I’ve just been to see my lovely chiropracter, Kay, for my regular back crunch to keep me in the saddle. As always, while I’m lying flat out on her couch, we chat away with our latest news, hers is her chickens, mine being my barefoot project. Meanwhile, I’d just finished ‘The Book’ last night (first read, now need to go back to the beginning to translate all the words I didn’t understand!) so I was mightily lucid (in a very non-techy kind of way) on all things hoofs, bones, tendons and ligaments - ish.
Naturally for her, being a muscular/skeletal pro, she's interested in this barefoot thing, and cut a long one short, the more I was yakking away about the importance of transitioning the horse to a heel first landing to make ‘everything’ work better, and the importance of sole/frog/heel stimulation, plus of course diet, environment, exercise blablabla, she had a eureka moment in that …… wait for it ….. it’s the same in horses as in humans!
So Kay started comparing the two, noting the way we walk and how it affects everything, and how diabetes/insulin resistance affects the human feet and therefore the importance of controlling blood sugar levels etc etc. She then asked ‘what happens if…’ in various equine scenarios, to which I was replying mainly that vets nerve-block. And because Kay knows all about bones/tendons/muscles/ligaments and nerves, she then questioned the effects of metal (as in shoes) on horse nerves.
Stay with me, cos I’m about to get to the real point of this post. Her point was that metal vibrates, and nerves hate vibration. And if you over-stimulate the nerves in a negative way over a prolonged time, it can cause nerves to die - I know how my arm and shoulder feel after I’ve strimmed acres of nettles back for an hour. And thus, if you have no nerves, you have no feeling, which then leads to the progressive destruction of the joint, cartilage disruption, bone fragmentation etc.
By now we were both on a roll! She suggested that maybe, then, instead of vets blocking nerves, they/we/someone should do a nerve conduction study instead, because unlike us humans who can say to a doctor ‘I can’t feel my knee/shoulder/elbow/foot,' horses can’t tell us. If the horse’s nerves were no longer ‘feeling’, there’d be no pain or heat, so very difficult for us to tell by trying to locate a problem. As she said, in all likelihood, this could be an injury we’d only find out about when the joint/bone had finally collapsed. Which by then is too late. As she so eloquently pointed out, in humans the dead bits get chopped off. You can’t do that with a horse . . .
To conclude, she then got out one of her (massive) chiropracty encyclopedic volumes, page 884, and showed me the section and x-ray pics on ‘Neurotrophic Arthropathy’, and I quote; ‘a destructive articular disruption that occurs secondary to a loss of impairment in joint proprioception. Subsequently, the involved joint undergoes premature and excessive traumatic degenerative changes that lead to destruction and instability.’
To summarise, the pathogenetic sequence of events in Neurotrophic Joint Disease is:
- altered neurological status (sensation/proprioception)
- leads to inappropriate relaxation of the supporting structure (muscles/ligaments)
- leads to misalignment
- leads to progressive joint destruction/cartilage disruption/hone fragmentation
- leads to final disorganisation
Gawd, the more I get into this barefoot thing, the more I shudder at the thought of metal on hoofs. Certainly my chiropracter got it, and she runs a mile at the sight of a horse! So yet another reason not to put shoes on, perhaps?
Julie
Does traumatic degenerative changes mean arthritis? I know of a couple of shod horses who have developed arthritis at around 10 or 11 years old. Is that unusual? It seems very young. I had read about metal vibrating at a frequency that damages living tissue in one of the Strasser books. Its really interesting to hear a professional who is not involved in barefoot horses state the same thing.
Your right, shoes cause damage in so many different ways, there are so many reasons not to shoe.
becnreps
Quote:
Does traumatic degenerative changes mean arthritis? I know of a couple of shod horses who have developed arthritis at around 10 or 11 years old. Is that unusual? It seems very young.
I'm not sure whether the degenerative changes do mean arthritis but I too know of a couple of shod horses who have developed arthritis young.
One of the horses was put to sleep about 2 months ago. He was only 10 years old and the arthritis had already "got the better of him" he was on bute indefinitely and just before he was pts, he was in so much pain and was completely lame.
When he was sound, whenever we rode out together - she couldn't trot on the roads as the vibration was too much for his legs, it made him incredibly sore, if not lame.
I did notice though, that the horse had quite a bad farrier and even though he was only a TBXID, he had huge feet, like dinner plates! The toes had run forward, heels contracted and were very high off the ground - a bit of a mess really. I always had a sneaking suspicion that was why he had got the arthritis ... something to do with being shod.
Yann
I think the Strasserites did put this forward as one of their theories, along with a few others that were slightly less credible. Might be wrong but wouldn't this only be valid on tarmac or concrete? If the horse is being ridden on gravel, earth or grass for example I don't think you'd get the same effect would you? A tuning fork doesn't resonate if you hit something yielding with it.
dorisday
Just scanning Kay's photocopy that she gave me to see if arthritis is named, but it's not - not that that necessarily means anything. But what it does say is, under 'Clinical Features', (and remember this is related to human skeletal function - not equine - but an interesting link (to laminitus) all the same) :
"In the past, syphilitic neuroarthropathy has been the most common cause (of joint degeneration) but more recently has been replaced by diabetes. Of all diabetic patients many will develop neurotrophic arthropathy, usually involving the ankle, subtalar joints, and feet."
Apparently alcoholism can produce the same effects as well, so best I move that crate of beer from Murphy's stable then . . .
