KAUAI PETS

No Matter How Much They Beg, Just Say No!

By Ella Arume, DVM

During the holiday season, it is tempting to share our yummy food with our pets. Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, yum yum yum. But is this the best choice for your pet? Although they get really excited, jump up and down, and give you those eyes that are hard to refuse, caving in and giving your dog or cat table scraps can be a very bad idea and this is why… Dietary indiscretion - When your pet eats something they aren’t supposed to. This can lead to a really bad tummy ache, vomiting, diarrhea, decreased energy and appetite. Foreign body obstruction - When your pet eats something like a toy, sock, bone (ie: chicken bones, ribs, steak bone), rock, or other foreign material that blocks food from moving through the GI tract. They tend to be lethargic, vomit, won’t eat, they can have diarrhea, and it can be extremely painful for your pet. The treatment is to remove the foreign object surgically. If you don’t get it removed, the GI tract can rupture, causing a severe infection in their abdomen, which they can die from. Pancreatitis - inflammation of the pancreas is very painful. Most commonly, this is seen with eating a lot of high fat foods but can be seen in animals that get a lot of treats. Vomiting, diarrhea, refusing to eat, and pain in the abdomen are common signs for this. The treatment for this can be very expensive, and in severe cases, can cause death.

Toxicities - Chocolate, especially dark chocolate or cocoa powder, is very dangerous for dogs and cats. It can cause vomiting, diarrhea, increased heart rate, neurologic symptoms (hyperactivity, tremors, seizures), and at high enough doses, death. If your pet ingests any chocolate, let your veterinarian know as soon as you can so they can help either get it out of their system or treat them.

Xylitol is an artificial sweetener that can be used as a sugar substitute. It is used commonly in chewing gum but can also be used in baking. This can cause severe hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), which may result in vomiting, lethargy, and neurologic symptoms (ataxia, seizures). Xylitol can also cause liver damage or failure. This also can be treated by your veterinarian, but if left untreated, can cause death.

Please be careful with your pets around during the holiday season and learn to recognize early signs of something wrong with your animal. Most commonly, vomiting and diarrhea are seen with all of these things, so if you are seeing these symptoms contact your veterinarian. To be safe, just don’t feed them your food!

Ginger Turmeric Cinnamon Tea

Good for What Ails You! By Dr. Lee Evslin

Here is a wonderful recipe for a ginger and turmeric tea. We were given the recipe at a dinner with friends. We loved its taste and started to make it ourselves. After months of drinking it without much critical thinking about why it was making us feel better, I decided to do a little research on its ingredients. Below is the recipe and a brief review of the impressive health benefits of the simple and common ingredients. The main ingredient is fresh ginger root. Ginger has been known for hundreds of years to decrease nausea particularly nausea associated with motion sickness and the morning sickness of pregnancy. It has also been shown to improve asthma, joint pain and recently there has been evidence about its ability to lessen the mental decline associated with aging.

Fresh turmeric root is the second ingredient. Turmeric is found in curry powders. The active ingredient is curcumin. A review of the studies on turmeric was conducted by the University College Medical School in London and they found that turmeric has been found to:

Have strong anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities

Nourish the good bacteria in your intestines (prebiotic qualities)

Improve digestion

Improve liver, respiratory, and blood sugar regulation problems The next ingredient is cinnamon. A recent article in The Proceedings of the Nutrition Society gives evidence that cinnamon helps to regulate blood sugar, lowers cholesterol, decreases body fat and increases lean muscle mass. The final ingredients are cloves, peppercorns, anise and cardamon.

Ginger Turmeric Cinnamon Tea

Bring two quarts of water to a boil. When boiling, add all the ingredients below and turn off the heat. Allow to steep in the hot water for 30 minutes and then drain. Can serve cold or hot. Sweeten to taste if needed and store unused portion in refrigerator for future use. Ingredients: • Fresh ginger root about the • 2 teaspoons of cardamon size of 1/2 your hand, wash and cut longitudinally in 1/2 inch wide strips • 10 cloves • Fresh turmeric root, about one third • 10 peppercorns as much as the ginger root, also cut in • 10 anise (comes in little stars) longitudinal strips That is it. Let it steep in the hot water 30 • 6 cinnamon sticks minutes, stir, drain, and enjoy.

The traditional foods contain wisdom and nutritional value beyond all our imaginations. It is a welcome change to see our universities and medical centers embrace and begin to study these age old foods.

Makepa ‘Ohana.

Being So Careful About The Things We Love

By Monty Downs, M.D. President, Kauai Lifeguard Association

I hope this finds you and your family safe and reasonably “happy” in these troubled times. Holiday Season is upon us and I don’t think any of us has an idea of what the Holidays will look like this year. Speaking for my own family: For over 40 years Christmas afternoon and evening has been the one time each year that cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents and children all get together for a few hours. Will that happen this year?

For Kauai in general, Holiday Season has long been a peak time for tourism. Many businesses, large and small, rely on this season for achieving their revenue goals. These goals are already in shatters, from the drastic visitor drop-off for over 6 months and counting. Is there any hope that Holiday Season will help get some businesses going again? We have all enjoyed the traffic drop-off on our roadways. This has, however, come at a terrible cost, on many levels. Will Kauai be able to develop an economy that is not as tourism-based as pre-covid? Another positive of the drastic tourism drop-off has been a sharp drop in drownings in 2020. The only other year we have enjoyed such a drop off was the year after Iniki, again a period in which we weren’t able to host visitors. Since I myself have tried for decades to bring about fewer drownings on Kauai (and my ER job has shown me over and over the crushing effect of these drownings), one might think my overall mood is improved. But, other rough conditions we see in the ER have to do with stress, anxiety/depression, inability to purchase necessary medications, eating poorly, being houseless — and these conditions have not eased. In fact quite the opposite. So, like everyone else, I very much struggle with my mood and even if I’m having a good day, in the back of my mind I know that there are many others who aren’t. So any good day is tempered, and that many be the one thing that is normal these days. Continued on next page

Regarding ocean safety, which is supposed to be the main focus of my quarterly piece in Kauai Family Magazine: No matter how it works out with visitors, we residents need to remember that Holiday Season = winter swells season. As I’m sure you know, these swells are often spawned by hurricane conditions far North in the Bering Sea. The swells take 4-5 days to make their way to our shores and we might ourselves be enjoying gorgeous weather this entire time, including when the swells hit. Those of us who aren’t Big Wave surfers know to not venture into our waters during the huge swell conditions. But even relatively small swells serve to create dangerous shorebreak conditions, dangerous waveson-rocks conditions, and dangerous rip current conditions. 75% of our drowning victims are visitors, who are often not familiar with these conditions. But 25% are residents. So please be careful — in the water, and of course with your pandemic prevention measures. (Masks, social distancing, hand and surface washing, etc.) A final comment: It’s sad, very sad, that we have to be so careful about things we love (i.e. the ocean and what it holds) and around people we love and enjoy. Can’t shake hands?? Can’t see each others’ smile?? Can’t give a hug, be it short or long?? Can’t visit our friends and relatives who might be in the hospital, or even sick in their own homes?? There’s a line in “Bye Bye Miss American Pie” that goes “I saw Satan laughing with delight.” Sometimes it seems that this is what’s happening. You’ll notice that I asked a lot of questions in this piece, and I gave very few answers. Another famous song line goes “The answer my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” Not sure just what that means but I’m good with the line. Readers, please take care of yourselves, physically and mentally. A young poet once wrote, while working through the despair brought about by double amputations, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”Easier said than done, but we can do it.