Hello Fedup Gal from NM,

You didn’t mention what kind of, or how big your best epileptic friend is, but for the questions I am going to pose, it doesn’t really matter. First off, go read the ingredients on your dog food containers (bags, cans and all others) looking for monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartame. If you aren’t familiar with the various names they hide MSG under, on line search those and print them out – but I can tell you right fast like you don’t want to find natural flavors or natural flavoring, hydrolyzed plant protein whether from corn, pea, soy beans or any other plant listed in the ingredients. Fortunately at the present time the only names I know of
being used for aspartame are Equal and NutraSweet (and of course aspartame is also in any hydrolyzed plant protein which made neurologist Russell Blaylock who wrote “Excitotoxins: The Taste That
Kills”, label hydrolyzed plant proteins the most deadly MSG form of all,because it kills off two different kindns of neurons, whereas when
ingested singly MSG and aspartame only kills off one type of neuron.
He further tells you that excitotoxins are named so, because they excite the cells of the brain and central nervous system to death. Since our esteemed FDA that protects our food supply so well recognizes only the studies paid for by the manufactures of these two excitotoxins, they still give both a “GRAS” rating for human consumption, so there definitely won’t be any restraint from using it in pet foods. Blaylock must have read every study ever done on MSG and aspartame before he wrote this book. He states that every independent study done on both of them came to the same conclusions: it doesn’t matter whether the brain was that of a rat, mouse, chicken, cat, dog, etc., if the study was carried out for 13 weeks, the brains of all looked like those of Alzheimer’s disease patients.
He discusses the studies and tells you how they were skewed to keep their GRAS rating from the FDA. One study concluded that “it was at least as safe as the placebo used in the study”. They didn’t mention the fact that the substance used as a placebo WAS NOT A HARMLESS PLACEBO, but another substance that caused the same or similar problems as the substance being studied. Don’t you just love that honesty?

For your own health, after reading ingredients on your pet’s food containers, go read those on your own food and drinks, including the raw meat that you buy to cook. That chicken broth that one well-known brand of raw chicken that “may contain up to 15% of”is loaded with MSG. It is not easy to find any processed food that doesn’t have one or both in them. On one brand of canned turnip greens and canned black eyed peas (same brand), I found MSG, hydrolyzed plant protein, and natural flavors listed. I looked at this particular brand because my niece said she loved it, it tasted almost as good as home cooked. This niece had also been seeing a doctor for panic attacks and diabetes. After discussing MSG/aspartame toxicity, she started watching for them and stopped having so many of them when her intake of both were reduced. When she started having them more frequently again, in talking with her, she was surprised when I told her to go read those ingredients lists again because I had yet to find any boullion powder or cube that wasn’t loaded with one or both, and that was the one that I missed the most in my cooking. I choose to use more herbs and spices so I have better health. Many of those herbs and
spices also contain them.

I have seen nothing reputable to disqualify this neurologist words of
wisdom, so let’s consider that these studies he cites, irrefutably establish that the damage to all brains from these two toxins are the same. He connects them to much more than Alzheimer’s ranging from headaches, epilepsy, brain tumors, brain cancers, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and more. Strangely enough, most of the newer seizure (epilepsy) medications are magnesium, a mineral that our bodies require. When you do a little research on magnesium and find that it competes with MSG for the same receptor sites in the brain, you can readily see that when magnesium gets to those sites and are needed worse the MSG gets turned down. Im simpler words it stops seizures by blocking MSG entering the brain. Since our creator used the same structures, chemicals, body organs over and over, I assume that magnesium also competes for the receptor sites in the animal brains
also, so it should work the same for them.

If you can’t find a good source of magnesium, at the local Dollar Tree
stores, I can get a two pound box of Epsom Salts (magnesium sulphate)
for $1.00. It can also be purchased in 1-5 lb. containers at Walgreen, Walmart and others. For dosage – I’ll quote the old folk’s
amount they took to control their bloodpressure – the “amount you can hold on a dime”. I haven’t personally checked out this dosage but suspect it would be somewhat shy of 1/2 teaspoonful. I assume that the old folks were holding this dime in their fingers, so you can see
what it checks out for you. When trying to figure out how much to give your dog, consider his/her weight as compared to the l50 lb. average person adult dosage is considered to be based on. If it were
my dog I would start off with 1/8 tsp. or less and work up a little at a time until no more seizures. The beauty of this is if you give your pet a little too much, you will know because the laxative effect
will have you busy cleaning up after him/her, long before you will have done any irreparable damage to your pet.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, if you find you have been dosing your dogs with toxic chemicals, quickly find them a food without the toxic ingredients.

One other thing I did not mention is chelation to get rid of toxic substances in the body. Since medicines work approximately the same for pets, I assume that chelation would also. A safe formula for one
is 1 cup extra virgin olive oil, 2 bunches of cilantro (washed), and 8
cloves of garlic. Put all into a blender or smoothie and puree. The dosage is 1 tsp 3 times a day – again remember to compare your pet’s weight with that proverbial 150 lb. adult and reduce or increase accordingly.

Hope you find this helpful with your pets. Good luck!