The medical and veterinary industries love to take a problem apart and make it look complicated, as this exponentially increases the remedial possibilities. This way of approaching disease is called “reductionism” and it lies in direct opposition to the most effective and rational way to deal with illness, which is to simply look for common underlying causes and remove them.
The causes of disease are systemic. They are always related to each other and are always connected to each and every symptom or disease that afflicts the whole organism. This is the basic premise of the “Unity Theory” of disease causation, and in practical application it allows us to resolve disease by identifying ONE singular underlying cause that’s always the same. That cause is overall body toxicosis. Toxicosis refers to the saturation of the tissues and bloodstream with extraneous, internally and externally generated wastes that have accumulated faster than the primary organs of elimination have been able to discard them.
Skin Issues Should be Taken Seriously
When a toxemic state exists in the body such that the primary eliminative channels can’t keep up, the skin is sometimes enlisted as a secondary avenue of elimination. Toxins and wastes come through the skin, causing irritation and inflammation as they come into contact with nerve endings. Skin irritation, hot spots, hair loss and inflammation of the skin should therefore be taken for what they are: the signs that disease is forming in your dog.
So, to resolve skin issues, all we have to do is find out what is causing so much waste to be produced in the body. And, in all cases, the culprits are foods and medications that the dog is consuming or ingesting.
The Allergy Game
Instead of allowing reason and rationality to guide them, the veterinary industry has developed enormously complicated and costly procedures aimed at “identifying” the specific substances that an afflicted dog’s body has developed a hypersensitivity to. Once these are determined, if they are normal environmental substances, owners are instructed to avoid having their dogs come into contact with them. Typically — since the offending substances are all but unavoidable — drugs, herbs, homeopathic preparations or other harmful remedies are administered to “manage” the symptoms, usually for the remainder of the dog’s life. These remedies essentially shut down the body’s so-called “immune response”, which means they prevent the body from protecting itself in the way that it normally would. The medical profession perceives the body’s action is a mistake that needs to be shut down and would otherwise cause harm.
This is assuredly not the case. If a hypersensitivity exists, it’s because normally sensitive tissues within the body are in an irritated and inflamed state due to exposure to toxic substances accumulating therein. The “immune response” is normal for a toxic body, and this needs to be addressed not by shutting down the response but by reducing the body’s overall toxic load.
Treating symptoms is a dead end
Treating symptoms with harmful substances is a dangerous and foolhardy way to deal with environmental hypersensitivity (aka allergies). It not only leaves causes completely un-addressed, it adds to them.
Food “Allergies”
Waste is a factor in food allergies as well, but there is more to it than that. Let’s look more closely at “food allergies”.
According to www.PedEducation.com, the 9 most common allergy-causing foods in dogs are:
- beef
- dairy products
- chicken
- lamb
- fish
- chicken eggs
- corn
- wheat
- soy
Of those, at least 5 are known to be among those that dogs have been eating since they first appeared on the planet. What can account for some dogs being unable to tolerate what has been normal and healthy to other dogs since primordial times? The answer to that question has eluded almost all vets, precisely because they fail to recognize that foods that are natural and healthy in their raw state become toxic or injurious when cooked and/or processed. So it’s not really beef, chicken, lamb and other appropriate foods that are causing the problem, it’s the fact that they are denatured and rendered marginally digestible by the application of extremely high temperatures. If you think cooking doesn’t change the molecular structure of food, look at an egg white before and after it’s cooked. To miss the fact that these offending foods are always cooked or processed is like saying that if your body has a bad reaction to orange popsicles, you very likely wouldn’t be able to tolerate oranges either.
Even when the raw versions of animal products trigger symptoms, there are other explanations besides “allergy”. One possibility is that waste products or other harmful substances are often retained in the fatty tissues of food animals which are eaten by dogs. Some sensitive dogs don’t do well on corn-fed beef or conventionally raised chickens, for example, because of all the toxic residues that are contained in the meat and especially the fat. But even this is typically temporary, so a dog owner doesn’t have to avoid that food for the life of the dog, only until the dog gets well. It’s still not an “allergy”, which is presumed by everyone to mean some in-born or acquired life-long intolerance for something normally innocuous or even beneficial to the species in question. It’s a temporary toxic state that can easily be reversed when its causes are removed and the afflicted organs and tissues are allowed to heal themselves. It should be remembered also, that when the diet is improved and the body’s energy is freed up to eliminate stored wastes, the presence of these in the bloodstream can occasion the same symptoms that caused the “allergy” diagnosis in the first place. Therefore, it cannot be assumed by a dog owner that a dog necessarily has a sensitivity to even the raw versions of problem foods. Owners can try various foods during transition to see which ones the dog does better with, however. After the dog is clean and healthy, most often any kind of appropriate food can be tolerated.
Predisposition is NOT cause
The extent to which inappropriate foods cause symptoms in dogs is going to depend largely on the dog’s individual diathesis, which means genetic predisposition. This is what accounts for some dogs getting certain diseases and other dogs getting other diseases. Every living body inherits relative weaknesses among its internal organs and processes. But these are never the primary cause of disease, contrary to what we hear from vets. They only determine where in the body disease will occur. They do not determine whether it will occur at all. The underlying causes are the indigestible denatured foods that dogs are commonly fed, along with medications and vaccinations.
The remainder of the foods on the above list of common trigger foods are completely inappropriate for dogs. It’s no surprise, then, that some dogs have bad reactions to them. Although some dogs may seem to ‘get away’ with eating them, it’s either because they are young and retain all of their original digestive vigor, or because their bodies have slowly built up a tolerance for them. In the former case, as a dog ages, his/her ability to keep up with all the waste generated by these inappropriate foods will decrease and symptoms/disease will be the result. The latter case, tolerance, may seem like a beneficial outcome, but it always exacts a cost on the organism in other ways. Vitality is always sacrificed when a body is forced to tolerate or protect itself from deleterious influences.
Allergies = Big $$$ for the Sick Dog Industry
Via the “food allergy” game, skin issues alone have gone a long way toward empowering and enriching the sick dog industry to the extent that it presently exists. Dog owners typically spend hundreds just getting a dog diagnosed and in return for their money they get very little useful information. Lacking that, the problem never gets resolved. This ensures lots of future income for the attending vet in the form of further diagnosing, drug therapy, herbal remedies, supplements, topical medications, homeopathic preparations, and a whole host of expensive “hypo-allergenic” products and foods that can only be purchased at the vet’s office or pet supply store.
Allergies represent one of those areas that has enormous potential to take power away from the sick dog industry and put it back into the hands of dog owners. The absolute best way to deal with skin problems involves ZERO veterinary intervention and ZERO exchange of remuneration. That being the case, it should come as no surprise that vets don’t know anything about it. Proper feeding is the answer because it will allow your dog’s body to gradually eliminate all the wastes that are currently circulating in his/her bloodstream and causing skin irritation and other problems. It bears repeating that when the body is using the skin as a secondary avenue for elimination, it sometimes will continue to use it until the body and bloodstream have once again reached a state of homeostasis, or balance. So patience will be required, and strict adherence to a proper feeding system so that your dog’s body can concentrate on removing old stored wastes rather than dealing with new ones coming in. Healing takes time, and only the body can do it.