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Newbie Question about nutrition info
My dog is not currently diabetic but as he has pancreatitis I know it is a risk. I also have a diabetic cat so knew searching for this sort of place would be key if I ever needed it. Something that came up in the feline diabetic forum was whether a list of carb content of various foods (wet and dry) was available for dogs as it is for cats. Thanks!
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Re: Newbie Question about nutrition info
Carbs are not a big deal for canine diabetics and can even be useful. And, in fact, canine diabetes diets are not really restricted at all.
Unlike cats, which are akin to human Type 2 diabetics, dogs are akin to Type 1 - they lose the ability to produce their own insulin and there are no remissions.
And because of the way they process some of the insulins they are given, dogs sometimes even need carbs in their diets. And high protein diets can be digested too slowly to work well with fast insulin action. It's not uncommon for a dog's insulin to start working immediately on injection and rapidly drop their blood sugar. In which case quickly digested carbs are needed.
The species differences are really interesting to me.
Dogs commonly develop cataracts in response to high blood sugar while cats rarely do. And cats commonly develop hind limb neuropathy while it's much rarer in dogs - usually only in dogs whose blood sugar has been very very high, 500s, 600s for a while or when they have other spinal problems that are exacerbated by moderately high blood sugar.
The species differences apply to dogs versus humans too. Dogs do not generally suffer from organ failure and other severe consequences of Type 1 diabetes. And insulins that might last 12 hours in a human can last as little as 6 in a dog because they generally metabolize insulin more quickly.
The good news is that dogs are, overall, pretty tolerant of blood sugar levels that would cause horrible damage to a human. They can go through life healthy and happy even when their blood sugar never gets below 200 and stays in the 200s and 300s.
So if your dog does develop diabetes (hope not), it's quite manageable but also needs a bit more laid back approach than a human Type 1 diabetic since they can't tell you when their blood sugar is low.
Fingers crossed it won't happen!
Natalie
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