educate themselves as to what their pets really need, and do a good job educating themselves, so when they go to their veterinarian, they can stand up and say, “This is what I read. I printed it out. I’d like to stay your patient, but I want you to understand that I don’t want my animal to get vaccinated.”
So the first is vaccine.
DEBRA: I used to have cats. I don’t have a cat right now, but I’ve had several cats, and we never vaccinated them, and never had a problem with all those things. And I think that we do need to be looking, like I heard you mention mercury. Is mercury in all the vaccines, in all those booster shots?
DR. DEVA KHALSA: As I know, unless something has changed in the past years, yes.
DEBRA: So every time you give your pet those booster shots or those vaccines, you’re giving them a good dose of mercury. And that’s a toxic heavy metal.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Yes, and the thing is, the only real disease that cats get that can be prevented from vaccine is feline distemper, which is also called panleukopenia, and only kittens get it.
So if your cat is a year-old, it’s not going to get feline distemper, and it doesn’t need the vaccine. The rest of the stuff is totally superfluous. And it’s not a joke. They’re just not going to get it. It’s superfluous.
And the other thing is that the vaccines for FIV or FeLV are terrible vaccines. The FeLV vaccine, feline leukemia virus, it doesn’t prevent feline leukemia virus, in my experience, and there are many other veterinarians who would agree with me. It’s very toxic, and according to Marty Goldstein and many other veterinarians, we believe that it can cause cancer in pets, just the vaccine alone.
And we’re seeing one in two dogs get cancer. This is why it’s so important to eliminate toxins because we’re seeing one in two pets get cancer.
So the trick is, and we’ll go over flea prevention and flea products next, but the trick is to minimize toxins that your pets get exposed to, and to maximize goodness that they get into their systems to help them dump the toxins out.
DEBRA: Well, that’s just about the same formula as what is good for humans.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: You got it.
DEBRA: And so when people do things to remove toxic chemicals from their homes, they’re also removing the exposures for their pets. And I would think that one of the things that we talk about in terms of children’s health is that a child, if you think about the amount of toxic chemicals in a home, that we have big bodies, but children have small bodies, and babies have even smaller bodies.
And so the amount relative to their body size is much more than it is for an adult. And then you start looking at a pet or a cat or a kitten, it’s just amazing how the concentration just gets greater and greater and greater.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Look at vaccinations. When they vaccinate your pet, there’s a little vial with all the bugs in it, and then water. And then you’ll take the sterile water and put it in, and you mix it up, and then you stick it in the dog.
So you can stick it into a two pound [inaudible 00:16:01] puppy the exact same amount that you would stick into a Great Dane adult. And look at the amount of toxins that little dog is getting.
In fact, little dogs and young dogs get terrible vaccine reactions because they’re so small, and they’re giving them such a burden.
But interestingly enough, our dogs—are you there?
DEBRA: I’m here.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: I heard a click and I got a little nervous. Interestingly enough, when lawns are sprayed, your dogs don’t usually stay on your lawn all the time, and you may spray your lawns, or your neighbor may, or the park may. We assume that when the rain comes and washes it down, it goes into the ground.
And actually, what happens when it rains is that it mixes up the stuff, and it forms a mist that goes up about two-feet from the ground, of all the herbicides and the insecticides that have been sprayed on the lawn.
So then when your dog goes out and runs through that mist, it’s running through a mist of insecticide.
It’s the same thing with fall leaves. If your dog is allergic to mold or has allergy, you walk through the leaves, you’re wearing shoes and pants, and you stir them up, the mold, because that’s what makes leaves to grade. But the dogs are in there and there’s dust, mold dust.
So they actually get a much higher exposure than we do. And besides that, we give them their heartworm prevention all the time, and we give them their spot-on products all the time.
I developed a vitamin under the name of the company, Deserving Pets, which has things in it to detoxify our pets because we’re giving them so many toxins. That was the purpose of it because one in two dogs is getting cancer because kale dumps toxins from cells about eight times faster.
The longer a toxin sits in a cell, the more the chance it has to change it into a cancerous cell and alter the DNA.
So all these vegetables and fruits that you’re talking about, these essentials that people should take, it’s the same cell in a dog as it is in a person, except dogs don’t like raspberries and blueberries that much. There are lots of recipes in my book, Doctor Deva’s Natural Dog, and its second edition in January coming out next year.
The first edition is still out, but it’s $400 on Amazon.com. I don’t think anyone is paying that. You can still buy it on—
DEBRA: I need to interrupt you because we need to go to break. The commercial is going to play even if you’re still talking. So you’re listening to
Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’ll be right back with Dr. Deva Khalsa.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is holistic veterinarian, Dr. Deva Khalsa. And her website is DoctorDeva.com, and it’s doctor spelled out, and then Deva is D-E-V-A, DoctorDeva.com.
So let’s talk about fleas.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Okay, let’s talk about fleas. Depending on where you live, it depends on, really, how many fleas you get. And there are these Top Spot products which people dab on which seem really nice compared to the dips, sprays and powders since the collars we used to use before.
Now, note that dips, sprays, collars, and flea powders, and even collars, the poison gets into your pet’s bloodstream and circulates all through the capillaries, through all the organs, the kidney and the liver, so that if the collar is sitting on your dog or cat’s neck, and the flea comes and bites them on the tail, it’s going to drop dead because of the poison in the blood.
The collars and the dips don’t powder on. They go systemically.
But then what seemed to happen was these Top Spot products came online, and they were thought to be really handy, little things. You put them on, and they keep the fleas and ticks away. And everybody’s worried about Lyme disease, and no one wants fleas on their dogs.
And so what happens is they start to use these commonly. It was thought that they were relatively safe for years. And we, as veterinarians, were told that they were safe. But actually, it’s not true because in 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency began reviewing the safety of these spot-on flea and tick products. What they found wasn’t pretty.
And additionally, the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, which is a non-profit investigative news organization, and the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, they began to look at these over-the-counter flea and tick prescriptions.
What they discovered was that they are totally not safe. The active ingredient, which is Fipronil, in many products like Parastar, Frontline, EasySpot, [inaudible 00:20:41]. We’re told as veterinarians that it’s absorbed into the sebaceous gland, which is the oil gland of the dog. And it provides a natural reservoir, which kills the ticks.
But then this woman—or I don’t know if it’s a man or woman—Dr. [DeBoise] of the EPA’s Pesticide Division, took a look at it, and discovered that it enters the body, and was excreted into the urine and feces of dogs, and then enters the fat and all the organs. And it showed that low doses of Fipronil long-term, which is what animals have when they’re dotted with this one particular product every single month, has the potential for nervous system toxicity, thyroid toxicity, thyroid cancer, ultrathyroid hormones, liver toxicity, kidney damage, convulsion, whining, barking, crying, reduced fertility.
It can go on and on.
Loss of hair at the spot.
It doesn’t even work against fleas and ticks that much, so what they do is they add more ingredients. They add other toxic ingredients.
So basically, Pesticide.org says that Fipronil, which is the ingredient in these spot-ons, disrupts nerves in animals other than insects. It doesn’t bind as tightly to these nerve cells, but it does, when it’s exposed to the sun, it becomes 10 times more toxic.
So you put it on your dog and he lies in the sun, it’s going to get much much more toxic because the sun is hitting the product.
DEBRA: I just want to say, I’ve never come across that before. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, that idea. But it’s fascinating to me that a chemical would become more toxic in the sun. And suddenly, I’m thinking, well, what about the chemicals that humans are exposed to? Which of those chemicals become more toxic in the sun?
DR. DEVA KHALSA: I don’t know. A lot of the stuff isn’t easy to find as data.8
DEBRA: I know.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: It’s not like you can just look it up. And anyone who has that chemical doesn’t want it to be known that that might happen. But it’s a good point. It’s a very good point.
DEBRA: Especially now, in the summer time when people are out in the sun, and it could be activating toxic chemicals that we don’t know even know about.
I mention this not to be scary, but it’s another reason why we should be watching and eliminating as many toxins—
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Yes, you should research that. And I’ll to find you my support, and you can actually maybe go from that and see what you can figure out.
DEBRA: That would be great because I would like to know what.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: I want to be fair to all the products too. There’s another insecticide called, Imidacloprid. It can be called [Iminoclopromid] and Imidacloprid. But we’ll call it Imidacloprid. And it is the compound that’s in many of the insect-dusting things they put on crops that’s killing the bees worldwide.
In fact, Europe and Russia have put bans on Imidacloprid use in their crops, I think Europe for two years, and Russia refuses to use it. I think they’re saying, by some trade agreement, Monsanto says they should use it, and Russia is saying they won’t use it until it’s proven it’s safe, and they’re going to do the research that it’s proven it’s safe.
And meanwhile, Putin is very much against using this in Russia at all.
But this is what you use in Advantage and other products. It’s a hard word. It’s neonicotinoid. And they act on the nervous system too. And they can damage their kidneys, livers, thyroid, heart, lungs, spleen, adrenal, brain and gonads. It’s a neurotoxin. It can cause incoordination, labored breathing and muscle weakness.
And researchers found an increase in birth defects in mice, rats and dogs when this drug was tested after its debut in 1994.
So that’s another thing that we put every month, thinking that we’re protecting our animals.
Now, the pyrethrin and synthetic pyrethrins, which are called the pyrethroids—pyrethrins are made from marigolds. Everything thinks it has to be safe because they’re natural.
They are the highest cause of reported death.
Now, all these adverse reactions are reported. But honestly, if your dog or cat, and any of you listeners listening now, if your dog and cat has an adverse reaction, you went to the vet or the emergency service from one of these spot-on products, would you be savvy enough to call the appropriate department and report the adverse reaction?
DEBRA: Probably not.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: I won’t because I’m a veterinarian. I don’t have the time.
So these are reported reactions. But the most common reported death cause—in fact, there are lawsuits. There are class action lawsuits against some of these firms. The most common cause of death is the pyrethrin, the synthetic pyrethrin.
And what happens is because they are not as effective per milligram as the other products, they really [whoop] it up. The new product has 36.8% in it, and that’s a very high amount to put on.
So what we’re doing is we’re putting all this stuff on our dog every single month because we don’t want to expose them to disease. So let’s just go two simple things. Let’s say, you don’t want your dog to get Lyme disease or any other diseases that are passed by ticks, which are quite a number of diseases. And you’re worried that, “Oh, my god. A tick might get on my dog.”
Well, first of all, the spot-on products don’t necessarily guarantee that a tick will not bite your dog and inject a disease before it dies from the product. That’s number one.
And number two, the best way to prevent your dog from diseases is to keep them healthy. The commercial about garlic, and if you chop up garlics very finely, and let it sit for 10 minutes, the chemical reaction occurs, which releases a lot more lysine, and then you mix it in with your dog’s food, it’s like giving him an antibiotic every single day.
And an article on my site called Garlic: Friend or Foe? gives explanation, doses and everything in garlic. It’s totally safe for dogs.
I hear music, so I bet there’s a break.
DEBRA: Yes. It’s time for a break. Thank you. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Dr. Deva Khalsa. You can go to her website, DoctorDeva.com. It’s doctor spelled out, and then Deva is D-E-V-A. And we’ll be right back, and talk with Dr. Deva more about what we can do to take care of our dogs.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is holistic veterinarian, Dr. Deva Khalsa. She’s the author of the bestselling book, Dr. Khalsa’s Natural Dog, and has more than 30 years of experience treating pets in a holistic way.
So one of the things that I often say about humans is that we should be creating health instead of treating disease, and I think you would agree with that.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Absolutely.
DEBRA: Could you give us some tips about things that our listeners can do to create health in their dogs?
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Well, the people buy for their dogs a processed, very heated, and very highly compressed dog food that’s made with byproducts, and when you look at what the bag costs, even if it’s expensive, you’re buying the more expensive brand, the ingredients can only be so perfect to sit into that bag, especially big companies that pay enormous advertising costs, television commercials, whatever.
They’re paying for that somehow, and it’s coming out of the cost of that bag of dog food.
So you’re buying basic dog food which is telling you it has everything you need for your dog. And in fact, all of the studies on vitamins and minerals for dogs are incomplete, everything. But no one really knows exactly what they need.
And if they’re being in practice for over 30 years, I would use human vitamins, different combinations of human vitamins, all kinds of things for my patients because of the fact that I didn’t have anything that I felt was good enough in the veterinary line. And that’s why I made Deserving Pets [inaudible 00:28:47] because I put in kale, broccoli, pumpkin, and so many things, alfalfa and cranberries, carrots, and all of these different fresh fruits and vegetables, in addition to high quality, human grade vitamins.
And then I micro-encapsulated them, so that they’re palatable. Your dog doesn’t know, he’s eating kale, and that he’s eating broccoli, and that he’s eating lots of healthy grains. He just thinks he’s getting a treat because it’s micro-encapsulated, which means it is coated, and it is flavored, so the vitamins never oxidize because they don’t reach the air, and the whole fruits and vegetables that are organic also never oxidize.
And so I created this, so that cells would have the building blocks to stay healthy.
For our homes, we use vacuum cleaners, and we use natural products, like vinegar or whatever, to clean our home, and we use scrub brushes and water and window cleaner. And we have paint and tape, and all kinds of things to keep our house in shape.
And we have to because if we didn’t create and create and create it, it would just get destroyed.
And cells have to do the same thing. And their tools are vitamins and minerals and the phytonutrients in super foods. And that’s what helps keep their cells clean, dump toxins, and also repairs themselves.
And they don’t get that every day. They get a processed, highly heated dog food, in which the vitamins and minerals are basically destroyed due to the process. And they’re told that their dog is getting everything, or their cats, that they need, especially cats.
Cats don’t eat vegetables. That’s why my cat vitamin is so good because the cats like it and they get everything.
So when you give the cells everything they need, what happens is they’re able to fight off and clean out all the junk that both we and our pets are getting exposed to every single day.
People go out and go, “I want my dog to have good joints. I’ll go out and get glucosamine. I want my dog to do this. I’ll go out and get this.”
You actually need a product that gives you everything you need to keep everything healthy every day that’s put together in a smart way, so the cells have what they need and everything stays health.
I have animals that are on glucosamine, they go on this product, the alfalfa and the vitamin C, it works to keep the dog’s arthritis and joints healthy, they can go off all their other products.
So you have to have a balanced, complete product that your dog gets every single day that’s really, really well-made. A lot of pet vitamins do not have the milligrams, the international units. They have a general jumbo on the bottom that tells what it’s in, but it doesn’t tell you how balanced it is, and exactly what’s in it. So giving your pet what they need to stay healthy every day is really, really important.
And on the other side of the coin, just like people, it’s minimizing toxins.
DEBRA: Those are the two things. After all of these years of studying this, what it finally came down to for me is eliminate toxins and put in lots of nutrition. And that people need to be eating whole foods. They need to be taking whole food supplements. And pets do too, but it’s the same formula for pets.
But when we look at, as you said, what the pets are actually eating, what the pet foods are about, it’s all cooked. I think there are a couple of raw pet foods out there. And I haven’t researched it a lot because I don’t have a pet right now.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: Well, they have, but the people who feed raw are not feeding lots of vegetables either. You know [inaudible 00:32:14] for people (that my family from New Jersey is doing now because there’s just so much cancer in my family). I’m adopted, so I don’t really have to genetically worry about it. But the new diet is 80% vegetables.
DEBRA: That’s great.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: That is the new thing out there the doctors are telling people. 80% vegetables, and then other 20% is carbs and protein.
DEBRA: I think I eat at least 50% vegetables, but that’s not how it’s been. I didn’t grow up on that. I grew up on TV dinners actually.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: I didn’t grow up on that either, but I’m a vegetarian. And when they told me—and I was for years now, I would eat fish occasionally, for the past 10 years, but it’s very rarely. But the thing is that when my family told me that they were eating 80% vegetables, I’m like,
“I’m a vegetarian. I’d have a hard time eating 80% vegetables myself.”
And do you count them from when they’re fresh, or when you cook them and they melt down?8 I don’t know, but it seems like a lot of vegetables.
There are two salient things that I say that reflects how we think nowadays, and we’ve been conditioned to think this way, through commercials and through advertising, and some sort of self-conscious routine that we have to have great lawns, and we have to have this and that.
So dandelion is one of the healthiest herbs on the planet. It does so much. It cleans the liver, unbelievably [inaudible 00:33:31]. It is healthier than milk thistle for the liver. It’s great for the urinary tract. It moves toxins out of the lymph system, circulates and gets things going in your body.
The Italians pick it in the spring, and they eat it. It grows on our lawns. And what’s the first thing we do when we see dandelions growing on our lawns? We spray it.
DEBRA: With RoundUp.
DR. DEVA KHALSA: We spray it. Everybody goes, “Duh,” because it’s one of the healthiest things around, and we’re busy spraying it because someone on TV or someone on the radio or somewhere in the magazine, we got convinced we had to do that so our neighbors would like us.
And then there are all these bad press on the web about garlic. So I got completely disgusted with it because people have been giving dogs garlic for years, that dogs can’t have garlic, that it’s toxic. Well, it turns out the FDA did a study, in which dogs did get sick from garlic, and you know why, because what they’ve said were dogs that were size of a Golden Retriever, 75 entire cloves of garlic every meal, two meals a day.
What dog would eat the equivalent of 75 cloves of garlic, two meals a day for weeks on end? You and I could not possibly do that.
Only some of the dogs would get sick from it. So they said that garlic was toxic for dogs.
Do you know that you could actually kill someone by having them drink too much water? You can die from too much water.
So I called the National Animal Supplement Council, which gets every report, every adverse report on products that are out there. And for 5000 years, garlic has been used for medicinal purposes. The price of a slave in Rome used to be a couple of garlic.
So the thing is that I called on the adverse reports on garlic, and millions and millions of doses have been for—and these were products that had other things in the mix, so who knows if it was garlic or the rest of the stuff?
And they weren’t bad adverse effects. They were diarrhea, vomiting, something like that.
So the thing is that garlic is excellent for dogs. I wrote an article for Dogs Naturally magazine, an excellent magazine. And it’s on my site, Garlic: Friend or Foe? And it gives all the statistics, all the information about garlic.
And meanwhile, everyone is afraid to feed their dog garlic. We’re spraying our dandelions, and we’re scared to feed our dog garlic. But we’re putting on Top Spot stuff every month, so they don’t get fleas and tick. See what I mean?
DEBRA: I do know what you mean, but I think that a lot of people who are alive today, I think you and I are similar age, and we grew up at a time where what we were told was better living through chemistry, and we were given all the TV commercials about the chemicals we should use and everything. And that’s what everybody thought was normal. And now, we’re finding that it isn’t what we should be doing.
We need to be learning all these things that you’re talking about, and we need to be changing our viewpoint about how we approach life because it’s a very different thing to decide that you’re going to be creating health by doing the things that create health, rather than just doing anything, and getting sick, and then trying to repair the body whether it’s a human body or a pet body.
And it’s a different way of looking at things that we’re not oriented to in this culture, but it’s [inaudible 00:36:40].
DR. DEVA KHALSA: No, and we have difficulty enough deciding it for ourselves. And then what people have to do for their dogs, people are convinced they can’t cook for their dogs. They could have raised seven strapping kids, but they’ll kill their dog if they cook for them. But it’s better to feed this highly-processed food with lots of byproducts in it.
And the fact is we can cook for our dogs. We can make them healthy meals. We can make them healthy snacks. And we don’t have to be [inaudible 00:37:05] about it. We could give them a kibble if we need to. We can cook for them when we need to. We can make nice snacks when we need to.
In fact, my book has a chapter called The Hassle Factor. And basically, you fill out a form. Where do you live? What do you do if you live in New York, and you have a tiny apartment and three Great Danes? You better be dating a butcher, if you want to cook for your dogs.
So the thing is that you look at what your lifestyle is, and how you can easily make your dog healthier. And then you figure out what process you can do. And it all works, but it’s just common sense.
The good news is that there are so many people, and the people who listen to your show are learning that common sense, and so we can look forward to a healthier world because people like you and your radio show, and thank you for having it.
DEBRA: Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, we’ve only got about 30 seconds left, so I’m going to say thank you so much for being on the show.
And we’ve learned so much. I’m sure that there is much more you could tell us, so I hope you’ll be on again.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. You can go to my website at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out more about this show. You can see what shows are coming up, and you can go listen to the archives of all the shows we have done to learn more great information like this, about how you can live toxic-free. Be well.
