Healing is a big topic. It's most likely to be framed in our culture with a pharmaceutical model. Historically traditional cultures understood that healing happens from the inside out. For sure, the shamans used bones and feathers, ritual and ceremony to gain the confidence of their patients so they, the patients, would accept the shaman's authority in the matter of their healing. The magic was in this granting of authority. Then, as now, most real healing is done by our body's repair systems. Albert Schweitzer, one of western medicine's great founders, said, "a doctor's role in the healing process is 90% bedside manner".Most bacteria are beneficial, actually essential, to all life including yours and mine. Yet popular opinion has been so swayed by the pharmaceutical industry and their well paid puppets in the mainstream media and advertising industries that most of us now believe that all bacteria are our enemy. This anti-bacteria worldview isn’t just bad science, it’s manipulative and its function is to sell us crap that actually causes harm to the web of life we are but one little node in, it makes a few richer and every other living thing pay for it.
My research for this piece started with the questions: "Does dog saliva have real healing properties, like mom said, or is that just 'folk' medicine?" And, "Is the curative power our mom's advice to have your dog lick your wounds simply a combination of the dog's tongue being a perfect tool for cleaning the wound and the placebo effect being activated by our granting of authority on such matters to our moms [similar to the shaman's art]". i found out that dog saliva contains lysozyme, an enzyme that lyses and destroys harmful bacteria and that another reason mom was right is that direct stimulation of the tissues and small blood vessels surrounding the wound site increases blood flow and promotes the growth of new capillaries which brings white cells, platelets and growth factors to the wound site. Mom was right again.
Psychological heath is as important to real healing as physical health. My psychiatric needs are sub-clinical most days and are perfectly well serviced by the unconditional love given and received between me and my best friends. Being needed by and needing a kindred spirit, by companionship, by having someone to just listen, someone always glad to see me no matter what, are the 'real' powers offered by psychiatric service dogs and my best friends. If you already share your life with a dog type person you're lucky and you already know all of this.
To conclude, if i’m in a car accident, torn to shit, bleeding, busted bones, take me to the emergency room, those guys can fix trauma best. But if it’s anything else i’m steering clear of the croaker, i’m reporting to dog unit in my front yard.
The Amazing Healing Power Of Dog Saliva!
Does A Dogs Lick Cure Wounds? - You betcha!
