或許有人會有興趣 關於寵物與精油的文章 - 芳療

http://ppt.cc/SlLv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jj827fDbpB8

此外
很多芳療師都養有貓狗
芳療實證學與芳香療法 x mind maps的作者Monika Werner
也養了兩隻貓,每天還會跟著她跟她老公出去散步

當然，劑量與使用方法是很關鍵的因素
許多有毒的論文
常是直接注射或者是餵以大量精油進實驗動物的體內

貼以這篇文章
或許可以從別的角度思考看看

Forget Everything Bad You've Been Told about Essential Oils for Pets

By Dr. Becker

I’m excited to be interviewing a very special guest today!

The reason I wanted to do this interview is because I feel very strongly
about the benefits of essential oils in veterinary medicine.

Unfortunately, not all vets view essential oils as safe, effective, or even
worth investigating.

So I’m bringing a true expert in the field to the discussion today, Dr.
Melissa Shelton.

She has a tremendous amount of experience with essential oils for animals.

Dr. Melissa Shelton’s Initial Exposure to Essential Oils

Dr. Shelton initially became interested in essential oils not for animals,
but for her own children.

They had specialized health needs that prevented use of traditional
medications, as well as dyes and other additives.

Melissa saw an announcement for a community education class for natural
remedies for coughs and colds and other minor illnesses, so she decided to
attend.

As it turned out, the class was about using essential oils to cure ailments,
and that’s how she became interested in the subject.

Dr. Shelton had already turned away from the use of chemical air fresheners
at home and at her veterinary clinic. This was in part due to the bloodwork
abnormalities she was seeing in pets exposed to a lot of air fresheners in
their environment. When the air fresheners were removed, the bloodwork values
returned to normal.

So she was excited about the possibilities for essential oils, because in
addition to being safer than chemical air fresheners, they also smelled
really nice!

Dr. Shelton began investigating whether she could use essential oils in her
vet clinic safely, but to back up just a bit, she’d actually first been
exposed to them years earlier – when she was able to cure her husband’s
warts with an essential oil.

She and her husband had tried many different things to try to get rid of the
warts. Eventually they tried clove oil, and it worked. And 10 years later,
Melissa still has that same bottle of clove oil!

Coincidentally, I was also introduced to essential oils almost by accident.

As some of you know, I’m a wildlife rehabilitator. Twenty years ago, the
woman I apprenticed under said,

“You know, if you have really stressed wild animals coming in, just put a
few drops of very pure pharmaceutical grade lavender oil on a cotton ball,
tape it outside of their cage, and you will see an overall calming effect.”

I have done this trick with lavender oil for years. It’s tremendously
effective. But suddenly I had people gasping and saying, “Oh my gosh! There’
s not a cat in the room when you’re doing that, right?”

A Controversial Treatment

I started to get a little panicky thinking I might be causing harm with my
use of lavender oil.

I asked Melissa if she’d received feedback from others in the veterinary
community about the supposed dangers of using essential oils around animals.

Dr. Shelton’s experience has been similar to mine. She’s contacted
regularly by others in our profession with questions like, “How dare you
even recommend that you could do this [use essential oils] around cats?”

Melissa has been using essential oils in her practice for about three years
now, but before that, she was cautious about even using a diffuser at home
with her own cats (she has over a dozen at the moment!).

She would watch her kitties very carefully for reactions to the diffuser. And
she ran tons of bloodwork to reassure herself they were healthy.

Then Dr. Shelton noticed that her Munchkin cat spent a lot of time at the
diffuser, lying next to it. In fact, she actually delivered a litter of
kittens right next to it. And it occurred to Melissa that her cat was
certainly smarter than most humans when it came to how her body responded to
the oils in the diffuser.

But Melissa continued to check blood and urine in her cats and monitor them
closely. Over time she felt confident no abnormalities were developing and
she began to relax with the idea of essential oils around cats.

Then it occurred to her the kitty probably didn’t lay next to the diffuser
just because she liked it, and that there were certainly more compelling
reasons driving her to be close to it.

The Quality of the Oils is Paramount

I asked Melissa whether she thinks the information about essential oils and
animals comes from those who are simply misinformed, or is there an element
of fear mongering involved.

She believes it’s a little of both. She’s done her own research on reports
of toxicity from oils, hoping to learn why some people can successfully use
them and others are so dead set against them.

And from her research, she has determined it comes down to an issue of the
quality of the essential oils used – just as many things in veterinary
medicine come down to quality. For example, pet food. When we see pets that
have become ill thanks to a poor diet, we recommend the owner upgrade the
diet as soon as possible. We don’t outlaw all pet food because there are low
quality brands on the market – we just pick a better food.

Dr. Shelton says it became very obvious to her that there are just as many
variations in the quality of essential oils as there are in brands of pet
food. She has her own brand preferences based on the quality of the oils. As
a holistic vet, when she finds a product that is safer or more effective, that
’s the one she uses and recommends to clients.

When it comes to essential oils, what Dr. Shelton has found is a lot of
people jumped on the bandwagon initially because it was a natural remedy. But
the majority of those folks had no knowledge of essential oils, or how to
distinguish a high quality grade from a lesser grade of oil. She has
discovered even companies that are big warehouses for essential oils don’t
understand about testing the quality of the oils, or how to evaluate an oil
at all. They just warehouse them.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there was well. Dr. Shelton has spoken
directly to people with cats that have been damaged by essential oils, so it
does happen – just not as often as many people think.

Melissa has met or knows of thousands of people who use essential oils
successfully, and only a few that have had major problems with them.

I asked her if in her experience, problems from use of essential oils were
primarily a purity or potency problem, or a mishandling problem.

Dr. Shelton believes it’s a quality problem (for example, a five-dollar
bottle of essential oil purchased from the local drug store is mostly likely
a poor grade oil), and also a mishandling problem when the person gets the
oil home. She can usually trace a problem with an essential oil back to it
being a synthetic oil, a poor grade oil, or a situation of misuse by the
consumer. For example in one instance, a bottle spilled and a cat wound up
basically covered in essential oil.

How Dr. Shelton’s Passion for Essential Oils Developed

I wanted to know if Dr. Shelton’s passion for essential oils for animals
developed gradually, or rather suddenly.

She says she was always drawn to them but initially thought she couldn’t be
around them much because of her own sensitivities to odors and inhalants. In
fact, she actually thought she was allergic to them.

Then she was exposed to very high quality oils, and she was instantly
energized. She began devouring books on essential oils and became very
passionate and a huge advocate.

Sometime after that, she had a patient at her vet clinic that had her
stumped. She felt there was nothing more she could do for the animal – there
was nowhere else to turn. Every veterinarian is faced at some point in their
careers with such a patient.

But Dr. Shelton suddenly found herself with several of those patients almost
simultaneously. The pets’ owners were telling her, “Look, I’m not giving
up on this animal, so you better come up with something else.”

Cowboy the Cat and Essential Oils

One such patient is Cowboy the cat. Cowboy has upper motor neuron damage to
his bladder and can’t urinate. Dr. Shelton hospitalized him over and over
and over again, but his owner refused to give up. She’s willing to do
anything to help Cowboy – surgery if there was any that would help, taking
him wherever she needed to, to have his bladder drained safely on a regular
basis, or whatever was required. She was willing to do anything.

Dr. Shelton kept gently suggesting it might be time to euthanize Cowboy, but
his mom’s response was always, “No! No! No!” So Melissa eventually decided
that if Cowboy was human, she would try certain essential oils, and his owner
agreed.

So try they did. And while Dr. Shelton had every intention of weaning the cat
off the essential oils after a period of time, Cowboy’s mom insistently
continued with the remedy. Dr. Shelton was sure she was going to see bad news
in his bloodwork from the ongoing use of essential oils, but his test results
came back perfect. And she was more convinced than ever that “these things
really work.”

She convinced Cowboy’s owner to back off the oils to every other day … and
the cat had a relapse.

Melissa continues to follow Cowboy’s bloodwork. And for over two years now he
’s been getting essential oil treatments twice a day, topically, using a
mixture of several oils. His bloodwork is, in a word, spectacular. In fact, he
’d just been in the day before our interview. Dr. Shelton re-checked his
blood values and it seems Cowboy is actually regaining some neurologic
function!

Cowboy is an amazing case, of course, and one of Melissa’s all-time
favorites.

I wanted to know if Cowboy can urinate on his own now all time. Dr. Shelton
says not completely. His bladder is still slightly enlarged, but it releases
urine more easily than before. In fact, it releases when he sleeps, which
indicates improvement in the neural tone.

And Cowboy can actually urinate in a small puddle instead of just dribbles
these days. He’s also showing a small panniculus response when he’s petted,
which is a bit of twitching of the hair and skin down his back – also a good
sign. And he can twitch his tail ever so slightly.

When Melissa first started seeing Cowboy, he had to be hospitalized almost
monthly to relieve the urinary blockage. His bladder would be the size of a
cantaloupe. It was horrible for the cat – being catheterized and
hospitalized until he was feeling better – then sending him home only to see
him the next month to do it all over again.

Since he’s been on the essential oils, he’s gone over a year without a
hospitalization. Read more about Cowboy here.

The Miracle of Dr. Shelton’s Very First Feline Essential Oils Patient

I told Melissa I assumed Cowboy’s mom just be ecstatic to see her pet get so
much relief and improved quality of life from an inexpensive, non-invasive
therapy. Dr. Shelton says the client has spent only a fraction of just one
hospitalization on essential oil treatments.

I asked Melissa if there was a specific case earlier in her career as a vet
that sparked her interest in sort of going against the grain of traditional
treatments toward incorporating alternative remedies like essential oils in
her practice.

She responded that actually it was her own cat who was her first essential
oils patient. She was an outdoor ‘farm cat’ (the Sheltons do cat rescues).
One day she came stumbling up the driveway with clear signs of a severe
neurologic problem. Dr. Shelton actually prepared euthanasia solution because
she assumed there was no hope for the poor cat.

Before she could use it, however, her husband suggested – since she’d
wanted to try essential oils with cats – that she try them first before
euthanizing the kitty.

So with literally nothing to lose, Melissa decided to try treating their farm
cat with essential oils. She did what is called a “kitty raindrop.” Within
two doses the cat was 100 percent back to normal.

It was such an amazing result – and also, remember, her first experience
using essential oils on an animal – that Dr. Shelton wondered whether it was
truly the oils that helped or whether the cat would have recovered on her own.

Getting Started with Essential Oils for Pets

I next asked Melissa if she has advice for people interested in getting
started very safely using essential oils with pets.

Dr. Shelton’s opinion is that first and foremost, the quality of the
essential oils must be very good. She has evaluated the oils from about two
dozen different companies. There are some good small companies that provide
what she calls medical-grade oils (because she uses them for medicinal
purposes). But she has found that just because a company has some very good
quality oils doesn’t mean all their oils are of the best quality.

It’s important to be very cautious when it comes to the quality of essential
oils. Dr. Shelton has a brand she uses made by a company that consistently
researches products for medical-grade quality. Their oils are tested multiple
times in independent labs.

Dr. Shelton has a website at www.oilyvet.com. She’s so passionate about
essential oils for animals she created the site specifically for the purpose
of educating pet owners. She answers many of the questions she’s been asked
by pet owner after pet owner about essential oils for dogs, cats and other
companion animals. She also discusses the brand of essential oils she uses
and provides a link for people interested in ordering their own oils.

The goal of Dr. Shelton’s website is to get information out to as many
people as possible through videos and other educational materials. Prior to
launching the site, people would drive from other states to her vet clinic
just to get information on essential oils. Melissa realized many people are
curious and others share her passion for the subject, so her website evolved
to get information into the hands of those people.

Essential Oils to Treat MRSA

I’ve become keenly interested in essential oils as one of the few effective
treatments for MRSA, and other antibiotic resistant bacterial infections. I
really believe one of our last resorts to successfully treat these horrible
infections lies with essential oils.

Dr. Shelton agrees. She has MRSA patients who have responded to essential
oils when nothing else worked.

The beauty of essential oils is plants change, and so every single
distillation of essential oils is slightly different from its predecessor.
This is a benefit we don’t receive from pharmaceutical drugs. Every batch of
a medical drug must by law be identical to the batch that preceded it.

Plants, on the other hand, adapt and change with the tiniest variable in
their environment, for example, a change in the water supply. So essential
oils, created from ever-adapting plants, never reach a point where pathogens
become resistant to them. They stay at least one step ahead – which makes
them much smarter than anything we can create in a laboratory.

Dr. Shelton says she’s reached the point with essential oils where she
thinks, “Boy, if somebody tries to take them away from me, I don’t know if I
’d want to practice veterinary medicine anymore.”

She compares it to how we view the issue of nutrition in animal health. We
are both huge proponents of the importance of nutrition in the lives of our
patients and all animals. If we couldn’t modify a pet’s diet as part of our
healing protocol, our jobs would become incredibly difficult.

Dr. Shelton sees them as a pair, diet and essential oils. She always starts
with the diet. If she’s not able to convince a pet owner to make necessary
dietary changes and she also meets resistance using even a small amount of
essential oils, it gives her an empty feeling. She feels that strongly about
the benefits of good nutrition and the use of essential oils in pet care.

Essential Oils – True Holistic Healing

One thing that adds to the amazing power of essential oils is they work at
emotional and cognitive levels as well as at the physiologic level. Many pets
have dramatic improvement in their response to stress and anxiety with the
use of oils.

They affect animals down deep, at the cellular level, positively impacting
neurochemistry and biochemistry. This, of course, makes for more balanced,
happier patients who are also regaining physical health.

Melissa uses essential oils to help with behavior modification in pets as
well. In fact she has a video you can watch at her website about Emmett, a
parrot with a horrendous case of papillomatosis – a viral form of avian
warts that can affect the entire GI tract. Emmett had growths in his mouth,
down his throat, and all the way to the other end of him. The condition was
so advanced it caused the bird to breathe so loudly he woke up his owner from
several rooms away in the middle of the night.

Once again, euthanasia was on the table in order to end Emmett’s suffering.
But Dr. Shelton remembered she’d gotten rid of her husband’s warts with
essential oils, and wondered if they would work for poor Emmett.

With great trepidation, because birds are so exquisitely sensitive and
fragile, Melissa began to treat Emmett with essential oils. And guess what?
The papillomatosis greatly improved. But that’s not the end of the story.

As it turns out, Emmett had watched his previous owner die and then laid in
the bottom of his cage for several days before anyone found him. Now,
remember Dr. Shelton was primarily focused on the bird’s physical problem,
the papillomatosis, and hadn’t given much thought to his emotional state.

Because the essential oils had worked so remarkably on Emmett’s disease,
Melissa wanted to take some photos of him for an upcoming presentation. She
used another blend of essential oils on Emmett that were intended strictly
for photo op purposes … and the bird’s emotions changed. You can actually
see it happen on the video posted at her website.

Emmett came out of his cage on his own for the first time in over two years.
And Melissa was stunned to realize she’d been largely overlooking the
emotional component in her use of essential oils on animals. Read more about
Emmett here.

This is one of the most exciting things about essential oils to me – they
promote healing on every level – spiritually, energetically. They are the
essence of a holistic approach to healing – mind, body, spirit. As Melissa
puts it, essential oils “connect all the dots.”

So Why All the Negativity?

I’ve been thrilled to watch Dr. Shelton expand her educational process in
essential oils. She is helping to change the negative opinion many people
have about them.

I’m not by nature much of a cynic, but I’ve often wondered who or what is
really behind the bad reputation essential oils have acquired in the last 10
years.

Is the bad press coming from pharmaceutical companies that don’t want the
public to learn just how beneficial, broad-reaching and inexpensive essential
oil therapy can be? Are the forces behind the ‘negativity movement’ afraid
pet owners will find out just how cheaply and successfully we can treat the
minds, bodies and souls of companion animals?

Wherever the negativity has come from, I just want to say I’m a huge admirer
of Dr. Shelton’s work in overcoming it. She’s out there helping pet owners
and others challenge their fears of essential oils in a logically sound way
so that they can open their minds to a totally natural, very effective form
of healing for animals.

I just really appreciate everything Melissa is doing, and I want to thank her
for spending some time with me today discussing her work and amazing success
treating animals with essential oils.

For those of you interested in learning more about using essential oils to
treat pets, please visit Dr. Melissa Shelton’s website.

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