What gift can you give your animal friends?

Words DR ELAINE CEBULIAK

The holiday season is approaching us, and many of us must be looking back at what a strange year 2020 was. Aside from the ‘COVID crazies’, it’s a time to celebrate our health, friends and family. On the positive side, we can be grateful that the world has slowed down, and almost done a ‘self-cleanse’ where life has come down to what is important – many have found that we ‘need less’ than we thought we did.

We can be thankful that much of the pollution is in the process of being cleared, the plastic production has decreased, and the waterways in places like Venice have become less polluted, so that even many sea creatures are back frolicking through clear waters.

Families are back together for the most part, learning to play games, eat together, work from home and take up gardening and other hobbies.

We have clients that are now cooking for themselves and for their dog! This leads to less reliance on the commercial food industry and helps market gardeners and local producers to move their produce. There are free diets and recipes on our website that can help you get started. Investing in a slow cooker to make bone broth (remove the excess fat from the top, after it cools) is a nice easy way to make your dog’s dinners. Contact us for more recipes, and to purchase the book on MHD (Modified Human Diet) written by one of our vets.

Getting our health back starts with the basics: nutrition, supplements, removal of toxin loads, rest, and reset the adrenals and hormones! Learning calm behaviours and getting adequate sleep resets the pineal/melatonin system and helps with ‘rest and digest’. People and pets that are highly stressed do not produce the calming vagal parasympathetic response, which often will be the cause of intermittent diarrhoea. Parasite cleanses are also useful, and regular worming agents have been proven to work (see your veterinarian to discuss further).

When our diet is based on highly processed, chemical additives, artificial coal tar, derived colorants with long useby shelf dates, the body can become predisposed to inflammatory diseases. We particularly find that there is much evidence pointing to glyphosate (Round Up, weedkiller) and the agricultural chemicals such as Atrazine (which act as endocrine disruptors) and exposure to them have been associated with an increased risk of developing cancers.

We see quite a lot of cancer cases at both our naturopathy clinic (for humans) as well as in the veterinary practice.

There are many supplements that can help the immune system fight cancer, so contact us for more details.

DR ELAINE is both a qualified naturopath and medical herbalist, as well as a veterinarian. She was able to help guide veterinary colleague and friend Dr Ross Perry to deal with stage four prostate cancer. He is doing very well, which is quite remarkable for a diagnosis and prognosis of only being given minutes to live. www.animalwellness.com.au