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Superior nutrition for all cats and dogs because prevention is better than cure!

Digestive Discomfort In Dogs And Cats

Digestive disturbances are extremely common in dogs and cats. In order to understand how best to help you to prevent and treat your pets’ problems, it’s helpful to know how the digestive system is supposed to work when healthy. Then we can look at various treatment and preventative options.

Do you know debilitating IBS is? Just think, you may be inflicting a similar disease on your pet.

A Healthy Carnivore Gut

The digestive tract of the carnivore is much shorter than that of omnivores and herbivores (e.g. humans, rabbits, horses).

The carnivore digestive tract is perfectly designed to digest other animals in their entirety, raw. Comprising the meat, bone, guts, offal, fur, skin, eyeballs … the whole lot!

Considering what their prey eats, this enables the carnivore to get a beautifully balanced mix of macro and micro-nutrients.

The herbivore has teeth especially designed to chew fibrous vegetation to a pulp. Its digestive system has enzymes to digest the cellulose cell walls releasing the nutrients essential to health.

If you are designed to eat meat, that means you need to eat meat. And if you need to eat meat, you need to eat it raw.

The carnivore capitalizes on this hard work, consuming this partially digested, enzyme rich grass soup in the guts of its prey. A carnivore gut is ill-equipped to deal with neat, raw vegetation unless it has been pre-digested by a herbivore or by the process of autolysis (which is the destruction of cells by their own enzymes, in fallen fruit for example).

Throughout the digestive tract, digestive enzymes and other digestive aids (e.g. hydrochloric acid in the stomach and bile in the duodenum) are secreted to maximize gain from the food consumed.

These add to the enormous amount of enzymes consumed in the raw prey. Enzymes are naturally occurring in every living thing, the so called ‘food enzymes’, comprising the prey’s metabolic enzymes (which run every cellular activity), digestive enzymes (to digest food) and food enzymes (in the raw vegetation it has eaten).

Cooked and processed food is devoid of enzymes. Eating cooked and processed food puts an enormous and destructive load on the pancreas.

The presence of active natural enzymes in the food consumed vastly reduces the need for the body to produce digestive enzymes. This reduces the load on the pancreas, the main producer of digestive enzymes, and all the other enzyme secreting organs.

As the food is moved along the gut by peristalsis, it is progressively digested and absorbed.

Once it reaches the large intestine, it comprises largely indigestible fibre and waste products. The probiotics residing here continue the digestive process, releasing more nutrients to be absorbed.

Water is also resorbed here. Whatever is left passes into the rectum to be excreted.

So the food is caught, chewed, swallowed, digested, absorbed and the indigestible portion is excreted. Perfect!

Does This Process Work For Cats And Dogs?

The simplest way to provide proper nutrition for our pets is clearly to supply them with appropriate raw food. Fortunately, there has been a huge increase in producers of raw meat and bone minces, raw meaty bones and frozen liquidised greens.

This makes it easy for us to feed healthy food to our pets.

You can easily buy raw meat and bone for your dogs and cats. But it is missing the recently digested stomach contents of herbivores.

The missing ingredients are the digestive enzymes, probiotics, prebiotics and other digestive “aids” which would be found in the grass soup of the prey’s guts.

These are essential to allow the carnivore to digest its food and deal with the liquidized greens we give them to mimic the prey’s gut contents as part of their balanced raw diet.

Pet Plus Is The Answer!

Fortunately there is a nutritional supplement which perfectly fills this gap, called PET Plus. By feeding a combination of raw meat and bone, raw liquidised greens and Pet Plus, the health of the gut, and therefore the whole animal, is maintained.

Fruit and root vegetables should not be mixed with meat and bone as the prey animals would rarely consume them, although dogs, being the survivors that they are, will scavenge anything and eat it, so fruit and root vegetables can be given as treats between meals.

Why Do We Get Pet Food So Wrong?

Heating or other forms of processing damage the food molecules and destroy the enzymes. The pancreas of rats fed processed food has been shown to be three times as big as that of their colleagues fed raw food.

This is because eating food devoid of natural enzymes forces the digestive system to produce all the digestive enzymes required to digest the food; the pancreas is the main digestive enzyme producing organ. In addition, many of the molecules are damaged to a degree that the body cannot recognize them as food and so launches the immune system to attack them.

Processed food is sometimes not recognised as food by the body! It’s therefore treated as if it were a foreign invader!

Undigested food particles find their way into the blood where they are recognized as foreign and attacked by the immune system, raising the white blood cell count for many hours, a process called digestive leukocytosis. This is much worse if a microwave is used to thaw or cook the food.

Undigested food irritates the gut causing inflammation and gas production thus speeding up peristalsis. Gastric dilatation and torsion (bloat) can result from the fermentation and gas production if it occurs in the stomach. In the intestines, this intestinal bloating is often painful and can discourage the dog or cat from eating.

As a result of the intestinal hurry caused by the rapid peristaltic wave, the intestinal contents arrive at the large bowel containing too much undigested food.

Unfriendly bacteria absolutely love processed food!

The probiotics which are not designed to deal with rich food but which thrive on cellulose cell walls (prebiotics) do their best to digest it. Other, unfriendly bacteria and yeasts also proliferate in this unnatural environment, producing gas, irritation and inflammation presenting as flatulence, diarrhoea, colitis, IBS and eventually bowel cancer.

Parasites also enjoy the presence of undigested food, exacerbating the intestinal irritation, so pets fed a processed food diet will need constant anti-parasitic treatments.

How Can We Prevent And Treat These Ailments?

Increasing the digestibility and nutrient value of the food, whether it’s raw or processed, by adding a supplement of digestive enzymes, prebiotics, probiotics and other micronutrients, e.g. Pet Plus will help to prevent digestive problems.

Using a daily herbal wormer like Verm-X will help to control the gut parasites, thus reducing the associated inflammation, bloating, gas and diarrhoea.

Once diarrhoea has been allowed to start, treat with a day of starvation whilst giving an anti-inflammatory natural medicine like Aloe Vera, an adsorbent like medicinal clay or charcoal tablets / granules and probiotics (in Pet Plus) to recolonize the gut.

Gradually introduce bland foods like cooled boiled brown rice, boiled white fish, raw egg, all given a little at a time. Clearly veterinary advice should be sought in all but the most trivial situations.

Pancreatic insufficiency is a common problem in dogs fed processed food. Supplying digestive enzymes in a complete, natural pet food supplement, like PET Plus, is the most effective way to help preferably combined with a change to raw food.

As always, prevention is better than cure.

Putting a dog in kennels is very stressful as they do not know if or when you are coming back.

All they know is that you have put them in a kennel and walked away. They usually bark and bark, trying to attract your attention in the hope that you’ll come back for them.

The stress of being away from home renders them vulnerable to infection

The combination of barking, breathing harder and faster than usual, and the stress of the whole situation renders them vulnerable to any infectious agents in their environment.

Barking excessively makes their throat more inflamed than usual providing the perfect breeding ground for bacteria.

Having lots of dogs in the same air space all in the same state of anxiety makes them all more vulnerable to air borne diseases, especially kennel cough.

Kennel Cough Symptoms

Coughing almost continuously in bouts, rather like Whooping cough in children, is the main symptom. Dogs will often cough until they wretch and bring up some white phlegm.

Kennel cough is a bit like whooping cough in children

The cough is usually worse with exercise and excitement. Affected dogs are usually well in themselves, showing no other symptoms.

How Long Does Kennel Cough Last?

Kennel cough can go on for about three weeks.

Dog Coughing Treatment

Most ailments are healed more quickly in a calm, quiet, restful, loving environment, so keep your dogs calm and quiet. Avoid exercise and dust, and definitely keep them out of draughts and cold air.

Give them plenty of loving attention to reduce any stress, especially as these dogs have usually just returned home having been stressed in kennels for a week or two.

Make sure there is always clean, chemical-free (filtered or bottled) water available at all times. They often want a drink after each bout of coughing.

Use natural products like honey and aloe to help remedy kennel cough

Get some Manuka honey. A teaspoonful four times daily, can give some relief from the coughing.

Aloe Vera is a natural anti-inflammatory and can be given by mouth from a plastic syringe six times daily.

The amount required depends on the size of your dog. A small dog would need about 5 mls, a medium dog about 10 mls and a big dog 15-20 mls. It is hard to generalize as the different preparations have different strengths.

Pukka seems to be an excellent make, with no horrible chemicals, so that’s the one I use and recommend.

Give Their Immune System A Helping Hand

Boost their immune system by adding a superb nutritional supplement (like PET Plus) to their food. This will help their body’s defence system to overcome the infectious agents.

Feed raw food so the body doesn’t have to waste valuable energy trying to digest the processed pet foods. This will allow the immune system to do its proper job of attacking invaders, instead of being side-tracked breaking down food particles in the blood (digestive leucocytosis).

Help your dog’s immune system to fight back

We used to give a three week course of antibiotics which sometimes worked, but I can now see that as kennel cough is usually over in three weeks anyway. This is a classic example of the dogs recovering in spite of the treatment, not because of it!

Feed raw food and PET Plus so the immune system is functioning at its very best, able to repel and eliminate any invaders.

Minimise Separation Anxiety

If you have to put your dog in kennels, do everything you can to help to reduce the stress of the experience.

For example, you could introduce them to it gently by leaving them there for half a day, then the next week, a whole day and gradually increase it so your dog knows you are going to return and collect them.

The pancreas is the organ in the body that produces digestive enzymes. Pancreatitis occurs when the pancreas becomes inflamed.

Interestingly, the pancreas of rats fed processed food was found to be three times bigger than those fed natural raw food.

Rats fed processed food suffered from pancreatitis.

That’s because when eating fresh raw food, the body doesn’t have to produce many digestive enzymes as there are already enough enzymes in the food to complete the digestive process. That’s why fresh raw food rots. It is simply digesting itself.

PET Plus supplies all these enzymes too, so it gives the pancreas a rest!

How Does The Pancreas Work?

When required, the pancreatic enzymes pass down a little tube (pancreatic duct) into the intestines at the same place as the bile duct which delivers bile from the liver and gallbladder.

If the duct gets blocked, for example by gallstones or thick sandy bile or even a growth obstructing the duct, the digestive enzymes cannot get out of the pancreas and so are likely to begin their digestive work in situ.

This is bad news for the pancreas which is gradually being broken down by these enzymes. It naturally becomes inflamed, irritated and painful. Autoimmune diseases can also destroy the pancreas.

When continuously asked to do unnatural things, like producing copious quantities of digestive enzymes every day, the pancreas becomes exhausted and runs out of the raw ingredients from which to make the digestive enzymes.

The pancreas can become exhausted over time

Whatever the cause, the result is that insufficient digestive enzymes are produced so the food cannot be digested properly.

Undigested food then ends up in the large bowel where the probiotics (friendly bacteria) break it down. This creates gas, bowel distention, pain and diarrhoea.

Affected animals lose weight rapidly as they are unable to access the nutrients in the food they’re eating. Eating also becomes associated with pain, deterring the poor animals from eating at all, even though they are desperately hungry. They soon look gaunt and thin with a dry coat. Untreated, of course they would die of starvation.

Ok, So How Do We Treat Pancreatitis?

Supplement the feed with pancreatic enzymes or digestive enzymes, probiotics and change to raw food!

PET Plus nutritional supplement, supplies all the necessary ingredients to improve the pet’s digestive ability.

If your pet also has diarrhoea it will probably need some treatment. I use medicinal green clay and aloe vera to help the large bowel to calm down with the Pet Plus providing the probiotics, prebiotics, digestive enzymes and all the other supportive micronutrients, like vitamins, minerals and antioxidants all as whole foods.

Prevention Is Always Better Than Cure

Prevention is of course better than cure! Prevent pancreatitis, autoimmune disease, cancer, thick bile and the exhaustion of the pancreas by feeding raw food with PET Plus right from the start.

We’re all designed to eat raw food. Save yourselves time, money and emotional upset by keeping your pets healthy.

Puppies and kittens can start taking PET Plus as soon as they are tasting solid food. This will be a few weeks before weaning as they suckle as well as eating solids for several weeks.

Why Choose Pet Plus For Kittens And Puppies?

It is really helpful for these young puppies and kittens to start on Pet Plus as early as possible as it supplies the nutrients they need to support their development. In the wild, their mothers would be bringing them freshly caught herbivores to eat, so that is what we need to replicate for our pets.

In the wild, after their mother’s milk, puppies and kittens would get fresh herbivores to eat

The immature immune system of young puppies and kittens is supported naturally by their mothers’ milk (colostrum at first) until they are 12-16 weeks old, but we tend to wean them at 8-10 weeks old, denying them that support. It is essential that we provide a top quality nutritional supplement to support them through this extremely stressful stage.

Stressful Times For Puppies And Kittens

Puppies and kittens are often vaccinated at 6-8 weeks (a complete waste of time!), again at 10 weeks (another mistake), then taken away from their litter mates their mother and the home they have known all their lives, wormed with some noxious chemical and taken to a new environment and expected to sleep in the dark in an unfamiliar environment alone. What a terrifying experience that must be!

That is super-stressful, isn’t it?

The very least we can do to support these babies is give them decent nutrition, so start them on PET Plus as soon as possible.

What’s The Best Food For Puppies And Kittens?

Raw food from the very start is absolutely the best. Always remember what they would have had in the wild and do your best to do the same.

They would eat little and often, so start off with about 6 small meals a day of minced meat and bone with a little liquidised greens and a pinch of PET Plus in each meal.

Feed PET Plus as soon as they start on solid food

As they get older and bigger, you can offer more at each meal. Remember how tiny their stomachs are and give appropriate amounts of food.

Gradually reduce the number of feeds per day and increase the quantity until by the age of about 6 months, you are giving 2 meals a day.

I would reduce to one feed a day if you want to at about 9-12 months old. Have a look at my diet sheet.

Does My Puppy Or Kitten Need To Chew?

Puppies and kittens love to play and chewing is a large part of this. You can provide them with the small end of raw chicken wings from about 12 weeks old. They love chewing them and are rewarded by actually getting some nutrition from their activities!

You can also get dried pigs’ ears, tripe sticks and neem chew sticks which are not raw, but chemical free and not overly processed.

Try to find chewy treats that are not overly processed

There are various knotted rope toys of a size appropriate for your puppy or kitten, but be sensible! Do not give a large, boisterous puppy a toy that might disintegrate and be swallowed, resulting in an obstruction!

Why Feed Raw Meaty Bones?

The advantage of using raw meaty bones to chew is that they are digestible and so will not cause an obstruction. This only applies to raw meaty bones. The moment you cook them, you’ve destroyed the enzymes and made them into something dangerous, brittle and indigestible!

So do not cook any meaty bones and do not give your dog or cat any cooked meaty bones left over from your own meal. The only meaty bones that are safe for dogs and cats of any age are raw, natural meaty bones.

Remember to give your puppies and kittens access to fresh, chemical-free water at all times. Use a bowl or dish that they can reach without risk of falling in and drowning. Wash the bowl every day and refill with fresh water.

Should My Puppy Or Kitten Drink Milk?

The only milk that is suitable for puppies and kittens is their own mother’s milk. No one is designed to drink the milk of another species and cow’s milk is particularly inappropriate.

Giving cow’s milk to immature puppies and kittens is a quick way of making them allergic because their gut wall is relatively porous.

Never give cow’s milk to a dog or cat – because it’s milk specifically made for a different species.

If you have very young puppies and kittens that for some reason cannot access their own mother’s milk, you can buy artificial milk powders specially made for them.

It would be a good idea to mix a tiny pinch of PET Plus with this to help them to digest and absorb this artificial milk because it would otherwise be completely devoid of enzymes, antioxidants and other heat sensitive micronutrients.

Below is a question I was asked by one of my new clients. I felt it would be a good idea to share it with you as parasitic overload and chronic infections can be very common and difficult to treat.

The Problem – A Cat Infested With Fleas

I just ordered PET Plus for my little rescue cat Gypsy on the recommendation of Sam at the Gryn Cottage Cattery.

We don’t know how old she is, possibly about 4 years, but she’s always been very tiny. She was infested with fleas and worms and had a bad infection in both ears when we got her which took a long time to clear up with antibiotics and steroids from the vet.

Dry Skin And Scabs

She had scratched away all the fur around her ears but thankfully most of it has now grown back. However her skin is still very dry and large flakes come away whenever we groom her, it also scabs up (I assume from flea bites) and she scratches it so much it takes a long time to heal, just to note I have never found any fleas on her or in the home.

Black Fur Turning Brown

The other major thing about Gypsy is that she’s a black cat, or rather she’s not, as she’s turning brown. Other than that, she is a happy, playful little thing, loves her food (James Wellbeloved wet food) but I just can’t help but feel that she’s not quite right and it makes me feel guilty that I can’t help her!

Looking at your other responses I’m confident PET Plus will help her, but is there anything else we could be doing? I looked at the Prize Choice website but was a little confused, is it for dogs? I also don’t have a freezer (only an ice box) so that may be an issue.

Fleas And Nutrition – Dr Susanna’s Response

The patches of dry skin could be flea bites, but more likely it’s now an intolerance to her food and/or a deficiency in essential fatty acids. The browning of her lovely black fur could also be a nutritional deficiency.

Feed PET Plus

PET Plus supplies all the nutrients she needs, so over time that will all recover, but give it time! It won’t repair overnight, unfortunately.

You could also improve her food intake by feeding her on raw food. Prize Choice is also for cats. I’m not sure why they just say dogs on it. My cats have been thriving on it for years. You can buy it at Pets At Home and other pet supermarkets. The staff there seem to think it’s dog food too.

Feed Raw

I also give whole raw little fish, like sprats. They love them. Raw chicken wings are also excellent once they are used to eating raw food. I usually cut the small ends off and give those to the cats; the dogs have the big bits. Sometimes, the cats like to gnaw on the big bits too.

So you could store a few packets of Prize Choice in your freezer compartment. A cat needs 1/4 – 1/2 packet a day, depending on how big, active or old they are. You can judge whether you’re giving enough or too much by what happens to her body shape. If she’s not filling out, she needs more. If she’s getting a bit plump, she needs less!

I also use Verm-x as a daily herbal wormer. They love it and it works.

I’m Here To Help!

If you have a question you would like me to answer or a comment you would like to leave – please feel free to do so below, or use the Ask Dr Susanna form. I look forward to hearing from you!

Canine Pica occurs when a dog is so desperately short of nutrients that they starts eating weird things they find like coal, wood or rubber.

A dog’s survival instinct is so strong that their bodies’ urgent nutritional requirements drive them to try and obtain these nutrients from the most unlikely sources.

Chester Eats Rubber

A dog called Chester, for example, used to hunt down anything made of rubber. He especially enjoyed chewing on used condoms which he devoured with relish. This was much to the embarrassment of his parents.

Pica is not reserved for dogs alone. All animals will do go to great lengths to satisfy their nutritional needs. When you think about it, the obsessive consumption of processed and overly sugary foods like Mars Bars are a form of human pica!

How To Treat Canine Pica

You can treat pica in dogs by supplying them with an easily digestible food and nutritional supplement. This is the answer to treating Canine Pica. Raw meat and bone is the most appropriate and easily digested of all foods available for dogs.

Feed Raw

Raw meat and bone is entirely natural, full of enzymes and bursting with nutrients. Mixed with PET Plus, the body can easily digest and absorb the nutrients and micronutrients. Download my diet sheet for more information.

Feeding your dog in this way will gradually rectify their nutrient deficiency, but it will take time.

The dog will be seriously depleted of nutrients to get to the extreme state of Canine Pica. Therefore it will take a while for those nutrient levels to return to normal. Don’t expect results immediately – instead be patient, and persevere with proper feeding.

Changing Your Dog’s Eating Habits – Forever!

If Canine Pica has been an issue for some time, the strange items the dog has become used to finding and eating may have become rather a habit.

But It May Have Become A Habit

So later, even when there is actually no nutritional need to go and eat these found things, the dog may continue this behaviour, given the opportunity.

In order to address this, you will need to change your routine. Go for walks somewhere else, remove all sources of rubber, for example, then the dog will eventually forget about trying to find peculiar things to eat because there will no longer be any nutritional need.

But make sure you continue to feed raw food and PET Plus to prevent the recurrence of Canine Pica.

Loose stools often accompanied by a too frequent defecation in dogs, is known as canine diarrhoea. Canine diarrhoea also occurs in other species but because dogs are such scavengers by nature, it is more common in them.

Causes Of Canine Diarrhoea

When whatever has been eaten is incompletely digested or is irritating to the intestines, canine diarrhoea is the result. It may sometimes be accompanied by vomiting.

Often, once the body has rid itself of the cause, the stools will return to their normal soft but firm consistency.

Sometimes though, intervention is required. If your dog is clearly unwell, go to your vet!

The commonest causes of canine diarrhoea are:

  1. worms
  2. diet and
  3. allergies.

Worms In Canines

Canine diarrhoea can be the result of internal parasite overload, so regular worming is important. I use Verm-X, a herbal wormer, every day.

The dogs and cats love it so I use it as a treat when I put them all to bed at night. This ensures we never have a worm burden in our pets.

Eating Processed Food – The Problems

Fed a processed food diet, the pancreas has to produce massive amounts of enzymes to allow for the digestion of this unnatural “food”.

In experiments with rats, researchers found that the pancreas of rats fed a processed food diet is three times larger than the pancreas of rats fed the raw version of the same food.

That just shows how difficult it is to digest food that has been processed. After a while, the pancreas becomes exhausted and less able to produce these enzymes, particularly as it is not being given the raw resources from which to make living enzymes.

Because of this, the digestive process becomes less efficient. This leads to incompletely digested food particles finding their way into the blood, resulting in digestive leukocytosis.

The undigested food particles can also reach the large bowel where the probiotics do their best to complete the digestive process. But the colon is not designed for dealing with digestion!

Its main job is excretion and reabsorption of water. The result is canine diarrhoea, varying in consistency from soft to watery and frequency from normal to uncontrollable.

Dog Allergies

Most dogs are unable to digest dairy products as they lack the enzyme required to digest what is in reality baby food for baby cows.

Some people feel that yoghurt is good because it contains probiotics. Whilst the probiotics are good, the dairy component is awful, so your dog is much better off getting probiotics from a clean source, such as PET Plus.

Gluten is another common allergen. It is found in most dog biscuits, where cereals are used as cheap fillers. These are totally inappropriate for dogs and cats.

Canine Diarrhoea – The Natural Treatment

If your dog has had diarrhoea for ages, it might take longer to get back to normal than after an acute episode of diarrhoea, but persist!

Treatment comprises of several stages.

Stage One, Day 1

The first thing to do is to give the gut a rest. To this end I recommend 24 hours with no food at all. However access to clean, filtered or bottled water is essential at all times.

It is best to start the treatment regime straight away so as well as giving the gut a rest, you’ll be providing a calming anti-inflammatory to soothe the gut lining, an adsorbant to grab hold of the toxins and take them out of the body and a good source of probiotics to recolonize the gut with healthy bacteria.

How Do We Achieve This?

Aloe Vera Juice / Drink is a wonderful anti-inflammatory available in most health food shops (for humans!). Giving 5 mls for small dogs, 10 mls for bigger dogs 6 times a day works well.

Argiletz Green Medicinal Clay is an excellent adsorbent. You can mix ½ tsp (small dogs), 1 tsp (big dogs) in with the aloe vera 3 times a day. This will make the stools look grey as it takes the toxins out of the gut.

PET Plus provides the best, most rapidly colonising probiotics, so add ¼ tsp to each green clay and aloe vera mixture.

Stage Two, Day 1

They need something to eat now so I suggest a teaspoonful (little dogs) or a tablespoonful (big dogs) of cooled boiled brown rice 6 times daily in addition to stage one’s regime. If that goes down well, you could add a raw egg to the last 3 spoons of rice (less for little dogs).

Stage Three, Days 3 & 4

Add some raw white fish / rabbit (minced with bone is best) to the rice and give a little bit more at each of the 6 servings, in addition to Stage Two. You could alternate between fish and egg if your dog is good with eggs.

Stage Four, Day 5

Reduce the clay to once a day.
Continue the aloe vera 6 times daily.
Continue the Pet Plus mixed in with the food.
Feed more at each meal time.

Stage Five, Days 6 Onwards

Stop the clay as long as the diarrhoea has stopped. Reduce the aloe vera to 4 times daily for 3 days then twice daily for a week then stop it altogether, as long as the stools are firm.

Gradually increase the size of each meal and reduce the frequency. You could introduce some liquidized greens to the white meat / fish and rice. Gradually reduce the rice and stop it after about 3 more days.

After about two weeks in total, everything should be back to normal. Continue with raw white meat / fish, liquidised greens and PET Plus.

You could gradually introduce other raw meats / fish over the following weeks, following my Diet Sheet.

Continue with the Pet Plus forever! It provides all the nutrients required to keep the gut healthy and balanced, preventing recurrence.

In its broadest sense, the immune system comprises all barriers to invaders and all systems designed to attack and destroy any invaders that get past the first line of defense.

The Skin

The skin and fur protect our pet’s delicate insides from the outside.

Essential oils (essential fatty acids, EFAs), especially the anti-inflammatory Omega 3 fats, as well as the nutrients from raw food, help to maintain the integrity of the skin.

When the skin is cut, blood rushes out, flushing out most of the potential invaders, then forms a clot to fill the gap, sealing out any further bugs. White blood cells arrive quickly to destroy anything that shouldn’t be there and the healing process soon creates new skin cells under the protective scab.

Lymph Nodes

The orifices of the bodies of dogs, cats and ourselves are the mouth, nose, ears, anus, urethra and vulva/vagina.

These are all well protected with local lymph nodes, the sentry boxes of the immune system, guarding all potential entrances. The majority of bugs enter through the mouth and nose, so there is a huge concentration of lymphatic tissue (mostly the tonsils) to guard this area.

Function Of Blood

The blood is the body’s main transport system carrying nutrients to the cells, waste products from the cells, red blood cells (oxygen to the cells, carbon dioxide from the cells), platelets (for clotting), white blood cells (immune system) and hormones.

There are many different types of white blood cells (WBCs), each with a specific main function. The exact details of how it all works are very complicated, so I won’t get into that here, but I will explain how to maintain a healthy immune system and why it sometimes is overwhelmed.

The Immune System Response

When an invader gets past the first line of defense and enters the body, the immune system recognizes it as foreign and launches a white blood cell attack on it in various ways.

For example, polymorphonucleocytes (PMNs) engulf (‘eat’) the baddies, mast cells produce histamine which brings lots of fluid to the area to dilute the toxin (the solution to pollution is dilution!), natural killer cells (NK cells) inject the foreign cells (often cancer cells) with porphyrin (an enzyme which makes holes in its membrane to kill it).

Digestive Leucocytosis

After years of eating processed foods, the body’s digestive ability gradually becomes exhausted and inefficient. As a result, incompletely digested food particles get into the blood where they are immediately recognized as foreign and attacked by the white blood cells.

The digestive process is then completed by these white blood cells in the blood! This is clearly not how the body was designed, but it is a survival strategy.

The body has to get nutrients somehow. So the white blood cell count in the blood increases, especially after eating microwaved food. Microwaved food is so damaged, the body doesn’t even recognize it as food (tip: if you have a microwave, either give it to someone you don’t like or throw it away).

Toxins In The Body

So what happens now when an invader invades? The white blood cells are all busy desperately trying to digest food in the blood so have no resources to deal with the invader.

This means that bugs get in and have a field day, wreaking havoc wherever they go. The body pushes some of the toxins (undigested ‘food’ particles) out through the mucous membranes (called vicarious elimination), mainly via the lungs and large bowels, creating symptoms like a runny nose, cough (from mucous and toxins in the lungs), diarrhoea (from toxins leaving through the bowels), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), colitis.

Toxins are also excreted via the skin causing irritation (eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis). Taking drugs to suppress these symptoms is never going to deal with the actual problem.

Strengthen Your Immune Function

The simplest way is to stop putting toxins (processed foods, drinks and drugs) in at the top end (mouth) so the body can get rid of the toxins which have already accumulated in the body and start the process of repair.

For people, Juice Plus or some other digestive enzyme, and for pets, PET Plus, are both great ways of providing the body with the nutrients it needs so it can start to repair itself. Nourish your body with the natural raw ingredients it needs. See ‘What is fat in people and pets? How to get rid of it! for more details.

If you want you and your pets to live a long and healthy life, with few visits to health care professionals, this is the way to do it.

Fat is the storage place for toxins in the body. If the body can’t get rid of a toxin, it has to find somewhere safe to keep it until such time as it can get rid of it. Where better to store a poison than in stable fat cells, which sit there quite happily, going nowhere.

What Is A Toxin?

A toxin, as far as the body is concerned, is anything it can’t use. The beauty of youth is that the body’s mechanisms for dealing with toxins work perfectly, so they are detoxified in the liver and excreted via the bowels, kidneys, breath and sweat.

But as time goes by, these systems are tested to their limit and eventually become less efficient until such point as they fail. So what can the body do to stay alive and not succumb to a slow, intoxicating deterioration and death?

Fat cells are the answer! They are pretty stable storage units. Think of them like long term storage. So the body directs anything toxic to the fat cells, which get bigger and bigger as they accumulate more toxins.

What Can’t The Body Use?

The body finds it tough to use anything that that has been cooked, processed, chemically preserved, artificially created or unnaturally damaged. Anything like this is more difficult for the body to process than natural foods and drinks.

The Good Stuff

The answer lies in nature. Look at nature and do what’s natural, so

  • drink clean, fresh, chemical free water
  • eat clean, fresh, natural, unprocessed food.
  • Go for a walk in the sun
  • Sleep when it’s dark

The Human Digestive Tract

The human digestive tract, starting with the mouth and teeth, is best adapted to natural, raw, ripe fruit, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. It is too long to cope with much animal protein (meat, fish, egg, dairy), so the large bowel gets clogged up with fermenting, degenerating animal products. This produces toxins which have to be either eliminated or stored away.

The Carnivore Digestive Tract

On the other hand, the carnivore’s digestive system is much shorter and perfectly designed to digest other animals in their natural state, in other words, raw meat, bone, offal, guts, fur, toe-nails and all other parts of the body.

Carnivores eat herbivores, mostly. The guts of herbivores are full of chewed, partially digested grass and other vegetable matter. This means that carnivores to get access to pre-digested vegetable matter which is also important for their nutrition.

The Herbivore Digestive Tract

Herbivores have an incredibly long digestive tract, starting with a great set of grinding teeth which pulverize vegetation into a pulp, with a fermentation chamber at the beginning in the case of ruminants like cows, sheep and goats.

Some herbivores such as rabbits, guinea pigs and horses have a fermentation chamber at the end. Horses are designed to eat their faeces at certain times to further break down the plant cell walls (cellulose) releasing more nutrients for absorption.

The Digestive Process, Briefly

Chewing releases the food enzymes contained in the raw food. This starts the digestive process of food breakdown and nutrient absorption into the blood throughout the gut, from the mouth to the colon.

Right at the start, absorption starts to take place in the mouth. This means too that when chemically treated water enters the mouth, many chemicals, notably chlorine, are absorbed right there in a matter of seconds.

So filter the water you and your pets drink and bathe in because absorption through the skin is a reality.

Various enzymes, produced mostly by the pancreas, mix with the gut contents to enhance digestion, releasing nutrients which are absorbed into the blood. These nutrients are carried to the cells to fuel the body’s activities.

Shifting The Toxins And Therefore The Fat

Clean, chemical free water is an essential route for toxins to get out of the body. So a human needs about 2 litres of water daily. This should produce in a human, 6-12 clear wees a day.

Make sure all pets have a plentiful supply of clean, chemical free water at all times. You will need to get a water filter.

To remove the toxins from the fat cells requires enzymes and energy. Raw food is the only supply of enzymes to the body, so whatever you and your pets choose to eat, eat it raw!

An easy way to get a massive supply of raw micronutrients and enzymes is to take digestive enzymes such as Juice Plus as humans and to give PET Plus to our dogs and cats. I have been doing this for 20 years and know it works!

As fat cells are not very active, they have a poor blood supply, so exercise is essential to increase the blood flow which takes nutrients to the cells and removes the toxins that the cells have released, allowing them to shrink a bit every time.

An hour’s brisk walk apparently produces enough fat removing enzymes (lipase) to last 12 hours.

Sleep enough so you don’t need to take stimulants to stay awake! (Caffeine, sugar and salt are the commonest). Contact me if you need some help for yourself or your pet.