Sara, With regard to your recent post, I wanted to offer info available on the site of Wendell Belfield, DVM and in his book, The Very Healthy Cat <http://www.belfield.com/books.php#> Book. Dr. Belfield reports that he has reversed FeLV in young cats where the disease has not yet progressed to the bone marrow with high dose ascorbate (vitamin C). See http://www.belfield.com/pet_health_art2.php. I work in the distribution of Pauling's high dose vitamin C/lysine therapy for removing arterial blockages (www.HeartTech.com <http://www.hearttech.com/> ) and am familiar with Dr. Belfield through Dr. Linus Pauling, as they were friends and colleagues. In fact, Dr. Pauling wrote the foreword for Dr. Belfield's book. Anyway, there is excellent information in Dr. Belfield's book about giving high dose vitamin C to FeLV+ cats to reverse the disease, provided it has not yet reached the bone marrow. Dr. Belfield, though now retired, has been willing to speak with me personally several times about this and I have used his product Mega C Plus, available from <http://www.belfield.com/> www.Belfield.com. Though I was not able to save my Lukey because his disease had already progressed too far when I learned of Belfield's protocol, it may not be too late to reverse your boys with the Imulan LTCI and Belfield's vitamin C protocol. Alternatively, I have also been using intravenous vitamin C on one of my FeLV+ cats with lymphoma and he has now survived for one-and-a-half years beyond the date that his original vet said he should have died. He is happy, healthy and eating well, and in fact, though we expected him to predecease his FeLV+ buddy Lukey, Linus is still going strong while my darling Lukey died October 1 from his disease (we were not using the intravenous C on Lukey because he was seemingly healthy and we really couldn't afford to do two cats on this treatment at once). FYI, they tolerate the intravenous C VERY well and there are no known side effects with IV C at high doses for FeLV. If these two were mine, I would do everything in my power to find a vet in your area who would be willing to administer the IV C to these young cats who have yet no evidence of the disease in their bone marrow. I would recommend a drip at least two days a week and also supplementing their food with the Mega C Plus available from www.Belfield.com. If you need more info about the protocol, feel free to ask. Vets and others will tell you that cats and dogs make their own vitamin C and do not requirement supplemental C. While it is true that they do synthesize ascorbate in the liver from glucose, because of their domestication cats and dogs make the least amount of vitamin C of all animals and this is why they develop illnesses similar to humans who lack the enzyme L-gulonolactone oxidase (GLO) to make vitamin C in the liver including upper respiratory, cancers, etc. Along with humans, guinea pigs, primates and fruit bats also cannot make vitamin C in the liver. Vitamin C is required by these species at very high doses (far greater than the RDA). E.g., an adult rabbit makes the human equivalent of 15,000 mg of vitamin C in the liver each day and even more under stress, while a cat makes only 2800 mg. This is a must read site for info on vitamin C in veterinary use. http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/197x/belfield-w-j_int _assn_prev_med-1978-v2-n3-p10.htm
Sally Jewell _______________________________________________ Felvtalk mailing list Felvtalk@felineleukemia.org http://felineleukemia.org/mailman/listinfo/felvtalk_felineleukemia.org
