The Highwire with Del Bigtree - PET HEALTH, THE HOLISTIC WAY

Episode Date: November 4, 2023

Beloved Homeopathic Veterinarian, Michael Dym, VMD, returns to The HighWire to share his serious concerns about the poor health of pets due to over vaccinating, over processed food, and harmful treatments. Dr. Dym also answers some of the most common questions when it comes to raising and treating their furry friends with the same holistic approach as they do themselves so they can live long, healthy lives.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

So many of you are new, you're coming to the show, whether it started with a COVID vaccine. And I know that many of you now got that vaccine, but thank God you realize, you know, there's something I can do. I got to stop. Maybe I don't trust this anymore. Welcome. We all had our moment that we're waking up, you know, and we're giving you ways that you can get around and introducing you to doctors and ideas that maybe can get some of this stuff out of your body and looking at seeing the world in a different way. And you're thinking about your kids and you're thinking about your own body.

but then all of a sudden there's barking in the other room or a cat jumps in your lap and said, wait a minute, what about my pets? What have I been doing to my pets? Well, that is a huge question. So many of you are writing in about it and we wanted to get deep in that conversation. We're bringing back Dr. Michael Dim who has really been on this long before COVID. He's the rock and roll master of healthy veterinary practices and he's going to be joining us in a second. If you don't know who he is, take a look at this. I've been a small animal veterinarian for the past 28 years. Oh, what are you doing?

Yes. Let's look at those teeth. I started to notice a pattern. The immune systems of these animals were overreacting. Everything from common skin and ear allergies to the urinary tract disorders we see in cats and dogs to even cancer and all sorts of autoimmune diseases. in younger and younger animals.

And I had very little to offer them, but suppressive medications or surgical procedures that at best gave them a temporary relief of their symptoms. And then suddenly my own two animals developed conditions. One of them developed a common thyroid condition. And I have a medication that works to treat that condition. Within two or three days, I saw that he was jaundiced, yellow, his liver was shutting down,

and it was the drug that was literally killing my dear kitty. I started to look for other modalities of medicine and I took a course in homeopathy. After I learned about nutritional supplements and homeopathy as a system of medicine, within four to six months, Misty went on to make a full recovery. It was cured of this incurable condition.

I started to wonder, what is it that we're doing that is causing these animals immune system to just short circuit and start attacking the body's own tissues. So I did my own research. We started running what are called antibody titers, and we were finding out that these animals were protected after maybe one or two vaccines as youngsters, and that that protection lasts for years if not their whole life. We accumulated thousands and thousands of animal data and stopped very very.

vaccinating and we didn't see these infectious diseases that most of the other practitioners were still over-vaccinating for or giving unnecessary shots for. Oh, come here, baby. These animals are given too many vaccines. They're given nutrient-poor processed commercial foods. They're over-medicated with pesticides, both topically and internally. I strongly feel, this is my truth, that vaccinations in general are one-a-one. of the most harmful, if not the most harmful, medical intervention of modern science that

has fooled most pet owners and most young mothers and fathers. Just this past week I had an animal present to me that had been to a mother clinic and had combination distemper, parvo, bordetella, which is kennel cough and rabies, and within a few weeks of that developed sudden seizures and now as an epileptic. This is epidemic in animals today. illness, chronic suffering, no answers. I'm just so honored to be joined right now by Dr. Michael Dim. Good to be here, Adele. It's really good to have you. This is, I would say, probably one of the biggest questions we get. And, you know, I think my audience in some ways is more

intelligent than your average bear. I mean, they've found their way here. But the headlines are showing us something similar. When we look at the headlines right now, this is what you'll see. one in three, this is Newsweek, one in three dog owners refused to vaccinate pets due to conspiracy theory. That was just September 4th, 2023. And so, you know, people are starting like this whole, I think this whole COVID vaccine thing just, it's caused, we had Dr. Peter McCullough, doctors, but lay people to say, man, if they were wrong about this and still pushing it, what about the rest of it? looking at, like we give our cats and animals or dogs, a lot of vaccines. Yeah, we sure do.

And we start when they're really young. And usually when their immune systems are still maturing it, sometimes as young as four or five, six weeks of age. Yeah. And we're giving them repetitive vaccines every two to three weeks up until they're four or five months of age. And that's at a point when the immune system is developing, the gut immune system especially. And that's when we see the most damaged.

sets us up for chronic disease later on in life. And that's something that I try and, when I counsel clients, I try and tell them that at that age, be mindful of what we're putting into these animals. And if possible, I recommend skipping most of them. I use in my practice homeopathic remedies to help keep animals healthy. And I also use nutritional supplements and herbal therapies. And I try to stay away from outside chemical agents, if possible. Okay.

And vaccines obviously are the cornerstone of conventional preventative care. And as I said, as I've had my 30 years experience doing this, I've seen it cause more suffering and immune mediated diseases than I want to see, and even cancer. Yeah. When you say cancer, it was one of the things we were talking about bringing you in just a couple months ago, we were just doing like an old dive because these questions were coming in and I saw there was actually so many studies on in this case was feline cancer like these cancers and cats this is just one of them vaccine associated feline sarcomas and it got really specific

i mean they started seeing that where they were injecting the cats the injection sites themselves were developing these tumors you know and it just it just made me think we you know to call you but there was so much science and they sort of recognized it and it seems to me that they were more open to removing adjuvants. I think we had one of the ads like the aluminum and things that we've been trying to get out of the childhood vaccine program. Veterinary medicine right here. Look at this. Safety, pured, look, bring that back up really quick. I have right here. Safety purity, proven protection, pure vaccines. Look what it says. PureVax, feline vaccines have been designed to elicit a protective immune response without the addition of adjuvants. They're celebrating that. You'll never

see that written on a single childhood vaccine. No, not at all. They won't do it. They'll stick with the adjuvants, but here with our animals, we'll go that extra step. Absolutely. And that was a really good development that the drug companies came up with was an aluminum, you know, adjuvant-free vaccine. Yeah.

And, you know, not that there aren't other components in vaccines that cause illness. You know, there are buffers and stabilizers and antibiotics and formaldehyde that were also problematic, but definitely removing the aluminum, which was one of the main, immune stimulants and toxins to the nervous system, the heart, the spleen, the liver, and it's actually the aluminum stays at the site of the vaccine for an extended period of time, therefore causing chronic inflammation and eventually these cancers in cats that were appearing months, if not years later. And initially, before my profession found out that it was aluminum, they were recommending that veterinarians vaccinate animals in the tail or on an extremity,

just so that if that would occur, you can easily remove the tail or an extremity because the fibrosarcomas, which were the cancers that were appearing, were very refractory to conventional medical treatment and would always come back and eventually killed these animals. So just instead of stopping the practice, just put it somewhere where it can cut that part of the body off. Right, right. But as you said, Dell, it is good and it's a good development. at least it's in the right direction that we remove the aluminum.

And, you know, even with dogs, there's with rabies vaccine, there are now thymosol, mercury-free vaccines that, again, are helpful. Yeah. But I want to, again, remind people that there are other components in the vaccines that really shouldn't be in there and they cause problems as well. There's a lot of when we talk about, and my wheelhouse is obviously, you know, human vaccines, but this one size fits all idea is really problematic. I mean, whether you have a preemie baby or, you know,

like my little brother, I think was 10 and a half pounds when it was born, you know, big chunker. Right. They're getting the same vaccine dose. And then I think about the amount of vaccines. You know, people say, well, I got my vaccines. And I was like, yeah, you were born before 1986. You had maybe, you know, 10 vaccines, really three shots given a couple times. Right.

Your kids are now getting 72 vaccines. Is there a similar thing to the amount of vaccines that were, that just, you know, you're saying over and over we're giving in the first several months. Do you feel it's overkill? I mean, is there- Absolutely. And now there's more increased use of other vaccines like kennel cough and influenza vaccine was developed.

And a flu shot for animals. They have a flu shot for animals now. And most of the boarding and kennel facilities actually are now requiring. that for animals to be boarded or for doggie daycare. So there's definitely been an increase in the number of vaccines. And then you have what are called other non-core vaccines like leptosporosis and Lyme disease. And these other vaccines in most animals are not necessary. And they're not safe.

They're very often not effective. And you brought up another good point about the one-size-fits-all. A lot of my colleagues are vaccinating every animal in the same way, just like you said with kids. They're vaccinating large breed dogs like Labradors and sporting dogs, the same that they would, a little Yorkie, that may not even go outside very much, giving them the same vaccines and the same amounts. And, you know, most of my colleagues are still giving the standard one-ccc dose of a vaccine. and fortunately one of my colleagues, Dr. Gene Dodd several years ago, published a nice study that showed that you can get effective, you know, antibody response by using half-dose vaccines, so you're cutting down on the amount of, you know, components of the vaccine.

We've got a quote from this study. It says right here, a half-dose of this vaccine was given and generated increased serum vaccine antibody titus for all the dogs studied. The median tighter and endpoint tighter levels had a success. stain increase in all dogs at six months post-vaccination as the presence of measurable CPV and CDV serum. What is that? I don't know what that means.

Serum antibodies, yeah. Tiders reflect immunity to these viruses. And given that vaccines are known to cause adverse events, especially in smaller dogs, results of this study confirms that receiving a half dose of bivalent DPV vaccine was efficacious for this study cohort. So it's basically saying that the vaccine is doing his job. Now, you know, a lot of us, by the time we even get our dog, has been vaccinated. I happen to directly buy a dog from a friend recently.

So it's the one dog I know that is just, you know, so healthy, didn't vaccinate at all. I suppose someone's going to record this and come knock on my door. But that is the question, right? There's a lot of laws around, you know, getting rabies shots and things like that. And so for people that are struggling in there, and normally I would, just say if it's your kid don't do it. Animals, we kind of maybe look at it a different way. What is your advice to people that are, you know,

sort of how do they get through the gauntlet? Is there a way to minimize? Can you ask for half doses? With the rabies vaccine, it's a little bit harder because it's supposed to be a standard one-cc-dose. I, in my practice, often will cut down on it. Okay. You know, because I think you get the same immune response

as you would with the full dose. rabies vaccine is required by law in all 50 states. And I usually tell clients to wait to get the first one until the immune system is a little more mature until around six months of age. That first vaccine is good for one year, you know, legally. And then they're given a booster at a year of age that's good for three years. Now that three-year immunity is an arbitrary cutoff. It really is the immunity lasts much longer than three years.

was some nice studies done by the rabies challenge fund, which were just completed, where they documented that immunity to rabies vaccine lasts for at least five years in these animals. So I, and rabies vaccine from a holistic perspective, is one of the more damaging ones to the immune system. It leads to antibodies against the thyroid gland. I often see it lead to neurologic problems, behavioral issues, anxiety, seizures. So it's really one of the more stronger vaccines. given to these animals.

And even when you remove the adjuvants, the mercury and the aluminum, I still see immune reactions. And that's because it's stimulating an antibody response against the rest of the tissues in the body. Yeah. And, you know, it was a colleague of mine back in the 90s that actually did some work. His name was Dr. Larry Glickman from Purdue University. And he looked at vaccines and whether they caused antibody responses in dogs.

He looked at multivalent, meaning multiple combination vaccines, which is the typical way my colleagues give them. And he found that the animals that were vaccinated developed antibodies against many proteins and biochemicals in the body. Against collagen, which is the main protein in the body. Right. Against the albumin, which is another major protein in the body. Different connective tissue components. Even the heart valves of patients, they develop antibodies. antibodies against the heart valve.

Now, there's a breed, the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, that's genetically predisposed to valvular heart disease. In fact, many of them come down with that disease and go into heart failure. Well, what Dr. Glickman's theory was is that repeated vaccines with these multivalent component helped bring out that genetic component by causing an antibody response against the heart valves. Now, the studies that he did, unfortunately, weren't carried out further. I actually, they weren't found to follow these animals over years, just like, you know,

it was done in the human side of things. Right. They didn't follow the health. All of a sudden the research stopped. And the next thing I know, I think I remember back at that time, he was on the payroll for, you know, for a drug company. Oh wow. Promoting actually leptosporosis vaccine. So, you know, it's, this type of work has been done.

It's out there. And we need to be aware of that in our animals. in our animals. Is it as controversial to, you know, be pushing back against the amount of vaccines or the size of the dose in veterinary medicine as it is in mainstream medicine? Or is there a little bit more of an open dialogue amongst veterinarians in space? Well, most of them are still following the insert on the vaccine. Okay.

So they're still giving the full dose, even though the study came out that they don't need to give it. Right. And they're still vaccinating every year. 60% of my colleagues vaccinate animals every year, even though the data and the research for over 50 years, though, has shown that the immunity to core viral vaccines last for years, if not the life of the animal. Dr. Ron Schultz, a prestigious immunologist often considered the father of veterinary immunology, said this 50 years ago and published and actually published

an article in a textbook called Kirk's Current Veterinary Therapy, which was a textbook were taught in all veterinary schools at the time. Yeah. And so he, over the years, has, you know, gone out and been an advocate and speaks out and says that our profession is way overdoing it and leading to chronic disease. So, you know, we want to be aware of this type of work that's being done. Yeah. And so homeopathics, like, is this a branch of veterinarian medicine that's becoming more popular?

I mean, I ran into, we had one in California. We found one here in Austin, Texas that does it. So it sounds kind of funny when you're first hear it, but, you know. Well, homeopathy is a system of medicine. It's an energy system of medicine that works on a deeper level than even functional medicine does. And by giving diluted remedies that have been potentized, it's called, actually improves the healing of the body. And through the principles of what's called light cures like. So diluted substances that are prepared and shaken down below where there's any molecules.

you look there, actually have a tremendous healing effect on the body. And you've seen that, I mean, obviously, you know, yeah. Amazing. That's why from a homeopathic perspective, these vaccines cause disease well beyond the biochemical aspect of it. It's actually the essence of the energy of the virus that you're injecting. Right. And so you see those energetic changes in the patient, mental, emotional, and then eventually

physical symptoms. So it's a chronic effect on the body, and we call that vaccinosis. So, and there are actually homeopathic remedies to counteract that, again, at a deeper energetic level. And so, again, I try and counsel clients to be aware of these things. And there's even homeopathic vaccines that can be used as an alternative to the conventional vaccines. For example, in young puppies that are prone to parvo virus. Yeah. I actually sometimes will recommend what are called parvo nozodes, which is a homeopathic remedy made from diseased material from an animal

suffering from parvo. But again, it's prepared and diluted down to where there's nothing physically present, but the energy of the virus at a very dilute level. And by giving that to patients when they're in an age that they're susceptible, you'll actually prevent the disease. So, you know, that's another option instead of giving young dogs parvo vaccine. Is there, I mean, is that something when you're looking up a veterinarian? Do they tend to say they're homeopathic veterinarians? Is that a search term? Or how do you find that? You know, I often tell my clients, you know, the word holistic veterinarian or homeopathic veterinarian means something different to everybody. Yeah.

And a lot of times people say, well, I do the best of both worlds. Right. And they're recommending, let's say, process prescription foods, or they're giving flee and tick and heavy pesticides to these animals. Yeah. And still vaccinating, but they do acupuncture or little homeopathy, and they call themselves holistic or homeopathic. To me, that's not a true holistic or homeopathic veterinarian. Great point, yeah. So I often tell people there's some excellent websites that they can go to,

like my teacher, Dr. Pitcairn, has an institute called the PIVH, and that has a libh.org. BIVH.org. Yeah, has a list of veterinarians that were trained in homeopathy, and usually they're going to be more, you know, again, more totally holistic rather than kind of cherubic. You know, so that's the better way to raise animals. All right.

I'm going to ask you a question that's really close to home for me, and that is that, you know, for a while we were making sort of like this all raw. We had a whole batch of dogs when I, you know, was not nearly as busy as I am now. And my wife and I would grind up the meat and the vegetables and made this like fresh concoction. That was really effective. I mean, her daughter was having seizures. The seizures disappeared. I mean, it was really incredible. But we're at a place now where there's just not enough time to do it.

And I am spending a fortune on these roles of remade food. And does it make a difference? Just tell me there's a reason I'm spending this much money. Food is, food is medicine. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, that let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food. The cornerstone of good health for our animals is a species appropriate, preferably rotating raw meat protein diet.

And when animals are fed that from young ages, we see so much less health problems, less skin and ear allergies, less joint problems, urinary disease, cancer. Their health, their vibrancy, their behavior, is just so much superior to animals raised on processed commercial kibble, which is loaded with synthetic ingredients

and processed carbohydrates that animals don't really digest very well. So the way to feed them is a raw meat diet. And you're saying don't stick the same meat, don't... Yeah, you want to rotate it. Okay. Because what happens is if you and I don't eat the same thing every day, if you feed an animal the same protein every day, they're going to tend to develop an allergy

or hypersensitivity to that over time. Okay. So the best way to feed them is to rotate those proteins. And when clients tell me that when I change my animal's diet, he gets diarrhea or vomiting or gets a tummy upset, I say, well, you need to see a homeopathic holistic vet to hopefully help strengthen that gut immune system through nutritional therapies and, again, homeopathic remedies so that he or she can tolerate variation in diet.

So, yeah, raw meat diets are definitely the way to go, Del. That and minimal vaccines. When I give lectures and presentations, I tell people if they want to do two things to just improve the health of their animals, it's those two things, and they live longer. Now, another topic, I don't know if we have some time to talk about, was the idea of removing the sex hormones of our animals. Oh yeah, right. Yeah, you know, getting the dog fix, getting cats.

Right. Yeah, right. Is that actually, that has a negative effect too? Yeah, it actually does. Animals that are neutered or spayed, especially at young ages, the research is now showing that there's a plethora of health problems that these animals develop. Bone and joint problems and certain cancers, hormonal diseases. diseases, a lot of them are, and behavioral disorders, people that think that animals that are

neutered or spayed have less behavioral issues, well, the incidence of anxieties and aggression and fear actually is higher in the neuterous spayed animal than it is in the non-neuterous animal. So, you know, there's so many benefits to it. And when clients do, if they do decide to neuter a spay an animal, you want to wait until they're at least sexually mature. So that allows the bones and the joints to mature because there are so many immune problems that we see are the bones and the joints, like ACL tears where an animal will tear its ligament.

That's an autoimmune disease. It's not an injury. Wow. And the lack of sex hormones significantly increases the incidence of autoimmune diseases in our animals. So we want to maintain those sex hormones. All right. A lot of benefits.

The wave of the future is actually now to have what are known as good. Zodanad sparing, you know, sexual sterilization of animals. Young veterinarians hopefully will be taught those techniques so that we preserve the sex hormones. So with male dogs, they're going to be doing more vasectomies. And with female dogs, they'll be doing more just removal of the uterus and sparing the ovaries. Just like with people. When you remove sex hormones, right? There's all sorts of health issues that pop up throughout the body.

The hormonal systems of the body work together. They don't work in isolation. So you take the sex hormones out, you affect the thyroid, the adrenal, the pituitary. It's all an integrated system. So that's why we want to be mindful of removing those sex hormones too. So my take-on points for a healthy animal are less vaccines, species appropriate, raw meat diets are possible. Although my colleagues who would preach vegetarian diets will bicker with me. And that's for different reasons.

But the species-appropriate diet, minimal vaccines. and less flea and tick and pesticide medications and overworming, which also stress the immune system and are toxic on the body. We cut it down on a lot of those, and we have healthier animals. And there are herbal alternatives to a lot of these things, and essential oils that can be used for flea and tick prevention. There's herbal remedies that are good for heartworm disease. So I try and again recommend these to my clients, and a less is more approach when it comes to the conventional drug. comes to the conventional drugs. Fantastic, Dr. Dim, that was a ton of information.

People hope they had their notebooks out, because really, really great. And I know we answered a lot of questions coming in. I want to thank you. Oh, I love appearing. I love the time to join us. Where do we find you if we want to sort of track down the work that you're doing and some of your advice?

Well, they can go to my website, Dr.dim.com. Spelled out. And I have some nice videos on my social media page as well that has information on food, proper diet, vaccination issue with some studies that I list and other useful information. And so I do consult with clients nationwide in addition to locally in the South Florida area. Fantastic. Dr. Dim, thank you for joining us today.

Great to be here, Del. Such a pleasure. So much to say in such a short period of time. And you did a great job at it. All right. We'll have you on again soon so we don't have to like get through so much so fast. Absolutely. Really great.