so in today's doctor Alex answers video I just want to talk a little bit about
homeopathy and natural remedies or dietary supplements in pets so stay
tuned I'm dr. Alex the veterinarian behind ourpetshealth.com where my aim is to
help you and your pet to live a healthier happier life so make sure
you're subscribed if that's something you're interested in and in my #DrAlexAnswers
series I take one of your questions and try and give you the
information that you need and today's question comes from Lilia who's a
fantastic subscriber and has been commenting and discussing with me a lot
of different points on bit loss in my different videos so yeah today's
question was asked by Lilia and she watched my video that's all about
natural supplements dietary supplements and comparing those to drugs so trying
to decide you know which is best what's the difference which is the most
appropriate one for your pet well where does homeopathy fits into that is
homeopathy and natural product can it be thought of as a natural product or a
dietary supplement and the answer really in my mind there's no they're completely
different so when I think of a dietary supplement or a natural product I'm
mainly thinking about a product that actually has got an active ingredient
agreed ingredient in it that does theoretically have a action on a body
system so that could be you know any number of things and obviously a lot of
our drugs or really all of our drugs come from in originally from natural
products so that could be an aspirin which I think comes from a tree bark if
memory serves me right but what we've done is we've isolated that individual
component of the tree bark to produce the aspirin that we know and that we
take you know many times you know a week a month or whatever you know depending
on your situation so that's something you know we could instead give tree bark
it's not as effective or it's going to be difficult maybe to get the
they're kind of an effective dose but we could give that and we could expect that
to potentially have an action I'm the same would be if we you know eat lots of
fish we expect to get a lot of our essential fatty acids so our omega-3 and
our Omega six six essential fatty acid so I'll make a three mainly for fish and
we could actually expect that and we could then expect that to have an effect
that we know when we purify we take actually essential fatty acid
supplements that they potentially have a benefit so if that makes sense we can
expect something to have an effect now when it comes to homeopathy there is
really and if you've seen my videos on homeopathy you'll know my thoughts on
this but there is no theoretical reason that we can expect what is effectively
water to have an effect on different body systems depending on what substance
has been infinitesimally diluted in it the idea with homeopathy is that you
take a substance I'm often it's actually something a part of whatever is causing
that disease you're then putting in a little bit of water you're bashing that
water against a leather strap or something to impart the energy from that
substance into the water and you're then taking a tiny amount of that water and
diluting it into more pure water and so on for a lots of different times often
thirty times so thirty C means that there's been thirty dilutions and that's
quite common one I believe excuse me and statistically there is you know actually
none of that original particle an original substance in the homeopathic
substance so how can that possibly be expected to have a result that you know
effectively it's a belief it's it's you know something that if you think about
it logically through that description there's no way that can have an effect
there's no explanation for that now whether you couldn't believe in
homeopathy or not and if you do you've probably stopped watching by now but we
that's very different from a natural substance where I would expect you know
there to be a theoretical benefit so something that we're seeing a lot at the
moment is
supplementation so that comes from a natural source the problem being and we
know that when that is in a concentrated form and we're getting a reasonable dose
than that potentially has an effect or it has an effect in the lab on kind of
cells that are grown in a in a petri dish the problem being though is when we
take the natural substances that contain that ingredient we would actually need a
ridiculously large amount to get the dose that we need so while you could
potentially expect that there might be a benefit from taking those supplements if
we break it down the likelihood of that benefit is actually potentially pretty
unlikely you know that's not going to be the same for everything I guess we would
think of horrible medication is very much the same so herbal medication would
be a natural product and natural supplement and natural dietary
supplement or a natural medication you know whatever the words you want to use
again it it may have that active ingredient but whether it has it in the
right concentration or not or whether there are other things within that
natural product that may actually increase the risk of of side effects
developing because you may have kind of compare different chemicals competing
with each other I'm I guess an example of that would be would be cannabis so
something you know CBD oil is something that is is you know gaining popularity
and that can definitely be thought of as a natural medication and natural product
or a dietary supplement to use to treat arthritis or epilepsy potentially arm or
anxiety but if you just took it from the gave cannabis then that also has um the
THC which is the psychoactive compound so while you might get the benefit of
CBD you'll also get the downside of the THC and that in extreme circumstances
can you know be really dangerous although by and large marijuana is
something that is pretty safe and I've certainly discussed that in my
couple of other videos about both of those topics so yeah I hope that answers
your question I hope that's kind of made things a little bit clearer and not kind
of complicated matters yeah I hope it's not kind of too much of a a rant or
anything for you but you know that's my thoughts really on where you know
homeopathy and maybe a lot of these other kind of alternative remedies come
in you know they they maybe not have many much evidence behind them there's
maybe no theoretical way that you can link the suppose that effect they have
on the body system that they're supposed to be affecting and also often with
sorry we've got my cat here so normally I shut my cat's out when I'm filming but
Molly has just come to join me and you might have heard her meowing earlier
she's wondering what's going on while she's been picked up and shown to the
camera and she can see herself anyway the other thing Lily I mentioned was
about using kind of natural supplements or dietary supplements you know should
use them instead of drugs or is it part of a combination I guess generally in
the vast majority of cases if we're going to use them at all if we're going
to try them we should definitely think of them as complementary to other things
that we can do so that's not always drugs that could be in the case of
arthritis we might give a glucosamine and chondroitin or a green lipped mussel
extract we might start giving fish oils or we might feed a specific I'm joint
diet but we don't want to do that in isolation at the same time we want to
control exercise we want to think about modifying one of our pets environment so
soft bed keeping them out of a draught reducing the risk of them falling over
on slippery floors so putting down rugs and mats and that kind of thing so we
want to think of a lot of a lot of diseases we want to think of that it's
just one part of the treatment strategy anyway that's it from me those are my
thoughts it's getting late and I don't want to ramble on too long but yeah I
hope that answers your question Lilia I'm if not you can always leave me a
comment down below and I'll try and yeah try and answer that a little bit better
but also if you've got a question like Lilia you can just ask me you know over
on my website if you follow the link and I'll leave that in the description then
I'll do my best to get you the information that you need as well make
sure you're subscribed if you're interested in videos like this give it a
thumbs up if you've enjoyed it and until next time I'm dr. alex from our pets
health and this is the show where you ask the questions and dr. Alex answers