Vital Animal News: November 17, 2024
Bird Flu "Asymptomatics" / Amazing Ag News / Homeopathy Sale Ending / Holy Bat Wings, Robin! / Imbalanced Food, Yes!
Deja Vu: “Asymptomatic”
Joel Salatin: Ag’s Fix!
Homeopathy Sale Ends Soon
Bat Wings to the Rescue!
Tasty Tips: Imbalanced Food Works
Along the Natural Path
Beware the A-Word…
Asymptomatic.
This is a word I think we all need to be careful interpreting, as we’re going to be seeing it in the limelight once again, as Bird Flu is perhaps next in line for a news moment.
Here’s the article that prompts my concern, from AP News, right at the center of mainstream media.
The opening paragraph should sound familiar and ring a warning bell if you were paying attention during the Covid Plandemic:
Federal health officials on Thursday called for more testing of employees on farms with bird flu after a new study showed that some dairy workers had signs of infection, even when they didn’t report feeling sick.
Farmworkers in close contact with infected animals should be tested and offered treatment even if they show no symptoms, said Dr. Nirav Shah, principal director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” [Emphasis mine]
It seems the CDC waded into some dairies in Colorado and Michigan and tested farmworkers there.
Lo and behold, they found some with antibodies to the H5N1 flu virus, the cause of our latest long lasting bird epidemic, aka “highly pathogenic avian influenza.”
Those antibodies were found in 8 workers tested (out of a sample size of 115).
That’s 7%.
And here’s the kicker: half of those 8 workers were never sick with the typical symptoms others had shown (like red eyes, or mild cold symptoms).
What Could More Testing Bring?
Well, treatment for one thing. Unnecessary treatment. Ineffective and side effect laden treatment.
The treatment to be offered?
Tamiflu, generic name oseltamivir.
This is from a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine journal:
In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 15 randomized clinical trials including 6166 patients, oseltamivir was not associated with reduced risk of first hospitalization compared with placebo or standard of care. Results were similar in a subgroup of patients considered at high risk of hospitalization…”
So, efficacy is lacking. (Sound familiar?)
And side effects include depressed immune responsiveness to, erm, well, influenza!
Furthermore, antiviral administration led to a significant 5.7-fold decreased production of functional anti-influenza antibodies. Thus, our study demonstrates that antiviral treatment affects the development of the adaptive immune response and protective immunity against influenza.”
Of Greater Concern: More “Cases.”
And we know how that went, right?
The Covid test swabs up your nose, subjected to crazily amplified PCR assays, meant a level of false positives that stoked panic in the populace. More cases, oh no!
(Even though that test was never intended to diagnose illness…).
Are we going to let them bring forth another reign of control measures (that didn’t work in Covid) for this latest “threat?”
I’d sure hope we’ve learned enough from the Covidiocy experience to resist that move.
The Dogs Have Something to Say
If you want to bring this home to the animal example, look no further than Lyme positive tests that vets are quick to jump on, suggesting a month’s worth of tetracycline, even though your dog is 100% asymptomatic.
A positive antibody presence (aka a positive titer) means they are fighting the organism, and probably have already bested it, thanks to their intact immune system, doing what it’s been honed to do over millennia.
How would you imagine that immune system would respond to a month worth of a broad spectrum antibiotic?
Knowing some 80% of our immune systems live in the gut, you can bet immunity will only be whacked with the antibiotic treatment of your asymptomatic dog.
For more on this, grab my podcast episode #21 Lyme Disease: Why treatment is 100% unnecessary.
Beware the push to test more widely. Beware even more what’s made of a “positive” test in a healthy individual.
Newfound Hope for Agriculture
While I’m reserved about the president elect, I’m thrilled that he appears to be building a team intent on righting the many wrongs that the US government is directly responsible for.
The most obvious team member for me is RFKJr, who should, with his long experience as a lawyer, be able to disentangle the many 3-letter agencies and their supposed regulators.
But I’m even more excited about another hero of mine, namely Joel Salatin, farmer extraordinaire who’s a living, working example of how to turn agriculture into a healthy, profitable, earth-friendly enterprise.
Joel has been approached to take an important role in the new administration.
I've been contacted by the Trump transition team to hold some sort of position within the USDA and have accepted one of the six "Advisor to the Secretary" spots. My favorite congressman, Thomas Massie from Kentucky, has agreed to go in as Secretary of Agriculture.”
If you’ll not be likely to visit his working farm for a tour, here’s a recorded version for you to see the miraculous work he and his family have done to take their land to crazy levels of production and renewal, all by following Nature’s many examples.
This will help you see his down home brilliance and maybe you’ll share my excitement for the mending of our broken food system:
But wait.
Seems like I know someone else who’s keen on following Mother Nature’s long standing examples…
Oh, yeah.
More from that guy on Vital Animal.
Homeopathy Short Course Sale: Ending soon…
Okay, we’re opening Vital Animal Alpha, my monthly veterinary homeopathy membership/study group on Wednesday, so that means the Homeopathy Short Course sale is coming to an end.
As a reminder, that intro course is normally $39 but is reduced on this sale to $20 and gets you a great intro to
what homeopathy is (and isn’t)
how remedies are made
and some interesting examples of its amazing work with animals.
In fact, when you click through this sale link, you can see the entire curriculum listed out to help you decide if this is worth your 20 buck investment.
From some past HSC students:
Have finished this wonderful course, it’s fabulous, I thank you for this gift to us all and look forward to the alpha offering” — Julia Dudgeon
My course is completed now. I am richer than yesterday. Thank you for this rich start-point in the universe of homeopathy. God bless you.” — Ion
This 50% off sale ends Monday, 18 Nov, at midnight.
Here’s what to do to join us there:
Details about Vital Animal Alpha membership will be sent out early Wednesday morning.
Best to keep an eye on your inbox. It’ll be a 4 day enrollment only.
Hope to see you in both the HSC course and the ongoing Alpha membership.
Native Probiotics to Save Bats
If you follow bats at all (I know, I know, forgive my nerdy biologist side, but these guys are amazing insectivores, and while occasionally rabid (see last issue on aversion training for your dog), they deserve our help and encouragement to maintain their non-stop work.
The bat has been in the news for a disease called White Nose Syndrome for the past several decades.
WNS is, from the article in Science Daily
“a fungal disease affecting the skin of wings and muzzle, which has nearly wiped out vulnerable bat populations across North America.”
Microbiome Rescue!
It’s been found that bats in Lillooet, British Columbia, for some reason, have never shown the disease and are thriving in a multitude of ecological niches there.
The scientists have cultured the wing microbiomes of the healthy winged wonders, made a probiotic cocktail, and used it in colonies affected by WNS to good effect.
As you can imagine, they’ve tried all sorts of things before this natural approach with little to no success. Millions of bats have died while biologists have tried to stop this fungal disease.
Don’t you love it?
Okay, maybe you’re not a Bat Fan, so here’s an interview I did some time back with a homeopathic colleague (Julie Anne Lee of Adored Beast) on the Vital Animal Podcast: Skin: It’s Alive!
More revelations of the microbiome on the surface (and how to prevent damage to it in ways you might find interesting…)
And here’s another from a colleague working with “fecal implants” for dogs, who are also showing fantastic results: Episode #31 Talking Poop with Dr. Odette Suter.
Same idea: good flora in, bad disease organisms out competed and ultimately dying off instead of wreaking havoc on the host.
Tasty Tips: Imbalanced but Good Food
In more positive news, this on the heels of the devastation brought on by recent hurricanes, comes a revelation that, in a pinch (that could last weeks to months, heh heh), you can feed your dog <gasp> unbalanced meals!
How’s that for sticking it to the Big Pet Food man?
Susan Thixton (of Truth About Pet Food) has written about this neat little “secret” here and it just confirms what many of us have long known:
Our pets, just like their wild ancestors and living wild cousins, don’t need “100% Nutritionally Complete” meals each and every time you set down their bowls.
I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating as my own example of this at work.
When I was a fledgling holistic vet, long before professional “alternative health” training, I knew kibble sucked.
And raw food, when ever I’d recommend it to my clients in Hawaii, often brought about miraculous betterment in and of itself when they brought sick animals my way.
But, like the barefoot kids of the shoemaker, our adopted kitties started their rescued lives in our kitchen eating mostly… well… raw liver!
With our own bunch of kids and my new practice taking up our attention, we just didn’t have time to follow well planned recipes, like those I provided my clients with, a la Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats.
So, I’d stop by the local slaughterhouse and pick up a slab of cow liver, and we’d blend it up raw in the blender, add some veggies and (I hope?!) some source of calcium to grow strong bones and teeth, and “slopped the kitties” a couple times a day!
They swarmed the food dishes like sharks at the sight of blood and grew beautifully, all while snarfing down (embarrassingly) unbalanced food.
Food that “should” have had so much vitamin A as to cause them problems, according to the experts.
No problems were ever seen.
Susan relays a wise approach to continuing to do something raw even when you’re in the aftermath of a hurricane.
And, of course, this wisdom can be applied to less devastating situations, like you’re in a hurry tonight and your freezer is empty of something more nutritionally “with it.”
You’ll always have “something” that’ll make do, and as Susan (and the vets she’s asked in her article confirm), these “make do” meals can go on for weeks, perhaps even for months.
Nice, right?
(And in case you’ve ever been scared off by the complicated labels on commercial pet food, think for a moment about what a wolf eats… zero ingredients you’d ever find on commercial food and often “unbalanced.”)
Along the Natural Path
We’ve just dipped into cool enough nights/mornings to turn off the a/c and start thinking about woolen undershirts, socks and blankets. Truly, my favorite time of the year in India.
It was in the US as well. What’s not to like about blazing leaf colors and flannel shirts?
But here, it’s doubly rewarding, as Summer really gets serious way back in April and the a/c is pumping until mid-November.
The rice crop came in seemingly overnight all around us.
From ripe heads, bowing from the weight of the grain…
To harvested fields whose stubble is partially burned in rows to enrich the soil with natural potassium (aka pot-ash, get it?):
All the threshing takes place either in the field itself or, in my neighbors’ case, right in the center of their yard. A tarp is spread, a wooden bed is put in the middle, and sheaves are beaten repeatedly until they’ve given up their grain.
The fields are plowed and turned into raised potato beds in neat geometric rows for the next crop:
And so life goes on in The Land of Carbs.
With my insulin resistance, I tread carefully and cook for myself in my tiny kitchen. Fresh buffalo milk kefir that often drains to become cheese, plenty of pistachio, pecan, and some peanut butter are staples for me. Chia and flax play prominent roles as does some real melt worthy cheese from Amazon India.
The fresh veggies are pretty sparse through the hot months, but come January, we’ll start to see a veritable abundance of inexpensive farm fresh (cheap!) produce brought to our village daily.
So, it works.
Tonight, I’ll be taking a sleeper train across Uttar Pradesh to our two other ashrams in the East, where we’ll have 4 distributions of household goods and food to some of the poorest of the poor, two groups of widows and two groups of sadhus, those who’ve largely left the world in search of God realization.
These events, like our three hospitals, are all free. And if you opt for a paid subscription, your money goes towards these efforts as well as our award winning girls’ school nearby.
Until next time, keep on making wise choices for those innocents in your care. And know that Mother Nature will never steer you wrong. If you’re ever feeling pressured in a vet’s office, think: “What Would a Wolf Do?”
“We’ll get back to you on that, Doctor, we’re just not ready to commit to your plan right now…”
Will Falconer, DVM
Will I share you love of animals and wildlife and appreciate your work to educate us on how best to take care of them. Here is something else that is vitally important and it involves our children. Please read this and do what you can to help expose this indescribable evil:
https://tritorch.substack.com/p/demons-disguised-as-guardians-philanthropic
Just as the animals need advocates like you, so do our children. I implore you to help expose the wolves encircling them.
I love your Substack, and have avidly followed your informative emails for years, and continually forward to others as well as posting on social media. Thank you so much.
You mentioned Lyme Disease in this post, and I thought you might be interested in a fellow Substack author who regularly posts information and anecdotes on the healing power of Ivermectin. The last couple of weeks or so, he has posted quite a bit of support for Ivermectin (+ Doxycycline) to treatment Lyme Disease. Makes sense to consider it a parasitic infection.
https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/subscriber-success-stories-improved