Preventing Disease in Dogs and Cats with Holistic Health CareHolistic health care uses knowledge of what causes disease to make preventative lifestyle choices. For people, holistic health has a history that goes back 5,000 years to India and China, but for pets, the concept is modern.Often times, Western medicine hasn’t been on the same page as holistic health care. In Western medicine, scientists identified germs as outside causes of disease, and created synthesized chemicals to destroy them. People made unhealthy lifestyle choices and assumed health problems could be “fixed” if they got sick.While it is wonderful to be able to cure disease, wouldn’t it be a better approach to prevent disease in the first place?Promoting optimal health and disease prevention are the main goals of holistic health. As a pet owner, you can choose to use holistic health with your pet. The benefits include:
Lower overall health care costs (prevention is cheaper than curing)
Pets with greater energy and freedom from infirmity
Having a disease-free pet who lives a longer, healthier lifeHolistic Health Care Diets for Dog and Cat Holistic health care for dogs and cats is simpler than it is for people. Why? Because dogs and cats are have simpler needs and are easier to satisfy.For many people, the most challenging aspect of maintaining holistic health is consistent emotional balance. The human mind creates its own worries in the over-stimulated world we all live in.However, a dog or cat that has a bed to call their own and gets exercise and belly rubs on a regular basis is likely quite content. For owners, the simply purity of our pets happy state of mind is one of their great charms.The food we give our dogs and cats, however, is dubious from the holistic health perspective. Many dogs and cats go their entire lives eating nothing but processed food. This creates imbalances with essential nutrients, fatty acids and digestive enzymes.Providing a well-balanced diet for our pets can be challenging but is the most important factor in achieving optimal health. Many people barely keep up with cooking healthy for themselves, much less their pets. Although commercial pet foods are convenient to serve and most pets gobble them up, they are often quite poor in nutritional value and can even lead to many adverse health conditions such as allergies, skin problems and digestive disorders.Nutritional supplements can provide a consistent means for ensuring your pet receives the nutrients they need to lead healthy lives.Natural Support for Anxious Pets While dogs and cats don’t sit around worrying about bank accounts or politics, being part of the human world can be stressful. Unfortunately, we have also bred traits into dogs and cats that leave some animals susceptible to not only physical problems, but also anxiety disorders.Holistic health offers help for nervous pets. Herbal remedies are similar to giving a nervous dog or cat a soothing cup of tea. This calming effect allows your pet to learn how to deal with anxiety provoking events like being left alone or loud noises.Holistic Health and Everyday Choices Every day you make a variety of choices about how you live your life – what you choose to eat, whether you exercise and how much you sleep, how you handle stress, etc. Your pet cannot choose a holistic lifestyle. It is up to you as the owner to make everyday decisions that have a cumulative, long-term effect on your pet’s health.Exercise and attention are everyday essentials for holistic pet health. With a complete diet, your dog or cat will be happy, active, and require fewer trips to the vet.The average pet owner usually has little choice but to use processed foods. Adding nutritional supplements is an everyday choice that ensures your pet is getting essential nutrients in their diet. Over your pet’s lifetime, you will spend less on health care and have a healthier pet.

Cats health care is complex, but simple at the same time. This seemingly contradictory statement stems from how humans view the world. All humans have a belief system set up, that is personal and based on their upbringing, their culture, their environment, their education, their religion, etc. When any of this is challenged, it can feel very uncomfortable, unsafe even.Cats health care is complex because every aspect of your cat’s life needs to be examined. No stone can be left unturned. This is regardless of what you feel is good for your cat or not. Your preconceptions must not get in the way. You need to be very open minded.So when you feel that you cannot examine an aspect that perhaps you need to, that may be necessary to get to the route of the problem your cat may be suffering with, you may be challenging your current belief system. Scary stuff indeed!Cats health care is simple, because when you look at the whole picture, in its entirety, it can be easy to see where and why your cat may have a health issue.Let’s first look at how cats in the wild live. This is how they evolved. This is why cats are so successful today.At least three things spring to mind immediately – diet, freedom and health care.Let’s deal with the last one first, as most people would be asking ‘where is health care in the wild’?Animals seek out medicinal plants and herbs, to cure a variety of problems. They know which ones are good for any given ailment. They are far more savvy than the average human. Grass is a good example – cats use it to clear a digestive problem.Animals also know that rest and sleep can cure a large number of problems. Field doctors in a war zone discovered this too. They found that the patients they were unable to help immediately, fared far better than those they got to first.There is a magic to life that most humans know little about. Self healing is very strong in every living being.The second item, freedom, may not be optional for many cats for safety reasons. However, cats are free spirited and do suffer without some freedom. It is well known that cats confined indoors all the time are less healthy and life shorter lives, than those who have free access outside.How you go about addressing this depends on where you live. Securing a safe back yard may be an option for you. Some breeds take well to walking on a lead. Just making a closed run where they can feel the grass and the sun, may make all the difference to their lives.Probably diet is the most important aspect of everyone’s health care. Yet diet is dismissed by many as being irrelevant to health. That’s a bit like saying that the type of fuel you put in your car is immaterial to how it performs.The fact is that the typical commercial cat foods fed to most cats is the cause of most of their health issues. It also means that by changing the diet of your cat to a natural one, it is highly likely that they will improve or even recover from their health problem.Cats health care begins and ends by looking at the whole picture. Start by feeding your cat real, quality, nutritious food and watch the results.
For more information on a natural diet and health care for cats, click on the link below.