Hello everyone, it’s your favorite hospital mascot, Lupin, checking in with some more informative content for you!
I’ve gotten a lot of questions from my fellow dog buddies, wondering why their people have been changing their food lately. You see, some of my friends had been on grain-free diets, but were taken off of these diets by their people.
Luckily, as you may know, my dad is a vet, so I asked him for the low-down on what’s going on with the grain-free diets. As it turns out, veterinarians all around the world have seen an increase in cases of dilated cardiomypathy, or DCM, in dogs. This is a condition that has been recognized for many, many years, but it seems that the number of cases has really exploded over the last few years.
What is also interesting is the fact that this disease was showing up in dog breeds that had not been previously thought to be affected by this disease. This got some vets thinking – why are we seeing so much more DCM and why is it suddenly spreading to unexpected breeds? It turns out that a strong common link in these cases was that a high number of these dogs were eating grain-free diets.
Grain-free diets have increased greatly in popularity over the last several years due to concerns of skin allergies in pets. While some pets may have improvements in their allergy symptoms on these diets, data from veterinary dermatologists (who study these allergies in-depth), shows that grains are actually very low on the list of food allergens in dogs. Nonetheless, these diets have become quite popular due to aggressive advertising on the part of food companies. Anyway, that can be a whole other topic for another blog post from me some other time!
Getting back to how this affects hearts, the question now is what is it about these diets that is causing the problem? The short answer is that no one is sure quite yet. The lack of grains themselves does not appear to be a problem, nor does the lack of taurine, which is a critical amino acid for heart function. Pretty much all of the diets tested by the FDA had adequate taurine levels. So, the current thought is that one of the ingredients substituted for grains as a carbohydrate source may be causing a problem.
Many of these grain-free diets will use legumes, peas, lentils, and maybe even potatoes as carbohydrate sources. The current theory from veterinary cardiologists (yes, there are cardiology specialists for dogs just like there are for people!) is that one or more of these ingredients is somehow causing the problem leading to DCM in so many dogs.
Research is ongoing as to how that actually works in the body and how food companies can work around the problem in the future. But for now, my dad and many other vets are recommending switching off of any grain-free formula, and checking in with your vet if you’ve been feeding one of these foods for further recommendations. There are options for dogs like me with allergies, so be sure to check with your vet if this is a concern for you!
This is Lupin signing off, and thanks for reading my blog!
