Scientists Queue Up for Feline Cancer Cash
Chemo: How’s That Been Panning Out?
Heartworm and Holistic in the Same Sentence?
Standing for Ag Sanity: Joel Salatin
Along the Natural Path
Cancer Research: Wrong Focus
Veterinary medicine has historically, for better or worse, followed main stream human medicine.
In all fairness, that’s not always been a negative. Vets saw the light when the “door to China” opened under Nixon’s watch, and acupuncture found its way into serious vet practices who were looking for safer ways to heal.
That was the “entry modality” for many of us into holistic health, as I mentioned in my recent origin story with Nick Thompson, UK vet:
And of course, homeopathy has a lovely history of healing animals right alongside their humans for hundreds of years.
But here is the “Oops!” side of that tendency to follow:
“Study finds similarities in genes that drive cancer in cats, humans” recently appeared in the AVMA News.
Genes that drive cancer?
Genes, Ok. But what’s driving the Genes?
While genes can play a role in cancer, they are downstream of metabolism, all those inner workings of how we make and use energy in the body, be they pet or person, mushroom or musk ox.
Thomas Seyfried is probably the best resource to explore more of this, and he’s reaching back to pull from the work of Warburg in the 1930’s. See some references at the bottom if you want to dig deeper on this.
The central understanding revolves around fuel for cells to do their work.
When metabolism is working well, we expect it will:
turn food into energy smoothly,
use sugar and fat properly, and
clean up waste without trouble.
When metabolism is the site of disease, as is so often the case today, we find:
too much sugar in the blood for years
too much insulin trying to handle that sugar
too much body fat, especially around the belly and internal organs
Over time, this kind of problem can damage many parts of the body, including the heart, blood vessels, liver, kidneys, nerves, and even the brain.
More germane to today’s focus, this mistunement of metabolism drives genetic mutations.
Insulting Food, Feline Focus
Cats, like dogs, are dying of cancer when they’re past 10 years of age.
Wild cats, big cats in the jungle? They’re not.
Diet surely leads the way as a key reason for the difference in these close cousins.
The wild guys eat one food: prey, though it varies regularly.
That’s a relatively high protein, high fat, and very low carb diet.
They gorge, then fast until hungry enough to hunt again.
Cats are all too often fed kibble. Some call it “kitty crack,” as it’s so addicting.
All of those ultraprocessed dry food-like particles, from cheap to “prescription” or “premium” brands are held together with starch of some kind. Starch = chains of sugars.
This is then a high carb, highly tasty, convenient but wildly species inappropriate diet. And worst case scenario, it’s fed free choice.
That drives the metabolism in the opposite direction that every cat evolved over millennia to live.
This terrain gives rise to stressed mitochondria (every cell’s energy factories). Their response to chronic insults like hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia is to put out “reactive oxygen species” (ROS), known to cause genetic mutations.
Bingo: cancer cells. See the chain of events now? There’s nothing “chicken or egg” about this directional flow. Metabolism —> genes —> mutations that favor cancer.
Why Focus on Genes, Then?
It’s a classic case of “follow the money, honey.”
Genes can be cataloged, sequenced, tweaked, and researching them is “sexy,” so research money flows in.
And boy, what a pork barrel cancer research is!
Changing diets? Trading convenience for real food diets?
No research funding is coming that way, you can bet.
Too messy, too awkward, too many variables for researchers to interest.
How’s That Approach Gone to Date?
Remember the “war on cancer,” that bold initiative Richard Nixon started us on in 1971?
Let’s take the pulse on that, shall we?
Some scientists enthusiastically predicted that cancer would be cured in time to celebrate America’s Bicentennial in 1976.
The Bicentennial came and went, and the cure for cancer was no closer to being found. By 1981, the 10th anniversary of the war on cancer, the New York Times wondered whether this decade long war “brought real progress against this dreaded disease, or has it been an extravagant $7.5 billion misfire?” Cancer deaths continued their ruthless climb, and the past decade’s efforts hadn’t even slowed its ascent one bit. The ‘war on cancer’ was a complete rout. — Jason Fung, MD
Here’s a bright voice in conventional medicine who sees the importance of including a metabolic focus to cancer treatment.
Paul Marik, a co-founder of the Front Line COVID‑19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC):
As Always, Prevention Beats Treatment
Of the variables you have in your power to control, top among them that have a bearing on cancer prevention specifically, are my long standing triad:
Vaccination. Homeopaths have long seen the connection between vaccines and tumors.
Diet: Low hanging fruit that can, with a proper shift from the usual junk, give your animal a huge boost in health and therefore cancer prevention.
Pesticide avoidance. The usual plethora of products sold to “control” fleas, ticks, and internal parasites, as well as lawn sprays all increase the chances of cancer, as well you might guess.
I’ll add a fourth to wrap this up. Immune support from transfer factors. I’ve long used these in practice and on myself to keep that finely tuned system turned on and watchful. When immunity is doing its best work, it’ll “see” cancer cells for the foreigners they actually are and take them out.
There are innumerable research papers published on these useful cross species molecules, both in humans and in animals. Well worth exploring and sharing with your animals.
So, gene research may be sexy and attract dollars, but it sure hasn’t solved the cancer problem, which is clearly growing. It’s time to dig deeper on the precursor to genes mutating and focus on getting metabolism healthy.
The downstream effects will show your efforts at home were well worth it.
Warburg O. On the origin of cancer cells. 1956. (Classic; metabolic primacy.)
Seyfried TN. Cancer as a metabolic disease. Wiley-Blackwell. 2012.
Pavlova NN, Thompson CB. The emerging hallmarks of cancer metabolism. Cell Metab. 2016.
Poff AM, Ward NP, Seyfried TN. Cancer as a metabolic disease. Nutr Metab (Lond). 2014.
A Quick Note on Chemo
My conventional colleagues are following the MD set in offering chemotherapy as well, not surprisingly.
Here’s a timely note I came across recently that corroborates my take on chemo as a treatment modality:
HW Treatment: It’s Holistic?!
A recent article conventional veterinarians will read is how critically important it is that animals (mostly dogs) receive “holistic care” for their heartworm infestation. Meaning, these dogs have heartworm already.
But wait. Holistic?? Really? And this is in Vet Practice News?!
Well, that’s the title, anyway: “Delivering holistic care for heartworm patients” —??
Let’s see what Uri Donnett, DVM, MS, DABVP actually means, as I did a double take after reading that headline!
As it turns out, the author largely reiterates a long held point:
If your dog is undergoing conventional treatment for heartworm, she needs to be seriously restricted from ALL activity. Even from the excitement that might come from looking out the window!
But I guess the author felt this was a “holistic” angle on that. Funny how that word has been coopted, isn’t it?
In addition to being strictly locked up for two months, vets are encouraged to share behavior mod and even mind altering drugs to help them cope with that unnatural situation!
Imagine?
Under the heading of benzodiazapines, comes this caution:
It is important to note that all drugs in this class are controlled substances, and longer-term use in dogs can cause physiologic dependence. Side effects include anxiety, hallucinations, polyphagia, sedation, and paradoxical excitation, which would not be desired in a dog with activity restriction.”
Wow. Let’s not call this treatment “holistic,” okay, Doc? We’re all shaking our heads now at how you just casually used that word.
But Why Total Enforced Lockdown?
It’s all because of the method of “adulticide” treatment with their favorite arsenic based poison called melarsomine.
How long does this enforced inactivity need to last? “From diagnosis to 6-8 weeks post-treatment!”
Here’s the reason: the sudden die off of adult worms, those scary ugly long spaghetti looking parasites that lodge in the large blood vessels leading from heart to lung.
Sudden die off?
Yeah, the injected poison kills them quickly, and then the concern is the pieces of dead worms clogging up critical arteries, causing serious issues.
What a crude approach! There’s got to be a better option…
A Safer, Effective Option (Holistic for reals)
When I was in homeopathic practice, I treated heartworm positive dogs regularly, mostly in Texas but also in various parts of the country via phone appointments.
I had a 98% success rate. The test usually went negative within 6 months from when we started.
I told owners their dogs could be 100% as active as they wished!
And, I’m sure they were, as I assured them no sudden death from poisoning would take place.
This homeopathic approach strengthens the host, ignoring the worm. And I intuitively knew there’d be no sudden breakup of adult worms and pieces clogging arteries.
When homeopathy is harnessed to do this work, it’s a given that the innate intelligence (aka the vital force) will clear parasites in a measured and careful manner.
No sudden worm death, that’s not what we’re looking for. And no highly diluted remedy would cause worms to die like a poison hit them.
What’s the Protocol?
Ah, I thought you might ask. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was one? A one-size-fits-all series of homeopathic remedies?
When I was just starting to venture into homeopathic medicine, there was one floating around from a homeopathic vet who’d started well before me.
It was based on allopathic thinking: “If they use arsenic compounds, prolly a homeopathic preparation of arsenic will work!”
I think I tried it maybe twice with zero success, and decided effective treatment had to be individualized, as is true of all homeopathy (oh, maybe with the exception of the “Practical Homeopathy” folks, who don’t have time or interest in Hahnemann’s careful work that’s withstood the test of hundreds of years).
Wiping Out Susceptibility
I reasoned that, in order for any parasite to set up housekeeping in a host, that dog had to be unhealthy, by definition.
With poor health comes susceptibility.
To all manner of things, and true of all things in biology.
Poor soil management? Expect susceptibility to weeds and runoff of soil.
Poor human health? Expect to catch all the colds going around, as well as the many forms of metabolic disease now so prominent.
Killing off all manner of bacteria repeatedly with antibiotics? You’ll be prone to superbug infection and all the runaway problems that gut dysbiosis leads to.
When homeopathy addresses the “whole patient” in what’s known as constitutional prescribing, we reach such a depth of treatment that it ablates susceptibility. In addition to making your dog wildly healthy.
It takes time compared to poisoning the worm, but the benefits are far greater health and resistance to all disease.
And time is usually on your side. Most HW positive dogs are symptom free. No cough, no exercise intolerance, the usual signs of an impaired heart.
Any Good Homeopathic Vet Can Do This Work
I lectured on this to my colleagues years ago in Portland, when the AVH and AHMA had a joint conference.
AVH members likely can still access this lecture (2014 annual meeting), at least in note form, from our membership site.
Any vet properly trained in homeopathy and practicing it regularly can do this.
Here’s my suggested starting point for weeding out the riff raff from the real serious practitioners.
As always, ask questions of anyone you’re considering hiring. I’ve learned there are some outliers in our profession that still suggest chemical HW preventatives and even vaccines.
If it’s HW prevention you’re after, my drug free protocol now has a solid 30+ years of success behind it.
An Herbal Option
In fairness, you can also kill the worm with herbs, I’m told.
As a homeopathic vet, I only used ultra diluted remedies, and usually one dose of each in a month’s time.
Without training in herbs, I’d be cautious if you opt for this method. Usually things like wormwood and black walnut hull are prominent, and these can be harsh to the gut.
There are even those who claim Guinness beer will do the trick.
Do you need to restrict activity, because of sudden adult worm die off with these methods? I have no clue.
Will you get a healthier dog from these options?
Maybe short term, sure. Getting worms out of the picture is bound to help.
I wanted a deeper outcome, however. I wanted to erase susceptibility, so the dog wouldn’t go back out to get re-infested in the future.
Holistic? Hmmm. Both homeopathy as treatment and HW prevention can be holistic.
But enforced lockdowns with added behavioral modification and drugs?
I think that’s a stretch for the H word.
Talking Sense on Pesticides
Joel Salatin, life long farmer who’s never farmed with the “ag orthodoxy,” was invited to speak at the People vs Poison rally April 27th. It was held outside the supreme court’s hearing on whether Bayer should be protected from lawsuits for deaths caused by glyphosate.
As he was restricted to 3 minutes of time, you’ll find far more value in his thoughtful words in print than the various YT recordings out there now. He had to rush. You can chew his words slowly and appreciate them more deeply here.
This comes directly from Joel’s blog, Musings from the Lunatic Farmer:
Consistent with my unconventionality as the Lunatic Farmer, I’ve thought long and hard about what I could add to this momentous discussion today.
So here’s my take: we’re distracted, as is often the case, by asking the wrong question. We’re asking specifically whether federal agencies should be able to shield their corporate cronies from the consequences of their dangerous products, specifically, and more generally, is glyphosate, or perhaps any chemical fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide, or insecticide necessary in agriculture? The short answer to both of these qustion is “no.” But these are the wrong questions.
The real question is what protocols would return the North American landscape to its pre-European productivity and abundance? You see, 500 years ago this landscape produced more food than it does today, even with tractors, fertilizers, chemicals and new plant varieties. Of course, it wasn’t all eaten by people.
Some 100-200 million bison roamed grasslands and savannahs. 200-400 million beavers ate more vegetable material than all the humans in North America today. Flocks of birds blocked the sun for an entire day. The Lewis and Clark expedition encountered a bear every single mile from St. Louis to the Pacific. Bears eat a lot. A million wolves each ate 20 pounds of meat a day. Between 1492 and 1600, the Native American population dropped by 90 percent as European diseases ravaged indigenous tribes.
How did this pre-European landscape produce this abundance? First, symbiotic, diversified, mobile animals. Bison choreography included moving, mobbing, and strategic mowing. Second, hydrology. The beavers created 8-10 percent water across the landscape; today we’re less than 4 percent. The three primary principles of proper landscape hydration are to slow runoff water, spread it, and sink it. Bison augmented the beavers with millions of wallows, like backyard swimming pool-sized dust baths, which collected runoff into pools to then soak into aquifers. Third, both human and naturally-lit fire killed weak, sick, and small trees to favor big trees spaced apart, known as the cathedral forest.
Modern American industrialized agriculture opposes every one of these principles. We segregate animals and plants into monocultures and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. We drain the water, speed up surface runoff, and deplete aquifers. In forests, we take the best trees, leave the worst, and don’t prune to encourage healthy growth.
Because we’ve disrespected and assaulted the most basic protocols of ecology, beginning with European arrival but accelerating with modern machines, chemicals, and cheap transportation, nature is fighting back on many fronts: soil, human, and cultural dysfunction. Pathogenicity and toxicity scream a lexicon of abuse: E. coli, campylobacter, salmonella, super bugs, food allergies, chronic morbidity. As the glyphosate debate rages, let’s stay focused on the most important objective: restoring the abundance and ecological integrity that greeted those European immigrants.
Glyphosate is not necessary for national security; it’s merely one among many modern inventions pushing us toward insecurity. Let’s use our God-given mechanical and mental ingenuity to restore, regenerate, and redeem. Thank you.
Only Joel would have gone this deep into history to give us such perspective! Let’s hope his words and philosophy are taken deeply and help sway the decision makers to do the right thing with not only glyphosate but all the ways we’ve fought Nature for so many years in food production.
Along the Natural Path
I’m just 2 days into an entirely different Indian environment, trading the plains with high temps of 107º F for jacket weather and Himalayan vistas. Whew, what a relief!
Rugged hills and deep cutting valleys make for breathtaking views on my morning hikes. The Natural Path has shifted!
It’s been misty in the morning, so details are lost a bit in the distance, but way down in that valley above are terraced fields and dwellings.
We start from our ashram getaway and follow that winding road around the mountain. It can be moseying or “All Out” as my watch tells me when I’ve finished a hasty paced workout. Good for the body, good for the soul to be here.
And, you never know when things change suddenly. We spent the morning getting slowly buried in a cloud, followed by a torrential rain mid-day, and then, this afternoon, as I’m putting the final edits in, a rare treat shows itself:
We only get to see this a few times in a couple months of our visit here. Wow.
To bring it back to earth a bit before I wrap up, here’s a mandal of subtle colored inlaid semi-precious stones that welcomes us and thousands of visitors into a monument to our guru, Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj:
Stay tuned for the next issue, as we went long on this one. I’ll be bringing part one of The Hunt for an NR Breeder and a Tasty Tip called OMAD (which some of you intermittent fasting folks will recognize and probably feed your pet this way).
Part two will explore the issue of getting this prized NR pup home, unvaccinated, crated with a littermate pup who was recently vaccinated for parvo. Viral shedding possible? You bet it is.
I’ll outline the steps that put this into a safe perspective and erased all worry from my Alpha member who can’t wait to welcome her new bundle of puppy love to her home.
Of course, you’ll want to subscribe to be sure you get the alerts when each newsletter posts.
Meantime, keep on making those wise choices for those innocents in your care. You can make a world of difference in how they fare.
See you in a fortnight,
Will Falconer, DVM
Thank you so much for including the text of Joel's short speech! I never fail to learn something new when hearing or reading something from him.
I'm forwarding the portion about cats and cancer to my partner who feels like we're abusing our cats whenever their food bowl is empty. Every meow is a pitiful cry for sustenance to him, instead of a request for some attention, which is much more likely 🙄. He is a junk food addict himself, so he projects his desperation for "food" onto our critters, sadly. Hopefully seeing someone else explain the way carnivores are supposed to eat will allow it to sink in finally...
Thank you so much for your newsletters! So much valuable information all the time! You mentioned in your next couple issues you will be covering bringing an unvaccinated puppy home, about it being with/around its vaccinated littermates etc. The problem is I am picking up a puppy in a week and a half. I am doing your course right now on nosodes, tautodes, and titers. I also have the Hahnemann laboratories Vital Animal NT Kit that I purchased from you previously. I am worried that IF I can talk the breeder out of vaccinating my puppy will it be too much for her immune system to be with all those vaccinated puppies for 4 full days before I can pick her up? Because I read in your literature that exposure is supposed to be for like 5 minutes in a high traffic area only once a week. Any and all information you can give me in this whole area would be so appreciated! Thank you in advance!