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At the Veterinary Wellness Center, we frequently will use nutrition,
nutritional supplementation, and other natural methods in order to
maintain or restore health in our patients. However, there are
situations in which prescription medications are necessary and can
greatly benefit your pet. Therefore, we often will utilize a
combination of natural remedies and pharmaceuticals in order to take
best advantage of both methods. But, you may be wondering: What's
the difference between these nutritional supplements and 'natural'
methods versus the latest wonder drugs or multivitamin? Without getting
too technical, we will highlight some of the differences between
synthetic and natural. If
you watch television at all these days, you can't help noticing that
there is a new pill to 'cure' just about any problem. Unfortunately,
these 'cures' are associated with many potential side affects. This is
true for many of the prescription medications available. Even
synthetically produced vitamins have little-known potential
side-effects. Prescription medications and
most commercially available vitamins are synthetic creations produced
in the laboratory. Though many of these are modeled after
naturally-occurring substances, they are not the same and do not act
the same in the complex biochemical systems within the body. Prescription
medications are often based on identification of beneficial naturally
occurring substances. Then these substances are isolated, purified, and
possibly modified, to enhance their action. The
isolation and purification process amplifies the specific effect of
these individual compounds, but all the synergistic components present
in the parent plant are lost. This
difference highlights the major contrast between synthetics and
whole-food based supplements. When using whole-food extracts, all the
various phytochemicals found in the plants are preserved and
incorporated into the supplement. All these naturally-occurring
substances act in a natural way within the body systems in which they
were designed to function. They do not drive the particular systems or
overwhelm the body but rather feed the cells to enable them to function
optimally. This is obviously a slower process than the immediate
effects of drugs and synthetic vitamins. This is one reason that drugs
are so valuable at times: they act very quickly. When we have time to
allow the body to work naturally, nutritional support is a gentler and
overall more effective approach. However, even when using
pharmaceuticals, nutritional support can help the body respond better
to the drugs and minimizes some of the potential side-effects. Another
important difference between pharmaceuticals and food-based supplements
is the dosing and duration of use. Drugs are used in specific amounts
for a specified brief period of time. They are potent and fast-acting. Food-based
supplementation is a long-term process and can be likened to putting
gas in your car. It's something that you continue to do on a regular
basis so that you can keep driving. |