Dog Cancer Blog

Okay, got a great one for you today.  It’s cheap, easy and safe, and it smells good too: ginger.

Ever wonder why the rate of cancer used to be so low in Asia (before introduction of the western diet where the top vegetables consumed are french fries and ketchup…)?  Yep, diet is the likely answer.  We’ll touch on this topic more in future posts, but for now, let’s look at ginger.  

Sound too easy, too good to be real? It’s not.  Ginger has some decent anticancer effects, and some major other benefits relevant to dogs tumors. 

First the anticancer effects, which are pretty fair.  Ginger slowed the rate of breast cancer growth in mice, and kills lymphosarcoma cells in a test tube.  Ginger has been shown to decrease tumor necrosis factor alpha, which is a chemical signal in dogs’ bodies that stimulate cancer cell growth. It also decreases inflammation.  Inflammation is a central process in cancer development. This aromatic tuber has immune stimulating ability as well, a plus since dogs with cancer usually are immune suppressed. Chemo, radiation and surgery also weaken immunity. These are all nice effects, good stuff.

But, the real winner with ginger is that it decreases nausea.  Decreased appetite caused by nausea is really common in dogs with cancer.  Feeling sick to the stomach can be caused by the cancer itself, or by chemo, surgery or radiation.  Ginger has been shown to decrease vomiting as much as the most popular injection to fight nausea on vets’ shelves, metoclopramide. There is also published literature showing it fights vomiting caused by cisplatin, a common chemo drug, in dogs.

Not too shabby for an item sitting in the veggie section of the grocery store!

Dose: Remove the skin of the root with a knife.  The inside will be yellow and smell quite pungent.  Using a heavy, sharp chopping knife, finely mince the yellow portion of the root.  Give roughly 1/2 teaspoon for dogs under 35 lbs and 3/4 teaspoon for dogs 36 lbs and over. Give 1/4 teaspoon for miniature breeds. Ideally it is to be given three times a day. Mix in food.  Ginger can also be found in extracts and powders, but I like the raw stuff.

When to avoid ginger:

Don’t use ginger within 10 days of surgery, as it may have mild blood thinning effect. Avoid it if your dog is on aspirin, and discuss with your vet if your dog is on anti inflammatory medication like Rimadyl, Metacam, Deramaxx, Etogesic, and others. Ginger may have blood sugar lowering effects and reduce the insulin requirement, so talk it over with your vet BEFORE starting, or simply avoid ginger if your dog is on insulin. Avoid using ginger in dogs with gallstones (rare) or ulcers.  And finally, don’t use if your dog is on heart or blood pressure meds, as it may lower blood pressure slightly by itself.

Like any supplement, ginger can occasionally cause digestive upset in some dogs.

Hope it helps!!!!

Best to all,

Dr Dressler

Ya want more on melatonin? You just hit the jackpot!

Why should we be interested in this stuff?  First of all, melatonin used with chemo versus chemo alone more than doubled the survival time of human cancer patients. Big effect here folks.  Secondly, melatonin decreased the side effects related to chemotherapy.  These included low platelet counts, irritations of the lining of the mouth (stomatitis), nervous system injury (neurotoxicity), and heart toxicity (cardiotoxicity).  Here is the abstract.

Now, don’t go away mad, because there is more.  Melatonin helps overcome weight loss due to cancer (cancer cachexia)  in advanced cancer patients, with no change in how much food they are eating. As if this were not enough, a study looked at over 600 cancer patients with a variety of solid-tissue tumors received melatonin.  The 1 year survival time of the group that took melatonin was more than a third greater than those that did not.  

Melatonin was the topic of a medical conference which discussed the ability of melatonin to cause some cancer cells to not only die off directly, but go back to being healthy body cells, and decrease cancer spread (metastasis). To boot, melatonin is an immune stimulator.

Anyway, lots of promising stuff here.  One of the points made at the NIH conference mentioned was that this information has been around for years, but for some mysterious reason has not made it into the medical or veterinary knowledge pool.  As I pointed out in the last post, I think the obvious reason is that you can’t patent it, which means no pharmaceutical company marketing for sales…but we’ll go over that in some future post.

Anyway, here’s the skinny on side effects and whatnot…  Don’t give your dog melatonin during the daytime, it messes up the circadian rhythm and causes headaches.  Any supplement given by mouth has potential for digestive upset (vomiting or nausea).  If your dog has any immune mediated disease (like some types of underactive thryoid problems, dry eye, lupus, pemphigus, allergies, and so on), avoid it. Don’t give it to your dog if he or she is on calcium channel blockers (some types of heart and blood pressure meds), or is on fluoxetine (Prozac).  Diabetic dogs may need less insulin on melatonin. If your dog has diabetes, begin melatonin only with your vet’s close supervision and instruction, otherwise skip melatonin. If your dog is an epileptic, I would avoid melatonin as well.

There are statements suggesting melatonin should not be used with leukemia or lymphoma patients circulating around.  I have tried to find some actual evidence for these (a paper, case report, anything real) but to no avail.  Any input from the readers? Same thing with this idea that it can cause retinal injury- appears to be speculation, but I am open to any documented, real evidence.

Doses vary.  For early dog cancer patients, use about 1-2 mg per 40 lbs body weight, once a day, given at night.  For advanced dog cancer patients, use about 5 mg per 40 lbs.  Give with food.

There are ways to help increase your dog’s natural melatonin levels that don’t cost a cent.  Make sure your loved dog sleeps in total darkness, 10 hours daily.  No TV glare, no computer monitor, no nighlight.  If you are doing home cooking, give melatonin-rich food.  The highest is brown rice and oats, but carbs are not good calorie sources for dogs with cancer.  Try some fresh sage, lots of naturally occurring melatonin in sage leaf. Keep your dog away from high voltage, as electric fields cause melatonin levels to drop. Meditate with your dog.  My friend Jim Jacobson wrote a book on it.  Meditation increases melatonin levels.

Best to all,

Dr Dressler

I’ll like to go out on a limb.  Call me crazy.  Open a new window on your monitor.  But I’ve discovered something about dog cancer: 

The closer a dog’s life is to how it was in nature, the lower the probability of getting tumors.

Now, it’s true that if you read the “Meet Dr. Dressler” section on this blog, you will see that my parents were hippies, more or less, and I have been known to eat granola if we have some, and I did own a pair of Berkenstocks when I was a freshman in college.  Okay, fine.  Nonetheless, I cannot deny the truth of this statement.

Here’s an example:  Deep sleep, in total darkness, during the earth’s actual night hours, fights cancer. No, don’t laugh.  This is real.  Let me explain.

 Female nurses who stay up to work during the night shift have a very real increased risk of breast cancer.  It was found that sleep has something to do with it.

When our dogs are resting, a hormone called melatonin is released by a gland in the brain called the pineal. The deeper the sleep, the more melatonin.  It peaks at about 1:30 am, when the sleep in deepest.

Lots of us have heard of melatonin, as a supplement that can help with insomnia or jet lag.  It has been found that melatonin has many effects in the body.  Here’s the rub: melatonin is a major cancer fighter.  This little tidbit is almost totally overlooked in conventional veterinary cancer care.  Gobs of evidence that melatonin helps fight cancer, yet, nobody is talking.  

Maybe because melatonin is not patentable (difficult for big pharma to farm a cash cow when anyone can get it cheap…).

I’d like to spend some time talking about this stuff in the next couple of posts.  First, how to increase your dog’s melatonin levels without spending a dime.  Next, I’ll go into some detail about what it does in the body that has bearing on dog cancer. We are talking solid fire power folks.  Next will be doses and precautions.   Whether your dog has lymphosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, mast cell tumor, bone cancer or whatever, you’ll want to know about it. 

Stay tuned!

Best to all, 

Dr Dressler

Rochelle Lesser, who created and manages a great site for Golden Retrievers (and dogs in general), asked about krill oil on a recent post.  Here’s the skinny on why I like its cancer-fighting benefits (krill are those tiny shrimp that whales eat).  

First,  krill oil helps offset the omega 6 fatty acid excess I wrote about in the post before last, by supplying needed omega 3 fatty acids.  This helps block the inflammation and suppression of cancer-fighting white blood cells caused by excess omega 6’s. Too much omega 6 fatty acids are found in many commercial dog foods in corn products, vegetable oils, meat fats and more.

Other good sources of omega 3’s are fish oils of various kinds, with Chinook salmon, mackerel, menhaden and sardine also being up there. So giving these oils stimulates cancer fighting white blood cells, and decreases inflammation (inflammation is a central part of cancer development). Omega 3’s can also help fight cancer weight loss (cachexia), slow tumor growth, and lessen spread in many cases. So krill and fish oil both are good in these regards.

However, with our understanding of the link between depression in people and cancer, it becomes obvious that this is a massively overlooked problem in dogs.  To my knowledge, this is an area that has not been addressed in any formal way, and will be viewed at as “out there” by many conventional vets.  I firmly believe that this line of thought is on the leading edge of a whole new way of looking at dog cancer.

With this in mind, back to krill oil.  Krill  do not accumulate heavy metals, so this is not a concern in their oil.  Additionally, they are rich in EPA, the omega 3 fatty acid that has been shown to fight depression and inflammation.  Krill has more EPA than fish oil.  Here is more info. Since depression in people increases cancer, addressing this in dogs is very logical. On top of this, Krill has the capacity to actually restore the size of  brain parts that have literally shrunk in depression. This may be due to its phospholipid content, of which krill has more than fish oil. Amazing! 

Yes, krill oil costs more than fish oil.  However, you can get away with less, probably about 1/4 less than fish oil. I would recommend about 4-6 of the 500 mg krill oil capsules daily for a 40 lb dog, costing roughly $3 daily.  Not cheap, but good!

To be safe, stop fish oil or krill oil about 10 days before your dog has any surgery.

Thanks to Rochelle of The Land of Pure Gold for the great question!

Best to all, 

Dr Dressler

The mast cell tumor is very common in the Pug, Boxer, Rhodesian Ridgeback, Shar-Pei and other breeds.  This tumor most commonly occurs in the skin as a raised, inflamed nodule or mass. Sometimes it is found internally in the liver or spleen. 

The cells that make up this tumor are called mast cells.  There are some unusual aspects of these cells that should be paid attention to.  

First, they secrete a substance called histamine, which most have heard of in the word “antihistamine”. Histamine is released in the body during allergic reactions and it causes some nasty things. First, histamine causes inflammation, which is no fun for anyone. Redness, swelling, pain… all parts of inflammation.  If you squeeze a mast cell tumor, many will create a red, swollen effect due to the histamine that gets liberated.

Histamine can cause serious harm to the body when released in larger amounts.  When a dog experiences massive histamine liberation, her blood pressure can drop through the floor, causing life-threatening shock.  No blood pressure, no blood getting to vitals like the brain and kidneys.  Bad news.

Imagine if you were to do surgery on a mast cell tumor loaded with histamine.  This is more than just squeezing it, folks. We are talking scalpel action, along with some pulling to free up the mast cell tumor. Imagine the amount of histamine that could be released.

So, it is wise to make sure your vet is on the ball.   Since doing surgery on some mast cell tumors can result in shock, make sure you double check that your dog gets an injection of Benadryl before surgery.  This can block the effects of massive histamine release. Also allow your vet to place an IV catheter and deliver IV fluids or meds during the procedure to keep the pressure up.

Dog cancers are all different.  Each tumor in dogs behaves differently and needs it’s own special treatment.

Stay tuned!

Best to all,

Dr Dressler