The Hardest Part of the Holistic Animal Approach? Nobody Talks About This…

So years ago, when I used to listen to NPR, there was an interview with a doctor who said something like, you know, as you get older, you know, you'll develop a chronic disease and then you'll be on medications to treat the chronic disease.

And some of those medications will have side effects and you'll be on other medications to deal with the side effects of the first medications.

And as time goes on, you'll develop a few more chronic illnesses.

But the good news is we can really help with your quality of life.

And what that tells me is that there's not even a pretense of curing disease.

That's not their goal.

Their goal is to keep you numb enough so that you feel sort of okay while having chronic diseases, apparently, for which you must take medication.

And, you know, I'm just not super on board with that way of thinking.

When I think about my patients, for example, just recently I had a gentleman come in with a very nice dog who had just come off of a whole bunch of meds.

And so when I saw her, she was symptom free.

Yeah.

And then, of course, shortly after, because we were just starting with raw food at that time and we were just starting supplements at that time.

So very quickly within the following week, the dog became itchy and kind of all hell broke loose.

And she ended up back on steroids.

And I got some very angry emails from the owner who said, you know, this is why we came to you.

We didn't want to do this stuff anymore.

And, you know, the unfortunate answer is that.

Things take time.

It takes the body time to correct itself.

If we're expecting to be able to rebuild and restore the normal immune system and detoxification pathways, this is not Harry Potter.

This is not you wave a magic wand and say some words in a weird language

and things turn around.

It does not actually happen that way.

So when we think about how long things take, I think about that a lot.

If you read reports of homeopathic treatment of animals, like case studies or acupuncture or whatever, I notice when I read those things how long they say that it takes.

So years ago, when I used to listen to NPR, there was an interview with a doctor who said something like, you know, as you get older, you know, you'll develop a chronic disease and then you'll be on medications to treat the chronic disease.

And some of those medications will have side effects and you'll be on other medications to deal with the side effects of the first medications.

And as time goes on, you'll develop a few more chronic illnesses.

But the good news is we can really help with your quality of life.

And what that tells me is that there's not even a pretense of curing disease.

That's not their goal.

Their goal is to keep you numb enough so that you feel sort of okay while having chronic diseases, apparently, for which you must take medication.

And, you know, I'm just not super on board with that way of thinking.

When I think about my patients, for example, just recently I had a gentleman come in with a very nice dog who had just come off of a whole bunch of meds.

And so when I saw her, she was symptom free.

Yeah.

And then, of course, shortly after, because we were just starting with raw food at that time and we were just starting supplements at that time.

So very quickly within the following week, the dog became itchy and kind of all hell broke loose.

And she ended up back on steroids.

And I got some very angry emails from the owner who said, you know, this is why we came to you.

We didn't want to do this stuff anymore.

And, you know, the unfortunate answer is that.

Things take time.

It takes the body time to correct itself.

If we're expecting to be able to rebuild and restore the normal immune system and detoxification pathways, this is not Harry Potter.

This is not you wave a magic wand and say some words in a weird language

and things turn around.

It does not actually happen that way.

So when we think about how long things take, I think about that a lot.

If you read reports of homeopathic treatment of animals, like case studies or acupuncture or whatever, I notice when I read those things how long they say that it takes.