Vital Animal® § The Natural Path

Safe Heartworm Treatment

Will Falconer, DVM — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Your dog tested HW positive? Breath…

The emails I get tell me that many are being put into panic mode by a positive diagnosis of heartworm.

Here’s a recent example, though many sound similar to Dette’s:

My 11 lb. POMCHI was recently diagnosed with heartworm disease and he gave me a complete plan of treatment, costing $1,027 for 4 months. I began searching for home remedies. She’s 10 years old and I’m worried that the treatment is too intense for her. The only symptom she has is a dry cough when she gets excited, but she can stay in my room day and night and not cough at all. I agree with you that many of the meds used by Vets can have bad side affects. I started her on Doxycycline when she first started coughing and she stopped after 1 week, so I thought it was just slight chest congestion and stopped the Doxycycline. She began coughing again a week later, and her test showed positive for H.W. Disease. I put her back on the Doxycycline and 1/2 t. Apple Cider Vinegar in her water. What else can I do to treat her? I’ve been keeping her inside, but she really wants to go out and gets excited when we go near the back door near the fenced back yard. — Dette, Mobile AL

Keeping her inside? Why?

Read on…

Enter the poison (and the fear)

My conventional vet colleagues are certain there is but one option to treat a heartworm positive dog.

It’s an injectable arsenic drug called melarsomine (brand names Immiticide or Diroban)

It’s mode of action?

Poison those buggers, and quick!

It’s often combined with a long course of an antibiotic of the tetracycline class.

You know what antibiotics do to the microbiome, right?

Not animal friendly, nor of course is arsenic, used for ages to poison people secretly.

Most dog owners feel compelled to start this treatment right away, fearing for their dog’s life.

That fear may be aided by a well placed jar of a real dog’s heart in formalin, sliced partly open to reveal a slew of long spaghetti-like worms.

(We had one in the mixed practice I joined upon graduation. I only learned many years later that those jars were supplied by pharma, and the dogs were often Mexican street dogs, nothing like the pampered pooch whose owner was being pushed into toxic heartworm prevention. But I digress.)

Fear is a potent tool to affect behavior. If you find yourself in that state in a veterinary clinic, my best advice is to take a deep breath and exhale slowly with words to this effect:

Thanks for your counsel and your diagnosis. We’d like to take some time to explore all our options. We’ll let you know if we opt for your recommended treatment.

Lock up is part of their treatment

When this treatment plan is proposed, you’ll be told not only of its expense, but also warned that you’ll need to crate your dog for a long period of time. Or, at least impose “exercise restriction.”

Why?

Well, when you hammer these adult worms with arsenic, they die.

That’s good, right?

Well, yes and no.

When they are poisoned, they die rather suddenly. That means pieces of the dead worms are suddenly floating around in the blood vessels and can plug them, as you might imagine.

That could mean a stroke if that’s in the brain. It could mean heart or other tissue damage depending on the unlucky location of the worm fragment plugging up the works.

The $40 word for this: embolism.

Safer Options for Heartworm Treatment

First, let’s be sure we’re on the same page.

This article is about treating a dog who’s been diagnosed with heartworm.

That means some heartworm adults (the spaghetti looking scary things), are in your dog’s heart, and they have left “tracks” in the blood, either the microscopic larvae or some antigens from the females.

Your vet read these tracks and gave you his fear inducing diagnosis.

Next, if it’s heartworm prevention you’re after, your conventional veterinarian and I have very different approaches (as you may have come to expect, if you’ve been following my work for any amount of time).

The short version is that Dr. WhiteCoat provides a plethora of pesticides while I have a natural approach that’s been successful for decades. You can explore more about that here.

Okay, on to your safer treatment options.

There are two that I’ve seen and/or used over my decades of practice.

Constitutionally prescribed homeopathy, provided by a qualified homeopathic vet. This is what I used for years, with 95% success.
An herbal approach. This I’ve never used, but have heard some reports that it works.

The Best First

The best approach is to hire a homeopathic vet who’s trained in curing chronic disease.

It’s a given that any dog who “allows” parasites to be present has some chronic disease that’s feeding her susceptibility to worms.

It’s the same throughout Nature:

the unhealthy crops (in depleted soil) are beset with weeds
the unhealthy dog ear gets invaded by yeasts and bacteria
the “flea magnet” in your pack is old Fluffy, who’s always had more health challenges

The homeopathic approach takes appointments, usually monthly, where your homeopathic vet chooses remedies that fit your dog (no one remedy fits all) and usually in six months, the test will have gone negative.

I did this in practice with a 95% success rate.

It’s not “finding a heartworm remedy,” but rather treating your individual dog based on how she’s showing her symptoms, not only of HW, but in general.

Is she also an itchy dog?
Or a wildly aggressive or fearful dog?
Has she a history of recurring illness that you can describe?
What symptoms does she repeatedly or commonly show?

All these things are part of constitutional homeopathic treatment.

As I no longer take new patients, I explain how to find a qualified homeopathic vet to do this in my video here.

The advantages of this approach are: you end up with a very healthy dog who’s less likely to get any parasites for some time.

Resistance to all disease is heightened significantly.

And, like all homeopathic treatments, this is 100% non-toxic.

(If you want to better understand what is and isn’t homeopathy, here’s a great course I made)

Attention Homeopathic Colleagues: YOU CAN DO THIS!

If you are on my select list like I outline in the video linked above, it means you’re already very qualified to do this work.

You’ve cured (or greatly improved) animals with chronic disease.
Homeopathy is your main medicine, and constitutional treatment is your mainstay.
Ideally, you offer telephone consultations (as there are just too few of us to be everywhere)

As you well know, the name of the disease means next to nothing, right? You’ll be treating the patient, not the disease.

So, fear not: even if you’ve never treated a HW positive dog, your approach is the same as treating any other chronic disease.

For more info about my experience and approach, I’ll refer you to the AVH site, where they should have past meetings available to you. I presented on this in 2014 in Portland, when the AVH + AHVMA meeting were there simultaneously. If you’re an AVH member, you can view at least the notes from my lecture. Perhaps there’s a video as well.

The Herbal Approach

A worm focused approach has been working for people, I’m told.

A supplement is out there on the internet called HWF (the name has changed now and then, but a search should find this in association with the word “heartworm” or “heart worm.”)

This is cheaper and doesn’t get your dog any healthier or more resistant, it just attacks the worm with herbs.

I have no experience with it and don’t recommend it, but I’m passing it on from others’ experiences they’ve mentioned to me.

No Lock Up Needed

As neither approach causes a sudden death of the worms (well, I can truly only speak to the homeopathic approach, remember: I’ve never used herbs for this), exercise and normal activity is just fine.

When homeopathic prescribing “wakes up” the immune system to realize there’s an invader, the innate intelligence we homeopaths call the vital force moves intelligently against the worms.

They are attacked, digested, and eliminated likely via the lymph rather that suddenly breaking up and showering the blood vessels with chunks.

I never once saw anything remotely suggesting embolism (clots) in my patients who were treated by this “Whole Dog” approach.

Of course, it would work for cats as well, not the normal host for this parasite, but it’s been seen in this species as well as ferrets on occasion.

Time: Usually on Your Side

My experience, living in Texas but taking patients all over the country, was that a heartworm positive dog is rarely on “death’s doorstep.”

Most are free of symptoms but just have a positive test, meaning there could be three worms or 30, but the dog is living normally with the parasite present.

I speak more about this in my ebook/course called “Vital Animals Don’t Get Heartworms! The Drug-Free Prevention Program That Works”.

The symptoms of a dog more seriously affected are typically:

Exercise intolerance (Sadie used to run with you, but now flags before she used to)
A low level cough
Perhaps a difficulty breathing in more advanced cases

As I pointed out in my lecture, 90% of my patients had none of these. They merely had a positive test.

So, don’t let fear propel you into a toxic treatment or make you feel like you need to make a quick decision if you’re presented with,

“Your dog has heartworm.”

That may be true, but you’ve got time to weigh your options and “choose your poison” (or none, of course).

Let us know in the comments if you’ve had a scary diagnosis like this and what you did.

#42: Dr. Janet Roark: Essential Oils WORK

Will Falconer, DVM — Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Dr. Janet Roark rightly calls herself the Essential Oil Vet.

Newly graduated from vet school, she found herself in a deeply stressed state.

Migraine headaches, classified by the allopaths as “ice pick migraines” (ouch!) forced her to take time off she didn’t want to take.

Newly graduated, in a new practice, new work load, and chronic migraines accompanied with depression that drugs weren’t helping - what was she to do?

One day, she found herself without drugs, suffering a crushing migraine, and all she had with her was a small tube of essential oils she’d been given by a helpful friend.

In short order after topically applying the oils to her temples and back of her neck, the good doctor experienced a revolutionary resolution of her pain and suffering.

In mere minutes, the migraine lifted. No drug had ever come close to bringing this kind of relief.

“If it worked this fast and this amazingly on me (when the drugs did not), imagine what it could do in my animal patients,” thought Dr. Roark!

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Listen up as we explore her transformation, her shift in practice, and her happy results with a wide variety of animal patients.

Links for this episode

Your most timely link, if you’re reading this before Saturday, 20 May, is this one: Learn EO’s from Dr. Roark’s LIVE Workshop

To find Dr. Roark online:

Website: Essentialoilvet.com

Facebook: facebook.com/eodvm

Instagram: instagram.com/essentialoilvet

Thanks for listening!

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#41 Dr. Rob Silver, Medicinal Mushrooms

Will Falconer, DVM — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 09:27:04 GMT

Dr. Rob Silver has worn many hats in his holistic career, including obviously as a practicing veterinarian of four decades, but also he’s an author, CBD/cannabis expert, supplement formulator, and lately, medicinal mushroom expert.

Join us as we discuss the vast kingdom of mushrooms and some of their amazing health properties.

Rob saw early successes with cases of cancer, but discovered by further study that mushrooms are far from a “one trick pony.”

From their calming influence, to curing nervous disorders, to boosting immunity, and adding energy, mushrooms are really a rich poly-pharmacy unto themselves.

The mushroom family even shares about 30% of our DNA as humans!

We discuss Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, Reishi, psilocybin, and how even ordinary store bought button mushrooms are good for us in many ways.

The exciting news is that Rob is bringing his formulating knowledge for animals to a company that’s been making very pure 100%. organic mushroom products for people for years.

Links for this episode

You can find Dr. Rob Silver at his website, WellPetDispensary, where he’ll help you decide if medicinal mushrooms are a fit for your animal.

In addition, his newest offering on 100% organic, high quality mushroom supplements is found at RealMushrooms. You’ll find a great selection of human use purified mushrooms there as well as their budding pet line Dr. Silver has headed up.

Holy Moly! 25% off!

I just learned that Real Mushrooms is giving a very generous 25% your first order. Here’s the link to shop there, not only for pets but for you and the humans you love and care about.

Thanks for listening!

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Vital Animal Podcast so you don’t miss a single episode.

Are you finding value from this podcast? Want to help spread the word? Take a moment to leave us an honest review on Apple Podcasts!

And those little buttons below make it easy to SHARE!

Thanks!

Let us know in the comments below if you’ve had experiences yourself or with your animals by using mushrooms.

Episode 41 Dr. Rob Silver, Medicinal Mushrooms

Intro: If you want a wildly healthy, naturally disease resistant pet who turns heads and starts conversations with awestruck onlookers, you're right where you belong. This is the Vital Animal Podcast with your host homeopathic veterinarian. Dr. Will Falconer

Will Falconer, DVM: [00:00:00] Welcome to our latest episode of the Vital Animal Podcast. So glad you've joined us. I have a very special guest on board today, a colleague of mine from way back when we both struck out into the holistic field back in the eighties. I have Dr. Rob Silver, who is in Colorado and has taken an interest in all things holistic for a lot of years, and now is on to talk about medicinal mushrooms with us.

Welcome, Rob!.

Rob Silver, DVM: Thanks for having me.

Will Falconer, DVM: So tell us a little bit about your background, Rob. I know you and I have parallel stories, but when did you just make the leap into holistic medicine and how has that led you to where you are now?

Rob Silver, DVM: I graduated vet school in 1982 and I thought that I knew everything that I would ever need to do battle with the diseases of the world of our pets and our animals and and the first year or two I was busy remembering everything I had learned and putting it to good use. But [00:01:00] four or five years into it, I started finding myself frustrated, frustrated with the inadequacy of the tools I had been given in vet school to deal with some of these very challenging chronic diseases. Things like diabetes and cancer and autoimmune disease, and Cushing's disease, and all these. Complicated diseases. So that's when I started looking for other answers and I began looking at diet, nutrition.

I found Dr. Pitcairn's book and copied his recipes and shared them with my clients and did nothing else but that. And even the and now we look at some of those recipes as being very carbohydrate laden, much too high in carbohydrates, but my patients did really well, which was great for me.

Cause it gave me that kinda motivation that if diet is that advantageous to help my patients heal, what else is out there? And I'm a big backpacker. Big backpacker and survivalist. So the, and so I was really, I'd already had learned quite a bit about [00:02:00] identifying herbs that are edible for survivalism.

So I started looking at herbs and in vet school we had a poisonous plants class for large animals. And so everything kinda meshed together. When you realize that the difference between a poison and a drug is dosage and for a homeopath, I'm sure you certainly appreciate that as well.

So then things just started adding up. I started making enough money in my practice I could afford to take the acupuncture training and some other trainings and added those on and here we are 40 years later. It's crazy that so much time has passed. It just seems like just flashing by.

Will Falconer, DVM: And the parallel with Pitcairn's book and I and you are, is striking. I had the same experience. I didn't know what I was gonna offer, but I knew I wanted to go down a holistic path. And like you, those recipes were a God send. Exactly. Even boiling the oats and all that stuff and mixing it with raw meat and adding the healthy powder, I saw [00:03:00] great responses and I went, okay, I'm inspired.

There's gotta be a lot we can do that's non-drug oriented and still get great results in our animals.

Rob Silver, DVM: Absolutely. I still use his model for a diet. When I'm teaching people to do diets, I just use different nutrient profiles depending on what we need to do with that given patient. So yeah, and he's, his legacy lives on. He's still thriving. I think he just had his, I don't know how many years of homeopathy courses he's been teaching, but I know Cindy Lankenau just went to the most recent one like last month or so. So he's still vi he's still vibrant himself, isn't he?

Will Falconer, DVM: Let's talk mushrooms. What an interesting subject. I know you, you are also an expert in C B D and the the derivatives of the plants from that whole realm. But what got you specifically interested in mushrooms? I. [00:04:00] Years and years ago, we probably sat in on the same lecture at some point at the AHVMA and heard people talking about muco polysaccharides and how the Chinese were curing cancer and all these diseases with mushroom related products.

What's your path that got you down there?

Rob Silver, DVM: In my practice of integrative medicine, I found myself with a lot of cancer cases, which I'm sure probably a lot of integrative practitioners do, and as I'm looking for more and more tools to deal with cancer, it seems every road leads to mushrooms when it comes to cancer.

So I started using mushrooms for cancer. I started getting some decent results. I was working with a company that hired me to develop products for them that were supplements, that were herbs, that were nutraceuticals. And so that in part, sparked my interest because every, cause I had to come up with three or four new products every year with exciting new ingredients.

And so every time I'd make a new product, [00:05:00] I would become an expert on the ingredients that were in that product. It was crazy, but it was really almost like a residency in this stuff, cause I really, I, I really did learn a lot. And when CBD became, when cannabis became more legal and CBD became very popular, I started working in that realm with this company and learned quite a bit.

So I started getting some what appeared to be clinical successes using mushrooms and that's what really got my interest. But most of my interest for the last eight years has been on CBD.

There's been just so much to learn about it and so much to teach and it's is such a very effective remedy. But it was three years ago that I started to get interested in mushrooms, as it seemed like the rest of the world was also waking up to the value of mushrooms.

And since then I've really become totally enamored of them because what I thought was just a one trick [00:06:00] pony with mushrooms that they would be good for cancer. That's great. Alright.

So CBDs gotten to be old hat these days, and I was, I've been looking for a new area of interest and mushrooms have really gained a lot of interest with the public all the way from the the, mycelial beds that underlay our forests that are worldwide what they call them, wood wide webs of communication and transferring nutrients, to the whole mushroom cultivation industry, to this fascination with mushroom images and mushroom furniture, and mushroom socks and mushroom coffee, as you and I discussed earlier.

So what I found about in my study with mushrooms is that they have so many properties that it, and the properties are based on not just their beta glucan compounds, which are the muco polysaccharides that you're [00:07:00] referring to. But mushrooms, just like so many plants, and mushrooms aren't plants by the way, but mushrooms, just like plants, ah, have these terpenes in them.

And we're used to the aromatic terpenes that you might find in lemon or in mint or lavender which are, they're called monoterpenes. They're small molecules. They're very volatile. If you heat that plant too much, you're gonna drive it off. Mushroom terpenes are much larger.

They're like five isoprene units. They're called triterpenes and di terpenes and sesquiterpenes, and these larger terpenes aren't volatile. So when you do a hot water extract Of your dried mushroom powder in order to break down the cell wall to deliver the goods, the beta glucans, ah, you don't remove the terpenes with the heat.

So it's these terpenes that will mate with membrane receptors in your brain to create a sense of calmness. There's a mushroom called Reishi or Ganoderma [00:08:00] lingzhi,, and Reishi is used as a meditation. By Zen Masters because it creates this settling and grounding effect. Many people take Reishi at night to help with sleep.

Reishi has has some of the strongest terpenes of any mushroom. They have the highest percentage of terpenes, and that's what makes Reishi as bitter as it is. But these terpenes have different expressions in different mushrooms. There's another mushroom called Lion's Mane, and if you believe in the doctrine of signatures, which is that, you know when a natural substance looks like something, it may actually be able to treat that, Lion's Mane looks like a brain.

And what we've learned is that the terpenes that are found in Lion's Mane have a beneficial effect on on nervous tissue. If there's injury or trauma, it helps them to repair and rebuild. It helps with. It's the most popular mushroom in the [00:09:00] in North America these days because it also has had a beneficial impact on memory.

They're actually publishing some studies with Lions Mane and Alzheimer's showing mild Alzheimer's showing some benefits to its use. And with our patients, with our dogs and our cats, we're seeing a lot of senile. geriatric senility in our older dogs and to a lesser extent in our older cats, they call this canine cognitive disorder in the dogs.

And we've been anecdotally cuz there's no studies yet, but we've been hearing just glowing reports from veterinarians who are using our mushrooms in some of their patients that are these elderly patients that get so confused, uhhuh, they can't find the dog door and aren't sure what time. Time they're being fed and they're starting to actually become better members of the family because of these terpenes that are found in the Lion's Mane mushroom.

So yeah, there the study of mu, I thought the cannabis was [00:10:00] fascinating because this one plant would have a hundred different molecules that are called cannabinoids, like THC and C, B, D, and it would also over 200 terpenes have been measured in cannabis as well as flavonoids. I thought, whoa, this plant a polypharmacy in and of itself.

Turns out mushrooms, each mushroom is like a cannabis in and unto in unto itself. Cause each mushroom has that same polypharmacy complexity, but is a little bit different. So I'm having so much learning more about all these individual compounds that are in these mushrooms or in these plants, and how they interface with our biological systems that we have as humans or as animals or as other species on this spot.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, it is. And I think now, how many of the the younger generations have depression and autoimmune disease? I'm talking about humans. Not only our animal world, but [00:11:00] how many are suffering depression. Kids are on drugs from an early age, ADHD, all that stuff.

Think of the potential in our own species for all these mushrooms. That's amazing.

Rob Silver, DVM: Absolutely. And I'm happy to see that they're becoming very popular. Even my 18 year old daughter is told to put some lion's man in her mache tea. Oh, cool. To help her with her studies. So it's very cool seeing that stuff happening. Yeah. Especially right close to home.

Yeah. And there's a lot of mushrooms. There's Cordyceps mushroom you've heard of, perhaps you've heard of the Cordyceps mushroom. You're, you said you're gonna be traveling up towards Tibet and that's where the Cordyceps mushroom is grows wild. It's the caterpillar mushroom, the spore. From the Cordyceps fungus will infect a caterpillar as it goes into the pupa state where it buries into the ground, and then it basically kills the caterpillar by growing.

[00:12:00] The mycelium grows through the caterpillar, and then when it's springtime and they're ready to send up their little mushroom sprouts so they can release their spores to detect more caterpillars, that's when the wild crafters, crawling on their hands and knees up in Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan looking for these little mushrooms coming up because it's reputed to be an aphrodisiac.

So it's very, it's very expensive to buy the wildcrafted caterpillar Cordyceps goes for 15 to $20,000 a kilogram. Yeah. Crazy. Now we can cultivate it on rice and separate it from the rice when we harvest it. And so we don't have to sacrifice any caterpillar lives or eat caterpillar, eat mycelium growing caterpillars.

It's interesting because the cultivated strain of this Cordyceps actually has, is stronger in many of these active ingredients. They have [00:13:00] something in the Cordyceps mushroom called cordyceptin, which is an analog of a what's called a nucleoside, which is something that's found in DNA. And when the body breaks down the dna, these nucleosides signal certain receptors. Well, the Cordyceps looks just like at the adenosine nucleoside but it's just one molecule different. So what happens is it binds to the adenosine receptor, which is responsible for lowering the level of ATP or energy in the body and inhibits it. And guess what else, does the same thing on the adenosine receptor. Caffeine. So Cordyceps works like caffeine in terms of creating energy in the body, but like all mushrooms, it has a grounding and separate effect instead of a jittery effect.

So I took, I take my Cordyceps in my tea in the morning because it's a great morning drink like that. It's good for energy and Cordyceps is probably the tastiest of all mushrooms. [00:14:00] Cordyceps is related to tr, to truffles and morels and of all the dried mushrooms out there, I think Cordyceps is most likely to be accepted by a cat just as it is, because it is, it tastes, to me, it tastes a little bit like toast.

Seriously. But what's really cool about it, other than being tasty for cats, is that it also supports the health of the kidney. And we know that cats have that as a big fault in their DNA. And so to get a cat on Cordyceps early on would be supportive.

All mushrooms are adaptogens. Yes. They help our bodies adapt to stress. They're very safe to use. They're basically superfoods, they're functional foods generally recognized safe by the FDA. So giving a kitty cat Cordyceps from the very beginning can help to protect and provide them with good, healthy kidney function so that later in life they aren't doomed to die from chronic kidney [00:15:00] disease.

So it's fascinating. The, these, the differences in these mushrooms is just it's really bringing out the nerd in me.,

Will Falconer, DVM: I remember Cordyceps also getting high praise for immune strengthening. I remember it being mixed into transfer factor products. So I think we might even have it in ours, I can't remember, but it got high praise as a, as an immune booster.

So lots of applications.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yes. It's, all mushrooms contain these beta glucans because beta glucans are part of the structure of the fungal cell wall and the reason why the beta glucans are so good for immune problems is that early on, animals and fungi both evolve from the same single celled organism.

Fungi and animals contain a, this 30% similar DNA. We actually shared DNA with [00:16:00] fungi and I know it's crazy. And some of the worst pathogens in the world, right? Disease-causing agents are fungi. They're the hardest diseases to treat, and I think one reason is because we share DNA.

At the same time, mushrooms and certain fungi are incredible as far as their ability to provide us with healing properties. Even many drugs that we use today are derived right from fungi. Penicillin, streptomycin, cyclo, cyclosporine, and look at our foods. What would we do without yeast, which are fungi as well. Where would we get our bread, our cheese, our wine, our beer?

Yeah. Yeah. Our kombucha. We it would be a pretty dead world. Yeah. Without our friends, the fungi. So the immune system of animals learned very early on in the evolutionary process to detect the shape of the cell wall, of the fungus, which shape is a beta glucan. That's why [00:17:00] beta glucans are so good at stimulating the immune system because they're signaling our ancestral immune system that a fungus is among us, and it poses a pathogenic challenge.

So all mushrooms has the same quality.

Will Falconer, DVM: Let me, lemme just make sure I'm understanding this. The immune function is boosted because the organism, the mammal, is seeing the mushroom as potentially a threat? Interesting.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yes, exactly. Yeah. There's almost a little bit of homeopathy in that, isn't there when you think about some hor, some hormesis.

Yeah. And so that's, and so not only that, what we've also learned is that you can actually, just like you train a muscle Yes. You can train the immune system, and by taking the beta glucans daily for a long period of time, your immune system becomes stronger. Even if you stop using the mushroom for a week or two or a month, your immune system still has that memory.

Now it's best to keep at it, of course[00:18:00] depending know, cuz life is full of many challenges, especially immune challenges. But it's, yeah. This, these are some of the fascinating facts that have just really turned me on about mushrooms that I like to share with people because they are they're, it's more than just a shroom it's more than just a good meal.

It's more than just a medicine. It's really an integral part of our planet.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah. I was mentioning in my email to you that Paul Stamets, who I'm sure you've run into, is this stomper around the woods, mycologist in the northwest, and he's brought to light the fact that forests, entire forest communicate by the mycelium that are running through the soil for miles between these trees. How fascinating is that?

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah. I have, we have to credit Paul really, he's a visionary and he really has brought the value of mushrooms to the entire planet. I don't know if you've, I think I saw his [00:19:00] film on there. Yeah, it's a, where you are in India. Yes. Did you see? Yeah. "Fantastic Fungi." Terrific. He's really a mover shaker.

I look forward someday to actually meet him in person. He's truly one of those people that you'd like. I'd like to have that experience.

Will Falconer, DVM: So how interesting that we've got, like you say, the parallels with homeopathy are there. We've got poisons that are some of our greatest homeopathic remedies, mercury, and the toxins from a the bushmaster snake called Lachesis, that cure deep-seated diseases.

And the fungi also have these bad actors who will kill you one bite. If you don't, if you don't know your mushroom picking and you pick something that's wrong you're gonna be in trouble.

Rob Silver, DVM: One of the questions you asked me in your email was about foraging wild mushrooms and I have to say and feeding them to your pet. [00:20:00] I have to say I, I strongly recommend against that. I think unless really know what you're doing.

And there's a whole movement now, at least here in North America there's, it's like a hobby. People get together and they do mushroom foraging. They meet on a weekend at some park somewhere, and they go with an expert who identifies the mushrooms and they gather and they collect the edible mushrooms and take them home and have a big meal with them. So it's a whole thing, mushroom foraging and you really need to know what you're picking before you ingest it.

That's why I think for daily use, not for culinary use but for daily use to improve your immune system function, improve other functions within the body as a standardized superfood, I think you're really better off using mushrooms that have been, ide have been commercially identified and processed to extract their good qualities and have been packaged in a way that makes it consistent, dose to [00:21:00] dose. Every day you're taking a similar amount, which would be an effective amount.

Will Falconer, DVM: That makes perfect sense.

Rob Silver, DVM: If you're gonna find wild mushrooms, remember, mushrooms are 90% water. So just imagine how many mushrooms you have to eat to get a therapeutic amount of beta glucans.

And cause you're you, you can't, you really shouldn't eat mushrooms raw. Some mushrooms have mildly toxic principles that once they're cooked, the toxic principle is gone. Plus, unless you cook the mushroom at least 15 minutes and more likely an hour and. Putting 'em in soups and stews is the better way to do it and cutting them down into smaller pieces so they're more digestible.

But you really need to cook the mushroom and get it to break down that cell wall so you can access all the good that's in it, and I think eating mushrooms is great. If you know what you're doing, recommend it. mushrooms, If you know what [00:22:00] you're doing.

The fiber in mushrooms is really healthy for the microbiome, which everyone's talking about these days is being the center of our soul, the center of our health and that's because the beta glucans, which are non-digestible, turn out to be food for the microbiome.

As well as another fiber source in mushrooms that's called chitin. We're familiar with chitin cuz that makes the hard exoskeleton in crustaceans like crabs and lobsters, uhhuh, and it's a source of glucosamine. But if you've ever chew if you ever eaten a mushroom, a real mushroom, I'm sure you have.

They get a little slimy when you chew on 'em, and some people hate that. I understand that. But the sliminess is actually your saliva and you're chewing bringing out the chitin, because chitin is a precursor to glucosamine and glucosamine is slippery, and so it's the chitin actually that when you eat it, it gets digested by your bowel bacteria, [00:23:00] which convert it to a form of glucosamine called N- acetyl D glucosamine, which is one nutraceutical we look at using for things like colitis, Crohn's, I B D, ulcerative colitis. There's some studies showing it's very supportive of the inflamed connective tissue in the bowel, so it helps to restore integrity, helps to reduce leaky gut. And it's there, right there in mushrooms, so that's a good reason to eat an edible mushroom.

Once it's been properly identified, because it does have good benefit for the microbiome.

Will Falconer, DVM: It reminds me, I'm gonna grab some button mushrooms here. We've got 'em available to us, and just add 'em back into my diet. It's been a while and gut issues have been a challenge for me. The wrong side of mycology has been candida for a lot of people, myself included overgrowth of candida in the gut.

So that, that reminds me to go get back on some mushrooms.

Rob Silver, DVM: Okay. That brings up two things. [00:24:00] First of all, at first I kind laughed at button mushrooms, right? I'm learning about these really exotic mushrooms like Maitake and Reishi and Cordyceps, God, it grows in caterpillars. Turns out, button mushrooms are just as healing and healthy and medicinal as any other mushroom.

In some cases, maybe even better. They're known to have a special antioxidant that's unique to mushrooms, similar to glutathione called Ergothioneine and then and so yeah. So I definitely encourage you to eat those button mushrooms. And when the button mushrooms get bigger, they crimini when they get even bigger, they call 'em portobello.

All that species of Agraricus bisporus yeah, that's something. Yeah. And there's probably about five or six different species of the Agaricus, all of which are very similar, all of which are very healthy.

But you also asked me a question on your email that I thought would be fun to answer because it also speaks to homeopathy and the microdose. Like cures [00:25:00] like, right?

Yep. That's in homeopathy. If you have a fungal infection or a candida overgrowth,

Will Falconer, DVM: Ah, I know where you're going…, what would you treat with? Mushrooms are gonna be a big help for that, aren't they?

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah they are cuz they're gonna support the microbiome, which is crucial in terms of reversing candida.

They're going to stimulate all the dendritic and immune cells in the bowel to get activated to deal with pathogens. I don't, I'm not saying a mushroom alone is gonna solve your problem because there's probably some intrinsic issues with your own system that are part of this, plus the environment you're in may keep feeding it for all I know.

But it's certainly a good place to start. Yeah, cool. I think looking at those things.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah it's it makes perfect sense to me. And I know people have done various is it mushrooms or is it. , there's some beneficial that are common in people. [00:26:00] There's whole hosts of places like on Reddit that people are fighting candida, lifelong candida.

Luckily I've got it pretty well in control. Yeah. But it hasn't helped in India, I'll get periodically Giardia and that just throws everything off kilter. And then the bowel population changes and I get an overgrowth of candida, probably secondary to that sometimes. So that's very prevalent here. So I have to watch myself.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah, I'm sorry. There's nothing worse than those kinds of GI issues. I have my own sensitive stomach and I'm in a fairly a different kind of place, but I still, there still are certain foods that just set me off, yeah. I think it's more digestive function and maybe enzymes versus pathogen.

Will Falconer, DVM: Yeah, that makes sense as well.

Rob, one of the, one of the things that I think people need to hear about is that, How have you pursued getting these things into [00:27:00] animals and getting them into a titered dose and I think you've associated with a Canadian company that I want to hear about.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah let me tell you what I've been doing about that. Thank you for asking that question. Yeah, so I'm working as Chief Veterinary Officer for a Canadian company called Real Mushrooms, and they are cultivators of U S D A certified organic mushrooms. They grow them in China, but under those standards. They extract them and they purify them.

And then they package them into into capsules and bulk pouches. And they've been selling them for humans for the last eight years. About a year and a half ago, two years ago, I approached them and suggested they hire me and let me create a pet product line with mushrooms and they agreed they've, my reputation preceded me.

Cool. And they were really excited about that. So it's slow going. [00:28:00] What I've done initially was take their products, they had encapsulated for human use in 500 milligram capsules and reduce them to 300 milligram capsules and label them for pets, dosing for pets.

I've made two different soft chews. One that uses the calming properties of mushrooms, blended with tryptophan and calming herbs. We call it Relaxed Mushroom Chews. They work really well to help settle the animal work even better when you combine them with CBD. And then we made another one called Mushroom Immune Juice that has five different mushrooms.

But I'm on I'm in the process of developing more products. I've got one coming out soon that's gonna be like a daily topper for dogs, food that has a little bit of everything including probiotics and prebiotics and postbiotics.

What I think I really brought to this company was an algorithm for dosing their mushrooms. And this was derived from some work I had done early on with beta glucans. I worked with the [00:29:00] beta-Glucan chemist when I originally worked with the company RX Vitamins, with their Beta Glucan product. He let me know that when you dose for beta glucans, that there's basically three different dosing tiers that you use.

You use a very low dosing tier if it's just everyday superfood wellness type of a dosage. You use a moderate level when you're dealing with more moderate conditions, let's say we wanna use Lion's Mane for memory. Let's say we wanna take Cordyceps for energy. Let's say we wanna take Reishi to kinda settle and ground us to meditate. We'd use this moderate level.

And then when you get to the bigger need like cancer, then it's the severe level.

So those numbers using kilograms would be 2.5 mgs per kg per day of beta glucans for wellness. Five mgs per kg per day of beta glucans for moderate need, and then basically for cancer, 10 to 30 [00:30:00] mgs per kg per day of beta .

What's unique though about Real Mushrooms,, this company, is that every single product they standardize and they put on the label what their beta glucan content is, and they standardize them. So the bottles they're producing this year have the same potency as the bottles are gonna produce next year.

So it's like the perfect product for a practitioner to use if he's trying to dose it in patients. And it's also the perfect product for a person to use for their pet or for themselves because it's consistent. That's so consistent from one bottle. Next.

Will Falconer, DVM: The CBD world was the opposite of that. It is probably still is.

You were close to that. There was the Wild West in terms of what you got in the bottle. It could say one thing and have something completely different. No standards, yada. Yeah, so I love this approach.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah. Yeah. the CBD world is still pretty squirrely. It's, the FDA just refuses to [00:31:00] regulate it, and without regulation, it is the wild west.

Absolutely. And I'm not keen on regulation, but I think, yeah, they need some boundaries out there.

So mushrooms, they're legal, unless we're talking about psilocybin and psilocybin, we're starting to see actually legalized in certain municipalities. I'm in Colorado, it's actually decriminalized in Colorado. It's been decriminalized in Oregon and Washington state.

So we're starting to see a lot of initiatives towards looking at how we can use the psilocybin medicinally, cuz they found this really seems to be good for generalized anxiety for severe depression, for PTSD, for conditions like that.

We have no idea what effect it would have on our animals.

Yeah. I'm a little nervous about trying it. My own dog Ollie has, he's a rescue dog. He's got bad ptsd. I considered trying it on him. I'm just, I don't know. I'm right. Above all, do no harm so I'm wait to hear someone else.

Will Falconer, DVM: You're, it's gonna be the researcher on that one, I think.

I know [00:32:00] the little bit I've read about it, they're using micro doses in these people, that they're trying to help humans with PTSD, et cetera, et cetera. Just tiny doses. So I wonder if it's even lower than the scale that you mentioned for this particular mushroom,

Rob Silver, DVM: I'm sure it's is. I'm actually cultivating it myself here in the house, but I'm having problems with the cultivation and keep getting contamination and I don't have a kinda a standardized grow that I can feel comfortable with. So I'm working on that first, try to create know, something that's standardized, but yeah, Ollie will probably experience it.

And we'll try a low dose daily, see what that does. See if he wags his tail more. He's a Labrador, so they're so needy. At the same time, he has PTSD, so he to be…(lost).

We'll see. He, if I ask him to get up on my bed, he won't get up on my bed, but when I leave the room, he gets up on the bed, yeah. [00:33:00] He's a dog. He's a dog.

Will Falconer, DVM: Where do you think his PTSD came from? Do you know the history?

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah, I do. He was found in Alvin, Texas, which is about 30 miles south of Houston as a stray at three months of age with a dislocated hip and broken leg.

So I don't know what happened, whether it was a big man that kicked him or he went, ran out in the road and got hit by a truck or what the deal is. But whatever it is, indelible mark on his psyche and sweet, sweet. Sweet dog. Yeah. Labs. I'm a lab aholic. He's a great dog, but and with time I'm giving him, I'm treating him with love and lots of love and lots of physical love as well.

Just touching him, rubbing him. He's, he likes the rubs. He's got an FHO in one hip and that's kind sore. That muscle gets sore after a while. So I massage him and he enjoys that and he likes his mushrooms. The Lion's Ma ne and Reishi seem to be a good combo for him, and I've got him on my CBD formula.

[00:34:00] Cool. So he's a happy camper even though he's, even though he's got some stress in him.

Will Falconer, DVM: Holler If I can help him with homeopathy. There, there comes a remedy to mind just talking about him. Is he a real sensitive guy? Does he know when a thunderstorm is coming way before you do? Yeah. You might read up on phosphorus. Ah-huh. Ah-huh. He doesn't even like the wind. Yeah. Read. Read phosphorus. Oh, okay. Is that also for. Yeah thunder, phobia. Car rides are difficult for 'em. They sometimes get nauseous in the car. There's just the most sensitive of the animals, they know our emotions. The phosphorous cats in my clinic my clinic was just a more of a visiting office, and then I had remedies in the back. And I'd be taking the history of the cat and I'd finally go, "Ah, I know the remedy I'm gonna give this cat." And the cat was out and about and as soon as I had that thought, this cat would go behind the bookcase in the furthest corner that it could [00:35:00] get into and hide before I even got up outta my chair to get the remedy.

And I went, ah, that's confirmation. This guy, this is a phosphorus kitty. He knew my intention before I even executed.

Rob Silver, DVM: What potency would you use, 30C,?

No, he's probably, he's a fairly hale and healthy guy. How old is he? He's 10. Okay. I probably give a 200 C single dose. Yeah. See where you go. Okay.

Yeah. And let me know. I'm always happy to hear outcomes and moderate things if I need to.

Now that we've connected, you're stuck with me.

Will Falconer, DVM: That's great.

Rob Silver, DVM: You'll be hearing more from me.

Will Falconer, DVM: How do people find you, Dr. Rob, on, on online and et cetera? Yeah. Tell us how to locate you.

Rob Silver, DVM: Yeah, I forgot to mention all that. Yeah. [00:36:00] I have a website where I sell stuff like Real Mushrooms and my CBD products.

It's called WellPetDispensary.com. Just like it sounds, Well Pet Dispensary, all one word. If people are interested in going to real mushrooms directly, and we have a lot. There, there's so much. We're very education strong as a company and so we have a whole bunch of information on the website free, just available for people to learn.

And if they sign up and we also have all these educational emails we send out with information about, cause there's so many mushrooms, there's so little time. So that website is RealMushrooms.com. So the two websites people would need to know if you want, if someone wants to reach out to me personally, they can go to the Well Pet Dispensary website and use a contact form.

And I, I do customer service, not for orders, but for questions about their pet's problems and whether a product might be appropriate for that pet or whether it might interact with something else they're on. [00:37:00] So I'm pretty good with getting back to people if someone to reach out to

Will Falconer, DVM: Great, Rob, it's a big service.

I appreciate that. It's been a really interesting discussion and glad we'll have contacts in the show notes for the, for this episode certainly where people can just click on link and get to you, but really good to know what you're up to.

Again, thanks very much Dr. Rob Silver for joining us today. And we will be in touch and we know how people now can find you. If you have questions for Dr. Rob, you can contact him via his site. WellPetDispensary.com

Rob Silver, DVM: RealMushrooms.com ,so those are the two websites where you can find me one way or the other.

All right, that's a wrap and until next time we're gonna say goodbye for now. Yeah. And do keep touch. We've got show notes for you, we've got links for you, and we'll look for you next time. Thanks for attending.

Thank you.[00:38:00]

Misplaced Desperation

Will Falconer, DVM — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 00:00:00 GMT

This post is prompted by a desperate reader of my website, specifically coming after reading this blog post: Vaccines and Vets: Is Your Holistic Vet Really Holistic?

Prairie Girl wrote to ask,

Can anyone recommend a holistic vet in N. Western Iowa who would work with owners regarding vaccinating 2 senior dogs who have epilepsy? State won’t waive rabies medical exemption in order to get them relicensed. We’re willing to get them vaccinated but looking for a vet who could administer smaller dosage or holistic treatment after vaccine. We’re desperate.

My head reeled when I read the source of her desperation.

Instead of desperately wanting to keep her aging seniors (both of which are epileptic) healthy and seizure free, she desperately wanted to “safely” vaccinate them to meet her state’s licensing requirement.

Apparently, she missed some key understandings around this hot topic:

Duration of immunity to viruses
Vaccines are labeled “Only for use in healthy dogs (cats, ferrets)”
Vaccinating sick animals is therefore malpractice
Seniors have been damaged to the point of dying prematurely by getting a seemingly “needed” booster vaccine.

Duration of Immunity

This understanding rests with scientists called immunologists.

Two prominent veterinary immunologists pointed this out in a mainstream veterinary textbook decades ago.

Immunity to viruses persists for years or for the life of the animal… Furthermore, revaccination with most viral vaccines fails to stimulate an anamnestic (secondary) response… [Schultz, RD and Phillips, TR, Current Veterinary Therapy XI, 1992]

Do state lawmakers (or rubber stampers in any level of government) understand immunology enough to set forth rules of how often your animals should be vaccinated?

Clearly they do not.

Nor is it a good idea to beg them for a waiver.

(The same argument can be made for groomers, kennel owners, and, my all-time favorite: apartment managers!)

Are any of these folks ready to take responsibility for your animal’s vaccine injury once you comply with their ignorant rules?

It should be obvious: they are not, and you’ll be left holding two bags:

The expense of treating chronic disease, from the merely bothersome (itchy skin or funky ears) to the deadly (autoimmune disease).
The heartache of knowing that you’ve unwittingly brought about serious illness in your pet by not being desperate enough to avoid unnecessary vaccines)

On Vaccine Labels

The American Veterinary Medical Association follows the USDA’s guidance on vaccine use:

Vaccine programs should follow all governmental regulations.… Label indications and recommendations should be followed.1

AAHA (The American Animal Hospital Assoc) spells out the USDA’s “new” label system:

The new label system states: “This product has been shown to be effective for the vaccination of healthy (name of species, weeks of age or older against name of disease).2

(“New” is in quotes because the “healthy” part is long standing, the only newness was removing some older confusing language).

Now, think with me here: is epilepsy a sign of being “healthy?”

No way, right? Both seniors in question are epileptic, and likely on meds to try to control their seizures.

“On meds” by the way, is a great measure of “NOT healthy,” wouldn’t you agree?

Veterinarians are allowed to go “off label” in using drugs if they feel the health needs of the animal justifies a special case.

I just can’t imagine there’d be a single justifiable reason to vaccinate an epileptic animal.

Hence, I’m calling that off label use of a vaccine malpractice.

In the risk vs benefits assessment, we’ll see it stack up as 99:1.

According to the immunologists, immunity is likely already established from earlier vaccines, remember.

If you’ve got an unwell, medicated animal, you’ve got a vaccination waiver.

Vaccines and seizures: a long history

It’s just not sensible to risk more seizures with a procedure that’s been known to trigger seizures in the first place.

Homeopathic literature has evidence of vaccines resulting in seizures since the very first vaccines.

Modern medicine is no stranger to the phenomenon either:

Epilepsy can be caused by vaccination as a leading symptom of vaccine-induced encephalopathy and febrile seizures can also occur as a result of vaccine-induced fever.… Case reports exist of epilepsy, autism, and cerebral palsy developing after measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) and measles vaccines.3

Here’s a citing from the Journal of Equine Vet Science: Reactive seizures after vaccination in a Thoroughbred broodmare:

Article Abstract A 550 kg Thoroughbred broodmare born in 2007 was evaluated repeatedly over five breeding seasons because of episodic seizures, which occurred only after vaccination. The mare had no health problems other than repetitive reactive, focal seizures that occurred over a 5-year period, in each case after vaccination 5

Seniors and vaccines: a Bad Mix

I’ve received far too many emails and comments about seniors damaged by vaccination to be able to count them all.

The common thread among them?

Old Blue was getting up there in years, but was rocking along just fine. Going for long walks, chasing rabbits, usual dog stuff.

That all changed after either a “required” rabies shot or a vet recommended combo wombo distemper/parvo vaccine.

I wrote about one such disaster here.

Judging by the comments on this post, it resonated with readers, including Audrey:

Please help me with ANY suggestions you may have to help me reverse the damage my vet has done to my poor sweet angel, who is an 8 year old yellow lab. Not even a month ago, he was lively and vibrant running up and down the beach chasing the ball and now after he went in for his last round of shots he’s barely able to walk/run. Just sleeps all day like a 14 year old, but he’s only about to turn 9. I’m just devastated that my energetic young boy is basically hitting a brick wall — Audrey, commenting in Stop Vaccinating Your Seniors4

Would a smaller dose help?

This is a common thought, and it does seem that small dogs, receiving the exact same dose as a Great Dane, are far more prone to vaccine injury.

What that doesn’t take into account though, is the phenomenon homeopaths call vaccinosis.

Would there be less chance of chronic disease by lessening the dose?

I’m not sure we can say with surety that will be the case.

We’re still injecting foreigners into the body, bypassing all manner of natural defenses that Mom Nature has set up for our animals (and us, of course), over millennia.

The name of the commonest diseases we see after that foreigner injection fest fall under the category I’ve created (I think…) called Immune Confusion.

The most common of the confused immunity diseases is allergies.

In our pets, that’s usually a wild over reaction to normal, everyday things, like:

the bite a flea
a bite of chicken
a perfectly normal grass or pollen grain

Allergies (you’ve likely seen them) are usually manifest as horribly itchy skin (feet, rumps, bellies, or all over) and funky smelly discharging ears, that can also be painfully tender and itchy at the same time.

Dogs suffering the latter version desperately want to scratch their ears, but it hurts so badly when they do that they may be left taking their ears for a long carpet rubbing ride or merely flailing a hind leg in the ear’s general direction.

Does a smaller dose create less allergic reactivity?

I really have serious doubts that’d be the case.

Vaccinosis is deeper than the dose.

How about a “holistic treatment?” after the shot?

Meh.

I’ve done it in my practice, with a rabies tautode (a homeopathic remedy made from the rabies vaccine itself) given both before and after the vaccine.

Has it prevented all manner of vaccine injury?

I clearly remember a case where it didn’t.

Janet’s dog had been under homeopathic care with me for years.

She somehow felt compelled to give a rabies shot and there was no convincing her to simply say no.

We dutifully gave the rabies tautode to hopefully “buffer” the ill effects.

And Max went clearly into worsening of his ear issues we’d been modestly successful in resolving with years of working together.

I clucked to myself, inwardly, resisting the urge to pull, “I told you so.”

But, in fairness, I’ve also seen many others use the tautode, get the shot, and report no illness afterwards.

But that’s not an apt comparison, as these latter animals were not my closely followed patients, where I was keeping abreast of every symptom they made over a prolonged time.

Would I give a rabies tautode to two epileptic seniors and assure Prairie Girl all would be well?

Never in a million millennia.

Desperation Has Its Place

So, I hear from many who are desperately trying to keep their animals well, and I applaud their efforts.

Usually, that means they have put their foot down and told their vet, “No More Shots.”

And no poisons for heartworm “prevention,” no pesticides to kill fleas and ticks, and no, we’re not going home with a bag of your premium (or worse, “prescription”) kibble, thankyouverymuch.

That’s the kind of desperation that wins for your animals’ long term health and a long joyful life together.

And I wish it didn’t take desperation to achieve this lovely ending, but unfortunately, that’s the world we live in now.

The world of blindly putting your trust in the medicos to have your pet’s health uppermost in their minds is long gone.

This is the world where YOU, and no one else, takes the lead, calls the shots, and mercilessly evaluates all that’s being offered to you by Dr. WhiteCoat.

My goal is to help you make those wise evaluations at every turn.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve taken desperate measures to keep your animals well, or if you’ve experienced disasters from misplaced trust in the past.

Vaccination Principles, American Veterinary Medical Association, https://www.avma.org/resources-tools/avma-policies/vaccination-principles
Interpreting vaccine labels, AAHA, https://www.aaha.org/aaha-guidelines/2022-aaha-canine-vaccination-guidelines/interpreting-vaccine-labels/
The Causes of Epilepsy, Chapter 56 – Vaccination and immunization, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/causes-of-epilepsy/vaccination-and-immunization/8C8E9F05D86E3CBCE739A1C1F8AC8CD2, Simon D. Shorvon, Cambridge University Press 05 March 2012
Stop Vaccinating Your Seniors Already!, VitalAnimal.com, https://vitalanimal.com/stop-vaccinating-seniors/, Will Falconer, DVM, September 1, 20019
J Equine Vet Sci. February 2019;73(0):106-109

Beware Misinformation from “Experts”

Will Falconer, DVM — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

It seems Facebook has been all aglow with concerns spread by Jean Dodds that parvo nosodes do not protect puppies from parvovirus.

She cites a paper (out of print) published by none other than Dr. Ron Schultz, PhD, a well known immunologist of the University of Wisconsin and veterinarian Susan Wynn.

Jean, a hematologist, boldly says,

5 out of 7 nosode treated dogs against parvovirus passed away. Let’s get this clear. Homeopathic nosodes are not effective against parvovirus. Nosodes were tested in a clinical trial where the dogs were literally exposed to parvovirus after receiving nosodes. The majority of dogs died.”

In conclusion, she quotes Susan Wynn: “Until well designed studies are completed…nosodes remain an unknown quantity, and I do not recommend using them…”

The key words here are “well designed studies.”

I’ll show you why this study, causing all the uproar (and even censorship by Jean for those who’ve had only positive experiences with nosodes) clearly does not meet that worthy goal.

The Flawed Study

Every scientific paper has a Materials and Methods section within it.

It tells us exactly how the researchers conducted their study.

As the study Jean Dodds cited was published in 1998, in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, and their available database only goes back to 2000, it effectively means we may never see the study.

Which means we may never know exactly:

Where the parvo nosode originated
What protocol of administration was used
WHEN the final nosode dose was given before the live virus was unleashed

That last point turns out to be critical, and, according to my inside source, Dr. Don Hamilton, likely why the nosode failed to protect the animals against the parvovirus they were challenged with.

You see, one of the known limits of nosodes is that they have a short window of protection.

Somewhere along the lines of several days to a week.

Now, I say “known” but you’ll still find people, even so-called homeopaths, who don’t understand this.

A common nosode protocol in the past that apparently originated from an allopathic-minded homeopathic veterinarian, George MacLeod, is still in use today.

So, when Jean Dodds says…

Parvovirus nosodes given orally and in ascending potencies in a manner recommended by veterinary homeopaths…

…what she’s referring to is this old protocol that went something like this:

A 30C potency of the nosode is given daily for a week, then
A 200C potency of that nosode is given weekly for a month, then finally
A higher potency, probably 1M or 10M, is given every few months.

This is very allopathic thinking applied to homeopathic remedy use.

While a high potency of a simillimum (i.e. a person’s constitutional remedy) might have positive effects lasting for months, a nosode is a very dissimilar medicine to the person or pet taking it.

It’s only highly similar to the disease, not the patient.

In other words, its effects are only based on the similarity between the disease organism itself and the nosode made from the disease discharge, in this case parvovirus laden stool.

That similarity is why nosodes work well against infectious diseases, but only when used properly.

Warning! (Ignored by the Chief Researcher)

In Episode 22 of the Vital Animal Podcast, my homeopathic colleague Don Hamilton points out that Susan Wynn, before undertaking this parvo nosode study, discussed it with him.

He was a wise choice for Susan to consult with, as he’s been close to nosode use for years, and had first hand experience with them in a kennel setting. (You can tune into the episode for those interesting details)

As Don recalls, they were planning to vaccinate one group of pups, use nosodes on another, and after a two week waiting period, expose them to live parvovirus.

Don explained in no uncertain terms that this protocol was doomed to fail.

Nosodes don’t work that way, he explained.

Sadly, for the pups who died unnecessarily (and for you, perhaps, being seeded with doubt that nosodes are a sound alternative to vaccines), Susan ignored his warning.

The study, flawed as it was, proceeded in spite of Don’s explanation.

And then, even knowing that, she published and she to this day still tells people that we studied nosodes, and they don’t work. And this study was simply set up incorrectly.” — Don Hamilton, DVM, in Episode 22

Is Truth a Product of Repetition of a Falsehood?

Here we are today, 24 years since the study was published, and Jean Dodds is quoting this same research as “proof” that nosodes don’t work.

Is Jean a homeopath, capable of evaluating this study critically?

Clearly not.

If the study was set up incorrectly, the advice of a homeopathic expert ignored, and the puppies improperly given nosodes died, what conclusion should be drawn?

Only one, in my mind: the research proved clearly that nosodes do not provide long term protection.

But we who’ve studied nosodes and used them in practice, already know that and have for decades.

MacLeod was wrong, assuming monthly or semi-yearly nosode administration would protect against infectious disease long term.

Does Jean Dodds think she’s doing a service to animal owners by trotting out this poorly designed study over and over again?

In repetition, does misinformation somehow become true?

What would you call this if not misinformation?

Hey Facebook censors, where are you now?

An Age of Caution

We live in an age where anyone can state anything as fact.

We’ve seen the gross manipulation of the media recently assuring the world that the COVID-19 “vaccine” was both safe and effective, while neither has been borne out in the real world.

Like the main stream media, “influencers” and “experts” can spread misinformation widely and a certain segment of the populace will take it as truth.

Now, probably as never before in our history, information has to be looked at very carefully, from more than one source, and judged critically before you act upon it.

If your choice is to vaccinate, that’s fine, but do so intelligently, knowing there are very real safety concerns.

Know also, without a doubt, that there’s zero logic to repeatedly vaccinating your animals throughout their adult lives.

That just plain doesn’t even work, according to veterinary immunologists, chief among them, Dr. Ron Schultz.

And if you choose to use nosodes as an alternative, use them with a clear understanding of their limits as well as their potential to help keep your youngsters safe.

The protocol I advise was arrived at by a “think tank” of homeopathic vets back in the mid-90’s, hosted by Don Hamilton.

Relying on flawed studies by “experts” will get you nothing but trouble for those animals you seek to keep safe.

Let us know in the comments: have you used nosodes? Properly? To good effect? Or have you been scared away from them, perhaps, by false warning flags like the Wynn study?

Finally: Why veterinarians have a high suicide rate

Will Falconer, DVM — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Dr. Will McCauley had just finished his shift at a small Dallas animal clinic when he went home, fed his pet pot-bellied pig and then held a loaded handgun to his head. The 33-year-old veterinarian was wracked with student debt and worn down by the daily demands at work, which included euthanizing dogs and cats and being vilified by pet owners for not meeting their expectations. “I was tired in this miserable state of mind,” he says. “It just drained me so much.” For reasons he attributes to either fear or hope, McCauley didn’t kill himself that summer day in 2016, and he quit his job later that week and stopped practicing.1

As I’ve long suspected, veterinarians are finding conventional practice unfulfilling.

It’s long been known and publicized that my profession has a high suicide rate. It’s much higher than any other medical profession.

The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession, and 4 times the rate in the general population2

The 2012 CVMA National Survey Results on the Wellness of Veterinarians (n = 769) found that 19% of respondents had seriously thought about suicide and 9% previously attempted suicide. Of those who had seriously thought about it (n = 135), 49% felt they were still at risk to repeat. The risk is real. The numbers are compelling.3

The usual reasons trotted out

I’ve never been satisfied with the reasons ascribed to this epidemic in my profession.

Work pressures, burn out

Inadequate professional support and professional mistakes, along with other work-related stressors such as long working hours; after hours on-call duties; conflictual relationships with peers, managers, and clients; high client expectations; unexpected clinical outcomes; emotional exhaustion (compassion fatigue); lack of resources; limited personal finances; concerns about maintaining skills; and the possibility of client complaints and litigation can all contribute to anxiety and depression, which increase vulnerability. Long-term exhaustion (burnout), characterized by disillusionment and demoralization, may also increase vulnerability.4

Having to euthanize animals
Demand to do free work

Another soul-crushing aspect of the job that most other health professionals don’t have to deal with, veterinarians say, is constantly being asked to perform services or give out medications for free and then being cyberbullied or harassed if they don’t. In 2018, Americans spent more than $72 billion on their pets, and more than $18 billion was for vet care, according to the American Pet Products Association (APPA)5

Cyberbullied if you don’t work for free? Well, that’s creepy on the part of owners who’d stoop to that. Do they feel entitled to free? What, because they’ve “rescued” some poor animal?

Luckily, those folks never darkened my door.

Getting closer to reality

Finally, a study that’s finding a point much closer to the heart of the matter in my mind has recently been published.

Imagine being up against this wall: your treatments are just plain ineffectual.

All the training, all your knowledge you worked so hard to acquire in all those years in vet school, and, after years of practice, it dawns on you: those chronic cases aren’t really getting better for all your efforts.

That’s called “futile treatment,” and I submit it’s the norm in conventional medicine.

More than 99% of 474 veterinarians surveyed said they’d encountered useless or nonbeneficial veterinary care in their careers, according to a new Cornell-led study that documents the prevalence of futile care for the first time. The authors use a working definition of futile care as continuing treatment when relevant goals can no longer be reached.6

I’ve written about this “dirty little secret” of medicine earlier.

Cure is an impossibility in the very system of medicine that’s the “norm” in the world today. The best that’s accomplished is a modicum of symptom “control” with drugs or surgery.

That’s a lot like seeing the oil light pop on on your car’s dashboard and taping over it with electrical tape because, well, it’s bothersome.

And, while those drugs are sort of controlling things, your animal is really getting no better.

No greater joy of life, no ability to get off the drugs, no improvement in all other aspects of life besides the symptoms being deadened a bit.

The deeper nagging at the vet conscience

Still unspoken of is a far deeper reason for vets to get disillusioned, even to the point of suicide.

I write this as a vet of 42 years who’s been on both sides of the fence.

Conventional practice was the first seven years of my practice life.

And while I was blessed to work in a lovely rural setting with great partners and wonderful clients, it wasn’t until I stepped out of that practice that I saw a bigger picture.

Training in first acupuncture and later homeopathy, my eyes were opened to a far greater reality I’d never realized in my early days:

Much of conventional prevention actually harms your animals.

I’ve been pointing that out for decades now, and I saw it day in and day out as the “doctor of last resort” when the animals presented to me were:

Not only NOT getting better in Dr. WhiteCoat’s practice, but
Were actually getting worse the longer they took part in what passed for “prevention”

Chief among this “Ah ha” was studying the effects of vaccination during homeopathic training. (The term for vaccine injury is “vaccinosis,” a term coined by human physician J. Compton Burnet way back in 1884)

Here I was, surrounded by other holistic veterinarians, some at it much longer than I, and our instructor, Dr. Richard Pitcairn, was showing us case after case illustrating the harm that was coming from vaccination,” recalls Falconer about his awakening. “More significantly, he was also showing us that sick animals usually didn’t get better without, at some point in their treatment, receiving a vaccinosis remedy.7

Greed vs caring and “do no harm”

I’ve always been a bit more innocent than might be good for me.

Early on in my discovery of the long known damaging effects of vaccination, I started blogging about it.

In my innocence, I assumed my colleagues would see the error of their ways and back off on the excessive use of vaccines.

One, that repetition just plain wasn’t helping build more immunity.

Two, and far more importantly, it was causing chronic diseases like allergies and autoimmune disease.

And yet, many years after the main vet associations were urging vets to stop the annual vaccine nonsense, it came to light that some 60% of my colleagues were still pushing this on their clients.

That’s when I stopped forgiving them.

It wasn’t that they didn’t know better. These decisions were fueled by greed and these vets were clearly ignoring the welfare of their patients.

If you knowingly were perpetrating this in your practice of medicine, where the code was to help, not harm them, wouldn’t that eat at you at some level?

That’s worse than “futile treatment” by a mile.

Might that inner conscious awareness of causing harm also be fueling the crazy high suicide rate in the veterinary profession?

It’s always seemed a likelihood to me.

Will that be studied and admitted any time soon?

I seriously doubt it.

It’s one thing to realize your treatments of anything chronic are ineffectual.

It’s another for a profession, especially one that used to be associated with compassion for animals, to come to grips with the fact that in its haste to add more to the bottom line, they were actually causing harm to the innocents.

A way out

To my colleagues who see a glimmer of truth here and want a way out of the quagmire, I’d urge a pause and a retraining.

It often starts with acupuncture training. It’s an amazing body of ancient knowledge that’s been organized into a year long certification training that often opens doors to burned out, disillusioned vets who truly want to help their patients.

Acupuncture is often the gateway to other fields of holistic endeavor. It’s internally logical, it’s physical, and yet it’s deep acting and affects much more than just the physical.

If placing needles in flesh isn’t appealing, you can skip right to where many of us went after that: classical veterinary homeopathic training.

It’s world changing, actually cures patients, and there aren’t nearly enough of us out there doing this work.

For those of you with animals who need a way out of the same quagmire for your animals’ sake, please view my Recommended Resources page for the AVH list and the video I’ve made for you on how to choose a qualified homeopathic vet.

Key understanding: you needn’t have someone located near you to get this amazing work done. For years, I did this with long distance telephone consulting and many of my colleagues offer this service as well.

Let’s get veterinary medicine back to being an honorable profession. One that animal owners can once again trust and one in which vets feel great about their work. The conventional medical model has been broken from the get go and for everyone’s sake, it needs to be stepped beyond.

The comments await you and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Uncivil ones will be deleted. We’re all better than that, even in these challenging times we are living through.

Here’s Why Suicide Among Veterinarians Is A Growing Problem | Time magazine, https://time.com/5670965/veterinarian-suicide-help/
Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it – PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it – PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it – PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
Here’s Why Suicide Among Veterinarians Is A Growing Problem | Time, https://time.com/5670965/veterinarian-suicide-help/
Futile veterinary care is widespread, study finds | Cornell Chronicle, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/05/futile-veterinary-care-widespread-study-finds
Is your ‘holistic’ vet really holistic? A fresh look at the health risks associated with pet vaccines – NaturalNews.com, https://www.naturalnews.com/042090_pet_vaccines_holistic_veterinarians_health_risks.html

#40: Are viruses real or not?

Will Falconer, DVM — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMT

Against a backdrop of an admittedly wild couple of years with COVID-19, lockdowns, masking, vaccines rushed to market, and statistics that have been shown to be wildly manipulated, perhaps one of the most confusing things are self-proclaimed experts who proclaim confidently that viruses simply don’t exist.

Now that I’ve had no less than three listeners wonder if that claim has any basis in fact, I think it’s time we looked more deeply into it.

As one of the most fascinating diseases I’m familiar with offers some great insight into this question, let’s put the spotlight on rabies to answer this.

Rabies has been plaguing mankind for centuries, long before viruses were even a glimmer in scientists’ eyes.

As it’s such a horrible, scary and usually fatal disease, and one that you’re being told to repeatedly vaccinate against, we’ll use rabies to see if a virus might be involved.

Or is it simply “terrain” responsible for people dying in the 10’s of thousands from rabies every year?

Links for this episode

Two virologists talking viruses vs exosomes in the context of COVID-19.

Scanning electron microscope images of the rabies virus.

More on Germ Theory vs Terrain from my blog.

Sign on for my free Rabies Short Course if you haven’t already and want to know more about this disease.

Join our free Vital Animal Pack and grab some freebie courses and get my fortnightly Vital Animal News.

Thanks for listening!

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Vital Animal Podcast so you don’t miss a single episode.

Are you finding value from this podcast? Want to help spread the word? Take a moment to leave us an honest review on Apple Podcasts!

And those little buttons below make it easy to SHARE!

Thanks!

Let us know in the comments below if this idea of viruses being bogus has come your way. Did you have an inkling that you were hearing something amiss?

Photo Attribution: NIAID – https://www.niaid.nih.gov/ – @ flikr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

#38 Behind the scenes at Vital Pet Health

Will Falconer, DVM — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT

Vital Pet Health CEO, Jason Donas joins me to give us some big news in product development.

It seems my friends in Vital Animal’s “sister company” have been busy reformulating to make your animal’s immune support and detox options really amazing.

Jason explains the process of micronization and why it takes an expensive machine to accomplish it. Far more than mere filtering, this process makes your pet’s supplements instantly available and fully absorbed.

Practically speaking, that translates to way more “bang for your buck.”

And, if you’ve followed transfer factor’s evolution with me, you’ll know the power of their immune support, with 1000’s of research papers dating back to TF’s discovery in the ’50’s. Add micronization to this powerful immune enhancement, and you can expect unprecedented results.

(Jason briefly compares their transfer factor with colostrum, and if that’s ever confused you, don’t miss his explanation.)

What’s more, the entire product line now is formulated with 100% natural ingredients, long the goal of Dr. Scott Treadway, chief formulator at VPH.

And, since the upgrade, it means all the products are now readily available to your cats as well as your dogs.

As a plus, palatability is now 100%, thanks to the new liquid formulas. Just get it on to your pet’s food and you’re good to go.

Links for this episode

As a friendly introduction to the newly reformatted product lines, Jason has graciously offered a sweet discount to Vital Animal Podcast listeners. You’ll find the details on this page:

www.VitalPetHealth.com/specialGet your dog or cat on the best immune support and detox options available today!

Thanks for listening!

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Vital Animal Podcast so you don’t miss a single episode.

Are you finding value from this podcast? Want to help spread the word? Take a moment to leave us an honest review on Apple Podcasts!

And those little buttons below make it easy to SHARE!

Thanks!

#39: Fire Your Vet!

Will Falconer, DVM — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT

When your vet pushes you into procedures you don’t want that are more risk than benefit, it’s time to FIRE him!

Join me as I share a real life story (one of far too many I have) about a woman being held hostage by her vet. She was being told she had to revaccinate her already vaccinated dog in order to get insulin for this same dog. Scout’s had diabetes for 4 years…

Learn why I recommend firing this vet, why more vaccines for this dog would be malpractice, and what you can do to get your needs met.

Are you paying a vet who’s more interested in his bottom line than doing the conscientious thing for your animal? If so, it’s time to make a powerful statement: You’re FIRED!

Links for this episode

Itchy Skin Update: Still #1 Dog Disease

Cruciate Cruciate Rupture: Missing The Big Picture

Vaccination as a Cause of Illness Has the link to Duval and Giger research on autoimmune disease in dogs post-vaccination

Recommended Resources (including how to search for a qualified homeopathic vet)

Thanks for listening!

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Vital Animal Podcast so you don’t miss a single episode.

Are you finding value from this podcast? Want to help spread the word? Take a moment to leave us an honest review on Apple Podcasts!

And those little buttons below make it easy to SHARE!

Thanks!

Let us know in the comments below if if you’ve either fired a vet or have just cause but haven’t yet.

#37: Is Nosode Use Safe After Vaccines?

Will Falconer, DVM — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT

“Are nosodes safe to use after my puppy has already been vaccinated?”

As a homeopathic vet, I’m always puzzled when people ask if it’s safe to use homeopathic remedies after their animal has been given drugs or, in this case, vaccines.

I’m really not sure what’s going through their heads in this, as the reality is there’s no safer medicine I’m aware of than these ultra diluted remedies.

It’s the drugs or vaccinations I’m concerned about safety on!

This episode grew out of such questions and I share with you some of the details of how remedies are made and how they are extremely safe, even if they are made from deadly viruses (often the case with nosodes) or even poisonous venoms or metals like mercury or plants like belladonna.

You’ll also hear homeopathy’s amazing roots, when Dr. Hahnemann stumbled on to a finding (in his own body, no less) that would change the course of medicine for ever, from the late 1700’s on to today.

Tune in to discover how homeopathy is not only safe but how it can be used to take the place of vaccines and powerfully protect your youngsters against serious and often fatal diseases.

Links for this episode

Parvo and Distemper Nosodes + Protocol

Don Hamilton, DVM on Nosodes, Episode 22

Thanks for listening!

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Vital Animal Podcast so you don’t miss a single episode.

Are you finding value from this podcast? Want to help spread the word? Take a moment to leave us an honest review on Apple Podcasts!

And those little buttons below make it easy to SHARE!

Thanks!

Coming soon: Vital Pet Health transforms healthy supplements for your pets.