When Your Pet is Diagnosed with Cancer

Cancer is one of our most common diagnoses. It occurs in dogs and cats of all ages and comes in many guises. But in every case, it evokes a predictable series of emotions and responses.

The word “cancer” implies the inevitability of death. And when it comes to our beloved pets, this implies a heart-wrenching impending separation that always comes too soon. We respond by wanting to know what we can do to prolong our time with our dear companions. We start thinking about how our companion might feel about the potential treatment plan we may select for him. And we need to know the costs and feasibility of all of our treatment options.

Our immediate fact-finding task is impeded by our emotional turmoil. And not being experienced in this area, we find ourselves lacking in the knowledge of what questions to ask to find the most appropriate treatment for our pets. Here are some guidelines to help in those decisions:

1. Recognize your treatment preferences. Do you have a strong preference for natural treatments or conventional ones?  Are you willing to consider all options?
2. If you are willing to consider conventional therapies, you will need to know what questions to ask the oncologist (or your veterinarian who may be able to administer those treatments). Here are some questions to consider:
1. What does this treatment entail as far as number of visits to the vet? In other words, will it work for you or your cat to travel to the vet weekly or more frequently?
2. How is the treatment administered? With chemotherapy, for example, some treatments are done at home, some as a quick outpatient visit, and some require IV infusions given over a few hours. With radiation therapy, general anesthesia or heavy sedation is required. And of course, surgery is often the treatment of choice, so you would need to know how long your pet is likely to spend in the hospital and what the recovery will entail.
3. What is the cost of this treatment?
4. What is the survival time? Are we talking months or years?
5. What percent of patients actually live that long?
6. What are the side-effects and what percent of patients experience those?
7. What is the survival time without treatment?
8. What can I expect to see happen in my pet if I opt to not treat?
9. How many patients with my pet’s type of cancer have you treated and how did they do (as far as survival and side-effects)?

Some cancers have excellent responses to conventional therapies. Conversely, just because a treatment exists, it doesn’t mean that it is a desirable one. You will need to weigh the potential for side-effects/complications with cost and with the chances for a good quality of life and satisfactory survival time.

3. If you are inclined towards more natural therapies, you can likely expect that there are no great studies out there to give you all the information that might be available as in #2 above. With this treatment option, you are relying on the expertise and experience of the veterinarian administering these therapies. Here are some questions to consider:
1. How does this therapy work? Many natural therapies are based on stimulating the animal’s innate immune system and cancer-fighting responses. Others are non-chemical ways of killing cancer cells.
2. How is this therapy administered? Some treatments are pills or liquids given orally, others are topical, others are intravenous, and yet others are given rectally.
3. Will this entail visits to the vet, and if yes, how frequently? You may just need to come in for periodic monitoring, or you may visit two to three times a week for a therapy such as rectal ozone treatments.
4. What does this cost?
5. Do you carry the supplements or do I order them myself?
6. What is your experience with these therapies? Have you treated this type of cancer before? Note that in holistic treatments, unlike conventional therapies, we treat the patient with cancer, not necessarily the type of cancer in the patient. This means that one patient with this type of cancer might respond much better than another- and, similar to responses with conventional therapies, we may not know how any individual patient will respond.
7. What is the survival time without treatment?
8. What can I expect to see happen in my pet if I opt to not treat?

Hopefully, these questions will get you started on your path to making the decision that is most appropriate for you and your pet with cancer.

Letter Home (to WAH): The First Update

Catherine is an employee at WAH and a third year veterinary student. We love her emails to us and wanted to share one with you.

Hello WAH Family!
While my parents text me with updates about how unseasonably warm it is back in Delaware, I donned a wool coat in the first week of September. Though Sebastian is rejoicing in the crispness of this autumn weather, I am refusing to accept autumn weather before it is actually autumn on the calendar.

Speaking of the animals, the new little kitten, Jalapeno, is settling in very well. He and Dory would play all day long if they didn't have to eat or sleep. Essie tolerates him enough to let him sleep next to her. Jalapeno is infatuated with Sebastian. He splits his time at night between our bed and Sebastian's (which Sebby is only okay with because he sleeps so soundly that he doesn't notice the kitten trying to be his little spoon).

And now for classes this year. The only way you can fully appreciate this is if I list them: Cardiorespiratory Diseases of Small Animals, Musculoskeletal Diseases of Small Animals, Neurology & Ophthalmology for Small Animals, Small Animal Medical Exercises, Large Animal Clinical Techniques, Food Animal Medicine, Equine Medicine, Exotic Pet Medicine, Principles of Integrative Medicine, and Small Animal Radiology I. For those of you that went to the trouble to count the total was TEN. I am taking TEN classes. Because I didn't think a full vet school curriculum was enough, I am voluntarily taking an online course through the University of Florida on Shelter Animal Disease.

Occasionally I sleep and eat, but mostly I just sit in class and listen to lectures about eye balls and dairy cow mastitis. In fact, tomorrow I have a lecture in Food Animal Medicine entitled, "The Teat." That's right, all this money I am spending on vet school tuition and tomorrow afternoon I will be sitting through a 50 minute lecture on a cow's nipple. Mentally invigorating. On the bright side, last week I got to draw blood from a dog! It was sooooooo cool. I wish I had a job where I could do stuff like blood draws all day long! :)  [Note: Catherine DID have a job in which she drew blood all day long- at WAH!]

Hope all is well! Another update to come again soon!

-Catherine

Antibiotics: Too Much of a Good Thing?

I recently read a number of different articles that all came to the same conclusion: Antibiotics can be lifesaving but their overuse can have deleterious consequences.

We’re hearing some good stories in the media recently about the role that bacteria play in our bodies. A recent New York Times article by Michael Pollan entitled, “Some of My Best Friends are Germs” highlighted the fact that we are only 10% human- the other 90% of us are bacteria. And the most important bacteria are those that live in our guts.

This means that every time we swallow an antibiotic, we are killing some of the good bacteria that are living within us and performing important functions like helping us utilize food that we eat, making important vitamins like the B’s and fighting off bad-guy bacteria. And this antibiotic ingestion is not always intentional. Think of all the antibiotics used in the meats we eat!

Mitochondria are little mini-organs, or organelles, that exist within our cells. They have many important responsibilities to keep us alive and healthy. Among their many roles are the production of energy for cells and their antioxidant action. The intriguing thing about mitochondria is that it is believed that they are descended from bacteria that somehow found their way into cells and decided to remain there.

What does this mean? Well, it turns out that the mitochondria share a lot in common structurally with bacteria, and every time we take an antibiotic we are actually damaging our mitochondria! This effect is seen with many other types of drugs as well, and is likely one of the reasons we see so many pets with liver problems. We are still uncovering the vast array of diseases that result from mitochondrial damage.

In 2008, the International Journal of Cancer published a paper showing an increased risk of cancer proportional to antibiotic use in people. They found that in people who have taken 2-5 prescriptions of antibiotics, their risk of cancer was increased by 27%, and greater than 6 prescriptions led to an increased risk of 37%.

An earlier study (2004) showed that antibiotic use was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. For those taking antibiotics for more than 500 cumulative days, the risk of breast cancer doubled. The antibiotics included the fluoroquinolones (known to be carcinogenic) as well as tetracycline, erythromycin, penicillin VK and cephalexin. We use all of these in veterinary medicine.

How can we avoid these problems with antibiotics?

First of all, keep your gut as happy as possible. A happy gut leads to a healthy immune system which leads to less need for fighting infections. For pets, feeding as close to an archetypal diet as possible (raw is the closest way) should help to grow the healthiest colonies of bacteria. Consider giving your dogs raw green tripe 2-3 times a week to help achieve this goal.

Feed organic or at least antibiotic-free meats. This is a challenge, but I’m throwing this in here so that maybe you will at least consider eating this way for yourselves. For people, diets high in fruits and vegetables also help. Organic, of course.

Recognize that your health is intertwined with your pet’s health. Research shows that people who own pets have different bacteria in their systems than non-pet-owning people. Likewise,  if you ask for antibiotics every time you visit the doctor for a head cold or sore throat, problems that are likely viral anyway, you are exposing your pet to potentially resistant bacteria.

Correct imbalances in your pet’s body that may have occurred as a result of prior antibiotic therapy. Your pet may need probiotics to restore the good bacteria, or prebiotics that provide the food for good bacteria to grow. Your pet may need antioxidants or CoEnzyme Q10 to repair mitochondrial damage and resultant organ damage.

Look for alternatives to antibiotic therapy. Is the bacteria really the problem or is something not right in your pet that is allowing the bacteria to infect your pet? You may achieve longer-lasting results by addressing the underlying problems and strengthening your pet’s immune system.

At WAH, we offer many alternatives to antibiotics, including homeopathy, acupuncture, ozone therapy and a wide array of supplements to boost the immune system. You can read more at: http://wilmingtonanimalhospital.com/services_holistic.php

New Scientific Findings in Homeopathy

 Our April 28, 2013 Facebook post (https://www.facebook.com/WilmingtonAnimalHospital?ref=hl#_=_)  showed me in a very brief video lecturing at the Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy (AVH) Annual Conference on updates in research in veterinary homeopathy. We had over 5500 views and numerous requests to learn more. As one who spends many hours each week reading (and enjoying this reading!) about the research findings, I am thrilled that the interest is so great!

My main concern about sharing the entire 20-page paper is that it is very technical, especially the basic science part which is the bulk of it. Many of my colleagues who practice homeopathy day in and day out commented about how they are glad that someone has gone to the trouble of understanding the research and taken the time to present it in a manner that they could somewhat comprehend. This stuff turns out to be based on physics, biology, pharmacology, physiology, nanoscience, neurology, immunology…and fields that combine a lot of these words like psychoneuroimmunology, nanopharmology and nanophysics.

So…I thought it would be kindest to present this material in two parts. The first is a very brief summary that follows immediately. The second is actually a summary written by my colleague Dr. Lisa Brienan. You can skip right to it, but it starts to get a bit technical so you may want to read the brief summary first. The original 20-page manuscript is the property of the AVH and is only available to veterinarians who are AVH members.

If you are interested in reading veterinary studies, you can visit my British colleague Mark Elliot’s website:

http://homeopathicvet.org/Veterinary_Research_into_Homeopathy/Welcome.html

Here it goes:

1. Homeopathic remedies are made by a process of dilution and succussion, or rigorous pounding/shaking. Widespread belief holds that homeopathy is no more than placebo effect because many remedies that are used are too diluted to have an effect. The assumption is based on the belief that there is no physical material that could provide a medicinal effect in high homeopathic dilutions.

2. However, there are many physicochemical studies on ultra-diluted and serially succussed solutions that have shown properties different from plain water.

3. With improvements in technology, researchers can now view nanoparticles (NP) of the starting bulk substance as well as glass-derived silicates in these solutions. High-speed videography has enabled visualization of these NPs as they are transferred from one container to the next in the dilution process.

4. Nanochemistry/physics has shown different physical properties of NPs compared to those of their starting bulk substance.

5. NPs, unlike larger pharmacologically-active substances, penetrate through the body’s usual barriers, like skin, the blood-brain barrier, the lining of the gut and airways.

6. Meanwhile, hormesis is a field of toxicology in which a low dose stressor- chemical, toxin, physical exposure like heat, etc.- stimulates the organism while a higher dose is toxic to it.

7. Homeopathic remedies may act via hormesis, specifically as post-exposure stressors.  In other words, homeopathic remedies may be hormetins. In other words, only small doses are actually needed to stimulate a healing response!

That’s the very brief version! Now for slightly more details, complements of Dr. Brienan:

Dr. Shelley Epstein shared the latest, cutting edge research related to homeopathy in Updates in Research in Veterinary Homeopathy.  This lecture was presented in two parts.  Part one detailed updates in basic science and part two outlined veterinary clinical trials.

We have moved well beyond whether homeopathy can be measured into being able to measure nanoparticle quality control issues among the starting homeopathic products; measure specific frequency differences between remedies and their potencies; measure variation in particle and aggregate size and shape; and measure elemental composition of the homeopathic particles.  Studies are finding out how nanoparticles remain dispersed in solution via the hypotheses that trituration generates nanofraction formation, lactose acts as stabilizer to prevent aggregation, dilution allows larger raw particles to settle out and nano-clusters to disperse freely in the medium.  Other research involves remedies as nanomedicines and how their dissolved silicate structures carry remedy information into the body.

She moved on to a discussion of hormesis and the stress response.  In hormesis, a phenomenon in the field of toxicology, there is an initial dose dependent toxicity response followed by a compensatory rebound response.  In this context homeopathy is a low dose stress (an initial action on the life force) which enhances repair and recovery (counteraction).  When a low dose stress is administered, the resulting compensatory biologic process also confers a protective effect against exposure to a subsequent more severe stress.

Dr. Epstein detailed the multiple pathways the body uses to respond to stressors and the resulting multi-factorial repair and return to function.  A balanced stress response network keeps the body functioning normally; however when there is an overwhelming accumulation of stressors, there is dysregulation in the stress response network and the body becomes stuck in chronic disease.

Back to the concept of homeopathy as nanoparticles; because of their properties of increased bioactivity and bioavailability, only a small quantity of remedy is needed to produce an effect.  This small quantity (low dose stressor) that causes a reparative response means that homeopathic remedies are hormetins. Also recall that the resulting compensatory response to a low dose stressor confers protection to future exposure of more severe stress…and may confer future protection to an unrelated stressor (cross-adaptation).

Further research by Bell and Koithan¹ has led to the model of Time Dependent Sensitization (TDS) – exposure to a hormetic agent (homeopathic remedy) initiates compensatory changes that amplify over time, do not require the continued presence of the initiating agent and are independent of specific pharmacological action on receptors.  In observing homeopathic treatment of fibromyalgia in people, repeated intermittent doses of individualized remedies amplified electroencephalographic alpha activity, reduced local pain and improved overall health.

In the discussion of veterinary clinical trials, Dr. Epstein outlined the challenges: how to demonstrate efficacy while following the principles of classical homeopathy (individualization of remedy prescription); prescriber skill; and the difficulty of the randomized clinical trial model (RCT) of one medicine for one diagnostic condition without consideration for comorbidities.  She outlined the ideal RCT for homeopathy including: “randomization and placebo or drug controlled; adequate number of test subjects to provide statistically meaningful results; individualization of prescription and ability to select from all available homeopathic remedies; adequate screening time to determine a similimum and medicine adjustment; adequate follow up to monitor decreased symptoms, remission and collateral health benefits.”  She finished with a series of clinical trials in different animal species in which remedy effects were clearly demonstrated and quantified.

¹Bell IR, Koithan M. A model for homeopathic remedy effects: low dose nanoparticles, allostatic cross-adaptation, and time-dependent sensitization in a complex adaptive system. BMC Complement Altern Med 2012;12(1):191 (Epub ahead of print]