And What we Can do About it
By Jamie Bussin, featuring Dr. Marlene Siegel DVM
When a dear friend told me his 10-year-old dog had been diagnosed with cancer, it hit hard. As pet owners, we know our animals won’t live forever. But cancer? According to my recent guest on Episode #423 of The Tonic Talk Show/Podcast, veterinarian Dr. Marlene Siegel, our pets are getting sicker, younger. This is a digest of that conversation.
“We’re definitely seeing cancers in animals even under a year of age,” she told me. “When I started practicing 41 years ago, I saw cancer once or twice a year. Now we’re seeing 10 to 15 cases a week.”
Ten to fifteen cases per week. This is no longer an “old age” disease. Something has changed dramatically.
The Rise in Pet Cancer and Chronic Disease
According to Dr. Siegel, what we’re witnessing is not random. It’s systemic.
The root causes boil down to two primary factors:
- Severe nutrient deficiencies
- Overwhelming toxicity
Together, they are driving something called mitochondrial dysfunction.This is a breakdown in the tiny “powerhouses” inside every cell that generates energy and regulates communication throughout the body.
The mitochondria don’t just make energy. They also coordinate signals between the microbiome, cells, and DNA. When they fail, systems fail. And when systems fail, disease emerges, including cancer in dogs and cats.
What’s Happening to Pet Food?
At first glance, you might think pet food has improved over time. Marketing suggests it has. Walk down any pet store aisle and you’ll see words like “premium,” “natural,” and “complete and balanced.”
But Dr. Siegel argues that modern commercial kibble is part of the problem.
Decades ago, both human and veterinary medicine shifted toward what she describes as a pharmaceutical model: fast, cheap, and convenient. In the pet food world, that translated into dry kibble that can sit on a shelf for years.
But shelf stability comes at a cost.
To manufacture kibble, ingredients are cooked at extremely high temperatures. That process destroys enzymes and alters proteins. Preservatives and additives are introduced. In many cases, the meat content, if present, comes from waste by-products of human food processing.
In Dr. Siegel’s words, it’s “Franken food” to a pet’s body.
No pet parent wakes up excited to poison their animal. But we’ve been sold a story that convenience equals quality. The marketing sounds good. The packaging looks wholesome. The price often reinforces the illusion.
But if dogs and cats are carnivores by nature, shouldn’t we look at what carnivores eat in the wild?
When humans don’t intervene, carnivores eat other animals, fresh, whole, and raw.
Dr. Siegel follows what she calls “nature’s model.” That doesn’t mean hunting deer in your backyard. It does mean considering raw, species-appropriate diets created with high standards and proper sourcing.
Why Is This Getting Worse Now?
Here’s where I pushed back.
Haven’t people been feeding commercial pet food for 20, 30, even 40 years? Why are we seeing an explosion of pet cancer now?
Dr. Siegel’s answer points to a deeper environmental shift.
Over the last 50 to 75 years, nutrient depletion in soil and rising chemical exposure have intensified dramatically. Glyphosate, one of the major herbicides in use today, has only been on the market for about 28 years. Its widespread use has significantly impacted gut health across species.
Meanwhile, regenerative farming practices have largely been replaced by monoculture farming. Soil is replenished with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium; but not the broad spectrum of micronutrients like magnesium, manganese, zinc, and calcium that living organisms require.
Plants can only be as healthy as the soil they grow in. Animals can only be as healthy as the plants, or animals, they consume.
That’s one reason processed foods, both human and pet, must have synthetic vitamins and minerals added back in to meet “complete and balanced” labeling standards. The base ingredients are already depleted.
Deficiency is now built into the system.
Add toxicity to that, pesticides, preservatives, chemical cleaning agents, tap water contaminants, air pollution, electromagnetic exposure, and you create a biological burden the body struggles to manage.
The Body’s Breaking Point
For years, the body adapts.
That’s what makes this trend deceptive. The body is remarkably resilient. It compensates. It adjusts. It survives.
But adaptation is not the same as thriving.
Dr. Siegel explains that we’ve pushed our pets’ adaptive capacity too far. Eventually, organs of elimination- the liver, kidneys, colon, lungs, skin, and lymphatics become overwhelmed.
When detoxification pathways can no longer keep up with incoming toxicity and ongoing deficiency, symptoms begin to appear.
Cancer. Autoimmune disorders. Allergies. Chronic inflammation.
We are now seeing the breaking point.
So What Can Pet Parents Do?
If this sounds overwhelming, Dr. Siegel insists it doesn’t have to be.
Her approach begins with a foundational step: stop doing the things that are causing harm.
That includes:
- Transitioning away from non-species-appropriate diets
- Eliminating toxic tap water
- Improving air quality
- Switching to cleaner household and skin-contact products
- Reducing electromagnetic pollution where possible
- Supporting detoxification pathways
- Supplementing essential nutrients
It’s not about perfection. It’s about better choices. If we’re willing to upgrade our own nutrition, why wouldn’t we do the same for our pets?
The Emotional Frequency Factor
But there’s one factor many don’t consider. Dr. Siegel introduced a concept that surprised me: our emotional state affects our pets physically.
Animals entrain to our frequency. When we live in chronic stress – anger, frustration, bitterness, we exist in a heightened sympathetic state (fight or flight). Our pets pick up on that. If their “pack leader” is on high alert, they respond as though danger is imminent.
Chronic stress in animals increases oxidative stress and physiological damage. Over time, that compounds the burden already created by toxicity and deficiency.
She refers to automatic negative thoughts as “ANTs” programs running in the background. Just like clearing files from an overloaded hard drive, we can choose to delete thought patterns that no longer serve us.
And when we regulate ourselves, we help regulate our pets.
A Wake-Up Call for Pet Health
If Dr. Siegel is right, the rise in cancer in dogs and cats is not a mystery. It’s a mirror.
We’ve embraced convenience over quality. We’ve depleted the soil. We’ve saturated our environment with chemicals. We’ve ignored regeneration.
The good news? The body is adaptive in both directions. When we reduce toxicity, restore nutrients, support detoxification, and return to nature’s model, we give our pets a fighting chance.
Our animals depend entirely on the choices we make for them. If pets are getting sicker, younger, perhaps the real question is: Are we ready to change what’s making them sick?
