Return to Companion Animal Medicine
September 23rd, 2009 11:39 pm by Shane
This past week has been a busy one for me as I take time off from my day job to spend some time working on home projects. This year has been so successful thus far, that I'm really enjoying a sense of accomplishment. Kelly and I are just knocking a number of things off of the big todo list. However, none of this will keep me away from this week's post, which is a return to discussing homeopathic treatments for companion animals.
With the power of Google, I decided to just do a search for "homeopathic pet medicine" and see what the first site that came up was (for the record, I try not to use the word "pet", but I had to follow popular convention. Oh, the irony, of a site calling itself "petalive.com". A graphic of kitten is in the header as well as the word "Naturally". For the record, arsenic and strychnine are "natural" as well. Just saying.
So, on the day I happened to get to this homeopathic pet companion animal medicine site there are a number of specials on "herbal" remedies, though the title of the page contains "homeopathic". I found it interesting that the site is initially presenting itself as a purveyor of "homeopathy", which is nonsense, but seems to really be selling "herbal" remedies. While most herbal remedies are just as much junk as homeopathic remedies, they contain actual substances. The question is, do these substances work?
Here is a list of various substances in various treatments:
* Dandelion
* Indian Ginseng
* Scullcap
* Belladonna
* Passion Flower
* Kelp
* Burdock
These substances are in products aimed at both cats and dogs, which are very distinct species. It would somewhat surprise me if both cats and dogs reacted the same to all these different products, so I did a little searching.
Dandelion extract has shown "moderate anti-inflammatory, cholagogic and hypoglycemic activities" in laboratory animals, however, there haven't been many studies designed to test it, and the one positive study seems to be from 1974. Not a total washout, but far from conclusive, especially compared to the modern medicines available for animals that are being studied currently. Ginseng contains substances that work well in rabbits, but I can't seem to find any dog studies. Furthermore, ginseng seems to be an inefficient source of the advantageous substances.
Scullcap seems to be completely lacking of any studies proving efficacy. It seems to be simply folk medicine. Belladonna in the context of this website seems to be the homeopathic belladonna solution. Since homeopathy is junk, I can safely move on from that. Passion Flower was shown to be more effective (in people) than a particular anti-anxiety drug in a double blind study. However, the sample size was too small to be definitive. The trial was only on 36 people, which is fine, since you have to start somewhere, but the conclusion was that more testing needed to be done.
Kelp..well, kelp is pretty good for dogs. It's a nice food for any animal, as a vegetable. Kelp, however, won't remove toxins from the body, as that is pretty much nonsense. By all means, add it to your dogs diet, don't worry if it's organic, and watch your dog benefit from better nutrition. Lastly, Burdock. I couldn't find much about burdock and animals, so it looks like to me that the purported effects on humans were simply transferred to animals. Nothing much else to go on I'm afraid.
So, to conclude this post, which I've tried to keep short, I have to say that natural companion animal medicine is probably a complete waste of time. Very few of the ingredients are actually tested on animals for the purpose of treating animals. Animal studies kind of get globbed together, so when a study says laboratory animal it could mean dog, rat, rabbit or mouse. Just because it worked in the lab doesn't mean it works on your animal (same goes for humans btw). In most cases, the evidence is very weak.
Furthermore, just because a thistle plant contains a valuable substance, doesn't mean thistle is the best source. A great example of this is salicylic acid. A great source of salicylic acid in ancient times was willow bark. A hot drink made from willow bark would be prescribed to help alleviate pain and fever. You could still do that today, or...you could just pop an aspirin and spare yourself from the crappy tasting bark tea. That's pretty much how it works for a lot of these substances. I'd rather talk to my vet about an actual medicine created to treat my animal that might expand upon what's available in thistle instead of sprinkling thistle dust on his food. It is the 21st century and all. We may not have flying cars yet, but our medicine for animals is much more amazing to me.
References:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11679026
http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/69200.cfm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10589445?dopt=Citation
