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Placebos for Pets?
The Truth About Alternative Medicine in Animals
Brennen McKenzie
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eBook - ePub
Placebos for Pets?
The Truth About Alternative Medicine in Animals
Brennen McKenzie
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About This Book
Whether online or in the local pet store, there are a bewildering variety of pet healthcare products and services to choose from. Diets and supplements, ancient herbs and folk remedies, and even high-tech treatments like hyperbaric oxygen tanks and laser therapy. Everything promises to give your pet better health and a longer life, and isn't that what every pet owner wants? But how do you know if all of these products do what they claim? Are they safe? If they really are miraculous cures, why are so many offered only on the Internet or by a few veterinarians specializing in "alternative medicine?" Brennen McKenzie, a vet with twenty years of experience and the former president of the Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine Association, helps pet owners and veterinary professionals understand the claims and the evidence, allowing them to make better choices for their companions and patients.
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Topic
MedicineSubtopic
Veterinary Medicine Placebos for Pets?
The Truth About Alternative Medicine in Animals
Brennen McKenzie, VMD, MSc
Copyright Š 2019 Brennen McKenzie
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.
Published in 2019 by Ockham Publishing in the United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-912701-37-7
Cover design by Claire Wood
www.ockham-publishing.com
About the Author
Dr. McKenzie has been in small animal general practice for eighteen years. After completing a bachelorâs degree with majors in English Literature and Biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, he followed his dream of becoming a primatologist. He obtained a masterâs degree in Animal Behavior and worked for several years in environmental enrichment and primate behavior.
Switching gears, Dr. McKenzie attended the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and began working as a vet in private practice. He has served as President of the Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine Association and taught veterinary students as a clinical instructor for the College of Veterinary Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences. In 2015 he completed his MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Dr. McKenzie has shared his expertise through lectures at numerous veterinary conferences and in a monthly column in Veterinary Practice News magazine. He runs the SkeptVet Blog and contributes to the Science-Based Medicine Blog.
In his sparse free time, he enjoys playing his mandolin, traveling with his family, and sitting on the couch with his dogs watching the hummingbirds and woodpeckers outside his living-room window.
Contents
Introduction
1| What is Complementary and Alternative Medicine?
Words, Words, Words
Medicine and Philosophy
The Politics of CAM
Defining CAM by Example
Bottom Line
2| How to Evaluate Medical Therapies for our Pets
Missyâs Story
Anecdotal Evidence: Is Seeing Believing?
What Can We Learn From History?
Is there a Placebo Effect for Animals?
How Science Helps us to Find the Best Medicine
How Does Science Work?
Now What?
3| Homeopathy
What is It?
Does It Work?
Is it Safe?
Bottom Line
4| Acupuncture
Acupuncture. Whatâs the Point?
What Is It?
Is It Safe?
My Acupuncture Experience
Bottom Line
5| Manual Therapies
Hands-on Treatment: Chiropractic, Massage, and Physiotherapy
Chiropractic
Massage
Physiotherapy, Physical Therapy, and Rehabilitation
Plausible but Unproven Physiotherapy
Scientifically Dubious Physiotherapy
Bottom Line
Handling Manual Therapies for Pets
6| Herbal Medicine
What Is It?
Common Concepts in Herbal Medicine
Varieties of Herbal Medicine
Other Herbal Traditions
Does It Work?
Cannabis
Ginkgo biloba
Is It Safe?
Bottom Line
7| Dietary Supplements
Introduction
What Is It?
General Concepts in Dietary Supplement Use
Does It Work?
Examples of Dietary Supplements
Glucosamine
Probiotics
Is It Safe?
8| Alternative Nutrition
Food is Love
The Basics of Nutrition
Myths and Misconceptions about Pet Nutrition
Organic Foods
Homemade Pet Food
Raw Diets
So How Do I Decide What to Feed My Pets?
9| A Quick Guide to Other CAM Practices
Introduction
Animal Communicators/Pet Psychics
Aromatherapy and Essential Oils
Cold/Low-Level Laser Therapy
Colloidal Silver
Cranberry
Cupping
Fish Oils
Lysine
Music Therapy
Naturopathy
Neutering
Orthomolecular Medicine
Pheromones
Prolotherapy
Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy (PEMF)
Reiki
Yunnan Baiyao
Conclusions
10| A Prescription for Science-based Pet Care
Whatâs It All About?
Our Core Questions
General Principles
Watch Out for Red Flags
Further reading
Introduction
As a veterinarian, I get to spend much of my day interacting with animals. This is one of the great pleasures of my work. However, some people are surprised to learn that vets spend as much, or more, time interacting with people as with animals. Talking with the owners and caretakers of my patients is critical to helping the animals I treat. Listening to my clientsâ concerns and observations, asking questions about their animals, and educating them about how to best care for their pets is a critical part of my job. While most vets enter the field eager to help animals, it turns out we get to help people too, and that is also quite rewarding!
A very important part of talking with my clients involves answering their questions and helping them make informed and effective decisions about the care of their animal companions. In order to do this I have to be informed myself, about many different kinds of medical problems and the bewildering variety of options for preventing or treating them. Many of the treatments I use are things I learned about in veterinary school. But in the eighteen years I have been in practice, much has changed in veterinary medicine. New therapies have been developed, and research has shown us that some treatments we used to rely on are not as safe or effective as we once thought. An important part of my responsibility is to keep up with the progress and research in medicine so I can give current and accurate information to my clients.
There are also many products and procedures available to animal patients that are not part of the mainstream medicine typically taught to veterinary students. These are sometimes collectively referred to as âcomplementary and alternative medicineâ or CAM (though we will see a bit later that it is not at all clear or simple to determine exactly what that means). Even though these methods may not be part of the veterinary curriculum, it is important for me to know as much as possible about these options so I can counsel my clients and help my patients.
I have put a great deal of time and energy over my career into learning about such alternative therapies. I have asked questions of those offering these treatments; read the literature produced by CAM practitioners and the scientific research regarding these practices; considered the work of skeptics and critics of CAM; I have even been certified in one CAM method (acupuncture). In doing this, I discovered that figuring out what works and what doesnât in medicine is itself a fascinating and complicated business. This realization led me to completing a masterâs degree in epidemiology, the science of how we study health and disease and the medical treatments we use. Throughout my career I have tried to approach all the questions my clients ask, and all the treatments they ask about, with both an open mind and a commit...