[0:15] Jeffrey introduces today’s guest, Dr. Barbara Royal - Oprah’s vet!

[1:43] Dr. Barbara Royal explains why the most important decision you can make for your pet is what you put in their food bowl.

[4:41] “I think what happened is we got less interested in the nutritional value of the real food we were putting in and more interested in - you know, the pet food industry got interested in just plow and putting everything in there. It doesn't matter. It's not organic. It's not real food. It's got all kinds of chemicals in it. It's okay, it's pet food. We don't care.But the fact is we do care. A short lifespan and very, very, active metabolic systems will show the problems right away and they did. To me, cancer has started to increase, allergies started to increase, immune system problems started to increase, seizure problems. All of these things, they're not normal. They shouldn't be in the population at this high of numbers, it's crazy! When I take them away from the animals and we put them on organic food and we say, "Don't do this anymore," and people pay attention, those problems go away. They go away.”

[7:17] Jeffrey uses the ancient Ayurvedic statement - with the wrong food, the medicine won’t work. With the right food, medicines aren’t needed - to explain why more medicine isn’t the answer for our pets

[8:30] “So I really was taught it would take something like three months before you're going to see a significant change with any diet change. And I will tell you, I have people come back for their three and four-week recheck and they're practically crying because they cannot believe the changes in their animals.”

[9:29] Jeffrey shares PetsandGMOs.com and the list of educational materials he’s compiled to help pet owners make the best decisions for their pets, including a list of non-GMO foods.

[12:43] In addition to the physical symptoms showing up in pets, behavioral issues are also on the rise. Anxiety has become a huge problem for pet owners, and it can be contributed to the use of Roundup and excessive sugar in kibble.

[13:33] “What's going on with the biome in the skin? Is that related to allergies with the bacteria and is it being killed by these glyphosates? We don't even have a normal biome in the mouth anymore, so we get dental disease. We don't have a normal biome in the skin, so we've got allergies. Are we killing and ruining our bacterial ability to keep our bodies healthy? I mean, that's what's happening in these animals.”

[15:01] Dog’s urine has levels of glyphosate 40 times higher than that of human urine because they lack variety in their diet!

[16:56] “If I were designing an experiment to make cancer, I would do exactly what's happened.... We're also feeding them tons of sugar, which everyone knows that's what cancer loves to eat. It's going to be sugar. The first thing they tell you to cut down if you have cancer is sugar.”

[19:31] Dr. Royal talks about support supplements she has created with Now, in order to help pets be healthier.

[21:54] Jeffrey makes the connection between digestion problems presenting in humans and animals & Dr. Royal explains how IBD & IBS are really the same.

[26:55] Jeffrey explains the astounding human results from switching to an all organic diet shown in his film, Secret Ingredients.

[29:31] Veterinarians suffer the highest suicide rate of any profession & Dr. Royal suggests this is because they aren’t given the right tools to heal the patients that they love so much.

[31:20] “They said their animals were happier.... It's a term we're not allowed to use in medicine. Which by the way, why not? Because I do want that. It's a good word. I hear that every day. I'll have people when they come back for their second appointment and they've changed the food, they'll be like - there's just, they'll say happier, brighter, more energetic.”

[36:45] Dr. Royal dispels the myth that dogs shouldn’t have veggies.

[38:29] “The lifespan has changed dramatically for the worse. This is not just like me guessing. AKC lifespans for Goldens used to be something like 17 to 18 years and right now is somewhere between 10 and 12 years and that's because they all get lymphoma and other cancers. That is not okay, and that's not what I see in my practice. My practice has a higher level of nice healthy geriatric animals than I see out in the population of this country.”

[39:49] Dr. Royal talks about the time she performed acupuncture on a zebra, who was really sick because of hamburger buns!

[43:07] “Half of Americans are trying to avoid GMOs for themselves. They don't even think about it for their own animals. They're facing a thousand decisions in their life in a year to try and be non-GMO. It's basically one or two decisions for an animal to be non-GMO and organic for the lifetime of the animal, and that's going to make a huge difference. “

Jeffrey: Hi everyone. This is Jeffery Smith and I am with Dr. Barbara Royal. Hi Barbara.
If you have pets, if you know someone that has pets, if you've ever heard of a pet, then what you're about to hear at the beginning of this information - I say listen for at least five minutes because it could save the life of your pet or improve the life and lifespan of your pet. Truly.
So, Barbara, I want to do a quick introduction, but I really want to get to the nuggets here. I know you're Oprah Winfrey's veterinarian and I know that's the short way of getting people's attention, but you've worked on zebras and giraffes and you worked on moose. You've got the Royal -what's the name of your clinic?

Dr. Royal : The Royal Treatment Veterinary Center in Chicago, and then I have the Royal Animal Health University where we do a lot of our teaching for owners and veterinarians just whoever wants to learn a little bit more about medicine.
Jeffrey : Great. So you know, I was there talking to you in your clinic for several hours and so I want to condense, in the next three minutes, the main point about the food. The food.
Dr. Royal : The food!

Jeffrey : Can you just give us the nugget- what you discovered, how you discovered it, what you do, what the results are and then we'll get into some detailed things. But for those that are only on for five minutes, I want them to get the full point so they can share this and save other animals' lives and get to the right decisions.

Dr. Royal : So it's 10 words or less You know I've been practicing for 20 years and what I watch every single day is - I watch animals eat themselves healthy. So I mean that's sort of the nugget - the most important health decision you can make for your pet is what you put in the food bowl, and that's bar none. Absolutely the most important thing you can do.
What you really need to think about is - the reason I learned all of this is because I've worked with zoo animals, with wildlife, with all kinds of different species. The number one thing I always think about each time is, what are the causes of health? As you're looking at an animal, you have to know what causes health in this particular species? And it isn't going to be eating - every single meal of their life should not be eating some dried weird little combination of a kibble that is completely inappropriate for the species.
It doesn't make sense. So the fact that we sort of have fallen into this because normal has shifted so far off track - it doesn't make any sense either. So right now, my biggest problem is I look at the animal population in general in this country and we say one out of every two animals has cancer. Is that an acceptable statistic? Is that just like, "Well, that's just the way it is?"
It's like we've gotten so far into some abnormal numbers that we're just accepting them. Not okay by me, and that's not what I see in my practice when animals are eating appropriate food. That's the number one thing that we do to change things.

Jeffrey : So I'm going to challenge the general notion of kibble versus not kibble to a timeframe. Because as you know, my focus is on GMOs, and GMOs are sprayed with Roundup herbicide. Starting in the early 2000s Roundup started to be sprayed throughout the food supply. Kibble has been around for a long time.

Dr. Royal : Yeah. And it used to be a better food.

Jeffrey : But what happened around the time that GMO is introduced in 1996? They started going into the food - the human food and pet food in late ‘96, it started. But mostly in '97 and then it built. So what happened in your practice since you were around before and after that time? What happened during that time that was different?

Dr. Royal : It seems like to me what - it doesn't even seem like, I think it's pretty statistically true. We were suddenly seeing way more allergies, way more problems with animals that are more metabolic disturbances that - I was taught you would see a couple of those in your career and all of a sudden I'm seeing Addison's disease all the time. Chronic stressors, things that that you could - I'd studied chemistry in my undergraduate program and I can understand where a lot of those link. Like how do certain chemicals affect the body systems and their metabolic processes?
Some of the things - we do a lot to animals anyway. We sort of started doing more of the pesticides. More things like that as we're putting them topically on the animal, for one. But we were doing that - we started doing that and then if you add in every single meal of their day having different types of chemicals.
I think what happened is we got less interested in the nutritional value of the real food we were putting in and more interested in - you know, the pet food industry got interested in just plow and putting everything in there. It doesn't matter. It's not organic. It's not real food. It's got all kinds of chemicals in it. It's okay, it's pet food. We don't care.
But the fact is we do care. A short lifespan and very, very, active metabolic systems will show the problems right away and they did. To me, cancer has started to increase, allergies started to increase, immune system problems started to increase, seizure problems. All of these things, they're not normal. They shouldn't be in the population at this high of numbers, it's crazy!
When I take them away from the animals and we put them on organic food and we say, "Don't do this anymore," and people pay attention, those problems go away. They go away.

Jeffrey : So this is lucky. This is for those people who are wondering what we're going to be discussing in the opening of the five minutes. It's this here and I want to make sure that we drive this home, because, on another interview that I did for Healing from GMOs and HealingfromGMOs.com, I asked you, "What happens now?"
When a patient is presented to you by a client and you - the first thing you do is put them on a new diet with nothing else. No other changes, just change the diet. You gave me a percentage and - I'm not going to tell you what their percentage is this time because you may have changed it. What percentage of animals show improvement by the time they come back for their second appointment or the time you hear about them again?

Dr. Royal : Yeah, I was just talking about this because I'm going through a lot of - we do early season reviews with my staff and one of the things we always, sort of, drift into is how great it is in our practice because people say - They'll say to me, "Oh, Dr. Royal, you're going to love this case. There's like these 10 different problems and there's been no diagnosis and it's just, it's a hopeless case."
And they know. They know what's going to happen. We're going to change the food. For us, I think we're looking at such a high percentage of animals that benefit. It's getting to be 80% or something ridiculous like that. You know, I look at it and I say, "Okay, well that's outrageous."
Because you don't get that kind of a great result when you're doing even just a medicine, you know, like aspirin. It doesn't always take care of your headache. Okay? But, I look at food and I just say, "No matter what we do, if I make the food excellent, they'll get better."
They may not heal everything. They may not - you know, a perfect diet doesn't solve every problem, but a bad diet will always make problems. And that's our problem.

Jeffrey : This number 80%, let's parse that. Because to me, when you say - because you've told me. When I was there, you said at this point you don't start with the medicines. You start with the food and then by the time the food kicks in, you'll know what medicines are needed.
Otherwise, it's like the ancient Ayurvedic statement with the wrong food the medicines won't work. With the right food, the medicines aren't needed. So how long does it take? I mean, between the first time you meet the animal and then you put them on the diet, how many weeks are we talking about on the diet before you bring them back to see that there's an improvement?

Dr. Royal : That's the fascinating thing to me too.

Jeffrey : And we're talking about organic food - organic food doesn't have GMOs and Roundup. In a few minutes, I will talk with you about why that's the case. So for those that just want to know what to do, they can share the video.
But in terms of why that's the case, and why it's linked to cancer. and why it might be the 40 fold amount of Roundup -the active ingredient, glyphosate in the urine of dogs compared to humans. I will talk about this, but in terms of the 80% how long does it take?

Dr. Royal : So I really was taught it would take something like three months before you're going to see a significant change with any diet change. And I will tell you, I have people come back for their three and four-week recheck and they're practically crying because they cannot believe the changes in their animals.
It's a ridiculous scenario where they come and they're like, "Wait, I had no idea." And they might've come in saying, "This is so unlikely. We really want you to give us a pill." And I'm like, "Please change the diet first."
"Please give us a pill."
"No, change the diet first." Then they come back and they go, "We don't need the pill."
That's exactly what we're saying, but it happens over and over and over again. Where I have people saying, "Why didn't someone make me do this before?"
It's difficult because I have to choose foods for people of all different areas, or financial ability, or time ability. So it's - I have to choose companies right now that they can buy from that I know source well. That they're not putting in things that are necessarily industrially raised or maybe they're not even certified organic, but I know the company. I know where they're sourcing from and it's not going to be certified, but it's going to be still better.

Jeffrey : We actually have a resource. This is news now, okay? For the early birds, for the early adopters, you're almost ready to be dismissed. Okay, go to PetsandGMOs.com. We actually tested 30, or gathered and had others test 30 different popular pet foods. 29 of them had glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.
Actually, we can give you the list of what have the high levels, what have the medium levels, and what have the lower levels. We also described how to choose - how to read a label to know whether or not it's going to contain GMOs and Roundup. And we have a list of some of the companies that we have vetted and there's more to be added to that list - if you're wondering what to do.
So, now we have 80%, so that's the thing. The bottom line is, change the diet and see what happens. It can happen quickly, but let's drill down a little more. 80% get better. What percentage are like - all gone, everything's fine and they don't even have to come back? Those are the people that don't come back so you can't really -

Dr. Royal : They don't come back, which is great. You can imagine as a business tool for me, my investors are like, "You're doing what?" Because then it makes them not come back. Like, you know what? Here's my investment in the health of animals, that's what I want to see.
I would say, with the cases that I see - I get a lot of the weird cases now. I get the desperate Hail Mary cases. So there's a lot going on, and even within those, there are some that don't have to really come back. And I do have other associates.
So in the entire practice, I'd probably say the number of animals that just get back just by changing the food, getting off of chemicals, going to something organic - it's got to be 40%. It's got to be 40% and it's sort of ridiculous.

Jeffrey : Wow. So the logic here is that if 80% get better and half of those are completely better, it tells me that most of the problems with animals - with pets come from the food. What I've heard is that not only are the - and we can go into the details of what gets better, I'd like to hear that. Can you tell me both the medical things that get better and the nonmedical things? The things that are in terms of personality or whatever?
So give us a smattering of both. Because for those that don't have any problems with their animals, they still may want to change the diet because of the nonmedical improvements.

Dr. Royal : Yeah, there's an awful lot of things that we see. Actually the receptionist upfront - it starts with that. Where people say that my receptionist can tell what an animal is eating just by feeling their hair coat. They'll be like, "Oh, this soft, velvety softness of a really fresh food eating animal. They're not eating any chemicals."
The hair coat just shows it. It's that vibrant beauty that makes you go, "Wow, that animal's going to live forever." So that's the first thing. It's just, people are like, "Well, you know, I'm not coming to you to have a beautiful hair coat." It's like, "Yeah, but you'll get it." So that's one.
I definitely would say a lot of behavior comes - we have an outbreak in this country of anxious animals. I mean, how many times did you hear, "Oh, my dog has separation anxiety. I have to be really careful. I'm doing a special thing when I leave the house." It's like, "What?" Why is that normal?
Those kinds of things. I think that's just - we're not paying attention to how behavior, and chemicals, and all of the things in the body, and whether or not all of these different types of pesticides are going to affect actual behavior in these animals. Of course, it will.
If we're talking about even just, you know, the human population and ADD and things like that. I mean, you add a combination from pet food that's got all kinds of different types of pesticides in it, glyphosate being the big one, and then you add tons of sugar to it with every single meal - which is what's going to be in these kibbles as they high heat processed them.
It's like - okay, I have a kid that's got ADD, and I give them a whole bunch of sugar, and I put them in a room, and I say "Behave." I mean that is not going to work out. So we need to think about what's going into the food in terms of how it affects behavior.
Then there are other little things that people don't think about. Even just how the biome is. What's going on with the biome in the skin? Is that related to allergies with the bacteria and is it being killed by these glyphosates? We don't even have a normal biome in the mouth anymore, so we get dental disease. We don't have a normal biome in the skin, so we've got allergies.
Are we killing and ruining our bacterial ability to keep our bodies healthy? I mean, that's what's happening in these animals. I see it for sure because we're doing fecal transplants, which means to give a proper and appropriate biome back to an animal. And it's not because they somehow got completely wiped clean by a bottlebrush through there.
It's like what happened? Their biome got completely messed up and is it probably from pesticides and herbicides and things that kill life? Well yeah! Why wouldn't it be that?

Jeffrey : Let's talk about - it turns out that the Roundup that's sprayed on Roundup-ready crops, the GMOs and also on the cereals in this country: the grains, the legumes, the potatoes, potato fields. It's sprayed throughout and on a lot of different non-GMO crops as well. A lot of those end up in pet foods.
The dogs tested at the Health Research Institute in Iowa - they found that the dog's urine had 40 times the amount of glyphosate compared to human urine.

Dr. Royal : Can I just comment on that one moment? They're eating the same thing every day. So if the same thing every day, has that in it every day and it's a potato that's soaked in glyphosate, which a lot of them have in there. That's what they're getting. I mean, at least in humans, we're going to be doing a little - I mean, I eat at a restaurant now and again, whatever. They're eating the same thing every day. We have to think about what that is. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Jeffrey : No, no, it's good. So glyphosate, it turns out is an antibiotic. It is designed - one of its properties. It's like the properties I'm about to share in terms of Roundup and glyphosate attack. Attack the fundamental building blocks of health. Like, if you could design something to cause ill health, it would mess up the microbiome by being an antibiotic.
But it's even worse than that because it doesn't kill evenly. It kills the beneficial bacteria both in humans and in animals, which causes dysbiosis or imbalance, which can lead to all sorts of diseases. It binds with minerals, shutting down key metabolic pathways. It can create leaky gut, it damages the microbiome, it might prevent the ability for the body to create serotonin,
melatonin, dopamine, it can mess up the hormones. It's going to cause birth defects, and I'm just getting started.

Dr. Royal : I know the immune system.

Jeffrey : The immune system, I mean my god. So you look at these fundamental things and what are we doing? We're pouring it - and it's a carcinogen. The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen, but a definite carcinogen for animals.

Dr. Royal : So we're done. Like, hello!

Jeffrey : And dogs have a higher cancer rate than any other mammal on the planet by far, and it's recent around the same time that Roundup was added to the food supply.

Dr. Royal : Yeah. And if I were designing an experiment to make cancer, I would do exactly what's happened. I mean, again, that's that thing you're saying. It's not just - the sad part for them is it's so concentrated. We have a shorter life span for them, but then we have the Roundup. We're also feeding them tons of sugar, which everyone knows that's what cancer loves to eat. It's going to be sugar. The first thing they tell you to cut down if you have cancer is sugar.
Well 50% of most of these foods that have all of that in them are actually carbohydrates, which is - as soon as you take it into the body it becomes sugar. It's a disaster. And then, we're expecting their immune systems to kick in and fight anything. I mean, it's great for the pharmaceutical companies I suppose.

Jeffrey : Well let's speak about pharmaceuticals for a second because right now we've talked about 40% of the animals getting better, completely. 40% of the animals getting better, somewhat - between completely and mild. And 20% not getting better. So one of the things that you do - you have a book, you train other veterinarians, but you also created some supplements.

Dr. Royal : I did.

Jeffrey : You worked with Now foods. I have some friends at now foods and they've been working on the non-GMO and funding non-GMO groups since before I was involved. I've been doing this for 23 years. I came into it and I saw the Now logo on my board member's sign and went, "Oh my God, who was this company?" So, good on you for picking up Now.

Dr. Royal : It was definitely on purpose, that's for sure. They're a good company.

Jeffrey : So, we are doing a contest. I'm giving away some supplements for pet owners, for the dogs and cats. You know, this is interesting - it's kind of a new area for me as of last summer. Where for 22 years people would say to me, "What do I do besides switching my diet for my personal - you know, for humans?" And I'd say, "I don't know, it's above my pay grade."
But then I started hearing from you and from doctors for adults and scientists and whatnot for humans and whatnot. And I started realizing that there are actual protocols that we can use to heal the body. Detox, repair, and rebuild the body from the ravage of GMOs and Roundup. So, you know, you may have general tonics for animals, but the - which ones specifically help rebuild the ravaging impacts of the GMO, the BT toxin produced by the corn - and we can go into that - and the realm of more than 80% of GMOs.

Dr. Royal : Yeah. Part of our problem is we're just trying to give the body a couple of extra things so that it doesn't feel the weight of everything so heavily. So for me, I came up with the gastrointestinal support because I think that's where it - I mean, obviously that's where it starts. When your biome is messed up, you can't absorb anything. You really - there's no way you can get there.
So I basically just put into that gastrointestinal support sort of these eight. We had the most fun meetings I've ever had designing anyway, but whatever. They're just such cool people. I chose eight different of the bacteria that I think are probably some of the most important in trying to help the GI tract. And you know, within that, as you're doing supplementing, I believe in using a supplement for things. Which is why I designed those supplements.
I also believe in getting it with real food. So being able to bounce back and forth and use things that are out there if you know they're really good. And again, organic. Oh gosh, it matters. So that was really important to me with this supplement. But I came up with that one and it's helped animals, not just with, sort of coming back when they're ill, but even diet changes things. They get into something a little funny, whatever. That GI support's been amazing.
I didn't make it all by myself, we did it together. So I feel very proud of this team. It's really - it's made a big difference and that's one of them. And the other one I think is really helpful, and we have a whole line of them, but the immune support supplement combination that we put together. It's different forms of mushrooms, and then it has some other adaptogens in there that can help the body when its hormones are having trouble or you need a little bit of a push one way or the other. Those kinds of things can be really helpful in the supplement as well. So that's where that one is.

Jeffrey : Let me comment on the two things you mentioned: immune system and digestion. Because you know you have your practice but I get to talk to people with different practices, and farmers with pigs and cows and whatnot.
I remember going to - I was first told by doctors that people were getting better from a non-GMO and largely organic diet and that they were - and they could say, "Anxiety and depression almost immediately. Allergies and sensitivities, three to seven days. Digestive problems up to three months." And we build up to two years.
They were describing these different improvements and it's like, "Really?" But you know, at the same time the person maybe even switching to organic, which is even better. Or they also might be getting rid of gluten or dairy or they might be eliminating processed foods.
So then I went to a farm at the same time and I spoke to a farmer that had put his pigs on a non-GMO diet, or his cows on a non-GMO diet. So all of a sudden they were eating food that wasn't drenched in Roundup, that didn't have all the collateral damage because of the DNA changes, and their animals got better.
I remember this guy in Denmark. He did not tell his farmhand that he switched to non-GMO soy and the farmhand came up to him in two days and said, "You changed the feed. " And and the farmer said, my friend Greg Patterson said, "Oh, what happened?" He said, "No more diarrhea." They had had deadly diarrhea for two years on the GM soy.
So, in the doctor's office, I was talking to people that got rid of Crohn's disease symptoms in three days, IBS in three weeks or six weeks. Same kind of symptoms. They call it different things in pigs and in humans.
Then I was talking to a Michael Fox who wrote The Animal Doctor column for years, 25 to 30 million readers. He said when GMOs were introduced, he got a raft of letters for people with people talking about diarrhea and itching and whatnot. He said, he wrote him back and said, "Get rid of the GMOs." They got better.
I was talking to Dr. Caroline O'Sullivan from Prescott, who's a holistic vet and I said, "Okay, how do you know that it's the GMO?" She goes, "Well, you know, sometimes people will refuse to change their diet and you'll give them everything else. And then you finally convinced them and they still have intractable diarrhea and they change the diet and it goes away and then they're convinced."
So the other thing is, in our survey of 3,256 people, they got better from 28 different conditions when they switched to non-GMO and largely organic food. The largest improvement, 85.2% of the people reported improvements in digestion. And the largest improvement in the pet owners that responded on behalf of their pets, was digestion.

Dr. Royal : Absolutely. I see that all the time.

Jeffrey : You know, to me it is a perfect, perfect way to support the animal from the ravages of GMOs and Roundup.

Dr. Royal : That's one of the problems that we see most commonly because that's the thing that they're upset about the most. You have diarrhea from your dog in your house, you are done. I mean that's horrifying. And if it's over and over again? The problem is if they go to a regular veterinarian, they can even do biopsies, they can do all kinds of tests. They can absolutely 100% prove that this is IBD, they call it.
So that's one of the cases that everybody at my front desk gets really excited when they come in and they're like, "Oh Barb, you're gonna love this case. It's an IBD - proven IBD case." I'm like, "All right, we'll get them up. We'll make this, okay. We're going to do this."
And if they refuse and they don't do organic, it's a harder go. Always. So when they're saying, "No, I have to do this," and after that, I'm like, "Okay, we'll try this, we'll try this, we'll try this." And then they get a little PTSD about the diarrhea and they get to a point - they're like, "Alright, okay, what can I do? I can't have diarrhea in my house anymore." And then we change over to a non-GMO food and all of a sudden they're just like, "Wow. So does my dog still have IBD?"
Your dog didn't have IBD, your dog had the wrong food. Right? So it's a normal good reaction to a really bad thing in your GI tract. You're like, "Get it outta here." I can't do that. And so I think, okay, we still have - if I'm having diarrhea, I still have some health in there for the body just to react and say it's really horrible and get it out of there. And what we need to do is feed the right food and give them the right thing. So that's part of it. And it's not just - that kind of diagnosis came up out of the fact that we didn't know what to call it or what to do with it.

Jeffrey : So I'm going to ask our social team to list the link for the contest to get the - yeah they have it listed there now. The other thing was the immune system and I'm really glad that that was also one of them. Because what's interesting was, again, from the farm angle. I'll start - because I like to connect livestock, pets, humans and animals.

Dr. Royal : We're all animals.

Jeffrey : Right. There was one farm that switched to non-GMO corn for their pigs and the amount of injections went down 75%. The whole medicine - meant the use of medicines went down 75%. Ian Pedersen, his use of antibiotics went down about 69%.

Dr. Royal : Well, there's no way that doesn't just mean they're better.

Jeffrey : Yeah, and the immune system is better than enough to fight off infections that way.

Dr. Royal : That's a huge percentage. Those are huge percentages all by themselves and so if you're thinking about what you're doing - I talked to my clients all the time that way. My first-time clients, I'll say, "Okay, my goal for you is to see you at your annual exam" Like, this is what we want to do. I don't want you to have to worry about your animals anymore. This is horrible.
It's cats and dogs - and you know, cats even a little bit more. They're even more sensitive to these things. We've got tons of cats with behavioral problems, urinary tract problems, cancer. Like, what is going on? And it stops when they can get better food. They're so sensitive, those cats.

Jeffrey : I want to bring the people angle in too because in the film that I did with Amy Hart called Secret Ingredients, which is available at SecretIngredientsMovie.com - there are people whose lives completely transformed where they switched to organic food. There are autistic boys who are no longer autistic. In one clinic they put infertile couples on organic food, 100% of the couples ended up with children.
They had all sorts of cancer, and skin conditions, and depression, and all sorts of digestive problems. The family said they only go for their annual checkup. It used to be all the time, but now it's like once a year. And the person- the nurse or the doctor looks at the record says, "There must be something wrong here."
No, there's something right here. So it's like the same thing. It's like, what are you suffering from as a family? This one family from Secret Ingredients, the DiChiaras, they had 21 chronic conditions between the five members of the family. When they switched to organic food, they all went away. It ranged from respiratory problems to paralysis, to a breast tumor and all that. So do you see the range here? I mean, is there anything that's not affected that's consistently more affected by changing to an organic food?

Dr. Royal : Probably something like, you know, they hit by car or something like that - you know, trauma, I will tell you, it is actually - it's gotten to be that thing where we just sort of go through the thing and I'm talking to a new client and they say, "Okay, well I came for this lameness problem. That's all I'm really interested in My dog's basically healthy, but we've got this chronic ear infection. But that's going fine cause I've got some medicines and it seems okay today and it'll be better for a month and come back again later, whatever. And there's this problem with a little allergies, and we do have periodic diarrhea, and we also have this really bad dental stuff, but we're going to go in and have an anesthetic procedure for that as soon as we can check out this heart murmur that we've got on." So, you know, I'm like, "Okay, I'll deal with the lameness?"
No, I'm not gonna just deal with the lameness. But the fact is, every time I do everything, I mean, a lot of that stuff goes away. Even a lameness. You can have an animal who'd be so inflamed in their body because they're not absorbing properly. Their enzyme systems aren't right. They can't get rid of their own inflammation just because their hormones are all offline because they're constantly having all kinds of different chemicals and pesticides in their system.
You get them off of that, the lameness goes away and people say, "Well, that's not possible." I'm like, "Yes, it is. Because I see it. I see it every day." So this is not - it isn't a joke. You know, I wouldn't do this because I have no vested interest in this. In fact, I have a disinterest.

Jeffery : You're financially better by having sick patients.

Dr. Royal : Yes. But from the standpoint of veterinarians - right now, the suicide rate in veterinarians is the highest in any profession.

Jeffrey : Oh my goodness.

Dr. Royal : It's horrifying, and I really do believe the reason for that is because we are not given the tools in which to heal our patients. Most veterinarians - you know, when you want to be a veterinarian, you wanted to be a veterinarian from when you were six years old, you know? Like I want to be a veterinarian, I want to heal animals, I love animals.
You know? If we're loving animals, but we're given tools that involve industrial farming that makes, you know, the food animals that we deal with sick. And then we deal with animals that just don't get better no matter what we do because they're always eating things that are toxic to them.
It's a horrible feeling all day long. And I can imagine that that would what would weigh very heavily on someone who is very dedicated to their profession. I'll tell you, I go into work absolutely delighted every morning. I'm excited about what I'm going to do and I think. "Look at all these chances for me to make a difference." I know it's not because I'm such a great veterinarian. It's simply because I'm paying attention to some common sense things and we're making really good suggestions. Honestly, I tell the owners every day. This isn't me doing it, you're going to do this, and that's going to be the answer.

Jeffrey : This makes me think that people can share this with the pages of the veterinarians that they know. At PetsandGMOs.com we have a two-minute video which you're in, and also a 10-minute version where we have a lot - I think if a 10-minute version we have eight different veterinarians saying basically the same thing. Now, you talked about the behavior issues with the animals. I just have to share one thing that the farmers that I interviewed about the changes in their pigs and cows, and there's one very technical term when describing the changes. They didn't hear it from each other. It was always spontaneous, their own experience. They said their animals were happier.

Dr. Royal : It's ridiculous. It's a term we're not allowed to use in medicine. Which by the way, why not? Because I do want that. It's a good word. I hear that every day. I'll have people when they come back for their second appointment and they've changed the food, they'll be like, there's just, they'll say happier, brighter, more energetic. I'm not sure this seems wrong. Like that's not really what you expected, is it?
You know, they just seem brighter. You look at the dog, it's a difference between a dog who walks in like, "I'm just doing my stuff and walking along and following my own," to "Hi! What are
we doing?! Are we going to go out?!" It's just like you can tell the difference in the shine, in the eyes and the head ups posture and just the way they move. And of course we can tell, you can tell - it's a thing. It's not just like an ambivalent, you know, happiness. And you know, I think that's Bhutan they measure gross national happiness, you know, for their animals.

Jeffrey : Well there's a story I'd like to tell a lot because it's similar to many other stories, but it's so succinct. This woman stood up in a lecture that I was giving an MIT and said her six and a half-year-old son was violent and out of control. They wanted to kick him out of school, She saw the film Genetic Roulette that I'd created some years ago, changed his diet and all the problems went away.
I said, "How long did it take?" She said, "One week." And then she said, "Within a month I had a new son." So then I asked Michelle Perro, a pediatrician. I said, "What do you hear from parents when you change the kids to organic food?" And she says, "I don't recognize my own child, the changes are so dramatic." So you're saying that there are all these other changes? It's a similar lines across the board. It's so exciting and predictable.

Dr. Royal : Oh, so exciting, and predictable. That's the cool part, is it just - it's changed the way I practice medicine. It makes me feel more accomplished and I see these animals eating themselves healthy and I'm like, "Wow, that's an amazing thing to be able to be a part of." And then I get to be a veterinarian.
I love my veterinary colleagues. I mean, we've got stuff we can do as veterinarians too. There are things that happen that we can make better. It's just there isn't something that won't get a little bit better by fixing the food. There are a lot of things that we still have to deal with. I have dogs that have, you know, conditions I've got to treat. Absolutely. But that's not really - it's such a different level of discourse when you get to talk about things in terms of let's make them really feel terrific rather than just like get some quality of life, you know?
Jeffrey - All right. So here's what I would like to do. In a moment, to close, I want to get one fun story from your zoo experience. We'll call it screen candy. Okay? It doesn't have to be related to GMOs or Roundup, just some fun story about some weird animal. But before that, I just want to look at some of the comments to make sure that we're responding to some of the people who are live. Mike says GMOs, death to the gut microbes. Yeah. GMO death to gut microbes.
That is amazing, Mike. GMO -Death to Gut Microbes. That's very interesting. I like that. Because I always - GMO - God Move Over. That was the thing that I called it. Okay, let's see here. Any other comments here? I'm just scrolling down. Learn to read labels, learn ingredients, follow wise people like Dr. Royal and others.
My seven dogs and I eat non-GMO. Thank you, Shed, that's great. All meat or as close as you can to get - so there are people discussing within the - I mean this is beyond my pay grade. It's
not obviously beyond yours. Within the organic category, people are wondering, you know, meat or no meat, whatnot. Do you have a book or a website that can go into all that detail?

Dr. Royal : Yeah, I do. They can try one of two places, it depends on what they want to do. But for the Royal Animal Health University, we've got courses and a whole nutrition course information about that. And we also have an animal diet formulator to talk about how to balance diets - and sourcing matters in our animal diet. Formulator sourcing is involved in each ingredient that we talk about, so that can be really helpful. And then the Royal Treatment Veterinary Center. If you're in Chicago, or in the area, and you want to have me help you with your animals, you can go there as well. Plus there's lots of information on this site so we try to keep up and keep things out there for you. And then the Royal Treatment is my book, which I don't know if I've got one back over there. But they can find out that stuff, yeah.

Jeffrey : Thank you. Very convenient that your last name is Royal.

Dr. Royal : It's so easy to remember and I was born with it.

Jeffrey : Lauren actually says, "I found the list you provided to be very helpful in choosing my pet's food." Thank you, Lauren. So that list again, is at PetsandGMOs.com. So Sky's asking, "What's the diet for dogs?" We've talked about that. Yeah.

Dr. Royal : And really a diet for dogs really does involve meat. So trying to do vegetarian, trying to do things like that too. You know, and good sourcing matters and there's a way to do that and, and keep the planet healthy. So I really know - we know that's true.

Jeffrey : All right, and there's a question on cats as well. What they should eat.

Dr. Royal : They should be eating fresh foods and they should be eating, you know, organic if you can do it. And there are lots of companies that are making that. Don't feed the dry kibble because it's going to have the sugars and GMOs in most of them.

Jeffrey : Someone's asking your take, what's your take on vegetarian dogs? My dogs loves veggies and they get a lot with their meat, but she's fed raw to her dogs for 15 years. This is Melissa.

Dr. Royal : Yeah, and the veggies are fine. I mean, I don't mind having them in there. They would eat the intestines and they eat all kinds of different things from the animal. They're not just eating the meat. So they would get some veggies in their food and that helps balance out their world. They know how to do that. So absolutely adding them in is fun to have some fresh food in there. But definitely meat. They need it. They need the meat.

Jeffrey : So Moira says, "Working with Dr. Royal is the happiest I've been in the veterinary field for the past 12 years."

Dr. Royal : Moira's the best.

Jeffrey : Okay. So, Eileen, I've been making homemade organic dog food for eight years for my dog who just passed in December. He was 17 years old, never treated for anything in his whole life except the lipoma under his front paw. So two things, making your own food, and two, what's the lifespan difference?

Dr. Royal : So making your own food is not that difficult as long as you make sure that it really is balanced. At least over the course of a week or so, you can get a good balance. You don't have to balance every single meal, but you do need to get like magnesium and fatty acids appropriate. That's what we do at the Royal Animal Health University with our animal diet formulator program. So if you need help with a recipe, heaven sakes, contact us. Um, and it does need to be balanced and remember that it's not just going to be meat. Okay, so that's just not going to work out. And then what was the other question? The lifespan...

Jeffrey : What kind of lifespan changes have you seen?

Dr. Royal : Oh my gosh, it's so crazy. People come in and they say, "Oh, my dog is really old. She's 12 you know, she's a shepherd." I'm like, "Yeah, guess what? My German Shepherd lived to almost 18 and she started eating excellent organic food when she was 12." Because I didn't know any better until then and I just -

Jeffrey : My bad, I'll take all the heat for that.

Dr. Royal : Get on it! Yeah. The lifespan has changed dramatically for the worse. This is not just like me guessing. AKC lifespans for Goldens used to be something like 17 to 18 years and right now is somewhere between 10 and 12 years and that's because they all get lymphoma and other cancers. That is not okay, and that's not what I see in my practice. My practice has a higher level of nice healthy geriatric animals than I see out in the population of this country. That's what I see.

Jeffrey : In the film, Secret Ingredients, there's a press conference that we have with some attorneys and plaintiffs who are suing Monsanto for the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from the Roundup. There's a person who lost her husband and the family dog, Duke, who traveled around while the husband was spraying Roundup, and they both got the same symptoms. So yeah.

Dr. Royal : How do you explain that? Yeah, no, it's crazy.

Jeffrey : Yeah. All right. So, this is the last comment that we're going to get your screen candy. He says I have four chihuahuas that are 16 years old and act like puppies because I spent five days researching the foods they were eating. That's great. All right.

Dr. Royal : That's what we need to do, pay attention.

Jeffrey : The final story - tell us a story, Barbara.

Dr. Royal : I'll tell you a story. Okay. So, I was working at the zoo and they told me that there's a zebra that was having seizures and it was also coming with some arthritis in the carpal - some lameness and things like that. So, they said that they wanted me to come in and do acupuncture, which is what I do. I had been doing acupuncture on camels, I had done some on elephants, and so this seemed appropriate to do it on the zebra, right? So we'd go in -

Jeffrey : A lot of us have done acupuncture on animals

Dr. Royal : Everybody does this, it's so boring. Like just the thing we do. So yeah. It was very exciting for me because I love zebras and who doesn't? They're all stripey. But you go in and of course, interestingly for me was the keeper said to me, "Now, I want you to know that zebras are one of the most dangerous animals here." And I'm like, "What?"
She was like, "Yeah, the first response of a zebra that's thinking things are not going their way is to kick the hell out of you." Sorry, should I not swear on Facebook? But they kick the heck out of you, and that's their job. So she said it can be really fast and they're good at it. So, we're going to have to be really careful. So we had to get the zebra really accustomed to me being there and putting in acupuncture needles and allowing all of this.
One of the reasons they couldn't deal with the seizures is because they couldn't even get a blood draw to check for like phenobarbital levels if they were going to be giving any kind of seizure medication or something like that. So, they wanted acupuncture. So I'm like, "Okay."
So I'd started doing this acupuncture, the animal started to get a lot better and it wasn't everything, but the seizures got less and the arthritis seemed a bit less. And you know, we do this in horses. So it made sense to me that it worked, but it wasn't 100% and I was like, why is it not making a huge difference like I would see with some of my patients? And I found out that because of our training and because of the way this particular zebra was raised, this was the zebra that was like the zebra for any kind of special donor that came in and wanted an animal experience, they would get to come over and hang out with the zebra, and the one thing that they would bring would be like hamburger buns or something else.
And where they would buy them would be in a place where they were relatively cheap and they were definitely full of GMOs, definitely full of chemicals. If you read the ingredients just for the hamburger bun, which should be like, you know, flour and butter or something, it just, this long list of chemicals, right? So I'd be like, "Oh man." So they would - the zebras loved hard like rolls and things like that. They liked those kinds of carby things because they're carb eaters. So this zebra was getting those all the time as a thing. So we ended up taking away those treats and
giving more brows and things like that. And all of that would be pretty much natural good stuff, and suddenly you see a huge change in the way the zebra was. The seizures got a lot better. Everything else got a lot better.

Jeffrey : So it's for everyone who has a zebra.

Dr. Royal : Don't feed them hamburger buns.

Jeffrey : I know this is going to make a big difference in hamburger bun sales in the United States.

Dr. Royal : Because I told that story.

Jeffrey : All right, so here's the going home instructions for everyone. Save an animal's life, extend an animal's life, make a pet owner happier. Share this and then go to PetsandGMOs.com and not only look at the reports, but share the two minute video there and put it - post it, share it. Because we want to get that going viral.
We want to get that to be seen by millions because everyone - half of Americans are trying to avoid GMOs for themselves. They don't even think about it for their own animals. They're facing a thousand decisions in their life in a year to try and be non-GMO. It's basically one or two decisions for an animal to be non-GMO and organic for the lifetime of the animal, and that's going to make a huge difference. Thank you so much, Barbara. You are amazing. And I'm so glad people get to benefit from your experience.

Dr. Royal : Yeah. No, I love what I do, and that's for sure. And for me, this is important, not only just for each individual animal, but for the food animals, because we should love them too. And our planet, which I consider to be my biggest patient. So let's do better.

Jeffrey : Alright. Safe eating everyone.