How Electroceuticals Reduce Anxiety, Stress in Pets

"Electroceuticals are, as a prescription medical device, approved for anxiety," says Ava Frick, DVM, CVC, FAIS, chief of staff at Pet Rehab & Pain Clinic in Eureka, Missouri.

"With animals, the whole stress thing. Of course, mostly we're talking about anxiety with dogs because they are the ones that interact the most with people on a day-to-day basis. The deal with dogs is that, if they have an anxiety attack and if they are really stressed out, they are going to do something that's destructive. What do they have? It's either going to be their mouth—so they're barking at people all day when they're gone or they tear something up—or their feet which is also destructive to the home and they scratch and pull things down. And so, we're looking for ways to help address that.

So, when we see these dogs with anxiety, because they are so attached to that human person, it's a difficult thing to change. Using the microcurrent, it's basically introduced to the body through little clips that go on the ears. It's a very, very low frequency, it's subsensory—which means they don't even feel it—and it introduces through the vestibular apparatus into the limbic system and the brain, which is where anxieties and fears and aggression and all those things coordinate, in the amygdala of the limbic system, and then out to all other areas of the brain, including the cerebral cortex so we get perception and alterations of your perception about your body. And so, we use this then. The people just sit with their pet and we have the clips on them for 20 minutes or 30 minutes. A lot of the dogs just fall asleep while they're having their therapy. It increases in them the serotonin-beta endorphins—one 20-minute treatment up to 200%. So, immediately they start to feel better, they get this feel-good sensation, and, because of how it functions throughout the brain, then it reduces their stress level."