Natural Pet Health

While pursuing longevity for domestic pets, the medial fraternity did not probably bargain for the accompanying risks of cancer, which is mostly seen in older pets. Moreover, as long as we feed an unnatural diet to our pets and abuse the environment, pet owners are likely to continue facing problems with cancer in their pets. Seeing pets die slowly killer diseases like dog liver cancer and lymphoma in cats is indeed not something that any pet lover would want.

Many of us do not realize that it is natural for animals to resort to ‘self treatment’ in the wild. Most of them nibble at things that are actually not their natural diet. It has been seen that this happens only when the animal is not completely healthy and therefore is actually a means of herbal self medication. This forms the basis on which herbal and natural medicine for pets is based.

Whichever treatment for cancer in dogs you may opt for, the major aim of all cancer treatments boils down to eliminating cancerous cells by all means. The best cure for cancer in dogs is one that kills cancer cells, does not kill normal cells and at the same time ensures that there are no or manageable side effects. This is not possible in all cases as practically all therapies have drawbacks in one sphere or the other.

The most common therapies for cancer treatment include:

* Surgery, a partial or total excision of a tumor, has limited success ratio in cases where cancer has spread to various organs in the body.
* Chemotherapy, the use of drugs to kill cancer cells, has serious toxic side effects.
* Radiation therapy, the use of high intensity radiation, cannot guarantee that only cancer cells will be targeted.

There comes a life after a dog’s body has reached a certain size and maturity that the natural multiplication of cells by division stops producing new cells. Cells are then produced only to replace dead cells. The body produces new cells only in exceptional cases like a cellular injury.

Such replacement is the necessity of the body and the process of replacement or otherwise is natural. Sometimes there are instances when the controlling system that maintains a balance between the death and growth of cells is unsettled by internal or external factors.

This causes the cell production to start producing in an unregulated production mode. This results in a mass of cells (tumor) that perform no specific function and are not required by the body.

The location of oral and pharyngeal cancer presents an immediate danger to the life of the dog. The growth causes an obstruction in the oral passage that is difficult to operate and excise.

Benign oral cancer in dogs presents a good prognosis as it does not spread and invade the bones or other tissues like malignant tumors. Benign tumors are well defined and limited to an area while malignant tumors metastasize to nearby as well as distant organs of the body. Treating malignant oral cancers often poses a challenge to surgeons as they are difficult to access. There is aslo an accompanied risk of disfiguration as well.

Early detection is elemental to the success of treatment. Symptoms of oral cancer normally appear in the mouth as:

Despite a good prognosis for some types of cancer, due to the fatality and toxicity of the medication associated with it, pet owners are often confronted with a dilemma whether to go for a treatment or not. Most of the times, cancer in dogs occurs in old age making dogs more vulnerable to the side effects of conventional treatment. Surgery has a limited scope in as far as it can only excise parts of the tumor.

There is a dire need for exploring new areas of cancer treatment. Despite significant developments in this field, a lot more needs to be done to develop new strategies and drugs that target only cancerous cells and spare the normal cells.

The situation with regard to pet cancer has undergone a dramatic change. With advancement in pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures, it has now become easier to diagnose, treat, manage and improve the quality of the life of you canine friend.

To understand how tumors and cancer in dogs start, it is important to first get an inside view of how your dog grows in size. Similar to the growth process of any mammal, the cells in your dog also multiply by division. This process starts right from the time when a female egg is fertilized by the male sperm. Over and above the replacement of the cells that die over time, there are new cells that are formed.

The question what causes cancer has been one of the most frustrating questions for scientists involved in cancer research. Despite huge amounts of funding and resource being spent on the subject, there is still an element of doubt behind what causes cancer. At the most we know what the risk factors are because most of the causes carry an element of doubt along with them.

An important risk factor behind the development of lung cancer in humans is cigarette smoking. But cigarette smoking does not cause cancer on its own because there is strong evidence of many heavy smokers who do not develop cancer. Genetic predisposition and a change in genetic messages caused by carcinogens combine to cause cancer. For example, age may be one factor that has been identified.

The success of any cancer treatment is directly related to the stage at which it is detected. There are strong possibilities of cancer in dogs spreading to vital organs making surgical removal an impossible task.

All cancers do not occur as tumors that can be seen on the surface of the body. And therefore these tumors are not too easy to notice and monitor. In many cases malignant cancer symptoms manifest themselves as symptoms that are related directly to the organ it affects.

Symptoms like gastrointestinal bleeding or diarrhea are associated with a tumor in the stomach, small and large intestines or colon. Similarly, cancer in hormone producing organs surfaces in the shape of endocrinal disorders and brain or spinal cord tumors are associated with neurological symptoms.