arthritis and animals

Hi guys,

Ok, TMS, arthritis doesn't hurt, etc.

Animals get arthritis. They get checked and the vet says "look, cartilage degeneration here."

Then, they put the animals on some supplement and the animal feels better. Supposedly animals do not get a placebo response.

Can someone explain this to me? If arthritis isn't a problem, why do animals have trouble doing stuff and then the vet says it's arthritis? Is it coincidental? Are the animals repressing emotions? Are they reacting to humans somehow? Thanks.

 

This is one of those distracting brain tactics a tms mind thinks about to avoid the true causes of TMS in humans.
You can’t ask a pet to do TMS therapy so what does this matter? TMS or true structural or biological disease or illness is always worse when stress and anxiety are present.

 

I get where this question is coming from, @learningmore. I've pondered variations over many years, as a lifetime believer in the power of self-healing long before Dr Sarno filled in the missing pieces with his theories about the primitive TMS brain mechanism.

This is tricky to articulate, because it's so essential to also understand that the whole concept of the mindbody connection is extremely complex, and far from linear.

The basis for this complexity is seen in Cactusflower's statement:

This is a key factor that is too often overlooked in TMS theory, one which I also consider to be vital.

Even the wider medical community knows that we can absolutely develop so-called "real" physiological/pathological conditions when we allow stress to run rampant for too long. Check out Gabor Mate MD for an even more radical interpretation about how and why this can happen. He was just interviewed on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, in fact, which I need to post, because he covers the autoimmune conditions (and by now many folks know where I stand thanks to my own experience with late-onset RA).

And look, I'm sorry, but you can't ignore the physiological fact of aging. Our bodies weren't really designed to live for the many decades we now expect, which means that we need to take care of them early on, accept modern medical intervention when it's appropriate and effective (rejecting it when it's not, like most back surgeries) and develop the skills, as we age, to accept some pain and some limitations without fear - because the TMS mechanism is always ready and waiting with fear and with unnecessary pain.

So let's look at this assertion about animals. I am willing to argue, first of all, that we can't apply a blanket statement like "...they put the animals on some supplement and the animal feels better. Supposedly animals do not get a placebo response." to every case.

Animals are just as prone to the negative health effects of stress and trauma as humans, and their ability to be effectively treated for those conditions is, I am quite sure, just as variable. Again, we have to look at aging separately, with the knowledge that all animal bodies, no matter the species, and assuming survival past middle adulthood, do start wearing out, slowing down, growing things that shouldn't be there, etc. Do older animals, who are showing signs of stiffness and slowing down, seem to have increased mobility with a medication? If it's a pain reliever like an NSAID, or an anxiety reliever like gabapentin, there's no reason to believe that these wouldn't have some effect just as they do in humans, especially for age-related deterioration, and especially where the human guardians are possibly laser-focused on any sign that their beloved animal is "feeling better". Which of course is an anthropomorphic construct we can't actually assign to them.

Barring the existence of an underlying anxiety disorder, or the stress of the TMS mechanism, I'd like to think that an animal's metabolism will make better use of pain-relieving strategies than a human who has full-blown TMS on top of aging symptoms. This is because the human TMS brain is just as capable of rejecting a useful medication as it is of making good use of the placebo effect (research "harnessing the placebo effect" for some fascinating studies).

One more point about arthritis in animals - let's not forget that we are using modern medicine and care to extend our animals' lives well beyond their natural mortality, just as we do for ourselves. One has to ask if that's what THEY actually want, because we're really doing it for ourselves, not them.