When our pets are diagnosed with a heart disease we wonder if they would have quality of life from that point onwards. What if I tell you the opposite works? Improving your dog or cat’s quality of life you can improve their heart health and prolong their lifespan.
According to the WHO Heart disease is the main cause of death nowadays. Lifestyle, diet and genetics are the main causes to develop heart disease. As you can see, two out of three are environmental factors that we can control to prevent it.
Frenetic lifestyles can also affect our pets hearts. Sometimes we take our pets everywhere not letting them slow down and have their very needed rest. Othertimes we have dogs full of energy sitting at home. They going crazy as need much more exercise than we can give them cause we simply don’t have enough time for them.
This also applies to cats. I do feel for those indoors cats that are outdoors at heart. They are under stress in a confined space, like a house or a flat, having limited access to the outdoors. Cats are highly susceptible to change, some spend a good part of their lives in a cattery or home alone due to their owner’s busy lifestyle. This causes tremendous stress and anxiety to the cat that can lead to all sort of disease, from urinary infections to heart disease and cancer.
Heart disease and a poor quality of life are directly related.
Let me tell you something funny. I often see pets developing the same disease their owners suffer from. Heart and metabolic disease like diabetes and hyperthyroidism are the most common in my experience. I don’t have a reasonable explanation for this, to be honest. Perhaps their similar lifestyle or the fact that animals are very empathic?
HOW TO PREVENT HEART DISEASE
Only a small percantage of heart disease are genetic and inevitable. The most dangerous cocktail is a sedentary lifestyle combined with a poor quality diet, these cause the majority of heart disease. Therefore, the key to prevent heart disease is to feed your pet with an adecuate diet and exercise them regularly as simple as it sounds.
Dogs and cats are carnivors by nature. They need a diet high in animal proteins, moderate amounts of animal fats and low carbs. Commercial diets are rich in carbs and low in proteins, they seem adecuate to maybe feed a chicken but are exactly the opposite to what our dogs and cats need. Animal proteins are rich in essential aminoacids crutial for their heart’s health like Taurine and Carnitine (except cheese and eggs that are low in these aminoacids).
Without this amino acids the heart gets damaged. Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a heart disease that affects mostly large dog breeds but also some cats. It seems to be directly related with low amounts of taurine in the diet. A lack of Taurine in the diet has also been linked to blindness in Cocker Spaniels. Dogs seem to produce Taurine naturally but cats don’t. They need to get enough Taurine from their diet.
Taurine and carnitine are key to a healthy heart.
The dose of Taurine supplementation for dogs and cats with deficiencies in this amino acid and heart disease is 250 to 500 mg twice daily. Once the deficiency is solved, the dose can be reduced to half.
The cardiac patiente needs a special diet in order to improve and prolong his quiality of life as much or even more than medication itself.
Together we can make up a diet and exercise plan for your dog or cat with heart disease to help him or her live longer with more quality of life. Go to the BOOK NOW page to make an appointment.
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