1. What is deer velvet? And is it effective or not?
This is a really interesting substance. What Dr. Buzby says is that it has been used by human athletes for recovery and things of that nature which is great, and it’s been used as a joint supplement as well. It is considered to be an adaptogen and also a Jing tonic in Chinese medicine and then there’s all sorts of other good stuff. The thing is that you got to cut these suckers off of live deer. What they’re doing is breeding deer to have large antlers purely so that they can harvest the deer velvet, and what has to happen is these deer, because they’re valuable and a specific type, they anesthetize the deer and then cut the antlers off in the stage when the velvet is soft which is a pretty weird stuff.
I’ve tried it for some of my patients and I’ve seen no efficacy as well. I have a kind of mixed sentiments about it. I know that Dr. Judy Morgan is another big proponent of deer antler use and has seen good results with her patients, but I think it is a cruelty quite honestly. I mean, these are farm – raised deer for meat but they’ve also genetically engineered them so that they produce these massive racks. I hope that’s helpful. That’s my opinion and you can take it for what it’s worth.
2. Is adding in organ meats in the diet a good idea to help with the liver?
That’s part of what you are doing with Holistic Total Body Support. We are using direct dehydrated organs to help your pet’s endocrine system and things of that nature. The problem with feeding a lot of liver is that liver is the detoxifying organ and so even in animals that are produced pasture – raised, solely grass – fed and things like that, they’re still picking up a lot of stuff that their liver have to get rid of which in many cases they don’t get rid very well. For that reason, I don’t recommend using a lot more liver in the food. You can certainly add organ meats in the food but I would not exceed 5% to 10% of the total protein. On average, say 3 pounds of protein in there, then that’s 48 ounces times .1 so somewhere in the order of 3 to 5 ounces total of organ meat per batch of food.
3. What is the standard dose of melatonin for a dog with Cushing’s?
The sort of standard dose for endocrine atypical Cushing’s is 3 milligrams for dogs under 25 pounds and then up to 10 milligrams for dogs that are way more than that. You could certainly try to use 10 milligrams because you really need a heavy hitter and you do want quick absorption not extended release. However, you do have to be careful to make sure it doesn’t have xylitol. Xylitol is a sweetener that they put in almost everything now because we can’t possibly eat anything if it’s not sweet. Mae, you can try those 10 milligrams. With the storms coming through, you probably want to try to divide that dosage into say 3 milligrams 3 times a day and see if that helps you, same thing with the CBD. If it’s going to be a bad storm day, thank God the fireworks are over, you could use maybe 15 to 20 milligrams of CBD in the morning and evening and just kind of work your way up to see if you can get the right dose for your pup.
Try those 3 milligrams twice daily to see if that makes things more smoothly. If he truly needs that much as far as not getting up and barking at things, you should not see him be sleepy on that dose so it’s going to be somewhat feeling your way through it.
4. What are the ways to get rid of negative energies at home?
Sometimes if a spirit has gotten stuck somewhere, you can help them move on by leaving out food which is what the Buddhists do. They believe that the spirit of a person or animal when they die, sort of stick around about 44 days. What they can do to help aid that soul transition is to help put out a small bowl of food and see if that gives that creature enough energy to leave and to move on. Sending it love, sending it peace, and ease you know helping it guide. Be guided through energy to what’s next. I think that would help tremendously.
If there’s a particular window that Spirit goes to and barks at, then I would set it outside of there because that’s where the creature is coming closest to the house. Leave some food out there. It could be the cooked food or it could also be the dry food whatever it is. If it is actually being eaten, then you know it’s a real live critter out there. But again, for the majority of them, they will come and take the energy from the food and the food will look normal to us but its ability to provide energy, theoretically, is gone. I hope that makes sense. You may have to put it up somewhere where they can’t really get it. It’s a tough choice but that’s what the Buddhas did to help the soul sort of have enough energy to go on to what’s next.
5. What are the other products used for chronic pain?
Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) is something that I was just reading about as far as using it for chronic pain. I was researching it for fibromyalgia and then lo and behold, there is a veterinary product of PEA. Now, this is in typical fashion. They have taken something good and used a lot of crap to make it a chew. We’ve got a lot of cornstarch, and all sorts of garbage in there. It’s 200 milligrams and interestingly, this is used as a skin product to help with itching. It seems to help reduce mast cell degranulation so that’s why it’s being used in this format and also for chronic pain. The other thing is that with atopy and allergies, there’s often sort of a brain misinterpretation about what’s going on so again, here we are at an autoimmune type disease, essentially. I’ll put the link in there for you.
Now, the other option I would suggest for you is PEA (Palmitoylethanolamide) one that is made by bio clinic. It’s 400 milligrams per capsule and I think that in humans, the study dosage is 1200 milligrams per day to start with and ten sort of a maintenance dose of about 600 milligrams per day. For a 50- or 60-pound dog, I think I would use 800 milligrams so 400 milligrams twice a daily for a while and then drop down to 400. I’m going to be trying this for myself to see if that helps to a prevent a couple of things going on for me ad one of which is chronic pain due to inappropriate interpretation of pain secondary to fibromyalgia and mast cell degranulation which I’ve been using a lot of quercetin for many years and I’d like to back off of that a bit. It’s still got a little bit of junk in it but it’s in a capsule making it much less garbage, so I think this is a better option. Frankly, it’s cheaper so I will drop this in. Also, this is available on fullscript. I think this is a good option. The Redonyl Ultra I think is not so great. At any rate, I think you can check it out there but I think this is a really good option.
6. What is slippery elm and what is its purpose?
Slippery elm is a demulcent and so the long – term concern is that it will inhibit absorption of other nutrients. This is why people are telling you not to use it long – term. And with SIBO, I think you really have to be careful about adding in digestive enzymes and also probiotics. What I would suggest is maybe starting with something that more conditions the gut to have the proper pH without adding a digestive enzyme because I’ve seen in SIBO patients and in myself that it can actually worsen symptomology. So, Zymex is something that standard process makes and the whole goal is to condition the gut to create the appropriate pH and then also foster healing withing the gut itself.
If things have been pretty stable for a while and you’re not seeing any issues, I would start with a probiotic. What I would consider if your pup is not sensitive to beef, then I would use FidoSpore. Literally, what I would do is take a capsule and use maybe a 16th of it and take 2 to 3 weeks to get up to a full capsule. By doing this, I think a couple of things happen because this is a sporulated probiotic. They don’t really open up until they get to the colon so it is less likely to create huge problems with the gut as far as ramping up the small intestinal bacterial counts. But if your pet is sensitive to beef, then what I would suggest is using MegaSporeBiotic. For food sensitivities, MegaSporeBiotic is a great way to go. The human dose is 2 capsules per day but with dogs we would use it at 1 capsule per day.
7. What products are best for clearing up your pet’s GI offset?
There’s another product in fullscript that’s available to you. It’s a red ginseng and it’s made by EuroMedica. These guys pioneered the clinically important curcumin. It’s made from a specific plant that has very high level of the noble ginsenosides. I found this to be tremendously helpful. The upside is that because it is a red ginseng, it does not tend to make the animals hot. Each of these capsules is about 200 milligrams. I would start somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 milligrams per day and see if this is helpful. The nice thing was that I’ve had some products like that where I’ll feel great and then I’ll crash and burn later. This did not make me crash. And I’ve tried it on a couple of other client’s pets that were in the similar states and it did seem to help improve their feeling of well – being.
8. What are the vets checking when they flip the dog’s back foot over and waits to see how long it goes back?
Essentially, what the vet is doing ostensibly is to check for nervous function being normal. Like does the dog know that his standing on he’s knuckles? Now, the little trick about this for older pets that have a terrific amount of back pain, sometimes it is so painful for them to pull themselves up to be able to flip that foot over that they will stand there with the foot flipped. What I end up having to do in practice was take my arm and support the dog’s abdomen so that we can get a true reading of whether they truly had neurologic issues and separate that from chronic pain. It’s a clinical test for nerve function but there’s some codicils around there. If your older dog is standing there on its toes on top of its foot, it may simply be that there is sufficient back pain that it’s too uncomfortable. You may hear those toenails scraping with every step the dog takes in the house. I hope that’s helpful.
I think we got through everything else. Ladies, that is what I know. Until next week. Keep everybody safe, give them a big hug, and I look forward to seeing you all soon. Thanks!
