Describing Your Pets "Diarrhea" Symptoms to Help Find an Individualized Remedy

[Dr. Jeff]

Hi everyone-

On the 6/22 Empower Hour! webinar Dr. Christina, Sara and I will discuss with you why and how to repertorize. This is the homeopathic method of individualizing pets to find and use helpful homeopathic remedies.

Using it is easy once you look closely at individual symptoms, and know what to do with the information. The need to define symptoms is the reason "diarrhea" is in quotes. It is just a general description that doesnt help that much when it comes to repertorizing.

All you need to do is describe the symptom in detail then use an index of symptoms, called a repertory, to find remedies that can help that symptom.

The next step is to put all the symptoms and remedies together to narrow down the choices of homeopathic remedies. As you can see in the diarrhea rubrics listed below, some contain hundreds of remedies.

BTW-A rubric is a list of the homeopathic medicines that have been found to be useful for the symptom.

Here are a few ways to define the general symptom of diarrhea:

1. Normal = well-formed (no residue when picked up)
2. “Diarrhea” (or wet stool) - The general rubric is: RECTUM - DIARRHOEA : (214) where the number is how many remedies are in the rubric.
   
   Ways to define the diarrhea symptom:
   
   1. soft-formed (leaves residue) - STOOL - WATERY: (169)
      1. worsening wetness—>
   2. pudding
      1. worsening wetness —>
   3. watery

Describe:

1. mucus - STOOL - MUCOUS, slimy: (105)
   1. quantity, e.g. coating the stool, blobs, streaks
   2. mucus color - STOOL - MUCOUS,slimy - green: (59)
2. presence of undigested food - STOOL - LIENTERIC: (84)
3. blood - STOOL - BLOODY: (134)
   1. quantity as for mucus
   2. color (red, pink, dark, black)
   3. clots
4. straining to defecate - RECTUM - PAIN - tenesmus : (152)
   1. before - RECTUM - PAIN - tenesmus - stool, - before : (23) acon. aeth. AGAR. alum. arn. berb. cham. Coloc. crot-c. dirc. fago. grat. mag-m. Merc. MERC-C. Nux-v. phys. plat. plb. sep. SULPH. tarent. verat.
   2. during - RECTUM - PAIN - tenesmus - stool, - during: (107)
   3. after (poop walking?) - RECTUM - PAIN - tenesmus - stool, - after : (72)
5. shooting - STOOL - SHOOTING out: (40)
6. odor
   1. offensive - STOOL - ODOR. - offensive: (136)
   2. putrid (burns your eyes from many feet away) - STOOL - ODOR. - putrid: (38)
   3. sweet
   4. sour, etc. - STOOL - ODOR. - sour: (34) aeth. arg-n. Arn. bell. CALC. camph. carbn-s. cham. colch. Coloc. Colos. con. cop. Dulc. Graph. HEP. iris Jal. lyc. Mag-c. MERC. mez. Nat-c. Nat-p. Nit-ac. olnd. Phos. podo. RHEUM rob. sep. sil. SULPH. verat.
7. dry - STOOL - STOOL - DRY: (63)
   1. CRUMBLING: (32)

There are lots of important details for every symptom. These are the things you'll want to keep track of.

Here's a few homeopathic medicines and the symptoms that help define them, which Dr. Sara has found helpful:

Symptomatic homeopathic remedies for diarrhea include:

Argentum nitricum – These patients develop diarrhea when they are excited, such as dogs on holiday or in competition.

Arsenicum album – This is the remedy most often used for gastrointestinal signs from eating unusual foods or garbage. Animals are usually restless, and may have vomiting as well.

China - This diarrhea is often periodic, recurring every few days. The patient frequently has gas, and feels tired from the diarrhea.

Nux vomica – These animals may belch a lot, with nausea right after eating. They may have frequent urges to stool, with no result. They may be uncomfortable before and during passage of stool. They may seek out warmth.

Phosphorus - These patients have sudden onset of watery stool with blood. They are usually thirsty, and may vomit right after eating.

Podophyllum – These patients have explosive diarrhea, often with a lot of gas. They often seem uncomfortable before the diarrhea, and are better afterwards.

Pulsatilla – This animals have changeable signs, often resulting from dietary indiscretion or overeating fatty foods. These dogs want to be out in the open air, and they may belch.

Sulphur – These animals have early morning diarrhea which is quite foul smelling.

There are many more remedies which can help with diarrhea. I suggest the book by Lockie “The Family Guide to Homeopathy”, as an excellent resource. This book is written for people (well obviously, animals can’t read) and does not specifically address animal problems. However, most problems are similar and often directly referable. If you use homeopathy for yourself, you will understand better how to use it for your animal friends.

 

[Dr. Christina]

If you are brand new to homeopathy, this may seem complicated. Hopefully seeing how this process leads to selecting a medicine that is very tailored to your individual companion.

HA! does have mini-repertories for acute problems that you can easily use as you learn more about homeopathy.

Dr. Christina

 

[kristen_acri]

Thanks @Dr. Jeff , @Dr. Christina , and @Dr. Sara for the info in the two posts on diarrhea. The info will be helpful to me as I have been continuing to re-repertorize Charlie's stools before the casserole incident.

I would never have referred to wet stool as diarrhea so would have bypassed rubrics that say diarrhea. I was thinking of diarrhea as liquid stools with varying frequency. I even bypassed some of my notes from the GI course that referred to diarrhea thinking Charlie doesn't have diarrhea.

Thanks again, I'll take another look!

Kristen

 

[Dr. Jeff]

You're welcome Kristen!

Yes, the conventional medical definition of diarrhea is frequent liquid stools. Homeopathically tho, a much more detailed definition is needed about every stool that is not well-formed (aka "diarrhea"). ?

See 'ya Monday for much more.

 

[Dr. Christina]

In the repertory, diarrhea refers to how the stool passes out of the pet. Frequency, urgency, time of day, associated with other symptoms (concomitants), straining, triggers, etc. These are all found in the Rectum, diarrhea section.

The separate section - stool - refers to how the stool looks once it comes out - wet, watery, covered in mucus, etc.

Dr. Christina

 

[kristen_acri]

Thanks, really helpful!

 

[Dr. Jeff]

YW Kristen!

 

[novasimpson]

Hello!! Warning: poop pictures ahead!

We have had a lot of poopie experience –acute and chronic. Catie and I have a system to keep track of the pups’ poops. We use a spectrum that ranges from:

Liquid, thick soup, pudding, barely formed, soft formed, sticky and formed. Formed poops we further identify the firmness from ok, good, really good, great, really great, PERFECT! We intermittently check with each other by feeling a poop (picked up in a poopie bag) to make sure we are on the same page. Fun times!

Extra details we usually add:
Noisy/gassy?
Smelly? If so, how far away were we standing when we smelled it. And what did it smell like? Sulphur, dog food, eggs, fireworks, rotting?
Color?
Any blood?
Speed of coming out? Spurting, gushing, straining?
Mucus? Color, consistency (dried and tendriled, globby, throughout or in one spot, sheath?)
Undigested food?
Anything else? Bubbles? Fatty? Temp (sometimes poop seems much colder then it should?)
How often? Urgency? Timing during day?

We take a lot of pictures too and then just mark in the journal when we took one. And warn people looking at pics on my phone that they have a high likelihood of running into a poop picture!

 

[Dr. Christina]

Great specificity, Nova!
.
Asking all those questions is a great example of the case taking we have been covering in the webinars.

This week we will looking up symptoms in the repertory. If there are any of the above you cannot find in the repertory, be ready to post them in the chat.

Also ask:
Possible triggers (thanksgiving dinner, hunting, vaccines...)
Other concomitant symptoms - is there vomiting, itching, lameness, etc..along with the stool problems.

There was a great DVD about raw feeding that ending with children dressed as Sherlock, walking outdoors using a magnifying glass to examine and comment on different kinds of poop!

Dr. Christina

 

[Dr. Jeff]

Thanks so much for sharing Nova. This is very helpful info.

I love giving a warning to people who look at pictures on your phone!

The DVD Dr. Christina mentioned is called Eat, Drink and Wag Your Tail. Its a wonderful introduction to fresh feeding. The poop detective segment is very cute.

Unfortunately, it is out of production, but I still have some in the office if you'd like to watch it.

We could also set up an online screening if others would like to watch it.

 

[Dr. Christina]

I love the idea of an on-line screening of Eat, Drink and Wag Your Tail.

Dr. Christina

 

[JoannC]

All so interesting and helpful! I look forward to tonight and all the information is so helpful. I never knew how the stool comes out is under “diarrhea “ and very helpful. One of my kitties,not sure who yet has walked out of the litter box to complete pooping leaving a thin rather slippery dark brown piece of stool like a thin almond slice size, and it was slightly giving off a pink tinged mucous when picking it up. This only happened once and I am suspecting it’s Timmy because I see a small dilated vein, very small near his rectum so maybe he was straining and I did not notice. Stools are dark brown, tootsie roll effect with hair inside and stool rather dry coating around it. The stools look normal but since on aloe, I think Timmy’s has gotten darker. I may need to pull back now on his therapeutic amount and see what happens on a maintenance dose without the minerals in the aloe.