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Flea and tick medicine

Does garlic really have any benefit? like really? I've seen one pet get sick from slamming the costco sized bag of crispy onion salad topper, two from someone sprinkling more and more garlic/onion powder on the dog's food every day for a while because they're still seeing fleas and ticks, hell I've seen someone stick garlic cloves in a cat's ears to try to clear mites... there's just no telling how creative people can get with garlic, but the one thing I haven't seen yet is garlic actually fixing the problem, I've never seen it actually work.

Therefore, I think it's unwise to recommend giving garlic to a dog as a preventive measure for ticks and fleas over the internet. It's not an effective way of achieving your goal compared to regular removal and/or more appropriate products that are available, it actually is well documented that it can be harmful, and there's no telling how people will use the advise. The toxicity is often overstated, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. That article talks about fresh garlic doses, but omits that if you dehydrate and/or powder the garlic you're increasing the concentration of problematic compounds, and It's also rather vague about chronic exposure, which is a thing.

I'm not sure how LD50 came into the discussion, it's not in the article at all. My 2 cents, which nobody asked for, It's a very superficial way of assessing toxicity, it's a statistical measure that tells you at said dose half your test subjects should be dead. What it doesn't tell you is what's an effective therapeutic dose, what dose do ill effects start to happen, what frequency to expect those ill effects at said therapeutic dose, or anything about chronic exposures. LD50 has very little clinical value, It's really not a useful stat point to consider for this type of discussion if you think about it. If you can properly measure the dose, and your product is effective well below any dose that will make you sick, what does the LD50 matter?

As for pharmaceutical products available, Their toxicity is often as exaggerated as garlic's. I'm with @egoldstein. Their safety and efficacy is pretty well documented, They've been on the market for a while with very rare significant complications being reported. If you're in a heavily infested area at risk of tick-born diseases, they will offer more safety then garlic.
 
I encourage all zoos to read papers that are relevant and interesting, they can be hard to parse at first with some of the specific jargon, but after looking up a few terms and reading a couple of papers it becomes less intimidating. Included in a paper will be referenes that describe in detail more about specific aspects and it will frequently be helpful to chase down references and read those to get a thourough understanding of the subject....but for most papers one can get the gist of it without an enormous effort or specialized understanding. The "Abstract" at the start of a paper is supposed to give a hgh level overview....and usually does, but there are occasional papers that leave out vital information from the abstract, so don't rely on an abstract to provide a clear picture.

The Merck Veterinary Manual provides a nice easy to read synopsis for this particular issue that I recommend reading before going into any of the papers so you'll have a bit of a primer before getting deep in the weeds.

According to this paper, 5g of whole garlic per kg of dog weight for 7 days was not enough to trigger hemolytic anemia, but was enough to cause detectable indications in bloodwork, which implies prolonged exposure is not recommended and garlic intake should be avoided. Assuming my math is right, that's 1/4lb a day for 7 days in a 55lb dog; that's a lot of garlic, certainly possible for some individuals with a penchant for eating everything, but I would suspect quite unlikely to cause harm when consummed in smaller doses infrequently. That said, the paper indicates it's a buildup, so it seems reasonable that prolonged use at lower doses could lead to serious damage. My opinion as a non-vet would be to avoid it, but not sweat it if the dog got into some leftover pasta or gobbled up a clove of garlic that hit the floor.

An interesting note for horse lovers appears to be that horses are more susceptible to the issue than dogs. I didn't go deep into it as I'm not a horse-zoo, but refer to the paper Association of maximum voluntary dietary intake of freeze-dried garlic with Heinz body anemia in horses for details.
 
saddlebum66 said:
people have had problems with bugs....ants fleas ticks, roaches, grain beetles of a hundred types, stinkbugs and thousands of other creatures thst threaten directly or indirectly....ever wonder how they dealt with it? They did, and most of their methods were effective.
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If they were effective, why would one exert the effort of researching and developing alternatives? What market forces would make such profitable if there were a commonly available effective solution already?

I'm old enough to remember a time before these modern solutions were commonplace. There we ways of dealing with each pest, but they weren't nearly as effective. It's been many long years since I've had to purge fleas from my home and I am very happy to be free of them.

Do you have any evidence supporting the efficacy of garlic for this?

saddlebum66 said:
The difference between then and now? TIME. Ten seconds to buckle on a flea collar, a minute to apply pesticide to a neck, a couple of minutes to administer a pill becsude doggiekins spits it out 6 times. All as opposed to several hours of beating carpets every Spring. OR a thorough bath once a week.
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And those alternate solutions were not as effective. Why beat fleas and eggs out of carpets to limit the infestation when you can not have the little fuckers at all?


saddlebum66 said:
As for garlic, the small dose required puts it closer to my side of the equation than to yours.
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Not saying what you claim is not true, but I've not found any reputable evidence to suport it. My not finding is doesn't mean it doesn't exist and I'm fully open to accepting it, but I'd like to see the evidence.

saddlebum66 said:
Truth is often hard to handle.
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It sure can be. Nobody likes to be wrong, but I'll happily accept being wrong if it means I can trade an error for fact and be cured of my misunderstanding.
 
So, distilled down, you are affirming that you have no evidence to support your claim, correct?
Opinion isn't fact and if you're going to claim something is just as effective you should be able to show that. It's fine to believe it and feel that it is true, but you are presenting it as fact when you have not shown it to be.

Your own anecdotes undermine you when you refer to beating out fleas and eggs, if garlic were as effective, that would not be neccessary.
 
Chemicals are not the devil, so lets not get in a religion fight about using only one.

Chemicals have the advantage of being (mostly) one controlled active component and precise dosage over time. Any side efect will either be told or be discovered over time.

Natural methodes are usually less to the point, even if the can sometimes be so good as the chemical one. May have more or less side efects but they usually have a long run experience
They usually have many active substances and concentrations are depending on the batch.

In the "garlic incident" the smell might be an insect repellant but some principles cause hemolisis. IF you got an artificial smell-only substance, it *would* be a chemical, but with less side effects.

This does not lessen the natural solutions, which can sometimes be as effective or more than the chemical, and in todays meat market where you can NOT use antibiotics and most chemicals, they WILL gain a market.

A couple of personal examples:

I had to shot down a goat with CAE, before that I trued the impossible to treat the untreatable. Oart of it was giving her daily Ibuprofene (not approved as veterinary product, but found an excerpt of heavy usage in goats with no ill effects). Later I found ginger was effectively used in horses for inflamatory problems, so I tried it and was way more effective.

The other one was a fruends story where he knew someone with hypertension and was prescribed some pills. He told him olive leaves would wirk fine abd the fruend handwaved it as "this is science,not plants". He had a look at the ingredients and... by the botanical name "olive tree leaves" was there. So he said "yes, fine" and laughed.
(Actually I once tried that in a relative whose tension was skyrocketing and... worked almost too much. In six hours she was almost too low for the rest of the day...)
 
The best info I can find on garlic as an insect repellent comes from "Insect Repellents Handbook, 2nd Edition (2014)", which unfortunately is not promising. Unless there is some compelling evience to the contrary, I think it is fair to say that eating garlic as a repellent is not effective. The relevant portion of the text is included below, with references as cited, should anyone want them.

Chapter 9 "Plant-Based Insect Repellents" , page 217...
It is still a common misconception that eating garlic, Allium sativum, will make the skin unpalatable to mosquitoes(271) a view that has been held since ancient times.(272) Garlic is still used as a repellent in South America (hung around the neck) and China (eaten).(70,185) Stjernberg and Berglund(273) claimed that the consumption of 1200 mg garlic per day provided significant protection from tick bites. However, the accuracy of the study has been contested since the findings were exaggerated statistically due to the incorrect use of the collected data.(274) Conclusive evidence that consumption of garlic does not repel mosquitoes has been found using a double blind randomized trial.(275)

Rubbing garlic cloves on the skin does have a moderate repellent effect,(276) but is an extremely unpleasant means of protecting oneself from mosquito bites.

References:
(70) TRI News 15,1,4 Tropical Resources Institute, Yale University, New Haven. An Ethnobotanical Survey of Insect Repellents in Brazil, 1996.

(185) S. J. Moore. A methodology for developing plant-based products for use against Anopheles mosquitoes. PhD Thesis, University of London, London, 2005.

(271) P. Kendall. Nutrition column—Garlic may repel pests as well as people, 2003.

(273) L. Stjernberg, J. Berglund. Garlic as an insect repellent. JAMA, 284, 831, 2000.

(274) J. Ranstam. Garlic as a tick repellent. JAMA, 285, 42, 2001.

(275) T. V. Rajan et al. A double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of garlic as a mosquito repellent: A preliminary study. Med Vet Entomol, 19, 84, 2005.

(276) D. L. Greenstock, Q. Larrea. Garlic as an Insecticide. Doubleday Research Association, Coventry, UK 1972.
 
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egoldstein said:
Agreed, especially considering there doesn't appear to be any evidence of it's effectiveness at all.

I'd have been happy to find that it did work, but every reliable source says it doesn't produce results.
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The only academic source I could even find regarding using garlic as a flea treatment for dogs was a research article stating that no peer reviewed studies had been performed in vivo.

 
shygirl said:
hello! i am looking for some advice. i just got a Rottie puppy and I want to use a flea and tick topical treatment. the problem is they all come packaged by weight, and he will grow so fast he won't stay in a particular weight class until he is mature. i am trying to figure out how to get just one tube of medicine for each weight class until his weight stabilizes. does anyone have any suggestions?
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Im not sure if you have the following product where you are but try Fidos Concentrate wash. Bath him with this product as per the instructions. It works wonders where I am. We have paralysis ticks and brown ticks here and Ive never had an issue with any of my previous dogs. This wash/shampoo also treats fleas and lice. Excellent product. Im not a fan of putting drugs down a dog throat as Im sure there are negative side effects to the drugs. Wash him and he will smell pretty and when ever you are ready to play with him he will be nice and clean and ready to go for you.
 
SultryHellhound said:
The only academic source I could even find regarding using garlic as a flea treatment for dogs was a research article stating that no peer reviewed studies had been performed in vivo.

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I had seen that as well, but a failure to find references could be attributed to a variety of issues including search terms and databases searched. To me the stronger evidence is this one: "T. V. Rajan et al. A double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of garlic as a mosquito repellent: A preliminary study. Med Vet Entomol, 19, 84, 2005.", which the authors of "Insect Repellents Handbook" (mentioned above) cite as "Conclusive evidence that consumption of garlic does not repel mosquitoes has been found using a double blind randomized trial."
While mosquitoes are not fleas, typically compunds that repel one arthropod repel others, so it seems rather damning. I'm still trying to locate the paper itself. While its possilbe I'll find a valid study supporting the use of garlic, I've not had any luck yet and if experts in the field (as of 2014) can't find it, I'm thinking it probably doesn't exist. Doesn't mean it doesn't work, but it certainly isn't promising.
 
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