The Magic of Probiotics

I'm reading "The Consumer's Guide to Probiotics" by S.K. Dash, PhD. Apparently there has been a ton of research done on probiotics! They can replace antibiotics...if you choose the right ones. This is why I think the best idea is using a probiotic with multiple strains of bacteria and a high CFU (colony-forming-units) count - that basically tells you how many bacteria per serving.

So isn't it interesting that in our society we're so fascinated with antibiotics (which means "against life") that we take them for the slightest excuse - a minor infection or wound, a cold, whatever - and yet we are slow to use probiotics ("for life")! So slow, in fact, that many people have not even heard of them! But we've all heard of antibiotics.

Probiotics help support the body in performing its normal functions and allow it to successfully heal itself. Antibiotics kill bacteria indiscriminately. Unfortunately, we need some of those bacteria. They keep out worse bacteria, keep yeast in check, and synthesize nutrients that our bodies need from the stuff we eat.

I was in a grocery store and the woman in line in front of me wiped the little credit-device stylus with an antibacterial wipe before she left. She said to me, "I'm doing this for you." I smiled at her and replied, "That's okay, I love bacteria. They're my friends." And indeed they are.

Linear Thinking Part II

Linear thinking can also prevent us from utilizing multiple solutions to a problem at the same time, which I find to be a very effective approach. Many times, when I prescribe a diet change, a homeopathic remedy, chiropractic care, and a couple of supplements, I am asked, "But how will we know what's making Rover better?"I used to be bothered by this as well. As humans, especially living in our troubled and convoluted times, we have a strong desire for things to just be simple. Surely there must be a better way to do things - one better way. In school we are taught that there is one right answer and it's hardly ever "all of the above." If we do more experiments, perhaps eventually we will reach some basic, primal truth that will be the One Truth, like the Grand Unified Theory of the Universe.
Well, I've had to get over that mindset.
Out of all the things I prescribed, which one helped Rover the most? I don't care. Everything works together.
There often is no one right answer. Our bodies are affected by innumerable influences all the time, many of which are beyond our awareness. We require optimal diet, optimal movement, optimal posture, and optimal internal and external environments in order to be truly healthy. One piece of the puzzle is often not sufficient. At least not to get the kind of results I'm aiming for.

Linear Thinking Part I

This blog is about the linear cause and effect thinking that seems embedded in conventional medicine. This type of thinking goes, well, a lot of the time when we see symptom A, we also find B, therefore B must be the CAUSE of A.For example, from a recent TV drug ad: "The root cause of gout is high uric acid." No, it's not. Yes, gout is associated with high uric acid levels, and we know that it's those uric acid crystals precipitating in the joints that are the source of the joint pain of gout. But high uric acid does not cause gout. It is one of the syndrome of symptoms that, grouped together, we call gout.
What's the cause, then? We don't know.
Whatever it is that made your body start to form uric acid crystals and allow them to aggregate and precipitate. Chances are, like a lot of other diseases, one day some scientist will find a DNA change that appears sometimes in people with gout, and that will then be touted as the "cause" of gout.
OK, what makes your DNA do funky things? We don't know.
A big reason behind the "we don't know" is because modern medicine has a heck of a time dealing with multifactorialism. With the type of experimentation that is done, only one hypothesis can be tested at a time, and all other variables must be eliminated or reduced to inconsequentiality. In other words, we can only ask one question at a time. We can't ask "what causes this?" We can only ask, "is pollution associated with this?" "Is it dietary?" "Is it the DNA?" "Is it traumatic?" If the answers end up being yes to all of these, then they get to duke it out and try to choose one "root cause." Usually DNA wins, because we believe that DNA is the primary code of our bodies and is unchanging and beyond influence by factors like vaccines or the electromagnetic fields of power lines.
Wouldn't it be great if life actually worked that way?
Things would be a lot simpler. "Why did Jimmy drop out of school?" "He's stupid." "Oh, OK."

Vaccine History

Last night I was reading some veterinary journals. They always have case histories of animals that have come down with some weird disease, or a weird presentation of a common disease. The history given is usually limited to the clinical signs, and never include what I want to know: And when were they last vaccinated? And what were they being fed while they were vaccinated?
All vaccines come with an insert, that little piece of paper that tells you how to use the vaccine, what percentage of animals can be expected to be protected by it, etc. I never read these myself until about 3 or 4 years ago, when I suddenly wondered what was on this little piece of paper that comes with the vaccines.
Vaccine inserts mention several times that the product is for use in healthy animals, and that only healthy animals should be vaccinated. At the end there are precautions, including the tidbit that animals who are stressed (do you really think your cat likes to ride in the car?), malnutritioned (every pet on dry precessed kibble food), or incubating any disease shouldn't be vaccinated because....well, they don't say what might happen, because it's unknown. It is completely not known what kind of effects, short or long term, the vaccine might have on your pet.
Another article mentioned that viruses for the cat vaccines are grown in feline kidney cell culture. Guess what happens when you inject them into your cat? That's right, the cat develops antibodies to everything in the injection, including...cat kidney cells. Maybe that's why just about every cat develops kidney disease at some point.
Hmmm, food for thought.

It's Hot Today

Unbelievably hot today. I walked the dogs early this morning, right after morning rush hour - I have to walk them down the main road to get to a safer place to walk them. It was so early the mosquitos weren't quite done with their own morning rush hour.
I think the dogs still got heatstroke. It was hotter than hell.
Tonight I went a little light on their raw food for dinner, and added yogurt. It seemed kind of like dog ice cream. Now Alice is eating grass compulsively. Sigh. Maybe the dairy is not a good choice when it's so hot out. Now they're lying around in the house being miserable. Sigh. Me, too.
Tomorrow it's supposed to be even hotter. I don't know if I'll walk them at all.

Days like this remind me of when I was working as a farmhand in the desert on the Egyptian border. One night, sitting around the camp fire, there were a couple of new girls from Zimbabwe. The Israeli guy turns to them and says, "It's hot today." Yes, they agreed, it was. A few minutes later he repeated, "It's hot today." Turns out that was all the English he knew.

It's hot today.

Old News

At a used book store last week I picked up a copy of Current Veterinary Therapy, Volume 5, published in 1974. I checked to see what the vaccine recommendations were back then, and found this tidbit in the chapter "Minimal Disease Prevention for Cats":

"During the third part of the initial examination, the veterinarian should discuss diet and general health programs with the owner. The owner should be advised of the importance of adding raw meat to the diet and of offering a variety of foods not only to promote a well balanced diet but also to guard against the feline tendency to become addicted to certain meats. A daily vitamin program should be established....."

Thank you Nancy Kowall, DVM, from Pasadena, who wrote these sage words! Where had all this gone by the time I was in vet school, in the mid-90's? By then we had become corporatized, and our cat and dog nutrition lectures were taught by employees of Hill's Science Diet. What had been learned from Pottenger's cats had been unlearned, and was presented as fact.

Interestingly, the previous chapter, Minimal Disease Prevention for Dogs, has eight authors and only discusses the benefits of vaccines. There is no mention of other things that help prevent disease, like diet, vitamins, and a healthy lifestyle.

Intestinal Fortitude

Yesterday my dogs ate three large bags of brown rice. I can't blame them. My theory is that just the same way it's a prisoner's job to try to escape, it's the dogs' job to hunt for food.
The first clue was that when I got home, my kitchen floor was like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark....crunchy. The second clue was the open cabinet door. The third clue was the as yet uneaten (but gutted) remaining bag of rice on the living room carpet.
I didn't know what to expect. Would the rice really expand in their stomachs and kill them? Nothing else has, yet. Would they bloat and die?
The four of them seemed pretty happy....and hungry. I fed them dinner. They ate like normal. It's a speed sport, at our house.
This morning they seemed fine. No vomiting, no emergency trips to the yard.
This afternoon they were fine when I got home, but were a little desperate to get outside. They all pooped. A lot. Rice. Lots and lots of rice. Then they ate dinner like their normal fiendish selves.
This is why Katie K9 and I constantly tell people to create strong stomachs in their dogs. For just this occasion and purpose. I can't express how worthwhile it is to have built intestinal fortitude into my dogs. The value is in the peace of mind.