Paws to Heal

Integrative Veterinary Medicine

It is the imperative of integrative and holistic veterinarians to provide the best advice from all avenues of husbandry, medicine and surgery available to treat animal disease. This is the definition of integrative veterinary medicine.

It can be very difficult to have an open and unbiased opinion about all of these options.

One of the greatest impediments to the advancement of homeopathy for example is the misconception that no evidence exists for the effectiveness of this medicine. Despite a growing body of gold standard evidence for the biological effects of homeopathic medicines in humans, animals and even on plants, many physicians not only refuse to recognize this but actively despise the fact. I conclude that this is largely because it challenges them beyond their capacity to change their thinking.

This is not the subject of this post but rather an example of how we must struggle against our own inherent and learned prejudices in order to be a better health provider to the animal population.

My personal example of prejudice that I strive to overcome is the use of chemical and pharmaceutical interventions in animal health. It is difficult for me sometimes to see and admit the benefits that these products provide in an integrated health program and I am looking for reasons for why I often feel this way.

The most likely reason is that these approaches are often directly against what I consider to be best practice. This also raises the crucial point of difference between allopathy (conventional medicine) and homeopathy and the understanding of disease and cure.

Put simply; conventional (allopathic) medicine (drugs) is used in the hope that the animal makes itself well in the meantime and thus becomes cured. These medicines have little to nothing to do with the disease in question but rather act on the parts of the body that are still healthy in a variety of mechanisms designed to suppress the disease symptoms. In contrast: homeopathic medicine recognizes the bodies attempt to cure itself and sees the symptoms as attempts to cure. Homeopathy then assists this attempt to cure the diseased parts rather than putting pressure on the healthy system. This explains why side effects occur with drugs but not with homeopathy. Drugs affect healthy organs whereas homeopathy treats diseased tissues, restoring health by employing the healthy parts to assist the process.

I endorse the use of drugs in some cases. They can be life saving interventions at times. It is just that we have become overly reliant on them when there are healthier options available in many cases. Admittedly these better options are not readily available to all practitioners so we do the best we can with what we have available. My goal is to have more natural options available to the animal health industry and better education about nutrition and homeostasis.

Cancer is all too prevalent in animals and this is another area that can only be best served by an integrative approach with nutritional and organ support for systems under extreme duress. More and more the newer cancer drugs are also following examples set by homeopathy with both the choices of drugs (palladium most recently) plus the rise in the trend to low dose (metronomic) chemotherapy protocols. There will be a meeting point in this area in the not too distant future, which will herald a breakthrough in understanding. Other areas that will discover validity in homeopathy will be nanomedicine and nanomolecular adaptive networking along with quantum medicine all of which albeit, are still in infancy for mainstream medical practice.

So back to my personal quandary and the point of this blog.

Why do I find myself so disillusioned about the practice of medicine in a modern world?

Here are some suggestions.

I feel frustrated by the complexity we have created by our interference in the natural world.

Just because it is new it does not mean it is better.

I am disappointed that there are so few clever thinking and inquisitive practitioners looking for answers in nature.

I believe that simplifying our life will enable us to have space to be healthier.

It seems too easy to be caught up in expectations of others as to how we should be living and staying connected with each other.

Along with advantages this may bring, there are untold costs to our health.

I believe that there is too much interference at a vibrational (noise, frequencies, waves) and chemical level in our environment, which directly affects physiological function of all water based living things. This is becoming more alarming with newer towers and higher (5G) outputs about to be introduced.

I am less trusting of corporate agendas and whilst we all still need money to drive our economy I do not endorse selling products that are potentially harmful and not necessary; medicine for health not for profit.

I do not feel comfortable with the amount of packaging and waste that comes from pharmaceutical sales and petfoods. We are facing crisis tipping point for global contamination with plastic and we can all do better.

We dump it in landfills where plastic degrades and leaches into the soil and groundwater and makes its way to the food chain. Then we eat it.

Whilst it is essential that most of us live now in modern cities it does not necessarily follow that we must accept the limited conditions this imposes.

We can be looking for more ways to grow and replenish soil, grow local foods and medicines and build healthy community through very simple sustainable, ecofriendly enterprises that will ultimately benefit us all.

Most of all I seriously challenge the premise that disease is not curable.

When did we give up on curing disease and how have we come to accept that we live in a constant state of ill health? I did not study veterinary medicine to watch animals die or live with permanent disease.

Coming back to the most basic training we receive as veterinarians,

“If you don’t look then you wont see” and

it is alright to say “I don’t know”.

I admire all my colleagues who can keep the blinkers off and I will keep trying to be one of them but I confess that this is difficult when we are battling our own imperfections and limitations in practice and understanding.