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Fall River ~ Or Other Raw Feeders -- Question on Aging

1K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  Fallriver 
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#1 ·
Is there ever an age where you can't feed raw (i.e, the senior years)? And if so, what do you feed then?
 
#2 ·
i don't think there is ever an age that they cant eat raw. Seniors switching may take some time but if they've ate it for there lifetime or part of it i see no reason why they couldn't keep on it. My poodle is 12 yrs old.i switched him in October of 2006, he is doing great, his ripping and tearing capabilities are not wonderful but i help him eat his boney meals (i hold it for him). meaty meals no problem!
 
#3 ·
Seniors do great on a raw diet. The exception as you saw above is dogs who were fed kibble their entire lives...the grains and strange cooked molecules in kibble cause IBS and if a dog is fed the same food for years, they may not have the capacity to handle another food and will develop colitis and such things.
This isn't a raw problem though, it is a problem created by kibble.

For those who do feed kibble, please rotate your foods often to prevent IBS and the toxin build up that it creates :police:
 
#5 ·
Well, in people, 'leaky gut' is linked to lack of variety in the diet. When we tend to eat the same foodstuffs over and over again, we get excesses of some nutrients and they can build up as toxins in the body.

In the case of kibble, when the protein is heated and extruded, it changes the molecular composition and the dog's body often doesn't know what to do with this strange molecule, and it can mount an immune response which can take many forms from allergies to IBS.

Similar things happen when we eat processed foods...the molecular composition is changed and the body sometimes recognizes it only as foreign matter that must be attacked. Sometimes the body attacks its own cells in the chaos, or the white blood cells are so busy fighting margerine molecules for example, that our immune system is compromised and we are more susceptible to disease.

IBS has also been linked to vaccines in both people and dogs as the vaccines cause a similar immune response.
 
#6 ·
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but it does relate to the question of digestion.

First, are we talking about the same thing? "IBS" = irritable bowel syndrome. "IBD" = inflammatory bowel disease (e.g., Crohn's, ulcerative colitis). They are very different.

In humans, IBS is a junk diagnosis (diagnosis of exclusion), but it's primarily a motility disorder, not allergy related. Leaky gut syndrome is actually quite rare, and I have seen very little reliable (as opposed to highly speculative and logically flawed) research for it. Histopathology should be able to demonstrate it, so if it was as common as some people say it is, you'd think there'd be more evidence for it. Typically the folks who support the leaky gut syndrome in humans are also huge supporters of the notion of candidiasis, which also is much rarer than is often claimed (unless you have AIDS or a similar immune destroying illness). (I know for sure it occurs in celiac disease, which is an allergy to wheat gluten. Perhaps some dogs have a similar reaction to wheat.)

My lay understanding (and I have read a lot about this in trying to understand my own condition) is that most toxic build-ups are the result of localized ischemia, as one finds in, e.g., chronic myofascial pain syndrome. Again, in humans this is predominantly a psychoneuromuscular phenomenon, which may have impacts on psychoneuroimmunology but is not an allergic reaction.

Certainly if one is intolerant of a particular food, we see, e.g., diarrhea from irritation, which causes excessive and uncoordinated gut motility. Note that in humans, what one person handles well will send another into spasms of pain. This does not mean that we aren't evolved to eat certain foods; it just means there's enormous individual and subgroup variability. This doesn't mean that stuff is leaking, toxins are being built up, etc., etc. Of course dogs are more limited than we are in what they can eat since they are not true omnivores (at least not in the way we are).

I don't know how much, if any, of this is useful for understanding what goes on in dogs, but I just wanted to throw it out in case anything is of value.

P.S. One area where I think you could see a seriously problem with leaky gut (and here I'm just thinking logically, rather than based on evidence) is if you are feeding something that changes the natural pH of the gut. This is a huge problem in ruminants (cattle) who are fed huge amounts of corn, which they are not evolved to eat, and which creates an acidic gut (and the concomitant problems of constant bloat, infections, acid-resistant e. coli, etc.). Since I know nothing about the dog gut i can't say much more, except to guess that it would be similar in pH to ours. Do you know, Dana?
 
#8 ·
Yes, the dog gut is more acidic than ours but they definitely have pH problems with grains.
This is the holistic board, so I'm not speaking of allopathic research and symptoms and that can be hard sometimes as you do have to have some faith as there is some anecdotal research.

Certainly if one is intolerant of a particular food, we see, e.g., diarrhea from irritation, which causes excessive and uncoordinated gut motility
I would call this intolerance an immune system breakdown, holistically speaking. From that point of view, IBS and IBD are essentially the same. Everyone here understands that diet is the cornerstone of good health and there is a crisis in the quality of human diets too, not to mention the toxins in our water and our air. Until a good diet is established, I'm not sure that research will reveal what it needs to.

If the toxins in your condition are created by ischemia, what is causing the ischemia?

I think you are also confusing immune problems with auto-immune problems...allergies are autoimmune problems so I don't think I claimed that these things were allergic responses, rather they are symptoms of a deficient immune system and the deficiency is often caused by poor diet, stress, vaccinations and drugs which holistically speaking, only act to suppress symptoms. In traditional medicine, symptoms should not be suppressed as they are the body's way of dealing with toxins. For example, if you have a cold, you do not want to suppress the cough as that is what partly helps the body to expel the virus from the body.

Processed foods start the immune response because the molecular composition is often changed so drastically that the body can not recognize it as food. When unknown molecules enter the body, it mounts an immune response. These small but constant challenges to our immune system tax the body and over time creates a breakdown. This can occur in the form of any number of chronic diseases and is well documented in western research. There is a reason that most of our top diseases are chronic lifestyle diseases and I don't think we are even close to getting a handle on them. In the case of cancer, we spend millions and millions on how to treat it and I wonder where we would be if we instead took that money and worked on public education and cleaning up our foodstuffs and the environment. On top of that, there are a few researchers and practioners who have a great success rate with cancer through nutrition and over the counter medication and they meet with a lot of opposition in either getting published or getting FDA approval because the drug companies want to own the disease.

Even things as seemingly straight forward as arthritis are autoimmune diseases.

It is the same with our dogs...the top diseases in dogs are chronic immune (not auto-immune although they are common enough) diseases. If we want to reverse these changes, we need to start with good diet and stop using toxins on our dogs.

Having said that, this is not medical advice of any sort, nor is it an endorsement for alternative medicine or shunning allopathic practice. I just thought I'd share some thoughts on the little I know about this as I have had a great deal of success with holistic medicine and just thought I'd share some of it's simplicity for those who don't use it. It sure makes my head spin sometimes, trying to make sense of everything ;D
 
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