‘Here, buy my nosode package, give nosodes for your horses as a vaccine,’ and all it’s really doing is substituting two different things that are really not the same; you’re still using the Western mindset of ‘we have to give this vaccine because it’s March 1.’ You’re not thinking about treating the animal holistically.” It is for these reasons that no one should undertake giving their horses nosodes without the advice of their veterinarian.
An important difference between vaccines and nosodes is the use of nosodes does not give you a measurable titer, used to assess antibodies in the body. While a vaccine will create titers, a nosode will not as it does not stimulate the immune system in the same way.
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“Nosodes really are not a substitute for a vaccine; they really have a
different purpose, but people tend to think of them that way,” —Dr. Joyce Harman
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“Each nosode you give is a treatment,” says Dr. Harman. “It’s triggering a response in the body, and that response might be good for the body, or it might not. Anytime we start throwing piles of homeopathic remedies into horses, or any animal, without the need for it, we run the risk of getting horses very difficult to cure from whatever diseases they do get because the energy of the body is so confused.”
Homeopathic nosodes are designed to be absorbed into the body through the mucus membranes. In horses, the most common way to give them is orally.
Dr. Harman describes her process: “There are many ways you can give homeopathic remedies, and there’s this whole religion about ‘don’t touch them, don’t give them with food’...If you take a horse who has a long mouth, and they chew their food very well, all you have to do is get it in their mouth. I would say I feed 90% of mine in a little bit of food. By the time the horse chews the food, they have absorbed the remedies in the mucus membranes.”
Dr. Cannizzaro counters, “Really, there’s no mystery to not handling the homeopathic pellets. If you handle them too much, you might actually rub the medicine
Holistic Horse™ • June/July 2010 • Vol.16, Issue 67
“We would make the decision based on the animal’s health history and exposure risk,” Dr. Henneman says. “Giving a nosode to an animal with underlying constitutional disease can cause an adverse reaction which can worsen matters. Sometimes, based on vaccine titer status, a nosode is unnecessary.”
WHEN TO USE NOSODES All three veterinarians interviewed for this piece agree that the best time to use a nosode in is the face of an outbreak. Dr. Cannizzaro says, “A nosode is more effective if you have an outbreak. If we give a vaccination, it’s going to take anywhere from 10 days to 2 weeks for the immune system to mount a completely appropriate response to the vaccination.” Oftentimes when you have a disease outbreak in a barn, horses not yet showing signs of illness may already have the bug in their system. Dr. Harman explains, “If you go in and vaccinate those horses in the rest of that barn while they might be incubating the disease, there’s a very good chance you’ll have some very, very sick horses, because it’s sort of like the vaccine crosses with the disease.”
RESEARCH IS SPARSE While holistic veterinarians know that nosodes, if used appropriately, do work, there is little scientific research to back up their results. “Tere is a biological reaction that occurs in the patient,” says Dr. Cannizzaro, “so you can’t say ‘OK, well it doesn’t do anything,’ because we watch tumors disappear, we watch sarcoids disappear, we watch lamenesses get better, colics go away, and there’s absolutely positively something that happens.”
Dr. Harman points to cases in animal shelters that use nosodes on their dog populations, most of which come in already sick with kennel cough and parvovirus. “[Te shelters] know what their case rate was previous to nosodes, and they can see that
continued on p. 18 ADMINISTERING NOSODES
off of the pellet...All of the medicine per se is pretty much impregnated on the outside of the pellet.” She says while you can feed the pellets in some food, “We want to reduce the greatest number of variables when you’re going to give a homeopathic medicine, and when you mix it with food, there is some controversy about whether or not there’s any kind of interaction between the food source and the homeopathic medicine.”
Dr. Cannizzaro suggests, “Either liquefy the pellets (dissolve them in spring or distilled water in a syringe) and then give them by mouth, or if the pellets are small enough, I just open the lower lip of the horse and I pour the pellets onto the lower lip, inside that pocket... Really, the most important thing is that the pellets dissolve.”
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Helios Pharmacy
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