On today's thoughts from the truck episode, I ponder a little bit about a quote and this quote, for a context comes from one of my top seven of all time books; biggest, most impactful books that I have read. One of these books, out of the seven, that lie on my mind altering, life altering type shelf at home.

This book is called High Performance Habits by Brendan Burchart. Highly recommend reading this book and looking into it, but in this book, the author, who is a self-help, self-development type guru selected a quote from Andrew Carnegie, and if you don't know who Andrew is, he was an industrialist specifically within the steel industry or on the turn of the century, and Andrew was credited with saying:

"I believe the true road to pre-eminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line."

Today we will discuss why mastery is intrinsically rewarding to us and how we can begin to capture our own small chunk of it on a daily basis!

Supplementing a Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation product modulates innate immune function and ameliorates bovine respiratory syncytial virus infection in neonatal calves

Ultimate Message:

We do have an ability to modulate immune responses to make them less damaging within the respiratory tract of our calves and potentially beyond that if you start to look outside of this study.

Big 3 Take Aways:

Number one, there are differences between prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics. Is one necessarily better than the other? Do you need one more than the other? Not necessarily, but the ability of the postbiotics to be more concentrated versus diluted in what you'll see as the prebiotic and the probiotic potentially has a bigger impact than those other two factors and is worth considering when you're considering your source or your dollar investment for your clients.

Number two, innate training. We can train the immune system to respond in a less destructive way, to just respond in a more phagocytic way versus more of kind of that nuclear bomb or uncontrolled damage type of way. That's very interesting that we have the ability to do that.

Number three, we have the ability to control inflammation. And that again, ties into the response we get. We have less free oxygen oxidative species going out there, less oxidative bursts occurring, less overall damage and destruction to the overall airways.

Abstract:

The objectives of this study were to determine the effects of oral supplementation with Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation products on immune function and bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) infection in preweaned dairy calves. Twenty-four Holstein × Angus, 1- to 2-d-old calves (38.46 ± 0.91 kg initial body weight [BW]) were assigned two treatment groups: control or SCFP treated, milk replacer with 1 g/d SCFP (SmartCare) and calf starter top-dressed with 5 g/d SCFP (NutriTek). The study consisted of one 31-d period. On days 19 to 21 of the supplementation period, calves were challenged via aerosol inoculation with BRSV strain 375. Calves were monitored twice daily for clinical signs, including rectal temperature, cough, nasal and ocular discharge, respiration effort, and lung auscultation. Calves were euthanized on day 10 postinfection (days 29 to 31 of the supplementation period) to evaluate gross lung pathology and pathogen load. Supplementation with SCFP did not affect BW (P = 0.762) or average daily gain (P = 0.750), percentages of circulating white blood cells (P < 0.05), phagocytic (P = 0.427 for neutrophils and P = 0.460 for monocytes) or respiratory burst (P = 0.119 for neutrophils and P = 0.414 for monocytes) activity by circulating leukocytes either before or following BRSV infection, or serum cortisol concentrations (P = 0.321) after BRSV infection. Calves receiving SCFP had reduced clinical disease scores compared with control calves (P = 0.030), reduced airway neutrophil recruitment (P < 0.002), reduced lung pathology (P = 0.031), and a reduced incidence of secondary bacterial infection. Calves receiving SCFP shed reduced virus compared with control calves (P = 0.049) and tended toward lower viral loads in the lungs (P = 0.051). Immune cells from the peripheral blood of SCFP-treated calves produced increased (P < 0.05) quantities of interleukin (IL)-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha in response to toll-like receptor stimulation, while cells from the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) of SCFP-treated calves secreted less (P < 0.05) proinflammatory cytokines in response to the same stimuli. Treatment with SCFP had no effect on virus-specific T cell responses in the blood but resulted in reduced (P = 0.045) virus-specific IL-17 secretion by T cells in the BAL. Supplementing with SCFP modulates both systemic and mucosal immune responses and may improve the outcome of an acute respiratory viral infection in preweaned dairy calves.

Get this newsletter delivered to your Inbox every month!  Signup for the Countdown to Success HERE!

Happy February OTO,

At Operators to Owners we encourage continual growth and learning.  In the spirit of this initiative we will be experimenting with our monthly newsletter,  the Countdown , and its layout throughout 2023.  We are doing this to make it more useful to you, as well as more accessible to the veterinary community.  As part of this experiment I'm proud to present to you our first audio version of the newsletter!

If you have any comments or suggestions we would welcome them at [email protected]!

This month's Countdown to Success is focused upon training.  I believe training represents a way for practices to begin to build a solid foundation for their staff. A way for them to differentiate themselves in a competitive market.  And a way to reduce future HR based headaches.  Using psychology as part of this training, will naturally improve it, allowing you to leverage the power of the human psyche.  

I hope you will consider trying it!

As a reminder, your journey of professional development is important to me.  Teaching and seeking the advancement of our profession has been a goal of mine since I started veterinary school and OTO gives me a vehicle to continue this mission.  If you wish to join me more interactively as I pursue this, please join our Facebook Group or consider joining one of our masterminds at otovets.com and share your journey with our community.

You never know when your ideas, stories, actions, or reflections will inspire another vet out there!

Take the Personal Growth Initiative Assessment at otovets.com/pgi

Our Inner Work Life Tells a Story

Struggling with feelings of burnout and stress at work are not unique to the veterinary profession. In fact, this is an endemic issue that pervades almost every level of our society.  Scientists have begun to classify these internalized thoughts and feelings that are brought on at work as "Inner Work Life."  

We've all experienced the power of Inner Work Life at some time. The waxing and waning of motivation throughout the day, that little voice that can ramp up your emotions building relationships or creating conflict, even altering how our subconscious mind perceives the actions of others around us during the day.  What Inner Work Life describes is our behind the scene's motivators; the silent judgements we make, the stories we craft that affect decisions made by us and how these interpretations control our own internal thoughts and actions.  Our feelings of our own levels of control over these situations, aka autonomy, form a key aspect to how we craft these stories.

So how can we increase autonomy?  The first thing we must realize is there are differing types of autonomy.  First, there is what I call "Controlling Autonomy" or the ability to schedule your day in a way you desire to control it, letting the individual autonomy decide when tasks and appointments to be done.  This simple act of Controlling Autonomy can help us feel more efficient and better able to cope with daily challenges, unfortunately it does very little to progress personal growth and in the long term only minorly improves feelings of autonomy.  This is a common and important level of autonomous control within our society given to employees by managers as a way to say they provide autonomy in the workplace.  This makes Controlling Autonomy a common scapegoat by managers when they fail to provide a much more empowering type of autonomy; "Meaningful Autonomy."

To aid our employees in this evolution toward increased Meaningful Autonomy we may need to provide some structure and/or identify how they can discover, plan for, and pursue Meaningful Autonomy themselves.  Christine Robitchek's Personal Growth Initiative lab has a great model for this; Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS), or a measure that allows us to track the individuals readiness for Meaningful Autonomous growth, ability to plan for effective growth, opportunities and presence of relationships needed for growth, and their tendency towards taking action in areas of Meaningful Autonomy.  Listen in to learn more about how PGI can form the framework for your own Personal and Professional Growth Journey.

Take the Personal Growth Initiative Assessment at otovets.com/pgi

In Episode 72 we introduced the concept of Salutogenesis and my feelings about it's ability to impact our profession; specifically how it has the potential to aid us in discovering our Flourishing State or that state in which we are:

 "Being free from illness and distress but, more important, of being filled with vitality and functioning well in one's personal and social life." - Source 

Today we discuss the four principles that make up Salutogenesis:

1) A Sense of Coherence - This is comprised of three major factors; comprehensibility, meaningfulness and manageability

2) "Other" Factors - The intangible factors that improve interpersonal and intrapersonal resiliency skills 

3) Defined Salutogenesis - A clear definition of what salutogenic medicine is

4) The Mind-Body Connection - What are the physiologic affects of the presence OR lack of a mental state of flourishing

Begin to understand just what it means to be a salutogenic practitioner and how it can change the way you work day by day.

Link to Episode 63 What do You Want and Why

Salutogenesis is a word few of us have heard before but could be the means by which we can rejuvenate our profession.  Salutogenesis is the pursuit of knowledge around the study of the origins of health, contra the origins of disease, resulting in a better understanding of the "flourshing state" of mental, physical and spiritual health.  

More simply defined; salutogenic research revolves around the "top performers" and what makes them the top, vs focusing on the pathologies that cause bottom performers to become bottom.  The pursuit of the factors that lead to flourshing allows us to elevate people from a "healthly" normal and better protect that elevation from suboptimal states using techniques we learn from the top 1%, 5% or 10% of practitioners in their fields.

In order to make salutgenesis mainstream in veterinary medicine we will need a fundamental shift in resources from our "we've always done it this way" mentality and instead we must begin to embrace alternative interventions that focus less on correcting the underlying pathologies.

Bottlenecks have existed for as long as man has.  From the drawbridge in medieval days, to the corporate board room and even within our own heads; these friction points decrease our efficiency and cause us to experience a variety of problems.  These problems disrupt our lives and cause us untold physical and emotional pain.  

Therefore, the identification and addressing of bottlenecks can prove to be a much needed skill for the modern medical professional.  This podcast will teach you techniques to improve your reflective routine so you can more quickly and efficiently identify bottlenecks, even before they begin to cause formal problems. 

Finally, we will discuss how adopting a systems thinking mentality will change how you view these problems and help you craft new strategies to address your current bottlenecks.

Fostering motivation for personal development is one of the key values of OTO.

Creating an environment of momentum, one that motivates you to continue your development is key to experiencing long term success in this endeavor.  

As a listener to this podcast, you're likely among the 20% of individuals that are doing 80% of the creative work in our industry.  But finding the motivation to continue this task, continue this work, is incredibly hard.

This is where the Matthew Effect is critical.  The Matthew Effect originates from a bible verse:

“FOR UNTO EVERYONE THAT HATH SHALL BE GIVEN, AND HE SHALL HAVE ABUNDANCE. BUT FROM HIM THAT HATH NOT SHALL BE TAKEN AWAY EVEN THAT WHICH HE”

This means that if we can begin to create an environment of winning, of success and of personal growth we are more likely to see a continuation of that growth.  

This podcast will go deeper into the Matthew Effect, the research that surrounds it and ways you can begin to harness it.  At the end I even include 6 ways that I've personally used to jump start this effect, even when I am at my nadir of personal development motivation.  

Have you ever wanted something but didnt know how to get it? 

Maybe you've started a new service and are struggling to get it off the ground?

Maybe you've always wanted to provide a service or bring a product to the market but have struggled to get traction as it develops?

Have you ever grappled with feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome?

Then today's episode is made JUST FOR YOU!  Speaking something to existence means that you are committed to sharing your vision with the world.  It means that you want to confidently and clearly commit to what you want and why you want it.  It also means that you are reaching out, leveraging your relationships to help you achieve what you desire.

Speaking to existence gives you the opportunity to ask the world for help.  Priming the Reticular Activating System of every speaker, reader or listener toward things that might help make your dreams a reality.

Tune in to learn how Speaking to Existence could change your career path today!