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Solution to Dental Disease in Cats

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Dental Disease in Cats

gum red line

This condition is common and very frustrating for people  to deal with. The usual appearance is first a redness of the gums, a line along the border of the teeth. Then, with more progression, looseness and decay of the teeth. For some poor cats it ends up with them losing all of their teeth.

The usual treatment for this is antibiotics followed by cleaning of the teeth (or removal of same). The treatment helps for a while but does not resolve the problem. It is not a bacterial infection so the antibiotics do little to affect it. 

What is interesting is the historical perspective. I graduated from veterinary school in 1965 and in my first years of practice this condition was not seen. We would indeed see dogs that had deposits on their teeth and advise cleaning but cats rarely had any issues or needed this to be done. With time, the frequency of this in cats steadily increased and the question, of course, is why this is so. It is not a genetic condition, and is not an infection due to some new strain of bacteria. Whenever a condition without an obvious cause affects a large percentage of the population it is usually something in the environment, something that is not healthy to be exposed to. 

It is looking now that this condition is caused by mercury poisoning. Mercury was used very much in medicine a couple of centuries ago, as frequently as antibiotics are used today. As this was done in people it was learned that the primary effect of mercury poisoning was the inflammation of the mouth with eventual decay and loss of teeth over time — just like is seen in these cats.

Why would this especially be a problem in cats? If you look at the labels of cat foods you will find a very large percentage of them contain fish. And fish is very high in mercury. There is also mercury in other meat sources but it is highest in fish. This is so because in the burning of coal in power plants to produce electricity. The smoke given off contains mercury which was in the coal and this mercury released into the air is brought down to earth by rain. In the soil and water the mercury is modified by bacteria to become an even more toxic form — methyl-mercury. Then it is picked up by plants and small animals living there and as these plants and animals are eaten by other animals the amount becomes increasingly concentrated in their tissues. Much of this also washes down into the streams, and eventually the oceans, which is why it is so high in fish. You might remember that women that might be pregnant are advised not to eat fish more often than once a month. Now translate this back to the cat eating it every single day. 

This problem with mercury coming from coal burning has been known for several decades but our government decided it would be too expensive to regulate and so it was allowed to continue all of this time. We are now reaping the results. If you eat fish, whether wild or farm raised, you will be getting additionally a nice helping of mercury.

What evidence is there that this is important for cats? In a report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG; ewg.org) in 2008, the amount of mercury in the blood and urine of cats was compared to that of human beings. Over 9000 people had been assayed by the CDC and the amount of mercury found was averaged out as a reference to what, these days, is the common level for people. They didn’t say it was OK, just this is what was found. The EWG did a similar study of the blood and urine of 37 cats tested at a Virginia veterinary clinic. What they found was that cats had, on average, 5 and a half times as much mercury in their bodies as human beings. This is highly significant and identifies for us what is the likely cause of this common mouth condition. 

Once I realized this, I started treating these cats by first changing their diet to eliminate fish entirely and also minimizing meat as a secondary source. The next step was homeopathic treatment and I emphasized those homeopathic remedies which had been identified to be useful for treating mercury poisoning. There are a large number of such remedies, over 60, so it requires careful evaluation of the cat’s condition to choose the most appropriate one. However, once successfully done, it is of much benefit. Hepar sulph., Sulphur, Sepia, Silica and Aurum are often indicated but, again, it takes careful evaluation of the details to make the optimal choice.

What can you do?

An obvious next step is the avoidance of any cat food that contains fish. Our best advice is to study the 4th edition of our book, Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats. In this blog we have focused on just one substance, mercury, but there are many more to consider — heavy metals as well as many industrial and home-use chemicals which accumulate in the bodies of the animals that end up being eaten by other people, dogs and cats. We addressed this larger issue in our book, developing entirely new recipes that minimize this exposure to as many of these toxic substances as possible.

If you can go further, contact a homeopathic veterinarian to give specific treatment to your cat as this will very much accelerate recovery.

Thoughts on Plant Based Diets for Dogs

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I am thinking, since proposing this idea of changing the diet of dogs to a more plant based one, it would help to explain somewhat what my path to this has been. Many people when first hearing about this react with strong disapproval, saying this is both unnatural and harmful to dogs. Of course we know that the ancestors of dogs, the wolves, were prey animals and mostly ate the animals they hunted and killed. It is easy, therefore, to assume that domestic dogs should be fed the same way. This would be a good argument a couple of centuries ago, but not so much now.

The Problem

We have a problem in the dog world. Overall dogs are becoming more sick with the passing years. I am referring to numbers, percentages. Whatever our system of medicine is doing, it is not bringing about a progressive improvement of health in the dog population. One example, is the tremendous increase in cancer in dogs. Veterinarians that have looked into this say that cancer is now the leading cause of death in dogs and that some breeds like Golden Retrievers will have half of them experiencing cancer in their lives.

The Veterinary Perspective

I am giving just one example of what we veterinarians are facing in our desire to help dogs lead healthy lives. I have been a veterinarian for 50 years and I have seen a lot of change and it has concerned me. I kept looking into what might be causing this to happen (not just cancer, but the decline in health). This led me, over time, into study of nutrition, a re-evaluation of vaccine use (not an easy thing for me to do with my PhD in immunology), and working with alternative methods of treatment. I came to like homeopathy the best.

Nutrition

My study of nutrition opened up a whole new world. I had no idea. What I found you will see in our book along with the nutritional advice that came from my clinical experience. What is different in this last edition of our book is putting much emphasis on feeding dogs a plant based diet or a diet with mostly plant sources and minimal animal products. Many people object to this, thinking it cannot be healthy. I started out thinking the same way but my progression of learning took me to a different view.

Environmental Contamination

I learned that the environment has been very significantly contaminated by substances which are toxic when they end up in our tissues. It did not used to be like this, but with each passing year it has become greater and greater. Part of this is that more and more chemicals are being put into use. There are now 100,000 being used in all sorts of ways, most of them ending up in sewers, in the water, soil, ocean. One of the most toxic materials is the solid stuff that settles out in waste water treatment plants of towns and cities. There was so much of it that there had to be a way to get rid of it. It was expensive to put in a land fill so another solution was thought up. The sewage sludge was renamed “biosolids” and our government approved it being used as fertilizer on our food crops. So the most toxic material we can come up with, with hundreds of chemicals in it, is put on our food for the plants to take up.

It is not just this source that is a problem. As one example, industrial processing has released very extensive amounts of dioxin, which is considered to be the most potent chemical in existence that can cause cancer. Dioxin is throughout the environment, highest in fish, next in eggs, then significant amounts in dairy and beef. It is important to realize that dioxin is not something added to the food, or injected into the animals. It is in the environment, in water, air and soil. So it gets into all animals, even those raised organically.

Do you begin to see the problem? We could go on and on. After all, there are 100,000 chemicals. But you can get the idea. I realized that this contamination was a big deal and that regular feeding of dogs with sources that had poisons in them would be a very important reason whey there would be so much increasing illness.

Bioaccumulation

We could talk about this for a very long time. There is actually much information available. Rather what I would like to do is bring in one more consideration and that is called “bioaccumulation.” The idea is this: the chemicals introduced into our environment are taken up by the plants as they grow. The animals that eat the plants then also get these chemicals but because they eat plant after plant, over months or years, the chemicals build up in their bodies to much higher levels that what is in the plants. Then if there are animals that eat these plant-easting animals, then they too accumulate more of it. This is sometimes called a “food chain” meaning that like a ladder the amount of accumulate chemical gets higher every rung. How much higher at the top? We are talking hundreds of thousands or millions of times more than what is found in plants. So what animals are at the “top” of the food chain and get the most chemical buildup? Human beings, dogs, cats.

Do dogs have much in their bodies? Studies of their tissues tell us that have about one and half times as much as the average human. This is a big load. Many of the chemicals are carcinogens. I will remind you that carcinogen meant a chemical that has been shown to cause cancer in animals. Do you think it possible that if a dog is eating a food that contains chemicals that cause cancer in animals that it might be a problem for that dog eventually? It may take a few years. It might show up as something else, maybe allergies, chronic ear problems, hypothyroidism. Who knows? The veterinary profession is not really interested into looking into this. Even if it were, it would involve injecting some poor dogs with the chemical for a time to see what it would do to them. A nasty thing to do.

Another Idea

How about a simple solution? I admit not a total solution but one that does seem like it makes sense. How about we just don’t feed so much of this toxic stuff to them? Once this came to my mind I had to investigate the possibility that dogs could get by eating less meat and animal products. I was surprised to find studies that showed they could do very well on vegetarian diets, even diets entirely plant based. This investigation took some time as I had my inner resistances just like most of you. But I found that dogs have the ability to eat a variety of foods and do quite well with them. They are not considered to be strict carnivores by biologists and that has allowed them to adapt to a range of diets. Studies of their ability to make enzymes used in digestion has shown us that the have the same ability as humans in this regard. They can eat carbohydrates and digest them very well.

Testing the Idea

Along the way this idea was put into action. I began to recommend to people that they make diet changes and see if there was a favorable effect. It was surprising to see that many dogs with chronic health problems, like allergies, auto-immune diseases, seizures, would noticeably improve in their health when animal products no longer part of their diet. This was unanticipated on my part but was much like long ago when I started having clients prepare their own food instead of using commercial pet foods and seeing improvements there.

Seeing better health in these chronically ill dogs reinforced the idea that this consideration of environmental contamination was an important to understand. I am not suggesting it is the only issue but seem it must be a very significant factor. Even if the chemical buildup is not the primary influence, it must be somewhat weakening to that animal wouldn’t you think?

Conclusion

I am going to close here. As I said above, we could go on and on with information and experience about this. I do want to communicate here that my views about this, whatever their validity, have come about because of a very long time of study and experience in the veterinary field. I started with the desire to help animals, to spare them unnecessary suffering, and this intention has remained all this time. I feel like it was this intention that prompted me to look “outside the box” and consider other ways of looking at this problem of increasing chronic health problems for our poor brothers and sisters.

Blessing to you all.