On Pancreatitis
Pancreatitis in pets is hard to diagnose, potentially life-threatening, and easily avoidable. It is important to recognize the signs of pancreatitis and act promptly to partner with your vet to develop a treatment plan. We are seeing many customers coming in with concerns about pancreatitis in an increasing amount. We wanted to provide this as a tool to learn, identify, and treat pets with pancreatitis.
What does the pancreas do?
The pancreas is an organ that is vital to digestion. A healthy pancreas does two things very well. It secretes insulin, which balances your pet’s blood sugar. It secretes digestive enzymes (amylase, protease & lipase) which help to break down carbohydrates, protein, and fats respectively.
What is pancreatitis
Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas. It can vary from a mild, chronic condition to an acute, severe or even fatal episode. Symptoms can include vomiting, lethargy, anorexia & fever. It is recommended for acute, severe episodes to see a veterinarian quickly – hospitalization may be required at this stage. Once this passes, we can look at correcting one of the common causes of pancreatitis: the diet.
What about fat
A common treatment for pancreatitis is to avoid fat-heavy diets. Newer research is finding that while higher triglycerides (fats and oils) in the blood are a common sign of pancreatitis, this seems to be the case when a high-fat diet is paired with a high-carb diet. Especially when looking at a diet rich in cooked, starchy carbohydrates like those in kibbles. Triglycerides regularly show up in the blood on high fat, low carb diets, but they leave the blood and are used throughout the body. Fat alone is not to blame for pancreatitis. It is in fact an essential part of your pet’s diet. Raw goat’s milk would also be a great food or supplement at this time since raw goat’s milk requires no work from the pancreas to be digested and also contains plenty of live enzymes.
Misconceptions about pork have been linked to pancreatitis because of specific cuts having higher fats, in reality many animals have high fat content in certain cuts. Pork as a whole is a fairly lean animal. Regardless of all of this, fat is a crucial part of our pets diet and should be fed. For a healthy pet, fat can even be fed at a ratio of 1:1 protein and fat with low to no carbohydrates included. Concerns over the digestablility of pork is brought up in relation to pancreatitis as well. Pork is no harder to digest than any other meat item. Generally, digestibility of fresh meat ranges from 85-95%. Pork will not cause any sort of digestive upset in all pets, but some may be more intolerant to it than others. That is an individual problem, not a problem as a whole.
Treating a pet with pancreatitis
When dealing with acute pancreatitis, it is good practice to fast your pet for 24-48 hrs. This will allow some of that inflammation to go down. After this fasting period, introduce bland food. During this period, keeping fat levels down is important. Canned foods such as Weruva’s Paw Lickin Chicken, Grandma’s Chicken Soup, or Dave’s Restricted Bland Diet would be a good choice during this time. Raw goat’s milk would also be a great food or supplement at this time since raw goat’s milk requires no work from the pancreas to be digested and also contains plenty of live enzymes.
Once acute symptoms have subsided, a species-appropriate diet, such as raw food, would be the best choice to avoid any further pancreatitis episodes. Diets such as Answers, Primal, and Smallbatch would be most ideal as they have appropriate amounts of fat and don’t contain any starchy fillers. Raw foods also contain all the active digestive enzymes and probiotics that are naturally occurring, which will put less stress on the pancreas. Most dogs and cats are fed an exclusively kibble-based diet, which is heavily processed and full of carbohydrates. Kibble contains a minimum of 30% carbohydrates in order to bind the food together, with most brands utilizing a higher carbohydrate load (closer to 40-60%). If you look at a dog or cat’s digestive system, beginning with the mouth, you’ll see they’re designed to eat and digest mostly meat – and to a far lesser extent any carbohydrates. Because of the heavy processing, dry food undergoes, all of the naturally occurring enzymes within the food ingredients are destroyed. This makes the pancreas work harder than it should to produce the necessary enzymes needed to break down the food. This can cause the pancreas to become inflamed over time and extend pancreatitis symptoms.
Digestive enzymes such as Animal Essentials Plant Enzyme & Probiotic and Carna4 Flora4 Sprouted Seed can be added to a diet that would be lacking in enzymes, such as kibble diets. Raw goat’s milk is a great addition as well, as mentioned previously, to add probiotics and enzymes into their diet as well. They will continue to give their pancreas a rest for some of their daily calories on top of that. Dry foods can be used, but avoiding high carbohydrate diets is key as well as supplementing additional enzymes that the kibble is lacking. Enzymes such as amalayse can help deal with the excess starch in kibble, but starch breaks down to sugar when processed and heavy starch diets can lead to a myriad of health issues as well.
Thank you for reading, we hope you found some value in this article. Feel free to leave a comment or ask us in person about pancreatitis. We are always happy to help.
Resources:
Dr. Karen Becker DVM on Pet Pancreatitis
Dogs Naturally Article on Pancreatitis
