Vet Cemetery, the placebo effect and the mystical powers of pet owners

[HysteryDiagnosis]

This is a place some of our pets end up in too soon due to a life of digestive disturbances, diarreah, vomiting, IBS and the like. While visiting with some people recently the subject of one of the dog's health issues came to light. Apparrently persistent chronic diarreah is the issue. Quite immediately I recommended to the owner that she visit the place that once was a place known primarily for books but now fronts for hundreds of thousands of online stores and search for “probiotics and dogs”.

Since my own aging pooch has at times had stomach issues at various points in her life I decided that it might be a good idea to read the “stories” from pet owners in the reviews section myself. So I did. After reading for a good while I ordered some probiotics for my furry little friend.

Some of the pet owners' “stories” surely can be attributed to the placebo effect since most of them do tell their pets that they are giving them probiotics. Still others may be attributed to a quantum psychological transference of the placebo effect from owner to pet. Still others are surely on the payroll of big supplement and most certainly receive a hefty royalty every time an order goes through for the product they fawned over in the review section.

I think it would be interesting to do a poor man's clinical trial with these reviews. I think it would be accurate and truthful insomuch as it would be an analysis of “the perceived benefits” achieved by the pets as assessed by their owners.

The IP addresses of the story tellers could be logged in order to make sure they weren't coming from inside a big supplement facility. It could be determined that they were coming from Joe/Jane citizen on Elm Street USA.

We could throw out a third of the results because they would be due to bona fide placebo effects as experienced by the cats and dogs. Another third could be discarded due to the perceived benefits as experienced by overly optimistic pet owners. Then a third could be taken as an accurate representation of the truth, and since most all of the reviews are 4 and 5 star the results would be more than sufficient to declare the supplement effective at treating a “intestinal disease”.

I say all of this because I met some people this week who own two dogs, one of which suffers from chronic diarreah and perhaps IBS. The dog lives on immodium D and this is at best a band aid fix. Believe it or not this person has never heard of probiotics for animals and I am sure they are not in the minority.

I say this because I have met people suffering from diabetic neuropathy who have never heard of lipoic acid, have never had it mentioned to them... their doctors think it is some sort of hallucinogen.

I say these things so that the next time someone's mother's kidneys are taken out by medical drugs perhaps some naturally occurring substances that protect kidney and liver will be applied to the situation. Perhaps someone's life will be saved, perhaps some dialysis machine will sit dormant.

I say none of this for money or personal gain. I say it so that perhaps some of us will find a better way to stay alive or even thrive.

[nebenaube]

1. I'm not sure what you are saying...

And IP addresses no longer serve that function.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Oh, just chew on it for awhile, it will come to you. n/t

[AnnieBW]

3. I recently got some probiotics for my cats

My one male at has been throwing up and peeing outside of the box. We had him on Clavamox, but it really made him sick. So, I decided to try probiotics to even out his stomach. So far, we haven't seen results, but it generally takes a week for stuff to build up enough to show results.