How often have we been told that food is medicine! One of the five pillars in Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine (TCVM) is Food Therapy. Food Therapy and Herbal Medicine are both sources from Mother Earth, Food Therapy being the more palatable and mild while Herbal Medicine is more potent and often bitter. A food therapy consult is based on each indiviudal’s age, species, breed, geographic location, personality and current disharmony or disease process. Each diets/recipe is then developed using TCVM theory including the Eight Principles, Five Elements and Pattern Differentiation. The beauty of food therapy is that we can modify the diet the pet is already on, find acceptable commercially made diets, owners can prepare diets at home or we can do a combination to find what is acceptable to the pet!

Often times owners will utilize food therapy to support the pets natural Constitution or use seasonally to promote health and prevention of illness. Using food as a primary medicine has been shown to help with skin diseases and even gastrointestinal diseases. When a pet is being treated for cancer, kidney disease, other chronic conditions food therapy can be used as an adjunct therapy to help support their body or even help with pain management. If an owner is looking for a simple diet change to help promote health and prevention this can be done with a virtual consult and some questionnaires. If an owner has pet with medical needs and is looking for food to be a primary or even adjunct therapy then the veterinarian overseeing the pet’s care needs to be involved and included in the discussion of food therapy.