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Horse Care
#81

First and only post is to defend CA. So your horse is doing better on Timothy and alfalfa than he was on high NSC safechoice and very little forage. Good. Glad to here you added some quality forage and decided to attribute his success to non organic oats. Your problem was you weren’t feeding him well to begin with.

My horses eat the most diverse organic diet of any I know, pulling it up from the ground with their teeth like nature intended. And it took me decades to develop pasture that would eliminate the need for any supplements. Please don’t ride in here condemning intelligent advice with an attitude that you are providing better quality anything by feeding non organic feed from a bag. Which Tim/Alf pellets are you feeding? And you do realize that you are only echoing what everyone said, the horse will need vitamin/mineral and other supplements to be healthy on this feed. So thank you for confirming what everyone here told the OP.

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#82

That is pretty wildly inaccurate.

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#83

My apologies I should have specified TRADITIONAL.

#84

Actually homeopathy has nothing to do with herbal remedies, and as I understand it is a treatment modality out of the western European tradition. Chinese medicine uses herbs, but as far as I know, not homeopathy (and the two modalities are not really compatible).

Homeopathy dates from the middle ages and Renaissance, when people understood they were treating diseases by balancing the four humors. Also, at that period, minus a germ theory of disease, many remedies for curing disease and wounds were actively dangerous to the patient.

That’s why Paracelsus had such success when he started putting the ointment on the weapon rather than on the wound. He developed a whole idea about the “sympathy” between wound and weapon, but in fact he just wasn’t causing gangrene in his patients, so doing nothing was better than using existing remedies.

that is the medical environment in which homeopathy cured more people than the “mainstream” medicine of its time.

As I said before, I’m not arguing that there aren’t plant based medicines. Indeed, the very existence of proven plant based medicines should alert us to the fact that it is indeed possible to test plants for active ingredients. My point was that there are a whole set of plants, many of them commonly used in cooking, that don’t seem to have any active ingredients at any reasonable dose. That’s why we can cook and eat them with impunity. My point was that people attribute “healing power” to plants and herbs that test as having no particular active ingredients.

If a plant does have an active ingredient, then it needs to be used with care. First, you need to know the concentration of the ingredient in that specimen, and second you need to regulate your intake.

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#85

Thank you for your testimonial. Despite what they have said about CA I am going to give it a try BUT I have made some mental notes on some of the comments that have been made - I have NOT ignored them like a certain person on here have she thought I was doing. Just because one does not reply does not mean that they haven’t taken notes of what is being said - just thought I’d throw that out there ;). I am currently looking over some vitamin and mineral supplement to add to the CA. And if it does not work then I will take some of the suggestions that I have received from some of the members here on the forum and through private messages and I implement them. I am glad CA is working for your horse…

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#86

You appear to be conflating herbal medicine with homeopathy. The two are far from being the same thing.

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#87

The principles are vastly different, yes. And you are correct I should have said holistic and my reason for using that term is that every holistic vet I’ve ever used uses a combination of homeopathic and herbal remedies depending on which she feels will best suit the need. The term I should have opted for was alternative medicine, folk medicine or anything that might combine the two. While they have vastly different theories behind them, they are used in conjunction by some practitioners.

I apologize for creating confusion.

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#88

What is your understanding of how homeopathic medicine is effective?

#89

Homeopathy relies on using substances that cause the symptoms you are trying to treat in minute quantities. For example, my holistic vet gave me nux vomica to treat dexter’s Colic episodes.

I understand the principle of like treats like and have acknowledged that I should have said that traditional medicine was still widely practiced. Herbal medicine qualifies as eastern medicine. But as I was typing decided it was improper not to include other native and cultural remedies and typed homeopathic when I SHOULD have typed holistic.

Again, I apologize for my error. I edited my original post to more accurately describe my thoughts.

#90

Herbal medicine is a feature of any human culture you care to examine.
“Eastern medicine” encompasses acupuncture and food therapy as well as herbal formulas.

And a cookbook approach to herbal therapy such as a standard recipe of herbs included in a feed for every horse is far from what would be employed by a practitioner of TCVM.
Both the herbs and the diet would depend on the individual animal and the findings of a history and examination.

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#91

My understanding is that “homeopathic” remedies take a desired proposed therapeutic substance and dilute it so heavily that when administered you are basically just getting water or whatever else it’s diluted in. An example of this is Rescue Remedy. I would consider herbal medicine to be very different because the herbs are going to be used for pharmacological effect and not diluted down to their “essence”.

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#92

Which is basically what I recommended to the OP in an earlier post. I was also very clear that the amount of herb contained in this feed is likely not in doses suitable for a horse and what one needs another may not or may require a greater amount.

I understand that TCM encompasses a wide variety practices. The umbrella of holistic medicine typically covers all of those and my particular holistic vet uses homeopathy, herbal medicine, acupuncture and chiropractic depending on the needs of the horse. She is also a DVM and will use standard veterinary medications as well.

Im not sure what I can say other than I used the wrong H word and remedied that in my original post. I’m not going to keep repeating myself. Traditional (native, cultural) healing can include more than herbal based preparations as well. I tried to choose wording to encompass that. My grandfather was a practitioner of braucherei. Im Namen Gottes des Vaters, des Sohnes, und des Heiligen Geistes, Gebet.

#93

Yes. And my understanding of homeopathic medicine is also that it is based on a medieval conception of the body and the universe, to which we would no longer subscribe. For instance they didn’t understand circulation of blood or the germ theory of disease. They also thought the world was flat and spent a lot of time trying to turn lead into gold. The theory of correspondence that underlies the theory of homeopathy extended to see likenesses in shapes and colors. But homeopathy dilutes the substance to the point their is no detectable substance other than the carrier, water or alcohol. The claim is that the molecules leave vibration in the solution.

The British national health service did some proper clinical trials on homeopathy a few years ago as it still has a following there and the decision needed to be made as to whether to fund it under the National Health Plan. The findings were that in a clinical trial the remedies had no effect. Since the remedies by definition contain no active ingredients this is not surprising.

I do think the placebo effect is a valuable one in humans and that the very act of believing you are going to cure a cold, say, can lessen the symptoms. However unfortunately the placebo effect doesn’t work that way in animals.

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#94

One could argue that the medicine of Samuel Hahnemann’s time was largely medieval–bloodletting was still all the rage. It was one of the reasons he abandoned conventional medicine.
As for the flat earth, no need to invoke something that had been abandoned as popular concept well before the advent of homeopathy.

It has been said that, given the state of conventional Western medicine at that time–bloodletting, the use of heavy metals (lead, arsenic, antimony, etc.) as “medicine”, and so forth, that, at the very least, Hahnemann and his followers practiced the Hippocratic ideal of at least “doing no harm.”

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#95

Yes, I’d totally agree that since the conventional medicine of the time was so appalling, homeopathy (basically doing nothing) was by far preferable and was the reason it seemed effective at the time. Which was also the point I was trying to make about Paracelsus and his idea that there was sympathy between the wound and the weapon. The wound heals better when the ointment is applied to the weapon rather than the wound, because the ointment is so toxic. Not because there is magic correspondence between wound and weapon.

I see I was imagining homeopathy to be quite a bit older than it actually is, so stand corrected there. I’d still say though that the idea of “curing like by like” when addressed only to visible symptoms is not always going to get you a cure, because you may have misunderstood the root cause of the symptoms.

Hahnemann is also active prior to science really understanding the germ theory of disease.

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#96

Sorry, but I can’t resist. This skit from the British sketch comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look explains homeopathy pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0 :smiley:

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#97

My goodness the attitudes on here are horrible…
Well I had a really long reply but have no idea what happened to it

#98

Houseguests are arriving!

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#99

It’s a “like” substance that produces the same symptoms in healthy people. Backed up by trial and error.

WRT “traditional medicine” vs. “eastern medicine” etc, there is plenty of wiggle room for a good doctor to subscribe to a wide range of practices that are safe and efficative, no matter what the label on the doctor. As far as treating the “whole person,” most traditional doctors take a history of the patient and family members, get lifestyle and diet information, do blood work, weight, blood pressure, etc prior to recommending a treatment plan.

#100

I’m not debating the value of a wholistic approach to health. I’m not debating that many plants contain medicinal substances.

I do however want actual double blind studies for anything that I am going to rely on or pay money for, and I want the process by which the remedy works to make sense within a 21 St understanding of bodily process.

First like cures like is not really true as a general principal. Second homeopathy is not a long standing folk remedy but the idea of one man in the late 1700s. Third, his ideas of how the body works were exploded by the scientific advanced of the 19 th century such as the discovery of getms and viruses. Fourth, actual scientific studies of homeopathic remedies have found they don’t work.

Plus even if like cured like, the fact that homeopathic remedies are diluted to the point there is no active ingredient left would tend to negate that. Nobody these days wil prescribe a medicine that actually causes fever to cure a fever.

In other words, I agree that homeopathy is totally harmless, and with Ghazxus analysis that in the 1700s doing nothing was better than using conventional medicine of the day.

Since this is no longer true, I would not advise anyone to spend time money or hope on homeopathic remedies for animals.

For people it is another matter. The placebo effect may be strong enough to make them of some value particularly in managing chronic conditions or those with no current cure like the cold.

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