Last Saturday we took our little boy dog to his Whoof Club to get titre tested by the amazing vets at Herbal Vet Scotland.
I thought the fact its a thing that dog owners do to assess the levels of antibodies before the dog receives further vaccinations, when there are concerns for over vaccination and to minimise bad reactions, draws great parallels to how we don’t look at our own health in a similar situation. This is very pertinent in the current climate.
In our family we have anaphylaxis to medications and genetic susceptibility to more severe reactions to viral vaccinations. In contrast, not necessarily as a direct result, we have a strong focus on health and through testing knowledge of our own hormone, digestive, detoxification and immune health.
We put a large focus on the health of our family pet, “the son I never had”, through the food we give him as well as probiotics, herbs, healthy fats, and he is now doing well on a raw diet.
However, we are confident a previous vaccination set off an immune challenge or level of toxicity his system couldn’t cope with. In my experience much of the challenges to our health centre on the need to lighten the load and manage toxicity. Previously it seemed the health of our dog was the same.
He went on to suffer a prolonged period of inflammation on his paws severe enough he was bleeding and at points impacted his walking. His digestion was far from happy as well. Eventually and with the help of Regan and Jordan we narrowed down his issues to allergy to the food he was eating. From stool testing and food elimination we now know chicken and beef, to a lesser degree pork, that he does love, sadly are his nemesis.
We no longer have these challenges. We identified the issue, the toxin, that was overloading his system, we learned the trigger that tipped him over the edge, we then removed the toxins and replaced and re-innoculated him with what he was missing. Identified the bad bugs and lack of good bugs we repaired the damage and over time he has gone from strength to strength. I also appreciate that correlation is not causation and you do get coincidences and things that just happen that can’t always be explained. However if you go looking in the right places with right techniques you can find explanations providing insights that lead to actionable steps.
Bizarrely although I felt like a fish out of water with dog immune health we ended up doing exactly what I do on a daily basis with my human clients. I needed the help and guidance from experts in animals that specialise in testing and working holistically and on an animal to animal basis which I 100% identify with professionally, to get to the root of the problem and seek remedy.
Taking my dog for his Titre Test made me think about the parallels to the current program of experimental gene therapy being rolled out on first time ever global scale. It’s obviously routinely referred to, wrongly, as vaccination and is the cleverest science you will have heard of but it is embryonic and a trip into the unknown. Its a laser focussed phenomenally specifically targeted answer to an evolving problem. We have more than a year of data on SARS-CoV-2 but only months of incomplete data on any of the “vaccines.
I always favour being fully informed. Full disclosure is required on the data and recording all the data; from people not knowing it exists, the time taken to do it, as well as for physicians liability concerns due to accuracy and risk of false reporting, make the awareness and information on the adverse events a challenge.
We are all unique and just like our unique little dog he had his immune system challenges that we chose to identify and work through. In us humans we can take the exact same steps. You can identify your underlying issues, whether its high hormones, food sensitivity, digestive infection or elevated liver enzymes and add in assessing the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. Antibodies take 1-3 weeks to begin to be present in significant amounts post infection. Those with prior Covid-19 infection are a potential risk for increased likelihood of adverse events from vaccination. It’s kind of like having too much of a good thing, too many antibodies, which affects the immune system balance and response. Similar to our dog had we known originally about Titre Test and even thought to run a stool test to get insights to his digestive and immune health, maybe we could have avoided that period of suffering, him with bleeding paws and our continuous deliberating on how to feed him. In a dog before the problem presented running tests would have seemed like dog loving neuroticism. It is more common place and accepted to test humans, for prevention and for treatment. Further testing like T-Cell Testing will become more widely available to evaluate long term memory to infection and better assessment of the robustness of your immune system response to viral infection. If you do have prior immunity then that could be seen as a valid reason to consider whether these these experimental gene therapies are appropriate for you or not. In the absence of choosing a medical treatment armed with specific information on your health it may spark a stronger commitment to health; nutrition, exercise, sleep, water, vitamins and more laughs in your life. It ought to be a package. Just like with your dog, its not get vaccinated and then ignore the quality of the food you give them. There will be humans choosing their medicine and ignoring their health. Of course some may choose the medicine and also choose health they dont have to be mutually exclusive. As always having more information whether its about the medicine or your own body and how it functions and copes with life helps inform your decisions.
We have the results for the Titre Test and his antibody levels are high enough he doesn’t need vaccination for; Hepatitis, Parvovirus and Distemper Virus, so thats good news and helps justify our decision to opt for the test. Always interesting what the right lab tests can be used to help you figure out.
Have you had a Titre Test for your dog? Share your thoughts and experience over on my Facebook page.