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WYSONG COMPANION ANIMAL HEALTH LETTER
Dr. R. L. Wysong
May 1996
DEAR FRIEND:
The most common inquiry we receive is from
pet owners who want recommendations for a specific health problem their pet is
experiencing. In some cases people who have been using Wysong Diets for quite
some time might even be having a health problem with their companion animal.
Someone might wonder why their dog has developed arthritis when it has been fed
Adult Maintenance for the past two years. Or a cat owner may be puzzled by why
her cat has developed a urinary stone blocking its bladder when it has been fed
Feline Vitality for its entire life.
Although it would be nice if diseases could
always be reducible to simple cause and effect, such is not usually the case.
Most serious diseases in fact only manifest themselves after many years have
elapsed since the cause (or causes) began. In this time a wide variety of
circumstances may have actually contributed to the development of the
condition.
Inherent in modern domestic life is almost
certain toxic contact from the air, water, food, and the home environment.
Disease may result from any one or all of these. There may also be a genetic
weakness, or a nutritional deficiency or imbalance.
Though modern medicine is geared toward
attempting to achieve a specific diagnosis and prescribing a specific cure - and
we have all been led to believe this is to be expected - very seldom is there a
specific diagnosis identifying a specific cause and a remedy that can be
prescribed that causes a reversal and cure.
So it would be very difficult for us here to
be able to satisfy the need for a silver bullet cure for health problems even if
we were in a position to fully evaluate cases. (Nor would we be legally
permitted to do so by the FDA.) But what we can do is help you to restore
balances into your pet's life to give it the best chance of recovering from and
preventing disease.
That is the whole point of the Wysong
Feeding-For-Health Program. Wysong is not just a better pet food to serve as a
“100% complete and balanced” diet which can be fed day in and day out for an
animal's life. Although I continually stress throughout all our literature and
labeling the need to fresh-food supplement and give appropriate nutritional
supplements as described on page 4, many people have not discovered the
importance of this concept. Still others ignore it, opting for the convenience
of simply feeding one food day in and day out.
To me it is a marvel that all pets fed
exclusively any processed foods are even alive. It is a testimony to the
fantastic adaptability of organisms that they are able to withstand such
nutritional abuse.
So if you call with a health problem, almost
regardless of what the problem is, we are going to tell you pretty much the same
thing. Cycle through the Wysong Diets using the principle of variety. You can
cycle-feed, as I mentioned in the January issue, Junior Growth to elderly dogs,
Senior Less Active to adult dogs, cat food to puppies and Anergen to kittens.
Also remember - fresh foods are a must on a daily basis. Such variety including
the canned Diets and also incorporating the supplements Biotic, Pet Inoculant
and EFA, combined with daily fresh air, sunshine, exercise and lots of tender
loving care is the formula for optimal health.
There are simply no short cuts.
WHY MINERAL FORM IS IMPORTANT
It can be argued that the most essential
class of nutrients is minerals. This can be said because essentially all other
nutrients can be created by living organisms. Lipids (fats and oils),
carbohydrates, proteins and enzymes are all created within living tissue.
However, none of these processes would be possible if minerals were not
present. Minerals are our direct link to the Earth itself, since this is where
minerals are derived. The other nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats and
proteins are our link to the sun, since they embody the energy derived from it.
We all know the importance of calcium and
phosphorus in the bones. But what is less well known or understood is the wide
range of important physiological functions a host of other mineral elements
play. For example, zinc is essential for the function of over 200 biochemical
processes. Chromium is important for the proper functioning of insulin so that
glucose can be properly metabolized. Iodine is important for thyroid function.
Iron is critical in red blood cell formation and selenium is a critical
component of the important antioxidant glutathione peroxidase. The list could
go on and on discussing hundreds of important biological functions that depend
upon dozens of major, minor and trace minerals.
Minerals take on increasing importance in
our modern day, because increasingly the foods we eat and feed our pets are
derived from farm lands that only have three elements replaced to the land each
year after crops are continually harvested. NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium) in these fertilizers does not replenish the land with the dozens of
minerals these plants take up and deliver to their crops. Over the years our
food supply becomes increasingly impoverished of minerals, while horticulturists
busy themselves trying to create weak hybrids of farm crops that are absolutely
dependent upon NPK fertilizers and pesticides for their survival.
The ideal source of minerals is as they are
complexed within plant and animal tissue foods. But if these plants and food
animals do not consume crops that have the minerals, then their tissues will
not contain them. The problem is not solved by simply going out and buying
calcium tablets to give your pet “to build strong bones.”
Supplementation of modern diets is very
important to deliver not only the major minerals, but the dozens of minor and
trace minerals that are and are not yet known to affect health physiology.
Further, not only is it important that
minerals be available in the diet, but that they be in a proper mix, inorganic
and organically complexed to create the best results. In this regard it was
found that organically complexed minerals (chelates, proteinates) were superior
to many inorganic forms of minerals because as the minerals are tied to amino
acids and proteins, they are absorbed within tissues more readily. But in the
haste by some to move to these organically complexed minerals, problems resulted
because too large of a percentage of these organic complexed minerals could
actually interfere with mineral metabolism. It has subsequently been shown that
a mix of inorganic and organic minerals is ideal.
This is the reason you will find listings on
the labels of Wysong Diets of a variety of inorganic minerals (e.g. zinc
sulfate and iron sulfate) along with organic minerals (e.g. zinc proteinate and
iron proteinate). In addition, the Wysong Diets contain a very unique 74 trace
mineral supplement which is derived from an ancient geological deposit of a
composted sea bed vegetation (pre-pollution), which contains an extraordinary
range of minerals in both organic and inorganic form. (As a separate dietary
supplement in pill form this is known as Wysong Chelamin.)
Like all other nutrients, minerals do not
act in isolation. By feeding one or two or even half a dozen minerals to an
animal we don’t really know what we are doing because all minerals behave as
they are related to other minerals. For example, the ratio of calcium to
phosphorus in the diet is far more important than the absolute level of calcium
in the diet.
Therefore, other than for very special
circumstances, be sure that you do not supplement singular minerals since no one
knows for sure how this may imbalance the system. It may actually create the
opposite effect intended.
Feeding Wysong Diets with the range of
inorganic, organically complexed and composted trace mineral sources it
contains, along with fresh food supplementation should create the ideal
mineral-rich diet to give your pet the best opportunity for optimal health.
Yogurt, Not Milk
All mammals, humans and animals, thrive on
mother’s milk during infancy. But the ability to digest milk, particularly the
milk sugar lactose, decreases with age and may disappear entirely in certain
adults. The result is that after milk is ingested there can be a variety of
symptoms including diarrhea, bloating, abdominal pain and flatulence. This is
seen frequently when people put down bowls of milk for pets.
To avoid this problem and still give your
pet the benefit of dairy products, yogurt should be used instead of milk. Use
the plain yogurt, not the sugared yogurt. Better yet, make your own yogurt as
described in Vol. 8, No. 6 of the Wysong Health Letter (see Reference 1).
The reason yogurt is tolerated better than
milk is because the bacterial cultures in yogurt have the ability to synthesize
beta-galactosidase, the enzyme that is capable of digesting lactose.
So go ahead and use yogurt periodically as
one of the fresh supplemented foods we recommend you incorporate into your pet’s
diet.
If you read the label closely on Wysong
Diets, as well as the Biotics and Pet Inoculant, you will see a listing of
various microbial cultures such as lactobacillus acidophilus. One of the
reasons we add these to these foods is that they are capable of seeding the
digestive tract with healthy, friendly micro-organisms that not only decrease
the possibility of disease-causing micro-organisms taking root, but have the
capability of producing a variety of enzymes such as the beta-galactosidase that
help your pet better digest foods including milk products.
Reference: 1.2-5
Volume 8, Number 6 of theWysong Health
Letter, available from the non-profit Wysong Institute, 1880 N. Eastman Road,
Midland, MI 48640 for $6.00.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
November 1995: 1003-
Journal of Dairy Science, 1983; 66:
959-66
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
1984; 40: 1219-23
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
1989; 49: 1233-7
Selenium For Pancreatitis
Pancreatitis can be a severe debilitating
life-threatening disease.
A recent study has shown that the
administration of oral sodium selenite, an antioxidant mineral often deficient
in the diet, was highly effective in the treatment of pancreatitis. In the
study, no patient who was given the sodium selenite died, whereas 89% of those
who didn’t receive it did.
The treatment regimen is as follows: Upon
diagnosis of pancreatitis, human patients are given 200 mcg of sodium selenite
mixed with food. Then in 24 hours they are given another 800 mcg and from the
second day on they are given a dose of 500 mcg daily.
Since this treatment has not been adapted to
animals, depending upon the severity of the condition, dosages ranging up to
these levels might be tried. A rule of thumb for adapting human dosages to
animals is found in Resource 6.
Reference:
For converting human dosages to animal
dosages, a safe starting dose as a general rule of thumb is to calculate the
dosage based on the weight of your animal in proportion to a human. (e.g. 4
capsules for a 160 lb. person equals 1 capsule for a 40 lb. dog) However,
since animals have higher metabolic rates than humans, higher dosages are
usually needed and should be given with slow, incremental increases, watching
for adverse reactions such as vomiting, loose stool and depression.
Z Gesamte Inn Med, 1991; 46: 145-149
Med Klin, 1995; 90: 36-41
Watch The Ashtrays
Some pets will try anything, even
cigarettes. Since the lethal dose is less than 2 cigarettes for children,
cigarette butts lying around the house or outside on the ground should be
considered a potential threat to your pet.
Since pets could consume cigarette butts
quickly without owners even being aware that it has happened, it is hard to
evaluate the incidence of this in pets. Symptoms would include primarily
gastrointestinal distress. Since this is the most common presenting symptom to
veterinary clinics, it is likely that it occurs more often than noticed.
In some human hospitals, as many as 15% of
the admissions for children are due to the consumption of cigarettes.
Reference:
Lancet, November 11, 1995: 1296
Probiotics For The Seniors
As animals age, their ability to secrete
hydrochloric acid in the stomach decreases. This acid is not only necessary for
the digestion of proteins, but also helps inhibit the growth of disease-causing
organisms.
This is one of the reasons that probiotic
organisms are added to all Wysong Diets and the recommendation is made that all
animals, and in particular the very young and the old, be given regular
supplementation with extra doses of probiotics. (See the Wysong
Feeding-For-Health Program below.)
By increasing the levels of probiotic
(friendly) micro-organisms in the digestive tract, a wide array of health
benefits result, including improved vitamin nutrition, anticarcinogenic
activity, immune enhancement, improvement of constipation and competitive
inhibition of disease-causing organisms.
Reference:
American Journal of Epidemiology, 1994;
140; 4: 350
Exercise For Diabetes
Companion animals can get both juvenile and
adult onset diabetes just like people can.
You predispose your pet to developing
adult-onset diabetes (juvenile diabetes is believed to be hereditary in nature)
by feeding a constant diet of high carbohydrate, nutrient-impoverished
(so-called "100% complete and balanced") processed foods day in and day out, and
encouraging a sedentary lifestyle.
By repeatedly causing a muscle to contract
as occurs in exercise, insulin levels are lowered. Since a high level of blood
insulin can occur in diabetes and is related to a variety of diabetic
pathologies, encouraging regular, daily exercise will help alleviate the
condition.
Reference:
Journal of Applied Physiology, 1994; 7;
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