Ginger, horseradish and licorice in horse feeding E-Book

Stefan Brosig

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 194

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Since 2002 ginger is used in horses for the treatment of a wide range of ailments, mainly in cases of injury or age-related arthrosis and inflammation. Since 2010, its efficacy has also been "officially recognized" and put on the doping list. As a healthy spice, it will probably be the only harmless drug that can be used for the entire life! The successful treatment of the famous German dressage mare and former great Olympic hope Renaissance Fleur in 2003 led to a rapid spread of ginger feeding among the horse owners in Germany. ("The greatest progress in horse feeding since the introduction of hay and oats!" Quote from a user) In 2004, horseradish was added to the anti-inflammatory ginger as an effective broadband antibiotic. In 2009, licorice was added as a treatment against headshaking. The book reflects the current state of feeding ginger, horseradish and licorice and provides practical guidance on how to use it. The book also includes the effective treatment of fungal skin diseases with broadband antifungal mosses. Furthermore, the ambulant treatment of keratomas is described, the treatment of sandcracks by gluing over with glass fiber tissue and a gastric-juice-resistant encapsulation of ginger for use in humans. In addition, a gentle treatment of equine sarcoids with liverwort extract and cod liver oil is described. And finally, it is described a very simple method of affixing bandages over wounds by gluing, which (because too cheap!) unfortunately is only very rarely used by veterinarians. As a prophylaxis to orthopedic problems, the quite new hoof-caring method F-Balance, tested and found superior by the University of Leipzig, is also emphasized.

Leseprobe

The author has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, rides since 1978 and owns horses since 1986

This book is dedicated to my warmblood gelding and former riding-school horse Waran (1971 – 2006), for whom ginger, and later on horseradish, was the first to extend his life in a beautiful and liveable way!

On the day of his death a poem came into my mind spontaneously, which I have cited here in German, as I find no fitting English words to translate it. But the translation of the title is “Farewell”.

Abschied

Lange waren wir beisammen,

haben vieles schon erlebt,

war’n uns liebe Kameraden,

bis zuletzt die Stunde schlägt!

Durch das Leben schwach geworden,

gib mich frei und laß mich zieh’n!

Keine Trennung ist auf Dauer,

bald schon gibt’s ein Wiederseh’n!

Und bis dahin, sei nicht traurig,

besser könnt’ es mir nicht geh’n!

Mit den Freunden, die schon gingen,

ewig jung und ewig kräftig,

immer gut gelaunt und prächtig,

über ewiggrüne Weiden,

lüftetrinkend, jag’ ich hin!

(written on July 30th 2006)

Foreword to the English translation of the 4th German edition

At first I want to apologize for the long time I needed to present an English translation of my book which has already proved so valuable to many horse-owners in Germany!

Ginger has been elected medicinal plant of the year 2018 in Germany and this gave an additional motivation to get it finally done! Although as a scientist I have to be able to read English fluently, the active usage is a bit “hampered”.... Thus I also want to apologize in advance for translation mistakes, which you will surely find when reading it. But the described treatments itself should nevertheless be described clearly enough, as I believe. With a little help by a Pittsburgh lady I could at least erase some very big blunders!

In the English version of the 4th German edition I have omitted some treatments, which have now become unnecessary since there are in the meantime enough other effective treatments on the market. These omitted treatments concern the prevention of crib-biting and treatment of thrush.

I also want to point out that the most important thing always is the removal of the causes of maladies!

In this respect I also want to point to a VERY important thing: the correct hoof-care! Cause of so many maladies!

In the 40 years I have to do with horses, I have seen many different kinds of caring for hooves. As long as hooves and horse are of correct shape and the hoof-care is done regularly and in short enough intervals, there is nearly no difference in the results between most methods. But with deformed hooves and leg-shapes some methods are clearly better than other ones! And the best method I have come up to until now ist the relatively new method called F-Balance, which makes especially use of the high vertical flexibility of the heels of the hoof. The method was tested on racehorses against two other well-known methods by the University of Leipzig and was found superior to them.

Because of this I learned the method and now apply it successfully myself! You can read more about this method on the website http://www.f-balance.com/en/ .

I am very confident that the treatments described in this book will also help a lot of horses in English speaking countries!

I wish you every success!

Stefan Brosig

in December 2018

Foreword to the 1st German edition

"Why doing something in a simple way, if you can do it complicated!" This view unfortunately seems to be quite widespread nowadays. Simplicity also is often treated as equivalent to faultiness.

In this book I would like to point out that simple things sometimes are not only good, but sometimes even better than the complicated ones,. You can find here several treatments for horses which are not only equal to the methods of the classical veterinary medicine but in some regards even distinctly better! If one adapts the dosages appropriately, they can even be applied partially to people.

Stefan Brosig

in December 2006

Foreword to the 2nd supplemental and revised German edition

New knowledge and experiences of many users have made reasonable a supplemental and revised edition. Fortunately, the use of ginger, partially also of horseradish, starts to spread, though slowly, among veterinarians. Even at the universities research about herbal remedies like ginger is on the rise, although in this area no gushing font of money is to be expected from pharmaceutical companies.

However, in my opinion the potential of these remedies is still not fully recognized. Many former investigations should thus be repeated on account of the non-linear correlations, described in this book, between dosage, effect and adverse effects. By increasing the dosages up to the limit of good tolerance, I expect from such investigations many new useful treatments for animals and also for people!

„Against every illness a herb has grown!“ says a German proverb. At least one should not disregard it thoughtlessly!

Stefan Brosig

in January 2008

Foreword to the 3rd supplemental and revised German edition

The findings of the last years in the feeding of ginger and horseradish to horses has confirmed what had been found previously, and there have not been found many more new uses for these plants. The knowledge that ginger is of great benefit as a remedy for horses is spreading more and more.

Nevertheless it was time to issue a new edition, because there has been in the mean time significant progress in other areas, e.g. a better tolerated "feeding" of ginger to people by means of a double encapsulation. Moreover, licorice has turned out as a promising remedy to relieve horses of some kinds of headshaking! The first investigations also seem to indicate that it is suitable to fight herpesviruses in horses!

Thus with ginger, horseradish, licorice and mosses, four strong remedies are now available to treat in horses effectively inflammations, bacterial infections, headshaking and fungal skin infections. Besides, some of the methods are well applicable to people! To fight thrush and also as a prevention against it, an externally applied mixture of oregano, easily dissolvable oat flakes and water has turned out as very effective and at the same time mild.

And sand-cracks in hoofs can be repaired simply by covering and gluing the crack by means of fiberglass fabric and a synthetic resin until the crack has completely grown down.

The fact that ginger is very healthy for people has been known for a very long time! Already Shen Nung, the second Yellow Emperor of China, rated ginger exceedingly high for the human health! He divided medicinal plants into three classes: The "servant-herbs" which were toxic and could only be taken in the smallest amounts, the "minister-herbs" which were not poisonous though, but which one nevertheless should take only for a restricted period of time, and the „royal plants“, which were allowed to be taken in larger quantities and for an indefinite period of time, and which protected people against illnesses and maintained their vitality. For the Yellow Emperor ginger was one of the most important plants in this “king's class”!

Although I am no „Yellow Emperor“, this statement is in my opinion true also for ginger in the feeding to horses!

I wish you every success in the treatments of your four-legged friends!

Stefan Brosig

in January 2010

Foreword to the 4th supplemental and revised German edition

In the three years since the last revision, enough new experience has accumulated to justify a new edition. An important task of this book is also to make clear to horse owners the difference between inhibition of inflammation and pain inhibition and also between inflammation and infection, because many people confuse these terms to the detriment of their horses, but also to their own!

In the meantime, ginger has also received the "knighthood" by the experts: He has been included in the doping list! Probably it is the only recognized doping drug with no harmful side effects, because even after up to 10 years of continuous use in my sensitive English thoroughbred I can not recognize such side effects. This is the advantage of a food!

And its use spreads more and more to other species. Thus, e.g. even a zebra and an old elephant lady with osteoarthritis (daily dosage 250 grams of African ginger) are treated gently with ginger.

The deworming effect described in the first edition was confirmed even after many years of use, without resistance being observed. However, with one exception: tapeworms! Ginger (just as many of the common deworming agents) does not work against them. Therefore, I recommend the so-called selective deworming, which has become common in some countries and in which the type of worms is determined in faeces samples and then one only treats specifically against those found in the sample.

The treatment of idiopathic headshakers with licorice is not yet common, certainly also because more complex accompanying examinations are recommended during the administration. A stronger distribution would be desirable in my opinion, especially since for my own thoroughbred, now in the fifth year of treatment, a steady decline in headshaking was observed from year to year, allowing that the dosage could be reduced every year. Obviously, there is a partial long-term cure of the cause of his headshaking!

Once again, I wish all the best in the treatment of your horses!

Stefan Brosig

in January 2013

The „main actors“ in the history of ginger feeding:

Waran (1971 – 2006) (at the age of 35 years)

Assi (1974 - 2004) (at the age of 30 years)

Amarock (*1987) (at the age of 19 years)

Renaissance Fleur (*1992) (at the age of 14 years)

Table of contents

Introduction

Ginger feeding

Basics

Historical note

Use

Ginger and doping

Treatment of people and dogs

Use of ginger against other diseases (in humans and animals)

Does ginger have adverse side effects?

Ginger dosages for different diseases of horses (table)

Turmeric as a ginger-substitute?

Frequently asked questions

Quick guide for feeding ginger to horses

Horseradish in horse-feeding

Quick guide for feeding horseradish to horses

Licorice in horse-feeding

Quick guide for feeding licorice to horses

Treatment of fungal skin diseases of horses

Quick guide to treatment of fungal skin infections

Ambulant treatment of keratomas

Treatment of cracks in hooves (sandcracks)

Glued-on dressings

Gentle method of growth inhibition of equine sarcoids

Introduction

Since 2002, ginger is used in horses for treatment of a wide range of ailments, especially in cases of injury- or age-related arthrosis and inflammation.

Initially, its use spread only slowly among the horse owners, as ginger was regarded by many physicians and also the pharmaceutical industry with great distrust: In their classical and dogmatic medicinal view a spice had no place within horse medicine.

Maybe even worse: it was freely available for everyone and unrivaled cheap.

However, after Renaissance Fleur (Trakehner breed), the famous dressage mare and great German hope for the Olympic Games 2004, was treated successfully with ginger since 2003, the use of ginger spread widely among the horse owners.

Targeted examinations or purely random discoveries have added new fields of use beyond the treatment of arthrosis. It turned out that ginger acts „holistically“, to use this buzzword for it.

In the meantime, ginger's efficacy, albeit grudgingly, has been recognized, and it has therefore been included in the doping list.

In 2004, horseradish has been added to the anti-inflammatory ginger as a broad-band antibiotic, which helps to compensate for this deficiency of ginger.

The use of horseradish (probably also etymologically connected to „horse“), which is superior in some respects even to common pharmaceutical antibiotics, is spreading now too. Also for horseradish there could be the "danger" to be included in the doping list sometime, because he seems to increase the content of young blood pigment (similar to EPO) when fed for several weeks.

In this book, I want to outline the current state of knowledge in the feeding of ginger and horseradish, based on research with my own horses and those of acquaintances, horses of the stud farm Rondeshagen (home of Renaissance Fleur) and on experience reports from many other horse owners (a total of several hundred horses), whom I herewith want to thank a lot for their willingness in giving their reports back to me! Without them, advances in the knowledge would have been significantly slower.

At the end of the book I want to present some other natural products which also deserve to be used on a large scale. With particular emphasis I want to point out the use of mosses against fungal skin diseases and of licorice (the plant) against pollen-induced headshaking and, eventually, also against herpes infections.

Additionally, you will find a possible ambulant treatment method for keratomas in the hoof and a simple method for letting sandcracks in the hoof’s wall heal and grow down. A caring method for wounds by glued-on dressings is also presented. This method I learned from my vet many years ago and it deserves to be saved from oblivion, though vets do not use it any more today, I suppose because they cannot earn something with it. Furthermore, an external treatment of sarcoids alternatingly with liverwort extract and cod liver oil seems to stop or inhibit the growth of equine sarcoids.

A. Ginger

Basics

In horse medicine great progress has been achieved in recent decades, and today it is possible to treat injuries which in earlier times would have been a death sentence.

Nevertheless, the medical art of healing still shows some very weak spots that the pharmaceutical industry has not been able to eliminate up to this day.

One of these weak spots is the fight against inflammations and pains without harmful side effects. Up to now available pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory medicines from the group of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (in short often called NSAIDs or NSARs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or non-steroidal antirheumatics) all act aggressively onto the digestive tract after quite a short time. Thus their use must occur over a limited time only and a continuous use in high enough dosage is excluded in case of chronic inflammations and pains, which is so frequent in old age. (Best known to the horse owners is the active substance phenylbutazon, which, for example, is known as Equipalazone®).

Another weak spot is "The lost art of healing" itself, as the American physician and Nobel Prize Laureate Bernard Lown complains about in his book with the same title. Medicine has become more and more of an emergency medicine.

In aftercare and long-term healing of a disease, people, as well as horse owners, are often left alone to themselves.

But Australian scientists of the Herbal Medicine Research and Education Centre and the University of Queensland helped out with a discovery from Mother Nature to remove these weak spots in many cases:

In 2001 they found that the spice ginger, or an essence from it, reduces the sensation of pain in rats and has an anti-inflammatory effect!

Ginger is the root (more precisely, the rhizome) of the reed-like ginger shrub (Zingiber officinale) which is cultivated from India to China, in other tropical areas and also in Africa, and is traded as a spice fresh or dried. Most people will know ginger as a powder from the spice rack in the super market.

Ginger does not act homeopathically or like a placebo, but according to conventional medicine: Certain compounds in ginger, above all probably the so-called gingerols and shogaols, the essential pungent ingredients of ginger, dock at the same (so-called "vanilloid") receptors in the cells as for example the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs Ibuprofen®, Aspirin® and also Equipalazone®. However, ginger does not show the serious side effects which are connected with the intake of the usual non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs! For ginger no contraindications are known in people. Even pregnant women may take it for a long time against nausea (Obstetrics & Gynecology, Vol. 105, April, 2005).

Surprisingly, in relation to body weight, ginger acts significantly more pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory in horses than in rats.

Experiences have also shown that ginger is first and foremost an anti-inflammatory drug and that it effectively eliminates pain especially, when the pain is due to an inflammation!

Historical note

The horse which was the first to receive ginger daily in larger amounts and in long term as a feed supplement was my warmblood gelding Waran (born in 1971, died in July 2006, as a consequence of a completely toothless lower jaw). To treat a strong inflammation of his hoof-joint he had received ginger (in dry, ground form) starting in March 2002 over a period of more than 7 months in a pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory amount of about 3 grams per 100 kilograms of body weight, and thereafter he received it further in amounts which varied experimentally between 1.5 and 4 grams per 100 kilograms of body weight, because it obviously was good for him. In the last 2 years of his life he received daily amounts of 3 to 4 grams per 100 kilograms of body weight without any sign of adverse effects.

Hence, a picture (at the age of 35 years) of my very affectionate gelding, whom I will never forget, decorates the back-cover of this book.

Since my letters to editors of horse magazines, ginger has already saved the life of many other horses and made life easier for even more! It is already used by studs as a kind of routine treatment, independent of race, be it Icelandic, Trakehner or thoroughbred. The most prominent "ginger eater" and at the same time "blockade runner" against the prejudice of many veterinarians at that time that ginger would act only like a placebo, is probably the Trakehner mare Renaissance Fleur, who tragically suffered a triple debris fracture of her fetlock and its joint in February 2003 while in a training stable. (This accident also shattered the hope of this best German dressage mare for a medal at the Olympic Games 2004.) The leg was set together in an emergency operation with nine (!) screws like a mosaic. The horse's weight was simultaneously transferred to the hoof via an outer cast around the fetlock. A proof of what can be done now by modern medical science! However, when the mare left the clinic after four months, she was getting worse from day to day. The fetlock joint stiffened (deliberately) completely. Finally, the mare was completely lame because of strong arthrosis and lost more and more weight. (At that time most horse magazines reported about this).

Renaissance Fleur in August 2003, after her return to the stud;

her in November after only 2 months of feeding ginger. By feeding of ginger a painless walking and also trotting was again possible for the mare since September 2003. This made the way free for a hopefully long and trouble-free life of this great mare. The mare felt increasingly better under ginger, and she could also gallop again across the pasture, despite her stiff fetlock joint. The affected leg also became a bit thinner again over time. So nothing prevented her use as a content brood mare. In April 2006, Renaissance Fleur got her first filly, Roulette, fit as a fiddle. Then in 2008 there came the second filly, Reminescence, and in 2010 the third healthy foal, again a filly, Residence. In 2011 she had a twin birth, of which unfortunately neither of the two foals was viable. The birth had been a great emotional burden, but the mare quickly recovered by the good care.

The picture on the front cover shows her in 2006 together with her first filly, her mother Regatta (died in October, 2009 at the age of 29 ½ years) and her owner and breeder in the stud Rondeshagen.

Since the beginning of 2003 a study was running by the Reha team Aggertal (head M. Hompesch) in which ginger is applied highly dosed and successfully to horses who could not been helped by conventional veterinary treatment anymore and were resistant to therapy. These horses suffer from extreme arthrosis in several joints simultaneously, high-grade spavin on both sides, high-grade podotrochlosis (navicular disease), high-grade ataxia or Wobbler-syndrome (cervical vertebral malformation, CVM), calcifications and other diseases.

Although a treatment with ginger is a little bit more time-consuming and the effect appears only with a bit greater delay than with medicines which are used by vets to treat inflammations and pains, the advantages of ginger prevail by far:

no adverse side effects

no contraindications and

no waiting periods

,

because ginger is a food.

Besides, it is inexpensive.

Veterinarians may have faster acting remedies in their funds, but none that are better and healthier!

Hence, ginger is to be looked upon as the means of choice and should always be used, at least if a long-term use of an anti-inflammatory substance is necessary. Actually one follows only one motto of the ancient Hippokrates (about 460-375 B.C.): „Let food be your remedy, and remedy be your food!“

Use

For the horse owner, practical instructions for use are particularly interesting, because he himself is required to determine the individually required dosage for his horse. In the following I would like to enumerate the essential points that have to be considered for a successful treatment of the horse:

1.) Ginger is a natural product, and its pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory effect is highly dependent on its origin and its content of active ingredients. These are mainly the pungent substances, especially the gingerols, which in customary dry ginger powder range between 0.5 and 3%. Ginger from Africa (Tanzania, Nigeria), usually has the highest content of gingerols, but there are also very good qualities from other countries (sometimes with certificated content of pungent substances of about 2% or more). Today one can buy ginger of good quality via internet, at least in Germany. In Germany also many of the big horseware-traders deal with it now (e.g. Masterhorse). However, there are also “black sheep” who sell bad Asian qualities as good ginger! (When comparing different ginger qualities one should also consider the kind of the used analysis! The more simple photometric determinations show distinctly higher contents than those which use HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) with which the material mixture to be analysed is separated into its components before analysis! HPLC seems indeed to show values which are very slightly below the true content.)