How To Get Rid Of Giardia In Cats Naturally

Be Your Dogs Advocate

I cant even count how many articles I read in which dog owners were repeatedly told their dog did not have giardia, even with textbook symptoms.

The vets were looking at fecal samples instead of sending the sample to the lab for an antigen test.

Over and over again I read about owners having to insist on treating for giardia, even in the absence of evidence in the feces.

The takeaway for me was this: If your dog has two or more of these symptoms, insist on a giardia test that uses the ELISA antigen test:

• Difficulty gaining weight
• Intermittent diarrhea or loose stools
• Gas
• Refusal to eat due to stomach upset

As you can see, learning how to treat giardia in dogs naturally involves not only being educated about the treatment options, but about the testing options as well.

What Are The Symptoms Of Giardia Infection

Parasites are organisms that feed on the nutrients of their host, and they benefit most when their host is unaware of their presence, so they can be experts at staying hidden. Thus, like with most parasites, not everyone who becomes infected with Giardia will show noticeable symptoms. Regardless, parasites steal our nutrients and release toxic waste inside us, and over time, these are bound to cause ill health effects. Some of the symptoms that Giardia can cause are:

The Best Tool Is Prevention

Go to your vet periodically to get your cat dewormed. They’ll tell you the regularity with which you should go, which varies mainly according to the cat’s age and how often it goes outside.

It is hugely important for the cat’s environment to be in optimal hygienic conditions. Finally, we should mention that an adequate diet and a healthy lifestyle will help keep its immune system in perfect condition, therefore preventing infestation by internal parasites.

This article is purely informative. AnimalWised does not have the authority to prescribe any veterinary treatment or create a diagnosis. We invite you to take your pet to the veterinarian if they are suffering from any condition or pain.

If you want to read similar articles to Home Remedies for Intestinal Parasites in Cats, we recommend you visit our Parasitic diseases category.

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Can I Get Giardia Infection From My Pet

The chances of people getting Giardia infection from dogs or cats are low. The type of Giardia that infects humans is not usually the same type that infects dogs and cats.

If you own other household or exotic pets, contact your veterinarian for more information. Some strains of Giardia can be shared between humans and animals, including chinchillas, beavers, birds, opossums, and monkeys.

How Common Is Giardia In Dogs

According to the survey, particularly in North America, about 7% of dogs carry giardia but don’t show any signs and symptoms.

Most likely, young animals like dogs that live in shelters are prone to be infected with giardia. Especially if you have more pets in your house, it would not be worrisome if you have only a few.

However, after the treatment ends, you need to take your dog on a thorough bath to ensure that the cysts cannot infect.

To ensure your and your pet’s safety, clean those surfaces thoroughly, most likely contaminated with giardia.

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Home Remedies For A Cat’s Intestinal Parasites

Below you can see which home remedies you can use to effectively combat your cat’s intestinal parasites:

• Fasting with apple vinegar: A day of fasting will be highly beneficial for your pet. This is because the body has a greater and better predisposition to detoxifying when it is not exerting energy on digestion. Add two spoonfuls of apple vinegar into your cat’s water. This is a potent antiseptic which will eliminate the presence of parasites when it passes through the digestive tract.

• Garlic: Garlic is a highly medicinal food since it has potent antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial properties, and is also useful for eliminating intestinal parasites. Contrary to what you might believe, garlic isn’t one of the forbidden foods for cats. You should mix a tablespoon of garlic with its meal, twice a day for 15 days.

• Ground pumpkin seeds: These act as an efficient and smooth laxative. They will help rid your cat’s body of parasites. You should add a tablespoon of ground pumpkin seeds in its food for one week.

• Thyme: Thyme is a plant with a powerful antiseptic activity which will help to eliminate the parasites in your pet’s gastrointestinal tract. Besides, it is completely safe for cats. Crush it into a powder and add a tablespoon of ground thyme to its food once a day for several days.

How Do Cats Get Giardia

There is little research about how giardia causes disease in cats, so much of the information that veterinarians have is based on studies of giardia in humans. It is believed that cats become infected with giardia when they swallow the organism in its immature state. Once inside the cat’s intestine, the organism matures into a cyst. Eventually, the cat passes more infected cysts in their stool. If other cats come in contact with the stool, they can get infected. Cats may also ingest giardia in contaminated drinking water, outdoor puddles, or ponds.

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Giardia In Dogs: Overview

1. Consider Giardia first rather than last as a possible cause of your dogs diarrhea.

2. Request that your veterinarian send a sample away for an antigen test, or, if theyre doing a float, ask for a technician whos been specifically trained to find Giardia that way.

3. Dont let your dog drink from the toilet! They can become infected by an infected person this way. Remember, an infected person may not exhibit symptoms.

4. Ask your vet to make Giardia part of your dogs annual parasite test.

Susan Weinstein is a freelance writer with a strong interest in animals and holistic healthcare. Presently, she is working on a book about pets and stress with Paul McCutcheon, DVM. Weinstein and Caleb live in Grafton, Ontario.

How Do You Prevent Giardia Infection

Since Giardia is a microscopic parasite that exists around the world, you cannot really prevent it. You can, however, lower your risk of exposure by taking necessary precautions such as:

• Washing your hands thoroughly, especially if you work in places where germs spread easily.
• Avoid swallowing water when swimming in natural bodies of water like lakes, rivers, streams and ponds.
• Do not drink tap water or brush your teeth with tap water in developing countries unless the water is heavily filtered or treated with iodine.
• Avoid eating uncooked local produce in developing countries.
• Wash your vegetables, especially if coming from a place that may have contaminated soil.
• Practice good hygiene.

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Diagnosis Of Feline Giardia

Numerous diagnostic comparison studies have been undertaken to determine the best test for detecting Giardia infections, with one common resultno single test detects all infections.7 The Companion Animal Parasite Council recommendation for detecting Giardia infections in symptomatic cats in practice is to perform a direct smear and a centrifugal fecal flotation in conjunction with a veterinary-approved sensitive and specific patient-side antigen test.8 This combination of diagnostic tests maximizes the chances of detecting Giardia.

Diagnosis of Giardia via microscopy alone is difficult for a variety of reasons: cysts are small , shed intermittently, are transparent, and are fragile in flotation solutions.7,9 In routine practice, antigen tests for use in humans should not be used for cats or dogs, as they are not optimized for or approved for clinical use in animals.

Molecular testing to detect Giardia DNA in feces is available at reference laboratories and some university laboratories, but it is generally more expensive than performing or sending out a fecal flotation or using a patient-side antigen test. The polymerase chain reaction tests available at commercial laboratories do not generally include genotyping or sequencing to determine the assemblage of Giardia present.

Fringe Natural Giardia Treatments

What I discovered about peptides for bacterial and parasitic infections actually surprised me quite a bit. If you don’t know what peptides are, then you’ll need to listen to my epic podcast with Dr. William Seeds this Saturday on these peptides and many others and also to my podcast with Jean Francois Tremblay on all things peptides.

1. LL37. LL37 is one peptide that can be incredibly effective for gastric inflammation, parasites, SIBO, and a variety of other bacterial infections. I had my physician order me peptides from a high-quality source and injected 200mcg of LL37 2x/day, subcutaneously in the abdominal region.

2. TA1. Thymosin Alpha 1 is the second peptide I used, at 1.5 mg daily also subcutaneously. This one hits the immune system hard and helps to repair the intestinal lining with the above supplements. It can increase the innate immune response and upregulate natural killer cells to bring in more direct defenses to battle the parasite and the inflammation at the same time, upregulating the immune system’s ability to recognize foreign invaders and phagocytize compounds, and release cytokines, chemokines, and proteases to destroy parasites.

So LL37 and TA1 in combination will activate macrophages to destroy Giardia. These are the big guns, folks.

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Ways: Give Her Some Garlic

Garlic is rich in the compound allicin, which has properties that can help get rid of Giardia in cats naturally and efficiently. Allicin contains sulfur that helps eliminate and flush toxins from the body, clearing up diarrhea caused by Giardia infection.

Just give them a small piece of raw garlic once daily or crushed into some food at least 2 times a week until your cat shows positive signs of recovery .

Zoonotic Implications Of Feline Giardia

Concern regarding the zoonotic potential of Giardia is focused on assemblages A and B, which infect both humans and animals. Assemblage A has varying zoonotic potential and has been further grouped into subtypes AI through AIV humans seem to be infected with AI and AII, and animals with AI, AIII, and AIV.1,2 Thus, assemblage AI appears to have the broadest host range.

The Giardia assemblages infecting cats and dogs are generally host adapted and have not been reported to infect people in the U.S.1,2 In pets, these host-adapted assemblages are much more common than any potentially zoonotic assemblages.1,19 However, there are reports of assemblages A and B infecting cats, and it is these cases that pose the greatest zoonotic risk to people. A survey of cats in Virginia found that 22% of cats positive for Giardia were infected with assemblage AI.2 Cats infected with assemblage A have been reported in Canada, Italy, Japan, Brazil, and Germany.20-24 In Australia, cats appear to harbor a greater diversity of assemblages, including canine-adapted assemblages C and D.25

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The Natural Giardia Treatment I Used

The following are the exact herbs and dietary components that have the best research behind them for killing Giardia via a variety of mechanisms.

1. Garlic Chop into small pieces and consume regularly throughout the day to maximize allicin intake. This is better than buying pills, although if you do go with pills, Allimax is the best brand. Allicin has very good anti-giardial activity, specifically against giardia. Garlic may also stimulate mucosal production of nitric oxide synthase , thereby increasing the release of NO by enterocytes, which may also have direct giardiacidal effects.

2. Insoluble fiberInsoluble fiber intake has been demonstrated to markedly increase the relative number of goblet cells along the GI tract and significantly enhance luminal mucin levels in the small bowel. This may partly explain how fiber can prevent and treat Giardia infections. In my case, I chose sweet potatoes, carrots, hazelnuts, flaxseed powder, pumpkin seeds and papaya seeds . Because the gut is very sensitive during giardia, I did not eat the nuts or seeds whole but instead blended them with the flaxseed powder to make a nut butter that I ate with organic canned sweet potato and mashed carrots. Whenever I ate during the day, I’d typically just have a few tablespoons of this, along with the collagen yogurt and bone broth .

A post shared by Ben Greenfield Fitness on Jul 22, 2019 at 4:43pm PDT

How I Managed The Nausea & Diarrhea From Giardia

At times, the stomach upset and nausea from Giardia makes it feel like someone is digging a shiv into your stomach, and the diarrhea is, well, as mentioned earlier, some of the most upsetting, nasty, foul-smelling, foamy, liquid stuff that’s ever going to come out an orifice in your body.

1. Nausea. For the nausea, I kept things pretty simple: I chewed on ginger root and liberally used peppermint essential oil on my upper lip and also rubbed into my abdomen. Sure, there are plenty of other helpful tips for nausea, colds and flus that I talk about in posts like this and this, but I had enough trouble as it was trying to do all the rest of this while still keeping myself twenty feet from the nearest bathroom, so I kept this part of things pretty simple.

2. Diarrhea. For the diarrhea, and to assist with sopping up the toxins generated by Giardia, both bentonite clay and activated charcoal can be effective. What I did was two twelve ounce glasses a day of water mixed with a heaping tablespoon of bentonite clay and also a heaping tablespoon of activated charcoal powder. I timed this separately from my other supplements because these can interfere with absorption of other supplements. I found the most effective times to take them were mid-afternoon and late evening. As you can probably imagine, this doesn’t taste very good, so I added a dropperful of liquid butterscotch toffee stevia to the mix.

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Efficacy Of Natural Giardiasis Remedies In Dogs

If the dog is regularly given the correct supplements, the giardia should all be killed within the space of a few weeks. However, these natural remedies may prove to be less effective than conventional medicines. Alternatives to the natural remedies are prescription anti-parasite drugs such as ‘Metronidazole’ or ‘Fenbendazole’.

Home Remedies For Giardia In Dogs

Some dog owners prefer to try home remedies for giardia, and only resort to conventional treatment if the natural remedies dont work.

I would assume that the efficacy of a home remedy may be influenced by:

One thing to remember is that many studies on natural substances are carried out in a petri dish not on dogs. The funding just isnt there to study them on the dogs themselves.

So, like most natural products, anecdotal evidence needs to be combined with petri-dish evidence and checking with your holistic vet to decide if it is something you want to try.

Although home remedies wont always be effective, keep in mind: giardia isnt always cleared by the first round of conventional mediation either. Its tough to get rid of whether you use conventional meds or home remedies.

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How To Prevent Giardiasis

Scrupulous scooping, cleaning, and disinfecting of litter boxes will help prevent the spread of giardia to other cats. A 30:1 solution of chlorine bleach may be effective for litter boxes, and some catteries advocate steam cleaning of all surfaces where giardia cysts might be present.

If you do have a cat infected with giardiasis, it’s important to avoid reinfection. If possible, wash the cat frequently and keep it isolated until all symptoms have cleared up.

Ways 1: Avoid Chemical Deodorizer In The Litter Box

Since Giardia is an intestinal parasite, it makes sense that this organism thrives in areas with many feces and dirty water.

Therefore, its best to avoid using chemical deodorizers in the area where your cat defecates since they will make her feel uncomfortable when she uses their litter box and promotes deadly infections such as Giardia.

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All About Giardia In Cats

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In the U.S., giardiasis is the most common intestinal parasitic disease among humans, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . But did you know that giardia can also wreak havoc on the intestines of your beloved cat?

Though sometimes confused with intestinal worms, giardia is actually a type of parasite called a protozoan that invades the gastrointestinal tract. Though the parasite can cause severe diarrhea, giardia in cats treatment is typically very effective and carries a great prognosis.

How Pets Get Infected

Figure 1.1 Coccidia life-cycle2)https://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2016/09/21/pet-intestinal-parasites.aspx

Oocyst, immature coccidian, are usually passed in the feces of an infected animal. The oocysts are very resilient and can live for quite some time in the environment3)https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/coccidiosis-in-dogs

Coccidia infections typically spread from one dog or cat to another through contact with infected feces. Coccidiosis is most commonly found in puppies or kittens that have contracted the parasite from an adult dogs feces or eating a mouse that is infected with coccidian.

These oocysts sporulate, and become infectious under certain temperatures and humidity. If a susceptible pet ingests the sporulated oocysts, the oocysts will release sporozoites that invade the intestinal lining cells and set up a cycle of infection in neighboring cells.

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Why Not Just Take Antibiotics For Giardia

So why didn’t I immediately jump into a regimen of common antibiotics used to treat Giardia, such as metronidazole, tinidazole, or nitazoxanide?

Frankly, this is not only a fast-track to create antibiotic resistance bacteria , but these things aren’t as effective as you’d think.

For example, metronidazole has been associated with recurrence rates as high as 90 percent, and the prevalence of clinical metronidazole resistance may be as high as 20 percent.

In addition, common side effects of the most popular antibiotics used to treat Giardia are almost as bad as Giardia itself, and include:

• Nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, and stomach pain
• Diarrhea and constipation
• Swollen, red, or hairy tongue
• Generalized chronic fatigue and drowsiness
• Significant muscle weakness and full-body tiredness

Instead, after speaking to several of my very well-informed physician friends in the realms of naturopathic medicine, allopathic medicine, gastroenterology, and Ayurvedic medicinealong with reviewing an extensive body of literature on Giardia I opted to pull out as many stops as possible to naturally rid my body of Giardia and support my gut health after the post-Giardia damage without the use of antibiotics or medications.

Now I know you’re wondering, so here’s exactly what I did