There are significant regulatory battles within the supplement industry that affect consumers. The New York Times reported in May 2010 that an investigation by the U.S. Congress found many herbal supplements to be contaminated with heavy metals or pesticides. In response, a trade organization that represents the supplement industry, the Council for Responsible Nutrition, pointed out that trace amounts of metals are naturally found in soils. In September 2010, Consumer Reports published a warning on twelve supplements (aconite, bitter orange, chaparral, colloidal silver, coltsfoot, com-frey, country mallow, geranium, greater celandine, kava, lobelia, and yohimbe) to be avoided because risks outweighed possible benefits.

Animals’ dietary requirements vary not just between the species (the carnivorous cat has extremely different needs than does the herbivorous horse) but according to the animal’s individual needs based upon its age and work. One should never simply interchange supplements between animals without professional advice.

Science’s difficulty in assessing many of these supplemental treatments is that there are so many compounds in a given supplement. Aplant, for example, has very numerous identified and possibly unidentified compounds, and these factors are variable depending upon the plant part (root, stem, leaf, flower), soil condition, season, and processing of the plant. Also, one animal can process various supplements differently than another due to different body chemistry at the time of supplementation as well as other health factors.

Consider vitamins and minerals, for example. Iron absorption is aided by vitamin C, but excess vitamin C hampers the body’s absorption of copper. Excess vitamin Bl can lead to deficiency in B2 and B6. TOO little vitamin E impairs absorption of selenium, while too much selenium is easily toxic. A plant grown in one area can be toxic with selenium while the same plant grown in different soils might be deficient in this trace mineral. Horse owners work to balance the calciurri:phosphorus ration in the hay, as alfalfa has high calcium and other grasses tend to have much less.

Like other alternatives, supplements may be seen as ranging from mere hype to the truly helpful. Take care to not experiment on your animal, and consider the pros and cons of a treatment with conventional guidance in mind. Gastric distress, allergic reactions, and toxicosis are the most common side effects in supplementation. While supplementation is usually oral, it can also be applied topically, with some products, such as colloidal silver, being applied either orally or topically. Remember that even topically applied alternative supplements can have unintended negative consequences. For example, cats and dogs have been poisoned by the use of pennyroyal oil as a flea and tick deterrent.

Topical Application: The Cyborg Horse

The little black Thoroughbred did well enough, finishing first in enough purses to let his owners be regularly photographed in the winner’s circle; placing and showing (coming in second and third, respectively) enough to keep the promise of money alive.

He was smaller than most of his competitors, fifteen hands and two inches, but his owner said, “He had more heart than any other racehorse I ever had.”

And more spirit. The little beast—amped up on the hard training, high grain diet and stall life of a racehorse—once broke loose in the saddling area at the track, sending people running for safety as he careened about, a one-horse circus, every buck punctuated with a staccato release of gas.

The growth arrived suddenly, a nasty, lumpy mass burbling from his eyelid and surrounding skin until it overtook his right eye.

No one knew what had caused the mass, and no one could make it stop. If it was viral, no one wanted their horses around the little guy.

Soon the hideous growth looked artificial, as though a Hollywood makeup artist had created an unnatural horse-plus-something-else from another planet.

“He looked like a cyborg,” one veterinarian recalled. “A ‘borg horse.”

The cyborg gelding was scheduled to be put down. A one-eyed horse can be unsafe on the track, and a gelding has no breeding value. Still shy of his fifth birthday, the ‘borg gelding wasn’t even at full maturity, but he was suddenly living his last days. Had he been healthy, his post-racing fate would have been retirement to a new career, such as dressage or jumping, but cyborg horses are hard to adopt out, and even harder to sell.

Euthanasia was the answer for the horse with the most heart.

Then his owner tried one more veterinarian, a woman who embraced alternative treatments. This vet regularly recommended homeopathic preparations to her clients, offered chiropractic on many animals, and worked with acupuncturists.

“She had some special salve she said she could put on it,” the owner reported. “I told her to go ahead. Nothing else had worked.”

The vet topically applied the product, treating the growth repeatedly with a salve no one else had.

And then?

“The growth went away, disappeared completely,” the owner told me. “The horse was fine. She saved him.” And saved him quickly. Her course of treatment didn’t take long, and soon the healthy retired racehorse was off to a rehabilitation and adoption facility.

I asked the alternative veterinarian what was in the salve she put on the little black gelding.

“It was a combination of things,” she said mysteriously.

When I pressed further, it turned out she didn’t know all of the ingredients in the potion.

I wanted to buy a bottle of the magic salve, read the label, contact the manufacturer. However, the vet told me she could no longer get the product.

Readers are cautioned to seek competent veterinary care for skin lesions on horses. Pyogranuloma (proud flesh) can look quite similar to a fibroblastic sarcoid, but the two have opposite management strategies, and each condition will be worsened by the wrong management. See the University of Liverpool’s excellent brief by Dr. Derek Knottenbelt (http://www.liv.ac.uk/sarcoids).

But the little black Thoroughbred no longer looked like a cyborg. His vision is fine, and he’s still enjoying a long life as a saddle horse.

APITHERAPY

Apitherapy, the administration of honeybee products for health, has an ancient and varied history. Conventional medicine uses insect venom in careful, restricted application for treatment of hypersensitivity. In the realm of alternative treatments, honey, pollen, propolis, royal jelly, and venom have all been used in hope of improved joint function and nutrition, as well as decreased pain and degeneration. Respiratory, integumentary, and dental problems have all been treated with apitherapy; and all have some anecdotal support while lacking strong support from scientific research.

Honey is used topically on wounds as well as ingested. Advocates believe raw honey contains additional beneficial trace substances. It is certain that unprocessed (raw) honey contains many impurities such as bug fragments. A mix of sugar and iodine is a common home hoof infection preparation as the sugar environment does provide some protection for topical infections, but it is not clear that honey-dine (honey and iodine) or sugar and iodine are is more effective than a commercial anti-septic preparation.

Pollen, gathered incidentally by bees as they collect nectar from flowers, is suggested by apitherapy proponents as a nutritional supplement as it does contain carbohydrate (in the form of sugar), fat, protein, and many vitamins and minerals. Pollen also contains insect excrement, fungi, and bacteria. Adverse reactions are not uncommon. At least one study of human athletes did show a benefit with bee pollen supplementation, in that the supplemented group took fewer sick days (http://www.nebi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fegi?cmd=Retr ieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7139223&dopt=Abstract).

Propolis, the waxy plant material collected by bees to chock their hives, is sometimes suggested for germ-fighting as a topical preparation or an oral ingestion, often in a gelatin capsule. An antimicrobial effect is reported in a laboratory setting but propolis also supports bacterial growth. Again, any animal sensitive to the plant the propolis was gathered from may have a reaction to the propolis.

Royal jelly is especially subject to misinformation, often advertised in literature advocating apitherapy with the comment that royal jelly is consumed only by the queen bee, when in fact all young bee larvae receive royal jelly. Still the queen bee was fed only royal jelly when she was a larva, and her life span and fertility lead to the alternative treatment of administering royal jelly for all manner of weakness.

Bee venom is suggested as a treatment for inflammation, autoimmune arthritis, and degenerative arthritis. Therapists may have processed venom that is administered with a needle or may position a bee over the body, using a container that exposes the animal to the bee until the animal is stung. Because allergic reactions are fairly common, due care must be exercised by anyone considering apitherapy.

There is also a homeopathic remedy called apis, or apis mellifiea, that is crafted from the body of a bee as the original mother tincture. See the therapists section, What Is a Homeopath?.

AUGMENTATION THERAPY

Not to be confused with immuno-augmentive therapy (or LAT, an alternative cancer treatment), augmentation therapy is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms mega-nutrients and orthomolecular medicine as a term for vitamin, mineral, and other nutrient supplementation in an effort to help an animal. Preventing, correcting, and reversing pathology is the goal.

BACH FLOWER REMEDIES

Edward Bach, an English medical doctor, turned from science to intuition in the 1930s and decided that disease was largely caused by mental states. He developed what he termed flower essences to alleviate problematic mental states he identified after personally suffering these feelings or habits. His essences are not the contemporary understanding of the term essence as a highly concentrated tincture or oil, but rather as a preparation made by collecting dew on a flower. Failing that primary method of collection, it is made by placing a cut flower in water and leaving it in the sunlight, or in the absence of sufficient sun, by steeping the flower. The exposed water is then diluted and administered orally or topically to a patient with a specific mental complaint. The remedies are usually packaged in a manner that protects them from additional light exposure. The thirty-eight original Bach flower remedies and their indications for use are as follows.

In addition, Bach created a thirty-ninth remedy, called rescue remedy, that was a combination of five flower “essences” (cherry plum, clematis, impatiens, rock rose, and Star-of-Bethlehem), which he suggested for trauma and stress conditions. A cream preparation of rescue remedy is also available. Some practitioners consider Bach remedies to be a vibrational therapy in that they believe the water takes on the flowers’ vibrational energy for healing purposes.

In the early 1990s, the University of California Davis School of Veterinary Medicine abandoned its study of Bach flower remedies as the initial results were disappointing (Fogle, 1999).

BOTANICAL MEDICINE! HERBOLOGY

Also called phytomedicine, or herbalism, this is avast and ancient field used to treat an extraordinary array of mental and physical complaints. It is not without significant risks, as these organic preparations must be given with care and knowledge. Blue algae, for example, is sometimes recommended as a dietary supplement (spirulina), yet as microcystic aeruginosa, it can cause fatal liver damage. The Physician’s Desk Reference for Herbal Medicines, first released in 1998, is a measure of mainstream medicine’s recognition of the potential value of many herbal therapies.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration releases a list of Generally Recognized as Safe items. Hundreds of commonly used herbs are not on this list; for example, two kinds of basil are listed, neither of which is the “holy” basil used in ayurvedic medicine. To add to the confusion, there are very numerous names for many botanicals, with occasional disagreement about which name is attributed to which plant. Thus two practitioners might claim to be giving the same herb but are actually administering different plants, or in the reverse, they could believe they are giving different treatments while they are actually prescribing the same substance. Also, some treatments are known by a common name for an herbal blend.

There are also numerous offshoots of botanical medicine. The American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association distinguishes between specialists in Western herbs (WH) and TCVM herbal practitioners. Some aspects of TCVM are certainly herbalism. The RedBook of Hergest is a medieval Welsh text that contains (among much prose and poetry) herbal remedies of the time, and it is sometimes invoked in support of specific herbal remedies suggested.

Gemmotherapy is flower and plant therapy in which only the new buds, shoots, and roots are used, as practitioners believe the newest growth to be the most potent.

Medicinal mushrooms are a relatively understudied treatment, although some reports include immune system—stimulating and cancer-fighting properties, such as Russian Chaga tea. Other fungi are considered anti-viral. Polypore mushrooms have significant history in Chinese medicine.

Essiac , a combination of burdock, Indian rhubarb, slippery elm, and sorrel, is an example of a common name for an herbal blend. A Canadian nurse named Renée Caisse began promoting the blend (Essiac is the reverse spelling of Caisse) as a cure for cancer in the 1920s. After her death in 1978, numerous manufacturers began releasing products called Essiac . A 1982 study by the Canadian government found no benefit to cancer patients who received Essiac .

It is emphasized that herbalism is not a field for hobbyists, as dangers abound. Some plants found in alternative treatment guidebooks (lantana, for example) are also featured in warnings to horse owners about toxic plants. Plants that are safe for one species can be harmful to another. Members of the allium family (chives, onion, garlic, et cetera), so tasty to humans, are toxic to dogs, and especially cats. Alliums contain a disulfide alkaloid that damages their red blood cells and can result in hemolytic anemia.

CHELATION THERAPY

Intravenous administration of a chelating agent is the conventional treatment for heavy metal poisoning. Cadmium and mercury are examples of these metals with a specific gravity greater than about 5.0. At the molecular level, there is a clawlike composition in the common chelating agent, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid, also called EDTA or edetie acid. The Greek word for claw, ehele, gives this therapy its name as EDTA binds metallic ions in the body in a stable form that is excreted in the urine. Calcium disodium EDTA is a chelating agent recommended for animals with lead poisoning. Chelation therapy has been extended to the alternative treatment sphere by practitioners who assert it helps in the treatment of vascular disease as well as other ailments.

The treatment is not without risks, as the chelating occurs not just in target ions, but in all ions to which the chelating agent has a molecular affinity. Thus zinc and copper and calcium may also be flushed away. Further, the treatment has additional significant side effects.

Oral chelation therapy is also promoted by some practitioners and vendors of supplements as a treatment for geriatric confusion, which practitioners blame on aluminum toxicity. Like all supplements, they are not to be given without professional consultation.

COLLOIDAL MINERALS

A colloid is a substance composed of small particles suspended in another medium. For example, wood smoke from a campfire is a colloidal mix of solid soot particles suspended in gas. Ahydrocolloid is composed of solid particles suspended in a liquid. Products marketed as colloidal minerals are liquid supplements with small mineral-containing particles suspended in water. There is a legend that colloidal minerals were accidentally discovered in the early 1900s by a rancher named Thomas Jefferson Parker who traced a Utah spring with reputed healing powers to their source and then mined the shale he found at the source to produce colloidal mineral water.

A veterinarian began promoting colloidal minerals as a treatment for numerous maladies and the tonic needed to secure perfect health. There are now numerous companies—many offering multilevel marketing distributorships—selling colloidal minerals. Promotional literature for mines leaching minerals from rock shale out of Emery County, Utah, asserts that colloidal minerals are more complete and/or more absorbable by the body than mineral supplements in tablet form. One proponent asserts that long-lived cultures live near cold water enriched by glacially crushed rock, and the resultant glacial milk they drink is related to the peoples’ longevity.

Predictably, some pet care retailers offer expensive (usually yellow-tinged) colloidal mineral supplements to pet owners. The majority of the periodic table of the elements is represented on some of the product labels, with the companies asserting that all of the elements are needed in supplemental form and all are necessary for optimum health. Consumers can balance those assertions with the knowledge that arsenic and lead, for example, are also naturally occurring elements in the earth’s crust. The presence of an element on the planet does not equate to a mammal’s need for supplementation of the element.

COLLOIDAL SILVER

Following on the heels of the colloidal mineral interest is the promotion of colloidal silver, a liquid containing silver particles promoted as an ingestible health tonic or applied on wounds, rashes, and more. These products are sometimes created by electrically charging water in which a silver bar is submerged. Proponents correctly point out two advantages of colloidal silver over oral pharmaceutical antibiotics: bacteria do not seem to become resistant to silver, and ingested silver does not seem to cause dysbiosis (disruption of healthy gut bacteria).

However, while silver is known to have some antibacterial properties and has long been used topically in small amounts—such as in silver-impregnated bandages, especially for burn patients—there is no solid data to show that ingesting silver is beneficial.

A side effect of ingesting colloidal silver is argjria, a permanent discoloration of the skin to a bluish gray hue. It is likely that the silver deposited in the skin is also deposited internally, in other body tissues. An Australian review and a separate study by an herbalist found that the risk of ingesting colloidal silver outweigh any possible benefit.

DIATOMACEOUS EARTH

Diatomaceous earth, also known as DE or diatomite, is a type of naturally occurring silica rock that is porous and abrasive. It is used industrially as an absorbent, filter, insulator, or as an insecticide. While the absorbent trait has led it to be used in the animal care world as kitty litter, its use as an insecticide has also brought DE into animal care, usually in the equine sphere. Grumbled into a powder, diatomaceous earth absorbs parts of the waxy outer layer of pests, bugs, and insects. The damage inflicted to the pests’ bodies causes them to die prematurely.

As such, DE is used as a pest deterrent in settings such as grain storage. When mixed with an insect attractant, so that the pest will actually enter a line of the diatomaceous earth powder, it becomes an insecticide.

Some people administer food-grade diatomaceous earth orally to wormy horses or dogs, although this is not an approved use of the product. Proponents note the worms cannot build up a tolerance to DE, as they can to chemical wormers, so rotation of worming preparations is unnecessary; but they must feed diatomaceous earth to the animal subject for a protracted period, often two to three months, in order to eradicate worms.

However, because diatomaceous earth is an absorbent, it loses its efficacy rapidly in a wet environment, and of course, an animal’s digestive system is a wet environment.

Side effects of DE administration to animals can include weakening of the stomach wall and internal bleeding.

FLOWER ESSENCES

The usual understanding of the term essence as a distilled or concentrated extract would lead someone astray when examining flower essences. Here, flower essences are termed by some to be a vibrational therapy, in which a flower placed in a glass of water releases a vibration or energy into the water. The water is then used as a tonic. An extension of Edward Bach’s original thirty-nine flower remedies, flower essences incorporate flowers Bach did not use as remedies as well as combinations and flowers that he did claim for a specific complaint.

GLANDULAR THERAPY

Treating disease through the administration of another animal’s gland, or preparations prepared from harvested glands, is an ancient practice. The treatment springs from the belief that a supplement made from an eyeball will help an eye problem and so on.

Oral tolerization, feeding small but often increasing doses, has been experimented with in both conventional and alternative circles with interesting results that give hope especially for autoimmune disorders.

There is concern regarding the source material for these products. Thousands of bears are currently in captivity for harvesting products from them, for example, their bile. Some practitioners consider the bear to be a walking pharmacy.

Glandular therapy is related to cell therapy, in which practitioners administer—orally or via injection—freeze-dried or fresh cells from another organism to a patient. This is called live cell therapy by some practitioners and is not to be confused with stem cell therapy, an emerging field of mainstream medicine that uses stem cells, although there are some applications of stem cells that are not approved—not proven to be effective—and so are alternative treatments (see http://www.closerlookatstemcells.org/AM/Template. cfm?Section=Home&Template=/Templates/TemplateHomepage/Unp rovenTherapies_1510_20100323Tl44422_LayoutHomePage.cfm).

Live cell therapy, or cell therapy, applies harvested, mature donor cells. It has not been conclusively proven to be of value to the patient. The issue can be confusing for consumers because proponents of cell therapy may promote administration of embryonic cells. Again, these embryo cells are not stem cells, in the histological sense. They are mature cells from an embryo and an alternative treatment, apart from modern stem cell science.

HOMEOPATHY

Homeopathic remedies are a very highly diluted form of herbs and other preparations.

See the Therapists section, What Is a Homeopath?

HOMOTOXICOLOGY

In the late 1920s, Hans-Heinrich Reckeweg, a German physician with an interest in homeopathy, developed the theory of homotoxicology, that disease was caused by endogenous (within the body) or exogenous (external to the body) toxins or homotoxins. In contrast with classical homeopathy, which suggests only one remedy is to be administered at a time, homotoxicology often combines multiple preparations and may use less dilutioned preparations.

Reckeweg published a text on homotoxicology in 1955 and relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1970s, forming a company called Riological Homeopathic Industries, now known as HEEL (for the latin, herba est ex luce, meaning “plants come from light”), to market the remedies. As may have been expected, his work was adopted by numerous animal practitioners. In 1984, he was warned by the FDA that his anti-cancer potions were not known to be safe and effective.

MEGA-VITAMIN THERAPY

Distinct from orthomolecular medicine only in its concentration on vitamins, mega-vitamin therapy is still often used synonymously with both orthomolecular medicine and augmentation therapy.

Note that some vitamins are fat soluble (vitamins A, D, E, and K), allowing them to build to toxic levels in the body, while others are water soluble, so excess is much more easily excreted. Thus, as with all supplements and other treatments, do not casually administer them.

By convention, some B vitamins are more commonly called by their chemical names while others are known by a letter and number. The B vitamins are listed here for clarity:

NOSODES

Joseph Wilhelm Lux, a veterinarian homeopath who practiced in the 1830s, suggested isopathy for disease prevention—treating a disease with the disease agent. Thus nosodes are born, the homeopathic answer to vaccination. A pathological specimen, such as diseased tissue, saliva, pus, or other discharge is diluted to homeopathic proportions and administered orally to the animal. See the therapists section— What Is a Homeopath?—to appreciate this dilution.

The consensus of the veterinary community at large, even among the majority of alternative practice veterinarians researched for this book, is that nosodes do not offer the protection from disease that vaccination does. Any treatment at homeopathic dilution contains nothing but the dilutant.

Concurrent with the interest in nosodes is a general anti-vaccine, or anti-unnecessary-vaccine movement. The former ignores the tremendous benefits vaccination has conferred on animals, while the latter has some merit. As such, vaccine recommendations for animals have been revised for some species, in some areas, regarding some diseases. That said, owners who simply refuse all vaccines (often in fear of an unspecified post-vaccine illness sometimes called vaccinosis) place not only their own animals at great risk, but other animals as well as the human population.

NUTRACEUTICALS

Nutraceutical is a relatively new term for substances that are not drugs (and so are not subject to federal regulation, review, and efficacy in the United States) but are rather foods or food parts intended to give health benefits. They are not necessarily herb preparations either, although they can be. Glucosamine and chondroitin, commonly given for joint complaints (although their efficacy is still debated), are examples of nutraceuticals. Like many terms, there is more than one definition for nutraceutical. Health Canada, the Canadian office assigned federal responsibility for human health, narrows the meaning to “preparations” that are not strictly foods and are demonstrated to promote health or prevent disease.”

In the United States, products classified as nutraceuticals have a variable track record of actually containing the substance claimed on the packaging.

NUTRITION THERAPY

Diet is certainly one of the greatest single influences on health, and manipulation of an animal’s diet is a sure way to impact its well-being. While people will debate the pros and cons between home-cooked, natural, Bones and Raw Food (BARF), or commercially prepared pet food—and the dog food industry suffered an enormous black-eye with the 2007 melamine contamination problem—the simplest and surest view of dietary requirements remains one of common sense, in which the animal receives essential nutrition of good quality.

Nutrition therapy as a special therapeutic treatment, however, aims to exert a greater influence over health, for instance by anticipating additional requirements due to impending stress, such as surgery, moving, or competition, and is recognized by the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association as a separate modality. Nutrition therapy remains a strong component of TCVM as well.

Probiotics—a microbial supplement believed to enhance the animal’s natural, healthy intestinal flora—are an example of a common nutritional recommendation. The results of many studies on probiotics are mixed. It is recognized that gut flora from one species often do not transfer or colonize successfully in another species. Also, see the segment on herbalism for a warning about cross-species errors, such as alliums in canine diets.

ORTHOMOLECULAR MEDICINE

In the 1950s, Nobel laureate Linus Pauling developed the concept of orthomloleeular (literally, the right molecule) medicine with an initial application in human psychiatry that soon spread to general health. He advocated significantly higher doses of certain vitamins than was, and is, commonly accepted by the medical community. Veterinary orthomolecular medicine is today a specialty of some holistic practitioners who suggest high-dose administration of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other supplements to a specific animal in a specific set of circumstances. Its hallmark is that there is not one set of recommendations for all animals of a species, but rather, the recommendations are based on individual need.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE VETERINARY MEDICINE

TGM/TGVM focuses strongly on acupuncture, tui na, qigong, nutrition therapy, and herbalism. Eastern herbs are frequently prescribed as tea pills—small black pills that can be administered directly although they were meant to be dissolved in water and taken as a tea. The organic materials used in TGVM include dilong (earthworm), dozens of herbs, plant combinations, and more. True practitioners place great emphasis on proper diagnosis under the rubric of their schooling, which includes believing in an effect on a body by five elements (earth, wood, water, metal, wind), the four seasons, and more. Concepts of wind invasion, dryness, and dampness are studied and impact treatment recommendations. Practitioners are taught that things have a complementary yin to the yang. Meats that are believed to be inherently hot (venison, lamb, chicken) are fed for what are believed to be cold conditions, while protein believed to be cold (rabbit, duck, turkey, white fish, clams) are fed to animals with what are viewed as hot conditions.

RIGHT: Tea pills are a mainstay of Chinese herbalism.

Believed by many practitioners to be a whole medical system, TGVM is sometimes combined with conventional medicine, though with difficulty given the different views of causation of disease.

TISSUE SALTS

Wilhelm Heinrich Schüssler, a homeopath who practiced in the 1800s, developed the concept that mineral salt imbalances caused physical or behavioral problems. He thought many conditions could be remedied with minute doses of one or more of these twelve salts:

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