Nutrition Response Testing

One of the methods that I use to help me choose treatments for my patients is Nutrition Response Testing. This is essentially muscle testing, or Applied Kinesiology, using a person as the indirect tester for the pet. I muscle test the person (often the pet's owner, but not always), using the anterior deltoid as my indicator muscle. With both of us physically touching the patient, we evaluate the status of the sympathetic nervous system, scan the body to get an idea of which systems are under stress, differentiate which stressor is affecting the target organ or system, and individualize a treatment plan that is specific for that patient.
Muscle testing is one of my favorite methods to use. It allows us to bypass the thinking logic of the brain, and to ask the patient's body directly which treatment will be most beneficial for the organism as a whole.
I use Standard Process supplements almost exclusively. They are manufactured under strict quality controls, from organic ingredients, and the formulas are scientifically derived, backed by years of research. Standard Process makes a wide range of supplements for humans. They also make a small line of cat, dog, and horse products.
The need for differentiation becomes clear, when you consider, for example, that there are perhaps 5 supplements that will act directly on the liver, and 25 others that will indirectly benefit the liver. How can we decide which supplement will be most helpful? Are there other organs affected which also require support?
This is where muscle testing stands out as one of the most important tools in my practice. As long as we trust the answers that we receive directly from the patient's body, and trust that the body is a self-healing organism that has its own agenda of priorities, we will improve the success of our treatments and help heal our patients in the process.

Reiki for Pets

Reiki is an often-overlooked yet incredibly valuable treatment method to have on hand. I think everybody in the world should at least take a Reiki I class. Here's why: In case of emergency, if nothing else, you've still got your hands. And for all you amputees out there, you don't really need hands to do Reiki.

What is Reiki? It is simply the channeling of universal earth energy through your body, without using up your own body's energy. You simply serve as the conduit for the energy. Now, in case this sounds too voodoo, remember that there is always a background level of cosmic energy that can be measured by scientific instruments. This energy is generated by the earth, which is the source of an electromagnetic field.

It's always possible to channel earth energy, even without the benefit of Reiki teaching. The advantages of learning Reiki are that it provides a system and philosophy for the direction and use of the energy. This is extremely important. The existence of an underlying philosophy and plan is what allows a treatment modality to improve and advance itself. Without a unifying process, Reiki would lose all its structure and much of its benefits. Although everyone can feel energy and direct it, it's a lot easier if someone teaches you a safe and replicable method for its use.

Another advantage of Reiki is the system of attunements. The attunements help your body be a better channel for the Reiki energy.

I have used Reiki in all kinds of situations. In one case I had just gotten home to find one of my cats in urinary distress. There's nothing like getting home from a long day at the office to make you dread having to go right back out and take the cat to an emergency hospital. I had no medical supplies at home. I had Rescue Remedy and Reiki. I sat with Malcolm on my lap, rubbed Rescue Remedy into my hands and his face, and gave him Reiki for about 15 or 20 minutes. He calmed down, went to the litter box, urinated, and took a nap.

Another time, my old dog Charlie yelped and couldn't use his rear limbs when he woke up from a nap. I used Reiki on his back and spine, and within minutes the episode passed and he was fine. Freaky, but true! It happened to me, it could happen to you!

Canine Health Concerns - Spay Incontinence

Incontinence is fairly common in the middle-aged spayed female dog. Incontinence refers to the loss of tone or integrity of the external urethral sphincter, the ring of muscle that helps you hold urine in your bladder.
There are several theories about why this would happen. One is that due to the spay surgery, which in dogs involves removal of the uterus and ovaries, there is a subsequent lack of production of the female hormones that would normally stimulate the external urethral sphincter.
Another theory has to do with the spay surgery itself. During the surgery, the uterus is pulled right out of the dog's body. It's easier to do surgery outside of the body, where you can see what's going on, then in the darkened cavern inside the abdominal cavity. This necessitates, in some cases, a lot of traction (i.e. pulling) on the uterus, which is attached to the cervix, which is attached (in dogs) to the vestibule, which is also where the urethra empties into from the bladder. Once you stretch the cervix, you've also indirectly stretched the urethra, and have possibly disrupted the integrity of the urethral sphincter.
A third option is a chiropractic lesion or subluxation. During the spay surgery the dog is lying on her back, her spine is extended past the normal limits, her rear limbs are splayed - also unnaturally - in order to facilitate the surgical approach. When you're under anesthesia, you don't have the muscle tone that would normally prevent your joints from moving beyond their normal range. If the joints in the spine are disrupted, blood supply to the nerves that are coming out of the spinal cord and going to the various organs can be compromised. This also explains why incontinence can also be seen in dogs that have hip or lumbar spine degeneration or arthritis.
Incontinence has to be differentiated from other conditions such as urinary tract infections or diabetes, that will cause the dogs to have to urinate a lot more frequently. Even if the dog is leaking urine all over her bed at night, it is still necessary to test the urine (and blood tests are a good idea as well) to make sure there is not some underlying cause for the condition.
The conventional treatments include drugs such as DES and Proin. DES (diethylstilbestrol) is a synthetic estrogen that supposedly would replace the loss resulting from the spay. Unfortunately, this drug also has the potential side effect of causing irreversible aplastic anemia (i.e. it can wipe out your bone marrow forever), and I'm always surprised when I see it still in use after all these years.
Proin (phenylpropanolamine) is a drug that increases the tone of the external urethral sphincter. It's not known exactly why or how it does this. This drug was pulled off the human market because it caused heart disease in people, and in dogs it can cause irritability, increased heart rate, hypertension, and other side effects. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Some dogs will do well at a lower dose than is recommended. Some can be weaned off it after treating them for 3-4 months to "retrain" the muscle.
My recommendations for incontinence include: natural diet (some cases are actually due to a gluten or grain allergy, and will resolve when these are removed from the diet), healthy basic supplements to balance the system, spinal manipulation (if the problem is a chiropractic subluxation, restoring blood supply to the nerves will fix it), and specific, individualized homeopathic treatment.

Moving Made Easy

On Sunday I moved my horses to their new stable, an hour away from where they were. The last time my mare was loaded, she freaked out - even though her friends were already on board - and eventually was intimidated into getting on the trailer. That took an hour, and I ended up with a frustrated neighbor (who was doing me a favor by hauling her) and a frightened horse.
So I was dreading having to load her again.
As soon as the trailer pulled up, her eyes got big and the whites showed. As a Quarter Horse, this is her version of being really, really alarmed. First we loaded the mule, who is the boss of my little herd. Then we turned to the mare.
I let her sniff some Lavender and Peace and Calming, two essential oils from Young Living. My friend massaged her neck and shoulders.
The hauler put a Parelli halter on her, and longed her once in each direction.
And she walked onto the trailer.
Non-event. Took five minutes.
I'm never moving a horse without essential oils again! In fact, I'm not going out to the barn without them!

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."