Understanding vitality: the fundamental key to vibrant good health and longevity

Pet vitality optimization is something you can easily put into action to help your pet’s health be the best possible.

Let’s start off by defining vitality. Here are some  dictionary definitions.

• the state of being strong and active; energy
• the power giving continuance of life, present in all living things.
• energy and strength
• the power or ability to continue in existence, live, or grow

I add another definition to these ones.

• the store of vital life force energy stored and moving in and through the physical and energy bodies of living beings

Vitality is the most important thing when it comes to having a vibrantly healthy, happy, connected pet who will live a long, active life (good healthy longevity). Once you get a handle on what vitality is, what supports and strengthens vitality in your pet’s body, and what erodes your pet’s vitality, you can make a massive difference for your pets.

Your pet starts with a store of vitality from birth. You could think of this as a battery – the pet’s living being is the battery, and also expresses the vital life force energies as part of the processes of life. It’s a bit like the body is both the battery and the engine, when it comes to vitality. 

If your pet has healthy genetics, their vitality battery will be bigger, and stronger. If your pet has poor genetics, then the battery is both smaller, and weaker.  It’s just like a phone or car battery- the capacity of the battery degrades a little with every recharge cycle. This is what happens with natural ageing. Over the years, your pet’s ‘vitality battery’ recharges less and less, until eventually, there’s simply not enough vital energy in the system to support life any longer. 

When you get a new pet – a puppy or a kitten, it’s important to make sure that they have a low Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI). Ideally, it should be below 5%, and anything above 10% is pretty bad. If you like pure breeds, that’s a problem, because only about 5 breeds are under 10%, and the worst breeds can be 30%, 40% even 70% in the worst cases. COI needs to be calculated back at least 20 generations to be of value. 

Whatever pet you have, and whatever age they are when they move into your home, they will have a certain size of vitality battery. Every choice you make about anything you do with your pets will either increase vitality (charge the battery), be neutral (no impact on vitality) or erode vitality (damage the battery – making its capacity smaller, and/or less able to recharge effectively or quickly. 

You want to always be doing everything you can to enhance vitality, to maintain that ‘battery’ so it stays strong and with as much capacity as possible for as long as you can while your pet ages. At the same time, you’ll want to avoid anything that erodes vitality, that drains or damages the ‘vitality battery’

Vitality enhancers

• Healthy relaxation: Pets should spend at least 70-90% of their time in a state of healthy relaxation.
• Healthy fresh whole foods diet: This makes a massive difference to vitality levels.
• Fresh air, fresh pure water, unfiltered sunlight: In city environments, it can take a real effort to make sure these needs are met for your pets.
• Superfoods and supplements: Antioxidants like blueberries are great, and there are many other superfoods (high density of important nutrients), and supplements, herbs etc that strengthen and charge the ‘vitality battery’.
• Loving touch, social connection: Loving touch from you can be incredibly supportive of wellbeing + vitality. Social connection and play are important too.
• Adequate healthy sleep: Sleep is when the deepest regeneration of the being occurs. All pets need to be given space and time for healthy sleep.
• Complementary, alternative and holistic therapies and medicines: These kinds of treatments generally support vitality, and strengthen the whole being as they work to heal illness.

Vitality destroyers

• Stress and anxiety: Stress and anxiety mean that the body is running on adrenaline, in fight/flight mode. It’s the opposite of rest and regeneration. Stress in the humans in the family affects pets adversely too.
• Silent and chronic pain: Pain not only causes stress but also upsets the immune system. It chews up vitality like a woodchipper chews up a felled tree. 53% of pets are living with undiagnosed (silent) soft tissue pain.
• Processed pet foods (kibble, tinned): These foods are slow poison, and they eat away at your pet’s vitality over time. 
• Itchiness and allergies: Itches literally drive your pet crazy, and cause stress. 
• Chronic illness: The longer an illness is active, the more harm it does to your pet’s ‘vitality battery’.
• Over vaccination: Many vets still blindly revaccinate, even though the C3 and F3 vaccines last for at least 5-7 years, often longer. While vaccines give amazing disease protection, they can and do cause harm, so you never want to give an unnecessary re-vaccination. Always titer test first.
• Trauma – Injury, surgeries etc: Every trauma of any kind damages the ‘vitality battery’. The more severe the event, the worse and the more lasting the damage will be.
• Toxic chemicals: Especially tick, flea, and antiparasitic treatments. Long-term, regular use of these erodes vitality. 
• Allopathic medicines and interventions: Allopathic medicine is often necessary, but it often degrades vitality. For example – antibiotics can cure a bacterial infection, but they damage the microbiome in the gut. Non Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDS) reduce pain levels, but may damage the liver, kidneys and gut. 

The secret to optimising your pet’s vitality is…

Doing everything you can to build vitality, and avoiding everything that erodes vitality as much as possible. 

And if you:

• Need allopathic interventions that cure a serious problem but cause a vitality hit, 
• Or your pet experiences physical or non-physical trauma,
• Or if stressful events affect your family unit…

You need to do everything you can to rebuild your pet’s vitality as much as possible. Doing all of this can make an incredible difference, and help your pets be happier, more energised, more vital, and live a much longer, active life!

Check out the companion video to this blog post at: https://youtu.be/sjd3t7wVhIo