Has anyone safely used this for asthma?

As our vet tells us steroids are to dangerous for our transient diabetic (?) , we have been looking for alternative treatments, and came across some good reviews for this product (oil):

Has anyone ever used this before?

https://m.store.jacksongalaxy.com/store/jg/item/60036/jackson-galaxy-spirit-essences-easybreather

I've emailed the different oil companies asking for specific ingredients on every product that goes into this, but I'm waiting to hear back. Just wondering if anyone else has used this.

 

Hi Erin,
The product you posted a link to is not a "real" medication for asthma. Asthma can be a very dangerous condition and most of the JG product line are holistic, in this case meaning that the actual ingredients are literally just water and alcohol. The below is copied and pasted from the website you provided above:
"Physical Ingredients: Natural Spring Water, Alcohol (as a preservative)"
The product is supposed to be based on the "spirit" or "energy" of other ingredients being captured in the bottle somehow (see "Energy-based Ingredients"). Regardless of how you feel about the spiritual aspects or holistic products in general, my cat and I both had asthma, and I can tell you that it's an absolutely life-threatening condition that needs to be treated with medication if it's severe enough.
I think you can get a second opinion from another vet if you are worried about the use of steroids, which is a valid concern for any cat, but in the meantime, please make sure you have an albuterol inhaler at home for emergencies. We never put our cat on steroids for his asthma, but always had the inhaler around and used it as needed for acute asthma attacks. There are also masks that are made specifically for cats that you can use to administer the inhaler, but our cat hated the mask.

 

Also, others that have reviewed the product may have had cats that snored or wheezed a little, but didn't have real diagnosed asthma. You should think of this product more like aromatherapy. I cannot urge you enough to look into getting some albuterol if your cat has an actual diagnosis of asthma.

 

Agreed, that's not a real medication. Here's a website that has good information about treating feline asthma: http://www.fritzthebrave.com/meds/inhaled.html

 

We know its hollistic.

No diagnosis, simply a statement to watch. They do the gesture that looks like a hairball, but isn't. Online research lead me to asthma ...doc didn't want to treat. It happens a few times a week. :\

But don't the inhalers have steroids in them?!

 

In my experience so far (Ollie was diagnosed with asthma 6 years ago and I have been a member of the yahoo support group felineasthma@yahoogroups.com) I haven't seen any alternative treatments that work for asthma. In fact anything that has a scent (which "essence" makes me think of) can be dangerous and set off an attack. Of course corticosteroids can aggravate or cause diabetes, but the inhaled variety is not supposed to affect symptoms too much. Ollie had dexamethasone shots early on before we knew better and was also on very small doses of oral pred for itchy skin. After the diabetes diagnosis this past August, we eliminated the oral and actually the itching and hair loss have gotten much better. So, bottom line is I wouldn't try anything like the above but would go with the inhaled meds which are very effective.

 

Here's some information on Feline Asthma. You'll definitely need a diagnosis from a vet to treat. From the article:

Precisely pinpointing asthma as the cause of a cat’s chronic respiratory discomfort is challenging, says Dr. Goldstein, since many other conditions may be responsible for such symptoms as recurrent wheezing, coughing and dyspnea. For this reason, the standard diagnostic approach, he says, is “exclusionary” — it attempts to rule out these other conditions.

Accordingly, the first diagnostic step is a thorough physical exam, during which the veterinarian will initially use a stethoscope to locate the specific source of the wheezing while also attempting to rule out any heart or lung problems that may be causing the respiratory difficulties. Next, says Dr. Goldstein, the cat’s blood may be tested to see, among other things, whether there is a suspiciously high concentration of white cells called eosinophils, which are associated with an allergic response.

The third diagnostic step is likely to involve X-rays. “A cat may seem perfectly normal,” says Dr. Goldstein, “but X-rays can show overinflation of the lungs that results from the animal’s inability to completely exhale. This condition is known as air trapping.”

Finally, the veterinarian may order a fecal exam to rule out the presence of lungworm, a parasite that can live in the feline bronchi and cause asthmatic symptoms. (Early stages of this parasite can be found in an affected animal’s feces.) Based on these procedures, says Dr. Goldstein, the veterinarian may be able to make a presumptive diagnosis of asthma.
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They do, but inhaled steroids do not have the same negative effects on BG that oral steroids do.

 

JG products won't cure medical conditions, but I have used some of his products a few times. His Scaredy Kitty I used on 4 undersocialized fosters that learned to LOVE people. Opal and Ruby, the last two of the group and who we have kept, spent a year and a half in other fosters with more experience on socializing than us to no success, but they decided people attention was awesome with us. The Stress Stopper, Bully Remedy, and Peace Maker (Keeper?) we used when our boys were terrorizing our senior. They learned to co-exist.

If the other options for treating asthma are not options, holistic is worth a try. Steroids are not recommended for a diabetic cat, but if they develop a more life threatening condition, then you treat the bigger issue and adjust your insulin accordingly.

 

Thank you new posters! I really appreciate it!

 

My issue with it is not that it's holistic. It's that it's literally just water and alcohol. Contact the manufacturer if you want to verify that. I don't think using JG stuff for behavioral issues is a bad idea at all. It's just that asthma is very serious and often needs aggressive treatment.

 

Asthma has these main characteristics:
- inflammation, which narrows the airways
- bronchoconstriction, which narrows the airways
- thick sticky mucus, which can plug the narrowed airways

Treatment consists of:
- steroids, either oral or inhaled, help reduce the inflammation.
- albuterol helps reduce the bronchoconstriction.
- the use of a nebulizer, a machine which produces a fine, cool mist, with suspended medication (usually the bronchodilator), helps loosen the mucus so that it may be coughed up.

If you don't open up the airways and unplug them, death may happen due to lack of oxygen.

See also Fritz The Brave

 

Unfortunately the holistic route does nothing for asthma. Anything scented in fact such as an oil can aggrivate symptoms. If a cat is coughing (hacking with no hairball) the cat needs treatment.

Asthma gets worse over time if not treated. Lung scarring can occur which is unfortunately permanent once it happens. This is why it is so important to nip asthma in the bud once it rears it's ugly head.

Most vets allow it to get to a point where it becomes severe before treating. This leads to much unnecessary suffering for the cat and sometimes even death. A cat can go from being a mild case to severe very quickly. There is nothing worse than being woken or coming home to a cat that can't breath. It happened to me and it was the worst experience of my life.

The inhailed steroid, flovent, mainly stays localized in the lung. The medication's molecules are very large and it is difficult for them to pass through the lung tissue into the blood stream. What does make it through is so small that it does not have any negative effect on the cats health. It is a very safe drug and the most effective form of treatmemt for feline asthma.

Here is a wonderful website owned by the yahoo group Feline Asthma
http://www.felineasthma.org

 

Just out of curiosity, is flovent something you have to administer daily once begun, or maybe once a week?
Is it a lifetime treatment?

 

It is given twice a day 12 hours apart for life.