Chaste Tea Berries for Cushings - ideas?

[Auventera Two]

Do you guys ever feed whole chaste tea berries for cushings? They can be purchased for pretty cheap online per pound. Do you then grind them? Libbey has become so picky about eating since starting Pergolide. She looks great and is doing absolutely brilliant :D BUT the eating thing is a real pain. I'm thinking of trying CTB and decreasing Pergolide. Vet said I could try it - obviously she can't recommend it because it's not an approvied drug - you know how that goes.....

I'm going to try splitting her Pergolide dose into a.m. and p.m. versus once a day and that might help also. But also thinking of reducing pergolide and adding some CTB. Any advice on this? She lost a lot of weight and she doesn't need to lose more.

[caballus]

Vicki you might find some helpful info here:

http://www.equine-rescue.com/newsletters/newsletter-september-2003.html

[BuddyRoo]

That's a known side effect of the pergolide but it usually resolves with time. How long has she been on it?

The studies that have been done w/ chasteberry indicate that it's not at all effective in management of Cushings. I would not be inclined to spend money on the chasteberry....

The studies comparing chasteberry to pergolide that I am referring to were done at MSU by Dr. Hal Schott and his group. I believe their data is available online.

[caballus]

There is an Equine Cushings Group on Yahoo you might wanna check out:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/EquineCushings/

[Auventera Two]

There is an Equine Cushings Group on Yahoo you might wanna check out:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/EquineCushings/

Yeah, been there done that. Got some good info but don't go there much anymore.

She's been on it for about 2 months. Appetite getting worse. Lost a lot of weight. Has started holding up a front leg to her belly then slamming it down. Also got a lot spookier than normal. I think ulcers may be starting due to the decreased hay in the gutt. Talked to vet - said to put on Gastrogard. That helps but the real problem is the not eating.

Dentist is coming today to make sure teeth aren't a factor.

She had been eating but it would just take forever. Now she's practically quit. The last two days she barely touched her beet pulp/alfalfa pellet mix. She won't even touch oats or sweet feed given in my hand as a test. Can't even get her to sniff it. She did eat a carrot though.

I put her outside yesterday in the pasture where there's a little bit of grass greening up here and there. She was happy to eat that and wasn't sore at all so I'm going to let her go on grass as much as she can without getting sore from it. She has to eat something. She's always done fine on grass as long as its moderated. Some horses can't have anything green - ever - but thank god she's not one of those. Her main trouble seems to come from chemical insults - vaccines and worming.

I've heard lots of accounts of people using CTB that it really works so I thought I'd try adding some and decreasing the pergolide a little bit.

The plan was to retest blood in April to see if the pergolide dosage is adequate but vet said we should just wait. If she has this much of a loss in appetite, we can't increase the dosage, even if blood shows the dosage isn't high enough to control ACTH. Plan is to give her a few more months to see if the appetite balances out. I'm going to split the dose and give it 2x a day versus just once. That might help also.

[BornToRide]

You could also try and add some flavoring to her food, like carrot powder, if you feed mashes.

I would test her - maybe you could lower the pergolide some and it would take care of the problem.

[BuddyRoo]

Are you putting the pergolide in her feed?

My friend started her pony on pergolide and had similar issues. Come to find out, it was a bad batch. Got a new batch, horse perked right up. With the way it has to be compounded, there is some significant variability.

Same pharmacy compounded both batches for my friend. Just throwing out another thought.

Also...probiotics? Sometimes can help with appetite.

Good luck!

[vxf111]

We have a pony on pergolide that goes off her feed when it's mixed in with the feed. She is also VERY sensitive to the feed being damp. Even if it's just water (we were wetting the food because she's missing teeth as well as having cushings) she has no interest in even slightly damp food.

If the pergolide is syringed into the back of her mouth-- she cleans up every scrap of food.

You can also try sugar free kool aid powder mixed into the feed, if your horse likes the flavor if that. I mix that with Stoney's crushed doxy (bitter, bitter, BITTER) and he eats it up like a treat.

Good luck.

[Auventera Two]

Good posts, thank you. :)

Yes I do put it in her feed. I've tried mashing it into treats and she won't touch it. Syringing it is a PITA. The horse detests anything going in her mouth in a tube. It takes 10 minutes to get it down her, at which point she's fought and flopped around enough that half of it is dribbled down her lip anyway. The horse lived in a field with no contact for 16 years then I come along and make her do all this crazy stuff she's not used to. She gets so upset by tubes that she shakes and sweats. I feel rotten that she gets so stressed about it. I have tried applesauce and she doesn't want any part of that either.

For now she will eat a carrot so I can try processing a carrot and mixing the pergolide in with it.

I can try the carrot powder. She used to love cinnamon but not anymore.

She's really good to work with so maybe if I just do the syringing in the mouth for a few days in a row, she'll just get over it. I have to stop mixing it in the feed because she's quit eating the feed.

Thanks for the ideas and stuff to think about.

[slpeders]

you could try giving her a little fenugreek too. it's an appetite stimulant, good for the digestive tract and a #1 rated horse-approved flavor. :)

[meaty ogre]

I used chaste tree berry (whole ground into powder with my coffee grinder) to aid shedding in my ancient mini with excellent results. I don't know about effectiveness with cushings. It does act on the dopamine pathway like pergolide, but no studies are conclusive and one of the big problems is doseage and purity. If you do decide to give it a whirl, you should do a protocol including an "off" period (I did 3 weeks on and 1 off) to avoid tolerance. The brain regulates the amount of dopamine, and when you give a drug that affects that, the brain will continue to try to achieve homeostasis, so if you keep the drug in the system, you will get tolerance and then require a higher dose to overcome this. The 3 weeks on/1 week off was just what I adapted from a Parkinson's study involving chaste tree berry use on humans.

I like fenugreek for lots of reasons. It is insulin-protective (http://www.fao.org/agris/search/display.do?f=./1990/v1620/US9041366.xml;US9041366) and effective against ulcers(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T8D-45V717X-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0468110928b31b21ea7810006ebe9705) and has no known toxicity. And it's cheap. Go to scholar.google.com and plug in fenugreek and you'll get all kinds of interesting stuff, but no equine articles unfortunately. Triple Crown and Manna Pro put it in their feeds, and I think I've seeen it on other labels but those are the two I know for sure. There's a patent application that claims that fenugreek lowers cortisol (http://www.google.com/patents?id=2BefAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&dq=fenugreek+and+cortisol#PPA4,M1). It's a good source of lysine and lots of other vitamins and minerals, and does seem to perk up the appetite.

I also like grapeseed extract as an antioxidant, and it's popping up in lot of "metabolic support" supplements. http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&lr=&vid=USPATAPP11528892&id=SbqbAAAAEBAJ&oi=fnd&dq=grape+seed+extract+and+cortisol

I had my vet test my 38 yo mini (in the fall no less, using dex suppression test) for cushings, sure she was at a point where she might need some assistance. He actually had ordered the pergolide for me sure that at her age she would be needing it. Her tests were well within normal parameters. I upped her GSE and fenugreek dose and she has perked up considerably. She is turned out on my good grass right now and gets alfalfa and is doing great. I'd like to have her a little thinner but my vet says at her age and with her workup having such good results to let it be since dropping a lot of weight in a very aged equine can get ugly.

Now, having said all this, you can tell I'm a big proponent of fenugreek and GSE, but I'd be very leery about trying to replace the pergolide altogether. I don't know what tests would be best but I'm sure your vet could come up with a good way to monitor things. You'll have to be very patient and methodical with adding things in one at a time and slowly increasing doseages so you know what is helping and what is a waste. Best of luck!

[Androcles]

It's called chastetree berry.
I know of a horse who foundered recently and was put on it and he is doing very, very well now, his feet are healing and he has shed out really well. He never was on pergolide. I also know a cushing's horse that is on Pergolide and that helped her but she has never foundered. Pergolide is much stronger, I don't think once you've given it that chastree will make any difference. Usually what people do is start with the chastree and then when that stops having an effect move on to the big guns, Pergolide.

[Androcles]

I
I like fenugreek for lots of reasons. It is insulin-protective (http://www.fao.org/agris/search/display.do?f=./1990/v1620/US9041366.xml;US9041366) and effective against ulcers(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T8D-45V717X-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0468110928b31b21ea7810006ebe9705) and has no known toxicity. And it's cheap. Go to scholar.google.com and plug in fenugreek and you'll get all kinds of interesting stuff, but no equine articles unfortunately. Triple Crown and Manna Pro put it in their feeds, and I think I've seeen it on other labels but those are the two I know for sure. There's a patent application that claims that fenugreek lowers cortisol (http://www.google.com/patents?id=2BefAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&dq=fenugreek+and+cortisol#PPA4,M1). It's a good source of lysine and lots of other vitamins and minerals, and does seem to perk up the appetite.


So as far as you know, there's no tolerance buildup with the fenugreek? What is it actually doing?

[twohotponies]

The lady who owns the tack store I go to told me about a product called Hormonise. It is made in Texas by a company called Equi-Natural products. It is a chasteberry liquid. She would love to try it but California has weird rules about that kind of stuff so the Texas company won't ship it here.

www.equinatural.com

[meaty ogre]

Oh, and forgot to add that crest flavoring company has lots of powdered flavorings if you're looking to try something to get her interested in her feed again. Mine like the apple, peppermint and maple. I think they may have a minimum order though, but they were good about sending samples, and you might be able to find a dealer nearby that carries them.

[LMH]

If she is going off feed, you can reduce her perg for a few days and build back up again.

That may resolve it.

If you wanna talk more about CB you can email me.:)

[Altamont Sport Horses]

How much pergolide are you giving her and in what form (powder, suspension, caplet)?

You said you thought she might be getting ulcers from eating less hay. Why is she eating less hay? Are you feeding less? How much is she eating? And is it dry or soaked?

[traceyinojai]

I have an older Cushings and IR horse. I had him on pergolide a few years ago and he wasn't doing well. I added chaste tree berry powder to his diet as a last ditch effort and he rapidly improved. After a few months on both, my vet suggested I drop the pergolide and we have maintained him on just 1 teaspoon am and pm. I have read the studies and understand others concerns about its effectiveness, but for this horse it was a lifesaver.

Since then, even my vets have started recommending it.

[vxf111]

Bonnie doesn't like getting the pergolide via syringe either. She was VERY opposed to it at first. We just kept doing it and after about a week she settled down. For Libby's own good, she probably needs to get used to tolerating some syringing. What if she gets an infection and you need to give her SMZ every day and she won't eat them in her food? You'd probably need to syringe them. I would go ahead and calmly start getting her used to syringing and then try syringing the pergolide.

[Auventera Two]

Dentist was here last night. Libbey was sedated and every tooth checked. She had one little high spot and her incisors touched up. Not much work at all. So teeth weren't an issue.

She's on 1 mg. daily Pergolide. Capsule form (powder)

She's eating less hay because she just won't eat it. No, I don't ration hay. She gets plenty and eats only what she wants. After it lays there a couple days, I dump it over the fence for the others and give her fresh. I try grass and alfalfa, soaked and dry. She does prefer alfalfa but even her taste for that is diminishing. She is eating maybe 10 lbs. a day but that's not much. She's 950 lbs. so that's about 1% of body weight. She does eat some beet pulp and Wellsolve but it takes her forever and that amounts to maybe 3 pounds a day total (soaked weight.)

Dentist agreed she's in excellent weight but its more her belly I'm concerned about.

She can't have SMZs so that's a moot point. LOL. When they all had a mild touch of strangles a couple summers ago, Libbey did not take the SMZs that the others got. The vet said she's better off left to her own devices than to give her the medication. Going forward we're going to do fecals instead of routine worming also. Also no vaccinations, ever.

I think what I'll do is reduce her Pergolide to 1/2 a capsule for a little while and I'll try the CTB also. I'll post back on how that goes. Thanks everybody for the ideas :)

[Altamont Sport Horses]

I would recommend not changing two things at once just so you know what makes the improvement (or doesn't). I'd reduce the pergolide for a week before adding CTB. The pergolide capsules are supposed to maintain their effectiveness the best so maybe she doesn't really need a full 1 mg.

Have you tried giving the Advanced Protection Formula (APF) that many of the folks on the EquineCushings group use? It is supposed to help with the pergolide veil, stress, appetite. You'd have to syringe it orally.

If you have some UlcerGard paste on hand you could try giving that to her for a couple of days before changing anything else and see if that helps her.

[vxf111]

How is the horse going to get Ulcergard when she can't tolerate any syringing by mouth?

If it were me, I'd try to get the horse used to the syringing because-- in the long run-- it's better to have a horse you can syringe. I'd hate to find myself in a veterinary situation where my horse NEEDED meds and I couldn't get them in him because he refused to accept syringing and I knew that and hadn't worked on the issue pre-emergency. But that's just me. My horses need to stand for shots, shoeing, take their meds etc. because god forbid-- someday it may be situation critical and that is the LAST moment where I want to be fighting the horse because he doesn't accept treatment.

I know it's tough. Trust me, I know. I had a horse that used to have to be sedated for shoeing and another that was violently ear twitched to the point where you can't touch his face above his eyes. Neither was a pleasure to get to the point where they could be reliably shod/have their ears cleaned of gnats-- but I worked with them to the point that it's at least acceptably easy. Not fun. Not fun AT ALL, but I consider it an investment in saving myself from even worse issues down the line.

This is kind of a tangent though. If Libby won't accept the pergolide in her feed and you can't/won't syringe it in her mouth-- then you're left trying to reduce the dose or mask the flavor. You can, in addition to what has been suggested, try peppermint extract, molasses, or corn syrup (tiny amounts due to the sugar). I have had varying success with different horses sneaking meds into those three things. I have had better success with the kool aid-- it's sweet and strong when undiluted. The problem is, some horses figure out that the med is in the flavoring and after a while they stop eating again. So you may have to juggle, vary the flavoring, try different things.

Good luck, pergolide has made an IMMENSE difference in all the cushings horses I've known. Even a few missed doses/uneaten doses seem to really throw them for a loop.

[Auventera Two]

She has gotten Ulcergard by mouth and she did tolerate it. But she shakes and sweats the minute she sees a syringe. The horse lived in a field for 16 years with no handling. She just gets scared of some things. She'll hop in a trailer and go somewhere without a problem, but syringes scare her. I don't know if somebody tried to give her something years ago and she had a bad experience with it??? Not sure. She does not refuse to accept it. She does it, but she just gets so scared. The stress hormones can't be good for her system so I do like to avoid it if there's another way. Obviously if the horse were dying and had to get meds by mouth daily, we'd just do it. It's not like it takes 4 cowboys and a swamp monster to hold her down. I can do it, she can tolerate it, but she starts shaking all over like a leaf in the wind and then breaks out in a sweat that runs down her legs and drips off her pasterns. It takes her a good hour to calm down and quit shaking/sweating. I tried getting her over it by syringing apple sauce for a few days and she didn't get better with that. For her to have that much fear of that one thing, I kind of think somebody did something to her or her mouth at some point.

I just want to try avoiding daily syringing of pergolide to avoid the stress on her if possible. I have syringed pergolide into her for about 5 days in a row, I think. It made no difference to her eating her feed.

[vxf111]

I don't want you to stress her out either! It's just that I've seen horses go off their feed entirely when the pergolide is in there. It's not so much the lack of food, but the fact that then it means they're not getting the pergolide... and I think they can really go downhill when that happens.

If she is okay with the Ulcergard, then she must like cinnamon flavor?! You can buy cinnamon extract. You might also be able to make a paste with the pergolide and some mushed feed and give it to her using an old/spent Ulcergard tube-- if it's the look of the syringe that bothers her.

I feel for you having a horse that came with "issues," but if she won't eat the pergolide in her feed-- you're going to have to find some way to get it in her. :(

[Auventera Two]

Ok, I think I miscommunicated some information here. :lol: The horse DOES eat the pergolide in the feed. But it takes her 12 hours of nibbling a bite here and there to get it. She goes over to the bucket, eats a little nibble then walks off and does something else for a while, then comes back and eats another little nibble. Same deal with hay.

And she cleans up the feed/pergolide before she eats the hay. So most mornings I go out and the feed bucket is empty but 2 flakes of hay are still laying there. She is obviously getting the pergolide, or she wouldn't have quit eating the hay. That horse used to polish off her whole ration of hay in 30 minutes flat if it wasn't in a small hole hay net. If I put her out in the field, she does eat grass though, didn't lose a taste for that.

I put cinnamon in her feed for the insulin regulating properties (yeah I know that's controversial.) It makes no difference, cinnamon or no cinnamon. But I haven't tried the extract.

Ok, so first I'll try to reduce the dosage of pergolide a bit. If that doesn't do anything, I'll try adding the CTB and then go from there.

[grayarabs]

A2 - how is Libbey doing in regards to her coat? ie the areas you were concerned about?
I have limited experience with Pergolide. When my dear boy foundered due to Cushings we started him on the P at full dose - and I have mentioned he stopped drinking - in the middle of the summer. Should have started out lower dose at first.
My boy was a good patient, but I had so many meds and supps to try to get into him.
Don't recall all I was doing - Mag and Chromium? I tried to use a syringe to dose him - ie putting the powders in water in syringe - but it always got stopped up. One day I just said to H with this - and rightly or wrongly - out of sheer desperation - just used a little tiny scoop with the meds in it - opened his mouth - and placed/dumped the meds either on his tongue or wherever I could. I am sure it did not taste good, but I could not think of anything better to do - and it worked. Well the method worked, but the rotation worsened and he was in so much pain I had to let him go peacefully. (He was shod, high-heeled, told to restrict movement etc etc - needless to say that method did not work).

[savvy9]

Check out this product - http://www.foxdenequine.com/misc.htm#balance - Foxden Equine makes a great, palatible product with Chasteberry and lots of other beneficial ingredients for Cushings Horses.

[Auventera Two]

Hey - she's doing good on the coat! She's shedding but given the fact we're still in the 20-30 degree range at night, they all still have a lot of hair. I never had a problem with her shedding before though. But she did have that curly hair. Some of that is still there, some is gone.

Oh, I forgot to mention, she's on a Probiotic. She gets the probiotic made by the Equishine people. I can't remember what its called right now.

I started her on 1/2 dose (1/2 mg) for a week, then moved up to 1 mg. She has gotten pickier and pickier on the eating.

[Androcles]

Check out this product - http://www.foxdenequine.com/misc.htm#balance - Foxden Equine makes a great, palatible product with Chasteberry and lots of other beneficial ingredients for Cushings Horses.


Do you have experience with it? Did you find it worked?

[meaty ogre]

So as far as you know, there's no tolerance buildup with the fenugreek? What is it actually doing?

No. It's not the same principle as the pergolide (doesn't work on dopamine or cause downregulation of dopamine receptors...it's an entirely different thing).

I'm not exactly sure if scientists even know exactly how it works. It may stimulate the sythesis and release of insulin or it may sensitize the body to provide a better insulin response.
http://www.biomedexperts.com/Abstract.bme/12683221/Mechanism_of_action_of_a_hypoglycemic_principle_is olated_from_fenugreek_seeds


For anyone who does treat with pergolide, do they recommend that you give the horse a week off, or is it continually given? I just wonder because the resulting down-regulation of dopamine receptors is well documented in studies (http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/34/9/1208).

[meaty ogre]

I started her on 1/2 dose (1/2 mg) for a week, then moved up to 1 mg. She has gotten pickier and pickier on the eating.

Loss of appetite is the most common initial side effect according to this, which also recommends stopping treatment for a few days and then start at 1/2 dose and work back up.
http://www.pergolidealert.com/pergolide_monograph.asp

[Katy Watts]

For anyone who does treat with pergolide, do they recommend that you give the horse a week off, or is it continually given?

No, it's continually given. I believe I have all the full text papers on pergolide in horses and there is no mention of intermittent dosing. I have also heard Dr. Donaldson speak a couple times at conferences and he authored one of the most important retro clinical studies on pergolide efficacy. He has had some horses that required up to 5 mg/day, but did not say that increase of dose was a common finding. The literature mentions that loss of appetite is usually transitory, like a week or so. Mine have decreased appetite for a few days when I started or increase dose.
Katy