Senergy and Homeopathy

Senergy is an animal medication manufactured by Virbac AH, Inc. It is a topical parasiticide given monthly to dogs and cats according to their weight and is FDA approved. Senergy prevents heartworm, fleas, and ear mites. Selamectin is Senergy’s active ingredient.

I like the idea of preventing rather than curing. But what if the prevention causes more illnesses than cure, if a cure is at all needed?

I have recorded in my pet’s health log for months the temporal relationship between when Senergy is given and the start of my pet’s troubles.  It is not a perfect record because I was addressing and following the reactive symptoms more than the causation. I had missed the causation until one morning, as I was beating myself for not taking enough care of my pet.

Over tea and cricket, I was re-reading this record. The record established Senergy caused upper and lower gut symptoms. Moreover, the gut symptoms began to wane when the terminal half of selamectin (11 days in dogs) was reached. The pharmacology of Selamectin can be read here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/selamectin

The gut involvement is not surprising as Selamectin is excreted through feces and a small amount through urine. Thus, it seems, the liver and kidneys are also involved. Selamectin causes paralysis of the target insect. This effect is permanent. Blood-brain barrier supposedly protects the dog from transferring Selamectin to its brain and causing toxic seizures. If it does, you and your dog are in deep trouble permanently.

I have been given Senergy since puppy times. However, my pup is notorious for getting into unwanted things as he is curious. So often the symptoms were jumbled with falling from a height, licking discarded milk, eating treats from a treat ball left by another dog for God-knows-how-many-days in the park, stealing lettuce leaf, being chased by a bigger dog, rolling in muck, etc. I often focused on these triggering causes rather than THE cause for homeopathic management.

My record is hard to rebuild for best gut management consequent to Senergy, as there is no one single rule for homeopathy. However, after 2.5 years, I have found that the constitutional treatment of one dose a day before Senergy is given, helps to delay gut reaction by 5-6 days. This has to be concomitant with giving:

  • A good quality probiotic given every day for at least 11 days

  • A bland, homemade diet of less than 50% lean protein, less than 10% fiber, no fat, no treats, no rich meat, no offal, and easy digestible carbs like white rice or yellow, boiled, peeled potato as long as the trouble lasts

  • And addressing presenting symptoms (if any) with acute or an intercurrent indicated homeopathic treatment

As an owner, your troubles will last for a good fifteen days of the month, if not more. By then, it will be time to give another dose of Senergy. The cycle will repeat. Sometimes you will have to skip the monthly dose as the puppy is simply too unwell to handle more harsh chemicals.

I will eventually get tired of how bad Senergy is for my dog, now that I have identified the culprit. But is there any better treatment that will not cause other troubles? There are ‘Do-it-yourself’ sprays that, at best, act as a deterrent, but even those have no action on mosquitoes that can cause heartworms.

We live in fear of the future and the unknown. Most modern medicine companies act on our fear, underplay side effects by statistics to get FDA approval, and proceed to sell their products as maintenance medicines, even if they cause unseen harm. This is also true for humans. How do we eventually conquer our fear intelligently and rationally? Or do we gamble and take risks?