St. John's Wort

[chicknmania]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3384280/

I found this to be interesting. It's a study on Hypericum.

 

[romea]

I am reposting my experience with St. Johns Wort and Mariks disease from another thread. Maybe it will be helpful to someone else.

We've lost 2 chickens to Mariks disease in the last 3 months (both confirmed by Calif food & drug poultry lab through necropsy). So when the 3rd one began showing the same symptoms (weak legs, walking sideways, wry neck, not eating), I read through this post, then went to Walmart as the health stores were closed for the night. They had St.John's Wort in capsule form, so I bought that, opened one and dumped it into 2 tablespoons of 'pure' water. I used a glass bowl and plastic spoon (no metal). I gave her 15 drops in an eye dropper am and pm. I fully expected her to be dead the next morning, but she was alive but weak. After 2 days of treatment, she was dramatically better (sitting on the roost, strong wings, walking quite well), so I stopped the treatment. She again began walking crooked so I started treatment again. She started walking well again, scratching for bugs in the yard and eating grass. She's not back to eating grains yet, but eats some yogurt, oatmeal and ACV in the water. I've treated her for 5 days now, so will stop the treatment and see how she does. After losing the other two, this truly seems like a miracle. One was sick a month, getting so weak we had her put down, and the other was gone 2 days after we noticed symptoms. They both had internal tumors. So we are amazed at the difference with this treatment and hopeful that she will recover from this horrible disease!

Update: It's been nearly 3 weeks since we stopped the SJW treatment and Roxie is doing beautifully. She eats dry grains and seeds, and fermented every few days, she's busy scratching in the yard all day, growing feathers after a serious molt (at the same time she was ill) and at this point, you'd never know she was so sick. I firmly believe SJW is the only reason she is still with us and doing so well. Since everyone seems to think only the pill form of hypericum can be used, I want others to know that the powder form in St. Johns Wort did the job for us.

i want to add a warning re: the homeopathy versions some people may want to try:

i grew up in germany (homeopathy’s country of origin) and have had plenty of exposure to homeopathy - including having sought treatment myself etc. - in short: i used to be somewhat of a believer until i started a cat rescue and ended up with plenty of sick animals in need of treatment.
never ever has any homeopathic treatment made any difference on the animals i worked with. it sure was not for a lack of trying. apart from a lot of money, i spent countless hours researching herbs and strengths etc. - after all, homeopathy wants you to believe that there is cure for everything and if your remedy doesn’t work, it simply means you just haven’t found the right one yet.

it eventually dawned on me that my cats were basically my own double-blind-study and not influenced by the administration of any remedy (placebo effect) but only by the ingredients in it. if they did not respond to the meds, it was a pretty obvious sign that they simply did not work.

admittedly i have always had my suspicions and i eventually let my logic prevail. how can a dilution - equivalent to a drop in a lake (or, in ‘higher’ potencies the equivalent of an “aspirin in the atlantic ocean”) - become more potent without doing the same to the carrier liquids? in other words, any impurities in the carrier liquids would have to become equally potent.
the german wikipedia-article on homeopathy mentions the various criticisms of this folk remedy in great length. unfortunately this part has not (yet?) been translated/implemented into the english wikipedia version.

to cut a long story short: in germany and great britain, homeopathy has pretty much been debunked through over 100 studies including recent (meta) studies. of course it has and probably always will have strongholds everywhere - as so many things that people want to desperately believe in.

as for the original post: i am under the impression that - strictly speaking - ‘moodychicken’ did not use a homeopathic medicine because there is no potency declared. (usually it should state on the bottle the potency/dilution - such as D12, C4 etc…)
i am under the impression that the SJW (= hypericum) used was pretty similar to that found in tables or capsules and the fact that SJW works on marek's disease can solely be attributed to the herb itself.

 

[chicknmania]

I don't think it's quackery, but everyone's entitled to their opinion I know more than one veterinarian that practices homeopathic medicine whenever possible. The story from chickmom22 is pretty much identical to our own previous experience. And since we now have an eight week old chick exhibiting neuro symptoms that are progressing, here we go again. I'm off to get Hypericum today. Guess we'll see.

 

[CrazyTalk]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3384280/

I found this to be interesting. It's a study on Hypericum.

Please don't conflate this with homeopathy. This study is using a solution with actual active ingredients. The solution they used was .03%.

Homeopathic Hypericum (30C) is

.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

(it's actually zero, because you're going to lose every molecule of the active ingredient during the dilutions)

 

[chicknmania]

I didn't say our vet was practicing it on our animals. Getting back to the topic, though....

 

[chooks4life]

This thread is about testing different treatments and reporting individual experiences, it's not about debating what makes those treatments work or whether those treatments are considered quackery or not.

I dare say everyone here is exhaustively well versed in the perpetual to and fro over homeopathy. No need to rehash it all here, that's not the purpose of the thread.

According to forum rules it's trolling to join a thread to attack the topic. If you don't agree with it, best to ignore it, or start another thread discussing it, not hijack this thread yet again with attempts to dismiss something you personally disagree with. Such a pursuit has no use here.

Such topics are certainly valid to discuss, but there's a time and place for everything.

Best wishes.

 

[Nambroth]

I haven't actually seen anyone attack the topic recently. What I have seen is intelligent debate over effective dosages, which would be to the benefit of anyone interested in using Hypericum/SJW as a treatment. The merit to SJW is how it is used, and that it may indeed be of benefit in some cases.

Quote:
This actually seems like the perfect place to discuss what makes them work, so that we can better understand how to use them and how to get the most benefit for our birds. I think that most people that are genuinely interested in this want to know as much as possible! I know I do.

 

[casportpony]

What I'd like to know is why hypericium 30c allegedly works better than the liquid or pill form of St John's Wort.

-Kathy

Edited to add this picture:

 

[casportpony]

Regarding my previous post, I am really curious.

No hidden meaning or tone, just curious.

-Kathy

 

[chicknmania]

Well, here's something else to consider, just a heads up. We have her in a hospital cage with a heat light during the day, she's in a small carrier at night. We left this afternoon to go to a movie and didn't get back til after dark. Because the weather is so mild, the chickens were outside, so we left the barn lights on, and the door open. When we came home there was a screech owl in the barn! We think Peanut must have been giving off a distress signal, that potentially attracted the owl. He was sitting over her cage. He's still in there. We moved her into her small carrier and are not worried about him particularly, since he's too small to bother the adult chickens...but interesting that she would be giving off distress signals that we as humans don't detect. Will monitor and hopefully he will leave shortly.