Press Coverage |
Veterinary Medicine - Interview with Dr. Anne Hermans, DVM
Interviewed by Peter Gold, National Center for Homeopathy
|
Interview Part 1 [7.2 MB mp3 file]
Interview Part 2 [ 9.7 MB mp3 file]
Interview linked on NCH site
May 12, 2011
Posted courtesy of the National Center for Homeopathy
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Protect Your Pets This Spring
By Amy Mulvihill |
. . . For people looking to go the non-chemical route, homeopathic veterinarian Anne C. Hermans recommends reducing the amount of processed food in the animal’s diet and spending more time combing your pet after they come inside.
“There’s no quick fix, but the better the health, the more resistance they’ll have to fleas and ticks and parasites in general,” she commented.
For older pets or pets with already weakened immune systems, Dr. Hermans recommended herbal sprays as an alternative to heavy duty chemical sprays.
“The problem [with chemical sprays and ointments] is that products that are designed to kill fleas and ticks can have short and long term toxic effect for the pet and sometimes you won’t know until after it’s applied,” she explained, adding that more information on alternative preventative treatments can be found on her Web site www.vethomeopath.com.
Regardless of what course of treatment pet owners choose, Dr. Hermans stressed that it should be the result of much consideration and be tailored to the animal’s lifestyle.
“It’s a risk benefit analysis. If your pet is old or fragile you may want to be more conservative with what you’re asking them to deal with. If they’re healthy and running through the fields and they have 100 ticks a day and they’re crawling all over your baby then maybe you want to use [something stronger],” she explained.
March 10, 2006
Reprinted courtesy of the Litchfield County Times
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Local
vet uses alternative methods to treat pets
Anne Hermans
uses remedies to arouse pets’ healing ability
By
Deborah Rose |
Sherry
Levesque of New Hartford drives more than an hour to
bring her cat, Ginger, to a veterinarian in Bridgewater.
Mrs. Levesque said the drive is well worth it because
she sees “wonderful” results in Ginger after
she is treated by Dr. Anne Hermans, a certified veterinary
homeopath.
Dr. Hermans, like other homeopaths, tries to heal acute
and chronic diseases using remedies — made of plants,
minerals and other natural products — that are
non-invasive and don’t work against symptoms, like
conventional medicine, but rather with the patient’s
symptoms.
Homeopaths say the remedies act like a wakeup call arousing
an animal’s own healing ability.
Mrs. Levesque said Dr. Hermans’ care also helped
her former cat, Kelly, live an extra nine months after
she had been diagnosed with kidney failure.
“Remedies did amazing things for her,” she
said. “She just brightened up.
“It’s all about the animal and doing what’s
best for the animal,” Mrs. Levesque said.
Dr. Hermans, 41, said she came across alternative methods
of medicine when her first child was younger and had
health issues.
She said “holistic and alternative paths healed”
her daughter and were “really impressive.”
“Once I started studying [homeopathy] I became
passionate about it,” Dr. Hermans said, “and
when I started using it, it helped my patients with
acute and chronic problems.
“The responses to remedies were unlike what I’d
seen before,” the vet said.
Dr. Hermans said she spends a lot of time talking with
clients about their cat or dog when they visit her office.
Dogs can get cozy on the large dog bed on the floor,
while cats are invited to roam around the doctor’s
office and make themselves comfortable on a mat that
sits on a window sill looking out on the sprawling hills
of Bridgewater and Roxbury.
Clients are asked questions about their animal’s
behavioral, eating, sleeping and playing habits.
“The pattern of [the animal’s] response to
the homeopathy remedy is how I assess the patient’s
response,” Dr. Hermans said.
After studying the habits and needs of the animal and
how they can be addressed, Dr. Hermans figures out what
remedies would best suit the pet.
Remedies are “very gentle,” she said.
“They’re not just a Band-Aid,” Dr. Hermans
emphasized. “They go way beyond that.”
“Properly prescribed remedies can improve”
the overall health of a patient, she explained.
Chris MacDonald of New Milford, who takes her two cats
to Dr. Hermans, said while remedies work wonders, Dr.
Hermans recognizes and “considers the whole picture
and what every practitioner has to offer.”
The homeopathic vet recommends that clients take their
pets to conventional veterinarians for diagnostic tests,
blood work and vaccinations because she does not provide
those services at her office.
Ms. MacDonald said she finds Dr. Hermans a “great
educator and guide” whose care has provided a “positive
effect” on her cats and helped her “work through
issues.”
Ms. MacDonald said her cat, Pierre, has had good results
from receiving remedies for asthma. Her other cat, Marry,
is being treated for a cancer related to vaccinations.
The New Milford resident stressed, however, that it
takes a strong commitment from the pet’s owner
to pay attention to the animal’s patterns of behavior
and relate them to the homepathic vet.
Dr. Hermans, who graduated from Cornell University,
has always had an interest in animals.
She said she first thought about veterinary school when
she was 20, and after that spent a year living on her
aunt’s sheep farm in Massachusetts while working
as a veterinarian technician at various animal hospitals.
Dr. Hermans moved to the West Coast and practiced conventional
medicine for cats and dogs for five years, but she eventually
made her way back to Bridgewater — her family’s
hometown — in 1995.
Since then, she worked three years at the emergency
vet clinic in Danbury and then opened her homeopathic
practice in January 2000.
Dr. Hermans’ clientele has “been building
steadily,” mostly through word of mouth, she said.
One of her first patients was her dog, Ike, who died
in 2001. She said “homeopathy gave him three years
he didn’t have” prior to the alternative medicine.
“I really love this work,” she said. “It’s
very rewarding and interesting.”
“I learn from all of my patients,” Dr. Hermans
related, “and I expect to keep learning.”
Dr. Hermans sees clients by appointment. For more
information, visit www.vethomeopath.com or call Dr.
Hermans at (860) 210-1847.
March
28, 2003
Reprinted courtesy of the Greater New Milford Spectrum Top
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In
Bridgewater, Homeopathy for Pets
By
Kathryn Boughton |
Dogs
brought to see veterinarians are often reluctant patients.
Many sit trembling between their owner's knees in waiting
rooms, while others are hyperactive, leaping about in
excitement when other dogs are brought in. Cats tend to
crouch in their carriers, peering fearfully at the world
or meowing plaintively.
But when dogs enter Dr. Anne Hermans's world, they tend
to bound down the spacious side yard of her Colonial home
in Bridgewater, heading toward the door of her clinic.
"It's a social visit for them," she said as
she sat behind her desk in her receiving room last week.
"I worked hard to make this a friendly place for
my patients. I learn so much watching them when I meet
them for the first time. There is room for dogs to move
around and explore, and even cats have places they can
crawl under to hide."
Observing animals is an important part of diagnosing their
ills for Dr. Hermans, who is no ordinary practitioner.
Although classically trained in veterinary medicine at
Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., she has since turned
away from conventional medical practices to use homeopathy
to treat animals.
Homeopathy is a form of holistic healing, she explained.
"Holistic simply means the doctor views the patient
has a whole being, rather than viewing the illness as
an isolated factor. But there are different methods of
treating them holistically. You can even be a holistic
allopath (a doctor who treats disease with methods that
produce symptoms different from the disease itself). I
use homeopathy to treat my patients."
Homeopathy, she said, is based on the teachings of the
19th century German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, a physician
who determined that quinine, useful in treating malaria,
will produce the same symptoms as the disease when given
in concentrated amounts.
"He was a brilliant man who noted that by giving
too much quinine, you produced the same symptoms found
in malaria. When he reduced the amount of quinine and
used it to treat malaria victims he found it had curative
powers without the negative consequences. Homeopathy is
based on 'similars.' For instance, lumbago produces heat
in the joint and to treat it we apply heat."
In developing cures, a homeopath gives healthy people
enough of a substance to produce the "symptomatic
pictures" of disease. Such experimentation is termed
a "proving." If a substance is "proved,"
then it is used as a remedy for a "body presenting
a similar picture" as the result of disease or injury.
"We can look at disease from the point of view of
the disease or from the point of view of the patient,"
she said. "Diarrhea, for instance, is the body's
way of trying to get rid a virus. When you have a cold,
and all that stuff comes out of your head, that is the
way the body flushes out disease. So is a fever. Most
medicines address disease from the point-of-view of the
pathogen, but when we treat disease to kill bacteria,
we also kill off a lot of important bacteria in our bodies.
Our bodies have tremendous tools to fight disease."
Homeopathy, on the other hand, treats the patient. While
homeopaths do not ignore immediate causes such as infection,
their primary focus is on the patient's attempts to heal.
Their aim is to strengthen the patient's defenses and
to shift the balance in favor of recovery, she said. After
the body is given a "nudge" in the direction
of the disease by being prompted to produce mild disease
symptoms, the body sets up natural defenses, she asserted.
Dr. Hermans, who is married and has two children, worked
as a conventional vet for eight years before making the
move toward homeopathy. "I came to it through personal
challenges, because of the health problems of our first
child" she said. "We weren't getting the answers
we needed so I started working with a naturopath and saw
improvement. So, I went 'shopping' and stumbled on homeopathy.
It was so intriguing I started using it to treat our family
and pets. I started studying it in 1998."
She has completed a "Professional Course in Advanced
Veterinary Homeopathy" at the Animal Natural Health
Center, as well as the advanced course given by the same
center, which offers its courses in locations around the
country. She is affiliated with the Academy of Veterinary
Homeopathy and the International Association of Veterinary
Homeopathy, among other organizations.
Homeopathy is appropriate for patients that get the same
problems over and over, she said, have undesirable reactions
to conventional medicines or suffer illnesses for which
there is no well-recognized traditional treatment. It
is also useful for those that have problems resulting
from receiving vaccines.
"True healing takes time," Dr. Hermans said.
"The deeper the pathology, the longer it takes. Most
of our animals are severely compromised by poor nutrition
and over-vaccination. The first thing is to make an improvement
in those, to give the animal as clean a diet as possible.
People should avoid giving their pets foods that have
lots of additives. How long it takes to get better and
the ability to do so varies from patient to patient-even
between patients with the same diagnosis-because each
patient is an individual."
Often, she said, she is the "doctor of last resort"
for animal owners who have exhausted the spectrum of modern
veterinary medicine. "So many of the patients that
come here are so sick they can't get better. But their
companions-or owners, whatever-see how it can help and
they will bring another animal that is less ill.
"But we're a quick-fix society," she continued,
"and this can take a while to help. So much depends
on watching the symptoms. If an owner has watched an animal
itching and can't watch one more day, then I'm not the
right person to treat their pet. If they can't observe
their animal's behavior, I'm not right. But people who
love their animals and make that kind of commitment always
find a way to watch their animals, even if they have to
work."
The initial information gathering is important and can
take some time. Dr. Hermans often meets with the owners
first, frequently without the animal present. Discussion
centers around the pet's health and what homeopathy can
do. A one or two-page typed account of the animal, its
personality and habits, is helpful.
"I need to know details," she said. "If
a cat has kidney problems, telling me that it drinks and
pees a lot is not helpful. But telling me that it wants
to drink warm water or that it wants its food cold could
be helpful. After all, mice don't come refrigerated in
the wild and water is not heated, so if the animal wants
cold meat or will only drink from the warm water tap,
that is different."
The doctor will review the pet's diet with the owner and
make recommendations if needed. During a full initial
"intake," the pet will be given a physical examination.
The intake appointment usually takes 45 to 90 minutes.
Follow-up appointments are usually needed every two to
three weeks. In some cases, follow-up visits can be done
by phone.
For animals in good health "well-pet" visits
are recommended.
Because she practices homeopathy exclusively, Dr. Hermans
refers her patients to primary care veterinarians for
necessary diagnostics such as blood tests and routine
care, such as surgery, dentistry, vaccinations or other
injections, anti-parasitical products or prescription
refills. Emergency or off-hours care is also referred
to the primary care veterinarians. She does not have kennels,
grooming or in-patient treatment facilities.
Fees begin at $XX for an introductory appointment, with
$XX charged for a well-pet visit, which includes a physical
examination. An initial intake costs $XXX, as does case
research and analysis.
Dr. Hermans has a web site at www.vethomeopath.com and
may be reached at 860-210-1847.
January
10, 2003
Reprinted courtesy of the Litchfield County Times
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