Placebos for Pets?

The Truth About Alternative Medicine in Animals

Brennen McKenzie

• Verlag: PublishDrive
• Jahr: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781912701377
• Thema: Medicine
• Thema: Veterinary Medicine

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.

Placebos for Pets?

The Truth About Alternative Medicine in Animals

Brennen McKenzie, VMD, MSc

Copyright © 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 bachelor’s 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 master’s 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

Missy’s 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. What’s 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

What’s 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 clients’ 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 “complementary and alternative medicine” 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 doesn’t in medicine is itself a fascinating and complicated business. This realization led me to completing a master’s 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...