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Originally Posted by Mitzis Mom  Thanks a lot! I'll have to check where in our wider neighborhood an internal vet practices and get a second opinion....
Do you by chance have any info if there is a holistic approach to treat epilepsy in dogs? The reason I'm asking is that we lost our sweet little Mitzi 2 years ago to renal faillure that was probably caused by to much medication and other chemicals put into her tiny body. I don't want to risk that happen again... |
I don't know of a holistic approach to control seizures, but you can protect the liver from damage holistically. Milk thistle is wonderful. Lady has been on a very high dose of phenobarbital for seizures 10.5 years and her ALT is 79 - normal. Pheno is notoroius for causing liver damage over time, but I started using milk thistle right from the start. A few years ago her ALT started showing signs of liver damage. It was around 300. I added Denosyl and put her on a liver friendly homecooked diet and her ALT came back down.
Although anti seizure medication can have side effects, if Mitzi is having seizures that frequently, I would get a second opinion from an internal medicine specialist. Cluster seizures can cause brain damage and the biggest fear with cluster seizures is that they can't come out of it. I lost a dog to epilepsy that way many years ago. It was horrible.
Mitzi absolutely needs a bile acids test. A competent vet should automatically recommend a bile acids test on any Yorkie who is having seizures since Yorkies are 36 times more likely to have a liver shunt than all other breeds combined. I would not want Mitzi to be put on anti convulsants until you rule out a shunt. They would only further damage her liver.