The Vital Animal Podcast
Leaky Gut: What, why, and how to fix it
Will Falconer, DVM with special guest Julie Anne Lee, DCH
(71:41)

[00:12] If you want a wildly healthy, naturally disease resistant pet who turns heads and starts conversations with awestruck onlookers, you're right where you belong. This is the Vital Animal Podcast, with your host, homeopathic veterinarian Dr. Will Falconer.

[00:36]
Will Falconer, DVM: Welcome to you. We're glad you joined us on Vital Animal Podcast today. I have a very special guest. I have Julie Anne Lee calling in from Nova Scotia, and we're going to talk about an interesting area called leaky gut which I'm sure many of you have heard about, but I wonder how clear we all are on it. I'm going to learn something too, I'm sure. So welcome, Julie.

[01:02] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Thank you. Thank you. Nice to see you as always.

[01:05] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Great to have you here. I want people to know a little bit more about you, Julie, in case they've not met you. And like all of us in the animal world, we all grew up loving animals, but you for some reason took an alternate path. You didn't join vet school, and yet you've had this amazing life of working in veterinary clinics with veterinarians. Tell us about your steps to get to where you are.

[01:34] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Pretty diverse I think. I grew up in a really sort of eclectic family. So my dad just always wanted me to be a doctor, and my mom just wanted me to be whatever I wanted to be. And never thought any education was a waste, even if you didn't actually use it. So I sort of stumbled around for a while, and I was in.. I did really well in grades like 1 to 6, probably because I went to a really small school. And then in grade 7 I wound up going to like a junior high where I got bussed into a big, big school with all different kinds of people. And didn't do very well in it, because I felt it was really politically incorrect. I felt it was very… the really rich kids got all the attention and there were some really, really poverty stricken children that were treated really poorly. I just didn't do very well. And my mom recognized that I just, I didn't really fit in because I had friends that were in one camp, and friends that were in another camp, and I didn't know where… and I would stick up for the underdog all the time. Anyways, so in grade 9 she actually pulled me out and put me into an art school.
[03:01] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow.
[03:02] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: But in that time, it was the first art school ever in Canada so she had to drive me an hour one way just to get me there. It was an incredible school, because the school I was in you know you couldn't wear halter tops, and you couldn't wear torn jeans, and it was just like so ridiculous. The one I went to was like, we went for gym. Instead of doing track and field we went to the local park and did yoga with a guru and it was like… it was just like whoa, where am I now?
[03:34] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Big alternative school.
[03:35] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: A really very alternative, but it was super interesting because I really wanted to major in music. And I started the school, and really quickly I realized I couldn't… I had a really hard time reading music. Like reading music and playing, so I had an incredible teacher. And he said, "You know what, you're a really smart girl but you're not fitting in the regular box of learning. So do you think your mom and dad would come down?" And I said, "Yeah, for sure." So my mom and dad came down. He said, "I want to just explore this with her a little bit more," and it was to make a long story short I don't have really dyslexia, but I have a similar way that I just don't learn inside the box, and that was one of the problems at school is because I would come up with the right answers but I didn't do it the way they wanted me to do it, especially in math. So it was one of the where we would not agree, we'd have to agree to disagree.
Anyway, so I went to this school and I wound up taking dance, and majored in ballet with some pretty serious Russian, very strict ballet. But I also had horses. I absolutely loved, loved horses. So I continued to ride and I did all this ballet, and then I just my dad's like, "What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" And I'm like, "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know." So I went and I did a vet tech, I became a veterinary technician. And I did that for awhile, and I still danced. And then in grade 12 I actually wound up going to Russia and dancing in Russia.
[05:19] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow, wow.
[05:20]
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: I was just all over the map. So finally my dad was like, "you've got to decide what you want to do." So I really focused on working as a technician at a really big large and small animal practice. And right away, Will, I’m not kidding because there was a lot… it was a big, big, big clinic and I started seeing really strong correlations with vaccines and animals getting sick right away. Because I was in the lab a lot, and I did all the autopsies and biopsies, and pretty intense stuff. And I would say something and everyone would think I was crazy, and oh you don't know what you're talking about. My mom was very holistic. I was never vaccinated and my dad was really opposite, very science based, blah, blah, blah. Opposite ends. But it didn't take very long for me to go wow, I've been in this career for six years and animals are getting sicker, and sicker, and sicker. And nobody was listening to me, and everybody thought… and I was starting to hate what I did. I didn't like the ethics. I didn't like how some of the vets treated the animals. Some of them were amazing. But I just, it was just against my nature.
But what's super funny is I grew up on a farm where dogs and cats never ate dog food and cat food. Ever. And I screamed and yelled at my mom and grandma, "You have to vaccinate everybody. You have to put everyone on dry food." And then one time they did like a major intervention with me and they said, "You know we love you and whatever you want to do, we want to support you. We think you should be doing this and you're amazing with animals. But ever since you've been doing this, everyone is getting sick. We never used to have to have the vet come unless we were euthanizing a dog." And they were like 17 years old. So I didn't believe them and I would just be really stubborn and stuff until my dog got cancer, and he was four.
[07:27] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh my God.
[07:28] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And I was like oh my… I went to my mom, I'm like, "What do I do?" And she… I said, "I'm not going down the conventional road. I'm just not doing that. What do I do?" And she said, "Call Virginia." And Virginia was our herbalist for our family. She started giving me… first of all, she said, "Get that crap food out of his system." And then she was like, we did essiac. It was in his colon. I took him to an internal medicine, like an oncology. I had to drive him far away, and they couldn't get him in for two weeks. In that time, she made up a concoction of herbs and we did essiac suppositories, and we did all kinds of things. By the time I got to the surgery part was two weeks later, he said, his name was Dr. Smith, and he said to me, "I don't know what you're doing but keep doing it because it's gone from the size of an egg to the size of a…" They thought they were going to have to do some resection, and they never had to resect anything. It was encapsulated. He went home the next day.
[08:33] 
Will Falconer, DVM: So from an egg size to how big?
[08:35] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: To about the size of a large grape.
[08:37] 
Will Falconer, DVM: In two weeks.
[08:38] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, in two weeks, but completely encapsulated too, right?
[08:41] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow, yeah.
[08:43] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And it was really funny. She was the first person who said, "Don't let them biopsy anything. Don't let them do fine needle aspirates. Don't do this." And this was like 1990 I think. 1990? Yes. And I just said to myself okay, I'm done. I quit work. I said to my mom, "I can't do this anymore. I have to just, I want to either do chiropractics…" Oh, because I had also gone back to school and got a BSc in Equine Science at Humber College. So I was working for a lot of equine stuff with fertility, like doing fertility ultrasounds and stuff. And that was equally as horrific for me, like what they would do to get horses pregnant. It was just-
[09:25] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh yeah.
[09:26] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: I just, I felt like I was being insulted almost, like energetically insulted a lot.
[09:33] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, yeah.
[09:34] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So I thought okay, I want to be a chiropractor, I'm going to be an herbalist, but I've got to figure it out. So once Brutey healed, I went to Spain and when I was in Spain I got really sick. I used to get like hemorrhagic gastritis really bad when I was stressed, especially when I would show my horses or be some a big dance recital or something. And anyways I got to Spain and I got this, and I would be sick for about two weeks. And I went to the hospital and my girlfriend's boyfriend came with, and he could speak Spanish. They'd asked me if I'd ever had it before and anyways, they said, "Okay, we're sending in another doctor to talk to you." I said, "Okay, awesome." And they sent in a homeopath.
[10:19] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Ooh.
[10:21] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And I'd never done homeopathy. I didn't know what homeopathy even was. And mostly herbs and nutritional medicine and things like that, but not homeopathy. So they started asking me about dreams and all kinds of stuff, and I'm like, "Oh my God, get me out of here, I'm going to die! Just get me some like something for the pain and the diarrhea and blood, and give me some IV and get me out of here!" They did put me on IV right away. But anyways I was like okay, my holiday is destroyed. I thought I was going to go to Spain and decide what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, and it sure wasn't going to be animals because I was done with animals, working in that field.
Anyways, three days later I was backpacking.
[11:11] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow.
[11:12] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Three days later. And I thought to myself I don't know what this is, but I have to find. I have to find it, I've got to figure this out. I don't know what I'm going to do. So when I got home I started researching it and there was nowhere to… no one was teaching it in Canada at that time, and I thought I was going to have to go to England. But then I had to put all my animals in quarantine, so I was really sort of like not knowing what to do. Anyways they contacted me and they said, "One of our professors is starting a school at UBC in Vancouver." And I was like holy. So soon as that happened, I flew out and I had my interview. I decided to go and I got to school. Out I went with my horse trailer and my dogs and everything, out west.
[12:02] 
Will Falconer, DVM: One side of Canada to the other.
[12:03] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, no from Toronto. I lived in Toronto at that time. So then I get there and I'm not kidding you, my anatomy and physiology professor he was a medical doctor. He was a pediatric medical doctor from, he was German but he trained in England. The second day I just kept putting everything into animals. I kept going, "Would this work with, or would this work?" He's like, "Julie, I don't know. I know nothing about animals. Like I don't know." So finally I drove him so crazy he said, "Why don't you just go and do animals?" I said, "Well, the only course that I know of is Dr. Pitcairn and you have to be a vet, and I can't get into it." He's like, "Well, I don't know what you're going to do but you're driving me crazy," kind of like shut up interesting he back of the class.
I was just so perseverant, like I was just so like a dog on a bone. He just finally said, "Okay, meet me after class." I said okay, he said, "This is what I've done. I've taken my program with the British homeopathic physician's teaching group, and this physician's meant veterinarians or medical doctors. And I pulled some strings and if you want to go, you can go and they'll, you just need to do sort of a preliminary test," and blah, blah, blah.
[13:30] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Is this Sue Armstrong?
[13:31] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, yeah. Sue Armstrong.
[13:33]
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh lovely, lovely.
[13:34]
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And like everybody, Chris Day, and John Saxton, and all those.
[13:42] 
Will Falconer, DVM: These are all veterinary homeopaths, real top veterinary homeopaths. Awesome.
[13:45] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And like some of the early, early, early ones. I was so lucky. I wound up going and I got there, and they didn't even know John said yes to it, but Sue didn't know I was coming and I show up with this massive backpack to stay for four months. I went to UBC for four years, a human homeopathic medicine program. The second I was done in May I was on a plane, I went to England, I was there until September. Got back on a plane, started school, and I did that for four years. So I went back and forth with them for four years. Then I was really lucky. I got to go with them to Rajan Sankaran, so I was in India with them with Rajan Sankaran. And then George Vithoulkas, went there, and then I did some summer schools in Ireland. Then I did practicum's with the vets for years after that. I would go every summer and just hang out with Chris Day in his Jeep, and Mark Elliot, and all those guys.
[14;51] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Unbelievable.
[14:52] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So yeah, and I was like okay. I'm going to open a vet clinic. No, I'm going to practice on animals. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go back to Vancouver and I'm just going to be like a referral practice. Well, that lasted for about two days. And Dave Rusch, Dr. Dave Rusch he contact me and said, "I've heard about you. I did Richard's course, Dr. Pitcairn's course, and I would love to hang out with you." So I said great.
[15:19] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Dave's a vet in Canada?
[15:21] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, Dave Rusch is a vet that did Richard's course in Canada and just felt like he needed some more. And I was doing house calls, and didn't have my license, nothing, just totally like just doing my thing.
[15:36] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, strong intent to help.
[15:37] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah. And then I opened up this little clinic, and then bang, what are you doing? This is like illegal, duh, duh, duh. So then I went, I said okay, it's illegal, then tell me how to make it legal. And they said, "Well you have to be a veterinary hospital." And I said okay fine. But anyways I owned it. I owned the veterinary hospital and I just had to have a conventional licensed veterinarian as my designated veterinarian. And they didn't know how to license me because I didn't want to have drugs.
[16:14] 
Will Falconer, DVM: You didn't fit the mold at all.
[16:15] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: I didn't. then they wouldn't let me use the word integrative, natural, holistic. I wasn't allowed because this was in 1994 or 1996 I guess. They didn't let me use anything that was green or tempted to sound green. So finally I was like what am I going to do? what am I going to name this? Well, name it Broadway Veterinary Hospital. I'm like no, I don't even have a surgery. Something is going to get hit by a car, it's going to come flying in here and I'm not going to have the tools to like do anything. No, I'm not doing that. So back and forth, back and forth. I think I put in like 40 names, they said no to all of them. And then-
[16:55] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh, you're just trying to name your practice at that point.
[16:57] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yes, my practice. They wouldn't let me use any-
[17:00] 
Will Falconer, DVM: This is the Canadian vet board?
[17:01] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, yeah.
[17:02] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow.
[17:03] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And then so finally I was like reading this book about love, and there was a section in it about the love of animals, like how we love our animals. It was called "The Beasts Adored" and I was like oh that's exactly how I feel. So I called it "Adored Beast." So I put the name in, Adored Beast, and they said no. I said, "Why? It has nothing green, it has nothing…" And they said, "Well I think because people are going to think that the word "beast" is offensive." And I said, "Awesome. Then no one will come, and you guys will be happy, and then we'll just be good to go. Just give me the fricking name.
[17:45] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, yeah.
[17:46] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So they did.
[17:47] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Unbelievable that they were that controlling.
[17;48] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Oh that's nothing. Ugh. Then I got licensed, and then they sent in a private investigator, and oh it just went down this huge road. Anyways, we basically had this massive battle. I had to like second mortgage my house. It cost me almost $200,000 in legal fees-
[18:04] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh my God.
[18:05] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: … but I'm like no way man, you are not going to do this. So I had a really good lawyer and we were able to figure it out, and then I opened up a 7,000 sq ft hospital with a fully integrative practice, with rehab and surgery and scopes and lasers, and the whole nine yards.
[18:26] 
Will Falconer, DVM: And so vets must have joined you at that point?
[18:28] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Oh yeah. Yeah, I got investors and everything.
[18:32] 
Will Falconer, DVM: How many vets?
[18:33] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: At that point I had five.
[18:35] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow. Julie, you've got ovaries, girl.
[18:39] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: I know. Maybe something else too. Maybe a couple set of something else.
[18:48] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh man.
[18:49] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, it was just… got divorced because it was just too stressful for my husband to deal with it. When I said, "I'm second mortgaging the house. I'm not going to stop doing this, this is ridiculous." Then I sold that practice and I opened a wing of a 24 hour clinic and ran a holistic wing. There were nine vets and 30 support staff at this clinic.
[19:14] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Unbelievable.
[19:15] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Then I started my school with Sue Armstrong. She flew over and we did a four year plus graduate homeopathic medicine program. Then I was like okay, I'm done, I've got to go do something else now. So then I came out here and, no, all kidding aside. I was at a point where I thought okay there's lots of holistic vets out there now, and I just felt like I wanted to be able to do something bigger to reach more of an audience, to educate more people. Try and get it I used to say to people I want Mary Jean from nowhere to be able to access holistic medicine for their animals if they can't. how do I figure that out? So then I sold my practice and I moved out here. But one thing I was actually, I'm really proud of everything that I've done. I always say that all my dead animals are on my shoulder as angels, but I think you remember when I lectured for the vet conference, right? The homeopathic one? You were there.
[20:25] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Right, right. That's where I first met you, yeah.
[20:27] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah. But I think that we didn't have titers, right, we didn't have titers in Canada. Yeah. So Dave and I were instrumental of creating the very first canine titers for Canada.
[20;43] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Nice, nice.
[20:44] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So that was kind of cool too. Anyways, that's very long. That's what I've done, that's who I am. That's kind of, my Irish gypsy.
[20:51] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Amazing story. Yeah.
[20:55] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: My dad would always say I'm a gypsy from my Yugoslavian mother and I'm Irish from him, so it's…
[21:03] 
Will Falconer, DVM: It was like such a struggle, but you not only survived it, you really excelled at it. To be in charge of a clinic with five other vets working for you, and then even bigger later all because you had this homeopathic experience of holy cats I'm normally sick for three weeks and my whole time here in Spain is blown. To three days later I'm backpacking and I'm ready to go. What is this stuff? And you followed that trail, and then like all of us at some point said I can't just keep practicing one on one, I've got to go into education because there's a broader swath of people that I can help that way and their animals of course. So that's amazing, Julie. Kudos to you. What an amazing outcome for a struggle that you went through.
[21:59] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah.
[22:01] 
Will Falconer, DVM: I brought you on today to ask you about this thing called leaky gut, which we're hearing about in humans, we're hearing about in our animals, and it sounds to me like it's deserving of the title epidemic. Would you say that's true?
[22:16] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Absolutely.
[22:17] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah. And what the heck is it? How would you simply define leaky gut?
[22:22] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Well I've been researching gut health for probably a little over 20 years. I remember the first time I ever… this is so interesting too. I think that's the other reason why I love homeopathy so much is that I feel like it's my personal opinion with homeopathy is it is the number one modality of medicine that the conventional side or the Western side is the most fearful of, because I feel like it can fit in everywhere. Yes, you can break a bone you need to repair it, but you repair it with homeopathy and it is exponentially faster and stronger.
[23:06] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Right, right.
[23:07] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: You can't cure a pseudomonas bladder infection with chiropractics. I think chiropractics is amazing, but I don't think they're afraid that homeopathy could take over something like antibiotics or things like that. And so but when I was practicing I was really, I was a lot slower in taking my cases. A lot of times what I would do is I would change their diet, and I would maybe mostly just change their diet and go away, figure out what remedy I was going to give them. And a lot of times with diet changes they would get GI stuff. They would just get either soft stools or diarrhea. What I started noticing more and more and more, to the point that I couldn't pretend that I couldn't see it anymore, is that when I treated their guts, so when I shifted away from what the focus was, either cancer or skin disease or whatever it was, emotional stuff or aggression or separation anxiety, when I kind of shifted my focus and focused on the gut, everything got better. Everything got better. Like tumors got better. Whatever I was dealing with, I saw a drastic difference in supporting the gut along with treating them homeopathically. So I thought okay, I'm onto something here. What is going on?
So I really dove into the microbiome. Not just gut health, but just bacteria or micro bacteria, microorganisms in general. I started, I found out about leaky gut early in my practice through a naturopathic doctor because I started… We were in this group together. I can't even remember what we were doing, why we were in a group, but we were in this group together and she was saying, "Yeah, we call it, naturopaths… a lot of people don't believe in it. They think it's a syndrome and then they call it this, and no one really is believing in it. Doctors think we're crazy and whatever." She said, "But it's a real mimicker. It mimics other diseases like allergies, like MS, like autoimmune diseases." And I'm like what is it? Explain it to me. So what happens is that when we're born or a dog or cat, it doesn't matter, we're born with our native bacteria. So that bacteria is what we have taken from our mother basically. So we're born with that and then depending if your mother ate really well or if she took a lot of drugs, or she was super duper stressed, anything that decreases the diversity and the health of the microbiome in your gut often most people are even born with unhealthy guts. It's not even, and animals. It's not even if a bitch is eating dry dog food and she's chained up in the backyard, and she has a baby, chances are they're going to be born with a poor microbiome. People that are born with c-sections probably have maybe a quarter of the microbiome that they should have. It's a very complicated thing.
But what winds up happening is the microbiome, or you get antibiotics like a puppy. So they come in, they get their first vaccination. Lo and behold they have puppy vaginitis. they're on antibiotics before they're four months old. A lot of times right? And then they get antibiotics when they're spayed. They just don't even have a fair start when it comes to the microbiome. So what happens is if that microbiome becomes overrun with pathogenic bacteria, or yeast, or dysbiosis it's called which is an unbalanced gut. The healthy microbiome keeps the gut lining pliable, so the mucosal lining stays nice and plump, and it is juicy, and it moves around. It's supposed to look like a very, very tight knit cheesecloth, or a tea strainer is how I describe it, but something that's tight but flexible. When it gets dysbiosis it becomes almost I use the word sclerotic or tight, or stretched, or non-pliable and thin.
[28:04] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Hard, inflexible.
[28:05] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Hard, inflexible, and then it starts to pull the tight junctions apart. So it starts to stretch apart. When it stretches apart everything that should be in the gut goes into the bloodstream. When it goes into the bloodstream it becomes this… it's like a wheel. It's very interesting. First thing that happens, the very first thing that happens, is that people with leaky gut, dogs, cats, horses, cows, it doesn't matter, they become malnutritioned. So we could be feeding the best diets in the world and our dogs or our bodies could be malnourished with our micronutrients because they aren't being digested properly in the gut. We aren't actually able to, we don't have the bacteria to produce the metabolites to actually produce the vitamins that we need, the actual bacteria produce. So that happens and then, so that's one.
The next thing that happens is that the body believes that all of these big macronutrients that are going 
into the bloodstream are enemies. So if it's undigested chicken or it's flea dirt or pollen, or whatever that the gut is supposed to be detoxifying the body from will go into the bloodstream, drugs, all kinds of different things. Anything that they're ingesting and often anything that's even absorbed through the skin, even inhaled. So what happens then is that the body goes into an autoimmune response. So you, it starts to become chronically inflamed and then it turns into autoimmune diseases. So autoimmune disease, cancer, it's just this really, really vicious circle of what happens.
So it is how I explain it, especially with people with dogs or even humans, is what I believe leaky gut does is it accelerates what your normal weak point would be when you get older. It accelerates that process. So I could live with you and we could eat the same diet, but if we both had leaky gut I could get rheumatoid arthritis and you could get diabetes. It's caused from the same thing. So it's a really prevalent, prevalent problem. When I started treating things for leaky gut people thought I was insane. And when Adored Beast first happened, which was five years ago, that was my first product that I put on the market was a leaky gut protocol. Everybody said to me are you crazy? People don't even know what leaky gut is and you're going to start off with your first product being a leaky gut protocol? And I said yeah, because I believe that if people don't address that their animals aren't going to get better. We've really got to pay attention to it.
[31:12] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Since five years ago, the knowledge base has just exploded, right? Every day now you're reading some new connection about gut health versus brain health, or gut health versus everything, right?
[31:26] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Everything. It's our hormones, it's our gut brain axis. They even know now that our gut actually tells our brain what to do rather than vice versa. So it's incredibly important for our metabolic system. It is incredibly important for our hormone balance. It's incredibly important for our brain health. They've isolated certain bacteria strains that they've completely now linked to Alzheimer's, so like the lack of that bacteria can in people that are predisposed to having that, not having that bacteria can expedite that disease. So it's pretty incredible.
In 2006 I had an article, a column in the Vancouver Sun and it was called Adored Beast. People would write in questions and I lived in Vancouver which was kind of like an LA or California for the US. Very progressive, very holistically minded. So I had lots of questions and someone wrote in about are probiotics good for dogs and cats. I wrote my experience and what I'd seen, and my empirical proof of treating animals for a long, long time. And then I treat their guts and they get so, so much better. And I got fined $3,000 because I had no science to back my article.
[32:55] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Fined by who?
[32:56] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: The vet association.
[32:58] 
Will Falconer, DVM: The vet association.
[32:59] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah. This was before Phytoflora and all that stuff.
[33:03] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Unbelievable.
[33:04] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: For me to say that, I had to put a retraction in saying that I had no proof that probiotics are good for cats and dogs.
[33:11] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Unbelievable.
[33:12] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Oh yeah, it's pretty incredible. But saying that, that kind of leads me into this next thing is what gut health is really important, but it's a big topic.
[33:30] 
Will Falconer, DVM: it's huge.
[33:31] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It's not just probiotics. And when you look at healing leaky gut, there's a real process behind it. It's not just throwing a bunch of probiotics at your dog, because that is actually can be very detrimental to do that, just to give probiotics. So for me it's putting digestive enzymes in the body so that you can break the food down. The gut is not going to heal overnight. So while you're trying to heal it, the process would be to give the animal digestive enzymes so that you can break down the food, help them break down the food as they're digesting so that when that digestive process happens if it does go or when it does go into the bloodstream it's going in a smaller way, smaller molecule.
[34:19] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Less offensive.
[34:20] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Less offensive, more digestive process happening faster. All that stuff. I did a lot of research on prebiotics because people weren't using prebiotics a long time ago. I've been using prebiotics from almost the get go, and the way of looking at prebiotics is that most of the prebiotics that we use for animals are fructose based, which are okay for us because of the length of our guts. We're made to eat so much fiber, and we're made to eat… that's really good for us. So I was like how would an animal get a prebiotic in the wild? How do they do that? So then I started looking at diet in what would their prey eat. So they're probably getting their prebiotics from their prey, from the gut of their prey. So what would their prey be eating?
So man, I'm telling you, I probably researched this for six and a half months, seven months. And every single thing I looked at from birds to pheasants, to deer, to otters, to squirrels to rats, to mice, to whatever I could imagine, a wolf or a fox, or a lynx or a bobcat would be eating. The one thing they had in common was they all ate tree bark.
[35:43] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Really?
[35:44] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Everything ate tree bark.
[35:46] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow.
[35:47] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So I started looking at tree bark as more of a natural prebiotic that their prey would be eating.
[35:57] 
Will Falconer, DVM: So let's, for listeners, define prebiotic versus pro for a moment.
[35:59] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Okay, sure. So a prebiotic… probiotics need prebiotics to survive. It's like the fertilizer, the food that the bacteria need in order to colonize, set up shop, in the gut. So in order for them to cultivate and procreate, and want to live there and stay there and be healthy, they need food or like a fertilizer kind of thing in order for them to do that. That's a prebiotic.
[36:33] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Prebiotic, okay.
[36:35] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So we use a lot of things with people like inulin and chicory, and fructose based, sugary based plant matter and things like that in order for our own prebiotics, which is fine. But for animals it didn't make sense to me. It's like what animal would be eating chicory? And what animal would be… it just didn't seem species oriented for me. So I started really delving into that and I thought okay they must be getting it from the gut of their prey. How else would they be getting it? So I started looking at what would be something that they would all eat, that would turn into fiber in their guts and therefore be a prebiotic in their own gut, and then transfer into an animal. And that was bark. There is an actual prebiotic called Larch, made from the larch tree, and it's tree bark. That's what it is.
[37:28] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh wow.
[37:29] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: That's what it is. It's made from tree bark. So I started using larch right away, and now it's got incredible immune modulating benefits which is amazing for animals. They've done lots of research with people with it, slowing down the metastases of tumors so derailing metastases of tumors. There's lots of research on it. It's a pretty cool ingredient or product, even in its own right let alone as a prebiotic. It's expensive. It's really much more expensive than chicory or inulin and things like that.
[38:06] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Is larch a widespread tree, Julie? Is it all over the world?
[38:08] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It is.
[38:09] 
Will Falconer, DVM: It is. Interesting.
[38:10] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It looks like a pine tree but in the winter time it goes golden. It's really beautiful actually. And then its needles fall. So yeah, it's a really cool-
[38:22] 
Will Falconer, DVM: So wolves would eat it, and bobcats would get a hold of it through their prey.
[38;27]
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Through their prey, yeah. Wolves wouldn't eat it, but elk do, deer do, birds, beavers, rats, mice. Everything will pick on bark, like even a bird will pick on bark.
[38:44] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Interesting, wow.
[38:45] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So they'll eat the sort of lining out of the bark, like the little tiny birds even. Even when you're thinking of cats, cats eating mice and chipmunks. Chipmunks and squirrels eat tons of it, but rats eat it too. Rats chew right through bark. It's to me it was something, and it worked really, really, really well. So you need a good pre and probiotic. But you need things that heal the actual gut. So things like slippery elm and marshmallow root, and licorice root and L-glutamine, and N-acetyl glucosamine, stuff like that. So I created a protocol in my clinic to treat it, and we had such amazing success with it all my technicians came and said, "You know can we just make up big batches of this stuff because you prescribe it so often, that it just doesn't make sense to make it up all the time on our own." And rather than trying to tell people okay, go and get N-acetyl glucosamine and get this and get that, and then they have like 27 things on their table and they're trying to measure it out, and then their dogs food tastes like crap because all it tastes like is a bunch of all kinds of stuff… But leaky gut is definitely healable.
***
[40:10] 
Will Falconer, DVM: I wanted to break in for a moment here. First, did you catch the good news? Leaky gut is healable, and Julie ought to know. She's worked with a lot of it. So the prognosis is good if your animal is suffering from this, and most it sounds like are. I know am likely myself. But have you also noticed how much Julie has put in the time and the hard work of researching how to heal it? And how it's a process? And just throwing probiotics down the hole isn't going to cut it? Her hard work in researching and verifying things in the real world, in her patients, has brought Julie to a deeper understanding of how to truly heal this epidemic we're recognizing more and more, and we're calling it leaky gut.
Not one to just be a researcher, Julie wants to help as many animals as possible so she's built a line of products around this in her Adored Beast Apothecary. That includes her anti vaccinosis homeopathic product that she's seen such profound changes with, in those who are taking their pets through her leaky gut protocol. I told Julie after we ended our recording that I wanted to promote her well researched line, as I know so many animals are affected by leaky gut. I think it's safe to assume your animal is if she or he has ever had antibiotics, or eaten anything other than 100% organic food, or drunk unpurified water, thinking of glyphosate here. Leaky gut is likely a challenge he or she is dealing with right now.
So Julie has graciously has offered you, my Vital Animal Podcast listeners, a chance to get her products at a substantial discount. To take advantage of this you'll want to head over to adoredbeast.com/vital. Once again, just like it sounds adoredbeast.com/vital to get your animals on board with Julie's well designed, well verified products today. Okay, let's get back to the episode.
***
[42:33] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: But leaky gut is definitely healable. It's definitely really coming to the surface in conventional science for sure in the Western world. Lots of people subscribe to this syndrome. You can check it by if you look at IGA and IGG and things like that, they'll be skewed because the immune system is really compromised with leaky gut, so you can check it that way.
[43:02] 
Will Falconer, DVM: So there are antibodies that shouldn't be there?
[43:04] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Shouldn't be there, yeah, for sure. And lots of, when you see these crazy tests where the animal is allergic to everything and you're like how is that possible?
[43:16] 
Will Falconer, DVM: I see those.
[43:17] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: The sensitivities, well that's why. It's like they're sensitive to everything. They're not real true allergies.
[43:26] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah. They've never really been eating those things. I see this list that's growing, growing, growing.
[43:30] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: No, they're reactivity. Yeah.
[43:34]
Will Falconer, DVM: Well my dog never ate elk.
[43:35] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And environmental. Sorry, yeah. It's true. It's so true. How does this happen? How does my dog become allergic to everything? And it's because our skin, like I'm really fascinated by the skin microbiome too, right, so all these animals that have skin disease. The leaky gut was… I used to do so much skin disease it was crazy, and I think I came out with a protocol because when I heard… I was appalled to hear that skin disease, cancer is the number one death like disease, but skin disease was the number one reason for elected euthanasia.
[44:15] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh wow, I didn't know that.
[44:17] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah.
[44:19] 
Will Falconer, DVM: I've known for 15 years from insurance data that it's the number one reason dogs see veterinarians, itchy skin. We've got data on that.
[44:28] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Itchy skin, yeah. I know.
[44:29] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Number one reason, and they spend oodles of money, and they don't get better typically. They suppress the symptoms and et cetera. So you're saying it's also the number one say it again?
[44:42] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It's the number one reason for elective euthanasia.
[44:47] 
Will Falconer, DVM: So they're putting these dogs to sleep because they can't cure them.
[44:50] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: They can't get better, and they can't stand watching them walk around with t-shirts on, and cones on, or they can't afford to pay for it anymore, or they take them into… they can't handle it anymore. The husband or the wife or the kid can't stand the smell of them, or they take them and they give them up at the SPCA and then nobody wants to adopt them, and then they wind up getting put down. Yeah, it's incredible. So it was one of the reasons that I decided to do what I did when I sold my practice, is because I had such incredible success with skin doing this protocol.
[45:26] 
Will Falconer, DVM: With the gut.
[45:27] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: I know you're a classical homeopath, but I have a… I don't feel like you can address leaky gut when you're dealing with vaccinosis.
[45:37] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Right.
[45:38] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: I just, I feel like it's a crucial part. And you know what's so cool, we'll see this leaky gut kit and we'll get people emailing us going, "I haven't even started… I just did the anti-vacc and they're 20% better. Is that even possible?" Because I get them to do the remedies without touching the rest of the protocol first. And they only do it for two days, twice a day for two days, and they stop. And it's super interesting because now I've had to add to the protocol “if your dog continues to get better but then starts to plateau or slightly decline, repeat the anti vaccinosis” which is just Thuja and Silicea. And it's okay, back up the ladder they start going again.
[46:25] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh wow.
[46:26] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It's just this really cool, cool sort of like wow! how huge. Because how many dogs really see homeopaths? How many dogs when they do get a vaccinosis get a remedy for vaccinosis? They don't right? And they could be seeing great herbalists and great TCM therapists, but the diehard homeopath that I am is if you don't address that somewhere somehow, or even if it is kind of like broad blanketed, in my experience it helps a lot of dogs. It just… or cats.
[47:07] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, yeah. So that weighs in largely on what we learned in Pitcairn's training which was we can't get these animals all the way to cure unless and until we address vaccinosis, the illness that came about from past vaccines. And I love that you're just using it short term, and I love that you're seeing both a spike initially and then if they fall in their progress you give it again for a short burst. Two remedies together that we know are both top vaccinosis remedies, and just that couple of days they get back on track and start moving again.
[47:43] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Or sometimes I tell them to just give a single dose. It'll say right in the thing if they plateau, I just do a single dose. If they start to decline then I give three doses. But sometimes it's just one single dose of it, and then like… There's a little pamphlet in the protocol and it's incredible. Like Kaylen's constantly getting things, people going, "it's incredible, just that one little squirt of that stuff and they're back on track again." You know? But I just find it's, I think it just makes so much sense to me because gut health is so… it's foundational.
[48:24] 
Will Falconer, DVM: It is.
[48:25] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And I feel like it's so similar to homeopathy in a way because we see so many obstacles to cure in homeopathy. I feel like improper gut health is a huge obstacle to cure. We could be throwing remedies left, right, and center and finding perfect, perfect constitutional remedies and they get better for a little bit and then they decline. It's like why isn't this remedy working? This is this dog’s constitutional remedy, what is going on here? So it's because they're getting their remedy, the vital force is finding its balance, but it's being constantly bombarded with chronic inflammatory response. Its body is going "ah, ah, ah." Like it can't-
[49:11] 
Will Falconer, DVM: I'm on fire.
[49:12] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: I'm on fire, and then once they're finished… I have a few veterinarians that do a lot of homeopathy and they say that they've been doing it with putting animals on it where their case is, they just can't figure it out. They put it on them and then after they've done the protocol, the constitutionals are just like brilliant, like take them even farther than they could even have imagined even mentally and emotionally.
[49:41] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Wow.
[49:42] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: All kinds of really interesting things.
[49:45] 
Will Falconer, DVM: And what we're learning about the gut/brain barrier, or the gut/brain axis makes a lot of sense with that. You've got the gut health, the emotions become healthier, the whole mind functions better. And like you said hormones, we're uncovering more and more about the connection between our hormonal health which is the definition of a hormone is it is a bodily chemical that affects everything, right? It's broad. So that's amazing.
[50:09] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah. But I feel like the only thing that isn't amazing, it is amazing and it isn't amazing. I think you and I, this isn't our first rodeo when it comes to holistic medicine for sure. I'm so excited that gut health is becoming-
[50:29] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Mainstream.
[50:29] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: … Mainstream. I really, really am. But then I'm also a little nervous because I wrote a thing and actually I wrote a paper, and I also did a lecture on its called The Over Cultured Canine, and can overdoing probiotics cause harm? And they can. They definitely can because what we're doing, again, is we feel like we kind of know more about nature than nature knows. We kind of get into this hierarchy where oh now we found out about the microbiome so we know everything. We absolutely don't know anything.
[51:12] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, we're at the cusp of learning about it.
[51:14] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Just the cusp, and it's an ecosystem in its own right.
[51:18] 
Will Falconer, DVM: And there's ten times more of them than there are human body cells or the dog cells, right? Ten times more microbes in us than ourselves.
[51:30] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Mm-hmm, and so what the next thing that I did, because the more I look at… and you know I'll say this quickly but I compare it to Yellowstone Park. So Yellowstone Park when someone that was super brilliant decided that the wolves were, all the wolves needed to be culled from Yellowstone Park because they were predators and they were bad, and harmful, and whatever. And by the time they killed the last wolf, Yellowstone had actually started to decline to a point where they were going to consider it a natural disaster. It was no longer a park. The lands were barren, all the rivers were dried up, most of the trees had died. It was literally… so luckily a really good biologist went in and just went backwards and was like what happened? What happened 60 years prior to that or 30 years, I don't even remember what it was. And it was when they started to remove all the wolves, to kill all the wolves. And then they said okay, let's put them back in.
So they repopulated the wolves back into Yellowstone Park and it literally recreated the water system. Things started growing. It rehabilitated Yellowstone Park. Reptiles that were no longer there, birds that were no longer there, it's brought it back up to its health. So when you look at that egocentric part of hierarchy, and we assume that something in our microbiome shouldn't be there, like let's say yeast or a specific bacteria. Oh that bacteria is bad, we've got to eradicate that bacteria. Salmonella, can't have any salmonella. E coli, no E coli can be within a million feet of us. So we choose what we think are pathogens are bad. We destroy that and what we do just by destroying one species, we knock out our entire ecosystem, and it devastates our bodies. Then we think that with one or two probiotics we can throw them in and we're going to change that.
[53:49] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Fix it, yeah.
[53:50] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: We're not going to change it. What we're going to do is we're going to overpopulate the friendly bacteria, and those friendly bacteria overpopulates the whole gut, and does the same thing it unbalances it. Right? We want to find the most diverse thing that we can, and then that led me into a study that I did four years ago, which I was lecturing on gut health at Prince Edward Island veterinary university, and a very smart veterinarian said to me at the very end of my lecture, "I believe so much in this. I believe so much in this. My mom's been telling me this. But I have a question," and I said, "What's that?" And she said, "Is it true that all probiotics that we use for animals are the ones that we use for humans?" And I said, "Yeah, it is." I guess this was five years ago now. And she said, "Why is that?" And I said, "Because no one's done the research." And then I drove home and I was like okay, there goes my new roof, and there goes my new tires, and there goes my new…
[54:53] 
Will Falconer, DVM: I've got to get busy.
[54:54] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So I started, I have to get busy and I involved myself in a research project where they took canine feces and they isolated 11 strains, and we chose two of the 11 strains based on their ability to suppress certain pathogenic bacteria, but more so on the ability to modulate the immune system, and things that we're seeing so much autoimmune diseases in dogs. So when we launched that which was three years ago, it was the first species specific canine probiotic in the world. And it is, it just makes sense to me. It's like oh wow, look what it does with this, oh wow, look what it does with that. And then you see all the diseases that dogs are getting, it's like yeah well we don't even know whether human probiotics… we don't even know. Even we know that this probiotic maintains viability and the acidity in a dog's gut. All the stuff that we use, we use comes from a cow which is a very alkaline system the same with us. So we don't even know truly what the viability is in a carnivore. How long does this last? That's why we put 30 billion colony forming units it. Anyway, so we sort of launched that and developed that, and now we have an equine coming out and stuff.
For people that are listening, the more strains the better. You can't just go and put two or three strains into your body and think that's good because it's not good. It will unbalance your bacteria as much as not putting any in. So you want to be as diverse as possible. You want to try to find species oriented strains, so strains that it has its own DNA so from a dog to a dog, it's going to produce the metabolites that canines should have. And you mix that, and then you change them, and you make sure that you're doing larch and you do… it's a process. And now the soil based probiotics so you want to mix it up. You don't want to be giving the same three probiotics all the time because you can definitely do more harm than good.
[57:27] 
Will Falconer, DVM: So I'm curious, Julie, when you took dog fecal samples, there's got to be thousands of different species in that fecal sample. How did you choose one or two that you said hey these are the ones we really need?
[57:41] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Because we looked at what right now are the most glaring diseases in dogs. So we wanted to be sure that it was not going to become antibiotic resistant or didn't create antibiotic resistance, because that's really happening. It's rampant, the amount of antibiotics that just don't work anymore. So that was an important part. The next part was the strains that we chose had a stronger ability to modulate the immune system. So the amount of dogs that are on prednisone and Vanectyl-P and things, immune suppressive drugs, we were like oh wow, this is really cool because this is going to help it so that if there's viral loads, if there's something like that it'll bring it up. If there's inflammatory or autoimmune responses it'll help to bring it down. So it modulates it. So that was a really important part. It was really beneficial for suppressing E coli, salmonella, and clostridium. So I was excited about that because of the amount of vets that are fearful of that with raw food feeding. So I was like okay, well basically this strain should prevent the overgrowth of those pathogens. The overgrowth, not eradicate them, prevent the overgrowth because I think dogs would naturally have that and not be reactive, be asymptomatic to it.
[59:18] 
Will Falconer, DVM: sure, sure.
[59:19] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: So it didn't surprise us when we saw that, because it's like of course dogs should be able to naturally deal with salmonella, E coli, and clostridium, right?
[59:27] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, carcasses in the wild that have died days ago.
[59;30] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Exactly, yeah. But that's just, compared to cows, cows aren’t, so that isolate isn’t really what isn't there because that's not really their function, that's not really what their bodies do. They don't have to do it. That's not what they're supposed to be eating, so it wouldn't naturally have it.
[59;48] 
Will Falconer, DVM: So it sounds like a real hubris based thing to say well we're smart, we're humans, we know that we need more bacteria so let's just give them this bacteria that we get from cow milk, or that are good for humans, let's just give them to everybody. And it doesn't even work in humans to give them three species of probiotics. Zach Bush talked about that, it made things worse like you're saying.
[1:00:12]
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yes, it does.
[1:00:14] 
Will Falconer, DVM: And so when we come to a more ecological, holistic view of the world, we're just a small part of it. We're not the smartest beings on the earth. Maybe we're smartest in a way but we've got to humble ourselves and say how does this work in the whole, how does this interact. Like the story of the repopulation of wolves in Yellowstone, it's the same idea. We made up the idea that if we get rid of these wolves everything will be better, and it got totally worse. We interrupted the whole ecosystem, and when we brought them in species returned to what we thought were gone, and rivers changed their courses, and beavers returned to the rivers, and all these things happened that it's just like wow. We were thinking wrongly.
[1:01:04] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Oh, and I think we… that's what we do. What happens is someone has a good idea, someone has a scientific breakthrough or an "a-ha" moment, and then what happens, and some people think I might be shooting myself in the foot saying this but when we look at something that's like nature is different than natural. So something that is natural may not be following the course of nature. We can take, anything is natural, anything comes… its original state is usually natural. And I think that what we do then is we compartmentalize stuff. It's like it's the same, when we think of holistic-body, mind, spirit- and we think of gut health and brain health, and hormone health, everything works in this synergistic way. It's like a fine oiled machine, with homeostasis. We've all been born with the ability to have homeostasis. I think that what happens is we go oh wow, look at this gut health. Okay, so gut health is a foundational health, blah, blah, blah. So let's take this and let's just look at gut health, and let's just find the bacteria and the probiotics because what we're doing is we're industrializing it because we want to find a product from it. Right? That's what I'm saying, shooting myself in the foot because I make products, but I don't make products like that.
I know that the time that I was talking at the vet conference when you were there, or one time, I was talking about looking at homeopathy and sort of physiology, looking at it on a higher, more really finite details. I think gut health we have to do that. We can't, if we compartmentalize gut health, we're going down the wrong road. We can't do that. We have to look at it from every level. Like our soil health, we can take as many probiotics as we want. If we keep destroying our soil, our soil has no probiotics left in it. That's how we used to get probiotics. We got our microbiome from the soil, from pulling out a carrot and dusting off the thing and chomping on it, and eating dirt, having dirt under our nails. That's how we got a lot of our natural microbiome. Our soils are void of microbiome. We don't even have a microbiome in our soil anymore.
[01:03:39]
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, we're destroying them.
[01:03:40] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It's completely, we've destroyed it. And because we don't have microbiome and we don't have the ability to work with the carbon cycle, it's the reason that we're having… it's just this huge thing. It's why we have a lot of our global warming is because our soil doesn't have the ability to pull it out of the air.
[01:04:03] 
Will Falconer, DVM: The carbon.
[01:04:04] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: The carbon, and reconstitute it through the soil, and back up. We've interrupted that cycle, right, so I think that yes it's great to look at gut health but we can't just look at gut health. We've got to look at why is our gut health so bad, like glyphosates. It's just our glyphosates it's just really I think they said there's not a human being on the planet, we can't find it in ourselves. And that destroys any kind of organisms.
[01:04:37] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Tight junctions.
[01:04:39] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Tight junctions, organisms, it's just a menace. So even though, I think we have to fill the gap so for me when I produce products what I look at is okay, the big picture. How do we find a way to help the planet get omega 3 without eating fish oil? How do we do that? Because we have to. Because when we look at fish oil and we look at the amount of fish oil that we have to actually ingest even as a human person, it's not normal, it’s not natural for the amount we would have to eat to get that much.
[01:05:14] 
Will Falconer, DVM: To get the effect.
[01:05:15] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: There's something else wrong. So I love looking at that whole thing. But until we can balance all of that, you and myself and our colleagues, we have to find a way to fill in the gaps, but then educating it from a much more global perspective.
[01:05:36]
Will Falconer, DVM: A macro level, yeah. And the bright spot is it can be changed. Even the soil, there's great research Zach Bush is bringing to the fore of all you have to do, guys, is take this field and stop chemical inputs for one season. One season.
[01:05:56] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Stop tilling it.
[01:05:57] 
Will Falconer, DVM: And stop tilling it.
[01:05:59] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Stop tilling it, yeah.
[01:06:00] 
Will Falconer, DVM: And put in a cover crop. A multi species cover crop. And you will have healthy soil back again. One season. So I mean, that's regenerative agriculture.
[01:06:10] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It's incredible.
[01:06:11] 
Will Falconer, DVM: It's our hope for the planet, yes. So you're doing that on a-
[01:06:14] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: And it's the same with our gut, too, right? We want to put in different cover crops into our gut. We don't want to just keep putting in the same-
[01:06:26] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Lactobacillus.
[01:06:27] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: ... potatoes every single year, and think it's going to be healthy. And we use fulvic and humic acid, so the one product that we have, it's called Phytospora and it's the one that actually has the canine species in it, but it also has another 14 strains so it's got two different species of canine and 14 other strains. But we've also, and a prebiotic, but we've got fulvic and humic acid in it.
[01:06:54] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Beautiful.
[01:06:55] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Which is a mineral that it's an ancient mineral that has been weighted by the ice age, the one that we use is from the ice age. Some is from lava, but we use the one from the ice age. And it's got minerals that we don't even know exist anymore.
[01:07:13] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Right, right. I took my dose this morning just before talking to you. I take shilajit which comes scraped off the side of the Himalayas.
[01:07:20]
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, it's incredibly important for the permeability of our guts. Really, really, really important. It helps to support the permeability of the gut, and we want our guts to be tight. We want our junctions to be tight.
[01:07:36] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Not permeable, yeah. Beautiful. Julie, this has been great.
[01:07:42] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Sorry.
[01:07:43] 
Will Falconer, DVM: No, that's okay. I mean we can really go global on this, and I think to the extent that you have in even bringing a product to the market, I'm all in. I want to promote this, I want to tell everybody about it. I want to just share your work with as many people as possible so I'm glad you went into that detail because it's obvious that you've done your homework, you've done the research. You've seen the results in clinical settings. I think that's ever so important.
[01:08:12] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: It is.
[01:08:13] 
Will Falconer, DVM: If we just assume well we'll give lactobacillus acidophilus because it's a friendly bacteria, well sorry, how's the animal doing? How's the person doing right? And you watched all of that so kudos to you, my dear.
[01:08:26] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Thank you. You know what I wanted to say because I know all your listeners are like massive fans of yours and stuff, but when you said to me about how that I have a big set of ovaries, I remember the one lecture that I did when you were there. And a lot of vets didn't want me there. A lot of them did, but a lot of them didn't. I remember the one and I remember Jackie saying, "Just do it. Talk about this one." And I'm like they're going to just shoot me if I do, and they're like, "No, you can base it on Hahnemann, just really keep plugging it in what Hahnemann did and citing the Organon," like okay, okay. I remember doing it and getting really nervous, and looking down and you were sitting there. And you just had the nicest smile and you were so inviting, and so nonjudgmental. Every time I got nervous I looked at you.
[01:09:28]
Will Falconer, DVM: Oh, how funny. I didn't know this.
[01:09:31] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Because I just, I just was like okay he's okay with me. He's okay with me. And then after you came up and you said, "That was a really great lecture." I was like okay, I'm okay.
[01:09:44] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, it was mind opening for me. It was taking me out of that bounded understanding that I had. We all tend to compartmentalize it as you said, so I had a fairly bounded understanding and here you were doing these amazing things and seeing long term results in your clinical setting. It was just like okay, there's more than one way to do this stuff.
[01:10:06] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Yeah, anyways so thank you for that. People like you are the ones that were like holding me up when everybody else was going, "No, no, no, you're not doing this."
[01:10:19] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Well we're going to wrap up because I'm afraid I'm going to run out of time on the meter, but maybe we'll come back. We'll think of another topic that we could go deep on because I really appreciate the knowledge base that you're working from. Let's get you on again at some point, and do this again.
[01:10:38] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Okay. Thank you so much.
[01:10:40] 
Will Falconer, DVM: You open to that? Oh, you're welcome.
[01:10:41] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: Oh, I totally am, yeah. Anytime. It's awesome hanging out with you.
[01:10:45] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Okay. All right everyone, this is it for this week. And Julie Anne Lee has a lot of things that she'll add to our show notes for this episode. Just in a brief call out for those who don't make it to the show notes, Julie Anne Lee, where do you like people to find you online?
[01:11:00] 
Julie Anne Lee, DCH: They can find me on www.adoredbeast.com.
[01:11:05] 
Will Falconer, DVM: Adored Beast, okay. Adoredbeast.com, beautiful. So that's it for this week, and we'll see you next time with another interesting venue, and until then keep on keeping those animals vital. Bye for now.