BVSc(Hons) VetMFHom MRCVS
Dr. Viljoen is a practicing Veterinarian, a trained and qualified Homeopath, and a Medical Nutritionist. Simply Remedies, Natural, Vets and Pets offer organic, natural and biologically appropriate solutions to pets and their parents. Dr. Viljoen brings over 20 years of knowledge and experience to her range of products, which have been extensively tested in her practice and in the field in South Africa.
Simply Brands is a group of companies, products and brands, that share a common purpose – to provide people and animals with access to better health, while caring for the environment. Through the various products and services offered by us, we’re making natural, holistic health care easier and more accessible.
At Simply Vets and Pets, we treat individuals with disease, not the disease as such.
We are talking about individual patient care and not the conventional model of patient care by the book.
Treating animals holistically, we aim to start supporting the body when subtle functional issues become evident, long before medical diagnostics confirm deep seated disease. Unlike trauma or acute illness, diseases generally develop slowly over long periods of time and are not noticed owing to the body’s great capacity to compensate. As soon as we notice lack of normal or if the patient becomes ill of ease (“dis-ease”) we should act in a preventative manner making individual optimal changes to benefit individual optimal health. This is not the same from one patient to the next, owing to biochemical and metabolic individuality. This is why the same treatment for the same disease may work for one patient but not another. This is what makes holistic medicine massively challenging, and yet tremendously rewarding.
If your pet has already been diagnosed with serious illness which is not responding adequately to conventional or allopathic treatments we are also often able to help reverse many of the symptoms and at least afford your pet a quality of life (QOL). For us, this is the most important criteria and reason to treat.
QOL if where it is at: For this reason we do not use suppressive or chemotherapeutical agents such as cortisone and cellular destructive medications, as these often have severe side effect that do not afford an animal QOL.
A typical consultation would include an hour long holistic in depth history and examination, whereby we are able to ascertain subtle issues, trends in disease, possible triggers, causation or maintaining factors which have led to the problem or are exacerbating the problem. The primary caregiver or person that knows the animal the best must be present to answer any questions during this consultation. Observe your pets carefully for a few weeks to note the subtle differences and preferences between them and others. The treatment we are able to give will only be as good as the information provided, as this is what we would use to make the choices of treatments or remedies in the case of homeopathy.
Depending on the condition and problem at hand, we would employ any one of or combination of the treatment modalities that we have training in. Mostly it would include homeopathy, nutritional support, life-style changes and possibly herbs or acupuncture.
Proper diagnosis of the problem is imperative and as such we would need access to any previous treatments or diagnostic work done. My Practice will request full histories from previous caregivers and Veterinarians. If further diagnostics are needed, we would either do them in house (radiographs, ultrasound, blood work, microscopy etc.) or send tests away.
Typical follow up consultations occur 2-4 weeks later for half an hour, except in the case of acupuncture in which case it is usually weekly for 4-6 sessions. Some chronic allergy cases and cancer cases often require injection therapy (homotoxicology) which we usually repeat weekly at first. Each individual case will be assessed by its own merit. Many conditions can be dealt with telephonically, especially in the follow up stages.
It is important to understand that often it is a long process that led to the illness in the first place and as such it will take time for the condition to improve or correct naturally, and quick fixes can only be expected for acute (sudden onset) conditions not for chronic ones.
Holistic healing or alternative treatments is not for everyone, and as such you must be sure that you are prepared to follow through with the path of healing and not stop after the first sign of change. It will be the very best gift you could ever give yourself or your animal companion, and may turn out to be life changing for both of you. Be prepared.
As a Holistic Veterinarian I am not just interested in treating individual illness and diseases, but in overall prevention of disease and in creating optimum health for my patients.
Rather pay for wellness now than illness later.
Dr. Anuska
