19/12/2023
📸 Look at this post on Facebook https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=902927601212174&id=100044848263328&mibextid=WC7FNe
Just ruminating on how prevalent nutrient deficiency is in pets and I keep coming back to the DCM example:
Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a condition in which the left ventricle, the heart's main pumping chamber, is enlarged (dilated). As the chamber gets bigger, its thick muscular wall stretches, becoming thinner and weaker (myo-pathy). This affects the heart's ability to pump enough oxygen-rich blood to the rest of the body.
Sadly the disease is rife in pets. Sanderson (2006) estimates around 1% of America's 90mil dogs are suffering it.
A staggering figure.
DCM is due largely to a lack of the amino acid taurine circulating in the patient. While many bits can interfere with their absorption of taurine (such as too much plant fibre in the diet...heads up vegetarian pet food feeders), the primary cause of a lack of taurine in an animal is, somewhat unsurprisingly, a lack of it in the diet (OR, as taurine can be made in the body, a lack of its precursors methionine and cysteine). Either way, deficiency.
It's called taurine as it's best sourced from meat, specifically beef (taurus=bull).
Unfortunatley for dogs consuming the high-carb kibble still promoted by the vast majority of the West's vets today, kibble companies aren't known to include a whole heap of meat in their mixes. Vegetarian foods include none at all. If "meat" is in there at all, it's most often "meat and bone" meal, which is bone meal to everyone outside of the pet food industry. So, little to no actual meat (and thus taurine) at all. They try to artificially supplement to cover the nutrient deficiencies inherent in their dirt poor ingredients but those concical flask additions are obliterated in processing.
Raw is absolutely stuffed FULL of taurine. Hence, you don't hear too many raw-fed dogs coming down with DCM. It's virtually impossible for them to be deficient in it.
High-carb kibble has a LOT to answer for here (and that's before we start considering the known role of low-protein diets in kidney disease, pancreatitis, diabetes, etc). Don't forget, 66% of UK's "complete" kibbles fail to meet the minimum nutritional standards set out by the kibble companies themselves.
Got a breed at risk of DCM? Do not feed them kibble.
Got a dog with a heart issue? Feed them raw with 10% heart meat. That's a truly vital first step.
[Want to learn more about the DCM scandal, where Big Pet Food colluded with the FDA to repress the growth of grain-free pet food, then check this out
https://www.facebook.com/DogsFirstIreland/posts/pfbid02ZphJ2BrR1z4yuhN874gs5k5nBVqzaWhHLQihHTukbj5Qy5qxGFQth29DJu7Aoatsl?__cft__[0]=AZUmWS63kJ38Vve8DPdjHT9iED7h41w8JF-7CQvdytM015OaMcHrga5KLIU8Tu8ryFbQMNuPgvosHMhPf0n1GKEBiFsajqx_kIx7jGnOpVDU6mSnhVeEdMnn7cnnzJODRTxRTJyx0pQoVlQWLSl-uZNiu5Je4odK0DYAk567wDBMdr4Lqcjn16rxxDd3dTglAhY&__tn__=R]-R]
