Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats (3 page)

So I tried to make sense of what I saw, and gradually several basic questions arose: Why do some animals recover easily, while others never seem to do well, regardless of which drugs are used? Why do some animals in a group seem to have all the fleas and catch all the diseases going around, while others are never affected? I knew there must be some basic understanding that I just didn’t grasp about the ability of an animal’s body to defend and heal itself.

When you ask a question long enough and deeply enough, life seems to provide the opportunity to find an answer. Soon a job offer as an instructor at a veterinary school was dropped in my lap. Always eager to be in a climate of learning, I immediately accepted.

Once I was back in academia, I decided to take a course or two myself. The next thing I knew, I was a full-time graduate student in veterinary immunology, virology, and biochemistry. Surely here, I thought, I can learn the real secrets of the body’s defense systems. And so I set about studying and researching various problems, particularly the body’s immune response to cancer.

Some five years and a PhD degree later, I found that the answers to my questions still eluded me. Though I had acquired an even greater wealth of factual information about the mechanisms of immunology and metabolism, I still did not feel a sense of real insight about the issues that concerned me.

THE BIG PICTURE: THE HOLISTIC APPROACH

I had begun to realize what was causing me to feel baffled by conventional veterinary
medicine. Knowledge was fragmented, and specialists clung to narrow academic disciplines. For example, one group of immunologists would hold a particular viewpoint on disease mechanisms and a second group, a different view. It seemed that no effort was being made to reconcile the opposing positions. And then there were the microbiologists, the virologists, the biochemists, the pathologists, and a host of others, all of whom tended to see things through different sets of filters! Our research aims had become so narrowly defined and carried out that we were missing the whole picture. I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but I felt, somehow, that what we really needed was a holistic approach to the problem of disease.

As a result, I started doing two things that were decisive and have continued to define my style of operation ever since. One was to read broadly in many fields and from many sources to get a larger scope of concepts and ideas. The other was to experiment with new ideas that made sense to me by trying them out on myself.

I made it a first priority to learn more about nutrition. After some self-directed study, I was convinced that nutrition was a very significant factor in maintaining health and treating disease. Therefore, it amazed me to find that the indifference to nutrition that prevailed when I was a student in veterinary school was still in place. There was a wealth of research, for example, showing that a number of specific vitamins are essential to the normal functioning of the immune system—though they were never mentioned throughout my years of graduate study. Most surprising to me was the fact that proper nutrition could boost the body’s natural resistance to disease. Here was an incredible truth—unique in that it meant the body need not rely on drugs for better health. With this information, people could take charge of their own health. At last I was beginning to find some answers to my questions.

PERSONAL DIVIDENDS FROM A DIET CHANGE

I decided to change my own diet. I began to use whole grains, to cut out sugars and other junk foods, to eat less meat, and to take supplements like nutritional yeast, wheat germ, and various vitamins. Before long I was feeling better than I had in years.

I also started exercising regularly, using herbs, and exploring my inner life. All these measures eventually played a part in removing some things from my life that I didn’t need—like a potbelly I was developing, plus colitis, ear infections, excess tension, susceptibility to colds and flu, and a number of negative psychological habits.

Though these personal experiments didn’t constitute so-called statistically significant studies, they were tremendously valuable to me. There is nothing more convincing about the value of a treatment than feeling better after using it. You don’t need the interpretation or opinion of any authority to acknowledge positive changes in your own body and mind.

After helping myself, I began to apply my newfound knowledge to animals—first my own pets and then, as I returned to clinical practice, to some “hopeless” cases like Tiny. At one point, I adopted a stray kitten half-starved and ragged from life in the woods. We named her Sparrow because she looked like a small bird made up mostly of feathers and fluff. At first, I fed her a conventional kibble and she did all right. But when she became pregnant a year or two later, I decided to boost her strength. I faithfully added fresh, raw beef liver, raw eggs, bonemeal, fresh chicken, brewer’s yeast, and other nutritious foods to her daily fare.

Unlike many cats I’ve seen, she never lost any weight or hair during pregnancy, and her delivery was exceptionally fast, easy, and calm. She always had plenty of milk to nurse her three large, thriving kittens, and all of them grew up to be much larger than their mother. I kept one of these kittens and continued adding supplements to the diets of both mother and offspring, who became very chubby and happy. I was always amazed at how remarkably healthy they were. I never needed to use any flea control on them. And if one of these cats got scratched or bitten in a fight, the injury healed quickly and never developed into an infection or abscess. Sparrow lived to the ripe age of 18 years and never needed veterinary care for any of the common cat problems.

One thing led to another, and soon I became deeply interested in using herbs as a treatment. A particular occasion convinced me that these natural remedies could bring about almost miraculous cures. It was late one Sunday night and my son, Clark (then about six), was besieged by a high fever, flushed face, swollen throat glands, and incipient bronchitis (to which he was prone). He was very restless and cried with extreme discomfort and pain. I had nothing in the house to give him except some aspirin, which neither reduced his fever nor enabled him to get to sleep.

I felt stuck, and I thrashed about in my mind, desperately searching for some way to help Clark. Then all at once I remembered I had some goldenseal (
Hydrastis canadensis
) capsules in the house. Goldenseal has been found very useful for reducing inflammation of the lining of the bronchial tubes, the nose, and the eustachian tubes (which drain the ears to the throat), especially when the inflammation is accompanied by a harsh, dry cough and fever. I gave him one capsule with a little water. Five to ten minutes later, Clark suddenly got up and, for the first time in hours, went to the bathroom and voided a large quantity of urine. Afterward, he lay down, relaxed, and fell asleep. Clark’s fever dropped rapidly, and by the next morning he was normal.

As you can imagine, this experience was very encouraging to me. Looking back, I realize how fortunate I was to have hit it so perfectly. Goldenseal was quite appropriate for the symptoms my son showed. This remarkable
experience inspired me to pursue many fruitful directions later on, such as herbology, naturopathy, and, especially, homeopathy. This last has completely changed my understanding of the nature of disease and its cure.

Though I eventually branched out in other directions, I have found over the years that proper nutrition is the essential foundation of a holistic approach to health and healing. Without it, there is little to work with in helping an animal to recover. And I feel certain that many of the chronic and degenerative diseases we see today are caused by or complicated by inadequate diet.

After all, the physical body requires certain substances it cannot make internally. As with any complicated and delicate machinery, one missing element in the fuel that powers the body can bring the whole mechanism to a standstill. For example, it appears that the immune system, with its production of specialized white blood cells and antibodies, is particularly susceptible to nutritional imbalance. Perhaps, because of the fast growth of these specialized cells and their complex function, deficiencies show up sooner here than in, say, the skeletal system.

That said, let’s take a closer look at what your animal friend is actually eating. What is and isn’t provided by the diet can make a big difference in your pet’s health.

CHAPTER 2

WHAT’S REALLY IN PET FOOD

A
s I present this chapter, I realize that you could read it and just become discouraged and depressed about the whole challenge of feeding your pet properly. I don’t want that to happen. I think it necessary to inform you about pet foods so you can understand how important this issue is. It is true that I am not going to have good things to say about most commercial pet foods, and because the advertising for these products is so frequently encountered and so convincing, it is not enough for me to say “Don’t use them.” Instead, I am going to go into some detail about what is in pet food, the problems associated with
processed and packaged products, and also the lack of quality control that is typical of the industry.

After we’re done with this chapter we’ll look at nutritional solutions available to you—how you can prepare food yourself with simple recipes that are superior to most of what is out there. The encouraging news is that these recipes have been used for more than 20 years by my clients and by readers of the previous editions of this book with great success. So do not despair.

I find that animals respond very quickly and positively to a nutritious diet. In fact, it is the
major tool
you need to eliminate many of the chronic diseases your animal encounters in these times. If you follow the guidelines in this book, it is almost certain that your animal will become more healthy. I assure you that it is entirely possible to overcome the effects of prior feeding of poor quality foods, even if such a feeding practice spans years. It is actually surprising how quickly health will improve thanks to such a simple change. So screw up your courage and come with me into the little-explored world of pet foods.

LABELS CAN BE MISLEADING

The consumer is often told to “look at labels” as the way to identify which foods are best. It sounds good. Unfortunately, the way labeling is used does not really help us understand the quality of the food. For example, one of the important ingredients, one we are cautioned especially to check, is protein. But if we just look at total protein, as indicated on the label, we have not considered two important factors:
biological value
and
digestibility
. Let’s see if we can understand these terms.

A protein’s
biological value
(which has also been called the nitrogen balance index) depends on each protein’s unique composition of the amino acids that make it up. These amino acids are building blocks from which the body constructs its own tissues. Eggs are given an ideal value of 100, which means they are the most useful form of protein known. On this relative scale, fish meal is ranked 92, beef and milk 78, rice 75, soybeans 68, yeast 63, and wheat gluten 40.

The
digestibility
of a protein (or any food) is simply the extent to which the gastrointestinal tract (stomach and intestines) can actually absorb it. For example, one source might be 70 percent digestible, whereas another is 90 percent. Some proteins—like those in hair—are less digestible because they are harder or impossible for the body to break down, even though they are still proteins.

Interestingly, the prolonged high temperatures used to sterilize some pet foods can destroy much of the usefulness of even those proteins that start with a high biological value. That’s because the heat causes proteins to combine with certain sugars, naturally occurring in the food, to form compounds that can’t be broken down by
the body’s digestive enzymes. After all, these foods that are heat-processed at these high temperatures have never been encountered by the digestive systems of animals before. How could evolution have prepared them to break them down?

Because manufacturers are required to list only the amount of
crude protein
, rather than the amount that your pet can actually digest and use, they can and do include inexpensive sources that may supply your pet with much less usable protein than you would imagine. Most people don’t realize that terms like “meat by-products” can actually mean poultry feather meal, connective tissues (gristle), leather meal (yes, leather, like that used to make belts or shoes), fecal waste from poultry and other animals, and horse and cattle hair. Robert Abady, founder of the Robert Abady Dog Food Company, describes meat and bone meal as “generally comprised of ground bone, gristle, and tendons, and is the cheapest and least nutritious of the by-product meals.” The same is true of lamb meal, poultry or chicken meal, or fish meal.