Hi I'm Dr. Ilana Smolkin here for
healthcareforpets.com. Now I'm going to
talk about integrated care for pain and
arthritis in your pet.
I'm going to talk about some of the
alternative therapies, things like
acupuncture and herbal that you can add
into your therapy to see better
responses.
First I'm going to go a little bit into
detail, what are signs of pain in your
pet?
There's the obvious so when the dog can
see and obviously limp, but there's often
really subtle signs that if we can catch
these things earlier on in the disease
or in the process we can do a lot better
at taking care of. So sometimes dogs are
just a little bit stiff right after they
get up and it takes a little bit of time
for them to to work out of that after
they get up from lying down.
Sometimes we see a decrease in their
enthusiasm for regular activities so
maybe they don't want to play ball
anymore or go for a walk or maybe
they're just putting on the brakes
halfway through a walk that they used to
be able to do with ease.
People often report that they're having
trouble either going up or down stairs
or sometimes jumping up into the car.
They used to be able to get into that
hummer no problem and then what's
actually a little bit of a strain and
you need to help them up in the back end.
Maybe they're a little reluctance to
stretch, so yoga people we're used to
those terms, upward dog, downward dog.
Those were named those for a reason
because dogs naturally do those sorts of
stretches. If they're not doing those
anymore,
it could be that their body is tight or
that it's uncomfortable for them to get
into those positions. Cats can be even
trickier and I love to talk about cats
because cats to be honest, I'm never
going to catch an exam room. They will
hide it from me
all the time but you might notice things
at home and their subtle.
Maybe they're not jumping up onto the
counter anymore or they're still getting
up there but they need the stool to jump
onto first before they can make that
higher jump or maybe it's as simple as they
need to almost ramp themselves up and
looks like they're even 1, 2, 3 before they
can take that jump up or down. Cats
rarely do a full limp because usually
their problems are on both sides. So
sometimes it's as simple as they're
lying down in the same spot every day.
Yes cats sleep most of the day, but
usually change between five or six
locations in the house. If they're only
sleeping on one cushion on one couch
that could be a sign that they're
uncomfortable. They may also change their
eating habits or they're grooming habits
that they're not grooming as well or
even over grooming. Some of the skin
problems that come to me
aren't skin problems, they're grooming over a hip
or a joint specifically because they're
uncomfortable. Our ultimate goal is to
help get your pet feeling good and back
to their regular level of activity and
to a point of good health.
There are of course lots of good
medications out there and your
veterinarian can discuss that with you,
what's the most appropriate for your dog
or cat or your other pet. What I'm going to
talk about more here is some of those
integrated things that we can add on top
of that to either help reduce the dose
of medication or sometimes get them off
medication altogether although not
always. The first thing to look at is
nutrition and weight. Weight is the most
important everyone thinks that it's just
the weight of the body itself that's
causing more issues and that strain on the
joints but fat itself actually gives off
hormones that attack the joints and
cause inflammation. So it's really really
important to talk about proper nutrition.
Nutraceuticals there's lots of them out
there for arthritis and pain
from glucosamine to omega-3, green limb
muscle and again some of these can work
really well either on their own or with
each other to help improve that quality
of life of your pet and it's important
that you talk things over with your
veterinarian chiropractic care and other
manual therapies. I talk about these more
in other videos but this is where I love
to treat these pet's these arthritic older
animals and I see them starting to
stretch normally again and actually
kick out after their poops and do what
a normal range of motion for them and so
can really improve their quality of life
and give them a little bit of extra time
off medications. Acupuncture, it's been
used for hundreds of thousands of years
in China and ancient medicine and it
works great for pain control. Most dogs
tolerate it really well and again I go
into more detail about acupuncture in
another video. Laser therapy is another good
option as well.
Herbal therapies, there's tons of herbals
out there either from chinese medicine
or traditional medicine or western
herbals, things like turmeric, green tea
lot of things that you may even have at
home,
however before going and seeing online,
you can use these things do talk them
over with your regular veterinarian
because some of these natural herbals can
interfere or interact with medications that
your pet might be on and cause them that
combination to be unsafe. Often I've
seen the best success when we can use
two or three different modalities from
the alternative world combined with
medications to try and find what works
best for that individual patient and
each one response to each therapy a
little bit differently so it sometimes
takes working out what is the best
therapy for a specific pet because
what's most important to us is your
pet's health here at healthcareforpets.com.