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What a Difference Food Makes!

7/27/2015

My cat Malcolm (the orange tabby in the photo, taken one month ago) used to be a hefty 17 lb. cat. Once I switched all my cats to grain-free foods, he lost weight and went down to 14 lbs. For several years I fed all my cats canned food in the morning, and dry food at night, all grain-free with constant rotation of different brands and flavors.

Every spring and summer, Malcolm had allergies. His nose broke out in itchy scabs, all the hair on his ears fell off and scabs formed there too, and he licked hot spots over his elbows just like a dog. I treated him with the occasional homeopathic remedy but it never really made a difference.

Last fall, 10 months ago, I stopped feeding the cats dry food altogether. Now I put raw food in the bottom of their bowls, and smash some canned food into that. About half of them will eat the raw food willingly, and Malcolm is one of them. All the cats lost weight again. Malcolm is now a normal 10 or 11 lbs.

And he has had no allergy symptoms this year. Not a scab or a scratch.

Just from removing the dry food.

Crazy, huh?

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Why Food Matters

7/21/2015

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Occasionally I am contacted by folks wanting holistic treatment for their pets, but they announce in advance: “Oh, and I’m not going to feed a raw food diet. I’ll do exercises, take Buddy for weekly chiropractic sessions, I’ll give him supplements, but there’s no way I can change his food. I’m a vegetarian/it grosses me out/my husband won’t let me/it’s too expensive/time-intensive/complicated….” The list is endless.

Unfortunately, asking your dog’s body to run and function normally and get over symptoms of illness (a.k.a. repair itself) while feeding a highly processed dry or canned food is unrealistic. Even if the package has claims such as “Organic! Human-grade! All natural!” you need to know that the FDA does not evaluate these claims when it comes to pet food. That means that anybody can manufacture a pet food and label it “organic” and “human-grade,” and it may or may not be those things.

Even if the food is organic and human-grade, it is still very processed. This is like the difference between grocery-store brand mac and cheese and super-gourmet mac and cheese. It is all extremely processed and mac and cheese is not really a healthy meal for anyone.

Nutrition is the foundation of health. The folks who refuse to use nutritional supplements or give homeopathic remedies but are willing to feed a raw, species-appropriate diet will still have pets that are healthier than those who are willing to do everything BUT feed raw.

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The Positive Blue Dot of Lyme Disease

6/29/2015

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What does it mean when the dot for Lyme disease turns blue on the heartworm 4DX test? Does your dog really have Lyme? How can you tell? What should you do?

The dot is supposed to turn blue when antibodies against Lyme disease are present in the blood sample. Additionally, the blueness of the dot is supposed to correspond to the number of antibodies. This is why a pale blue dot is recorded as a “faint positive” for Lyme, and a dark blue dot is a “strong positive.”

This test is not 100% reliable, and I would never diagnose a dog with Lyme disease based on it. At this point you have several options:

Treat for Lyme disease. A 30-day course of antibiotics is often presented as a reasonable course of action. However, antibiotics are dangerous drugs with significant side effects, and antibiotic overuse is what has led to MRSA and other resistant strains of bacteria. Since dogs commonly test positive year after year, is it good medicine to treat your patient with antibiotics for a month every year? It sounds ridiculous, but I read medical records every day that tell that story. What is being treated in these cases? The dog owner’s and the vet’s anxiety.
Do further testing. Sometimes a C6 titer supports a diagnosis of Lyme disease, and sometimes completely negates it in spite of the blue dot.
Do nothing. The presence of antibodies indicates exposure. That means that the dog has been bitten by a tick in the past that was carrying the Lyme bacteria. Does the dog actually have an active case of Lyme disease? This needs to be determined by the physical exam and pet owner interview. If your dog has active Lyme disease, there must be symptoms to support that diagnosis.

What if you are afraid of Lyme disease, the dot is blue, and you don’t want to use antibiotics? Options abound!

Give herbs that strengthen the immune system. Echinacea is the most common one that comes to mind here. Use a tablet, capsule, or an alcohol-free tincture. Dogs are dosed as a percentage of the human dose. For example, a 50 lb. dog gets approximately 50% of the recommended human dose. Other useful herbs are Cat’s Claw and Goldenseal.
Support the immune system in other ways. Is your dog on raw food? Now is a good time to start! Do you give probiotic and digestive enzyme supplements? Remind yourself to put them in your dog’s food daily. Are you giving your dog high antioxidant supplements, like spirulina and bee pollen? Why not?
Give homeopathic Ledum 1M, 1 pellet by mouth three times a day for three days.

Better yet, focus on building a strong immune system before the dot has a chance to turn blue.

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Making Sense of Antibody Titers

6/22/2015

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Antibody titers are available for the major infectious diseases of dogs and cats, including distemper, parvovirus, panleukopenia, calicivirus, herpesvirus, and rabies. The purpose of running an antibody titer is to verify that the animal has an objective measure of immunity to the disease in question. The titer itself is a blood test, so your vet will draw a blood sample from your pet and send it to a laboratory. The lab determines the greatest dilution at which antibodies to the disease in question can still be found. The laboratory also determines a dilution below which (they suggest) your pet will not have enough antibodies should it encounter the disease.

Now, titer results bear interpretation. It is not realistic to say that if there aren’t enough antibodies, or any measurable antibodies, then there is no immunity. Immunity to disease doesn’t work that way. This is why a titer test should not be used as a screening tool to determine whether your pet needs to be revaccinated.

For example, I have been vaccinated against polio three times in my life, the last time being 27 years ago. Do I have antibodies to polio in my blood right now? I hope not! What a waste of resources for my body to be busy making antibodies against a disease I will likely never encounter. Could I make antibodies to polio if I needed to? Sure, in a fraction of a second. This is why we have whole parts of the immune system devoted to remembering pathogens that we have met previously.

When I do titer tests on dogs for distemper and parvovirus, a very common result is that the dog has a low titer for distemper and a high titer for parvo. Sometimes there is no measurable distemper titer, but almost always that high parvo titer shows up. Why is that?

Parvo is a very stable virus that lasts practically forever in the environment. It is present wherever dogs have been. When dogs are vaccinated against parvo, they shed the virus in their feces for approximately 3 weeks afterwards. Therefore the virus is constantly being renewed in the environment as well. If you take your dog to a public park, parvovirus is there. If the people who lived in your house before you had a dog, parvovirus is there. This means that there is constant exposure and re-exposure to the virus.

Distemper, on the other hand, doesn’t last long outside the dog. Dogs need close contact to transmit distemper. They need to cough on each other and breathe in each other’s faces. Distemper is no longer a common disease outside of the vaccine, so there isn’t the routine exposure like dogs have with parvovirus. I have seen and treated many cases of parvo in my 18-year career as a veterinarian, but only one case of distemper (and that was vaccine-induced).

All this means that your dog might have a low or even not a measurable titer to distemper. Then how do you know whether they are immune? It’s difficult to know. There is also a possibility that the dog did not respond to the vaccine as desired and did not produce antibodies. Will giving another vaccine booster force the dog’s immune system to produce antibodies? Nobody knows.

So this is the challenge with vaccine titer testing. We love it when test results are clear cut, and yes means yes and no means no. Unfortunately that is not the case with titers.

When I interpret these results, I think that any measurable antibody is a positive result, even if it doesn’t meet the laboratory standard for a “protective titer.” If you can produce one antibody, you can likely produce trillions (or however many it would take to fight off a disease) in nanoseconds. If you have no measurable titer, then the answer is unknown.

As far as I can tell, one antibody titer should be sufficient for the animal’s lifetime. Once you have proven your body’s ability to produce antibodies, you will always be able to. Even quite unhealthy animals and people will respond to vaccination with a positive titer, and this tells me that antibody production is quite easy for the body to do. Therefore, as long as you maintain a basic semblance of health and your immune system doesn’t self-destruct, you should be able to produce antibodies.

Please note that I am discussing viral diseases here, and that this information has no bearing on bacterial diseases, which are a whole other can of worms.

I was vaccinated for rabies in vet school, so likely about 20 years ago. Three or four years later I had my rabies titer checked, and it was high. Nobody ever sends me a postcard telling me to booster my vaccine, and I don’t ever need to check my titer again. It is good for life. And these vaccines likely provide our pets with lifelong immunity as well. For more information, check out the work done by Dr. Ron Schultz and Dr. Jean Dodds, and the Rabies Challenge Fund.

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Postcard Season

3/1/2015

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This is the time of year when postcards from veterinary clinics arrive at pet owners' homes across America. "Fluffy is due for..." followed by a list of vaccines, diagnostic tests, and even some products, like heartworm preventives and topical insecticides.
You may be wondering, does Fluffy really need all those shots? What would happen if she didn't get them?
The first step is to educate yourself. You could read Stop the Shots, by John Clifton, and Vaccines Explained, by Laurie Coger, DVM. These are very short straightforward books that help make sense of this issue. For a deeper investigation of the vaccine dilemma, read Catherine O'Driscoll's books What Vets Don't Tell You About Vaccines and Shock to the System.
Lately I have heard claims on TV and radio programs that people who are anti-vaccine are "unscientific," whatever that means. Actually, once you understand how vaccines work, the damage they do, and how the immune system works, there is nothing more unscientific than the annual or triannual vaccine.
The vaccines for the major contagious diseases of dogs and cats (rabies, distemper, parvo, and panleukopenia) typically provoke lifelong immunity when they are given to young animals undergoing the initial puppy and kitten series of shots, finishing up at 12-16 weeks of age. There is no medical need to ever revaccinate. Repeating the vaccines, in fact, merely damages our pets' health.
Why then does the vaccine "expire"? Because that is when the vaccine manufacturer wants you to buy another one. It would cause great financial pain to the vaccine industry if every pet owner decided to never booster another vaccine.
How can you tell if your pet is immune to these serious diseases? You can have a blood sample sent in for an antibody level, or titer. Titer tests bear interpretation, however. A low titer is not necessarily a reason to vaccinate. Distemper is not a common disease currently, and the virus does not survive for long outside the infected dog. Most of our dogs have never encountered distemper virus except in a vaccine. Lack of exposure could lead to a low titer.
This is not a bad thing. I have been vaccinated against polio three times in my life. Do I currently have a measurable antibody titer to polio? I hope not! Why would my body waste valuable energy and resources creating antibodies to a disease I will likely never encounter? And if I did come across polio, I would be able to produce antibodies in a fraction of a second. There is a whole part of the immune system that is devoted to remembering specific pathogens.
What about the bacterial diseases, like Lyme, Lepto, and kennel cough (Bordetella)? Bacteria are more complex than viruses, and are consequently more challenging to vaccinate against. Antibodies are only part of the immune system, and the body often must involve other resources to eliminate these organisms. It is very common for dogs vaccinated against Lyme disease or kennel cough to get the disease in spite of vaccination, because these vaccines are largely ineffective. Vaccinating against Leptospirosis does not prevent your dog from getting the disease, but does prevent the dog from shedding Leptospirosis in its urine.
Do you need to take your pet to the vet if you're not going to vaccinate? There is tremendous value in a complete and thorough physical exam preformed by a holistic veterinarian. You will receive information about improving your pet's health, diet, and lifestyle.
There is nothing better than having an animal age gracefully, without chronic disease, medications, and interventions. My experience has shown me that this is possible and achievable, regardless of the age or health of your pet when you start doing things differently. Sure, some pets are so ill that they will not experience complete resolution of their symptoms, but there is nothing more encouraging than making positive changes in the life of someone you love.
Happy Spring!

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Chronic Disease in Young Animals

12/11/2014

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It is common to see animals who had repeated bouts of diarrhea or urinary tract infections as puppies or kittens, as they were going through the schedule of booster vaccines. So often these animals are medicated with antibiotics and other dangerous drugs and the vaccines are continued. This leads directly to the development of chronic disease.
Chronic diseases are much more difficult to treat than acute infectious diseases, and sometimes can only be managed and not cured. The correct thing to do would be to stop vaccinating, and stabilize the immune system before proceeding. I have seen some animals where the immune system was devastated by the first ever puppy or kitten shot, and they could not be safely revaccinated. What to do? You could check antibody titers to see whether they have attained immunity. You should restore the health and integrity of the immune system. This is achieved with diet, nutrition, and homeopathic remedies.

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What a Difference Food Makes!

Why Food Matters

The Positive Blue Dot of Lyme Disease

Making Sense of Antibody Titers

Postcard Season

Chronic Disease in Young Animals

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