Shelton - The animal desk reference : essential oils for animals

It was the year 2001. I had graduated from veterinary school in 1999, was newly engaged to my high school sweetheart Winston, and was ready to begin a new life and career. As my wedding date approached, there was a problem. My husband-to-be had warts all over his hands, and being a typical bride, I wanted beautiful pictures of our hands showing our new wedding rings. Horrible, ugly warts did not fit into this plan. We had done everything that traditional medicine offered. We had cut off the warts, frozen off the warts, painted on medicines, and even applied duct tape to the warts.

Nothing had worked and we were running out of time. Our minister recommended that we try using the essential oil of clove to get rid of the warts. Thankfully, she recommended using Young Living Essential Oils, and with this truly therapeutic grade oil we saw results. Within 3 months, Winstons hands were completely clear of warts and our wedding pictures were gorgeous.

One would think that this experience would have propelled me into using essential oils on a regular basis, but it did not. The clove oil was placed into a cabinet, and sat there for another 7 years. We were young and healthy and had no children at that point. The motivation for natural and powerful remedies was not a priority in my life or in my career. As a new graduate of veterinary school, it felt as if I knew it all. I had all of this great new knowledge and could fix any case that came my way. Of course, life teaches otherwise. As time went on, veterinary cases for which I had no answers began to frustrate me. Even though I was continually seeking and learning new information, and I had begun to incorporate many holistic healing modalities into my practice, there were still those frustrating cases for which there appeared to be no answers.

It would be my own family that would drive me back into the realm of essential oils. In 2002, we were blessed with our daughter Ramie. My husband Winston is challenged with a Tourettes-like syndrome, as well as his father, his brother, and my own brother. When Ramie was 2 years old, we recognized that she too, was developing some tics. Then in 2005, our son Reiker was born.

When my son was a newborn baby, we noticed what we were told were normal skin issues. Classic cradle cap, baby eczema, and baby acne were conditions described by everyone who saw our son. However, when he was a few months old, he developed the coordination to scratch at his own head. Unfortunately, this showed us that his skin was in fact itching, and he would scratch until the skin was damaged and bloody. No longer were we dealing with skin that just looked bad. We would be up all night with our little baby, having him wear mittens, hats you name it trying to keep him from destroying his delicate skin. It was terribly stressful; resulting in many sleepless nights and tears.

As a veterinarian I knew that this was NOT normal. I was never really comfortable with him having the other normal skin conditions either, as it didnt really make sense to me for a fresh, perfect new baby to have skin problems. With our new found horror of his itching, I had to find answers. We went to pediatricians, allergy specialists, naturopaths, homeopaths, chiropractors, kinesiologists, Shamans, and Reiki Masters. I wanted to find someone with an answer but alas, no one did.

I started to look at the situation as I would for a dog. I had started to notice a direct correlation with breast feeding and the itching. However, I was assured that he had tested negative for all food allergies by the traditional allergist, and even the kinesiologist (using what would commonly be called muscle-testing) could not find a direct correlation with diet and the reaction.

So, I did what I would do for any pet in my hospital A DIET TRIAL. Since he was breast feeding, it was really a diet trial for me. My diet consisted of eating only plain chicken and water for 2 weeks. And, low and behold, my son was normal. I had my answer. He was definitely reacting to something I was eating, and it was passing through my breast milk and causing an allergic reaction in him.

Next, I introduced foods one at a time to see where the reaction would rear its ugly head. I kept a very exact diet log documenting everything I ate or drank, what time I ate or drank it, when our son was breast fed, and if he had a reaction to the feeding. After a while, it became incredibly confusing to figure out which items were causing the problem. He would react when I had eaten yogurt, but not to milk. He would react if I had ketchup on a hamburger patty, but not to chili with hamburger and tomatoes. He even seemed to react to me having a soft drink! Every time I thought I found an answer dairy, tomatoes, beef, citrus something else would prove that to be wrong. I didnt give up though. I had 2 weeks of diet logs and poured over them to find the answer.

Thankfully, a friend of mine came over and was telling me of her disgust of corn syrup. It was in so many foods, was certainly causing health problems, and it was almost impossible to buy anything that didnt contain it. LIGHT BULB!!! I grabbed my diet log and guess what. Corn syrup was in every item that my son reacted to. Yogurt sweetened with corn syrup, white bread sweetened with corn syrup, ketchup sweetened with corn syrup! However, I was assured by multiple medical doctors that there was no way that a baby could react to corn syrup, and especially not through the mothers breast milk. Tell that to my 4 month old son, scratching his face and head until it bled!

Corn syrup and its derivatives are found in almost every commercial food item today. Bread, soda, popsicles and freezies, ice cream, yogurt, fruit snacks, canned fruits, ketchup, hot chocolate mix, crackers, graham crackers, cereals, chocolate milk, tomato soup, hot dogs, lunch meat; the list goes on and on.

We drastically changed our whole familys diet for our son. We faithfully read ingredient labels and purchased only wholesome foods that did not contain corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup solids or anything else related to corn syrup. We saw amazing changes, and my son was normal again. We hadnt realized that he was also having quite a bit of digestive problems, which also disappeared with the new changes.