Antibiotics Can’t Hurt. Right?

Sarah was a sweet Maltese. Everyone loved her. She loved everyone and everything. And everyone loved Sarah. Even dog-hating people and anti-social dogs. Her sociability and energy allowed her to have a great life.

Sarah enjoyed long daily walk and playtime. She went to doggy daycare almost every day. She was physically healthy overall. Like her health conscious guardians, she ate a fresh diet and went for routine wellness checks.

The only problem was that she’d periodically develop itchy skin, rashes and red, smelly ears.

Whenever she was not acting “right” in any way, she was rushed to the veterinarian. Anti-biotics and anti-inflammatories were usually prescribed.

After all, they couldn’t hurt, right?

One morning, Sarah’s guardians saw a few itchy pimples on her skin. Sarah was acting fine otherwise so they went to the vet after work that night. Just to be safe. An anti-biotic was again prescribed. Sarah’s pimples vanished within a few days.

A few weeks later after work, Sarah started twitching and developed a vacant stare. After lots of tests at the ER and consultation with a neurologist, Sarah was diagnosed with a seizure disorder and idiopathic epilepsy.

This abnormal behavior continued almost every day so Sarah was started on anti-convulsants.The drugs made her pretty lethargic for a few weeks but then she seemed fine. Sarah’s life returned pretty much to normal.

Sarah was lucky. Her health challenge was successfully treated. But could it have been prevented? Many similar stories end badly.

Here’s something simple you can do that can save your beloved companion animal’s life. Try not to suppress skin symptoms. Like Sarah’s pimples.

Are these Skin Symptoms Just the Tip of the Iceberg?

Why not? Because every sign and symptom (see below for the difference between them) has a relative degree of importance. For example, it’s better to have an external symptom such as a skin or ear problem rather than an internal one such as a brain or liver dis-order, e.g. causing seizures.

This seems obvious, right? Uh, uh. Not in today’s reductionistic (where dis-ease is reduced to one part) and mechanistic (the living body is seen like a machine with separate moving parts) medical mindset.

Our common sense, intuition and scientific studies say that, unlike reductionism, life is a connected continuum. Everything is connected. Whole-istically.

Holistic understanding and evaluation of life’s decisions leads to better outcomes. Both for health maintenance as well as dis-ease treatment. After all, you don’t buy a car without exploring your available options. You look at the bigger picture. You collect information, read reviews, and get opinions from others.

Don’t our beloved companion animals deserve the same?

You Can Learn To Make the Best Decisions

(and do what feels right when treating your dogs and cats)

The most effective decisions are made this way. By evaluating all of the available information. Medically speaking, you (and your holistically-oriented doctor) weigh all of the benefits and risks.

In Sarah’s situation for example, was her overall and longer term health considered when treating her skin pimples? Was anti-biotic disruption of her body’s delicate bacterial balance even considered? How about the potential immune and other imbalances secondary to the drug use?

Was a holistic or reductionistic decision made?

Enter Holistic Medical Decision Making (HMDM) and Holistic Options courses and school. You’ll learn the simple framework that will allow you to help decide what is best for your animal companion.

You can do it!

The best decisions are those you make when you have all of the information and consider it holistically.

Holistic medical decisions can lead to better quality and longer lives for our pets.

You don’t need to be medically trained to effectively use this method. There’s only a few things to learn. The relative importance of the symptoms (like skin pimples vs. seizures) is just one of them.

Learn to holistically promote wellness. Not treat isolated symptoms reductionistically.

How you approach and treat symptoms is critical to the quality and length of life. For all beings.

Know Your Treatment Options

Unfortunately, you can’t always rely on your conventionally-oriented family veterinarian or MD to see the bigger picture of health or present them all to you. Especially when it comes to gentle holistic and natural treatments.

But how do you know what to do?

That’s why the Holistic Actions! for Companion Animals Academy and resources are here!

Our online resources are highly reliable and well researched. They will help you make the best holistic medical decisions.

Here you’ll find online courses, audio and video seminars, access to cutting edge research, analysis, etc. available 24/7. They’ll show you the gentle and effective methods that can be used to holistically help . Best of all, at the live group classes and discussion groups, you can ask your specific questions about holistic and homeopathic preservation of health.

Find out more about the Holistic Actions! Academy and Holistic Medical Decision Making method.

Or start by taking the Holistic Essentials course which goes over the five essential parts of the holistic life.

Be well.

Dr. Jeff

PS-A sign is an objective measure of dis-ease, like a blood test result (yes, diagnostic test results are also important when making holistic decisions). A symptom is subjective. Pre-verbal children and non-verbal animals only have signs. Using this definition that is. But is that really the way that life works?

Your child may not yet speak but she sure can still communicate. The same is true for animals.

For simplicity sake, signs and symptoms can be considered together.