I just read this article and I agree that probably the worst for a cat is the lack of activity because my cat ate mostly meaty canned food although he did like his dental diet dry stuff as well but I'm sure he would have been better off if he had exercised a bit more...wish I knew then what I know now.... www.chicagotribune.com/features/chi-cats_tuesdec04,1,5971915.story
chicagotribune.com
NATION
For cats, living large can lead to diabetes
Sedentary lifestyles, poor diets blamed

By Jennifer Mann

McClatchy-Tribune newspapers

December 4, 2007



The growing diabetes epidemic is not just hurting humans: It is increasingly afflicting the kitties curled up on our overlarge laps as we have allowed our tabbies to get tubby.

While there is not full agreement as to the causes, experts say the soaring rates of diabetes in the pet population -- and cats in particular -- mimic the reasons it has become epidemic in the people population: increasingly sedentary lifestyles coupled with copious consumption of highly refined foods.

Francis Kallfelz, a professor of veterinary nutrition at Cornell University, confirms that pet obesity is burgeoning.

"The literature shows that there is a huge incidence of overweightness in our pet population that's getting to be a bigger and bigger problem," Kallfelz said.

While there is a debate on the cause of the rise of cat diabetes, one theory gaining traction is that much of the dry cat food is too high in carbohydrates and too low in protein.

University of Missouri-Kansas City biology professor Karen Bame was shocked when she found out her beloved black cat, Rachel, was diabetic.

Her veterinarian explained cats need diets high in protein.

"It sort of blew me away because I teach biochemistry, and I had just gotten through with a lecture with my students about diabetes in people and how they should stay away from proteins," Bame said.

But people and cats have different physiologies. People (and dogs) are omnivores -- they'll eat animals and plants. Cats are carnivores, and, left to their own devices, eat other animals.

Bame switched Rachel from high-carbohydrate kibble to high-protein canned food. Four months after the switch, 15-pound Rachel went from 3 units of insulin a day to 1 1/2 . And she is a much healthier 11 pounds.

Kallfelz, however, disagrees with the premise that high-carb dry food is the culprit.

"I have seen no published evidence to the effect that feeding cats dry foods is a risk factor for diabetes," said Kallfelz.

Kallfelz pointed to a recent study from the Netherlands concluding that indoor confinement and inactivity were the biggest contributors to cat diabetes.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Before I comment, I'd like to make it clear that this is not a criticism on your upbringing of your dear cat, Toonie, in whatever lack you now feel you didn't provide for well enough for your liking. It's just that articles like this can really tick me off in their so-far-behindishness and lack of holistic (meaning "whole") reasoning.

So I gotta say.....from all the celebrated vets' and holistic human docs' works I've learned so much from, and all the reading about both human and animal health issues I've done for well over 13 years......well, to me this is like Grade 1 science! WE are animals, too, so while there are a few physiological differences between us and cats (and dogs), there are more similarities overall than there are differences. Therefore, our health issues are often much the same, as are many of the true causes (food, water, air, emotions, drugs, chemicals, thoughts, sometimes genetics, etc.), taking into account whatever differences must wisely be accounted for. As such, there is also usually more than one cause to any chronic health problem.

In particular, I can't agree with Kallfelz's last statement:

If this person really knew more about the BIGGER picture, they'd realize that even IF the carbs themselves weren't one of the major contributing factors, their quality and type could still be a large part of the problem, similarly to with humans, where whole (esp. organic) grains are a LOT different, health-wise, than refined grains. And don't even get me started on DRY foods (especially high-carb., low quality ones) contributing in a large way towards illness in animals. I suspect that this person doesn't want to believe that kibble is a poor choice, because that would impact the convenience of people's lifestyle.

Naturally, lack of exercise for them is no different in its effects than it is on ANY of us. I'm a prime example myself. Since losing Nissa, I've become WAY more sedentary than ever before in my entire life, for various reasons including the grief over her.....and now? I'm not physically doing very well and have gained lots of weight, so am naturally suffering for it. It's not rocket science. If people took a good, close look at what animals in the wild do and eat, and how they live and survive in less-pampered conditions, things would start to become much clearer. Just as our own health and wellness problems are exacerbated exponentially by a more mechanized and less natural world and society, so, too it is with animals, who often live without a naturally enriching environment to keep them occupied, engaged on many levels, and exercised (with their intellect, bodies and spirits).

This is also a portion of why I don't believe in strictly indoor cats unless there's no other option. I feel it's UNnatural to never allow them to connect with Mother Earth and all hers and the universal elements in some way, the way they and we were meant to, albeit in a safe and supervised way, for their safety and longevity and our peace of mind.

So I don't think it's really one over the other, but the WHOLE of any given picture. Everything must be nourished properly, on each level, or dis-ease is a natural consequence. It's also all about proper or at least reasonable balance between everything....something I find lacking in this particular article.

Your holistic view is indeed the better way. My usual impulsive self, I tunnel visioned right into that Dutch study that concludes that that indoor confinement and inactivity were the biggest contributors to cat diabetes and got carried away with these findings but as you can see the cat referred to in the article brought down his sugar levels with canned food not a mention of any increased activity so the article is sort of a contradiction of sorts. I have been reading all I can about feline diabetes, it sort of feeds but also rejects my guilt about some things that I should have could have etc... I would indeed like to see the entire diabetes picture since it is a growing problem whether for humans, dogs or cats. In the last decade diabetes in all groups has increased dramatically; for humans the stats talk about a 69 to 100 per cent increase over the 10 years, the percentages depend on which study you refer to but as you can see this increase is hard to explain fully. I know that a lot of folks have been obese/inactive/eating badly for at least a quarter century, so why is it that now diabetes flares up more, that has been the case for pets as well. The accepted excuse is bad eating and lifestyle but what is it that was a bit betterduring the 15 years prior to this last decade, where there was obesity, and there were obese pets but much less often diabetes to accompany these anomalities? For as long as people have been raising animals they have been fattening them up on carbs so the problem in our foods may well be due to the disproportionate amount of cereals in our diets. Worse still, labels do not often help because there is also the fact that any qualitative distinctions between processed foods and whole foods disappear when the focus is on quantifying the nutrients they contain (or, more precisely, the known nutrients).. When pets started dying as a result of their food containing melamine spiked gluten from China I wrote to our CFIA(CDN FOOD INSPECTION AGENCY) to find out if any of this gluten had ever made its way into our own human foods and as you can expect I never got the favor of a reply. (speaks volumes) I am also very worried that the corn that we use so much of, for humans foods and animal foods, is most likely genetically modified and might this explain the diabetes flare up ? I think that we have been genetically modifying corn for quite a while(about 12 years) now but how are we supposed to find out?-- as I write this I wouldn't be surprised that Monsanto come up to this site to scream that I haven't made any scientific studies they control most of the info on gmo's although the few independent studies have observed that genetically modified potatoes cause aberrations such as dammage to rat's spleens. mostly, t is priviledged information, known to Monsanto only. I have been following the feline diabetes cases on a forum from France and there it would seem that the thinking on this illness is that it starts with some sort of emotional stress...a move, a new baby in the house etc...I have reason to suspect that this may well be the case here as well but this is never mentioned by our vets or on our noth american sites. Should this be a factor I would like to see us consider the emotions of our pets as well and see to it that they are exercised and entertained, not only for their bodies but so that their moods improve as well. Another thing to consider and I do remember a nagging feeling about this whenever I would open the many little tins for my wet food loving cat is the kind of meat they ( and WE)are being fed. I always suspected that the quality of pet food meats is inferior to humans but this may be wrong, perhaps our own supermarket meat is just as bad. Animals fattened on cereals will have a less healthy meat that those who were only grass fed. I let Michael Pollan (article Unhappy Meals, 01/28/2007NYT) explain "It's not just the oversupply of macronutrients as we now have that represents a serious threat to our health, as evidenced by soaring rates of obesity and diabetes. But the undersupply of micronutrients may const*itute a threat just as serious. Put in the simplest terms, we’re eating a lot more seeds and a lot fewer leaves, a tectonic dietary shift the full implications of which we are just beginning to glimpse. If I may borrow the nutritionist’s reductionist vocabulary for a moment, there are a host of critical micronutrients that are harder to get from a diet of refined seeds than from a diet of leaves. There are the antioxidants and all the other newly discovered phytochemicals ; there is the fiber, and then there are the healthy omega-3 fats found in leafy green plants, which may turn out to be most important benefit of all.

Most people associate omega-3 fatty acids with fish, but fish get them from green plants (specifically algae), which is where they all originate. Plant leaves produce these essential fatty acids (“essential” because our bodies can’t produce them on their own) as part of photosynthesis. Seeds contain more of another essential fatty acid: omega-6. Without delving too deeply into the biochemistry, the two fats perform very different functions, in the plant as well as the plant eater. Omega-3s appear to play an important role in neurological development and processing, the permeability of cell walls, the metabolism of glucose and the calming of inflammation. Omega-6s are involved in fat storage (which is what they do for the plant), the rigidity of cell walls, clotting and the inflammation response. (Think of omega-3s as fleet and flexible, omega-6s as sturdy and slow.) Since the two lipids compete with each other for the attention of important enzymes, the ratio between omega-3s and omega-6s may matter more than the absolute quant*ity of either fat. Thus too much omega-6 may be just as much a problem as too little omega-3.

And that might well be a problem for people eating a Western diet. As we’ve shifted from leaves to seeds, the ratio of omega-6s to omega-3s in our bodies has shifted, too. At the same time, modern food-production practices have further diminished the omega-3s in our diet. Omega-3s, being less stable than omega-6s, spoil more readily, so we have selected for plants that produce fewer of them; further, when we partly hydrogenate oils to render them more stable, omega-3s are eliminated. Industrial meat, raised on seeds rather than leaves, has fewer omega-3s and more omega-6s than preindustrial meat used to have. And official dietary advice since the 1970s has promoted the consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils, most of which are high in omega-6s (corn and soy, especially). Thus, without realizing what we were doing, we significantly altered the ratio of these two essential fats in our diets and bodies, with the result that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in the typical American today stands at more than 10 to 1; before the widespread introduction of seed oils at the turn of the last century, it was closer to 1 to 1.

The role of these lipids is not completely understood, but many researchers say that these historically low levels of omega-3 (or, conversely, high levels of omega-6) bear responsibility for many of the chronic diseases associated with the Western diet, especially heart disease and diabetes. (Some researchers implicate omega-3 deficiency in rising rates of depression and learning disabilities as well.) To remedy this deficiency, nutritionism classically argues for taking omega-3 supplements or fortifying food products, but because of the complex, compet*itive relationship between omega-3 and omega-6, adding more omega-3s to the diet may not do much good unless you also reduce your intake of omega-6."

As Pollan goes on to say in the above quoted (18 page!)article, '' Rather, we’re turning to the health-care industry to help us “adapt.” Medicine is learning how to keep alive the people whom the Western diet is making sick. It’s gotten good at extending the lives of people with heart disease, and now it’s working on obesity and diabetes. Capitalism is itself marvelously adaptive, able to turn the problems it creates into lucrative business opportunities: diet pills, heart-bypass operations, insulin pumps, bariatric surgery. But while fast food may be good business for the health-care industry, surely the cost to society — estimated at more than $200 billion a year in diet-related health-care costs — is unsustainable."

So! for all that I love and have loved, it's something worth studying and remedying if at all possible. Your input on this will be welcome, Furkidlets' was much much appreciated. Take care you and all, eat nothing that your grandmother wouldn't recognize and treat you animals to 100%grass fed meat!

Toonie,

Hey, you're really getting the bigger picture! Excellent!

Yes, I know, with every thing we learn after the fact, it can both depress and empower us, as to how it relates to what we did and didn't do, or know, about our baby's health when it really counted. But that's when we have to also remind ourselves about that wise way of thinking -- "I did the best I could with what I knew THEN"......and then ADD, "And I'm continuing to learn whatever I can NOW, so I'll be in an improved position to care for any others in future....so I'm doing what I can..." So as far as that goes, you're doing very well! (why do you think I'm always endeavoring to nudge people into learning and educating themselves? It serves both the animals and their people in the long run, in one, joined circle)

As for that bigger picture, the most we can do, really, is try to keep abreast of the newest information that comes out of holistic circles (not mainstream, which is fraught with cover-ups and dated material, most often and overall, and certainly by comparison to holistic circles), but keeping in mind the track record of those who speak to these issues. In other words, if they've actually HELPED people or animals get well, or see big improvements, as opposed to just treating symptoms of illness but having their patients still decline, suffer from the treatment itself, or die anyway in short order...then it becomes empirical evidence that what they're saying must have merit, even if they don't get absolutely everything right all the time (who can?). We have to also realize that information is never static, always changing, being refined, and so we ought to stay open to new information all the time, just as the better docs and vets do. Time was, in eastern medicine, that doctors were not even paid UNLESS their patients improved, as that was their philosophy - they weren't doing their job correctly until that happened, so didn't 'deserve' payment until then. Quite a contrast to western models, isn't it?

You can almost always be sure that there are a whole host of things that feed into any illness or dis-ease, and that's why balance in whatever areas we can think of is so key to becoming and staying well, or at least better off. But we also have to face the fact that it would probably take a few generations of really healthy, super-clean living (with a matching planet, to which we are linked) to eradicate all the 'garbage' that's been bred right into most living organisms by all these years of planetary degradation....and foolish choices! For example, there's a huge colony of cats who've been fed, believe it or not, a vegetarian high-protein diet for over 4 generations and this company has found it took 3, I believe, generations to shed all the inherent diseases out of the bloodlines of these cats through the use of healthy, clean food, water, environment, etc. (these cats, btw, are apparently fit as fiddles and even like this food, believe it or not!...and not confined to indoors) Even if you doubt the wisdom of this kind of diet for felines, the larger point is that it took that long to be able to begin to reclaim true vitality and inherent health from inception.

And so, we also have to realize none of us are normally starting with inherently fully healthy animals (or people), so it's an upward battle from the get-go, which behooves us to add whatever good we presently can to preserve what inherent health IS there, FROM the get-go, whenever possible (and many things ARE possible if that's what you really want). We'll not yet catch everything, but again, we can DO WHATEVER WE CAN.

As for EFAs themselves (just one part of that bigger picture), yes, it's a complicated equation, and to make it even more complicated, no one knows for certain yet what the absolutely correct RATIOS are for cats in particular, although some holistic vets work with the latest ratios that are thought, so far, to be best for them. Most mainstream vets don't have any idea what that is, by comparison. This is what I followed for Nissa, once I became aware of it through her holistic vets' knowledge....which was later confirmed by articles I found on that very issue. (and then, of course, you have to let your vet figure out that ratio depending on which essential oil product(s) you've bought, to get a proper daily dose of each) This is an example of how we and say, cats, are both similar AND have certain differences, both of which have to be considered and respected. For at least your OWN EFA needs, you might want to check out Udo Erasmus' website, as he's known for being a forerunner and pioneer in EFA research for human needs/products - Udo Erasmus official website

As for Monsanto.....well, it's my belief that they're basically a very evil corporation, bent on world domination of our basic food supplies. You can call me a conspiracy theorist if you like (don't really care! ), but after learning more about them that I ever cared to know , the writing seemed to be on the wall, to my mind. Interestingly, in the U.S., their own employees recently had quite a coup when they refused to eat GMO foods in their own cafeteria! HA! So they've given them (supposedly.....man, I don't think I'D trust them with this if I worked there!) non-GMO food there, and possibly also in their UK quarters as well. How's THAT for irony????

Corn has been GM'd for a long, long time now, so let's connect the possible dots. What's one of the world's highest known allergens in both people and animals? You guessed it - CORN. There have been many attempted moves in both Canada and the States to improve our labeling laws to include listing GMOs, so we have a real CHOICE as to whether we buy them or not, but it's always failed so far with our respective governments. (wanna talk conspiracy theories again? or just stupidity?) THIS is something we can also do - keep fighting for things like this and never give up or give in, but get involved in some way. (and if I remember right, Canada's labeling laws are even a little bit worse than the U.S.'s and as you probably know, the Canadian govt. often likes to copy whatever the U.S. does, despite our population beefing about this....so all you American members out there.....it's even more on YOUR shoulders to change these things first, unfortunately) Oh, and btw, MOST of the produce we've been getting in regular grocery stores for at least the last decade ARE GMO'd already. (frightening, isn't it?) Again, buy organic wherever possible. The upside to doing this is that the more who demand certified organic, the more we support those farms and the less expensive it will become through higher volume sales. If we DON'T support them, they'll be drummed right out of existence and we'll have even LESS choice. In other words, put your money where your mouth is whenever and wherever you can.

All this said, though, I still ALSO believe that on a quantum level, our, and also our animals', emotions and thoughts ( both together, as they're inextricably linked) play a much bigger role in determining our state of health than 'mainstream' people realize or acknowledge. And without getting into this on a detailed level (I'd likely be here for DAYS, trying to explain everything I mean by this!), suffice it to say that emotional health and wellness can be every bit as important, probably even more so, than physical wellness. I truly believe that thought and emotion precedes dis-ease of every kind, so whatever we can do to also improve upon that is vital. However, this is also the hardest part for us humans to get a handle on, moment by moment, so if all we can do is simply improve even a little in a given moment, that can go a long way. NOT very easy at all when one is grieving, obviously, or when trying to cope with a sick furbaby, but if we can at least capitalize on whatever better moments we have (with them or without them) each day, that will also help. Mental/emotional help is, after all, not treated very seriously in our health 'care' systems, which we know by if nothing else, the lack of decent coverage towards psychological help in our medical plans. As they say, if you're diabetic (and they DO seem to like using that disease in these ana*logies), you're normally pretty fully covered for medical costs and are encouraged to get help, but if you're faced with psychological unwellness.....you're encouraged by the system to "forGETabout*it!" NOT holistic thinking whatsoever.

And yes, if we try to eat (and exercise, or rather WORK!) more like our ancestors did, we'll be better off. So, too, if we try to feed our kidlets more like their ancestors ate, the same applies. And again, that's why certified organic food sources are so vital if we can manage it. There have been quite a few scientific studies, even on an energetic level, comparing organic foods to non-organic, and the results are quite eye-opening to say the least. If you haven't yet read about the lower quality pet food ingredients in Ann N. Martin's book, "Food Pets Die For", here's one excerpt:
from "Food Pets Die For", on Homevet website Regular, human grade meats in regular grocery stores aren't the best to begin with (again, too long to detail), so unless your pet food states it's organic meat, or at the very least "human grade" and whole (not "meal", "byproducts" or any of those other horrid things), it's a given it's terrible, terrible quality, no matter the price, no matter the brand or if it's only sold by vets. ("Hills" was one of the forerunners, from what I've been told by pet food merchants and some vets, in using ethoxyquin as a preservative, moldy grains, etc. and wasn't one of the first to remove ethoxyquin from their products, either, so what does that tell you?) You're right, btw, about grass-fed beef being much more healthy than grain-fed, also just because that's what cows would naturally eat anyway. However, there's still the issue of residual drugs in their flesh to contend with. (again, studies have been done and on energetic levels as well...)

It's ALL a concern, and it can drive you crazy trying to address everything at once, so again, if you can focus and improve upon even just a couple of things at a time, all the better, as in "good, better, best" as a progression over time. And THIS is why I so strongly advocate for truly holistic vets (and docs) as well, especially homeopathic vets (and docs), who have an even BROADER outlook on all of these components of addressing the wholeness of any living being. (I also think some vets today are calling themselves "holistic" just to draw clients, but don't truly practice the real meaning of the term)

So now THIS was a much better article excerpt, I think! You have no IDEA how glad it makes me to see someone interested in these kinds of things, as most of the time it feels like I'm talking to brick walls and that's so discouraging when I'm trying so hard to impart this help to animals in every conceivable way I can. So THANK YOU for taking an interest and actually doing more reading on your own! Keep up the good work!

P.S. You might also want to start checking out the audio interviews (oh, unless you still don't have high-speed net service.....might take too long to download) on the Conscious Media link I'd provided in my thread "The Afterlife Experiments" in the News, Websites, etc. forum. Check out the Russian scientist's talk on foods, water, experiments he's done, etc. if you can. If you can't get a good download, perhaps he's either got a link listed next to his name when the interview starts, OR perhaps his work can be accessed in print if you Google him....maybe.

As I read your response I felt an enormous amount of enthusiasm because whatever it is that we are circling in on has brought these 'known unknowns' a little closer to the surface.
You are quite right about favoring organic: for the environment, for small farms survival and for your own health. Studies have finally been able to assert that organic foods contain more and better quality nutrients. I loved the comparison I read the other day that says if you had a very expensive car, would you put subquality fuel in it? Another argument says that all the chemicals that were used during food production have to be processed by your liver, why not make it easier for your poor body and eat organic...

Certified organic of course is what we should look for, it is desirable that a third party oversee the organic production and unless one personally knows the farmer, certified means you are really getting what you pay for. As for organic meats, they should be grass fed as well, I think this is being done more and more by organic farmers, it all makes so much more sense to use your fields and prairies to feed your animals rather than fattening them up on grain, organic or not.
Back to Michael Pollan's article, the advice makes a lot of sense well worth reading the entire article:
http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=87
but basically it's the first line of his article that came through to me: I also appreciate the fact that he sells nothing, his article advocates only real food no supplements:
But it is very true that emotions, not only our pets but our own can have an impact on every one's health. We are by nature fragile beings and pretty well on our own in this jungle of cold hearted ways. Take care all of you readers and Furkidlets' mom.
thanks for the links I shall get there during my day. Much appreciated all of you and please do not think of this post as a DIalogue, we would certainly welcome every one's knowledge and opinions.