iPet’s Ally Weekly Q&A Round-up 09-21-20: What is melatonin and what are the benefits of taking it?

1. What are the things you can do to help reduce your pet’s itching and nausea?

Assuming that your pet was eating a lot of grass, not drinking, and vomiting but the lab work showed the liver were all normal as was the kidney, so Ursodiol either cleaned it out. Suppose also that your pet was given intravenous fluids, something for nausea, probably Cerenia, and then sit home with 5 days of Omeprazole and on a prescription canned food for 3 days and then went from Orijen Regional Red to chicken and rice dry combination because they’re going to go to a boot camp program.
That would make me wonder if your pet then started vomiting after the food switch because if that’s the case, it may simply be that it’s part of what the sensitivity is. If they’re going to boot camp, it will be hard to do anything extra as far as adding in some veggies or something of that nature, so it may be that this dry food is just super-rich and that’s difficult for them to digest because they haven’t had it before. The other thing to consider is that if you’re living near the smoke plumes, you and your dogs have been breathing that so that may be part of what’s creating the itching as well.
What I would do is maybe feed a super light meal in the evening, maybe feeding a reasonable sized lunch and go from there. Again, part of what may be happening is if they’re itching and they’ve switched to dry food their stomach may be reacting to what they’re eating because sometimes that will result in increased stool, so I hope that is helpful.

2. What is a veterinary behaviorist?

Veterinary behaviorist are veterinarians with a special interest in animal behavior. These behaviorists can understand medical problems that may be contributing to the behavioral problem of the animal.
Now, if you are looking for a behaviorist, that I’m wondering what’s going on and if there’s something else I can help you with because for many of the veterinary behaviorists, their sort of go – to is load your pets up with drugs and not so much actually doing behavioral modification although some do, so that’s a tough one.

3. How to help a dog with bad gas?

Assuming that your dog is having really stinky gas and about of loose stools, it’s maybe because of what they ate or maybe there’s something he just picked up and ate. A great go – to as was suggested is always activated charcoal it kind of sucks up the evil spirits and then the other thing you can use is bentonite clay or green clay which also is a great absorbent. I hope that’s helpful too.

4. What is B12 injections and ProColon and what are they used for?

Here’s the interesting thing with B12, in the Texas A&M GI panel, we look at things like trypsin – like immunoreactivity which is going to tell us how much pancreatic enzyme your pet is able to produce, whether there’s exocrine pancreatic insufficiency or if there’s another lipase type test that looks at pancreatitis. The other component of that test is B12 and folate and the reason those two things are in there is that in small intestinal disease, they become deficient and so with the B12 injections for dogs that are deficient in B12, that often can help them feel considerably better.
Now, for proColon, I am not quite sure about that but that sounds like it’s got some kaolin in it. Basically, it’s a probiotic paste, so it’s got some probiotics enterococcus which is typically used for diarrheas in dogs and cats, a prebiotic Fructooligosaccharides and a gum and then kaolin and pectin which is what used to be in Kaopectate which bind and absorb things as well. Now, this is interesting because I think what’s actually doing the work here is the Kaopactate because it helps kind of bind things up and absorb some of the enterotoxins that may be creating some of the reflex that you are seeing. Sri, I hope that makes some sense.

5. What are the special list of veggies when you are having problems with SIBO?

Personally, when SIBO was really awful for me, there were 6 vegetables I could eat, they were bok choy, napa cabbage, green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, and carrots and that was it, everything else were either too high in fiber or too high in sugar.
With SIBO, there’s a couple of things that happens, it can create a myriad of symptoms including acid reflux and what tends to happen is that somewhere along the line, you or your pet have had some sort of foodborne disease or an infection of something like C. diff or campylobacter, E.coli, all of those pathogenic ones and what happens is, those pathogenic bacteria create a protein that is very similar to the protein in the cells of cajal which are responsible for powering the migrating motor complex in the small intestine. So, there’s a couple of things that happen, the migrating motor complex after you’ve not eaten for 90 minutes is supposed to flash down the bacterial count in the small intestine into the large intestine but when that doesn’t work, the bacterial counts in the small intestine goes sky high creating gas discomfort, regurgitation, gastric reflux all sorts of symptoms and it’s just miserable and it can create symptoms anywhere from simply acid reflux, burping, belching up in the middle of the night to profound and awful diarrhea. So, those are the veggies I’m going to look at. Napa cabbage and bok choy are going to be your brassicas and the other three are going to be your other veggies so I would look at that and definitely leave the beans out.

6. What is the difference between CBD and CBDA?

I am going to tell you what I know which is unfortunately not as much as I like. CBDA is a specific terpene of CBD, so CBD means whole unfractionated CBD oil or cannabinoid oil. I know people are saying to just use that one life for a while but it turns out for others it didn’t work as well. Now, that’s part of what is being discussed this week for the American Holistic Veterinary medical session so check that out.

7. Is Vita Nutrients Heartburn a good product?

Here’s why I the product Vita Nutrients Heartburn, it actually isn’t specifically for heartburn treatment more that it is for healing the gut. Unfortunately, I don’t like proprietary supplements but this one works and so we use it.
Its ingredients are L – glutamine, acetyl glucosamine, glycerized licorice root, and glycine are all really important to help heal the mucosal layer of the small intestine and heal the enterocytes. If you think about the enterocytes, there’s these villi projection all these fingers and these fingers are lined with hundreds of enterocytes and it’s where the food sits in there and the body absorbs all of the nutrients.
Now, in chronic gastrointestinal disease, what happens is these fingers get cut off, so you or your pet may have only 25% of the enterocytes available to absorb your food plus they’re damaged and they’re also sucking up not only some food but they’re also sucking up incompletely digested food into the gut associated lymphoid tissue which is creating more immune reactivity. So, what all these things do is, seal of the gut and allow those villi and enterocytes to heal. And then Aloe vera also helps to produce that mucus layer which is so necessary for the gut to be protected and for the good bugs to hang out. The other thing I like about it is that it’s all from a fish source which all of us and most of our pets are not sensitive to. I hope that makes sense.

8. What is melatonin and what are the benefits of taking it?

Melatonin is a hormone supplement used to treat a variety of conditions in many different breeds. In dogs, it has been used to treat sleep and behavior disorder and non – allergic hair loss.
Suppose your veterinarian recommended melatonin for your pet’s itching, it makes sense because there is an emotional component to it. Melatonin helps reset your neurotransmitter base, so that the things that keep us fired up, the adrenaline, all of the excitatory neurotransmitters chill out and so that’s probably what’s happening. Also, 3 milligrams every 12 hours is the appropriate dose for a large dog, it’s also used for atypical Cushing’s disease and Cushing’s disease sort of in the lack of a better set of options and it doesn’t work all the time but it works really well.

9. What is Biocidin and what is it used for?

Microbiome lab has partnered with Biocidin that makes this product that kind of kills bugs and so the microbiome folks seems to think that part of SIBO originates in the mouth and in specific for us, failed root canals, so you have chronic and inflammation in the mouth, in the bone and then in dogs, if they have any type of dental disease, same idea.
I’m not sure how well this would work for dogs but their goal with biocide is to spray it in the mouth to kill the bugs, swish it around and then as you swish it around, kill off the bugs, and swallow it, you’re going to ingest some of the Biocidin which will cause some die off which will help the spores get down to the large intestine and hopefully start to repopulate the gut, and the large intestine with the appropriate bugs so this is want I’m going to try.
The other technique that the microbiome folks was talking about was not giving the whole capsule, give literally a teeny-weeny pinch. Break a capsule open if that’s supposed to be enough for a day’s dose, it may take you, at this rate, 2 to 3 three weeks to get through one capsule. If you haven’t already getting x – rays under the teeth and see how the root looks because often there are root abscess in those nubbin teeth because what happened is he’s worn through the root essentially and then to some degree imprecated or sort of smoothed the dentium over the top of it so it’s not sensitive but I would get that checked out and make sure it’s not part of the issue.

10. What is animal Reiki? And what is the difference between grand mal seizure and petit mal seizure and what can you do to help treat seizures?

Suppose your 5 years old dog appeared to have what was a seizure. Now, it would be better if you did the reiki. Animal Reiki is the spiritual practice of compassion for all beings. In a nutshell, “doing” Reiki for animals is a form of meditation, with the intention of lovingly helping to heal their subtle energetic body – and in turn their physical body as well.
Now, not being able to respond doesn’t sound like a grand mal seizure but a petit mal if the upper body was shaking and then after 4 hours everything looks normal. So, there’s a couple of things I get checked out; one is liver function, just to make sure that it’s normal and then the second is thyroid function and the reason is that, low thyroid can create all sorts of bizarre issues and unfortunately it can decrease the seizure threshold to the point that it creates a problem like what you saw. The other thing I would sort of search through your mind about is did anything else change? As far as did you start using shoe tags for flea control, any new product, any new medication? Kind of go back and look at that so let us know about that and see what you think.

11. What are the best joint supplements for dogs?

Generally, for breeds that are predisposed to arthritis, I start them at five. To some, this may be a bit of an issue because most of them are chicken based because of the glucosamine and chondroitin.
What I’ve been using myself is ArthrisSoothe which is on our website, the thing that I like about it is that it is shellfish based and so for dogs that are food sensitive, a lot of times we can get away with this. It’s pretty amazing in the sense that, it’s again, what I was looking for in terms of as far as a joint supplement. It’s got zinc, glucosamine, chondroitin, it has hyaluronic acid, a little bit of niacin, selenium, copper, manganese, and these are doses that are more than adequate, MSM, acetylcysteine which is an interesting compound that helps with liver clean out but it also helps to repair collagen and joint fluid. It also has green lip mussel, anti – inflammatory, Boswellia, turmeric and Myristoleate which is an interesting compound in terms of getting improvement in the quality of the joint fluid. And then it also has hyaluronic acid, trans – resveratrol, and collagen too so again, because it is shellfish based and it’s for veggie caps for a large dog, I would use probably a capsule twice a day and then for smaller dogs, a smaller amount. This so far has been working.
I think that’s all I have for you this week. So, if you didn’t hear about this on the last broadcast on CrockPet, Dr. Keisha Years is doing an autoimmune summit specifically on brain health. I get tired of these summits too but I have to say what she’s doing I think, will be very helpful and I plan to listen to some of the lectures as well. And I’m doing a talk I think on the 5th about how pets mirror us and how they can teach us about autoimmune disease as well and these folks are all experts on the human side about calming down the inflammation in the brain and calming down autoimmune disease in general, so check that out.
Next week we’ll also have the Ipet’s Ally monthly talk and so for those of you that are ultimate members, a lot of that will be about some new information on controlling inflammation and some protocols I’m trying out myself, so this is how I kind of figure it out. The goal is to see what works and what doesn’t before I say “Yes! This is it.” So, I’ll let you know more about that but that’s going to be part of what we’ll talk about next week. I know many of you have difficulty getting there so if there is a better time for you then just let Hanna know what that is and we can adapt our schedule. So, until next week, take good care and remember your pet’s best health starts in the bowl. Thanks!