1. How many doses of melatonin can be given?
You could give up to 10 milligrams a day, so you could take them up to 5 milligrams twice daily. Now, in terms of composure for small dogs, in my hands VetriSCIENCE never worked that well. The theanine was sort of the active ingredient there. There was another product we used in practice called Composure Pro and the difference between the regular Composure is that the theanine doses is doubled and then they added in tryptophan. Frankly, this is what made the best sense of all.
2. Is Liquid Nutricalm better than Composure Pro?
Now, because Composure Pro are chews, they’ve got a bunch of cruds in them that is not useful especially when you’re trying to go through a rotation and elimination diet. The ingredients are barley, brewers, yeast, maltodextrin, and the chicken flavor which are all junk that is not going to be of much help. What I ended up using is Liquid Nutricalm. The tryptophan dose is kind of spot on for what we’re after as far as they’re 75 milligrams and 25 milligrams of theanine, and then also ashwagandha, which is an herb that helps you balance your system out a bit better, and some valerian root for more sedation, and a little bit of calcium and magnesium. For pets, the catnips can be sedating as well. This is in water fructose glycerin natural salmon flavor, so as long as salmon is not an issue, it’s not a big deal. The only downside is that it does have some xanthan gum in it which isn’t great, but frankly, for the majority of my patients that had food sensitivities they really did well with this. So, I encourage you to take a look at something like Liquid Nutricalm because you can work this into what you’re doing on a regular basis to help your dog sleep at night.
3. Is Rescue Remedy a good product?
Now, for rescue remedy, I would say that I think other have had better success but from seeing so many of my clients try it, I would say that maybe 1 in 100 dogs responded to it. If you can get a couple of drops of flower remedy on your pup’s tongue, that would be a great way to do it. You could also pull the lip out and drop a little bit in and see if that goes well. Also, you can rub it over his head or spray them, which the folks at Glacier Peaks Holistics were doing with their flower remedies – spraying it on both the dog and the person.
4. How do you use Rescue Remedy? And what are the other dental care tips?
You can just put the rescue remedy and that kind of stuff on a spoon and then let them lick it up and often they will so that’s a great idea. Now, so what do you do about dental care if you can’t use any of the flavorings… I wish they still made pantyhose because what I used to tell people is put a piece of pantyhose over your finger and then put that in the dog’s mouth physically just kind of doing stuff around. The other alternative would be something like a gauze square or any type of something like a microfiber cloth that’s got a little texture to it, and then you could use things like dampening it with a little bit of peroxide which actually helps to kill the bugs and see if that will go down without a hitch. Many of the dental products for dogs are usually something like calcium carbonate. Andrea has got a great formula but unfortunately, it does have chicken flavoring in it so I would try that – just some physical rubbing on there.
5. How can I ease my dog’s pain?
Suppose your dog did not do well with CBD because it either knocked her out or really didn’t do much for her. If she is having a super bad day and there’s no issues as far as horrible kidney enzyme elevations or things like that, I don’t think that’s a bad thing to use. If CBD is not an option, gabapentin has been helpful but veterinarians tend to go with a super high dose of gabapentin which sometimes can actually be sedating and that may be part of why you’re not seeing an increase in energy. Also, you can use Assissi loops. T – relief can make a huge difference as well, so those you can get to use topically and you can also get them as a tablet. You could just use the human ones and I would try something like a half a tablet twice a day. It’s an arnica-based thing that’s been very helpful. There’s a whole host of other things as far as an enzyme product that help reduce inflammation and then revisiting other anti – inflammatory products like curcumin and things of that nature.
I mentioned to you all that I was trying PEA for myself and I have to say that unfortunately, this was not very successful. For those of you that can’t remember, Discomfort Relief (Berry Flavor) is a version of Palmitoylethanolamide. I was trying this at 1200 milligrams twice daily which is the dose they had suggested in a couple of papers for people with fibromyalgia and unfortunately, it just was not very effective. So, I would definitely look at an Assissi loop. We do have them available on our website now. Additionally, the acupuncture is wonderful as well as massage. Now, on the website in the member’s area, there are videos on basic Tuina techniques which can be helpful.
6. Can seizures happen at night?
Generally, seizures happen when they are awake. They can have a seizure in the middle of the night but generally, it’s going to be something you can’t rouse them from. They’re literally dreaming and having some issues. If it’s something that’s changed recently and it’s become worse, it may be that there’s some sort of imbalance in the diet but a majority of these guys are just streaming which is easy.
7. What probiotic brand is recommendable?
Frankly, I’m not super impressed with Pro – Bio by Enzymedica – Daily Probiotic. Again, this is where I would use something like MegaSpore Biotic because it does not have any flavoring or anything like that and I’ve just seen it be a lot more effective. The other digestive enzyme that they suggested is the Pawgest which is not a bad product, but one thing I don’t like very much is it’s in maltodextrin which is a sugar that can create some inflammation in the GI tract so you’ve got a proprietary blend of protease acid, proteolyze, amylase, cellulase, hemicellulose, glucoamylase, lipase and all that good stuff.
Another option you might consider would be Zypan, which is standard processes’ products. Again, we’re in a proprietary blend but there’s betaine hydrochloride so we’re starting really from the top down. So, hydrochloric acid in the stomach, bovine pancreas, cytosol extract so we’re going to help support the pancreas to do a better job at making a lot of the pancreatic enzymes on its own, pancreatin which is sort of the active ingredients form the pancreas, ammonium chloride which will help balance the pH, and then bovine spleen and novine spleen. Again, this idea of like feeds like where the spleen is the min digestive organ in Chinese medicine is kind of where this idea of adding spleen comes from. I hope that is helpful.
8. What are the other ways to treat aches and pains?
The other thing you could consider doing is just doing good old – fashioned Epsom salt soaks. Let’s say you’ve got half a gallon of water and put in something like a quarter cup of Epsom salts and then just leave his feet in there if he has aches and pains in his feet, but if he won’t, the next best thing is to take a hand towel, soak it, squeeze out the majority of it so it’s still pretty damp but it’s not dripping all over the place and just wrap his feet up in that. He may think that it feels really good so that’ll draw a lot of that grossness out of there and then you can kind of use some dermacleanse or something like that or povidone or actually some of that CBD ointment but that’s such a lot of area to cover. Personally, I would just do soaks. You can add some povidone into that Epsom salt mix and kind of kill a few birds with one zone and see if that doesn’t help dry things up a bit.
I did mention last time that I’m going to do a presentation on medical cannabis on pets, but this one will be sort of less “sciency” if you will although not a ton less, and so I’m doing that tomorrow at 1 live and we’ll give that a go. Hopefully, I will be so much smarter tomorrow. At any rate, we will see you tomorrow afternoon. That’s what I have for you this week. Much love to you all I hope to see you tomorrow afternoon but if not, then next week. Until then give everybody a big hug and a kiss for me. Thanks!
