Restorative Herbal Medicine for Dogs

I had no time to think about what kind of breed she was when I first brought Mola home. I just thought that she was big in size. Once I introduced her to my family, and threw a welcoming party then I began to learn about the dog. For instance, the smart and mild tempered Labrador is recorded as the best dog to pick up fallen birds on the hunting ground. There were many other insightful facts, but one sentence suddenly stood out. Many purebred Labradors come to have a problem with their hip bone when they get to be over 10 years old, and need to have a surgery done which costs over $1,000 and in some cases they do not completely recover. It is said that since it is the breed that likes to run, a proper amount of exercise and diet should be done to save money later.

Of course, it takes money to raise a dog. No wonder in 2007, it is said that a huge amount totaling about 40 billion to be exact, was used for pets in America! Expecting that I would be one of those, I still felt uncomfortable for bringing the dog I care so much for to the hospital to have surgery done. A few days ago, I heard from my customer that he had his dog taken in (which is the same breed as Mola) to have hip bone surgery. It reminded me of the problem of the Lab breed that I had first read about when I brought Mola home. I thought that I would feed her nutrients or restorative medicine for prevention. Since I had no expertise, I searched through the Internet thinking I just needed to feed her Calcium for the hip bone.

It may not relate to this problem directly, but there is one thing I want to point out. It may not apply only to Koreans, but there are supplements, overdoses of medicine, and “restorative herbal medicine culture” which is generalized in the Korean culture. Nowadays, I see in Korean dramas that whenever they overeat, they take a digestive medicine on the spot, or when you watch historical dramas, there people offer herbal concoctions as a gift even for just a little bit of stress or a headache. Added to this, I think Korea is the most developed country in herbal restorative medicine having a culture based on well-being foods that have all kinds of medicines for every age—medicines that can make a kid smart, tonics for men, medicines for longevity for the elderly, and medicines that makes women younger, etc. This culture was not made overnight, but may have been influenced by an old country like China. Besides, our own excellent resources like Gaesung ginseng and Dongui Bogam (a Korean medical book compiled by the royal physician, Heo Jun) must have been the main reason for it.

As I prove that I am one of those Koreans with a keen interest in wellbeing, I explored about Calcium. As expected, lots of sources were discovered. Scanning them, I looked for articles related to a Labrador’s hip bone. There was one recently announced article that was still fairly new. Those who took calcium supplements for a long time have a 64% higher possibility of breaking their bones than those who didn’t take it. In other words, the calcium that they took to protect their bones actually ended up harming their bones. It may be a debatable issue among experts, but what they reported for the last few weeks was that unless taken with Vitamin D, taking regular calcium supplements is harmful rather than helpful. A similar story from the professional medical news came out several times concerning vitamin supplements. The average life expectancy of those who overtake vitamins regularly is shorter than that of those who do not take vitamins at all.

I vaguely remember that I learned in elementary school about how to take nutrition naturally from foods, like eating anchovy for calcium, eating seaweed for iron, eating egg and tofu for protein, and eating spinach for vitamins. If supplements were necessary, I used to take a pill called ‘Wongiso’ several times. But forty years later, because of the flood of supplements medical magazines telling us to put aside all those pills and claiming that it is best for us to get into the habit of selecting nutritious foods instead. On the other hand, overuse of extract pills, which is a part of the ‘hurry, hurry’ Korean culture can be harmful as well.

The flood of extracts or supplements is not just a problem in the area of medicine, but has spread to the religious world. Programs like reading through the Bible, evangelism explosion, TD. QT, Father School, Mother School, Master Life, etc. that almost every church goes through at least once are excellent spiritual extracts and supplements. I myself went through this process, but kept pursuing something new since I felt like something was still lacking. As I picked them up and ate them unconditionally since they were such good resources and were handy, I think I developed more dependency on those resources. If the Koreans’ typical “hurry, hurry” culture is added to this situation, it really produces weird Christians. In proportion to this, the Korean extra tutoring education culture fits in here too.

If you eat the Word appropriately everyday, digesting it, putting it into practice by loving your neighbor regularly to become a good Christian, you can stay healthy without taking restorative medicine. Without being picky, taking all kinds of foods and living consistently is truly a blessed life. What is the real difference between the problem coming from overuse and unbalanced diets of religious extract and the overuse of medicine or supplements?

Shaking off my stupidity to quickly resolve Mola’s hip bone problem by feeding her lots of calcium supplements, I decide that I will choose a more simple life of exercising regularly with Mola every morning and sharing anchovies with her. If I need to have her go through surgery, I’ll worry about it then, but until then, “I ‘don’t know’ (Mola) tomorrow, but will get by day by day.”