Dr. Margo Roman on healing eye conditions through alternative therapies.
There are many eye conditions that could be helped with alternative therapies.
The first thing to do is make sure that your Westie does not continue to rub and scratch their eyes. A well-directed Elizabethan collar, the cone type, needs to be put on the dog because it’s impossible to stop them rubbing their faces on furniture or stop their paws going into their eyes. The itchiness is hard to stop so protect your pet.
Serious injuries to the eye need to have veterinary care immediately but there are many times where we can provide supportive therapies that can help stop common problems and injuries.
Dry Eye
When it comes to Dry Eye when there is a lack of tearing which has been measured by the Schirmer eye test, we can initiate more lubrication and tear production in the eyes to prevent corneal inflammation. Keratitis sicca is a condition that has a thickening of the corneal surface due to lack of tear production. There is hyaluronic acid which helps to make the cornea slippery. At home one can try concentrated green tea. Take one teabag to a quarter cup of hot water, seep, allow to cool and then use that solution to rinse the eye. One can then use the teabag as a compress. Using Echinacea tea is another choice as well as Eyebright Tea.
Placing sterile saline eye drops into the eye multiple times a day will help keep the surface moist. But if one can use ozonated saline drops the benefits will be even greater.
Ozone therapy owes its biocidal effectiveness because of its ability to oxidize organic material in bacterial membranes, which weakens the cell wall and leads to cell rupture causing the immediate death of the bacteria cell. It also destroys viruses, yeast, bacteriophages, mycoplasmas, fungal and other infections. Therefore, allowing the eye to heal.
When the ozone is flushed into a wound or into the eye, the color of the tissue increases to more of the normal healthy color of that tissue.
Whether it be just conjunctivitis or pollen or an infection, the use of medical ozone as a saline eye flush has treated some of the most serious eye injuries with great success.
Other methods of treating eyes include the use of the homeopathic Euphrasia 30C which is the homeopathic version of eyebright. It makes an excellent eye wash and can also be given on the tongue as a homeopathic remedy. To make a homeopathic remedy, you take four ounces of distilled water and three little pellets of the homeopathic. Place in a clean cup and use a very clean spoon and allow the pellets to dissolve in the distilled water, mix well, and then place one teaspoon on the tongue of the pet. You can also splash this into the eye.
There are pharmaceuticals that address the eye but trying natural ways can also be very effective.
Getting an ozone generator and making an ozonated saline has so many uses but can be a support for eye infections, corneal ulcers, conjunctivitis, growths, and issues with the third eyelid.
For more information on Dr. Roman visit: www.mashvet.com
