HOListic Tip of the Week

Posted on by TayBham

How Slippery is your Elm?

If you are considering a HOListic approach to your dog’s health & nutrition, powdered Slippery Elm bark needs to be in your bag of tricks.

It is the inner bark of the Slippery Elm tree, and acts in all of the following ways:

**VOCABULARY WARNING**

  • Demulcent — used internally to soothe and protect irritated and inflamed surfaces & tissues
  • Emollient — used externally to soften, soothe, and protect skin surfaces
  • Nutritive — provides nourishment
  • Diuretic — promotes the production and secretion of urine
  • Mucilaginous — has soothing effect on inflamed mucous membranes

You can mix the powder with warm water, juice, milk, or an herbal tea, and as a water-soluble fiber, it will nourish the body while relieving stomach issues. It is ideal for any pet recovering from an illness. You can also use it externally to soothe, say, a skin rash, for example.

It forms a jelly after you mix it with liquid, and is kind of slippery. (Get it? Slippery?)

I mixed it with warm water and added a couple of tablespoons to food to cure diarrhea. I mixed a thicker consistency to get more of a jelly to apply externally to relieve a little hind leg skin irritation on Pearl recently.

Give it a try!

pugs & kisses,

Doo-Doo-Run-Run: What do you do when the doo-doo runs? (Part 3)

Posted on by TayBham

(Continued from Part 2)

I emailed Dr. Natalie to make an appointment for all natural deworming. I’ll let you know how that goes.

And after watching Dr. Karen Becker’s video (which can be found at healthypets.mercola.com, keyword “diarrhea”), I sprang into action.

Dr. Becker suggested a bland diet of cooked, drained ground turkey meat mixed either with pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling. Plain pumpkin) or sweet potato, and a dose of Slippery Elm until the poops return to normal.

Cool. I’ve got this.

Turkey is already very lean, but cooking renders the excess fat. The fat can cause additional upset to an already upset tummy.

Mixing it with the fiber of the pumpkin or sweet potato will, oddly enough, help right the irritable bowel.

Also, putting something warm in the belly is comforting until the irritation subsides.

Y’all know what Slippery Elm is, right?

I didn’t. Not really.

It was listed in my book. I know it’s an herb. But where to get it? How to use it?

TO THE GOLDEN TEMPLE!

Birmingham’s Southside (Autocorrect wants that to be two words. Shut up, Autocorrect. You don’t know Alabama) is blessed to have The Golden Temple — all natural grocery/cafe/yoga studio. Everything you need to live your holistic/spiritual/alternative existence. It is so groovy. I love it.

They had a big jug of Slippery Elm powder. I had no idea how much to buy, so I just got an ounce and a half hoping that would do. I didn’t know whether to mix it dry into their food, or mix it with water first. But an older woman checking out ahead of me had a large quantity of it, and explained to me all the delightful uses of Slippery Elm. She mixes it with warm water and drinks it for sore throat, diarrhea, and bladder infections, among other things. There was my “real world” verification. Thanks, lady!

(She told me with great confidence that I should drink it myself. Just ‘cuz…Thanks. I’ll pass for now).

TO THE HOUSE!

I cooked ground turkey, and mixed it with a baked sweet potato. Equal parts. 50-50. One and a half ounces of each for a total of 3oz of food in the bowl. (You really need a kitchen scale). For these 25lb pups, it’s enough. Trust me.

I heated some water on the stove and mixed about a teaspoon of the powder in about 3oz. I then added 2 teaspoons of the mixture to their food. (When the water cools, the elm powder becomes slimy. Note: Slippery Elm is a better name than Slimy Elm). We repeated the same thing the next day for both meals.

Both dogs showed immediate improvement. The pooping stopped for the next 48 hours.

Then, NORMAL POOPS!

It worked. Really well.

Then I researched what to do about those pesky worms…

Ground pumpkin seeds…hmmm….

…to be continued…