Heartworms 

http://www.bullovedbulldogs.com/heartworm.htm
http://www.danebytes.com/heartworm.htm
Natural Heartworm Cures http://www.danebytes.com/heartworm-cures.htm
 

Heartworms can be deadly, so prevention is the best cure. Should your animal have heartworms, please see http://naturalrearing.com/newsandviews/articles/heartworm.htm about treating them naturally rather than with arsenic or other poison. Another site which details use of homeopathic nosodes and a product called Paratox can be found at http://www.nbwi.org/holisticheartworm.html.

Heartworm preventative has as one of its side effects, aggression.  The potential side effects of Ivermectin (the active ingredient in Heartgard) include liver problems, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite, depression, lethargy, skin eruptions, seizures, tremors, paralysis, autoimmune disorders, thyroid problems, fever, weakness, dizziness, coughing, nose bleeds, difficulty breathing, pneumonia, irritability, sudden aggressive behavior, nerve damage, fertility problems, and sudden death. Other chemical heartworm preventatives have many of the same side effects.

Dr. Jean Dodds recommends the monthly PLAIN heartworm medicine given every 45 days. Basically the medications that just contain Ivermectin (although note that Ivermectin can be a problem for Border Collies and related breeds, so ask your vet for an alternative). Do not use the 6-month shots, use the monthly preventative so you have control in the event your animal experiences a reaction to the medication. It is an accepted practice among dog owners who practice holistic care that Interceptor and Heartgard are given every six weeks instead of every four because they are effective for that long.  If you live in a state that does not have mosquitoes year round, it is also important to take your dog off the pills for a few months.  In order for microfilariae to develop into the infective stage, it needs to be sufficiently warm (above 57 degrees) for a period of time. It takes approximately 6 months for the microfilariae to mature into adult heartworms, so stopping the drug for a few months will still allow for kill of the various stages when started up again.  In fact, ask your vet -- if the adult heartworm load is not too heavy, it is possible to treat the dog using the heartworm preventative rather than putting them through the toxic treatment of arsenic to kill the worms.  It is a good idea to give Milk Thistle or an herbal liver detox formula following a dose of the heartworm drug.

NOTE: Dogs such as Collies or Collie-like breeds (Australian Shepherds, Shelties etc.)  are especially sensitive to Ivermectin (found in Heartgard), and Revolution (flea control product) and can have fatal reactions. Interceptor/Sentinel do not contain Ivermectin and should be used instead. 

Black Walnut A woman on a chatlist says: "I give my dogs Black Walnut Tincture during heartworm season every day as a preventative.  65 lb dog 20-25 drops  30-35 lb dog 15 drops.  Or you may give them a daily Black Walnut capsule, too.  I gave my Chow mix, along with other remedies, 90 drops twice a day for 72 days to help kill her heartworm.  The treatment worked and she is fine.  So from my experience high quality Black Walnut Tincture can be a great solution."
 

The following was written by Christie Keith and is a good explanation of what to expect from heartworm treatments.

There is no radiation used in treating heartworm. They use a drug called immiticide, aka melarsomine dihydrochloride. It is given once, the dog is hospitalized overnight, and then it's given again the next day. A somewhat safer protocol is to give it once, hospitalize the dog overnight, send him or her home the next day, and bring them back a month later, and given them two further injections 24 hours apart.

During this month and one month afterward, the dog must be kept absolutely quiet, as in, CRATED, and allowed to move around only on leash to go to the bathroom.

Q: Has anyone heard of the "poor mans HW treatment"? Apparantly it consists of giving the dog higher doses of HW meds to kill the worms???

This might refer to two different protocols. One of them is, as you say, just giving a higher dose of ivermectin. The other is using a "preventative" dose of Heartgard to act as a slow-kill adulticide.

The higher dose of ivermectin is actually used as a regular part of heartworm treatment. It is typically done to kill the offspring of adult worms (which cannot mature in the dog, but can be taken up by mosquitoes). While there have been extensive studies done on the effects of ivermectin on adult heartworms by John McCall at the University of Georgia, and it's clear that Heartgard given at the normal "preventative dose," which is 6 ug/kg will kill will clear young adult heartworms after 18 months to two years, Dr. McCall did not find that this happened any faster if a higher dose of ivermectin was given. It seems unlikely to me that the higher dose protocol is effective.

Definitely the "long slow kill" does work, but with many risks. There was an Italian study presented at the American Heartworm Society Symposium this year (2004) that followed actual client owned dogs treated with this approach, and the incidence of pulmonary changes and other problems was very high - higher than with the standard "fast kill" protocol.

If you use the "slow kill" method, which takes around 18 months to three years to kill the worms, you have to keep the dog quiet for the whole time. It might be safer than the immiticide (it's basically just giving the regular preventative dose of Heartgard once each month - not a higher dose) from the point of view of drug reactions, but the risk of emboli is the same, or even worse, since you're stretching it out over a much longer time.

So as far as the risk of emboli goes, it does NOT MATTER what method you choose to kill the worms; any method that kills the worms, be it herbal or allopathic or a homeopathic remedy - heck, even if the dog's immune system does it! - is going to be dangerous, because the dead worms migrate to the lungs and form emboli, and it is those emboli that present the greatest risk to your dog, especially if the dog is heavily infested, active, older, or a small dog.

When we look at other approaches to killing heartworm, be they herbs or homeopathic remedies, we have to ask ourselves, "How will the dying worms affect my dog?" Whether using Heartgard or herbs or homeopathy, if the worms are dying slowly, the risks have to be evaluated the same way. Is it safer to have many tiny emboli "showering" the lungs than one big blow out?

The truth is we don't know the answer to this question. There are dogs who have died of pulmonary emboli while on the "slow kill" Heartgard treatment (reported by Dr. Bob Rogers in Texas, and also referenced by Dr. Dillon). We have to accept that this is probably also the case with dogs on herbal and homeopathic treatments.

Homeopathy might offer the best of both worlds, because at least in theory, constitutional treatment will help the dog be strong and disease resistant. But most homeopathic heartworm protocols are aimed at eliminating the worms and are not constitutional in nature, and I can't think of any reason why they would provide any benefit beyond being less toxic, even assuming equal effectiveness.

This information is from the proceedings of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine 2002 annual meeting, from the presentation "Heartworm Adulticides: Rapid Kill vs Slow Kill-The Complications," by Ray Dillon, DVM, MS, MBA, DACVIM of Auburn University, AL:

"The death of heartworms results in severe capillary bed fragility, loss of blood into the alveolar space, and causes the type of lung injury associated with adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in humans. The acute lung injury... is related to the worm mass and rate of worm death."

According to Dr. Dillon, "Based on an unknown heartworm burden in client dogs, where monies are not a major concern to the owners, the safest approach to a dog with heartworms is a staged heartworm kill. One injection of melarsamine and then a 1 month rest, followed by 2 injections over 24/hours can result in elimination of approximately 30% of the worm burden initially, 1 month to resolve the pulmonary insult, followed by 2 injections which would eliminate the rest of the worm burden. However, this approach also requires the prolonged restriction of activities during this 2-month period of staged heartworm death. In areas where large heartworm burdens are common, this 3-dose approach is the standard recommended therapy for all heartworm positive dogs."

However, he goes on to say that, "Based on a series of studies by several investigators, there is a consensus, but not agreement on the efficacy, that administration of the monthly preventative medications over a 1 yr to 18-month treatment will result in a reduction in the number of adult heartworms. With some differences in the experimentations where variables of age of worms, dosing duration, and worm numbers varied, there is evidence to demonstrate that there are long term adulticidal effects associated with dosing of monthly preventatives." The most effective of the preventatives studied is Heartgard Plus; in fact, as far as I know all or most studies showed it was the only one with significant adulticidal (killing of adult heartworm) activity.

Is this safer? Again, according to Dr. Dillon, "(E)xperimental studies using purpose breed dogs in confined space for the duration of the experiment would reflect a similar clinical scenario of cage resting a client dog for the 1 = to 2 years of worm death and lung injury. ... Acute lung injury is associated with the death of heartworms, regardless of the cause. Increased flow though the disease pulmonary capillary beds can result in fibrosis and extend to hemoptysis and in the extreme, ARDS and death. In the clinical practice of heartworm disease management, it is vital to know when the heartworms die and thus when the lung injury is induced and limited exercise is necessary. In a dog which has no physical activity, this may be a moot question. However, of concern is an active dog in which it is know that even with live worms, the increased cardiac output is associated with increased pulmonary fibrosis and increases in pulmonary vascular resistance. The unanswered question is whether an active dog with worms dying over a gradual period of time will have a greater tendency to develop these lesions as a consequence of the prolonged lung insult. Lung injury is more severe in studies where monthly preventatives were more 'effective' at killing 4-month-old L5 adults. Acute consequences of 'slow adulticidal' therapy with monthly preventative medications have been anecdotally reported. Clinical trials using unconfined dogs to determine the real risk of adulticidal activity of month preventatives have not been reported."

He concludes, "In active dogs, the use of monthly preventative medications as an adulticide should be used with caution. Owners of dogs receiving such therapy should be advised that any respiratory difficulty should be considered an emergency."

Christie Keith
Caber Feidh Scottish Deerhounds
Holistic Husbandry since 1986
http://www.caberfeidh.com

Fleas and Ticks

See my Pest Control page for lots of good ideas about natural flea/tick prevention etc.