The Secret Pet Pain Killer Side Effect Every Pet Owner Needs to Know About

🛑 Is Your Pet's Pain Relief Doing More Harm Than Good?

🧑‍⚕️In this compelling episode of the Call the Vet podcast, veterinarian Dr. Alex Avery uncovers the painkiller side effect that no one is talking about— and it’s not what you’d expect! 🤯 From busting myths about medication risks to highlighting the dangers of inaction, this episode is a must-listen for every pet parent.

Join us as we explore:

• The real risks vs. perceived dangers of pet painkillers 🐾
• The hidden consequences of untreated arthritis and chronic pain 😿
• Why anecdotal internet stories might be misleading you 🌐
• A veterinarian’s candid insights after 18 years in practice 🩺

Hit play to ensure you’re making the best, informed decisions for your furry family members. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow the Call the Vet podcast for more expert advice on optimizing your pet’s health and happiness! 🐶❤️🐱

Tune in now—your pet’s well-being might just depend on it! 🎧✨

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Transcript

0:00

Any medication has a risk of side effects. Some are common. Some are thankfully extremely rare. Truly a 1 in a million risk, but it's these rare ones that can also be very serious and even life threatening. And it's these side effects which quite understandably can lead many pet parents to avoid giving medication to their pet. Medication that actually has the potential to have a drastic impact on their quality of life to significantly improve their lives and even save their life. Welcome to the Call the Vet Show, the podcast that helps pet parents understand and optimize the health of their furry family so they can live the full and happy life you want for them. And here's your host, veterinarian, doctor Alex Avery. Hello, Kia ora. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. It's been a while since I've released 1, and in all honesty, it's because I've been pretty busy just with with general life with with work in the vet clinic with family life and various other bits and pieces. So, apologies for that but here we go with another episode and this one is all about the pain killer side effect that nobody is talking about. And what prompted this episode was a couple of conversations that I had with clients of mine in in fairly quick succession about their concerns of giving their arthritic pet painkillers, about the fact that they were younger animals in in their minds and that meant that they didn't need painkillers or they were reluctant to give them because of the perceived risk of side effects in the short term and also the longer term. And in both of these cases, their concerns were prompted after an Internet search, after looking into more detail at the drugs that we had previously spoken about giving these pets. So with that in mind, let's jump in today's episode, but before, I bring you that audio and it is audio from a video, just want to warn you there's a couple of patches where there is a few seconds where the the quality is not that fantastic. For some reason my microphone got a bit patchy, there was a bit of interference, I'm not quite sure what was going on. I've I've actually filmed 3 videos in a row. Each video had small sections, which is incredibly frustrating and ideally I'd go back and rerecord it, but I just didn't have the time and and to be honest, it shouldn't interrupt in any way the information that you get from this. With that in mind, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button whatever app you're listening to this on so that you don't miss out on any future episodes, And I'd love to hear your thoughts if you hit me up on social media. YouTube is normally the best place to find me. But with that all out the way, let's jump into the episode today. And now on with the show. Any medication actually does something that's a big by Verapine also has the potential to have ever been removed or some kind of side effect. To say otherwise would be absolutely untrue. But there is one serious side effect when it comes to the decision about whether to give your pet any kind of pain killer or not that no one is talking about. I'm vet doctor Alex. I've been a vet for over 18 years. But before I get on to that side effect, I just want to touch on the perception of just how common these side effects, these other side effects can be. And I say perception because it's really it's really easy to jump on the Internet to research, and that's absolutely natural. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that. But you jump on the Internet and you come to the belief that these side effects are actually very, very common. You know, search any drug on various forums, on Facebook, on anywhere, just blog posts, and they are full of very sad tales of people's experiences with the drug in question. And while some will undoubtedly be completely accurate, many won't for a number of different reasons that it's really important to consider. There's too many to go into, but some, you know, of the the more common ones will be that very often, especially with our older animals, so our arthritic animals, although a lot of unrecognized animals that are younger will have arthritis. But, you know, we're talking about old animals by and large. And we're often dealing with a situation where there are multiple conditions to manage to consider. It may also be that some of these conditions are not yet known because either the symptoms, they're not very clear, or they've not been noticed, or they've been attributed to another condition. So it may be that we're thinking dogs doing x y z because of their arthritis, where actually it's because there is another condition going on. It may well be that testing has been recommended but been declined for any number of reasons. Costs are a common one because testing doesn't come free. So whatever the reason being that an unknown or even a known second condition, a side effect could well be actually due to progression of that condition rather than any medication involvement. Another common reason and a big reason why the scientific method is so important is that side effect was going to happen anyway, and it just so happened to coincide with starting that medication. Although here, often, when we're reading stories, it might well be that, oh, my dog was on this medication for 4 months, for 6 months, and then this side effect happened, and I'm attributing it to that medication. There's no reason to suspect that necessarily that medication was involved, but we do look for links. It helps us to, I guess, understand and to cope with things. But going back to that medic that side effect was going to happen anyway. And an example of this is labradors. You know? They eat lots of rubbish. They get lots of diarrhea. They also get lots of arthritis because they have bad hips. They have bad knees and maybe have cruciate injury. And this means that statistically, there's always going to be a proportion of labradors who are going to get diarrhea at about the same time as starting a nonsteroidal anti inflammatory pain killer that has got absolutely nothing to do with the medication. Okay. We do know actually that is a risk of getting vomiting and diarrhea with the medication, but that's by the by. How do we know that? We know that by doing controlled studies by looking at a population of, labradors, in this example, or dogs who aren't being given the medication. They're being given a placebo and looking at how many times, how many of them develop diarrhea versus those that a group of dogs that are given the medication, and then how many of those develop diarrhea or vomiting or whatever it is that we're looking at, and we compare the 2. And if there is a significant difference, then we can say that that is a side effect that that medication could potentially cause in any individual dog. And that just goes for for any condition that you can think of. There's always a percentage of animals, very often a very small percentage of animals who were going to develop that condition anyway. So it's not always a clear cut case of medication x cause side effect y. We naturally look for these links, but it's very easy sometimes to put 22 together and actually come up with 5 through no fault of our own. And these are just a few of the reasons why anecdotes, I mean, stories effectively about side effects may not appear as valid as they first look. And before I'm accused, and it's something that will probably happen in the comments of denying the presence or seriousness of side effects or just wanting to peddle drugs because it makes vets money. You know, that's the common straw man tactic that is put up in forums. I'm not at all. I want to make it very clear that side effects, the risks are real and that they do happen, just not as frequently as you might believe because the Internet has allowed us to really concentrate the collection of people's experience. And by this, I mean that literally anyone anywhere in the world can share their experiences, can post on that Facebook page or wherever it is. And you can see hundreds of posts, loads of blog posts about people sharing their negative experiences. But even if these were all completely accurate, and we've already kind of discussed briefly why that might not be the case, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that all of these reports may well be just a drop in the ocean compared to the the thousands, the 100 of thousands of individuals who were also treated with this drug and had no particular problems at all or whose health was actually revolutionized, whose quality of life really improved, whose symptoms completely disappeared. We're not really seeing the whole picture. So, you know, you're then gonna say, well, where are all these reports of success? Well, if you look, you can absolutely find them. But human nature is also that we're 10 times more likely to complain or leave a negative review if something goes wrong than leave a positive endorsement when everything goes as expected. And most of the places you'll read these negative reports, they're also not particularly welcoming of people who don't agree with the group's general narrative and simply want to go about their life without effectively getting abused online, which is often the case when when people buck the trend of the general, the general vibe in any online forum. And so just what is the side effects then that no one is talking about? Well, I should say side effects because these are remaining in constant pain, having a reduced quality of life, and even being fatal as it more often than not actually leads to early euthanasia. But what then results in these side effects? Well, that's actually doing nothing. Being paralyzed by a misfounded fear and not giving your pet the treatment that they need, spending all your time researching your options and not putting anything into action, watching videos like this and then moving on to the next one and not actually taking action. When it comes to treating arthritis, there is there's so much that we can do to maintain comfort and slow this progressive disease. Analysis paralysis is all too real or we place our trust in treatments that are simply either unproven or not effective enough to provide the level of pain relief needed, and this is a big one. And, ultimately, you know, I see time and again in my consult room patients that have gone off their back legs and need to be euthanized when had they been treated earlier, had they been treated more effectively, they could have both lived a longer life and been so much more comfortable in that time. Helping your pet live the happy, healthy life they deserve. So what do you reckon? Obviously, treating any condition with any medication or any intervention is a risk benefit, analysis. You know, are the do the risks, outweigh the benefits or are the benefits outweighing the risks? And with our pain control, with our analgesia, for any painful condition, there are lots of different aspects. There are a lot of different strategies that we can employ, but it's really important to know that not each option carries the same amount of potential benefit to our pets and sometimes, potentially a lot of the time, the risks are actually overblown if we're jumping into the online world for our information. If you've got any thoughts about this, if you've got any experiences, I'd love to to hear from you, but until the next episode which will be next year now, I'm veterinarian doctor Alex. This is the Call the Vet Show because they're family. That's it for this episode of the Call the Vet Show. Be sure to visit call the vet dot org to join the conversation, access the show notes, and discover our fantastic bonus content. We'll see you next time.