Want to learn a holistic path to wellness for your pets?
Let's explore its roots and why it is a path forward, even now, in the age of modern medicine.
We live in a time of incredible change, revolution, and evolution. Institutions, governments, universities, human medicine, and veterinary medicine are all undergoing seismic shifts. The pendulum is shifting from a centralized bureaucracy/corporatocracy to a decentralized, locally-controlled system, or at least that is the direction I see it going, and it can be scary.
In terms of veterinary medicine, getting an appointment to see a veterinarian is difficult, and when you do, it is expensive. On top of that, veterinarians do not always offer solutions to your pet’s health care needs. I am actually seeing an increasing number of misdiagnoses, side effects from new treatments, and even gaslighting of clients by clinic staff.
It has become more important than ever to practice preventative healthcare, intentionally prioritizing the wellness of our human and animal families. It is better to spend extra time, money, and effort on maintaining health than on trying to fix it once it has broken down. Investing in clean, healthy food is the wisest investment you could make in terms of healthcare.
On top of that, many chronic diseases are very difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. As I have always said, “The way to treat cancer is to prevent it in the first place.“ I am seeing an increase in immune-mediated diseases driven by pharmaceutical side effects and toxins in the pet food supply.
Understanding our pets' bodies and what they require to stay in balance and harmony is a first step in making the best lifestyle choices for them. A basic understanding from a holistic perspective can help provide this foundation without having to go through the 12 plus years of scientific and medical schooling that I did.
What is holistic wellness or holistic petcare?
I consider holistic wellness to be a paradigm, or perspective on health, that guides the approach one takes towards caring for our pets. “Holistic” implies looking at the full picture, the whole animal living within its environment, including its genetic inheritance and many other factors which I outlined in my previous article you can read here:
ho·lis·tic /hōˈlistik/
“Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.” -Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine
What is NOT Holistic Wellness:
Sometimes, it is easier to point out what something is NOT to help define what it is.
For example, the use of herbal medicine or nutritional supplements does not make it holistic; rather, it is how those herbs and supplements are used. Many times, I see supplements and herbs being prescribed and used just like a pharmaceutical drug is prescribed, i.e., if the patient has this symptom, use this pill.
Clients will ask online: What can I give my dog or cat for this condition?
Many people will jump from one supplement or product to the next, as each one promises to be the magic cure or magic pill for what ails their dog or cat. It may even help them live forever! And if this one does not work, they try the next one and the next one, going from one Facebook group to the next, even one doctor to the next.
A common business plan is creating a Facebook group to give free health advice. The free advice is to take one, or even several, of the products they offer from the line of supplements they sell. Another is to run Facebook ads claiming they have the cure for every disease your pet may have. Many people without any medical background whatsoever are labeling themselves “nutritionists”, “certified”, even “clinicians”, implying they work with clinical cases like a licensed veterinarian. Pharmaceutical companies do it, why not supplement companies?
As a housecall practitioner, I see the overstocked supplement cabinets in people’s homes, with hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of supplements on their shelves.
Let me let you in on a big secret: there is no single supplement, herb, diet, mushroom, vaccine, vitamin, or latest, greatest peptide that is going to solve all of your pet’s problems.
Maybe this wishful thinking is a side effect of the fantastic programming the pharmaceutical industry has done to all of us in the United States. “Just take this pill, and you too will be running through a field of daisies in perfect health. Perfect health = perfect life; all it takes is this one pill! “
Don’t get me wrong; I use herbs, mushrooms, and diets in my healing protocols. However, I use them according to the individual patient's underlying pattern of imbalance.
I prefer to have a wide variety of supplements and herbs available in various forms so that I can choose the one that best addresses an individual patient’s imbalance. This means choosing a form that will be easy to administer to the individual patient, well-accepted without creating another imbalance, and bringing about comfort and healing.
Practically, this means that each patient’s protocol is designed for that patient’s unique constitution and pattern of imbalance, not the allopathic diagnosis.
Tenets of holistic health care:
The body is capable of healing itself and constantly maintains a state of dynamic homeostasis to the best of its ability.
Disease occurs when the body’s mechanisms for maintaining equilibrium and homeostasis become overwhelmed. This can be caused by stress, emotions, toxins, poor diet, lack of nutrients, water, and rest, or climate factors, such as being too hot, too cold, damp, or dry.
The patient is treated as an individual with a unique constitution and imbalance.
All parts of the individual are taken into consideration: the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual.
The individual’s environment, including ecological, climate, social, and familial, is taken into consideration.
Lifestyle issues, such as diet, exercise, work, and stressors, play a major role in health. Stressors often vary depending on the species, its natural behavior, and opportunities to express that natural behavior.
Traditional Systems of Medicine
People have been healing other people and animals for as long as people and animals have been falling ill or getting physically harmed.
Every culture has developed a system of healing. Many of those systems were passed down via oral tradition, from healer to apprentice or from shaman to student. They can be found among indigenous peoples around the globe, in the backwoods of Appalachia, and in our grandparents and ancestors who farmed the land. There were no hospitals or clinics. You were lucky if there was a traveling physician or village healer.
A few ancient cultures had a written language, and medical knowledge was preserved through medical texts. These include Ayurveda medicine in India, Traditional Chinese Medicine in the far East, Greek medicine, the forerunner of western medicine, and Tibetan medicine, which is at the crossroads, including a little bit from the west and the east.
“To All My Relations”
Many, if not all, traditional healing systems viewed the individual in relation to their ecological, social, familial, and spiritual environments. They considered the individual patient within their contextual background.
The web of life is called a web for a reason: Everything is connected to everything else in far more intricate ways than we could ever imagine.
That is why the Lakota people use the term "All My Relations" or "Mitákuye Oyás\'iŋ" after every prayer. It embodies this worldview of interconnectedness, emphasizing that all people, animals, plants, and even inanimate objects are related and the importance of treating all beings with respect and understanding, as we are all part of the same web of life.
With animals, we can look at their social, familial and even ancestral roots:
familial: the parents and litter they were born into
the larger social relationships with humans and other species of animals
the outer environment: house, dog house, kennel, yard, play area, extending to dog park, pet food store, vet clinic
the ecological environment: city, suburb, farm, forest, etc.
ancestral: natural behaviors they may have been bred for, what climates their ancestors evolved in, diet they may have eaten
As the saying goes in biology, part of it is nature, the genetics one is born with, and the other part is nurture: the environment, social interactions, nutrition, etc.
Constitutional Types
All of these factors help to form the individual. At the core of the individual is their constitution. This is akin to the physical/personality matrix they are born with.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the constitution comprises five elements or energetic processes: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Every individual has a unique combination of these elements, proportioned within the individual that determines their personality, physical, mental and emotional tendencies.
Ayurveda teaches that each individual has a unique combination of doshas, elemental energies, Vata, Pitta and Kapha, known as their "Prakriti" or constitution. The balance of these doshas determines an individual’s physical, mental, and emotional characteristics.
An individual is healthy and balanced when the 5 Elements or the Doshas are in harmony. However, when they become imbalanced, it can lead to various health issues.
In Greek medicine, the three humors were discussed. Tibetan medicine combined the three humors with the five elements.
In homeopathy, which developed far more recently, there are 15 basic constitutional types based on the constellation of characteristics of certain constitutional remedies.
The Five Elements: building blocks of the natural world
I resonate personally with the Five Elements of TCM. I have been tracking them through the seasons for years now, in my own life and in the health of my patients. Every year I learn new things and go to greater depths of understanding.
The Fieve Element creation and control cycles provide a map describing the cycles apparent in the outer world through the seasons and the cycles of the moon, sun, and stars. That map is mirrored in an individual’s life cycle from infancy, childhood, and adulthood to the end of life. They are also reflected on a micro scale in the body's organ systems and their interaction with one another.
The Five Elements provide a map to guide us through this great web of life, from the macro (the above) to the micro (the within). Its beauty is that it can be applied to all aspects of health and wellness, including nutrition, herbs, mushrooms, organs, body parts, energy movement through the body, and seasonal living.
If you would like to journey with me, alongside other explorers and their animals, we start the cycle again in April. Click the button below to learn more.